Not The First

I was alone in a giant sphere with nothing but a stack of dead mes.

Maybe Discord would enjoy that, but not me.

Just in case, I tried calling out to Discord. Maybe he'd hear me and come save me.

He didn't.

I was left alone with a pile of death.

After emptying the contents of my stomach earlier, my digestive track was crying out. I ignored it.

What was harder to ignore was the parched feeling in my mouth.

I knew the math.

The average pony could survive three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. As an alicorn, I was sure I would last longer. I wished I'd asked Princess Celestia more about alicorn physiology, because I didn't know how long.

I knew that without magic, I was not immortal. I would die. I'd have known that anyway; younger alicorn versions of me were dead on the ground.

How would I die?

Some of the corpses were bitten. Some of me had eaten others of me. They had lasted the longest, I supposed. Would I do that? Or would I starve?

Or maybe I'd dehydrate first.

There wasn't any water around. I found a couple empty water bottles; the versions of me that teleported with them probably drank the water themselves.

There was plenty of fluid though.

A river of blood, pus, and other things seeped out of the pile. The foul substance flowed across the slight decline, pooling some ways away at the lowest part of the sphere.

I crawled to the edge over and over again. Once or twice, I even put my muzzle to its surface. But I didn't pull any of it into my mouth. I'd rather drink my own urine. Of course, that would just make things worse.

I searched the corpse pile.

I didn't pay any attention before, but a lot of the mes were carrying things when they teleported. Bags full of books, food that was now rotten, all kinds of random objects. I found rocks, novels I hadn't read in years, sticks and strings, enough quills to start a supply store, and even a few powerless copies of my Element of Harmony.

I started using the blank pages at the end of the books to write on, using the blood as ink. I wrote my observations of this place. I had no facts, so I wrote my feelings. For a couple seconds, I wished Spike were with me to send the pages to Celestia. Maybe she could've found a way to get me out.

Then I realized what I was wishing for.

Then I remembered that I had teleported with Spike before.

There was nothing left in my stomach to throw up, but I dry heaved for what felt like hours after that. I took my hoardings and moved to the other side of the pond.

I tore out another page and began tallying. I estimated that it had already been about six days. I had slept five times since my arrival, and my body was fairly good about its schedule. I decided to make a better means of keeping time; using the water bottles, some sticks, and the body fluids, I created a series of increasingly long timers.

The first was only a minute. I counted sixty seconds of fluid drain. I did that sixty times, to find out how much liquid could flow in an hour.

The hour timer was nice, but I needed more. I took a couple days and drained twenty four hours worth of liquid.

My tally now said that I had been in this sphere for two weeks. I decided to add a rather complex mechanism to the timer, which would ring an alarm and wake me up once it reached a certain point. I created a second timer that I could trigger just as soon as the first one ran out, and then I could reset the first timer.

My days now became more accurate.

But now that I was done inventing... I had only done all that to distract myself from my thirst. And now I had no distraction.

My headache was subtle, just enough to make me want to lie down. Strangely, I wasn't hungry. My stomach clenched, but I wanted nothing in it. I just wanted to sleep, all the time.

Finally, I gave up. I pulled myself to the pond.

And I began to drink.