Pain and confusion were the first things the pony felt. Her body slammed into something solid, possibly the ground. She couldn’t see. Startled awake, her mind reeled with confusion. She flailed her limbs, but every muscle screamed with pain. Dampness soaked into her skin.

The world felt like it was spinning. The intensity of confusion and dizziness, not to mention the pain when she tried to move, forced her to stillness. Her lungs heaved and heart pounded as she tried to make sense of her surroundings, her situation. What happened? Where am I? She struggled to remember how she’d gotten here, but the pieces wouldn’t come together in her mind.

Cold rain pelted down.

A blazing flash of light, and the thunderclap an instant later, changed everything. With a shriek of terror, she jumped to her feet, heedless of pain. Ghostly after-images of menacing silhouettes were burned into her eyes. Overcome by the instinct to flee, she flex her hind legs and her wings and tried to take flight, but it was hopeless, and she crashed to the wet ground in a heap.

Panic undiminished, she staggered to her feet and tried to run. She managed only a few strides through the pitch blackness before her shoulder crashed into some unyielding structure, and she spun and flopped painfully onto the ground once again.

It was too much. Exhausted, she broke down sobbing. Lightning and thunder crashed again, not as near this time, and the pony shrieked once more as if struck by a whip. She cried out into the darkness, “Help! Anypony!” She tried a few more times, but no one answered. Cold, miserable and afraid, she lay there. The occasional flashes of lightning suggested menacing creatures around her, but she could never see clearly enough to know what they were.

After some while the rain eased, and the thunder receded into distance. The pony lifted her head, and she tried to cast light. It was the simplest spell that any unicorn could cast, and the first learned by their children. She shrieked again, for the pain that shot through her horn was breathtaking, and she could only cower with her arms across her muzzle until she was done seeing stars.

After some time the clouds began to break up, and a gibbous moon shone through.  Now the pony could begin to make out something of her surroundings. The dark figures around her remained motionless. The pony did likewise, hardly daring to twitch a muscle, aside from her eyes and ears that swiveled warily. It wasn’t until crickets began to chirp that the pony felt safe enough to try standing up again. It hurt, but not as much as before. Her muscles felt sore, everywhere, as if she’d started a new workout regimen the day before and had badly overdone it.

She looked around from her new, higher perspective. She blinked. Her eyes had always been night-sensitive, and moonlight filtering through the trees was more than adequate. Yet, everything remained unclear. She lifted an arm and rubbed at her eyes with her pastern. It didn’t help.

She took a cautious step and managed to stay upright on all four feet, despite her lingering wooziness. She ventured over to the nearest upright figure and squinted through bleary eyes.

It was a statue. More specifically, it was a statue of a pegasus pony rearing up on his hind legs. His eyes were wide and his mouth was open, contorted in a panicked neigh, so it seemed. The cold, gray stone was covered with a patina of dark grime and growing lichens. Yet, as she sniffed at the statue and inspected it, she noticed that it was completely undamaged. Even the delicate ears and wing tips had not a chip missing.

The pony made her way slowly around the sparse woods, weaving around clumps of underbrush and trees that had tipped some statues and ensnared others deeply in their branches. A firm majority of the figures were ponies of various genders and races, some of them with clothing or armor that had been faithfully replicated in stone. There were also a few griffins, a minotaur and several species unfamiliar to her. Their poses and expressions varied. Some appeared terrified, some defiant, some resigned to their fate. None looked to be at peace. All appeared to have been here for a very long time, and yet she never found even the smallest crack or missing chip. Was this a graveyard or a museum?

Her gritty-feeling eyes improved slowly, and the scene about her became clearer. She circled around and eventually came back to a place near where she had begun, and she stopped. There was an empty plinth, a block of stone just the same as the pedestal every statue stood upon. Scattered around it were many fragments of stone. She lowered her head to peer at them, tipped a few over with a hoof. The pieces were thin like eggshells, and each had one side that appeared pale, fresh and clean, and the opposite side darkened with grime and lichens. The grass was flattened, and her own hoofprints were visible in the mud.

“No,” she muttered. She sat down on the wet grass and gazed around with fresh eyes. She looked at the statues with large trees grown around them. “How long?” she breathed. “How long was I turned to stone?”

Author's Note

Right now my plan is to post a chapter per week until Episode One is complete. It's all written, so I don't expect any bad hang-ups.