V-Into The Unknown

Time passes by, minutes spin to hours, hours to days: 1 Week, 2 days since Banishment.

Twilight huffed in annoyance. She didn't know how much time had passed since she had been in this forest, but counting the day and night cycle, she deduced that it had at least been a week since she climbed that tree. She wanted to be out of the forest quicker, but fate has a strange habit of turning something that should have been easy, into a much longer than needed situation. She had managed to find what she thought was a water source, and it indeed was, but the problem was that she was out of food. Now normally, this could be easily fixed by going to get food or going to the market, but this wasn't Ponyville let alone Equestria. Twilight had taken to eating the leaves in the trees and while they weren't good by any means, they were at least edible.

During her arduous treks across the forest, she had taken to sleeping in the trees, on thicker branches. They protected her from the animals that roamed on the ground, and while she hadn't seen any, she had heard the howls of wolves in the area... well, she hoped they were just regular wolves; she didn't want to find out what they were if they weren't. Twilight kept going, putting one hoof in front of the other. It had just turned day, so she had plenty of time to move across the forest.

Twilight kept moving till she heard a branch snap, she turned toward the sound, igniting her horn. Normally, she wouldn't immediately try and fight a noise, but you spend a week in a forest alone and say that you wouldn't jump at the first noise that wasn't you own. She careful moved towards the area it came from, slowly coming around a tree to jump back in surprise. Standing there, eyeing her was a giant deer. It was bigger than the ones she had seen at Fluttershy's cottage, and it's rack looked like gold. It just stood there, before it swiftly turned it's head in another direction, and bolted away. Twilight couldn't comprehend the giant deer that ran away, when it moved it was gone within an instant. She bet if she could get it to race a certain pegasus, she would lose and it would win. She was just confused as to why it's horns were so abnormally colored, normal deer antlers weren't anything like that. 'It must be natural to this land' she mused.

Twilight decided to continue on her trek, after all it wasn't like it was going to get done itself. As she continued on, her thoughts shifted back to the unspoken words given by her mentor and her sister... and her friends. None of them said anything, and it could be arguable that they agreed with them. Thinking back on it, she couldn't believe that they didn't believe her, surely they had learned to trust in her after the whole discord fiasco right? Apparently she had been wrong, and suffered terribly because of it. Twilight thought on her current state, the messy mane, the unkempt coat, all of it. She didn't want to keep it like this, and wagered if the smoke she saw was indeed from a civilization, the first thing she would do is clean herself.

Invigorated by this thought, Twilight began to pick up her pace speeding up into a trot. She would show them that she could succeed even without their help. If she could do it before she became an element she can do it after! That would show them. She continued without delay, she had spent more than a few minutes looking at the giant deer, because the sun was now towards the middle of the sky.

Twilight had finally gotten to the edge of the forest, much to her surprise, there was a path. It was littered with stones sunken into the ground, akin to cobblestone, but not exactly. 'Wait. A path? That does mean there's civilization somewhere!'. Twilight broke into a full on gallop, sprinting alongside the path, hoping to find what she was looking for quickly. Her thoughts were out of control, but she didn't care, she finally wasn't going to be alone! Maybe she could finally get some answers to where she was, hopefully there were some ponies around.

Twilight kept going, her body screaming at her to cease with her fast paced running. It would seem spending a week in a forest made her slightly malnourished, she would take care of it later. She rounded an upcoming bend, before coming to a screeching halt. She looked forward at the state of the village in front of her, the broken down destitute buildings. She could see different beings moving about, but she realized the atmosphere of the village was really poor, it reminded her of lower Manhattan, with everypony just going back and forth just doing things.

As Twilight walked forward slowly, she could see numerous eyes upon her, with greed in them. She didn't like this place whatsoever, but she had finally found civilization, a couple of ponies looking at her strangely wouldn't make her back down. She approached the entrance, and saw what looked like guards, they watched her, creating vicious smiles at her, seeing sharp teeth and a few missing ones. What most took her by surprise is that she thought that there were ponies, but she could only see a few, and all of them looked to be earth ponies. She hadn't ever seen many other non-ponies, but these surprised her.

Going back and forth from place to place were large foxes, the same size as her, but unlike the foxes of Equestria, they had numerous different colors like ponies, and had more than one tail. Some had two, others had three, she had even seen a large one with four tails! What were these beings? Twilight started to step forward so that she could ask one of the ponies she had seen a question, only to feel her legs refuse, and as she fell, she watched darkness lay claim to her eyes.

Author's Note

And so we have the Fifth chapter. Can someone guess the foxes she saw? This is one of the three "species" planned to be introduced in this story, I have yet to hint at the others, and I'm still figuring one of them out. I hinted at what the culture would be in this land earlier, whether it was a comment or a author's note. I do hope someone looks back upon it, and do know, the deer, while not completely relevant, is based off of mythology, and it is native to this land. Also, get ready to be confused for some chapters, because now we start to get into another language, and to better prepare you, I've already written what it is as well, take a look back and see if you recognize it.

Το Κερύνειο ελάφι είναι ένα εγγενές πλάσμα σε αυτά τα εδάφη.

P.S. Yes, the name was definitely supposed to be a joke to a movie. At least Twilight isn't singing it at 3 in the morning.