The Bridleview home for emotionally duressed ponies was a quiet and restful place where ponies suffering from mental illness and nervous breakdowns, it was a castle like structure, all black crumbling stone with dank and dreary pale light glowing from the iron barred windows. Inside the patients all followed a strict schedule for every day they sought treatment for their issues.
One such patient was a cream coat colored mare with a grey scale mane, once she had been known A. K. Rowling aka Daring Do. The psychologicist leading the group therapy session checked her chart, Ms. Yearling had suffered a fear enduced nervous breakdown after her latest expedition. "Well Ms. Yearling it seems something went wrong during the latest outing, care to tell us just what happened?"
The mare only shook her head some and refused to say anything about it. Initially the stallion in charge only expressed disapproval in her refusal but opted to continue the group therapy session unaware of the horror he and all present had been spared.
Six months ago, the great Daring Do was still the brave and bold adventurer she wrote herself as, it was during the last expedition she went on that all that changed. Daring wiped a bead of sweat from her brow with a wing as she looked up at her destination. Her leads as a writer and adventurer had lead to an extinct volcano in the mountainous region of the Progentian jungle. She was on her own on this one. Not out of selfishness, but rather to keep anypony else from the danger.
For as Daring looked up at the grey terrain rising high above her the peak lost to the clouds above, she couldn't help but think back to the locals and the warnings they had given her about the place. The stories ranged from the lost souls of a strange and forgotten race not seen since the days of the before time, before even the first equines roamed the land.
Daring had never let talk like that stop her in her never-ending quest for fortune and glory. She adjusted her pith helmet and began climbing the mountain, the wind chilled her tan coat as she felt the breeze picking up with the altitude. She knew after at least eight thousand feet above sea level she'd need to use the respirator and tank of oxygen in her survival pack, in the mean time she took some ibuprofen.
'Remember your training girl and you'll be just fine,' Daring thought to herself as she felt the first few flakes of snow on her coat. The only signs of life were the birds flying over head, and even theyour became a distant memory. Daring had gone on expeditions like this before. She was no stranger to the isolation of being alone in such a remote place.
She still doesn't understand just what happened between the moment her hoof landed on that loose patch of ground and when she woke up in total darkness deep in a cavern under the mountain, all she knew was she fell...and fell...and fell.
The darkness surrounded Daring with only a sliver
