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Scale

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter 3: And the Dire Deluge

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html>Scale

Scale

by shortskirtsandexplosions

First published

Daring Do goes on an epic quest full of danger and peril. Her goal: to cross landscapes, to scale boundaries... and to transcend herself.

Daring Do goes on an epic quest to cross magnificent landscapes, to scale impenetrable boundaries, and to transcend herself.

Epic Cover art by Dream0rDie

And the Shifting Sands

Her fuzzy ears twitched upon hearing a rustling sound, like long sheets of paper shredding apart in the dark confines of an abandoned library. Soon, that rustling turned into a gentle roar, coming and going in vacillating sequence. Then her shoulders started shifting with the sound, and she opened her mouth to breathe. Her nose and muzzle produced nothing but bubbles.

Daring Do lifted her face, sputtering. Her ruby eyes opened to a flash of bright blue sky, then immediately clenched shut to squeeze out the salt and stabbing light. She curled up with a foalish whimper, only to hear the ripples of water all around her. Bobbing liquid surrounded the mare's body, soaking her, christening her tan coat with cool suds amidst the glaring heat.

It took a great deal of courage, but Daring opened her eyes yet again. Her pupils stung from the gritty sand and saline dripping off her lashes. At best, she could barely make out a fuzzy line bobbing and weaving straight ahead of her. As she tried focusing on the horizon, another wave of cold liquid doused her from behind. She found her body surging forward, her hooves plowing through a sopping muck of wet sand below.

She used the boost to her advantage and stood up, wobbling wearily on all fours. Only once she was upright did she realize how shallow the surf was. The water lapped against her fetlocks as her soaked green safari shirt dribbled streams of seawater into her wavering reflection. One pensive hoof after another, she tried trotting forward.

With a grunt, she tripped and fell flat on her chest. The wind flew out of her lungs, and in the next inhale she tasted thick salt in the air. The sound of birds echoed over the waves, and she looked up through pained eyes.

Three seagulls streaked through the bright blue sky directly overhead. They spun like vultures, twirling counter clockwise, mechanically chasing each other forever and ever until Daring Do blinked.

With a groan, Daring tried crawling forward. As she did so, she gazed directly ahead. A line of green fuzz solidified into a thin forest of palm trees and tall emerald grass, stretching left and right beyond rolling mounds of pale white sand. Daring found herself inching immediately towards a shallow beach dotted with bent palm trees and gray specks of exposed rock. She tilted her head back and forth to see what lay beyond her peripheral vision. As best as she could tell, the ocean shore stretched from horizon to horizon, not bending or breaking even once.

The bird cries intensified. Daring glanced up. The seagulls spun their circle away, as if retreating from her glare. As another wave of surf struck the mare's weak body, she felt something tap into her right hoof.

In a jerk, Daring glanced aside. She blinked to see a small object of brown leather sliding into her as it bobbed in the low surf. Reaching a hoof out, she spun the thing around. A beam of sunlight glinted across its slick surface, revealing the thing to be a book—splayed open with its ruined pages lying face-first in the the sand.

A deep sigh that escaped the mare's lips. She reached a hoof up, hesitated, then slowly slicked her soaking wet mane back. After a few seconds, she stifled a groan, sat on her haunches, and propped the book up in her hooves.

Daring Do was silent. Her nostrils flared once or twice, but otherwise her face remained as dead as stone. She scanned the sopping wet pages of the book, but there was nothing decipherable left to read. What was more, most if not all of the papers had been ripped out, leaving nothing but mottled, translucent leaves. She slapped the soaking tome shut and glanced at its cover. The hints of a colorful and artistic cover were still there, but the swirling paint strokes had all been drained away, leaving the stenciled silhouette of something that once held a pattern, but was no longer salvageable.

She exhaled quietly. In an emotionless shrug, she dropped the book with a wet plop onto the sand, where it was then consumed once more by the crashing waves. The tome floated back out to sea, and Daring Do trotted forward, this time with strength and purpose. Her slogging steps turned into wicked stomps as she crossed over from wet grit to dry sand. Powdery hoofprints marked the mare's deliberate path as she broke right at ninety degrees and began walking parallel to the shore.

Wincing from the heat and moisture, Daring repeatedly shook her mane and tail hairs, desperate to get as much of the salt and sand out as possible. Her vision was starting to adjust, and the blue sky wasn't quite so punishing. As she fidgeted with the soaking wet cuffs of her shirt, she glanced up at the sky. The seagulls were gone, and in their place the sun loomed directly overhead. She couldn't tell what time of day it was, only that it was hot. Her thoughts quietly mulled this over, rolling with the endless crashing of ocean waves.

About two minutes into her trek, she dared to look to her right, gazing out across the open ocean. A quivering blue horizon undulated softly before her, revealing no continents, no islands, no boats, not even a single mirage to tickle the adventurer's imagination. The waves glittered as if to show off the vast stretch of aquatic desolation lying before her.

Thus, it was with a gasp that Daring beheld a singular object moving amidst the waves. She pivoted towards the ocean, squinting. Then, with a desperate breath, she galloped straight into the rolling surf. She waded towards the small thing, wincing as the cold waves lapped up to her forelimbs' upper joints yet again. Nevertheless, she persisted, scaling the tide until the object was within reach. Without hesitation, Daring clasped the lid of the thing between her teeth. With a splash, she spun around and kicked at the waves until she was walking onto dry shore once again.

Squatting on her haunches, Daring happily plucked the pith helmet out from her toothed grip and examined the article closely. She turned it over and gave it a shake, draining the hat of both sand and seawater. With a grimacing expression, she reached a hoof in and dragged out a clump of vomit-green seaweed. It took several flicks of her forelimb to toss the clingy mass away. Once rid of it, she sighed and planted the pith helmet atop her gray head. The hat was just as soaked as she was, but at least it gave her tan brow some shade from the punishing sun.

Reunited with her headpiece, Daring Do turned directly towards the grass beyond the beach and marched forward. Her muscles ached, so she kept her trot slow and steady, crossing the blazing hot sands with more or less grace. Once her hooves made contact with the springy knoll, her whole body relaxed. She exhaled with relief, then fumbled through the tall swaying reeds in search of shade.

After about ten minutes of traversing the edge of the shore's vegetation, she found a blissfully cool spot. A trio of palm trees stretched into one another, their rustling fronds forming a patch of shadow in which Daring Do eagerly squatted. She rested for the better part of an hour, peeling her wet shirt off and stretching it—unbuttoned—across a gray slab of exposed rock lying against the base of a steep hill.

She emptied the pockets of her shirt and laid her personal belongings side by side in a patch of sand, right beside her pith helmet. As she sat on folded limbs in the shade, she passed the time by examining each item one by one.

One was a compass, miraculously unfazed by the seawater that had pelted it—and pelted her. Daring unclasped the thing and rotated it in the crook of her hoof, watching as the compass rose inside—a perfect match for her cutie mark—rotated to show her which direction was which. She blinked curiously to see that north and south were perfectly aligned with the shore. She glanced behind her, looking west over the crashing waves. Sullenly, she glanced straight ahead. The land east of her was blocked by a solid line of sharply jutting hillsides, beset with craggy rocks and loose mounds of sand.

Quietly, she clasped the compass back shut and placed it down. Next, she picked up a pale blue shard of crystal. She shook the enchanted object beside her ear, listening as the air immediately surrounding her danced with the ethereal sound of bells, then went silent. Raising the object to her mouth, she blew on it. The crystal strobed with a pulse of pale blue light, then went dim. Inhaling deeply, Daring next breathed on the shard for the span of ten seconds. The object proceeded to glow with magical torchlight, almost to the point of blinding her like the sun earlier did.

Stifling a snort, Daring bore a tiny smile and placed the glowstone back in the sand. Annoyed with the persistent glare, she lifted her pith helmet and plopped it over the enchanted crystal. Next, she reached for a slender, oval case. On the side of the item, in silver-embossed font, the container read: "Professor Do – Neigh York Institute for History and Archaeology.'" After turning the glossy gray thing over, she pressed a button in its middle and popped it open like a clam shell. Inside was a pair of bifocals, framed perfectly for her eyes, but that wasn't what the mare was looking for.

Tilting the container at a steep angle, she looked at an oval mirror that was shaped to fit the interior of the container's lid. A pair of dull ruby eyes stared back at her from its polished surface. Daring's face grew long as she gulped and—with fidgeting hesitation—tilted the container's mirror so that she could have a better look at her mane. The pegasus’ hair was still sopping wet, and many of the gray tones had tangled to form the color of bubbling stormclouds. She looked and looked intently at her mane, reaching a hoof up every now and then to spread the bangs apart. Her ruby eyes squinted, darting about, before finally giving up. With a sigh of disappointment, she clasped the container shut, then turned to give her equally wet tail a dull glance. She flicked the hairs for good measure, but still seemed equally bored.

Eventually, she placed the container back onto the sand and slumped forward, resting her chin atop a pair of criss-crossing forelimbs. For several minutes, she gazed past the swaying palm trees, into the churning shore, listening as the endless waves crashed and receded and crashed again. Her fuzzy ears twitched, and she detected the sound of skittering limbs. Her eyes jerked to the left in time to witness four crabs. They walked sideways, albeit in a loop, shuffling clockwise around a solitary tree. The crustaceans did this—quietly and persistently—for as long as Daring bothered to stare at them.

She didn't know when she gave up staring, but at some point Daring retrieved her shirt, buttoned it up, put her belongings back into the thing's pockets, grabbed her pith helmet, and resumed strolling south along the beach.

For an hour, Daring traversed the thick grass that bordered the surf-pounded sand. She climbed over crags of rock and piles of petrified sediment. She hopped over lopsided palm trees and fumbled through scratchy fronds and bushes.

Every now and then, the mare would pull her compass out, unclasping it to see if there was any change to her bearings. At each check, she found that she would always be facing south, with the east looming directly to her left. Bearing a dull expression, Daring glanced repeatedly towards the wall of grassy earth, wondering when there would be a break in the steep landscape. Her feathers were still wet with seawater, and she didn't want to risk flying into unknown territory if there was a chance she might fall and crash.

No matter how far she trotted, it felt as though there wasn't enough shade. The heat wasn't so much unbearable as it was annoying. Daring hissed in discomfort, for the seawater that had dried on her coat had left fine granules of salt clinging to her skin, and it made her flesh itch with a vengeance. The edges of her lips stung, and she felt as though her eyelids were growing more and more puffy by the hour. The pegasus quietly prayed for a cave or an alcove or a massive cluster of palm trees to appear and give her some much needed shelter.

Instead, she chanced upon another blessing: there was a break in the grassy ridges to her left. Daring paused, squinting down what appeared to be a narrow chasm of sorts. It wasn't too thin; daylight filtered down in random spurts, and she detected a hint of fine mist filtering out from the sudden cleft in the earth.

Without hesitation, Daring turned left and briskly trotted east. She was immediately rewarded with a cool reprieve as the shade of palms and rockfaces crossed over her like shadow puppets. The ravine meandered, winding right and left and right again. Soon, the crashing of waves dwindled into obscurity behind the mare, gradually replaced with the roar of another sort. Curiosity led Daring further down the serpentine cabin, as did a delightfully cool spray of moist air.

At last, she trotted around a final bend. The steep earth sloped down, revealing an emerald glen flanked by thick bushes buzzing with insects. Daring's attention was stolen by a shimmering sight at the far end of the clearing: that of an enormous waterfall crashing into a shallow pond at the base of a steep, steep rockface. A dense patch of shade hugged the walls, leading to a niche that curved inward from the pond, giving the mare enough space to walk through between the rock and the thundering waterfall.

Daring stepped underneath the natural overhang, and immediately she was in heaven. Wave after wave of cool, clingy moisture pelted her weary body with delight. She bore a rosy-cheeked smile as her walk slowed into a lazy trot. She stretched her neck against the rising mist, allowing the airborne droplets to kiss every square inch of her coat. The adventurer's green shirt was being soaked again, but she didn't care. She came to a stop on the rocky platform directly behind the thickest curtain of the pounding falls. Her ears drooped to avoid being deafened as she leaned in and stuck her hoof courageously into the deluge, testing the pressure of the plummeting moisture. The water stung a bit to the touch, but the coolness outweighed the pain.

Smiling, Daring took her pith helmet off and plopped it down beside her. The pegasus then set her hooves apart, balancing herself so as not to slip on the rock that had been smoothed to a pearlescent shine from countless centuries of liquid punishment. After a deep, deep breath, she plunged her neck forward and doused her skull in the shallow pool. Once thoroughly doused, she yanked her head up, tossing her sopping-wet mane back and allowing rivulets of water to roll down her neck and chest. She splashed hoof-fuls of moisture onto her lower limbs and fetlocks, washing away the sand and grit of her previous trek.

It was halfway through this impromptu "rinse" that Daring paused, her ruby eyes catching movement from beneath the surface of the pond. She spotted three shapes darting around themselves, and it took her a few seconds to realize that they were rotating in a circle. The pony stood there, serenaded by the cacophonous waterfall, watching as three fish perpetually chased one another in a counter clockwise motion.

Daring raised an eyebrow. On instinct, she looked straight up and ahead of her.

There was a dark shape from beyond the waterfall, lying perfectly still.

Slowly, Daring squatted low and slipped her pith helmet back on. With cautious steps, her wet body crept around the edge of the rock face, slowly emerging from the earthen niche beyond the other edge of the waterfall. As she rounded the cascading deluge, she spotted a dark, dark cave lingering on the far edge of the glen. It stood out like a sore hoof, leaving her amazed that she had not seen it when she first arrived upon the clearing.

With quiet steps, she padded across the grass, approaching the mouth of the cave. A cold wind billowed through the stone chamber. From where she stood at the entrance to the natural formation, she estimated that the craggy corridor was no less than twenty feet wide.

After a few deep breaths, Daring slithered forward. Darkness overcame her, and she slowed her movement in order to stretch a hoof toward the left front pocket of her shirt. Unbuttoning the flap, she slid out her enchanted stone so that it protruded halfway from her outfit. Breathing hotly on the shard, she summoned a pale-blue glow. A cold spotlight bounced and bobbed ahead of her, matching her movement, lighting her path as she spelunked the straight corridor that cut through what she assumed to be a rocky hill.

Much like the crashing surf, the roar of the waterfall behind her dwindled. The underground passage was deathly silent, punctuated only by Daring's clopping hoofsteps and the occasional sound of moisture dripping in the dank cave's unlit recesses. Daring pivoted her chest left and right, shining the swath of pale blue light back and forth. Despite her efforts, she could only illuminate the walls of the place; there was no sight of the cave's end.

At first, Daring was puzzled, and even slightly dismayed. About five minutes into the underground trek, she slowed her trot, for the echoes of her hoofsteps were becoming lesser and lesser apart. Suddenly, a halo of light solidified in front of her. The mare's glowing stone was illuminating a solid wall.

She came to a stop, her hooves shuffling. Breathlessly, she gawked at the apparent dead-end. Just then, a drop of water fell from the ceiling directly in front of her, but it made no sound. She looked straight down and realized why.

There was a drop—a hole—and it fell into complete darkness. Gulping, Daring breathed into the enchanted glowstone once again, causing it to pulsate with renewed energy. She squatted down to her chest and peered over the edge of the drop, shining her light directly into the vertical space. As she did so, a wave of air blew at her mane. She winced, then furrowed her brow in thought.

The air obviously had to be coming from somewhere. Determined to find out, Daring stood back up and stretched her wings. She didn't feel ready to fly, but she was certain that she could glide if she put her mind to it. So, flapping the wet feathers one last time for good measure, she plunged daredevilishly off the edge of the cliff. She plunged, rotating as she did so, circling gracefully towards the darkness below until her light struck smoothe rock—followed by her four hooves.

She landed on even stone and pivoted around, shining her light in every direction she could. There was another gust of air, and she spun in the direction from which it came from. She swore that she saw something glistening in the distance. She slid the glowing shard deep into her pocket in order to drown out the immediate light. Squinting, she made out a pale sliver in the distance. She trotted cautiously towards it, then broke into an eager canter as her eyes focused, making out a flat stretch of solid rock between her and her destination.

At last, the light and wind culminated in a chamber facing towards the outside world. Three vertical slits had been carved into the wall; they were too geometrically perfect to have been natural. Sure enough, as Daring Do scuffled to a stop, she noticed blatant furnishing to the place. Wooden support beams framed the rocky walls and ceiling. A cobblestone floor stretched between shattered, emptied pots, and on the far end were wooden tables and chairs that had decayed into brittle splinters with time.

Daring Do approached one of the lopsided tables. She tilted her head aside as she observed several wooden cups, bowls, and discarded pieces of ancient tools. A pale stretch of cobwebs bounced in the wind. Daring turned immediately around and faced the three carved slits on the far side. In the center of the room was a cylinder positioned at about knee-level, but she ignored it, choosing instead to trot over toward the windows. Once she stood before the slits, she leaned forward to peer out, squinting. However, the world outside was unbearably bright, and she couldn't make out any semblance of a landscape, foggy or clear. Another gust of wind blew at her mane, tugging at her pith helmet, and she sat back on her haunches, mulling the situation over in silence.

It was then that something crawled over her flanks.

With a sharp breath, she flicked her tail and stood up. The mare turned and stared down at the cobblestone floor.

She saw a couple of ants marching in a line... a dozen ants... a hundred ants... hundreds of ants. As Daring Do took more and more of a survey of the room's floor, she realized that an entire squadron of soldier ants had been skittering across the ground the whole time. What's more, every single one of them was conforming to an undeniable pattern.

Daring looked at the ants, then at the cylinder in the middle of the room, then at the ants again.

They were marching precisely clockwise around the cylinder.

Curious, Daring trotted forward, making sure she stepped over the insects without squashing a single one of them. She approached the cylinder, giving it a close study. Upon closer inspection, she realized that the cylinder's top pedestal was—in fact—consisting of circles within circles. There were four layers total, and each of them were adorned with stone engravings, patterned after four different creatures. The outermost layer bore the image of soldier ants—much like the ones that were circling the dais. Working its way in, Daring saw a circle inscribed with fish, a smaller circle inscribed with crabs, and a final, small circle inscribed with seagulls.

The adventurer cocked her head to the side. Cautiously, she reached two hooves forward. She gripped the outermost circle of the cylinder, gently at first, and gave it a tug. Slowly—with a scraping noise—she found that she could rotate the outer circle along the cylinder's circumference.

Something dramatically shifted in her peripheral. She looked down—then did a double-take, her ruby eyes wide.

Every single soldier ant had stopped marching altogether, instead scurrying collectively towards her with their barbed mandibles thirsting for tender pony flesh.

Daring hissed through clenched teeth. She looked at the ants, then at the carvings that matched them on the outer circle. Her head jerked as a thought ripped through her mind. With a jolt, she rotated the circle the other way: clockwise.

The ants all stopped in place, their feelers waving in the air.

Daring held her breath and continued rotating, rotating, rotating the circle clockwise.

The ants walked unnaturally backwards, went back into formation, continuing their clockwise orbit of the cylinder—and Daring in turn.

The pegasus exhaled with relief. At last, the circle stopped rotating altogether, clicking loudly as it locked in place. Daring stood there, leaning limply on the cylinder, rubbing her chin in thought. Then, with a brightening expression, she brushed her hooves towards the next ring of stone. Gripping the circle marked with fish, she rotated the inner circle counter clockwise. She did this until the scraping panel locked into place. She next grasped the smaller circle labeled with crustaceans, this time rotating the thing clockwise. After it clicked to a stop, she finally gripped the smallest circle and—with much effort—forced it to rotate counter clockwise.

When this one clicked to a stop, it popped up in the center of the stone cylinder like a loose piston, forcing Daring to emit a slight yelp. She backed up as a deep rumble rolled through the chamber. Then, with an explosion of fine powder, the cylinder expelled wave after wave of loose sand from deep within its interior. The cobblestone floor was absolutely covered with sediment, sweeping the ants away and burying them altogether. The air became too thick with debris, and Daring raised the collar of her shirt over her muzzle so that she could breathe without choking. At last, the rumbling stopped; the cylinder now resembled a stone island in the center of a loose fountain of sand.

Anxiously, Daring waded her way through the mess and grasped the edges of the circles. This time, she lifted, and the top of the cylinder popped off like the lid to a jar of strawberry preserves. She flung it aside, hearing as it crashed loudly against a wall of crumpled wooden furniture. Daring looked down into what turned out to be a round chest. A single item lay in the center of it, exposed after all the sand had spilled loose from the device. Reaching down, Daring grasped it and raised it up into the light from the windows.

It was a book; a very thick one at that. Years of sifting through coarse sand had rubbed off any hint of a title or picture along its leather covers. Daring wasted no time in dwelling on this obscure detail; she opened the book, flinging its pages wide. A fine dust was added to the already suffocating air. She studied the white pages, her eyes narrowing. Perhaps it was the sand, or perhaps the milky white haze that wafted in through the windows, but all she could see was a foggy blur of text. There was nothing to decipher, and Daring wasn't about to try.

With a sudden jerk, the pony flung her mouth forward, bit her teeth onto a thick wad of pages, and yanked her head back. The air of the room roared with the tearing of ancient sheets of paper. In an instant, the adventurer had ripped half of the book's contents to shreds. She let the loose leaves fall to the ground, where they mixed with the sand.

It wasn't long after that a heavy gust of wind blew in from the world outside. Daring Do gritted her teeth and covered her head. She fell to the ground, almost drowning in sand and loose pages. As soon as the tumult began, silence reigned once again. She swam her way up through the dust and stood on four hooves, squinting into a continuous gale. Looking out through the three windows, her vision finally spotted a landscape.

Waves upon waves of rolling green hills stretched as far as Daring's ruby eyes could see. Tall grass waved in perpetual downdrafts as dark gray clouds swam overhead. Gone was the sound of crashing waves entirely, replaced instead by a whistling howl as the smell of pollen and dewy grass tickled the mare's nostrils.

She couldn't explain why, but the tiniest of smiles adorned her lips. She trotted towards the centermost window, but suddenly paused. Reaching a hoof into her pockets, she fished around until she pulled out her eyeglass case. Popping the clamshell container open, she looked into the mirror built inside the thing's lid.

Her smile left. She tilted the mirror until she got a good look at her windswept mane. Her eyes searched and searched... but found nothing.

Daring sighed.

Clasping the container shut, she slid it back into her pocket and stretched her wings. Her feathers were dry now, and it was about time she rested her legs.

So, with a triumphant gallop, she threaded her way through the centermost window and plunged over the edge. She dove down an enormous cliffside, shot her wings out, and sliced her way against the winds, gliding like a tan speck over the immense plain of rolling green hills.

And the Whipping Winds

Daring thought she could glide against the howling winds with relative ease. She was wrong.

Less than thirty minutes into her glide, the whistling air above the plains proved too tempestuous to handle. She gritted her teeth and beat her wings harder and harder until they felt like tearing off. At last, she resorted to descending until she was about ten feet off the top of the hilly mounds of grass. There, she found that she could skim the landscape at a slow yet unchallenged speed.

However, this made the flight a great deal more stressful than she had anticipated. The landscape wasn't simply a flat plateau of fields, but rather a bumpy array of windswept hills. It was as if Daring was crossing an emerald sea of rolling green waves. She almost expected a creature to leap spontaneously out of the earth and land beneath her in a splash of weeds and dirt.

Nevertheless, the adventurer maintained her low altitude, scaling each rise and fall in the verdant topography. There was something hypnotic about the manner in which the emerald blades danced in the endless breezes. To her left and right, she saw tremendous gusts, outlined by serpentine swaths of bent grass winding before and behind her.

She found herself so entranced by the wind-swept vegetation that she realized she had suddenly lost her bearings. So, with a muted groan, Daring lowered herself to land atop the crest of a hill. She sank through the tall grass; her hooves didn't land quite where she had expected them too. Gasping, she found herself drowning in the tall green blades. They went up to her neck, brushing and scratching and tickling her legs and flank.

Shuddering, Daring trotted forward a bit, beating back the grass, weeds, and wind that never ceased to pelt her. To her joy, she found a cluster of compact dirt where the grass only grew up to her fetlocks. There, she plopped down on her haunches, resting while she pulled her compass out from her green shirt's pocket. Unclasping the thing, she watched as the rose rotated to a stop.

She was facing east-northeast; the mare hadn't flown far off her intended trajectory. She smiled and slapped the item shut, only to hear a loud bang echoing across the heavens. With a gasp, Daring clutched the compass to her chest, staring breathlessly upwards.

Gray clouds had coalesced overhead. They were thickest in the north, boiling and flickering with distant flashes of lightning. As Daring watched, she was serenaded by another roll of thunder, softer this time, giving a bass reverberation to the endless field of grassy hills. When the thunder cleared, Daring's ears were assaulted once again with perpetual whistling. The winds did not cease for one second, and this produced a high-pitched whine that sang high above the rustle of grass blades brushing up against one another.

With a sigh, Daring pocketed the compass and sat still for a few minutes. She took even breaths, drinking in the copper taint lowering through the billowing air. As the sky grew darker, she could feel her coat hairs tingling with static electricity. With each roll of thunder, there was no telling when and where the next bolt of lightning would strike. It was immeasurably dangerous to keep traveling forward, especially by wing.

Daring Do leapt forward and flew without hesitation.

An hour passed. The winds whistled with a vengeance, but Daring had grown numb to it. She flew as low as she could afford to over the hills, her hooves and muzzle occasionally being slapped by precocious blades of grass. She kept her ruby eyes trained forward, hoping without end that there'd be a change in the landscape beyond the next hilltop... or the next... or the next one after that.

Alas, with each rolling piece of earth that she passed, there came another breath of disappointment, accompanied by a violent gust of wind as she tried to skirt past the top of a gale-blasted knoll. It seemed to the mare that the turbulence was increasing. She gnashed her teeth and tried angling her wings to better slice through the cyclonic forces, but she found herself being thrusted faster and harder towards the earth.

After an hour and a half, she finally gave in, landing in an awkward skid across the western face of a grassy bend. Daring clung to the earth for a few seconds, struggling to catch her breath, trying not to be blown off her hooves by layers upon layers of punishing bursts of air. Lightning flashed, and she felt the thunderous vibrations rolling through the springy earth beneath her.

Gritting her teeth, Daring looked up. The clouds were nearly black at this point; they cast an ominous shadow over her and the swaying vegetation. A part of her contemplated jumping off the ground and soaring straight up. If she pierced the clouds with her pegasus body, then perhaps she might be able to fly at a high altitude unfettered by howling winds. However, for the life of her, she couldn't expect to fly twenty feet in a straight line, much less hundreds of yards. Her ears hurt from the constant whistling that pierced them. She drooped the fuzzy lobes back and gazed straight at the earth beneath her, as if praying for a break in the wind so that she could continue her journey.

It was then that she noticed something, a contrasting sight that broke through the emerald canvas of the landscape that was drowning her. Crawling across one particular blade of high grass was a golden speck, like a star that had fallen into her midst. Daring blinked, squinting her eyes. It was too windy to even bother trying to pull her eyeglasses out of their case. She mentally cursed her own farsightedness.

Nevertheless, the image eventually came into focus. It was a golden beetle, and it crawled and crawled until it reached the very tip of the swaying blade of grass upon which it was perched. Once it ran out of a surface to scale, it opened its shell and spread its wings from underneath.

Daring winced, already expecting the inevitable.

Alas, the beetle took off, soaring into the air above... and it did not get knocked over by the wind.

Daring gasped, watching quizzically.

The golden beetle became a yellow speck, winding its way erratically into the air, climbing higher and higher towards the dark clouds, until eventually bending right and heading in an eastward glide.

The pegasus blinked, for she sensed several more golden dots in her peripheral vision. She stood up straight, watching breathlessly as multiple clusters of golden beetles ascended from the sea of grass. They all took off in one accord, forming a platinum stream as they wound their way through the air and headed east after the first beetle.

With her brow furrowed, Daring rubbed her chin. She reached back with her teeth and plucked a golden feather loose from her wings. The mare winced at the brief spike a pain; a pegasus would never quite get used to that. Still, she tilted her muzzle up, timed the moment right, and spat the feather into the air.

She watched in mute wonder as the soft golden sliver spun in the air, rotated, then shot skyward in a dramatic arc. To her amazement, it followed the path that the beetles had made, taking a winding course eastward, as if navigating an invisible tunnel through the merciless winds.

Daring Do bit her lip. Pivoting about, she took a deep breath, flexed her wings like the beetles before her, and shot skyward. She regretted it immediately; her body spun like an orange bowling pin in the air. Thunder and lightning rolled around her, and it took all her energy to resist the urge to scream. Then, just as quickly as the flailing happened, the wind died.

She knew better, though. After all, she still heard the whistling howl in her ears. It just so happened that, where she was, the gale was almost nonexistent. She evened her body almost instantly, pivoting eastward and staring at the rolling horizon.

A thin stream of golden objects flitted ahead of her, worming their way with a chaotic pattern, easily breaching a niche within the valley's atmosphere: a pocket.

Daring smirked. With one thrust of her wings, she glided down the invisible tunnel. She easily caught up with her feather, the beetles, and even more golden swarms ahead of them. Soon she was flying with the insects, easily threading her way across the swaying grasslands that suddenly felt like they were miles and miles beneath her.

Without warning, the beetles surged upwards. She surged with them, scaling an invisible roller coaster that then followed the golden stream in a downward spiral. Lighting flashed around them, but they were untouchable, like golden orbs glinting in a cosmic void. Together, the pony and insects navigated a translucent tornado, streaking towards the ground with unchallenged grace. As bizarre as the air pattern was, it allowed the mare to cross more ground in far less time than her last two hours of flight combined.

Daring almost giggled to herself, if it wasn't for the sight of something looming ahead. The whistling in the air was suddenly accompanied by a clattering sound, like wooden limbs skittering across an oaken bosom. The adventurer squinted to see a drop in the hilly landscape. There was a tiny valley just ahead, and seven objects stretched dozens of feet high into the air. Six of them were wooden wind fans, their blades facing eastward as they rotated with loud rattling cadence. In the center of the fans, placed equidistantly from every single one of them, was a tall metal pole with a golden globe positioned at the top. The pole's base had a grass-covered mound for a foundation; otherwise the seven towers stuck out like sore hooves amidst the otherwise natural environment.

So busy was Daring in studying this sight that she almost didn't realize that she was hurtling directly towards it. That could only mean one thing: the beetles were hurtling towards it as well.

As she approached the valley, she coiled her wings towards her sides and dove out of the pocket of air. Her body broke free, and the wind beat her as punishment, but somehow it wasn't nearly as bad as the hilltops west of that location. When she landed, lightning flashed, illuminating the splintery surfaces of the wooden towers that supported the fans rotating above her. Her eyes traveled up the gnarled frames, observing the tall vertical axles that spun into the earth in direct relation to the blades' rotation above. The air was a mixture of whistling and grinding noises, and she spent a great deal of time pacing from one tower to the next, observing each with mutual interest.

At some point, Daring's gaze traveled skyward again. In the next flash of lightning, she saw the airborne beetles, only it was no longer just one stream of them. As she squinted, she made out not two... not three... but six separate swarms of insects floating towards the center of the valley. What was more, they came from completely opposite directions. If she stood in the center of the field, she could have sworn that they came from the same angles where the fan towers were positioned from the central pole.

The mare watched with awe as each golden beetle met in the center, swarming around the metal globe positioned high above her. One by one, they landed, perching on the sphere's reflective surface. A flash of lightning illuminated the glossy shells closing over their wings. Soon, there were so many of them clustered around the globe that it gave the thing a new golden polish. She couldn't tell anymore where the pole's metal ended and the insects' shiny exoskeletons began.

Daring stared fixedly at the perched beetles for the better part of five minutes. It was almost as if they were positioned there for a reason, waiting for some divine purpose. As thunder rolled, Daring gazed thoughtfully at the fans around them. All six sets of blades were pointed east, rotating against the continuous winds that pelted them from that end of the rolling plains. A thought crossed her mind, and she clenched her jaw in determination.

Pushing her pith helmet firmer atop her head so that it clung tight, the mare beat her wings and soared straight up. Immediately, the wind broke her trajectory, but she compensated by flying north, cutting across the currents, then breaking into a counterclockwise spin. This next part was going to be hard, but the mare wasn't about to back down. Gritting her teeth, she flapped her wings harder and harder, rotating her spin until she blurred around the pole in the center of the field at a steady distance.

Lightning flashed in Daring's peripheral vision, but she maintained her focus on the rotating fans below her. With each pass she made around the pole, she dipped lower and lower, until her wingtips were barely brushing past the spinning, rattling wooden blades. Soon, she was soaring past each of the six fans, gliding faster and faster until she passed one every five seconds... every four seconds... every three.

The whistle to the winds intensified. She swore that the thunder and lightning increased as well. Soon, however, Daring had to hone her thoughts on one thing and one thing alone: the fans as they surged beneath her cyclonic flight, violently nipping at her flesh and tail.

To her labored delight, she was making success; the fans were slowly rotating towards the center of the field, urged on by her tornadic movements in close proximity to them. As the fans faced the globe of beetles—one by one—they rattled into place with a rustic clicking sound, so that they were forced to face the pole indefinitely. Once each of the six fans locked in place, their blades spun faster and faster, fighting the wind with a loud whizzing sound.

Breathless, Daring flew down and perched—more like slumped—on the ground below. She looked up, panting, and watched as the fans' blades spun and spun to the breaking point. There was a flash of lightning... then another and another. The air became deafening with thunder as the bright branches surged closer. Then, there was a moment of silence, until...

With a mind-splitting crack, one blindingly thick bolt of lightning zapped the pole in the center of the facing fans. All of the beetles were incinerated instantly.

Daring gasped, falling back onto her flank and shivering. She watched as the ashes of burnt golden shells fell down the height of the metal pole in a perfect ring. Their descent was somehow immune to the winds, and when they landed, they formed a glowing halo of sorts. Daring watched in shock as the halo flickered, brimming with electrical energy. After a final flash, the ring turned dark, forming a deep, dark impression in the soil. Then the whole ground shook, for the mound of earth that acted as the pole's foundation was suddenly lifting from the niche that the burnt ring had formed.

In the span of a minute, the earthen cylinder had stretched a full fifteen feet above Daring, revealing a hollow interior with a winding staircase leading down into dank darkness. Once the rumbling had stopped, the pegasus now had a descending wooden path beckoning to her.

Daring gulped. She looked up at the dark clouds, her ears whistling to the bleeding point. She had definitely had her fill of this valley. So, without any further hesitation, she trotted forward and gingerly strolled down the rickety wooden steps. The platform creaked and groaned beneath her, forcing her to slow her trot even more as the shadows consumed her from below.

At last, the whistling noise decreased, though it was not completely gone. Daring assumed that her ears would be ringing from the sensation for another few hours. As it became unbearably dark, she opened her pocket and breathed into the enchanted glowstone. Her pale spotlight illuminated walls of craggy earth, with exposed weeds and grass roots dangling on all sides of her as she continued her trek down the winding, winding staircase. The flimsy wooden boards that formed the steps below greatly resembled the fan blades that had spun rattlingly on the surface, Daring thought. A cold chill ran through her body as she contemplated the pattern to this sojourn.

At last, Daring reached the staircase's bottom. A floor of compact soil embraced her, and it was as cold as granite to the touch. Breathing evenly, Daring trotted away from the base of the stairs and shown her light around. Through the pitch black darkness, her pale blue glow illuminated dozens upon dozens of tight, narrow tunnels.

She raised an eyebrow, slowly spinning about to shine the light in the opposite direction. The other end of the underground compartment revealed the same sight: dozens of dark tunnels stood like looming orifices. The entire chamber was a ring of entrances leading to even blacker destinations.

A sigh escaped her lips. She paced for a bit, pondering her situation, when she felt something brushing against her ears. The whistling returned, and then was gone again. Shuffling to a stop, Daring pivoted about. She gazed towards a certain cluster of tunnels. As she tilted her muzzle left and right, she became faintly aware of a gentle breeze, as if air was rushing down one of the many chambers. Cautiously, she approached a trio of dark tunnels, feeling the air rushing from their general vicinity. Still, she couldn't tell which entrance was the one producing the subterranean wind.

At last, she pivoted her right side towards the tunnels and stretched her wing out. She eyed the very tips of her feathers as she waved the wing slowly from the left to the right and back again. She determined that the feathery strands danced the most when she waved them before a tunnel to the far right.

With an ambitious smirk, she coiled her wing back to her side and trotted firmly down the corridor in question. The claustrophobic tunnel swallowed the little pony, and soon Daring’s glowing shard illuminated pale walls of dusty earth on either side of her. Every now and then, curtains of grainy sediment rained down on her gray mane. She grimaced, but kept marching, undaunted.

Soon, she was rewarded with a stronger gust of air. The wind was growing harder and harder, piercing her ears much like the gales above ground had for the past three hours. What was more, the rushing air wasn't alone. Daring became aware of flickering light at the end of the long, dark corridor. Eventually, she didn't even need the enchanted rock to guide her path, for she was greeted with amber torchlight.

At last, Daring trotted into a small chamber where an array of fans stood, aiming down her and the tunnel where she came from. What powered them to rotate—and with such swiftness—she couldn't even begin to guess. She was more intrigued by the bright torches flanking the round room, as well as the thin crevices built into the ceiling and beset with cobwebs. The floor and walls here were made of dense black stone, and she saw what looked to be a long dark corridor at the opposite end of the compartment, entreating her.

She didn't dare leave the room—not yet. She approached the fans as they moved with otherwordly animation. Her ears were attracted by a grating clicking noise that all four of them made. The mare walked behind the fans, staring at their mechanical parts with great interest. She saw a series of wooden gears rattling over curved levers. These levers were attached to a pulley system that was affixed to chains dangling deep into a hole in the floor. As the fans kept spinning, their wooden gears kept brushing past the levers, scraping against them loudly. The chains remained utterly motionless. Daring Do squinted at the sight, for if the fans were to spin in the opposite way...

With renewed energy, she bounded across the room and stood once more before the fans with her flank to the corridor from whence she came. She set her hooves apart, tightening her muscles and stretching her wings out. With a deep breath, she bowed low towards the fans and began flapping her wings faster and faster and faster and faster and...

The pegasus produced a mighty wind. It took much effort, but the air being beat by her wings pushed against the fans, finally ceasing their rotation. Slowly, with a creaking noise, the blades began spinning in the opposite direction. As they did so, the little wooden gears pushed against the tiny levers instead of just brushing past them. This activated the pulley system that gradually drew the lengths of chains straight up, filling the air with a rusted creaking noise.

Daring Do gritted her teeth. Curtains of sweat ran down her tan face as she blurred her wings faster and faster. She was rewarded with the sound of rattling chains for her efforts. Slowly, through the power of sheer endurance, she forced the fans' pulley system to hoist something up from the depths of the chamber. A large wooden box rose from the hole in the center of the stone floor. As Daring flapped her wings a few more times, she gasped to see a niche within the box. Something rectangular rested inside, bound in leather.

Instantly, the mare dotted forward. In the absence of her flapping wings, the fans spun back to their natural rotation. The chains went slack, and the box plunged back into the hole.

But Daring was quicker than lightning. She darted up to the box, reached her hooves in, and snatched the item out before the container could plunge back into the depths, taking her forelimbs in the process. She fell onto the floor, a sweating and heaving mess, her ears aching from the distant sound of the box crashing loudly somewhere below the room's stone foundation. The chains clattered, dangled, and drifted to a stop. All was once again silent, save for the rattling of fans and the flicker of torchlight.

It took Daring several minutes to compose herself. Her wings ached and her head throbbed from all the constant exercise. At last, she sat up and looked at the item in her grasp. It was a book, and its leather cover was as old as ever, with painted images fading off the worn brown surface. The title escaped her studying eyes, aside from a few bold words that read: “...the Whipping Winds.” Without wasting another second, Daring opened the book up. Dust flew through the torchlight as she flipped through the pages. She came upon the center of the tome, her eyes squinting.

She couldn't read the tiny words without her glasses; she wasn't even going to bother. Using the crook of her hoof, she gathered a thick cluster of paper leaves... then ripped them straight out of the tome, ruining the book entirely.

The fans clattered, rattled, then puttered to a stop. The torchlights flickered less, then dimmed to a dull amber glow. Even the whistling in Daring's fuzzy ears had stopped.

She dwelled on none of these things. Dropping the shredded book with a thud, she sat on her haunches and pulled her eyeglass case out. Opening the clamshell container, the "Professor Do – Neigh York Institute for History and Archaeology" inscription glistening in the firelight, she tilted the thing about until she was gazing at her reflection yet again. With quivering lips, she leaned in, focusing on the image in the mirror. She tilted the container left and right, running a hoof through her bangs. But before she could see anything, a cold drop of water splattered across the glass, refracting her image into a dozen gray blobs.

Daring Do blinked in confusion, only to hear a drop of water rattling off the lid of her pith helmet. She gazed up, then regretted it, for two more drops splattered across her face. She trotted backwards, rubbing her muzzle dry and squinting at the ceiling.

A trickle of water fell through the crevices in the stone. The cobwebs melted away as the trickles turned into steady currents. Suddenly, with unrelenting volume, several thick curtains of liquid were spewing out of every hole above her.

Daring's face grimaced. As she backed up, she heard plodding sounds. She looked down and gasped to see a thin curtain of water rolling up to her fetlocks with alarming speed. In a blur, she spun and ran towards the thin tunnel from whence she came.

A roaring sound greeted her—like thunder, only this time louder and angrier. A veritable mudslide vomited out of the tunnel, knocking Daring Do to her haunches. Slimy water pushed her across the chamber, shoving her back into the fans, shattering them to wooden bits. She tried standing up, but a second deluge of grime and sludge pelted her figure. The mare was soon finding it hard to stand. The torchlight dimmed as the fire was gradually extinguished by the rising floodwaters. The entire subterranean place shook and quaked, as if an entire ocean was bearing down on her location.

Gritting her teeth, Daring Do flapped her wings and shot out of the rising currents before she could be submerged. She shot down the only exit available: a deep dark corridor leading away from the claustrophobic chamber. As she barreled down the passageway, she sliced into utter darkness, which made her blind to the unrelenting fountain of water slamming into her from the opposite direction.

The pegasus did a literal backflip. She plunged into a nightmarish world of black bubbles and even blacker currents. She kicked against the waters and shot up—only to strike the floor instead. Panicking, she spun around, and kicked off the stone. Before her lungs could burst, her muzzle hit dry air. She gasped for breath, all the while being carried somewhere along the subterranean rapids. She tried to move, to leap, to fly out of the stream, but her face barely moved an inch before her nose scraped against a ceiling from beyond the blackness.

Daring whimpered. Before she could think, another wave of water sloshed over her. She flailed in the fathoms, spinning head over tail. The currents grew faster, carrying her down the blacker than black intestines of stone, shipping her drowning body to some unfathomable destination that was colder than ice.

Colder than death.

And the Dire Deluge

Daring's hooves scraped roughly across coarse stone, and the sharp pain woke her up from a temporary blackout. She tried screaming, but all was bubbles and madness. Her eyes darted left and right, but were useless against the dark depths. Following the churning sensation in her ears, she kicked and thrashed until the sound grew louder.

In a wet burst, she once more broke the surface of the stream. She gasped for breath, only to sputter in chaotic spasms. Daring flung her front legs up and felt the grinding surface of the tunnel's ceiling blurring above her. A warm trickle of liquid rolled down her forelimbs, causing her to jolt. She was bleeding.

The pegasus ignored the sting of the fresh cuts on her hooves. Treading water, she thrashed left and right, feeling for the walls of the flooded corridor. Her ears rang with the splashing currents. At last she paddled her way to the edge of the deluge. The whipping cobblestone wall stung to the touch, but she embraced it nevertheless. She needed to find a corner, a ledge, a partition—anything.

After having her head doused once or twice between the waves, she finally latched onto something. It was a niche in the wall where the mortar crumbled and allowed a stone to fall loose. She hung onto it with one hoof, her lower body flailing along with the currents. Her teeth chattered as she struggled to bring her opposite limb to her front shirt, feeling numbly for the pocket that held her enchanted shard. At last, she slid the rock partially out and wheezed into it.

She almost wished she hadn't done that; a pale blue beam glittered off dark waves violently rushing towards her in a tumult. She saw how dramatically the waterline was rising along the wall to her left, and it almost made her vomit. She tried pivoting around to see where the current was traveling in such a terrible hurry, when something floated straight into her and collided with her soaked muzzle.

Daring was in too much shock to flinch. She merely aimed her chest at the object, and her light illuminated her upside down pith helmet, bobbing in the water as it was constantly being pushed into her. Not realizing that she had lost it, the mare nevertheless grabbed the thing and plopped it back onto her skull. Squinting, she once more made a study of the currents.

The shard's enchanted light illuminated multiple paths. The tunnel split at a fork, branching off into three streams. She was grateful to have had this moment to pause and navigate, or else her body might have been battered blindly against the sharp rock partitions. After a near minute of looking, she saw that the water rushing down the rightmost path was travelling the fastest. She judged that wherever the river was going, the chamber beyond that point was the deepest, largest, and best choice for having breathable air.

She couldn't stay anchored for any longer; the water was rising up to her chin. She took a deep, deep breath... then plunged.

Daring's world turned into a sudsy dreamscape, illuminated by pale blue beams of enchantment. Streams of muck and dirty debris floated past her ruby eyes, but she paid them no mind. With deliberate, frog-like strokes, she threaded her way along with the current, kicking and kicking so that she took the rightmost past. To her shock, the water dipped, surging down what she could only flimsily make out to be a steep series of granite steps. She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to descend this deep into the sunken labyrinthe, but it was evidently no longer her choice. She lost control and flipped once or twice, her nostrils leaking a stream of bubbles. She was losing air even before she knew that she was losing air. Her vision spun; she glanced up for the surface of the rapids, but she was flowing too swiftly... flailing too wildly to make sense out of anything. What was more, the light was going out. Daring Do mentally cursed herself for not thinking to give the shard another quick breath for this part of her trip. All she could dwell on now was the sharp, knifing pain as her lungs began to quake for a gasp. She aimed her chest up, and finally caught a glimpse of a bulbous pocket of air. Above the stream was a cleft of rock hanging low from the ceiling. Her rear limbs met the ground, and she bucked hard, shooting herself up like a rocket.

With a spray of water, Daring Do pierced the churning waves. She flapped her wings without thinking, giving her the elevation she needed to leap up and grab the cleft with two strong hooves. There, she dangled, her body shivering as the water beat against her legs and tail, gradually rising up her thighs, her flank, then her waist.

She panted and panted for breath. Once her lungs were filled, and only then, did she decide to rekindle the dying light. She hung from one limb—quivering all the while—and used her other forelimb to raise the stone to her lips. She exhaled on it several times, increasing the luminosity to a blinding scale. Once the rock was burning hot, she slipped it back into shirt's pocket. It nearly scalded her skin, but now was no time to worry about that. The water was up to her shoulders. She took a breath of her own this time, filled her lungs to the breaking point, and finally let go of the rock cleft above.

As soon as Daring let go, she lost all sense of direction. She spun and spiraled like a tiny barrel in the stony esophagus around her. Thankfully, her shard shone like a miniature star, glowing with unmatched radiance. As a result, she could see the chambers through which she was submerged and tumbling. Her ruby eyes darted left and right, and she spotted several sharp obstructions ahead. The mare was throttling towards another series of thin tunnels; she could see their bone-shattering frames from miles away. She kicked to the left, aiming herself down the closest tunnel that hugged the chamber wall. She no longer took stake of where she might be going and why; she simply needed to survive. Threading through the corridor was a tight fit, and she curled her body into a fetal position to allow clearance. The current sped even faster as she roared through the stony capillary. Her lungs quaked while the pony's body somersaulted and somersaulted again. With a spray of bubbles, she sped through to a large chamber of sorts, only it wasn't a chamber. She saw fish darting left and right. Shrimp, plankton, and skittering minnows flew past her upside down gaze. Her eyes caught the bubbles from her own pent-up breathing tubes sailing towards a dimly-lit destination, and she pivoted her hollow body to face it. Far in front of her, a giant screen of glittering light and color danced in a nebulous spectrum full of green and greener hues and it beckoned to her as she kicked and thrashed with trembling pinprick hooves against the blackening shadows in her peripheral vision with each whimpering tremor that came from her imploding lungs in anticipation of the felicitous surface that now quivered ten feet and five feet and two feet and two inches away from her eyes her face her nose her mouth...

She broke through the surface, flinging her muzzle open in an inverse scream. Only a quarter of her lung's capacity refilled before she sank again. Her numb limbs kicked to life, and soon she was thrusting with renewed vigor, breaking the surface once more as she paddled and treaded water in desperation. Soon her struggles became less urgent, for more and more oxygen was being funneled deliciously through her organs, and she now lay back, bobbing slowly across the remarkably placid surface.

Once the blood stopped rushing through her head, she became aware of the bizarre senses surrounding her. The surface of the pond was viscous and slimy. She heard insects buzzing past her flicking ears, and the air smelled of algae, mildew, and moss. At last, her eyes fluttered open, and all she saw was branches, branches, and more branches. Adjusting her pith helmet, the pony treaded upright in the waters, getting a good look around.

She was floating in the center of a vast swamp, with lily pads and cattails and razor-sharp reeds lining the edges of countless islands where gnarled trees stood rooted, their many-many branches threading so densely through one another that they almost entirely blocked out the sky. Croaking frogs and buzzing cicadas scratched at Daring’s ear drums as she splashed and paddled her way towards the closest shore to her. At last, she trudged up a muddy embankment, crawled until she was on solid dirt, and collapsed outright. Her pith helmet slid forward, shading her eyes from the mosquitoes swarming around to inspect this fresh new source of heat.

After several minutes, Daring wheezed and began stirring. She crawled ashore and limply laid herself against the trunk of a brown tree covered in green algae. She felt her coat itching in several places by multiple bug bites, but she wasn't in the position to complain about them.

She was alive. She was soaked, battered, and even bloodied—but alive. In a numb haze, she glanced at her forelimbs, spotting two or three deep cuts where her hooves had been dragged against the flooded walls. A sigh escaped her lips, and she examined her shirt's pockets. The shard was still in place—so was her glasses case. As for the compass...

She pulled the thing loose, unclasped it, and looked at the arrows within. She found that she was currently facing southwest. Daring felt a twitch to her ears. Gulping, she closed the compass shut, stood up on wobbly legs, and trotted around the tree until she was facing east once again.

From there, the little pony quietly and slowly made her way across the submerged mounds of swampy vegetation. Her path was a sidewinding one, leaping over shallow ponds, wading through deep trenches, and scaling multiple logs in her sluggish attempt to continue her journey. Every now and then, she would glance up. The thin slivers of sky that would dare to peek through the branches were orange, tinged with a blood-red color. She had to guess that it was approaching evening, for the sun was setting. As the thick leaves and bushes around her started conducting choruses of crickets, she fully realized how much time had passed.

Daring Do was exhausted. When the thought of resting struck her mind, she in no way protested. She set up camp on a particularly large island, nestled in the center of three spreading trees. Halfway through building a campfire, she felt a few drops from above. Grumbling, she abandoned the fire when it was half-lit to create an impromptu shelter. Her expert hooves only took thirty minutes to accomplish this task. With use of multiple leaves and lily pads, along with several straight branches for a framework, she constructed a flimsy lean-to and propped it up over herself.

It was just in time; a steady downpour began. The rain blotted out whatever sight she could make of the stars above. Between the spreading tree branches and her humble "shelter," Daring remained remarkably dry. She only wished she could say the same about the fire.

The campfire lasted ten minutes at best, but was soon reduced to a smoldering pile of ashes. Daring shivered in the lingering cold of night, brought upon tenfold by the continuous deluge. She stripped of her green shirt completely and laid it over herself as a blanket. The mare had succeeded in drying it by the fire before this uncomfortable night began, and for that she was grateful.

Hours limped by. Daring couldn't sleep. It wasn't the discomfort of the moment that bothered her, nor was it the still-lingering sensation of having almost drowned. Her weary eyes remained locked on the eyeglass case in her grasp. She flipped the thing open, staring at her reflection, then snapped it shut. Just as soon as the clamshell container was closed, she opened it yet again, gazing at the mare with the monochromatic mane who looked back.

Every time she closed the container, she would open it again. On every occasion, it was her own face, unchanged, unwavering, unmistakably alive. She tried closing her eyes, but every time she surrendered to the darkness, she felt as though she was somewhere far away, somewhere lonesome and forsaken, with something roaring in the distance, receding, like waves, or the tearing of paper sheets in the wind.

With a gasp, Daring's eyes shot wide open. She saw twitching ruby pupils in the container's mirror. A whimper escaped her lips, its loathsome sound lost in the pitter-patter of rain all around her. At last, with more courage than it took to survive drowning, she shut the container close one last time. She hugged it to her chest and curled into a fetal position beneath her shirt. Her breaths came in rapid bursts, far too panicky for a pony trying to fall asleep.

Daring didn't invite slumber. She didn't invite anything except shivers. When the moldy, rain-swept swamp around her blurred into obscurity, she closed her eyes, as if turning her head away from something indescribably ugly—unimaginably frightening beyond it. She buried her face in her forelimbs and clenched her teeth. When the first sob came out, it was in a burst, like powder exploding from the muzzle of a gun. She quieted it with a labored breath, as well as the second and third salvos. At last, she found her equilibrium, and her weeping became a gentle thing, like the rippling of pondwater beneath dragonfly wings around her.

Daring sniffled. Daring shuddered. Daring cried. And somewhere in the midst of it all, as her mind hovered between labored breaths, slumber found her, and her dreams were a place far less dire.

Next Chapter: And the Sweltering Swamp Estimated time remaining: 3 Hours, 56 Minutes
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