Chapters At first, Twilight mistook the low rumble for thunder.
A glance to Rainbow challenged that theory. The weathermare’s eyes had narrowed and wings flared. Half-risen from the train seat, she bore no sign of the ready confidence with which she would face a storm, instead tensed against some unknown threat.
In the next moment Twilight noted Pinkie’s pupils had shrunk and her body was trembling, held more rigidly still than she had ever seen.
It was all the warning she had before with a sharp crack the world lurched under her, the car of the train tilting inexorably onto its side. It felt slow - mockingly slow - and yet she barely had time to meet her friends’ eyes before it fell. Fell and did not stop - everything began to spin increasingly quickly as she was thrown unceremoniously against their luggage, bruised and battered, train car gaining momentum as it rolled down a steep slope -
Her horn lit in panic, magic enveloping her friends to drag them from this metal deathtrap and onto solid ground. The energy of arresting their momentum in the teleport dug a trench into the hard-packed snow, enough to secure footing, as the train car crumpled on the rocks below them.
The relief that washed over her to not be on it proved short-lived. Twilight’s ears flattened back against her head as she looked up - and wished they’d never left.
Icy chunks rolling towards the group from above, somewhat obscured by a billowing white cloud of snow, attested Twilight had teleported the group straight into the path of an avalanche.
“Gah! Somepony, give me a boost!” Spike and Rainbow wasted the least time in responding, dragon leaping onto the quick pegasus and both charging to breathe dragonfire over the cold threat. Green fire lapped impossibly broad at the avalanche - and steam hissed as the ice evaporated from still-tumbling rock. Rainbow dodged several forerunners in order to herd the constructed cloud at breakneck speeds outrunning the avalanche, handing the rapidly cooling water cloud off to Rarity and Fluttershy in her passing.
“What are we supposed to do with this, darling?” Rarity’s voice was a thin veneer of calm over building panic, but she kept her poise. Immediate mortal peril was not truthfully her preferred time for theatrics, appropriate as they would be. The raw fear in Rainbow’s response, though, belied her quick response.
“I don’t know! Make something!” Running out of the cushion of warm air provided by Spike’s flames, Rainbow slowed and turned to aid Fluttershy in pushing the cloud to the ground. A strange sense of deja vu came over Rarity as she called on talents she did not remember using to wrap her magic around the clouds and began to sculpt; despite the unfamiliarity there was something approaching practiced ease to it. Soon the ground was slippery with ice where the cloud condensed and melted the snow, shaped in an abstractly floral design to channel the rocks away from them. Spike jumped down beside Rarity to give aid with precision firebreath in resculpting the channels, maintaining the icy perimeter.
Applejack’s lasso snaked out from a ledge the earth pony had claimed when the first large rock proved too hefty to be swayed by the defense of ice, yanking it to the side to tumble away harmlessly. Planted firmly on the ground, staring a challenge at the earth itself as it sought to crush them. Pinkie on the other hoof popped up beside or on top of the pieces, displaying some of the talent of her rock-farming heritage as she tap-danced a boulder into an explosion of harmless confetti. Despite their strength and agility, there were still too many for them to fend off, and Twilight’s horn sparked again - calling on a more directly defensive magic, this time, enough for a shield as she braced for impact.
Red shield springing up around her and her friends, the impact of rocks on her magic caused her to wince, but she held firm, though her voice cracked with her next instruction. “Shelter! Get shelter. I won’t be able to hold this long once there’s a mountain on it.”
“On it, sugarcube. Spike!” Applejack called the dragon to her as she set her hooves to further digging shelter from the hollow they’d wound up in. Spike rushed to her side, aiding her in melting deeper into the ice and forming something of a cove. At Twilight’s urging everyone but her huddled into the makeshift cave - barely making it before the overwhelming weight of the avalanche finally overwhelmed her shield.
She found comfort knowing that she’d kept her friends safe as she could have, before the mountain crushed her.
It didn’t stop.
Twiilight drifted in and out of consciousness, slipping from dreams of being eaten by a tatzl worm back to a confusingly less pleasant reality. The cold had seeped into her well enough to chill her to the bone, false warmth creeping after it to wrap her body in the strangely comforting grip of frostbite.
She sought to channel magic through her horn - just a spark - during that first period of awareness. Fire lanced through her horn and back through her skull, driving a pounding headache into her brain.
It was a mistake she made three times more before the pain managed to get its point through to her.
Every attempt at breath remained little more than dragging grit across her throat, and her bloody hacking grew more so; yet still her lungs worked. She had not drowned, not died of blood loss, nor shock, nor wishing desperately for this experience to end.
Despite all reason, she was not dying.
Her worse-than-useless breathing quickened, dragging claws over her respiratory tract as panic surged through her mind. Not dying. Buried alive. Trapped forever.
A slight spark of hope. Not dying. Her friends would find her. Her friends wouldn’t lose her. She could endure this for them. She had to.
As this started to calm her, she managed to reflect: her breathing was worse than useless. She didn’t need to breathe. If it kept up they’d pull her out in worse shape than she already was.
So she stopped.
The instinct did not give in easily; but she found that her lungs did not cry out for air with overwhelming force, and with the option between holding her breath and drowning continually in sandpaper, the measure was needed relief. She still couldn’t breathe deeply to calm herself … but there was a great deal she couldn’t do right now and a bit of panic was justified. Just. Don’t hyperventilate. No more razors in the throat, that was the goal.
Focus on her friends. Was the cove they dug out enough shelter for them, or did they wind up crushed like her - or worse? No. No, it would have been enough. Could they get out though? Or would they be buried alive, and stuck? Freeze? They had Spike’s flame, but that might use up what air they had … had plenty of body heat though … could pegasi make air, was that how she didn’t need to breathe?
A few sparks of magic, doing little yet and barely noticed, managed to gather on her horn without pain.
Fear mixed with wild speculation, flowing into dream and back into reality, breath held often as she could manage the agency to, for a length of time she was in no state to accurately estimate. Blessedly, her body grew increasingly numb, even sensations other than pain washed away in the heat of freezing.
Until, finally, her surviving ear picked up the most wonderfully horrid sound it had heard in some time: the scraping of claw through rock, and familiar crunch of strong fangs.
Five ponies and one dragon huddled in a small, dark cave of ice. Despite the frozen nature of their surroundings, the ice insulated well; cramming the six into a confined space made their shelter stuffy and uncomfortably warm for most. Nonetheless, Rarity kept a foreleg wrapped tightly around a burning-warm Spike, calming the young dragon’s trembling and quick breaths.
Rainbow shifted constantly, tail and ears twitching, extending a wing or leg only to hiss when it hit a barrier or retract it at the grunt from another pony. They were trapped, she was trapped, and it was not cool. Not cool at all. She relaxed slightly when the light touch of Fluttershy’s wing swept some of the trapped humidity to around Fluttershy instead; the press of latent cloudstuff about her body eased, no longer exacerbating her claustrophobia.
“Sooo … “ Pinkie’s bubbly voice cut through the shocked silence, an edge of anxiety lending her words a manic tint. “How long d’ya figure we can stay in here? If we were one pony I’d think maybe four hours, but since there are six of us that’s probably more like four ten minutes or even less than an hour to figure out what to do before we all suffocate because I’m pretty sure based on what my left hind hoof’s doing that Twilight’s in trouble and -”
“Pinkie, shut up,” Applejack’s tired voice cuts through the other pony’s nervous chatter. “Y’ain’t helping.”
One look around shows the truth of these words: Fluttershy cowering under her bit of cloud, Rainbow trying to crawl up the walls to find the space to extend her wings, Rarity with her foreleg over her eyes and Spike having slipped free to dig desperately at the rocks. Pinkie’s mane deflated, her friends were unhappy and it was completely her fault (aside from the avalanche that had buried them in the first place, but that was just a detail ...)
Her eyes widened as she finished processing part of the scene. “Wait - Spike, stop!”
“Not while Twilight’s in trouble!” the small dragon replied defiantly, biting through a tough part of the rock before brushing the mouthful to the side. “C’mon, I saw what your hooves can do, help me out here!”
Pinkamena’s gaze traveled up along the barrier between them and outside, lifting another hoof from the ground as it shivered in nervous anticipation, sympathetic to the shifting stone. “You’re going to destabilize -”
Dark.
Heavy.
Sharp.
Flickers of words other than ‘pain’ passed through the fog in Twilight’s brain to describe the sensations she felt, churned and mixed with the overriding sense of agony. At first they failed to persist long, lacking in urgency compared to the shock of impact. But all too soon … she grew numb to pain. Felt what else there was to feel …
And wished the pain was still enough to distract her.
In her nose, her mouth, water, dirt, nothing she could breathe. Choking, with futile desperation for air, her mind snapped to panic but her body failed to respond. Thus checked, a strange calm settled on her as she evaluated her situation.
That was an odd angle for her spine.
Some rock had gashed open her stomach, and her crushed body pressed against something slimy and vile-smelling. The urge to retch made the hacking of her throat no more pleasant.
That probably wasn’t the best angle for her wings to be at, either, thinking about it. They didn’t respond to her attempt to move them. Nothing below her neck did.
Dizzy. Likely blood loss. Good. Just a little longer and she’d pass out from it. Then she could stop
feeling
everything.