Cold. The winter was hard, and had been for a long time. The fools to the south abandoned our homeland, our birthright. I alone remain.
The wind howled, my body quaked and shook in the night's chill, cutting straight through the heavy cloak I wore. More and more I envied my northern cousins for their incredibly dense coats.
I would need to find shelter soon, or I would join so many others in the everafter. My stomach ached, and my rations were low
I should have listened to them. But this was my birthplace, the birthright of all Unicorns. The great range at the edge of the civilized world.
Oh how I cursed that Platinum and her pet magus. Thousands of years of ruling from the greatest seats of power and we abandon it for what!?
A little cold?
No. Not me. I was never going to leave my ancient home, and even if no one else would, I would stay.
I tried to spit. I really did. But I couldn't seem to work enough moisture in my mouth to do it.
Still I trudged onwards, the snow up to my knees, the surface hard enough to scrape my fetlocks, rubbing them raw.
The wind picked up, flecks of snow lifting from the surface of the ice. I shivered, teeth rattling in my skull, so loud it felt deafening.
How long had I been out here. I only had a hazy recollection of where I was.
I stopped. Not knowing why, I took a deep breath. It felt like ice cold needles stabbing into my chest. I wanted to cry, I could feel a tear sliding down my face leaving an icy cold trail behind it.
No. I won't let this cold beat me. I am Cosmic Dust, a better mage than Clover ever was going to be. With my fury staving off the cold, at least for the moment, I charged forward through the snow.
Suddenly there was nothing beneath me, and I pitched ass over horn down a steep slope before skidding to a stop.
I lied there, in the earth, I could no longer feel the wind. beneath me the hard earth seemed less cold and the crinkling crunch of snow that had hounded me for weeks wasn't present as I shifted.
Looking around I could see that I had fallen into a cave, snow streaked up a steep incline behind me, and above it was a hole that I was confident went outside, the faint light of the sun shining through the storm leaving some illumination. in front of me, a dimly lit cavern extended in to a tunnel where it curved to the side
It wasn't warm by any means, but no howling wind shearing through my coat meant that it could do its job.
My stomach made its displeasure known. My packs had come loose when I had fallen, and one of them had spilled their contents. Including my meagre food supplies.
With a groan I stiffly sat up, and then crawled towards it. The bread I had stowed away had broken. The hard coarse rye grains mixed into the dough had dried out, and had broken in the fall.
I grimaced as I looked at it strewn about in the frozen earth. But I was starving. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
Gathering up the largest pieces I began to eat. The bitter bread was hard and grainy in my mouth, and it was so very dry. Eventually I choked it down. Turning to the snow I used my magic, my life's essence, to heat it until it melted, suspended in my field
I tried to laugh, letting out a choked ragged bark. Not even Clover could manage to levitate liquids. I brought the water to my mouth and drank, I gasped and spluttered but managed to choke that down too.
I gathered the rest of the spilled items into my pack and with another groan stood back up, staring at the cave I seemed to have found myself in.
I turned to the incline that led outside, carefully climbing the soft powdery snow, and stuck out my head.
White.
A maelstrom of flakes and white. The blizzard had returned. Going out there was suicide.
I pulled myself back, almost stumbling and
falling, but managing a somewhat graceful slide back to where I started. I was going to wait out the storm.
No fire, because there was no wood. I should head deeper in.
With stiff and heavy steps I made my way over to the far end, and with some curiosity I noticed another cavern heading even further down.
With vigour that only the curious and those wishing to be anything other then focused on the cold, I trotted down the incline, only to notice something strange.
The cavern opened up, and I made my horn let off a gentle glow. Crystals lined the cavern like a massive geode, and the soil was this strange blue color.
The first thing that caught my attention about the room was what was at its center.
A stone arch, nearly twice my height, tall, angular, and imposing. Carved into it looked like tree roots.
Underneath the arch was a strange circle of rectangular stones, standing on its end. I could have stood in that circle on my hind hooves and touched the end.
I approached it cautiously. Nausea overtook me as I looked at the strange structure. The bread must have been bad. I sat down and hoped my stomach would settle.
It was here that I noticed it. A figure was lying in the soil, unmoving. It was tall and thin, standing up it was probably 2 of my head taller then me. It was made of a dull whitish metal I didn't recognize, which was strange for me, I knew all the metals there were to know. The armor had a golden trim near the edges of each plate. Parts of it stuck out like spikes. A crest sticking up from its bulbous head, and again my stomach clenched after looking at the dark pit in the center of its head.
It had blunt metal claws on the ends of its upper limbs. It had what appeared to be tools strewn around it. What I had initially taken for one of those reapers the muds used to harvest grain turned out to be far different. It looked like the blade was faced inwards rather then to the side, and it didn't have a good angle for cutting grasses.
Two spears, one intricate, with a broad head, and one simple with a long pointed one lie next to it.
In one of the creatures paw things was a simple sword with a large gemstone that seemed to absorb light at its pommel and a thin blade
It was then I noticed the light. A caustic green luminescence had filled the room, and I hadn't noticed. I turned back to the strange stone arches to see that the circle of stones had filled in with a horrible green glow.
It shifted and undulated a strange symbol appearing in the green mass. First a line with a downward pointing offshoot, then a half circle broken up surrounding a trident, then the same symbol but 3 lines crossed in a star pattern instead of a trident, it began to shift faster, and I had lost track before stopping on an upside down lowercase "h" with a dot in the middle.
To my absolute horror it made a skin crawling whine as a dark mass began to push its way through its center.
The dark mass glowed an eerie purple light, was letting off a horrible hissing sound, and I could smell a deep acrid odor. It was foul, and reminded me of brimstone.
My heart hammered in my chest as I stared at it. as it almost lazily arced back and forth.
I stood stock still, as it undulated, and began to split, multiplying and expanding in a web as it spread out.
Startled, I jumped back, kicking a stone that clattered deafeningly against the cavern's wall.
The dark entity suddenly stopped and twisted to point at where the stone had struck the wall.
I stood stock still and the only thing I could hear was the thundering in my chest and the ragged tiny gasps I was trying to stifle.
Every inch of my coat prickled as I watched the tendrils slowly point in my direction. It held there, gently moving up and down as if in a wind I could not feel.
The feeling of dread intensified as some primal part of me screamed to move, to run, to escape whatever this was.
My gaze darted around the cavern, but I couldn't find where the path I had taken here was, the crystals all looked the same.
Meanwhile the dark tendrils started to coil up like a series of thin snakes, and the metal creature behind it suddenly caught my attention.
Those tendrils, illuminated by the fel green light of the portal, were sinking into the dark slit on the things head. To my shock, thin streams of crystalline ice began to cover the body. Is that what was going to become me?
I turned to the tendrils that were pointed at me, they had twisted themselves into large coils, almost like the pictures of snakes I had seen in the old library.
"Move!" My subconscious screamed at me and I leaped to the side, skidding on the frozen dirt and slamming hard into the jutting wall ramming myself into the protruding crystals. I gasped at the pain, and the broken skin. Just a nanosecond later I heard 4 thumps and faster then I could see all the tendrils that had been curled lunged, spraying up a cloud of dust just where I had been standing.
"No!" I rasped. I needed to move, to get out, escape! It was a mistake to come here, the entity knew there was someone else nearby, and it was out for blood, my blood!
Forcing my exhausted body up once more I frantically searched for the entrance I had come in with. The cavern looked the same no matter where I looked, it felt like I was trapped in a house of mirrors.
I lit my horn, and sent a small wave of force at the creature knocking away the thin grasping tendrils.
The screeching sound of hooves against slate cried out, making my ears ring. More and more of the black tendrils began to exit the portal, filling up the room, vibrating violently, thrashing back and forth.
I ducked and weaved, courage igniting in my heart. I was Cosmic Dust, Starswirl's greatest student, and second to none amongst Unicornia's court. I summoned my magic, a bright corona of brass colored light coated my horn as I prepared to burn away whatever this filth was.
I tapped deep within my wellspring, and a burnished brass flame erupted from my horn as i cast it against the creature. Thin trails of the flame met the dark mass, erupting into noxious gasses that made me gasp and sputter.
With a cocky grin I allowed the spell to die out as I gazed at the...
The tendrils had coalesced into a mass the size of my head, Gathering into a large ball as more and more fell out of the portal. Around me, pieces of the creature were burning, leaving behind a choking black smoke.
The tendrils now were denser, stockier, and they vibrated, the demon's cry they made only getting louder and louder.
I needed to do something, whatever this was, it was wrong, and mere fire was only making it angry. I needed to stop it from getting to me, and whatever it was, came from that portal. And just like that I had an idea. Ducking dodging and weaving I flanked the creature as it tried to impale me.
If the portal was the source of its power, I needed to break it.
I charged up my horn again preparing for another intense fire, hopefully that could break the portal.
My spirit surged as I wrestled the magic down, and with the power of the greatest mage to ever live I—
"Sit Glacies da mihi Asylum" the noise pounded in my head, a deep and guttural masculine voice.
SLAM!
My concentration faltered as something hard and heavy smashed into my head. The entire world went white and agony ripped through my skull. A thunderous crack resounded, throwing me back with the force of my malformed spell.
It was dark, everything hurt. Exhaustion had sunk into my very bones. Why was it so dark? What was I doing? Moving made my head hurt, and I couldn't see anything. My magic felt... distant. What was wrong. My ears were ringing and it was hard to focus. I mentally reached into my wellspring, it resisted every moment as I tried to bring it to my—
"Gah!" I choked out as I felt a fiery brand press itself against my forehead. Brass colored sparks appeared for a fraction of a second, and feedback sent me reeling. My legs failed me and I slumped back down into the dirt.
Waves of burning heat radiated from my hor— no, my forehead, my hooves shook as I—
There's no way. That can't have—
I gently pressed my hoof against where I knew my glorious spiral of bone, the pride of the royal family, my great horn was.
I found nothing but a ragged stump that sent tremors of agony ricocheting across my body.
"No!" I cried in a ragged sob. "No! No! No! No!" tears streamed down my face and my body shook.
I tried to summon my magic once again and the broken stump backfired, slamming my face back into the dirt.
This can't be happening. This can not be happening!
I stumbled in the dark, blindly feeling around, I found my bags, their contents strewn about.
It was then I remembered the creature, and the portal.
The light from the portal was gone. If the creature was somewhere around here, I couldn't see it.
I felt around the ground, trying to find my bearings, I needed to see what had happened to my glorious ho—
I choked back a sob, Now was not the time, I needed to get out of this place.
I turned and tried to feel my way around. I smacked face first into something intensely cold, and immediately my migraine had lessened.
A faint caustic green like that of the portal had dimly lit whatever I had ran into. A massive hunk of Ice that hadn't been there before. The glowing green rune that was on the portal was also on the hunk of ice. From its light I could see that inside the ice was the metal creature from before, lying in the same position.
Across from it, there was only vague outlines of strewn about stones, whatever the portal was, it was destroyed now, Hopefully alongside that dark creature.
Stumbling and limping, I dragged myself away from the Ice with its stomach-turning symbol, my body wracked with sobs.
I followed the wall until it led to the snow strewn cavern I had fallen into initially. The hole I had fallen into now had revealed a sky filled with glittering stars.
The blizzard had cleared, but the howling of the wind had only grown stronger, and the it was the dead of night, with the moon illuminating the entrance. I needed to get back home. There is nothing but death for me here.
"I hope Platinum and Cookie take me back" I rasped before curling up into a ball and trying to get some sleep through the pain. I was going to need rest for the long journey back to the new home. Back into the cold.
