Luna's Secret World Redux

Luna’s Secret World

Chapter 2: Caves and Arachnids

By: Azurekaryu

August 17, 1008 PN

“AHHH” Twilight quickly jumped up from the ground she lay on, throwing off the blanket that had been trapping precious warmth in her body. She had just woken up from a horrible nightmare, one she had experienced a few times in the past. The contents of the nightmare weren’t all that important, they included many of her fears jumbled together in a random fashion.

Twilight was able to gather her bearing quickly, noticing that it was decently cold now that she had abandoned the blanket, especially with nothing else covering her body. Suddenly jolted awake she wasn’t all that drowsy, and took an opportunity to look around the room she resided in, observing the details.

Is this….. a cave?

Twilight quickly realized that the room of which she was a guest was made purely of stone with rounded, jagged walls on all sides. The cave's ceiling was a good twenty feet, maybe more, from the mare's head. Noticing that she could see, the next objective was to find the source of light. Twilight quickly turned around and regretted it immediately and was forced to swing her head away from the intense light and cover her eyes with a hoof.

She became acclimated to the light in a few seconds and slowly moved her head back to observe the source of the blinding light. The first thing she noticed was that this was obviously the entrance and exit to the cave she was in, so the outside world was the source of light. The next thing she noticed was that it was snowing.

It’s snowing? Where could I be that it’s snowing this time of year?

On Equis, the winter season would have never started this early, or at least not on equestrian lands. It was a solid two months from winter, if not more. This was the first thing brought up some thoughts of panic. Twilight was able to keep it down, and walked forward to the edge of the cave to further observe the properties of.. wherever she was and try to get some sort of idea of her location.

The lavender mare took one final step to get to the edge of the cave exit and looked out at the land before her. It was a forest of pines, the trees covered in fresh snow with small branches of green contrasting the bright white light reflecting off of the snow. As far as the eye could see it was just forest, with a few small clearings here and there, but those were very hard to notice among the trees.

It’s beautiful, Twilight thought to herself. It was truly the most amazing scene she had ever encountered, the virgin snow and untouched forest of pines just created a near perfect image. The unicorn continued to stare in awe for a minute or two before the biting cold got to her and she was forced to retreat back into the relative safety of the cave.

The cave was not much warmer, but every little bit helped. Twilight wandered back to where she had awoken and searched for the blanket that provided her shelter from the harsh temperature. It didn’t take long and once she did find it, Twilight levitated the blanket and wrapped it around her figure. During this action, she noticed two things. One, levitating that blanket was much harder than it should have been, and two, this was no ordinary cloth. It felt silky, but it the material was a dark blue with what looked like stars twinkling in the cloth. Aether blanket, She quickly realized what the material was. It was a cloth imitation made of pure magic, otherwise known as aether cloth.

She recognized how it got there too, from the use of the spell known as Aether Creation, a difficult spell to learn and master, herself learning a couple years ago after numerous weeks spent taming it. How did this get here? Was Twilight’s immediate thought after the realization. While some unicorns could unconsciously cast spells in their sleep, there was no way she could have called upon magic this powerful.

There had to be somebody else here with her. It was the only explanation. More cautiously now, Twilight observed her surroundings and started a slow walk deeper into the cave, each step echoing more and more. She didn’t very far before noticed fairly large cobwebs in corners and covering holes that led to an unknown somewhere inside the cave. The webs were beautifully manufactured, most of them being what would be considered a “perfect” web. They were nearly perfect circles with a diameters ranging from a few feet to upwards of fourteen or fifteen feet. The webs were thick at the outer rings and got thinner as you went inward, like a normal web would be like. This was a clear giveaway of some form of arachnid and from the size of the webs, some pretty large ones too.

Luckily, Twilight wasn’t all that scared of spiders. She continued and It was getting darker the farther she went into the cave. Twilight channeled magic through her horn, casting a magenta glow that illuminated the cave around her. She continued walking and the farther she went the more holes and cobwebs appeared around her.

Twilight started to get a bad feeling that she was not welcome where she was. Following her instincts, the unicorn turned around and started walking back, keeping her head on a swivel for any of the inhabitants of the foreign cave. Unfortunately for the mare, there were quite a few rocks on the ground that seemed to have a set mission to trip her, and they finally succeeded as she falls to the ground face first.

Twilight removes herself from the dirt ridden floor of the cave and brushes herself off. She feels a trickle of liquid just above her left eye accompanied by a moderate, sharp pain. She moves a foreleg up to the wound and winces as she removes the blood, but it was futile as the wound quickly replaced the vacant space with more blood. The mare sighed. It wasn’t particularly painful or dangerous, but certainly annoying. Twilight readied and casted a spell that would help the blood clot up and stop the bleeding.

After she cast the spell she continued moving down the jagged corridors of the cave. Already having a bad day, Twilight heard something that made her reconsider her fears. There was a skittering behind. A lot of skittering behind her. Twilight quickly jumped forward and spun around to observe what was behind her. As she spun, the mare shot a quick beam of light down the narrow cave, and saw a terrifying sight.

Spiders.

A lot of spiders. The arachnids were stunning creatures, bodies jet black with the tips of each of their legs a deep red and hostile eyes looking for the prey that had disrupted them.

Twilight’s eyes went as wide as baseballs and she started running in the opposite direction. Luckily the mare had only ventured into the cave for five minutes, so she wasn’t that far in. Unluckily, the spiders were much faster than she was and some of them were slightly larger than she was too.

I have to teleport! Was Twilight's immediate thought. Quickly, as she starting amassing as much magic as she would need, the lavender mare imagined the only place she could, the edge of the cave where she saw the beautiful pine forest covered with freshly fallen snow. Now with the spell ready and location in mind, she cast the teleportation spell. Or rather, she tried too.

She didn’t have enough magic left in her reserve to teleport that far, and that wasn't even that far away. Oh no oh no oh no Now Twilight was panicking. The spiders were gaining on her rather quick, and the mare wished she had her weapons, the blade and gauntlet. WAIT, where are they!? Twilight remembered that before she ended up here she had them on her person, but there was no sight of them when she woke up. It was clear in her head now that she was in the everfree forest with her weapons, but why she was not certain.

The skittering behind her knocked her off her train of thought, and she could come back to the location of her missing items later. The mare realized she was close to where she had awaken, but wasn’t going to make it unless she was able to get away from the monstrous things that were chasing her. Shield! Twilight immediately thought of an alternate to the teleportation spell that would save her. She spun around and channeled magic through her horn, summoning a bright purple colored shield and the creatures ran into it, stunning most of them. The spiders had never seen or come across something like this, and the shield was serving its purpose of trapping the arachnids in the cave.

Twilight collapsed and tried to normalize her breathing. “That was way too close... “ She thought aloud. The lavender mare took a deep breath, finally realizing the extent of her exhaustion, both magically and physically. But just when she thought she was safe, she saw a crack form on the shield she put up. Her eyes widened to twice their normal size and she shot up from the ground immediately. Run, I have to run. She had not been expecting her shield to break that quickly. She must have had much less magic in reserve than she had thought. Quickly, the mare exhaustedly stumbled to where she had left the Aether blanket and picked it up with her magic, wrapping it around herself. She chanced a glance back only to see the crack enlarged and spreading quickly from its origin to the edges of the shield, and it was apparent that it would only hold for a few more seconds. Those damn spiders are strong. What are they? The scientist part of her mind shines through for a fraction of a second before she regains her senses and runs to the only safe place, the outside cold.

Twilight got to the edge and realizes something pretty big that she should of saw earlier. As she looked around at the mouth of the cave, all the mare could see was a very steep mountain side, absolutely impassable. Her first thought was teleportation, but she was she had so little magic left at her disposal it would have been impossible. Now she was scared. She had no options left, the only chance she really had for living was to fight, and while the mare was very proficient in all magic, she was only really good at fighting with her weapons, which had somehow vanished. Twilight swung her body around and planted her feet into the ground just to see the shield shatter within fifty feet of her. The red legged arachnids wasted no time in rushing toward her.

Quickly the mare lit her horn, but it didn’t deter the foes she faced from running at her, so the mare ripped a few hairs from her foreleg to use as a focal point for summoning a ball of fire that expanded to the size of a basketball in only a second. The spiders that were approaching her halted immediately and some of the closer ones backed off. When Twilight saw this she exhaled quite powerfully and continued hyperventilating with a panicked look on her face. She took an uncontrollable step backwards and watched as the spiders moved around her, trying to surround her. Twilight pulled a few more hairs and lit another fireball and moved them to opposite sides of her body, lighting a third to put in front. Even though this was a very simple spell, it was very taxing on the mare’s tired body and she knew she wouldn’t be able to hold it for long. While she had her back to the vast cold world outside the cave. The hairs on the back of her legs stood, not because of the fear, but because of the harsh temperatures outside. That brought another problem. Even if she did get out of the cave, how would she survive out there?

That wasn’t the main concern at the moment however. The spiders had finally surrounded her on every side, and some of them were climbing the walls of the cave, trying to get directly above her. Twilight had no choice but to summon more of the fireballs she had been using to ward off the spiders. She now had seven all around her, and some spaces still allowed entry, so in order to close them off without expending much more of her precious magic, Twilight spun the balls around her in a way that covered all of the open areas and so quickly that there wasn’t a single opening. She was drained almost entirely of magic however and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long and there was nothing she could do to lash out at the arachnids with the balls of flame. She would only be safe for a matter of seconds.

The mare shut her eyes not only to protect them from the intense light coming the flame that was surrounding her, but to try and concentrate at keeping up the flame. She felt herself reaching critical levels of magical exhaustion, not very far past it at the time she had awoken anyway. Twilight was not going to be able to keep up the spell for much longer before risking serious damage to her body. She was scared to death of what exactly would happen once she had to drop the burning hot flame that protected her from the spiders on the other side, and tears actively dripped from her eyes.

Sweat dripped from her brow as she concentrated intently on conserving magic but keeping up the flames. She felt herself starting to falter and one of the balls poofed from existence, opening a gap where the mare, should she open her eyes, would be able to see the vicious creatures staring at her waiting for the rest to falter.

After a few more seconds of terrifying focus, Twilight realized she couldn’t hold it up any longer, and in a final desperate attempt to save herself she shot every single one of the balls of fire in a different direction to try and maim or kill the spiders trying to do the same to her. After that burst of magic the unicorn collapsed exhausted and afraid, and opened her eyes to see what damage she had done.

Nothing. Not one of the arachnids was harmed. They all rushed to her at once, the ones on the roof of the cave dropping down to land on top of her. She didn’t have the energy to yell, but if she could have she would have without a doubt. Instead she just slammed her eyes shut and turned her head away waiting for the worst.

*SCHING*

Twilight’s demise never came. There was no pain and no horrible bite from the arachnid. No being dragged into the cave covered in web. No, instead she was alive. And when she looked up, The spider that had dropped from the ceiling was cut in half and flying away from the cave exit. Alongside the spider was a very dark figure covered by a cloak moving very fast, but Twilight was seeing in slow motion. The figure flew past the mare at what seemed like the speed of sound and quickly cut through a few more of the arachnids before turning quickly towards her. She got a quick look at the face of her saviour, and she saw a dark mare with dark cyan eyes.

Twilight looked ahead in awe, but shortly after getting a split second look at the beautiful eyes and coat of the mare that saved her, she was roughly grabbed and pulled underneath the wing of the pony, knocking the wind out of her as well as knocking off the magic blanket she had wrapped around herself. The pair rocketed out of the cave at extreme speeds and immediately took a sharp turn upward. Twilight looked down, the arachnids disappeared from her sight and she observed the beautiful snow laden pine forest she was flying above. Exhaustion took hold of her body and she reached a hoof out trying to grab at the forest below her. She heard a murmur before her vision went dark and she was carried to somewhere unknown by an unknown someone.