It felt, at first, like a headlong tumble into nothing. Then nothing became sensations too many and too overwhelming to name. Sensations became everything and magic and she felt awash with it. Buoyed, floating, cradled, falling. It made no difference, she felt embraced and rejected all in the same breath.
A pause —
She can feel her hear thudding in her chest; in terror and elation, as if thrilled by the prospect of everything pressing in upon her. Thorax is literally paused in mid-tumble, looking as if she had started to roll on her back with legs akimbo in the air. That’s when she starts to feel weird.
She doesn’t know how else to explain it except it’s pressure, hard breathing, racing pulse, and frozen animation and something - something, different, changing, unbecoming and becoming all at the same time. Thorax tries to cry out but it is stifled by a thick rush of magic and something else. She has no names for this, any of it.
The magic cradling her mid-fall dumps her unceremoniously upon a spit of land. It looks like nothing familiar to her because it is not barren or thriving, it just is. She tests her limbs and her limits of strength for a few moments before focusing on the unsettling feeling of disorientation that rights itself into a sense of knowing and familiarity. This place has crags and caves, desert and sun, heat and brightness and all of it harsh and cruel.
Pangea? she thinks, mildly surprised. This was part of her birthright in some sense that she has never spared much thought to. She sniffs the air but there are no scents here, nothing new or recent, and strangely no old scents too. No piles of poop (hey, even fake ponies shit too!) to mark territorial lines and such, no tracks in the sand and dirt. Not even bones and she remembers there are bones here, in the caverns and the earth itself.
“Hello?” She ventures boldly but her greeting rings out over emptiness and bounces back as a sad echo off the rock walls. If anything answers, it’s a rockslide and a sad sighing wind that tries to stir her hair but fails, just musses it up a little. The land seems so weak in spirit and life. It occurs to her then to seek the bugs, and she pushes out with that strange manipulative power of hers.
Only to be greeted by nothing. No insects creep or crawl or fly to her. There is no answering tug or pulse, as if that spark of life for all is dead here. She feels fear then, pushes outward again with breath, thought, and heart. Not even a trickle of blood for all that she’s trying. No power here either. Fear blooms inside her like an ugly algal stain that spreads and seized hold of limbs and flesh.
Thorax trembles.
The earth does too. Not in response to her except it might feel slighted at her presence, at the audacity of her being there since it has ridden itself of all things great or small, horse or bug. It’s an earthquake and she cries out, because the earth rocks and rolls under her cloven feet and she has never felt this before. It wasn’t like digging for the pit of magic at the heart of the mountain. This, this was something else!
She began to run; out of instinct and fear, with no regard towards the direction she ran in. Just a mad headlong dash forward. Thorax knew this was hell; almost more than a simple nightmare or fears of not amounting to much or disappearing. This was a life of non-existence, of nothingness and it spurred her onward. She preferred that eerie tumble into madness and magic to this.
But wasn’t this part of that?
She didn’t know any more. This felt too real. Like she had been thrown back up into normal life and off the mountain (or from under it) and into this new frightening life of emptiness. Just land and sky and wind and her, like a small speck of dust in it all. Like an ant! Thorax screamed her terror and frustration but there was no one to hear it. Just the rocks that slid at the sound of her breaking their eons of stillness, and the earth that still quaked underfoot.
One tremor tripped her and she fell to her knees, scrambling to get back up as rocks rained down all around her. This is it, this is how I die. Alone, in a vast array of nothingness and no one, and she cried as the rest of the rocks pummeled her until blood mixed with tears, and life leaked out from underneath the rockfall and broken bones.
The moment she blinked last, took her last inhale, and felt her heart finish its last beat… she woke up, hale and shivering atop the mountain. She looked wild; wide eyed and snorting, feeling as changed and strange on the inside as she was sure she looked on the outside. Fearing life as a minuscule forgettable ant easily squashed by the world. She shook herself to rid herself of the thoughts of abandonment, trepidation and inadequacy, and stared straight ahead.
Little did she know, the mountain and the magic had taken more from her than just scrambling her up and killing her in a hell of her own making. It had taken a chunk of her sense of self and left a gaping void in its place. A chasm of apathy that she’d never felt before, to match the fear of emptiness or better to mimic it - to make her feel empty inside. Outwardly, she had changed too: the elbowed antennae of an ant sprouted from atop her head.
Traits to scramble: (all carried)
Blight, Goat horns, Invisibility
0-space appearance trait: antenna