Abridged To Safety

I woke up this morning to find a hot pot of Zecora's tea by my bedside along with a big basket of fresh grasses, fruit and cupcakes, left for me by my friends. Everypony is still getting up earlier than I am. But I'm feeling stronger! Rarity decorated the basket and there was a big get well card signed by everypony. I think Pinkie had everypony in Ponyville sign that card. There are so many overlapping signatures and hoofprints on it that it looks like a stampede had run over it. I still slept most of the day away.

Back to what happened.

I didn't know whether to be annoyed or relieved to have lost that farmhouse. I probably wouldn't have dared to enter a building that was that erratic. At least I wasn't in the field of brown grass and flowers. I still couldn't see further than a dozen lengths in any direction and I was getting tired.

Even after months of practice, I usually can only do Haycartes for several minutes. Thirty minutes, tops. I wasn't feeling the usual effort involved in a Haycartes spell in this book, which I took to mean that I was getting better at it. But I was getting wet and tired and I couldn't get out! I couldn't keep this up forever.

At the top of the pass was an alcove carved into the cliff wall along the side of the road. There was a dry sandy area under that overhang, big enough for six ponies to take shelter. I went in there to get out of the rain which was now falling like sheets. A pair of rock lobsters scuttled out past me and opened their gill chambers to the falling rain. I felt my pasterns sagging from fatigue. I wanted to hunker down and rest on the dry sand but there might be other rock lobsters lurking here. They're hard to see against the rocks. Instead I pulled out an apple from under my wing and took a bite.

I nearly choked in fright. A rock wallaby hopped down from a nook it had gnawed in the rock wall under the ledge and it moved toward me. I wanted to bolt, but at the same time I was fascinated by how it moved. It walked with a curious pendulum gait, swinging its hind legs forward both at the same time between the tripod of its tail and front feet. It was followed by another rock lobster. "That's close enough", I managed to growl with my mouth full. It stopped, sat up and made grabby motions with its front paws. The claws looked diamond tipped and sharp. So I tossed my bitten apple to it. The rock wallaby grabbed that and gnawed it to pieces, attracting a swarm of rock lobsters. Alarmed, I tossed it another apple as I backed up into the rain. I swallowed the apple in my mouth and everything went black.

Not completely black. My eyes adjusted to a dim glow emanating from wet areas on the walls, ceiling and floor around me. I was in a corridor. There were no windows or doors and no signs indicating a direction to travel. Just rock. Wet rock. The air was stale. I decided that it was less stale in one direction, and I set off that way. The corridor turned sharply left, then right, then right again, the right a third time, then after a while, right again. I got to thinking, eating an apple has caused a scene change twice. What if I eat another apple? I had two left. I pulled one out, took a bite and swallowed.

I didn't see or smell any difference. I was still in a rock corridor with muck on the walls, and the muck was sticking to me. Every so often the corridor would branch and I'd chose left or right, by smell if I could. There were no dead ends. Just dank and darkness. I could feel myself fading still. I ate the rest of the apple, but that didn't help. The muck was getting worse. My hooves were making sucking sounds now with each step, and sticking. I stumbled a bit and where I touched the walls, heavy muck peeled off and clung to me. I couldn't shake it off. I dropped my last apple somewhere along the way. The muck was climbing up my legs and coating me from head to hoof, crusting over my legs until it was so thick that my legs rubbed together as I shuffled on. It was so heavy. I was so heavy. I had to rest. I had to keep moving. I was getting pulled down and I couldn't see where I was going. I knew I'd never get out. I stopped and cried out to Epona. I don't know if she heard me. I was so alone.

Sunburst tracked down an Editing Spell and a Friendship Bridge spell and suggested that they isolate the page I was on and use the Friendship Bridge as a lifeline. Moondancer, since she is adept with Haycartes', would go in after me, and when she'd extended the Friendship Bridge spell to me, they would both pull her out and me with her. They had to decide quickly, because even though they hadn't read further, I was nearly asleep on my feet and sinking deeper into the muck.

Moondancer and Starlight learned the Friendship Bridge spell, the three of them linked hooves, and Starlight cast the spell. Then Moondancer cast the Haycart's spell, subtly and gently, focusing tightly to the Friendship Bridge as she reached into the open page and out to me. The muck was closing in over my back by then and I was slipping in and out of consciousness. In a brief moment of lucidity I felt something pulling at my mane. I opened a bleary eye and saw Moondancer's ear flicking against a grey sky, then I felt the bridge. My friends! Here to pull me home.

Moondancer had my mane in her mouth and she hung on grimly as she pulled herself back out of the book, and me along with her. There was a wet sucking sound followed by a pop! and I fell out of the story and landed on top of three ponies, generously showering them in brown muck. Then I must have gone unconscious.

While Starlight Glimmer and Sunburst rushed me to the Crystal Empire Medical Center, Moondancer cantered to the Crystal Castle to tell Princess Cadence that I had been found and rescued. Moondancer took the book to the Canterlot archives to be studied. I'd been trapped in it for about twenty hours.