“I think we’re lost, Starlight.”
Starlight looked up from the map, her gait slowing down to a crawl until she stopped completely. She took a moment to pull the map away from her muzzle, letting her eyes adjust to the magical light of her horn before turning to face Trixie. Her blue fur and silver hair were barely illuminated by the lantern she held at her side, and the trees about her and the canopy above were even less so.
“Trixie, we’re not lost, we’re just…” Starlight turned away, lifting up her compass and the map to illuminate them again. The compass’s needle still pointed south, though the map was of little help.
The forest south of Equestria, beyond the MacIntosh Hills, wasn’t marked on the map beyond a smattering of green in the valley. When they had been on the hill overlooking the woods, Starlight was sure she’d seen breaks in the vast stretch of trees. However, as they ventured deeper into the woods, the branches and leaves above grew tighter together, slowly choking the vibrant sunlight into a dim light, and then into blackness.
“... we’re just,” Starlight repeated, scanning the map once more, “okay, maybe a little lost, but it’s nothing to get worried about.” As Starlight turned to face Trixie, she was greeted with a blank expression and a raised eyebrow. “It probably just seemed smaller from up above, and these maps aren’t rarely to scale.”
“Uh-huh, and why did we end up coming this way, again?” Trixie asked, stepping closer until the combined light of her lantern and Starlight horn was enough to brighten the two.
“Because…” Starlight started, but Trixie held up her hoof and pointed it at Starlight.
“Because you couldn’t stand waiting two days for a train. I swear, you picked up Twilight’s worst habits when you took over as headmare.” Trixie lifted the lantern up above her head, the light illuminating the thick canopy and the web of branches visible beneath patches of leaves. “She couldn’t let a schedule slip for more than a second, and now between you and Sunburst—”
“This recruitment stuff is important, Trixie,” Starlight pleaded, rolling up the map and stuffing it into a pouch on her saddlebag. “We need to make sure it gets done every year. Missing even one could mean a dozen students we don’t have for the next semester. Less students means less tuition and less classes, that means less teachers and…” As Starlight’s mind started to race toward catastrophe, she was pulled out of it by the gentle touch of Trixie’s hoof on her cheek.
“Alright, alright.” She sighed, before wrapping her other forehoof around Starlight’s neck and pulling her into a gentle hug. “I’m sorry, but twilighting is another Twilight habit.”
Starlight blushed, before breaking into a smile and giggles. Trixie followed suit after a few moments and then the two pulled apart. “Either way, we’re here now, so…” Starlight turned back to where their path was leading, into the blackness just at the edge of their light. Tangled bushes, shrubbery and the gnarled trunks of trees canvassed the ground, through a narrow path of dirt cut through it. It was enough for them to keep following. When Starlight looked back where they had come from, it was the same.
“Do you think we should turn back?” she finally asked, the doubt that had been stewing in her mind bubbling to the surface.
Trixie rubbed her chin, humming. “At this point, we might be too deep. Who knows if we might get more lost on the way back?”
Starlight nodded, turning back to their path ahead. Then Trixie kept talking.
“Buuuut, we have been walking for hours.” By the time Starlight looked back, Trixie was already unpacking her sleeping bag. “A fresh start wouldn’t hurt, right?” she asked with a sheepish smile.
Starlight chuckled and nodded, clicking the compass shut before sliding it back into her bags. There wasn’t very much room for a campsite, but the pathway hadn’t been wide enough for that since the edge of the forest. It would have to be the best they could hope for. Shutting off the lantern and setting their sleeping bags out, the mares bid each other good night.
The air was silent, as it had been since they entered the woods. Starlight worried about it as she drifted off, that there hadn’t been a breeze, the snap of a twig, or even the distant chitter of some far-off critter.
In her sleep, Starlight saw endless rows of trees, barely illuminated by the magical light of her horn. Gnarled roots littered the path, buried slowly by the rain of dead, wilted leaves. They crinkled beneath her hooves, but the noise faded into the babbling of a river. In flashes, her surroundings changed: a flowing stream, fallen trees, eyes in the dark.
Finally, she was at a lake. Its surface was black, but only reflecting what was overhead. Her eyes drifted up, to a vast void above her. She could hear something breathing, but it was unnatural. Rather than soft, calm inhales and exhales, it was a raspy gasp for breath that never ended. Her mane waved about in it, sucked and pulled towards the center of the lake.
When she blinked, the sun was overhead, bright and burning. She couldn’t make out the forest about her.
The breathing, the inhalation, never ceased. Its pitch and intensity grew, as the sun seemed to expand in Starlight’s vision.
Starlight bolted upright, sweat dripping from her forehead and her chest heaving up and down in ragged breaths. It was still dark about her, but she could barely make out a shape nearby. It was upright, but deathly still.
She sparked her horn, magical light filling her vision, only to be greeted by Trixie. She was sitting up, her sleeping bag peeled away, and her eyes were locked on the forest at the edge of the path. In the dim light, they seemed bloodshot.
“I heard something,” she whispered, not turning away from the forest.
Starlight pushed her sleeping bag down until she could stand, stumbling a bit in the process. She didn’t know how long she had slept for, but it didn’t feel long enough. Her legs and back ached, as if they hadn’t rested for a moment all night. “We can check together,” she said.
Trixie stumbled to her hooves at Starlight’s side, and the two approached the line of trees. Starlight’s magical light illuminated the edge and the rows of trees that extended far beyond. Long, faint shadows cast in its wake, the smaller, bare branches of the trees projected into tangled claws and webs.
As the two passed the edge of the path, snaking between the packed trees, Starlight looked down at the ground. Dead leaves and bushes littered the ground, but there were no signs of tracks or that anything had been disturbed except by their own hooves.
“It might have just been your imagination, Tri—”
“There, there. Did you hear it?” Trixie’s voice was strained, trying desperately to remain quiet.
Starlight angled her ears towards where Trixie motioned, but she heard nothing. As the two stood there, it was silent once again. Not even a breeze disturbed the woods. Then, Starlight thought she heard breathing, but they were only coming from Trixie at her side, quick and ragged.
“It’s okay, Trixie,” she said, wrapping a forehoof around Trixie’s haunches to turn her back towards the path. “There’s nothing out here but us.” Not that I can see, she thought. It took a few moments, but Starlight managed to coax Trixie back to the path. Her legs began to relax, the ache fading by the second; in her back, however, it simply changed to a creeping, gnawing dread, as if she were being watched.
The two were unable to get back to sleep, and so they packed up their sleeping bags and Starlight pulled out her compass. Their path south found once more, the pair crept further into the woods. The path veered off only slightly, but the greater threat to their progress was in the obstacles that sprang up from the surrounding forest: tangles of brambles, thick shrubbery and even a fallen tree in their path.
While it wasn’t enough to halt their progress, Starlight did linger when she noticed that the fallen tree was without rot. Even stranger, its falling had not broken the canopy above in the slightest. While its trunk was littered with the snapped bases of branches, Starlight could faintly see, in the dim shadows above, that its branches and leaves were left behind in the web of greenery. As she brightened her light and moved it off of her horn towards the canopy, she was interrupted by a shout.
“We’re getting nowhere!” Starlight turned to see Trixie scaling one of the nearby trees. “Just give me a minute and I’ll find out how far we are from the edge. Then you can just blink us out of here.”
Starlight galloped towards Trixie, just in time to stop her hind leg from kicking over the lantern she’d abandoned at the base of the tree. Holding it in her magic and with the light of her horn dimmed, Trixie was left with a dim glow to guide her way.
“Just hold it up, Starlight,” Trixie muttered as she managed to hook her forehooves onto a branch, tugging herself up.
Starlight did as she was asked, holding the lantern higher until the surface of the tree was illuminated. The path to the canopy was easy enough from where Trixie was, just a few close-knit branches until she could reach the thick layer of leaves and branches.
Trixie reached for the first branch. Then, the second. As she hooked onto the third and tugged herself up, it snapped. Starlight reached out to catch her with her magic, but Trixie managed to cling to the shattered base on the trunk, and strained as she pulled herself up into the canopy.
“Be careful, Trixie,” Starlight mumbled.
“I’ll be fi—Ouch!” Trixie paused, wiggling deeper into the canopy as the snapping of branches and crinkling of leaves filtered down to Starlight. Soon, only Trixie’s flank and hind legs were visible, and those soon ascended into the mesh of greenery.
Then, from behind her, Starlight heard something rustling. She lowered the lantern, turning her head to face the source of the disturbance. “Is someone there?” she called out, but no reply came. She set the lantern down on the ground before lighting her horn anew, a bright magical light cast out into the darkness of the woods.
Only the trunks and bushes and the fallen tree greeted her. The noise stopped, and Starlight inched away from the tree. “I won’t hurt you. Just show yourself.” Even Trixie’s squirming within the canopy did not reach her ears. The forest’s reply was simply silence, deafening and foreboding.
As quickly as it came, it was broken by the snapping of branches, the rustling of leaves, and a scream. At the edge of her light, between two far-off trees, Starlight saw Trixie plummet from the canopy, tumbling to the ground and groaning. Starlight galloped over as quickly as she could.
Trixie’s neck, torso and legs were marred with small scratches, and her mane littered with twigs and leaves. She rolled about, squinting at the light on Starlight’s horn. “What? But I—” She looked up at the canopy above, then to the trees about her and the fallen one in the distance. “I was going up!”
Starlight tilted her head up. Despite the speed at which Trixie seemed to fall, and the refuse that stuck out of her mane or clung to her coat, there wasn’t a single break in the web of branches and leaves above. “That’s it.” She closed her eyes. Even with the canopy so thick, she knew that at least fifty feet would put her above it. All she needed was a second to orient herself, and then they’d be able to find their way out.
She took a breath, and teleported.
Flashes filled her mind. The lake. The sun. Fire. That tempest of ever gasping breaths, swirling about into a blazing inferno, flames flicking at her coat.
She tasted iron, rust, decay. There was a throbbing, like a pounding migraine within her head.
Then, there was black.
“...ight?”
“...rlight?”
“Starlight?!”
Starlight sprung up from laying on her back, and then instantly fell back. Pain coursed through her limbs, her torso and her head. She felt something warm on her muzzle and in her mouth. Her vision was blurry and black, but as she relaxed on the ground it came into focus.
Trixie was above her, holding the lantern at her side. “Thank goodness you’re awake. What happened?”
“I…” Starlight held a hoof above her eyes, enough to stop them from straining in the lantern’s light. “Something happened. I couldn’t…” She held her other hoof to her lips, and it came away bright red. Twisting to the right and clenching her teeth, she spat until the warmth left her mouth, though the taste lingered. “It won’t let me through.”
Trixie grimaced, craning her neck to look up. “You mean the trees?”
Starlight rolled over until she was on her belly, taking a few moments to steel herself before trying to get to her hooves. The pain had dulled, enough that she was able to right herself, but not enough to stay standing. After a few seconds, she had to lean on a nearby trunk and Trixie was rushing to her side. “Something about them is… has to be magical. I don’t know what, but it’s like a barrier.”
The two looked up to the web of greenery, the seemingly impassable obstacle above them. Trixie sighed and turned to Starlight. “We should stop for the day. There’s no way you can move like that. Just try to relax and I’ll get everything ready.”
Starlight nodded and slumped against the tree while Trixie galloped back to where their saddlebags sat. She tried to take slow, steady breaths, but they dissolved into sharp intakes and groans with the slightest movement. She slid down the trunk of the tree, and when she hit the ground, she passed out.
Starlight was at the lake again, in the dark. Even in the blackness, however, she could make out the shape of the lake: wide, perfectly circular, stretching beyond what her eyes could ever see. Here, in the middle of a forest, it sat.
She craned her neck to look up, expecting to see the sun once more, but was greeted only with nothingness. When she looked back down at the lake, she began to hear the breathing. Deep, laborious, gasping and unending, it rushed past her ears, yet her mane was undisturbed by it. She only felt a faint warmth against her coat.
A silver light appeared on the surface of the lake. From where Starlight stood, it seemed like the moon, but she knew that it was not above. With every second of that unnatural inhalation, its cacophony growing louder and descending into droning, it expanded, until it was at the edge of the lake. The entire surface glowed with that silver, brilliant luminescence.
As the breathing continued, now sounding like a whirlwind about her, the warm returned, bit by bit, until she felt like she was going to melt.
She took a step forward, her hoof breaching the water.
It was frigid.
When Starlight awoke, it was slowly. Her legs and back still ached, and her eyes squinted against the discomfort and throbbing she felt inside her skull. There was a blanket on top of her, and she clung tightly to it as she continued to awake.
The shadowy shapes of the trees about her flickered slightly, and she noticed that the lantern was still lit, but running low on fuel. At the edge of its light, Starlight saw Trixie was awake, standing on all fours a few feet away. She could only make out her back.
Starlight strained to right herself, the sudden pain after her attempt to teleport gone. The taste of blood was almost completely faded on her tongue. “I’m up, Trixie… Did you get some sleep?”
Trixie jumped in place, half a scream caught in her throat as she turned around. “Oh… Starlight, yeah, I… I just uhhh had a weird feeling when I got up.” She glanced over her shoulder, at the trees that neither of them could see, but knew were there.
“Being watched?” Starlight asked, finally getting on her hooves. There was only a mild ache as she trotted over to Trixie’s side.
“Do you feel it too? Hear it?” Trixie’s ears flattened against her head, and her tail curled against her flank. When Starlight got to her side, she could see that her eyes were bloodshot again.
Starlight put a hoof on her haunches, rubbing it gently back and forth. “A little, but we’ll get out of this, Trix. We just have to keep moving.”
Trixie smiled, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “I hope so. Then I can tell you not to try galloping off just because a train is delayed for a bit.” She giggled, and Starlight did too.
“Deal, now let’s get moving. The sooner the better, right?”
As Trixie began to pack up her sleeping bag, Starlight pulled the compass out of her saddlebags. Flipping it open, she began to turn it around. The needle pivoted aimlessly. Starlight shook it, and it rattled about before stopping suddenly. She tilted it, twisted it, shook it again and again. It refused to point anywhere but where gravity and friction willed it. Her vision started to get blurry. “T-Trixie!”
She blinked back the tears as she heard Trixie’s hooves gallop over. “What is it?” Starlight held up the compass, twisting it back and forth with her magic. “It’s broken? When did that happen?”
“It must have been when I tried to teleport through the canopy.” Starlight’s chest began to heave up and down, her breaths becoming quicker and sharper. She began to look about for any sign of where they’d come from or where they were going. Galloping back towards the path, her horn bright enough to obscure her vision, she spotted the fallen tree trunk. The canopy, the path, the tree itself, she looked over all of them for any sign. She found nothing.
Her vision started to blur again, and she sunk down to her haunches. The light on her horn faded, leaving her only dimly illuminated as Trixie galloped closer, her own horn lit. “Starlight? Starlight, calm down. If we just pick a direction, we’ll get out eventually, right?”
And then Starlight remembered the strangest thing: glimpses out of the corner of her eye that seemed like just tricks of the light at the time. As the compass hovered before her while they were walking, as she moved it about ever so slightly when she turned, it had wavered. When she looked back, she never minded that it was off by so few degrees, despite pointing it in the same direction.
“It never worked. We’ve just been wandering aimlessly.” Starlight gripped her head with her forehooves. “We’re lost.”
Trixie looked at the path they had followed and then at the compass. “We’ll just pick another direction. It’ll be okay, Starlight. If we keep going forward, we’ll get out. It can’t go on forever.”
The fact calmed her nerves, a comforting truth she could ease into. It was at least hope. Her tears dried and she wiped what few were left away. “Okay.” She took a breath and stood back on her hooves. They still ached.
Trixie had picked the direction, walking back towards their sudden campsite and then continuing forward in the same direction. On the way, while Starlight kept the way lit with her horn, Trixie produced a small illusion ahead of them. No matter which way they turned, how far they strayed, it always remained ahead of them, and it always pointed the direction she had picked. After what seemed like hours of silent, determined marching, a noise broke through it.
It was water.
Starlight and Trixie galloped ahead, barreling through a patch of shrubberies before they were greeted with the sight of a creek. Crystal clear water flowed past rocks and over the faint roots of nearby trees. Trixie was quick to gallop up to it, grabbing her canteen to refill it.
However, Starlight lingered back near the trees, eyes watching the path the water took. She reached into her pack, pulling out the map and unfurling it. In the light of her horn, she saw it: a river leading from the north that went into the forest. To the south, another line of blue streaked towards the coast and into the ocean. “We can follow it. We’ll get out for sure this way, Trixie!”
She galloped over to Trixie’s side, refilling her own canteen and drinking from the creek. It was frigid, and refreshing.
Starlight and Trixie kept close to the creek, following its path downstream. However, Trixie had not dissipated her illusion. Starlight tried not to pay it any mind as she kept her horn lit. Eventually, they met their limits and stopped for the night. Trixie marked the direction she had chosen on a tree across the creek.
Starlight dreamed of the lake. Instead of being at its edge, she was standing a few feet into its water. The surface came up just above her hooves, but its chill permeated her being, seeped into her bones, and made the air about her frigid.
When the breath came, its warmth did not phase her.
She looked up, and could see the sun once more. It grew larger. It grew closer. Its heat burned the forest about her, until all was an inferno.
The breathing stopped.
When she awoke, it was without pain or aches. It was the first and last good night of sleep she had in the forest. Trixie was still asleep.
The creek began to wind, widen and wither. Its depth grew, the rocks in its path eroded and even the invading roots of the canopy’s trees pushed back, letting the flow of water speed up. They had to be getting close. Starlight knew it.
Eventually, the river straightened out again, the trees on either side trying to encroach on it until they suddenly parted. Starlight stopped as her horn illuminated bare ground about the river, and then its end.
“A lake?” she heard Trixie ask as she walked forward, her horn illuminating the surface.
It was crystal clear, and Starlight could make out the bottom, slowly slanting down towards the middle of the lake. She looked up, and the canopy seemed to give way. There was nothing above.
“How far do you think it goes?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Starlight muttered, before closing her eyes and brightening the light at the tip of her horn. Once it was strong enough, its light nearly searing through her eyelids, she cast it up into the air like a firework. Its dazzling light illuminated the lake, herself, Trixie, the trees and the canopy…
It illuminated how it stretched up and up and up, before curving towards the center of the lake. What had been alive and green above their heads faded to decay and brown. Withered, leafless branches extended upwards like the gnarled beams of a dome. Her ears perking up, Starlight could hear them creaking despite there being nothing but deathly still air above the lake.
As her light reached its apex, she saw that the dome kept going up. There was no path to the sky. There would be no sun.
“Starlight?”
She dropped to the ground, eyes straining as they stared out at the illuminated lake, and the agonizing descent of her light towards it.
“Should we go around, or—”
There was no end to the water. As the magical light hit the surface, she could see no trees beyond. There was only water, crystal clear and deathly cold. Even feet away from its edge, she felt that chill seeping into her body.
When Trixie touched her shoulder, she jerked away. “Starlight. We need to keep going, right?”
The air was no longer still. That ever gasping, choking breath began to fill Starlight’s ears. Even covering her ears with her hooves, it would not go away. The warmth started to surround her body, but it did not manage to reach beneath her coat. It made her entire body shake and shiver from disparity. Her mane felt as if it was swept up in a powerful gust. When she finally had the will to open her eyes, Trixie was no longer at her side. Instead, she stood within the lake.
“Starlight. We need to keep going.”
Even with her hooves covering her ears, and the tempest of breath drilling into her head, Trixie’s voice was as crystal clear as the water. “No,” Starlight said, unable to hear the words over the castrophany about and within her. “No!” she screamed, though it felt a whisper. Her horn lit, feeling for the lantern tied to her bags. It was still unbroken. It still had some fuel.
“We need to go!” Trixie snarled, her face twisted into a beastly approximation of itself. Starlight looked away, towards the woods.
She ran.
The breathing stopped.
What followed, and began to chase Starlight, was a rage, primal and unbidden.
Cracking trees, snapping branches and the crashing of merciless waves reached Starlight’s ears as she galloped away from the lake. Turning away from the river and off into the unknown, she ran. All she could do was run, try to escape it. There had to be some escape. There had to be some way out.
She looked over her shoulder. Even if she couldn’t see it, she heard and felt its wake. It was getting louder and closer. Her eyes fell on the lantern, and she flicked it on with her magic. In desperation, she flung it behind her, and fired a bolt of magic at it. On impact, it burst, showering the area behind Starlight in vibrant flames. Trees began to crackle, branches broke and there was nothing but the inferno she created.
Some shape on the other side, indistinguishable through the roaring flames, stopped. Starlight felt its eyes on her. As she took slow, ragged breaths, and the heat began to sear against her coat, she turned tail and ran.
It felt like she ran for days, but Starlight was sure it must have just been hours. Her legs ached, her chest heaved and pounded. Every muscle felt as if it were at its limit, but she smiled. The canopy had finally begun to part. The night sky shined overhead, twinkling lights peeking out behind the clouds. She never let her eyes leave the sky, even as the greenery obstructing it gave way and she left the forest behind.
She was free. Trixie wasn’t there.
Her mind lingered on the thought, but then the primal urge to keep running, to be afraid, pushed her to continue. She climbed the hills north of the valley, and the sky began to brighten. Darkness and purples gave way to faint orange. As she crested the top of the hill, she saw it. She saw the sun.
Bright and shining, Starlight had to cover her eyes with her hoof to gaze in its direction. She didn’t stop smiling.
Starlight trotted calmly into the blaze before her, the cracking of branches and crinkling of burnt leaves not reaching her ears. Even as the trees about her gave out and fell, feeding the flames, the canopy never broke. Her fire consumed her, and the forest watched in silence.
