Cold, Oh so cold.
Those were the words that kept repeating in Starlight Glimmer's mind as she slept her headache away.
All she could remember was getting punched in the face, and her horn releasing an unseemly amount of magic all at once, knocking her out.
"Why is everything so cold?" She wanted to open her eyes and look, see for herself the reason she was freezing, but she couldn't.
Be it the magical fatigue from her spell going haywire, or just the freezing shivers of her body as she tried in vain to rub her body, generating even the most meager amount of body heat.
She didn't know how long she's been cold, it could have been an hour or it could have been days, but nevertheless, she was cold.
Oh so cold.
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When Starlight finally opened her eyes, it was to find herself laying inside of a cave, a campfire made of small sticks and twigs burning a meter away from her, and her body covered in an unfamiliar coat.
"Where am I?" She asked raspily, one hoof quickly moving to massage her throat as she felt her breath leave her lungs as if grinding on sandpaper.
The cave itself was five meters tall, and three times as wide, she could see the entrance of the cave, a white canvas painting the outside of the cave in a heavy snowstorm, she could just barely make out a pile of sticks laid in front of the entrance like a fence, trying to stop the snow from getting too far into the cave.
"Hey you, you're finally awake," A voice she could barely recognize called out to her before a figure hidden on the other side of the campfire threw a bundle of twigs and dried pine leaves into the flame.
"You..." Starlight rasped as she squinted her eyes, looking at the pony who moved around the fire and sat next to her.
His white fur was matted and wet, and his blonde hair was sticking to his face, he wasn't wearing the coat she had previously seen him wear when she tried to get her revenge on him, and the tips of his hooves were red.
With eyes widening, Starlight weakly tried to crawl away from the Unicorn, only to trip over herself and slam her chin onto the floor.
"If you're going to try and kill yourself in the snowstorm outside, could you at least give me back my coat?" He asked her, his eyes not leaving the fire and two sharp wooden sticks that seemed to be burning some sort of creature she couldn't recognize.
"Why are you here?" She asked, weakly turning her body around so she could look at him.
"Why are you asking stupid questions?" He replied to her with an eye roll, "I should be asking how long you think it would take for you to send us back, but if you think running into that snowstorm outside is the best option, I think I'll take my chances in this cave,"
"Why would I send you back?" Starlight returned his question back at him, causing the Stallion to stop looking at the fire and turn to look at her as if she was stupid, Starlight wanted to punch him in the face.
"Because if you send me back to Equestria, you wouldn't have a murder charge on your profile," Starlight paused.
"What?"
"You are a wanted fugitive, Miss Glimmer," The stallion turned back to look at the fire, his magic levitating out a small fish impaled on a stick, giving it a closer look before levitating it towards her, "It's better to not add a crime as horrible as Regicide to your much tamer list of medical malpractice and illegal construction work, By the way, I hope you like eating blind cave fish because that's all we have."
Starlight tried to grab the fish in her telekinetic hold but had to quickly move to her hooves when her horn started to ache.
She looked at the prince, eating the seethrough fish with a look of annoyance on his face, before looking at her own fish.
It was small, half the size of her hoof, with seethrough scales and no eyes.
She gulped, her dry throat uncomfortably itchy as she looked at the tiny fish.
She wanted to throw up, she always saw the act of eating meat as lesser, she was a pony, after all, her diet was mostly herbivorous.
But seeing the small fish, the smell of food wafting into her nostrils, and the lack of anything else to eat.
Starlight caved, and she cried as she ate the underground fish.
She cried not because she found it disgusting, no.
She cried because right there and then, that bland, blind cave fish, with no spices or oils, that was being cooked over a rudimentary campfire.
It was the tastiest thing she ever ate.
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Starlight didn't know when it was that she fell asleep, but when she next woke up, it was to find herself once again in that same cave, the snowstorm outside stronger than previously, and the campfire in front of her barely burning.
Looking around the cave, she spotted Blueblood exiting the deeper part of the cave, around a curve hiding it from her view, carrying a makeshift wooden spear in his telekinesis, A few more fish impaled on the end of his makeshift fishing device.
When he spotted her looking at him, he sighed and slowly walked up to her, before lifting her from the ground and placing her on his back.
She was too tired to push him away, it was a miracle she was able to keep her eyes open with how tired and cold she felt.
"We need to get moving, The Storm outside isn't going to stop anytime soon, and we can't just stay here until it does, We'll both freeze to death," He explained to her as he started carrying her deeper into the cave.
As they moved deeper into the cave, Starlight was able to see where the fish came from.
A large underground pond, The crystal clear waters of the spring allowed her to spot the many fishes swimming in the pool, she even managed to spot a small crab scuttling its way under the surface of the pool.
"Where are we going?" She asked, Turning her head to look away from the pool.
"Deeper into the cave," Blueblood explained to her, before stopping and pointing his spear at the other side of the pool.
Starlight followed where his spear was pointed, faintly managing to spot a section of the cave wall that seemed to be covered in bricks.
"What is that?" She asked.
"I don't know, but whatever is over there, is preferable from freezing to death," And with those words, Blueblood continued walking around the underground pool.
Starlight tiredly nodded her head, her hooves dangling off the Prince's body as his body heat warmed her up.
The soft beating of his heart and the movement of his lungs slowly lulled Starlight back to sleep, making her last view before the sweet embrace of dreams be that of herself, reflected in the water of the underground pond, the only source of light being Blueblood's horn. Before that reflection started to ripple when a small fish swam through it.
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Blueblood paused after reaching the other side of the large underground pool.
He stood in front of what looked like a stone door built into the walls of the cave, the bricks around it only holding it in place to reinforce it.
Seeing it, he was reminded of a Video Game he used to play years ago, Skyrim it was called, and just that memory caused a small smile to spread over his tired face.
Readjusting the passenger on his back, he put the spear on the ground and used his magic to open the door.
The stone slab that made up the door ground and shook, before slowly moving to the side, allowing him to see what was on the other side.
With an excited smile on his face, an unconscious criminal on his back, and a spear with three fish in his hold, Blueblood walked into a corridor of bricks and stone.
Each step he made moved dust from the floor, as he looked at the walls he could see carvings and images of Yaks and Dragons.
"A war between Dragons and Yaks? I should read some of this whenever I get back," The Prince whispered to himself as he walked deeper and deeper into the underground tunnel.
It wasn't long before he reached another door, one much bigger than the one at the entrance.
He tried to push on it, but it barely budged. He tried harder, and it only moved slightly.
He thought of giving up on moving the large rock until he heard a faint sound coming from the other side of the rock.
Sounds of somebody... crying?
Blueblood tried once again to push the door, dust and cobwebs flying about as he pushed harder and harder, each attempt to move the door of carved stone one managing to move the slab a centimeter at a time.
But someone was on the other side of that rock, and whoever they were, they must know a way to get out of there!
And with those words in his head, Blueblood finally managed to push the door open, the large stone slab sliding backward before falling into a large pond of crystal clear water.
"Is anybody there?" He called out to the room, the faint crying he heard from the other side of the door all but gone.
The room was large, with a large pond of water in its middle, with four walkways from the corners of the circular room all acting as a bridge, connecting to the middle of the room, above the pool of water, where an elegantly carved pedestal stood, a soft glow emanating from whatever it was holding.
Readjusting the hold of the passenger on his back, he walked up the nearest walkway, the thing emanating the glow from the pedestal almost in view.
And when he reached, he couldn't stop himself from gasping.
On the pedestal, was a broken piece of a gemstone, almost in the shape of a triangle, It was red with subtle lines of green underneath the crystal surface, twisting around like the designs of a marble.
But what stood out the most, was that the gem only took up a fifth of the room in the pedestal, almost as if it was a piece of a larger whole, like a puzzle.
Blueblood slowly moved his hoof to touch the crystal, stopping to look for any traps, before nodding to himself and picking up the gem.
And then he heard it again, the voice crying from before, he heard it far more clearly than before.
"Hello? Is anybody here?" He asked again, his voice echoing over the walls of the empty room.
Seeing that nobody was answering him, he looked to the other side of the room, away from where he came from, and spotted another door.
With the gem held in his magic, and Starlight on his back, he kept walking towards the door.
Deeper and deeper into the cave, And deeper into the ancient ruins that it held.
And as he kept walking deeper into the ruins, he once more failed to find the source of the crying.
And he also failed to notice the red and green gem pulsating in his magical hold as if it was a distress signal on mute.
And so deeper into the cave he went.