The landscape before Starlight was dry and barren. The wind blew viciously around, tousling her purple mane and causing her to squint her eyes to keep the dust out of them. The wind was not cold, nor was it unbearably warm either. It just simply was. It did not care about the mare that it continued to assault. The wind was indifferent to the pink mare, and it treated her as it treated all things.

Equally.

It was something that Starlight Glimmer found that she actually admired about it, as strange as that sounded to her tired thoughts. To her, it was as though the wind itself were an entity, one that shared her ideology. The problem with it however was that its method of equality involved trying to blow her off of her hooves and throw her to the ground as it did to everything else. If there was something residing in the constant gale, it was most definitely something Starlight would find reprehensible.

But there was nothing out here, at least nothing that nopony else knew about. For the moment it was just her and the path she had set for herself.

Starlight had forgotten how long she was walking. In fact the moment when she had been exiled from her home was now little more than a distant memory. And yet it remained a fixture in her mind, pushing her onward and through the dust to her goal. And no matter how much she may have wanted to forget that moment, Starlight used it as inspiration in her quest. And when she eventually reached her destination, then she would finally have had her fill of vengeance on that foolish princess.

She just simply needed to keep going forward.

The wind eventually died down after a little while, allowing Starlight to actually be able to see in front of her. And at the moment, all that she found was a dry barren landscape filled with rocks and dirt, along with the occasional shrub. No surprise there however, as it had been the only thing she had to look at out here, and she was quite sick of it at this point.

Not only had the view become stale to look at, Starlight had also begun to feel like she were about to drop from sheer exhaustion from how far she had come already. Her lips were dry, her hooves were cracked, and her coat was dusty mess. Not to mention she had run out of provisions a few days ago, forcing her to chew on the barely edible shrubbery, whenever those were available. At this point Starlight felt that she would have likely killed for a bath and a decent meal.

But still she kept trotting forward, doing her best to ignore the ache in her legs as she trudged onward. Nothing short of divine intervention would keep her from her goal. She could rest when she got there anyway.

Night had fallen, and every once in a while Starlight glanced upward to look at the distant stars as they shone down upon her. Off in the distance she could see the topmost part of Luna's moon over a rise in the terrain. This saved her from having to use her horn to light her way too much, although it was still dim enough that she stumbled over the occasional stone in her path. The first few times she fallen the offending rocks were appropriately punished with a swift kick to the side, but after a little while Starlight simply stopped caring enough about them to bother to do anything else but dust herself off and continue on her way.

It was also eerily quiet out here, with only the faint breath of a the occasional breeze reaching her ears. It was rather unnerving as well, considering how still everything else was. To Starlight it was almost as though she had unintentionally wandered into some weird realm where there was no sound at all, just the empty landscape before her.

"Who in their right mind would want to live out here?" Starlight wondered, her voice sounding like a grating whisper that pierced the silence like a blade. Not sure why she was doing, she quickly glanced around to see if anypony, or anything, had heard her. Starlight could not exactly say why, but it almost felt as though the slightest disturbance she made would spell trouble for her. There was just something about this place that felt. . . unnatural to her.

Shaking herself to clear her head of the feeling, Starlight pushed the thought out of her head and focused on going forward. It was the only thing that mattered at the moment.

Finally, after what seemed like ages to the unicorn mare, she saw a faint source of light up ahead, like that of a torchlight. Feeling her spirits begin to rise a little, Starlight quickened her pace to reach it sooner, breaking into a swift gallop, ignoring the rocks that were in her path and the scrapes and bruises she accumulated when she tripped over them. She did not even notice as they steadily grew larger the closer she got to the torchlight. All she felt was the sense of relief that came with the promise of civilization that the light represented.

But when she was no more than a few dozen yards away from the light, Starlight slowed down to a trot, then to a slow trot as she noticed that there was something rather odd about it. No matter how far she had gone, she never seemed to be getting any closer to its source. Starlight tilted her head quizzically as she came to a complete stop, eyeing the light with suspicion.

Then unexpectedly, the odd light began to approach her.

Very rapidly, she noticed.

Immediately sensing that something was not quite right with the situation, Starlight proceeded to back away from the approaching light, careful to avoid tripping over any loose stones behind her. As she did so a faint sound reached her ears, causing them to twitch in response. To her it sounded almost like the huffing and panting of some sort of feral animal that became steadily louder the closer the light came. And in that moment Starlight felt the unmistakable grip of fear clutch at her heart. Whatever was coming towards her, she wanted no part of it.

Starlight was about to turn around and gallop away from the approaching light, but just then she felt the grip of somepony's forehooves lock around her. She opened her mouth to scream but was cut off when a dark hoof was shoved into her mouth. Left with no other option Starlight began to charge her horn to blast whoever had grabbed her and teleport away.

Just as she was about to perform the action, a hushed voice whispered urgently in her ear, "Don't do anything. If you try to run it will catch you."

Starlight could not be sure if that was a threat she just heard, but she could not dwell on it as the light seemed to come to a stop a short distance away from her and her would be aggressor. And there, just a few yards away from the two. And in the dim light it cast Starlight could just barely see a figure. It looked like a pony, but the huffing and growling that seemed to be coming from it told her that it was anything but. She peered her eyes to get a closer look, then immediately wished she had not been so curious.

The thing before her may have looked like a pony, but right away she could see the dry leathery skin that almost seemed to be stretched over its body. It had no lips, exposing crooked yellow teeth that created a clicking sound every time it opened and closed its jaws. And its eyes. . . huge shiny black orbs that peered at Starlight, causing her to squirm under its gaze. At that moment Starlight wanted nothing more than to run away from the thing as fast as her legs could carry her, but the strange pony kept her in place. And there was his statement that she would not be able to outrun it anyway. So for the moment, Starlight begrudgingly stayed where she was.

A few long minutes passed without any further action from either party, and Starlight began to wonder if anything would happen. But no sooner had she thought this than did the thing suddenly open its hideous mouth and utter an unearthly scream unlike anything she had ever heard before. As the scream echoed into the night, the light that was hovering above its head suddenly vanished, leaving darkness in its wake. Starlight began to panic then, thinking that she would be attacked right then and there, until a faint blue light caught her attention.

She looked to see that it was coming from a spiral horn of a unicorn stallion, who was still holding on to her as his light was cast all around them. Starlight was initially worried that this would attract the attention of whatever that thing was, but when she looked she saw that it had vanished, as if it was never there to begin with. There were not even hoofprints left, leaving Starlight to wonder if it had even been real at all.

Still keeping his horn lit, the stallion finally released his hold on Starlight.

"Well," he said. "That was close. You're lucky I was around or nopony would've ever seen you again." The stallion proceeded to utter a little chuckle as he turned to look at Starlight. "Now, if you would be so kind as to-"

The stallion never got to finish his sentence, as a pink hoof slammed into his muzzle at high speed, knocking him out cold.