A Near Miss

Long Shot woke up in a generic hospital bed within a generic hospital room as an earth pony doctor scribbled something onto a clipboard. Lurching up into a sitting position with a gasp, Long half asked, half shouted, "What Happened? Where am I? Where are Near Miss and Spleens?"

The doctor stopped writing as she responded, "You're at the Royal Canterlot Hospital, your friends are awake in the next rooms down the hall, and medically all three of you seem fine, although you yourself seem to have taken a tumble and landed on your head. As for what happened, there's somepony here who's been waiting here for you to all wake up so she can explain it to you. Let me go get her and your friends."

As the doctor left, Long put a hoof up to her head before immediately withdrawing it with a hiss of pain upon touching the bandaged section near her left ear.

After a couple of minutes, the doctor returned leading Spleens, Near Miss and Starlight Glimmer, the first of whom promptly hug-tackled Long Shot. "I'm so glad you're alright!" Spleens practically shouted into Long's ear before being gently pulled away by a combination of Near Miss's and Starlight Glimmer's magic. After the two unicorns shared a brief glance, Starlight cleared her throat and began explaining.

"Based on what Spleens here told us, and knowledge of the area around Wren's Anomaly in general, I think I have a pretty good idea of what happened to you three. Around one hundred ten years ago, it would appear that two traveling stallions, an earth pony and a unicorn, were mugged at the bottom of the valley that became Wren's Anomaly. The earth pony was mortally wounded but his unicorn friend cast a self-perpetuating spell to stop the earth pony from dying by draining the magic and life energy from the surroundings, at least until the unicorn could go get help. Unfortunately, the unicorn died either while casting the spell, or immediately afterwards, and the spell kept draining magic and life from an increasingly large area until the three of you arrived, at which point Spleens was able to put the long suffering earth pony out of his misery. This caused a magical backlash that alerted Princesses Twilight Sparkle, Celestia, Luna and also myself to what had happened, and we all came right away. All in all, the three of you are all very lucky to be alive."

Starlight Glimmer cleared her throat again. "That said, did you manage to find that grundle tickler I sent you after?

"Oh yeah," Near replied, "It's stored inside the caravan."

Starlight lit her horn and looked up absentmindedly, as if rooting around somewhere before returning her gaze to Near Miss as she telepoofed both the artifact and a large bag of bits into the room. "Excellent, here's your five thousand bits, plus a bit extra from Princess Twilight for dealing with Wren's Anomaly" then, as she exited, she said under her breath, "Wait until Trixie gets a load of this puppy."

Long Shot was discharged from the hospital later that day, and as the three friends met up at their caravan, Near Miss asked, "Well, what the buck do we do now?"

At which point Long Shot reared onto her hind legs, spread her wings and shouted, "Adventure!" Although she held the pose in silence for so long that Near Miss and Spleens exchanged glances and both wondered if their friend needed further medical care.

The story continues in A Long Shot