The dark hued plants abruptly ended in a clearing that was bordered with more foliage and trees. The moon lit up the area rather well, the mushrooms and short grass had a blue tint to it. Here she could catch her breath and try to evade the presence she felt running through the underbrush.
 
As her heart calmed from the thunder in her chest to a stern thumping, she did hear something in the plants. Maybe it was somepony out to help her, since she hadn’t been seen since the evening and may have mentioned something to Twilight when she dropped off a book at the library. So it was entire possible that it was…
 
Just as the thought was forming, a small winged lizard popped through the brush. The long tail, with a swollen looking segment before the tip. Leathery wings stretched out of the scaly hide that ran it’s way up the neck that seemed like somepony Frankensteined a chicken hea….
 
“Cockatrice!” Rarity gasped and turned to gallop full speed away from the creature. She pushed through the wall of plants at the edge of the field and kept running. The creature behind her let out a bone chilling shriek and followed pursuit.
 
She didn’t look in it’s eyes, did she? NO, no, no, she didn’t she was sure of it! She would have been stone by now if that were the case! She peered behind her to look at her hooves, but couldn’t see much as she was out of the moonlight. She just heard heavy hooves stomping the ground. She was too numb to feel them, or much of anything at this stage.
 
Looking back for the foe was a bad idea, as the ground ended under her hooves. Her body tumbled down what felt like a cliff face, but was in reality, just a few pony lengths tall. She smacked the ground and rolled sideways, her saddlebags fallen off and spilled the contents over the ground ahead of her.
 
Taking a few seconds, she caught her breath from the fall. Once she felt that it was time to move she pushed up with her hooves, but was stopped as her flank failed to respond. “Celestia! I… I think I broke something..” she quivered. Wasn’t there supposed to be pain? She couldn’t feel anything odd.
 
Looking back, her heart skipped. Her rear hooves had become a dull grey, instead of her brilliant whitish coat. The scream that followed next was surely hear in Ponyville. Racked with horror, she began to kick with them, the stone barely lifting from the ground with her effort. NO! Not like this, not here! She couldn’t be turned to stone now, not in this undignified position! Her pack! The pack! It had some potions from Zecora and the alchemist in Ponyville to stop this.
 
Slowly she began to crawl, using her fore-hooves to move to the saddle bags. As she went, the felt the heat leave her thighs as the stone continued to inch it’s way up. It wasn’t turning them into a dead stone, as her heavy hooves dragged behind her, the felt them dig into the ground, the cold dirt at her knees and hooftips. The pressure as well, it felt like an entire ocean was ontop of her, every bit of her muscles tightening as the spell washed over them, compressing everything into a smaller, tighter form.
 
Huffing from exertion, Rarity finally reached the bag and flipped it over to pour the contents out on the ground. There were a few potions of ‘Instant Cleanliness’, always handy ANYWHERE, but here they were useless. Papers, pictures, notes and some pencils were all that was left. In a hurried fashion she looked around the area and spotted several vials laying about the place. She ruled out all of them but the blue one, she knew that by sight. Her sister’s friend, Scootaloo, had been petrified once. The trio of little fillies were playing near the edge of the forest and Scoots had to go see what the noise was. She remembered Sweetie’s tears as they poured the potion over her friend. Slowly, a shaky pegasus filly was ‘re-constituted’ and was perfectly fine.
 
But out here was different, she wouldn’t be. The grey had already tightened her tail base and engulfed her flank, pressing downwards on her back as her body was turning into stone. Gasping as the material gripped her spine and began to travel faster. Rarity began to haul her leaden body towards the potion, getting closer every second.
 
The potion was precariously close to another drop off, one where she couldn’t see the bottom. Her tail was completely transformed and dead to her now as the magic grasped her waistline like a corset, squeezing in inward mercilessly. Just a little more…
 
The unicorn’s pace was slowing as more of her was turning into dead wight. She was two strides away right now, but crawling at a deathly slow pace, it was taking longer to get there. She felt the cold grow over her shoulders and under her mane. It was withing reach, just one more pull!
 
Curling her foreleg under her shoulder as she arrived at the destination, she lost control of it, pinning it there until she was able to cure herself. The stone had reached her jaw now, paralyzing her head and neck. She gritted her teeth and reached out, feeling the one last free hoof begin to slow down as she saw her ankle consumed be the tight grip.
 
It was there! Right under her hoof, but was unable to grasp it, her leg locked outward in vain against the stone. Her muzzle stopped moving, she stopped breathing long ago, but to feel one’s teeth going cold and turning to stone was a terror unto itself.
 
A last ditched effort, she fired up her magic and touched the bottle, lifting up off the ground and away from the black edge of the cliff. Her mane was weighing heavy and the transformation wave started to creep up her horn. In vain she tried to move her head, as if in rising water, but it was locked in place. The aura around her horn began to falter as the stone moved up, it’s glow retreating to the smaller and smaller segment of white horn. The bottle began to lower, her magic was failing. Why didn’t she use that in the first place? Probably because the petrification began moving at a blinding speed at her lower eyelids.
 
As she tried again and again to retrieve the bottle, every attempt failed. She felt the ground under her move slightly and the portion of ground under the vial crumbled, sending it downwards into the blackness. Her eyes were washed over with a stiff haze of grey and the world around her turned into a murky water looking glass, able to discern shapes and colors, but just enough to know the dark brown rectangle to her side was a tree.
 
NO! She screamed internally, whipping up one last bit of magic to try and free herself, but the petrification fed on it, and hurried the last few inches in a fraction of a second to coat the last of her form, the horn tip.
 
Her entire body was now petrified. rarity had no control over anything. She couldn’t hear, couldn’t move, couldn’t blink, couldn’t speak. Just unable to communicate with her body and stare at the blank greyish void in front of her. She could hear echoes within her own body, as if the stone was cracking, but it was just solidifying, condensing even more. Rarity felt squeezed as if between two waterbeds that were crushing her.
 
The sun would be rising in a little while and she would be facing it directly. Somepony would find her, they would! She told Twilight that she was going into the Everfree, she was sure of that. It would be a while, maybe a few days, but she would be found, she HAD TO be found!
 
The ground shifted again, Rarity felt the cold soil under her front hoof disappear. Her heavy stone form was causing the dirt outcropping where she was sitting to fall apart. She was going to fall down the cliff face!
 
It took some time, but slowly the dirt vanished under her chest and then other fore-leg. Unable to stop anything, she felt herself teeter forward. She prayed that her body wouldn’t crumble when it fell. She didn’t know if she was going to die if anything broke off her form, worst of all her head.
 
The sun came up, but it appeared like a dull light through a blanket in her frozen eyes. Dew formed on the ground and leaves around her, and even her cold body. It beaded up and rolled to the ground, allowing the wight of the stone to slip down even further.
 
She went over the edge, but it wasn’t a drop. There was a river near the other side that had eaten into the hill, washing away the dirt where she had been sitting. Slowly she slid down the embankment, still upright. Unable to tell the speed and what was at the bottom, her heart sank. She was getting further and further away from her pack. But they would search the area! They had to. She would be close enough for them to spot her.
 
As she arrived near the bottom of the hill, Rarity saw the blue of a river and the purple taint of Everfree mud. Her hoof pushed into soft muck and slid in.
 
Great! Turned to stone, fell off a cliff and now she was going to be muddy. This was the perfect end to the perfect day.
 
The mud crept up over her sinking form, bubbling over her four hooves and nipping at her chest. She was going to be really really muddy….
 
But the mud didn’t stop. The river had whipped the purple soil into a boggy stew, a cause for worry as she began to feel the cold goop slip up over her flank and back. The posed Rarity was being swallowed inch by inch in the mud.
 
She felt as if in perpetual free fall, the water logged dirt grinding past her stony hide. It swept past her neck, over her muzzle and blotted out the morning light in her eyes. It crept up further and swallowed the horn tip. NO! Nopony would ever find her now!
 
For what felt like hours, but may have only been seconds, she sunk into the pit until she hit solid ground. She could have been fifty feet underground, or just below the surface. The cold muck pressed in on her, rendering all her senses null.
 
 
She would be found….. she would be found…. she would be found…