My Little Pony: Don't Starve

by TheBobulator

Rating: everyone
Tags: Spike, Comedy, Adventure, Discord, Pinkie Pie, Crossover, Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe
Length: 5496

Twilight Sparkle is transported to a nightmarish realm where her mysterious kidnapper expects one thing of her: don't starve.

Twilight Sparkle is transported to a nightmarish realm where her mysterious kidnapper expects one thing of her: don't starve. Will she escape? Will she survive? The first day begins...

Bear with me here, since this is my first venture into third-person (pony?) storytelling. The concept and prologue were whipped together over the course of two days, so expect a bit of a waiting period for me to figure out how to write in third person without the entire thing being too dull.

(Characters/Tags will be added as content is posted.)

Published 2013-01-05 03:30:02 UTC
Last updated 2013-07-19 03:10:09 UTC

Prologue: The Beginning

My Little Pony: Don’t Starve

By: TheBobulator

Prologue: The Beginning

The notion of parallel universes or alternate dimensions has always been a key component of myth and legend alike. Modern fantasy often presents the concept as a series of planes of existence where the laws of nature differ, allowing magical phenomena of some sort on other planes. For instance, the realm of Tartarus was once believed to be a fictional realm until the emergence of Cerberus during the-

“Twilight? Are you done yet?” Spike complained. “You’ve been reading that book for hours. Don’t you think it’s time for a break or something?”

Without looking up, Twilight replied “Just a minute, Spike.”

Spike tapped her shoulder. “Twilight?”

‘A Comprehensive Guide to Multiverses and Alternate Dimensions, Volume Three’ would have to wait until later. Twilight closed the book and turned to her number one assistant. “Yes, Spike.” She yawned and stretched. “I think it’s time for a break.” She placed a bookmark in the thick volume on her desk, stacked it next to the other four, and followed Spike downstairs.

“Great! Rarity said she needed some help with a new dress she’s making, so I was wondering whether it would be okay if I headed over there.” Spike said in excitement. “So unless you have anything else I need to do...” He hopefully stared at Twilight.

Twilight smiled, tired. “Go ahead. I’ll be busy with my research for a while, anyway.”

“Aw, thanks Twilight! You’re the best!” With that, Spike scampered off to ‘help’ Rarity with her dressmaking.

“Don’t stay out too late!” Twilight called after him.

“I won’t!” The moment Spike ran out the door and slammed it behind him, Twilight realized she should have asked him to pick up some more ink and scrolls on the way back. Hopefully, she still had enough to last the rest of the day.

A knock on the door brought her thoughts to a stop. “Who is it?”

“Hiya Twilight! It’s your best friend Pinkie Pie!” Twilight opened the front door, only to be greeted by nothing. Strange. “Hi!” Pinkie blurted from behind Twilight, causing her to jump. “You were taking too long to answer the door, so I let myself in!” Pinkie eagerly bounced in place.

“Pinkie! You didn’t- I haven’t even-” Twilight rubbed her forehead. Don’t think about it too hard, Twilight. Once she’d composed herself, she asked “What are you doing here?”

Pinkie shook her head. “Nopey dopey! It’s so busy I need to be in two places at once!” Twilight gave her the Pinkie-Pie-what-did-you-do glare. “Don’t worry, I didn’t use the mirror pond from episode fifty five. I mean, if I did, we’d be in a super duper amount of trouble!”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand why you refer to our lives in episodes. Anyway, were you looking for a book?” Twilight asked, hoping the bubbly pink party pony would get to the point. “Or is there something else I can help you with?”

A lightbulb appeared over Pinkie’s head. “I almost forgot! Can you come back to Sugarcube Corner with me? I know you like to turn things into oranges, but I can’t make apple cobbler cupcakes with oranges! I mean, what do I call it? Orange cobbler? Can you even do that? I’ve made cobbler with some really crazy stuff, but I don’t think I can do oranges. Wait, if the apples used to be oranges, does that mean the oranges taste like apples? Or maybe it’s an orange on the outside and an apple on the inside. Ooh, that would be super cool!”

“Pinkie, that was just a test. I haven’t tried the orange transmutation spell in weeks, mainly because I had to track down a blue, er orange jay and a frog-orange.” Twilight sighed. “You probably accidentally ordered oranges.”

“Applejack doesn’t sell oranges.” Pinkie replied. “Duh.”

As much as Twilight hated to agree, the baker pony had a point. “Fine, I’ll see what I can do about it.” She turned around to examine the bookshelves around her inside the library. “There’s probably a book on ‘how to transmute oranges back into apples’ somewhere around here.”

Once the appropriate book had been acquired (Apples, Apples, and More Apples: The Almanac of Every Apple and the Spontaneous Generation Of.), the two of them went to Sugarcube Corner and Twilight transmuted the oranges back into apples so that Pinkie would no longer have to worry about the workings of a formerly-apple orange. Since Twilight was there, she decided to pick up some cupcakes for Spike.

When the cupcake-laden librarian returned, her number one assistant was already back from his dressmaking mission. “Oh hey Twilight! I was wonderi- Ooh, are those for me?”

“Yep. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.” She levitated the box of cupcakes into Spike’s waiting claws. A small silver-colored brick lay next to Twilight’s stacked books on her desk. “Hmm. I don’t remember leaving you here.” She looked around. Was this Spike’s? Turning to the door, she yelled “Hey Spike! Did you leave your harmonica on my desk?”

“Nope.” Came the reply from downstairs. “I don’t have a harmonica.”

Well, that was curious, Twilight thought to herself. “I am positive that I have a book on the recommended operational constraints of a harmonica.” She turned back to the doorway. “Spike, is my copy of ‘Harmonics, Harmonicas, and You’ down there?”

“Which edition?”

Twilight had to think about that one. “We have a Dodge Junction edition, right?”

“It’s either that or the Manehattan one.” Spike appeared next to the librarian and dropped the colossal volume next to her. “You’re going to actually try playing that thing?”

“Of course. Wouldn’t hurt to try.”

Spike stared at her dubiously as he backed out of the room. “I don’t know about that...”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Twilight demanded.

The little purple dragon chuckled nervously. “I’ll, uh, go see if the cutie mark crusaders are doing anything dangerous or something. Bye!”

Twilight rolled her eyes and grinned. Hopefully, Spike could keep himself out of trouble for the time being. She opened the large gray-blue book. “Step one, pick up harmonica and hold to lips.” The unicorn wrapped the harmonica with her lavender-colored magic field. “Check.” Suddenly, the musical device stood up on its own accord and spun around. “Hmm. That’s not in the book.” She scanned the page for anything about dancing harmonicas.

“Congratulations! You’ve WOOOON!” The tinny voice from the harmonica blared. Twilight had a moment to realize this was probably not what a normal musical device did before everything disappeared in a flash.

Author's Note

Things have changed, FYI.

Chapter 1: Title Drop

My Little Pony: Don’t Starve

By: TheBobulator

Chapter 1: Title Drop

A gentle ocean breeze flicked at Twilight’s mane. She groaned and stretched out on the grass, still keeping her eyes closed. Birds were chirping and the warmth of the sun made her so comfortable that she could sleep all day if she wanted to. Wasn’t I in the library a moment ago? She wondered to herself. In a single swift movement, she sat bolt upright and opened her eyes. “This isn’t the library.”

A tiny lizard-like creature appeared in front of the unicorn. “Astounding observation, my little bookworm. Would you like to tell us where we are as well?” Twilight narrowed her eyes. Upon closer inspection, it did closesly resemble the malignant troublemaking draconequus that she knew as... “Discord!”

“How’s my favorite element of harmony doing? Still turning hapless bystanders into stone?” Discord asked, spontaneously spawning a statue of himself, frozen in mid-dance. The statue disappeared and he replaced it with a stoneified Princess Luna standing next to an equally stone Princess Celestia.

With a bit of smug satisfaction, Twilight strode right up to Discord. “Those are some pretty big words coming from a small guy.” As intimidating as the god of chaos was, she found it really hard to take him seriously when was barely the same height as her foreleg.

The statues vanished at the same time as oversized bright red boxing gloves materialized on Discord’s hands. “Ha! Take that! And that!” He punched at Twilight’s leg, to little effect.

The purple unicorn ignored the silly chimera ineffectually swinging at her leg. She took this opportunity to examine her surroundings. The landscape appeared to be flat and sparse, save for a few random trees and shrubs dotted around haphazardly. However, off to her right, the water lapped at the grassland that just so happened to stop at a sudden dropoff into the depths of the unknown.

“Where is this, exactly? I don’t think an island with this kind of terrain existed anywhere near Equestria.” Twilight curiously mentioned to Discord, who was still punching her knee. “Once I think about it, there aren’t many islands near Equestria at all.”

Discord paused in the middle of a right hook and exchanged his red gloves for a hovering glass of orange juice. On closer inspection, it was a drinking glass with several whole oranges somehow shoved into it. “That’s because this is a place I’ve created all by myself. Isn’t it lovely?” He took a sip from the glass, depleting the amount of glass around the oranges as opposed to the more sensible removal of the oranges inside. Twilight tried not to think about it too hard, especially when the lord of chaos was involved. “I’ve got a better question for you: How did you get here? Did Celestia bring you here? I’ve been behaving myself, I swear!” Just for demonstration’s sake, a little halo appeared over his head.

Twilight clearly wasn’t satisfied with the answer. “I picked up a harmonica, and it spontaneously teleported me here.” She stomped the ground in front of Discord. “Put me back in my library, right now.”

The trickster nervously chuckled as his halo popped out of existence. “Oops. So that’s where I left the darn thing.”

“DISCOOOORD.” Twilight raised her voice, ears flattening against her head. “What. Did. You. Do.” Just in case, she charged her horn with magical energy.

“Uh...do you remember that one time when you and your friends were trying to turn me back into stone?” In order to jog Twilight’s memory, (not that it needed jogging anyway) Discord summoned little silly cardboard cutouts to demonstrate everything. “Specifically, the part where I hid the Elements of Harmony and stuff?” The happy little Discord cutout bounced its way around the Celestia cutout and picked up the little yellow treasure chest. The aforementioned chest burst open and promptly disappeared with the Discord cutout. “I may or may not have left a gift for you.”

The lavender librarian pony quickly put the pieces together. “So you left a harmonica at my place to bring me...here?”

“You should have seen this place before I renovated everything. I had a magnificent striped hill over there, a flying marshmallow stand right over here...” Discord continued to go on about his former absurd fantasy land. All evidence of head-height neon green turf and upside-down fountains were gone, only to be replaced with the boring landscape Twilight observed around her.

While Discord went on about how glorious his spinning chocolate windmills, Twilight had had enough of his antics. “I’m just going to teleport out of here.” With practiced ease, she brought up the specifics of the teleportation spell and prepared it. “I’ll leave you alone with... whatever this is.” She focused on the mental image of her nice comfortable library nestled inside her tree.

From the trickster’s point of view, the lavender pony disappeared in a flash of similarly colored sparkles and reappeared a short distance away. She looked around in confusion for a few moments before trying it again. Discord happily settled into a spontaneously appearing sofa and munched on a box of popcorn as he watched Twilight hopelessly teleport to various places around his general location. “If I may,” He interjected, stopping her before she could charge another teleport spell. “I’d like to point out that I magic-proofed this entire dimension. It’s also candy-proofed, plaid-proofed, and Pinkie-proofed as well, just because I could. Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Can’t you take it down?”

“Nope.”

“Why?”

“I forgot how I put it up in the first place because, you know, somepony that didn’t really appreciate humor at all turned me into stone a very long time ago.”

“You can’t forget! You’re lying.” Twilight narrowed her eyes.

Discord casually shrugged. “I’m lazy.”

Twilight snorted in annoyance. “Give me a step by step of how you did it, and maybe I can figure out how you put it together. Using that information, I can theoretically take it down.”

The sofa morphed into a rocking chair. “Nope. Too lazy.”

“What?!? Then what do you expect me to do here?” Twilight was getting more agitated by Discord’s continued antics. Not only was he being uncooperative, but she couldn’t escape the dimension she was now trapped in. “There’s nothing here besides trees, rocks, and bushes.” She mentally included the grass and flowers that equally dotted the landscape.

Discord willed the couch and popcorn to disappear. “Well, I suggest that you dig around in that cavernous mind of yours and get those survival skills in order.” He put on some massively oversized silly sunglasses and donned his water wings. “I’ll go do something about this whole mess soon. Don’t worry though- Princess Celestia made me create a functional ecosystem and blah-de blah responsibility blah boring stuff basically you’ll be fine.” An innertube appeared around his approximation of a waist and he promptly jumped into the water. “And one word of advice!”

“What’s that?” Twilight dejectedly replied, looking around at the land that would possibly be her new home for the foreseeable future.

Discord cheerfully called out two simple, obvious words before disappearing under the waves. “Don’t Starve!”

Author's Note

Things have changed, FYI.

Chapter 2: The First Night

My Little Pony: Don’t Starve

By: TheBobulator

Chapter 2: The First Night

Twilight continued to stare off into the water where Discord had disappeared into. Don’t starve? That was an encouraging thought. Of course, that also went hoof-in-hoof with ‘don’t asphyxiate’. However unpredictable Discord was, at least his domain was somewhat... calm. Calm not being a word that was usually associated with the god of chaos.

“Well, at least it isn’t raining chocolate or anything.” Twilight thought aloud, then facehoofed. “Though now that I’ve said that, it’s probably going to happen. Great.”

Seeing as though Discord wasn’t going to be back for a while, food and shelter was going to be a priority. Twilight caught sight of a worn dirt path and followed it. “Dirt path means intelligent life. Intelligent life means ponies that can help me... I hope. Lacking that, maybe I’ll find something to eat along the way.”

Not very far down the path, Twilight noticed a familiar-looking green tuft poking out of the grass. A strong telekinetic pull later and the unicorn was staring at a perfectly ordinary carrot hovering in front of her. After thoroughly examining every possible property of the vegetable and finding absolutely nothing wrong with it, she decided it was okay to take a bite of the carrot, chewing thoughtfully.

“Carrots seem normal...” After waiting for a good five minutes, Twilight ate the rest of the carrot. “There’s edible food in this world. This is good.”

The plains around the unicorn slowly gained an orange hue. Somewhere in the cloudy distance the sun was setting, which meant night was approaching. Night meant it should be cold without shelter, but Twilight couldn’t be sure since Discord didn’t really care about the natural order of things.

“I’ll need wood for fire and some grass for tinder.” Twilight recounted from a camping guide in her vast memory of literature. “That tree should do just fine.”

The unicorn stopped by the one decently-sized pine evergreen in the area. “You look normal. A bit on the small side, but I think a few branches wouldn’t hurt.” She was about to study the tree for its weakest branches that she could snap off until the tree rapidly expanded and grew another several feet in an instant, accompanied with a comically loud springing noise.

“Gah!” Twilight hadn’t been expecting the tree’s sudden growth and she had fallen over in surprise. “What the-?”

The formerly average-sized pine now towered in comparison. Twilight peered at it, rubbing her chin with her hoof as she inspected it. Unfortunately, the few loose branches were now sturdier than ever. “I guess that plan’s not going to work.” Twilight muttered to herself.

Conveniently enough, there were a few small twiggy shrubs nearby. As the lavender unicorn stripped the saplings for their twigs, she could only think that either the perception of time or growth patterns had been altered in Discord’s unstable idea of reality. In a matter of minutes, she had collected a modest bundle of sticks. “Grass... to start it...” she muttered, pawing at the ground.

The thick green turf refused to budge even in the slightest, even going as far as stretching like a rubber band as Twilight tried to rip it from the dirt. Time was running out and the darkness was approaching.

The grass refused to budge. “Come on!” Twilight considered simply lighting the grass on fire, but that would likely cause an out-of-control raging inferno.

Twilight staggered backward and caught sight of a tall tuft of golden grass behind the tree. An experimental tug caused all the golden grass to pop off by the base, even bundling itself up into a neat pile on the ground.

“Well that’s oddly convenient.” The unicorn sighed. “Now, let’s get this fire going.”

Twilight began to place twigs in a small pyramidal pile, which was the ideal arrangement according to the survival book that she was basing all of her actions off of. She stacked a small pile of grass on top and cast a simple spark spell to light her campfire. There were enough sticks left over to use as kindling later.

Just in time. Night descended like the end of a play- very quickly and followed by a lot of darkness. Peculiarly enough, the moon- or more accurately, what passed for Luna’s moon- shed no light at all in the darkness. The chilling winds and darkness of the night were held at bay by the warmth and light of the crackling fire. Gazing into the darkness, Twilight could barely see anything. Suddenly, an orange light burst forth in the darkness.

Twilight hopped to her hooves. “Discord? Is that you? Explain yourself!” The mote of light wildly swung back and forth for a moment before hastily bobbing away.

Quickly casting a spell to illuminate her horn, the lavender unicorn charged into the darkness. The moment she left the safety and light of the campfire, the choking darkness, so thick she could almost feel its grasp on her coat, enveloped the meager amount of light produced by her horn. Even so, she continued to give chase.

A few branches scraped at Twilight’s flanks, which meant she was now in some sort of grove. Before she could press onward farther, a deep, echoing, harrowing snarl made it to her ears. She adopted a defensive stance and attempted to locate where the sound was coming from.

Whatever it was, it didn’t sound friendly- almost like a large hydra. “Stay back! I’m warning you.” Twilight fearfully yelled into the darkness.

Twilight didn’t like being blind, especially when something was stalking her. The snarl came again, this time much louder and much closer. She turned this way and that, trying to face her attacker.

Suddenly, jaws closed around her right hindleg. Twilight yelped and fired off a spray of magic, then bolted away, hoping to escape her attacker. The fire! If she could get there, then maybe she could actually see what was trying to eat her.

The creature snarled again, almost encouraging Twilight to gallop faster than she ever thought she could. Within seconds, she was already back near the safety of the fire. She glared back in the direction that she’d just come from and prepared a powerful magic bolt.

She waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

The beast was nowhere to be seen. Twilight sighed in relief and, in a moment of dazed relief, piled the remainder of her twigs onto the fire for more light. The fire roared and blazed into life instantly, illuminating the landscape around her.

“There.” Twilight happily panted. “Now I should be safe.”

Without warning, the tree next to her burst into flames.

Author's Note

We're back!

Chapter 3: Follow the Road

My Little Pony: Don’t Starve

By: TheBobulator

Chapter 3: Follow the Road

It took a few moments for Twilight to realize the tree was on fire. On the bright side, the dying campfire suddenly had a suitably piney replacement that cast much more light, though oddly enough, only the base of the tree was burning. For safety’s sake, she decided to back away from the flaming tree.

Suddenly, time froze as the moon fell and the sun (that wasn’t Celestia’s sun) launched itself into the sky. The shadows of the night were immediately replaced by the deceptively innocent sunbeams of the day. It may have been Twilight’s imagination, but she swore she could hear the sound of gears turning. Once the world had arbitrarily decided that, yes it was definitely sunrise now, it informed all of its potential inhabitants with a cheery dinging noise.

In the few moments that it took for day to break, the entire pine had been burned to a completely blackened crisp. Twilight dismissed the happening as another construct of this unpredictable world.

The noise of her growling stomach brought the unicorn back to the present. “Food... I’ll start having trouble thinking clearly if I don’t get some more food...”

As her thoughts drifted back to when she’d been attacked, she recalled that the monster had only bitten down and allowed her to flee rather than holding on.Now that she had some time, she noticed there weren’t even any traces of injury. Her hindleg looked and felt fine, if a bit sore.

Twilight pondered. “A dream? No, definitely happened.” Her stomach growled again, dismissing all previous thoughts and prompting her to focus on what was at hoof. “First breakfast, then I’ll worry about it. Assuming I can find something to eat.”

The librarian examined her surroundings. Yesterday’s carrot appeared to be the only one in sight. She trotted to a nearby sapling to strip it for sticks as she continued to look for something to eat. Noticing a red flower, she plucked it out of the ground and carefully examined it for anything that would identify it as being poisonous.

Twilight hadn’t seen or read about any flower like the one she levitated before her, but it appeared innocuous enough. Unfortunately, looks could always be deceiving. With slight trepidation, she closed her eyes and popped the flower into her mouth and constantly reminded herself that it was a rose between chews despite its blatantly bitter taste. She swallowed, and began to regret even deciding that eating the flower had been a good idea. It did make her feel marginally better, though.

After her less-than-filling snack, it was time to continue down the road as she pondered last night’s events. Things just didn’t add up, not including the ridiculous lack of sense Discord’s entire dimension seemed to have.

A small ring of red mushrooms immediately caught Twilight’s eye. As tempting as they looked, the little conic fungi, they were probably poisonous. She decided to tread on the side of caution just in case Discord had been devious enough to do so. Besides, he’d already created a life-threatening monster that was bad at doing its job.

Twilight chuckled to herself, reveling in the irony that the lack of knowledge on the trickster’s part had possibly saved her life. Farther down the path, a multitude of strange bushes, long grass, and small twiggy saplings were spread out over a wide plain. A few scattered trees jutted out from the landscape. Conveniently though, the dirt path she’d been following cut straight through and right into a suspicious-looking murky swamp..

The first subject of study was the small fern-like bush. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t really a fern and not really a bush either, defying all Twilight knew on the matter of botany.. Its five wide leaves were arranged like a fern’s fronds, with one comically sticking out of the top almost like a hat.

“Why would berries grow right out of the leaves?” Twilight asked out loud, picking them anyway and observing something far more confusing. “Better yet, where do they even attach to?”

Dismissing all of the logical fallacies of the plant, the berries themselves looked exactly like tiny cranberries. Upon cautiously taste-testing a few of them and not feeling any worse, she decided to collect and snack on them as she went about collecting a good amount of grass, twigs, and more berries.

A multitude of things were floating around Twilight at this point, grouped up by what they were. And as talented as the unicorn was, simultaneously levitating this many things at once was a little distracting in case she had to do something else with her magic.

An idea came to mind. She used a few sticks to create a small three-dimensional rectangular frame bound together with the grass which had proven itself to be much more durable than expected. Once that was sturdy, she began to cover the frame with roughly woven grass (Weaving in the Wild, Beginner’s edition) interspersed with more twigs for support.

“There! All done.” Twilight dusted off her brand new makeshift rucksack. “Too bad Rarity isn’t here. Hers would probably look nicer.”

She promptly began to fill the fashion-wrecking bag with the things that she’d collected. The remaining bits of grass were tucked into one end, the sticks went into a sling along the bottom of the pack, and the berries were placed comfortably on top of the grass.

Scattered around here and there between flowers and stripped bushes, little sharp pieces of flint poked out of the ground. Twilight stopped to think. Even though her magic was powerful, it wouldn’t help if she couldn’t see what she was attacking. In case the monster came back in the darkness, there wasn’t time to cast a wide-area spell before it would be able to get an attack in first. Times like these called for unusual solutions.

She was distracted by a small peculiarly-patterned red bird landing a short distance away. It pecked at the ground, looking for seeds. The second it saw the lavender unicorn intently staring at it, it chirped wildly and took off.

Twilight shrugged, then stopped to remove the remainder of the grass in her new pack and quickly turned some of it into a thick woven binding. She sifted through the collection of sticks she’d gathered and picked out the largest and sturdiest of them. Using the binding and a particularly sharp rock, she managed to create a crude spear.

Of course, Twilight had never attacked anypony or even used a weapon, but this was all going to be in self-defense. In case the monster came back this night, she’d be ready this time. However, the more pressing issue was that she’d used up the rest of her grass on making a weapon she didn’t really didn’t know how to use- Early-age Tools and Historical Artifacts Volume 2 hadn’t covered much about combat as much as it had on gathering.

“Gathering tools! That’s it!” Some of the trees in the area suddenly became prime targets for wood harvesting. “Now, how do I make an axe?”

One axe-assembling later, Twilight approached the copse of trees determined to liberate some wood for a fire. “Sorry mister tree, but I’m going to need some wood.” She approached the first tree, axe floating by her side.

The sensible thing would have been to cut it down from the top, but it would be faster to cut it down from the bottom just so she could take it with her in case darkness fell first. After making sure her telekinetic grip was sound, she began to swing at the base of the tree.

“Good thing this isn’t an apple tree or Applejack would freak.” Twilight told herself.

With one more good swing, the tree’s trunk gave. The librarian leapt out of the way to dodge the falling trunk, but it never happened. Instead, the entire tree disintegrated and burst into several neatly cut logs.

“Oh, of course.” A few pinecones materialized out of thin air and rolled to her hooves. “And here I was, expecting to have to chop this all up by myself.”

The sky began to darken, which made the unicorn put some extra spring in her trot. She quickly gathered the wood and the pinecones area, including some of the rocks and a good amount of the flowers, just in case the meager supply of berries that she’d procured wasn’t enough.

Although the swamp seemed like a scary place, Twilight would have to cross it at some point. Far off in the distance, she could barely see a dense evergreen forest at the end of the path. With all due haste, she followed the path at a brisk trot and hoped that spending the night in the swamp wasn’t going to happen.

Correction- this was more of a marsh, not a swamp. On that note, the local fauna didn’t seem to be doing too well. What passed for grass or turf appeared to be a very dark shade of purple. The trees were no more than jagged branches and gnarled stumps, as were the bushes. The only vegetation that seemed to have survived were dotted throughout the marsh in all their reed-like glory. One of them were sprouting right out of a crack in the edge of the path right ahead of Twilight.

Without any doubt, these were cattails. Nothing seemed to be explicitly wrong with the plant itself, aside from its isolated state. She looked it over and poked at the reeds with her spear in case something wanted to leap out and scare her.

Twilight pulled at one of the reeds. “Are you also created with convenience in mind?” She didn’t react when the entire plant harvested itself in an instant, transforming into a neatly shorn bundle all tied up with a single reed.

“Of course you are.” She sighed, collecting the bundled and processed plant. “What did I expect.”

Darkness began to swallow up the edges of the marsh and Twilight stopped in her tracks to retrieve the logs from her pack. Quickly arranging a few in a sort of star shape, she piled a few bits of grass on top and lit the entire thing ablaze. Just in time as well, as the immediate area was sucked into the abyssal darkness as well.

Spear at the ready, Twilight sat before her fire and slipped off her bag.“Now we wait.” She grumbled, floating out a small pile of berries to roast over the fire.

Somewhere in the marsh, the ground gurgled and squelched. A frog croaked and insects buzzed nearby. However, these sounds didn’t startle the lavender unicorn as much as the deep heavy rumble that seemed to emanate from all around her.

“I’m ready for you this time!” Twilight warned, a bit of panic in her tone. “Get back!”

The rumble abruptly ceased.

“Whew. I guess I managed to scare it off.”

To prove her wrong, the rumble picked up again- much louder, and just a bit closer.

Twilight whirled around and gasped in fright. Nothing there. She added a pinecone and a few sticks to the fire for extra light in hopes that she could see where the sounds were coming from. For a moment, she hoped that the sounds were only her imagination playing tricks on her.

To the best of her knowledge, her imagination didn’t usually shake the ground beneath her hooves. “G-get back!” She warned, wildly gesturing at the darkness with her spear.

There was a muted roar from behind Twilight that caused her to falter and drop her spear. The wind whipped and something distinctly slimy slammed into the back of her head, knocking her to the ground. She tried to flip herself over to fire off some kind of kinetic spell, but something slammed into her side.

The next thing she knew was darkness.

Author's Note

Yay, update! No progress on the editing of Memories, but at least the five of you that read this story have something to pass the time with!

I kinda goofed last chapter with the campfire, it's made of logs, not sticks. Mind slipped on that one, my bad. Doing my best here with what I've got. Tell me what you think!