The 'Brambles Towers' of the Bramblewood Forest were a most remarkable specimen of Equestrian flora.

Bramble Towers were bramble bushes that grew upward to the size and shape of huge cylindrical towers, (some ponies also likened them to large lighthouses.) The largest Bramble Tower in the Bramblewood Forest rose to a height of 117 feet, with a diameter of 12 feet.

When Lero Michealides plunged nine thousand feet from the sky, he landed, more-or-less, dead-center in the midst of a Bramble Tower. He'd achieved quite a velocity. To put it in terms of an actual tower, Lero could be said to have crashed through seven floors, and his body was now lodged midway in the first floor. The good news was: he was alive. On his way down, the bramble branches had snapped under Lero's body like so many potato chips - nothing at all like hard, unyielding tree wood - slowing the speed of his fall down to nothing.

The bad news was: brambles. Thick, sharp, oh-so-thorny BRAMBLES.

Thorns above him. Thorns below him. Three hundred sixty degree of thorns. Not a wall, nor a floor, just a claustrophobic rat's nest of these horrible little forest-grown spikes. He dangled from these thorny branches like laundry pinned to a clothesline, (if one were using thumbtacks for clothespins); so many of them were caught in his clothing and skin. Overall, the experience was somewhat like being inside a moderately kinder iron maiden. And yes: Lero bled. But not as badly as he could have been bleeding.

Two things had saved Lero from death by a thousand tiny cuts. The first was the outfit he was wearing. The upper atmosphere was quite a chilly place to fly through, so he'd made sure to dress in thick, layered clothing before climbing on Dash. The second was that the moment he'd felt the first sharp pricks upon his skin, he'd curled his body into the tightest little ball he could, squeezing his eyes shut, tucking in his neck.

"HELP!" he called out. "HELP! SOMEONE! ANYONE! DASH! WHERE ARE YOU?! Please... someone... please... HELP!"

Eastward. She trekked eastward. Never in her life had she been so singularly singleminded about anything.

Remaining motionless with all these thorns sticking into him was painful. Movement was agony, even down to the faintest tilt of his neck. But Lero forced himself. Wherever Dash was, whatever had happened to her... these thorns were unendurable, his one and only priority right now was escaping them!

He extended an arm outward. It was like wading through a swimming pool with broken glass instead of water. Bramble thorns scraped him as he reached forward, further, further... he closed his fingers around a branch, (it felt a lot like grabbing barbed wire.) Gritting his teeth, he pulled the rest of his body forward.

Through the web of bramble branches, Lero could see the darkness of the night.

She trotted across hills. Through forests, and Diamond Dog territory. There was a river of mud, and she swam uncaringly right through the neck-high muck, not stopping to clean herself off when she reached the opposite side, letting it dry on her coat. Never speaking, rarely blinking, unmindful of eating, unmindful of sleep.

Eastward beckoned.

"I'll make it through, I'll make it through!" Lero chanted to himself, through gritted teeth. "In order to survive in the wilderness, you need a strong will to live! That's what I have! A strong will to live!"

And finally, FINALLY, Lero's body passed through the last set of brambles and fall upon the dewy grass of the forest floor. Breathing heavily, amazed to be alive, Lero took one last look up at the horrible monolith of brambles he'd fallen through, thankful to be free of it. It was now the crack of dawn and he was bleeding from almost everywhere.

But - thank God and Celestia - Lero's backpack was still strapped to his back! How very lucky he was that Twilight had insisted on helping him pack last night. "You never know," he remembered her saying, when she'd given him the first aid kit. He'd thrown it in, merely to humor her.

It wasn't a big first aid kit, though. Not enough bandages or iodine by half, for his needs. All he could do was use up what he had for the very worst of his wounds; it would have to do. He still needed to get himself to a hospital, pronto, so the doctors could fix the rest.

He began walking. Bramblewood Town... yes, that was its name... but which direction was it? Was he going the right way? Lero's mind struggled to recall everything television and books taught him about wilderness survival. He remembered seeing a railroad up on that cloud. Even if he wasn't headed towards the town, itself, if he could find that railroad, it would surely lead him to civilization eventually! Or another option would be finding a river and following that... communities were ALWAYS built by bodies of water... that'd been one thing his middle school history teacher had hammered into him, when discussing the Tigris and Euphrates. It wasn't like he had a map or anything... he and Twilight had taken for granted that Dash would always be there to know the terrain, or at least provide a solid bird's eye view!

Thinking of Rainbow Dash just opened a floodgate of questions within Lero. Where was she?! Why had she left him here?! Why had she never come back for him?! Why had she flown off?! And why... why had she suddenly STOPPED flying after him like that?! What was with the brain-dead look in her eyes?!

It was difficult to puzzle out. Maybe she'd... run out of energy? No, not Dash... if someone's life was on the line, she'd have keep herself going until her heart gave out.

Maybe she wanted to see you die? A dark, cynical part of Lero's mind suggested. You've read true crime novels before. Seemingly happy couples... and then one night, after twenty years of togetherness, the husband drives the wife way out to the middle of the woods and takes an axe to her. And she never even saw it coming.

No! No way! Not only did Lero refuse to see Dash as... as an evil sociopath, It made no sense! Why would she had shot after him in the first place like that if she'd been plotting to murder him? He'd seen the look in her eyes: she'd WANTED to save him!

Maybe the reason she stopped was that she felt that she COULDN'T save you. Couldn't REACH you in time.

Lero hated to admit it, but this seemed much more believable. He tried to re-imagine the scene from Rainbow Dash's point of view. There she'd been, flying after him, but Dash could clearly see that he'd be falling right into a gigantic column of brambles. What good would a pair of wings even BE, if you were being asked to fly through THAT many brambles?!

Perhaps... perhaps the reason she'd stopped the way she did, perhaps the vacuous look in her eyes was just the shock of knowing that she couldn't catch up to him in time.

So where was she now, though? Trying to get help? A doctor? A rescue team?

Maybe she assumes you to be dead, spoke Lero's inner cynic again. After all, what are the odds of you surviving a fall like that? What are the odds of you surviving all those thousands of thorns?

Was that it? Could it be that Dash couldn't bear the thought of lingering by the site of his death? Of seeing his corpse? Had she landed somewhere to weep and grieve? Maybe even fly all the way back to Ponyville.

Maybe she even killed herself.

WHAT?!

Isn't suicide a terribly "romantic" thing for a girl to do, when she thinks her lover has died? Pure "Romeo and Juliet."

No... No... no...

I can see it now: her crashing into a mountainside at Mach 2, thinking only of her dearly departed stallion...

Lero broke into a wild sprint. "DASH! DAAASH! RAINBOW DASH! I'm right here! Don't be dead! Please, don't be...!"

This was when the horror stepped out from behind the large rock.

A spider as tall as a rhinoceros, and equally as wide. Lero counted nine red eyes arranged in rows of three. Each individual leg was like a medieval pike, if medieval pikes were jointed and hairy. Strangely, the great arachnid only had seven legs; there was an infected-looking stump where the eighth should've been. The legs were all the yellow of old parchment, while the rest of the spider's body was oaken brown.

Lero's mind refused to accept the existence of this spider. It was some kind of mirage brought on by blood loss and panic. One of the spider's foremost legs stretched forward, landing way too close to Lero's own feet.

The human turned and ran, and heard the giant spider scuttled after him. With building panic, Lero ran faster. The spider POUNCED at him like a panther, knocking him flat to the ground. Hollow fangs, longer and thicker than any doctor's needle, jammed deeply into his body. Colorless venom was pumped into him and his body went numb.

Incredibly, the venom was painless; only the puncture wounds hurt. Lero didn't feel poisoned, didn't feel sickly or like he was dying... but he also didn't feel his body move when he willed it to.

The giant spider grabbed him with its legs, and began rotating Lero's limp body over and over... the human felt a little like taffy being spun on a taffy machine. While being rotated, Lero could also feel a repulsive, rapidly-hardening fluid squirting onto him from the spider's spinneret, starting with his legs, and moving upwards to his neck.

I'm being cocooned! Lero realized in horror. Cocooned, or whatever it is they call it!

Lero's paralysis didn't extend to his head: he was able to scream out loud. But if anything, his screaming only served to excite the spider; it sped up in its cocooning. Finally, Lero was wrapped in webbing like a mummy; only his head was left untouched. The giant spider finished by drawing out a long dragline, and then dragging his catch to somewhere else in the Bramblewood Forest... much like a child in a Tim Burton cartoon taking his dead dog out for a walk.

To head southward or northward was to slip further into soullessness.

To head westward was to regress towards mindlessness.

To stand still was to plunge into emotionlessness.

She took yet another step eastward and became another 1/10,0000th less of a zombie, 1/10,000th less of a machine, 1/10,000th more AWAKE.

There were still so many steps left to take before she finally arrived at... wherever it was she was supposed to be. But she hadn't reclaimed enough emotion yet to feel solid feelings like doubt or discouragement or unease. She was like a blind mare with supersensitive hearing who'd been without water for days... and could hear the rush of a babbling brook from far, far away.

No other choice but to go eastward.

The giant seven-legged spider had strung the cocooned Lero up on a low-hanging tree branch, piñata-style.

Sliiiiiiice...

"AAAAAAAAAAH!"

Jab!

"AARRGH!"

Sliiiiiice...

AAAIIIIIEEEEE!"

The spider had long, curved, claw-like spurs on the end of all its legs. He was sticking and jabbing them into Lero's body, poking through the cocoon, (if the cocoon threatened to weaken, the giant spider would spin more of its silk around the human.) It was weird: for the most part, the spider's spurs rarely even broke Lero's skin; the real pain came from the fluid the spurs were secreting. It burned like fire.

"AUUUGGGGHH!"

The spider's goal, from what Lero could tell, was to get him to scream continuously for as long and loud as he could make him.

Then there came a point where Lero and the spider heard the tromping of... something large. Lero watched the spider scuttle away; hopefully it had been scared off, but the human worried: what new horror was in store for him now?!

A tall, brown-furred minotaur pushed through some tall shrubbery, and eyed Lero. The human placed him at around 300 pounds, none of it fat. Judging by the dead warthog he had slung across his back, Lero guessed he must be a hunter.

"And what're you?" he asked Lero.

The minotaur dropped his warthog and drew a long serrated hunting knife from his belt.

"Bet your meat doesn't taste half-bad!"

"No, I taste awful!" Lero would've shouted this louder, but his throat was quite sore from all the screaming the giant spider had already made him do. Plus, he had a sneaking suspicion that all the spider's venom was doing something bad to his vocal cords.

The minotaur hunter was taken aback. "You talk?"

"Yeah, I talk! I also think, feel, laugh, cry, sing, do algebra, arithmetic and my own taxes! I'm as much a person as you are, mister!"

Uncertainly, the minotaur hunter sheathed his blade. "But what are you?"

"My name is Lero Michealides. I'm what's called a human. I know you've never seen anything like me before in your life, but I swear to you: I live in Ponyville. I'm part of a herd with three mares in it! I don't really know where I am and I need serious medical attention! Please help me, for the love of mercy!"

"Okay, okay, I gotcha."

The hunter drew out his knife again, this time in a friendly way. "Sounds like you've had quite a day, buddy!" he said, sawing through Lero's cocoon. "I can take you to Bramblewood Town, they'll be able to help you from there."

"BEHIND YOU!" Lero shrieked.

But it was too late. The seven-legged spider had snuck up behind the minotaur, rearing up on its hind legs, wrapped its forelegs around his chest, and jammed its venomous fangs into his savior's neck.

"NO! NO, YOU BASTARD!"

The hunter collapsed like a ton of bricks. Cocooning the 300-pound minotaur took no small amount of effort on the spider's part; flipping his heavyset body over, again and again, but cocoon him it did. Unlike Lero, he even wrapped the hunter's horned head.

Then it proceeded to feast. The spider bit through its victim's silken shroud with a different set of hollow fangs than those it'd used to immobilize him and Lero.

"Spiders are unable to ingest solid foods the way humans are," Lero heard the voice of his old seventh-grade science teacher echoing in his mind. "Instead, they suck their prey dry by first injecting their digestive enzymes into their prey, and then slurping up their dissolved, liquified organs and such."

And so it went with the minotaur, for what had to be hours. To Lero's eyes, the seven-legged spider almost looked to be deflating itself as it pumped its corrosive juices into the minotaur, only to then bloat up like a tick as it sucked back in. Deflate and inflate, inject and absorb, back and forth, in and out, until the mighty minotaur was no more than a shriveled, desiccated heap, literally just skin and bones.

The spider then moved on and did the same to the warthog the hunter had been carrying. Afterward, the monster pulled back and let himself have a spell of rest to settle his stomach... the way Lero and his mares did right after they'd eaten a sumptuous Hearth's Warming Eve feast.

When it saw Lero twisting around furiously in his cocoon, the spider got back up, and injected more venom in his body to quell the human. Then the spider cut Lero down, spun an all-new dragline for him, and hauled him off to a new location.

Eastward, eastward... eastward.

Back when she'd first left her home to set off on this long walk eastward, she'd been as deadened emotionally as a killer robot from the future.

But she was recovering nicely. From unfeeling robot, she was now functioning at the level of a woodland animal; a deer or a feral sheep or such. She wasn't quite back to THINKING yet - at least not at any level of proper sapience - but she could FEEL again, and what she felt was dread.

Ever-growing, ever-increasing DREAD. Not for herself, but for... SOMEONE else, someone precious, out there, out eastward. As though she were a mother ewe, following the desperate, helpless bleating of her lost lamb, echoing through the forest.

The dear thing needed her! Needed rescuing! She had to press on!

Jab. "Aaaah!" Jab. "Eeeah!" Slice. "Go get crushed by a giant foot!"

Lero had decided on a name for his tormentor: Mr. 7. (Admittedly, it wasn't the most imaginative of names, but Lero was neither a fantasy novelist, nor a comic book writer, and thus, wasn't obliged to come up with imaginative names.)

The human dangled from another tree, upon a low-hanging branch. Unlike the vile Mr. 7, he'd had nothing to eat or drink in many hours. Every scream the spider tore from his throat was anguish; the screams, themselves, were getting weaker and weaker.

Then they heard a rustle, and movement from nearby. Something was coming! Once again, Mr. 7 scuttled away, for his next ambush. Loathsome as he was, Lero had to give the arachnid credit for a clever method of snagging prey. This was a lot more intelligence than Lero would have ever thought to attribute to a spider of any size.

He was the cheese in Mr. 7's mousetrap. The carrot in his snare.

Well... not this time!

"GO AWAY!" he shouted, with what remained of his voice. "RUN AWAY! GET HELP! IT'S A TRAP! A GIANT SPIDER! SAVE YOUR...! Awww, crap."

At first Lero thought that Mr. 7 had doubled back, meaning to punish him for trying to scare away the meat. Then the human counted eight legs on this new giant spider's body.

Of course. Lero thought to himself. This must be Mr. 7's girlfriend, and I'm the take-out dinner.

Miss 8 scuttled closer, arachnid drool dripping from her fangs.

"No, no, no...!"

Incredibly, it was Mr. 7 who saved him. He sprang up the other spider, and they struggled, each seeking to gore and tear the other apart with their many sharp legs.

Not boyfriend and girlfriend after all.

In the end, despite the handicap of a missing leg, Mr. 7 won out over Miss 8. As she curled into a defeated, insectile ball - legs twitching in the air - Mr. 7 wrapped his silk around her.

In grim fascination, Lero watched in silence as the seven-legged glutton punched his fangs through her exoskeleton and set about cannibalizing his fellow spider.

How long had she been galloping? Rarity had lost track of time. But she was a fully-thinking, feeling, intelligent, articulate being again, a proper PONY again. She had an identity back and memories again! Not that it had done anything towards quelling her panic. If anything, it had only been sharpened, intensified a thousandfold.

From a vague, formless dread, she now remembered everything with picture-perfect, 20/20 clarity.

Twilight had wanted her and Lero out of the house so she could work on an extremely old spell the Princess had mailed her; one she was scared of exposing her herdmates to. Lero had come up with the idea of making a little vacation out of it; just the two of them! She had cast the gossamer wing spell upon herself, and for hours, the two of them had been frolicking through the heavens - mare and stallion, swept up in love - not a care in the world! But then... this disaster had happened, and she'd watched him fall to earth!

All this had occurred mere moments ago.

At least he was still alive! The marvelous, all-consuming intuition inside Rarity was telling her so! So she had landed, and made those foolish wings disappear off her body, (if she hadn't flown that high, dear Lero would never have fallen in the first place!) and was racing off to save him! He was still in danger! The intuition said so! But she knew where she'd find him! The intuition was leading her! But if she wasn't quick about it, he'd be just as dead as if he'd splattered against the rocks!

How could she ever face Twilight and Lyra again if she came home with him in a coffin? How could she ever face HERSELF again?! Whatever had happened to him was her fault, her stupidity! Please, Celestia, let him be alright! Let him be alive! She'd never forgive herself again if he... if he had...!

Rarity shifted course, from straight east to northeast, led on by the sixth sense which had been guiding her all this way, guiding her to Lero.

Please, please, please, let him hate her forever, as long as he was ALIVE...

Mr. 7 couldn't have telegraphed his thoughts more plainly if he'd spoken them aloud in English.

Scream, bait! Scream, meat!

Once again, Lero had been strung up. This time, Mr. 7 had placed him in the mouth of a cave, and he hung from a stalactite. It boggled Lero's mind that he'd survived this long. At this point, it wasn't even a matter of his having a will to live so much as his body having a refusal to die. But how long was THAT going to hold out for?

Scream! Scream! I hunger! Scream for me!

The spider jabbed and sliced him with his sharp spurs, more viciously than ever before. Lero had to wonder... when he died, would he go to Pony Heaven? Or Human Heaven? Or maybe it was all just one place... maybe if Rainbow Dash had killed herself, he could introduce her to his grandparents. How would that go down?

Why don't you scream?!

...And if ponies and humans went to the same Heaven... did that mean space aliens did too? The little grey guys they spotted in Roswell, New Mexico? That'd be fun. Heh... they ought to've made a skit comedy out of that: Space Aliens In Heaven! As good as Monty Python's Dead Parrot schtick. Heh... how strange... Lero had always figured a man's dying thoughts would be more profound than his were... but he supposed it was preferable to focusing on what was happening to him at this moment. He ought to at least try for profundity; it wasn't like he had long.

Lord God... Heavenly Father... for whatever you did to arrange for me to wind up in this world, I thank you. In spite of everything that's happened to me today... it's been truly wonderful, living here, getting to know the ponies, and having them know me. Twilight, Lyra, Rainbow Dash... I love you all so much. Be safe.

Yes, that worked.

Incensed with frustration, the great spider stabbed Lero with a foreleg, going halfway through the shoulder. The human howled out in pain, with every inch of volume he could muster: "_!"

"LERO!"

The rock was about the size of a bowling ball, and it flew smack into the back of the spider's head. Jaws clacking angrily, Mr. 7 dropped to all sevens and skittered around to face his attacker. Down below stood a pony. Teeth bared; snorting heavily through her mouth and snout like a wounded bull, scraping the cavernous floor, again and again with an angry forehoof.

Rarity?! Lero mouthed, in soundless stupefaction.

No way. It couldn't be... could it? The pony was a unicorn mare, to be sure... and the mane color was right, but she was so completely sweaty and bedraggled! As though she'd just run two marathons, back-to-back, through all kinds of weather and several bogs! He'd at first thought the color of her coat fur was spotted - brown and white - only to realize that the brown bits were old mud. And all of that was just the farthest thing from what Dash's fastidious, image-conscious, dress-designing friend WAS, right? Right?!

Power shone forth from Rarity's horn as she glared back at her foe, eyes bloodshot and blazing with unholy, all-consuming fury.

"HOW DARE YOU TOUCH MY STALLION! HOW DARE YOU HURT HIM! I'LL MAKE YOU PAY!"