Going Under

by Velkan Nobody

Rating: teen
Tags: Scootaloo, Adventure, Main 6, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Rainbow Dash
Length: 7944

Everypony has a guardian angel to seek guidance from when darkness falls.

Everypony has a guardian angel to seek guidance from when darkness falls. So have grandmas always told their grandfoals...

It all started with the weirdest dream. At the beginning, it didn't cross Rainbow Dash's mind that it might have something to do with the strange event which took place in Ponyville, or the mysterious little colt she found outside Fluttershy's cottage. As the dream recurs, however, she takes it upon herself to unveil the mystery that surrounds this seemingly orphan child. With the help of her best friends and that of an imaginative filly who has always looked up to her, she delves into the secrets of a world full of believing demons and faithless angels.

Cover image by Fiasko0 (http://fiasko0.deviantart.com/).

Published 2012-03-07 00:14:03 UTC
Last updated 2012-03-07 00:14:03 UTC

Prologue: A Voice

"'areyouinorareyouout? youcan'twineitherway,' he said. 'butthefallwillbefantasticandwhat'sleftisnothinglessthanperfection'"

—AFI

Going Under

Prologue—A Voice

Stop. Rewind. Play.

Time was the only staid truth he believed in. He couldn't remember when, or if ever, he had felt differently in that respect. He did not abide by Its laws, but his nature compelled him to enforce them. Years lengthened into decades, decades into centuries, centuries into millennia. Before his eyes, though, they rushed like a violent gale. They brushed past every living thing, every inanimate body; grabbed snatches of life and matter in silence; gradually carried away the old voices and deeds; provided space for the new ones; blew perpetually along a winding path with no purpose or sense of direction, bound to an involuntary existence. He could no more manipulate Time to his advantage than he could escape his destiny. He observed and nudged It back on track whenever It strayed from the predetermined road, suppressing the consequent ripples. He held no Control; he merely exerted his Influence over It.

Time had become his cutie mark—a golden pocket watch bereft of its fob. His trade. Everything he knew and a substantial part of his being.

And Time was running out.

Rewind. Play.

Pause.

Clock Wise squinted down at the stone font, searched, and, having failed, moved on to the next location. The clean waters formed a small eddy, then settled. The few remaining bubbles merged into what appeared to be the image of a huge city upon the surface, the apartments, streets, and alleys of which bustled with life and curious interactions. Some of its inhabitants galloped frantically in suits and laden with hefty saddlebags to the cubicles in which they spent most of their days. Some called in sick. Some bought a variety of victuals in big rooms with tall shelves. Some waited in lines that progressed at a glacial pace. Some lay fast asleep in white beds surrounded by complex sets of equipment. Some were stripped of their belongings and shoved into cells. Not one of them interested him in the least.

He proceeded to another location.

A familiar scent wafted into his nostrils. It was the heavy smell of humidity which usually sticks around after a storm, the one he fancied would cause his nose to drip with blood if he actually had any of it to lose. He deigned to toss a glimpse back over his shoulder but quickly refocused on his current mission. He could now see a cyan pegasus soaring through the sky of that distant land which differed tremendously from his. Her eyes were fiercely narrowed, and an even fiercer glint beamed from her pupils.

"Is it done?" he asked.

"Almost."

The soft rustle of wings drew his pensive glare backwards once more. This time, he didn't return it to his former point of interest. Not far behind, a mare stared at him impassively. Although her cutie mark was out of his sight, he knew it to be a flawless, white snowflake; he had come to memorize every detail in the architecture of that brittle emblem fate had bestowed upon her. Her silver armor, like his, gleamed under the white light that rained down on them from an unknown source above, shielding every part of her turquoise body except the forelegs and flanks. Her helmet hid part of her mane, too. Only a fringe of trim white locks fell into view over her forehead.

She lowered her gaze but instantly picked it back up, its icy quality never diminishing. "The barrier remains to be sealed. There is but one approach that will ensure success. You are aware of it."

The stallion acknowledged the last of her statements with a curt nod.

"As you are aware," she continued with her monotonous voice, "that it is not the approach you have opted to follow."

He wheeled round and resumed his pursuit. "I am," he responded, watching intently as the same young pegasus shot through a row of cloud wreaths at a speed he would've thought impossible. He didn't understand what the waters wanted to show him or why they would give him such a hard time when he tried to shift to another location, but understanding wasn't what he concerned himself with. He worried exclusively about maintaining his Influence.

"Our paradigm is flawed. It clearly calls for adjustments and re-evaluations. My approach may be regarded as unorthodox, but I have complete faith in its effectiveness."

The mare headed to his side and peeked into the font as well. The waters revealed nothing other than an unbroken transparency to her. "Faith, you say?"

"Faith."

"Faith is an abstract notion, inextricably linked to pony emotions and, therefore, unreliable. Princess Celestia established our paradigm, and it allowed us to confine the Hollows. The Influence to alter it is not in our possession. The protocol is sufficiently clear with respect to that matter."

"Our paradigm has failed," he declared shortly, but with a slight flutter of his wings that conveyed a hint of annoyance. "If it had been valid, as you claim it to be, the barrier would've held, and she would not have escaped."

His body language, rather than his manner of expression, seemed to have affected her in quite an unusual way. The vivid shimmer in her blue irises, the second before she turned away, was something Clock Wise had only seen on the faces the font presented to him. Even as she walked back in the direction she'd come from, and the squishing sound of her hooves against the cloud flooring petered out, and her figure dissolved into Eternity, her odd glower hovered in his mind, pulsating like the heart of a newborn foal.

The pegasus kept spilling rainbows across the vast blueness as he looked on. She reminded him of somepony who'd wandered away from Eternity. Somepony he had no Influence on and, thus, could not save from trial. The fall would take its inevitable course; he could not change that. Redemption, however, was always a potential outcome, and would certainly be favored by his approach. The success or failure of his endeavor depended entirely upon three interdependent factors: the subject's exposure and susceptibility to pony emotions, his level of adaptability, and his resistance to her temptation.

Stop.

At this moment, an unpleasant feeling washed over him. It began with light vibrations in the back of his head, like a poisonous signal ready to be relayed to the rest of his body. Soon, the tickling rose to a harsh, disordered beating. Cold shivers electrified his spine; his limbs, as well as his wings, broke into a fit of trembling. The unforgiving hammer fell over and over again, imprinting a picture on the core of his mind. It was a bright crescent moon with its sharp ends pointed upwards, poising between a pair of pale cheeks. On aiming his gaze at the liquid screen, he noticed the pegasus had quit careering across the blue sky; she now lay fast asleep on a cloud, her rainbow-streaked tail curled around her huddled form.

A warm sensation overtook his nostrils as his eyes started itching. He managed to restrain the load beneath his lids from leaking out for almost a full minute. At length, drops of some clear substance that reminded him very much of water beaded at the edges and cut their way down through the red of his face, hanging loose close to his chin before plunging into the font.

The resulting ripples distorted the pegasus' figure, but only for a fleeting moment. The colt recognized the acrid taste of brimstone lingering in his mouth. He could hear a voice inside him, soft and suggestive, like the whisper of an insidious wind. Its essence emanated from the pores under his fur and through his feathers. It reeked of Control.

He had let her in.

Play.

Time was running out.

* * *

AN: Special thanks to Arbarano for editing this story.

Chapter 1: The Pony Horror Story

Chapter 1—The Pony Horror Story

Twilight Sparkle wasn't frightened when she saw it falling off the apex of the sky. She couldn't quite describe the state into which her mind had plunged, let alone associate it with any specific emotions from past experiences. Her legs had numbed, as though she had been plodding along a snow-covered path for hours, and a cold shudder shot through her shoulders. It could've been shock, or the initial stage of a severe case of the jitters, for all she knew. But fear? If she had been an inexperienced gambler, she guessed she might just have bet her very life that it wasn't in the least related to so unpleasant a feeling.

The abruptness of it all seemed to have jolted a part of her brain senseless, too, because the reason why she found herself looking out through one of the windows in her friend's boutique and not through one in the library eluded her. She didn't even recall having knocked on her door earlier this afternoon. As far as she was concerned, she hadn't put so much as a hoof out of her house throughout the day. She may have resorted to teleportation. That was, after all, a fairly reasonable assumption, wasn't it?

No, she told herself, because I did leave. Rather late. To check on the preparations for Monsoon Harvest Week. An image of herself lying comfortably in bed flitted into her head along with that idea. The remembrance was no more than a fragment, but it dragged a whole bunch of other little shards into a more or less coherent trail of memories.

That morning, she had overslept for the first time since her arrival in Ponyville (not that she had ever rebelled so outrageously when she resided in Canterlot). An hour and a half after her usual breakfast time, a cool breeze made its way in through the half-closed window at the corner where her bed lay, shaking her body from its prolonged lethargy. Her consciousness did not return all at once, as might've occurred if today had been another ordinary day with another checklist to fill in before sundown. She absently rolled over and dipped her face in her pillow. She could hear the vague warbling of blue jays and hummingbirds outside but didn't really distinguish it from the chatting voices in her dreams. Gradually, spangles of sunlight encroached on her little fantasy and cast away her debate with Pinkie Pie over the basics of defensive spells. She was just one breath—one snore—away from trashing her friend's theory of linked magic-shields (she had even thought up a clever punch line to wring a laugh or two from the audience), when a single scaly claw tapped her on the shoulder, rousing her from that murky state that's neither waking nor sleeping.

A shrill, deafening tune played in her ears, as though a crate jam-packed with fireworks had been lit inside her skull. She cocked her head a little to the left, the light of day striking her square in the face. On looking up, she noticed a big purplish blur hovered a few inches above her (or so her sleepy eyes tricked her into believing), and that it articulated words which, mingled with the incessant screeching, made the veins in her temples throb. The unrecognizable purple smudge presently cleared into the solid figure of a baby dragon with irises as green as emeralds. The voice, too, steadied progressively as she found all her faculties.

"Spike!"

Working herself into a frenzy, the unicorn bounced out of the mattress, her body thudding against the wooden floor. The quilt broke her fall, but the dragon, as she realized when she managed to disentangle herself from her starry straitjacket, hadn't been that lucky. Her flailing hooves had sent him flying smack into an orderly stack of books she had carefully built against the opposite wall with the intention of returning them to the shelves later.

Spike lurched out of the knocked pile with a grunt. He danced backwards and forwards in long, drunken steps, his eyes spinning out of control in slowly reddening pools of white.

"Spike," she repeated in a somewhat calmer tone, although her grimace deceived no dragon, "you were supposed to wake me up!"

Her assistant pressed his claws against the sides of his head to stop the swirling emeralds. "What do you think I was doing?"

She stole a glance back at the cuckoo clock ticking faster than ever above her bedstead. Fluttershy had given it to her for her birthday. Twilight treasured it dearly, but oftentimes she couldn't help wanting to try out an explosive spell on it. She wondered if its arms would actually start moving slower if she really didn't wish them to.

"Well… You were an hour and a half late! I promised Princess Celestia I would help with the preparations for Monsoon Harvest Week and—"

"Twilight," interrupted the dragon, standing with arms akimbo while aiming his patented not-this-again frown at her, "you do this all the time! You let some crazy idea get to you and then blow it way out of proportion." At this point, the furrows on Spike's forehead smoothed and his upturned smile capsized. "The Princess told you to take it easy and enjoy your vacations."

Correct, she had. But still. She'd read about the importance of this special festivity, about its vital role on the prosperity of all rural towns in Equestria. A thunderstorm beyond the weather ponies' control would brew over the next few days and cast a pall of heavy, dark clouds over each and every patch of farmland. She could already picture the hysteria this event would arouse in the Ponyville folk throughout the next two weeks. The plowing of fields. The sowing of seeds. Building the irrigation channels. Hoisting the lightning-harvesters. It was by no means a simple matter. It required strength, patience, organization, and extra meticulousness. In other words, it had Twilight Sparkle written all over it… or almost all of it, she guessed.

Besides, she'd never been blessed with the opportunity to witness this spectacle. Canterlot didn't excel in agriculture, per se (it did house some of the finest florists, though), and, as a result, she had missed out on Monsoon Harvest Week for many a year. According to her sources, not only did it yield high-quality, long-lasting crops; it occasioned a significant influx of eager tourists from overpopulated urban centers, mostly Manehattan and Fillydelphia. And why wouldn't it? Her tongue was not unfamiliar with the electric flavor lightning granted Granny Smith's renowned zap apple jam. Additionally, the presence of the Princesses during the course of the ceremony would certainly turn Ponyville into a major hotspot.

The purple unicorn devoted all her concentration to her horn and put her magic to work in a surprisingly methodical hurry, stretching the creased sheets, giving her pillow a couple of invisible pats, laying the quilt on top, and lastly tucking the unruly edges under the mattress. Once she finished (it must've taken her three minutes, roughly), she headed for the door, swung it open without lifting a single hoof, then glimpsed back over her shoulder to check that everything was in order before darting out and slamming it shut. Spike had dived into the task of picking up the scattered books to pile them back against the wall and so replied to her goodbye with a disinterested grumble that might've been a "See yah."

While she cantered through the streets on her way to the town hall, everything was as normal as a quiet place like Ponyville could get. Sure, the oncoming festivity may have induced a little anxiety, and the occasional herds of busy mares and stallions trooping along, carrying saddlebags bulging with ribbons and decorative trinkets from one place to another, struck her as a rather unusual sight. In a way, it reminded her of the capital of Equestria where she'd been born and raised, although she couldn't count nearly as many noses pointed at the sky.

She detected nothing above the ordinary then, no jaw-dropping incidents, no weird, flaming meteors plummeting from Luna-knew-where.

She couldn't imagine why, but lending a hoof to the other ponies with the setup and all proved immensely gratifying. Maybe she simply wasn't used to—or didn't feel comfortable with—sitting back and relaxing, like anypony else would've loved to spend a month-long vacation. Although she lacked the brawn for most of the jobs, Twilight assisted in those that called for levitation and careful decision-making, the latter of which she considered her area of expertise. She helped Rarity locate the best spots to hang the exquisite banners, aided Lyra, Bon Bon, and Sweet Pea in the stuffing of the myriad goodie-bags meant for tourists, strove to keep Derpy at least ten hooves away from any sharp tools (an effort that was greatly appreciated by everypony), and advised Vinyl on how to fill out and mail the application for Reining In Sunday, the band hired to play on the day of the storm. The white unicorn had grinningly assured (a somewhat disbelieving) her that a touch of feisty rock music an hour or two before the downpour somehow resulted in more lightning bolts.

By the time the hardworking folk called it a day, the downtown had transformed into a parade of beautifully adorned shops, with the stage reserved for the highly acclaimed band just outside the town hall. A great deal of plowing, building, and hoisting was in store for them in the fields tomorrow, and so everypony retired with the prospect of flumping onto their beds and surrendering to a well-deserved sleep painted bright on their faces.

The Princess had hidden her graceful sun from sight, somewhere beyond the rim of the horizon. A few lingering rays of gold stroked the lower portion of the afternoon sky, leaving a layer of dim yellow that would later deepen to an amaranthine red, then to a dark lavender, and would finally succumb to the will of Luna's incipient night.

The possibility that the world as she knew it could change—and not necessarily for the better—with no more than a haphazard peek out of a bell-shaped boutique window hadn't even skimmed her thoughts as she and Rarity sauntered to the latter's place after she had invited her over to delight her eyes with her latest creation. And the worst part was that, when it did (and it didn't skim; it practically crashed in like a runaway wagon), she couldn't push out a disturbing perception gnawing at the very back of her brain. A notion that the bright, green thing cutting through the pink belly of the atmosphere was, in an odd way, quite a beauty.

"I simply cannot understand why Sterling Ring will not take any checks for her rubies…" the white unicorn had begun to complain most indignantly, when the sight of the sliced firmament cut her off. Her pupils swelled like a pair of hungry black holes with bright glints wavering toward the upper right. The joints which held her jaw attached to her head loosened; the whole structure dangled under her face like a dysfunctional body part that no longer belonged there. Twilight saw the fear behind those shocked orbs and that gaping mouth. A fear that somehow bore no effect on her.

Not before Rarity had ensured her precious Opal were safe inside the house, the two girls sallied out only to bump into a dumbstruck crowd. All its members had their masks of profound awe riveted on the strange object. Apparently, every adult resident in town had abandoned the safety of their home to witness the unprecedented show. The thing looked like a filly-size crinkled ball of parchment a planet-size Spike hovering in outer space had belched on and then tossed aside carelessly. Like something out of a pony horror story Filly Scouts would listen to in absolute dread while gobbling up marshmallows around a fire in the heart of the woods.

As the phlegm-colored fireball hurtled down toward the Everfree Forest, Twilight didn't hear a peep out of any of the intent sky-gazers. The chirping crickets hushed and the air slithered past her ears like a shy and silent snake. When the crumpled parchment carried its journey to the end, the resulting pale green expansion wave stunned all watchful eyes like the flash of a giant camera. Ponyville froze in shock. Once the blast of blinding light subsided, the truly horrible sounds—the shouts of confusion and building despair—rent the silence, maintaining a certain rickety order at first, but eventually crumbling into an uncontrollable frenzy that perfectly illustrated the consequences of battering a beehive.

"W-what in Equestria was that?"

"It was way too close. Way. Too. Close."

"Where the hay did it come from?"

"Oh, dear! My little Jingles! She… she was playing in that old park near the forest!"

"Oh gosh! Soapsuds said she'd gone to Sugarcube Corner, right? Right?"

"It was so bright and green! And green's my favorite color… well, next to pink. And yellow, and blue… and red!"

"The Princess should be notified immediately about this!"

"…but come to think of it, it's kinda scary too, cuz things like that don't just fall in the middle of—"

"Pinkie, please! Simmer down! This right here's a seh-rious situation!"

Having picked out two familiar voices in the steadily growing racket, the purple unicorn shouldered her way through the crowd, Rarity trailing behind her like a clueless filly who knew no better than to follow her mother wherever she went. As she treaded forth and struggled to cast away the distracting noises of the mass, the outline of a broad-brimmed hat bobbing madly next to that of a matted pink mane entered her range of vision. Now driven by a stronger resolution, she pressed onward, aware but not particularly worried about the grunts and growls rumbling about her, until she broke through the last barrier separating her from her two points of reference.

"Applejack! Pinkie Pie!" cried Twilight, to which the two mares addressed veered their heads in her direction. The one in the hat planted her shimmering eyes on her, conveying a sense of impure relief, whereas the other did the same but with the irrepressible enthusiasm of a four-year-old seconds away from tearing open a birthday present.

The couturier hurried to her fellow unicorn's side and, on being greeted with equally mute thrill, spoke for the first time since the thing had hewn a glowing path through the fading cotton candy ceiling.

"What is going on?"

"You mean you didn't see it?" piped up the party pony, not a single note of sarcasm vibrating in her cheery voice. "I didn't miss it, how come you missed it? Maybe you should wear your glasses more often. I don't know what it was, it could've been anything. It could've been a star. Or a meteor. Or…! Or…! Or a starving, brain-eating alien in a spaceship! Wait. That's not a good thing, is it?"

"A brain-eating alien?" croaked a near bystander Twilight thought she'd met on a merrier occasion, although her name slipped her mind at the current moment. Her eyelids brimmed with tears. "I've read about this on my horoscope. We're being invaded!"

The burly stallion next to her set his forehoof upon her nearest shoulder and glared round at the many faces in his midst with clear indignation. "Well, Ah say that green sunufamule can eat mah horseshoes!" he hollered out, holding the same hoof he had used to console the young filly up high.

The crowd, in turn, cheered him with a, "Yeah!"

"Oh, for the love of Celestia!" chimed in said authority's most devoted apprentice. A fuchsia glow rose through the length of her horn, enclosing Pinkie's mouth in a magic envelope of the same color. In the blink of an eye, it took the form of a zipper that ran all the way to the other end of her mouth.

"Listen up, everypony! Acting like it's the end of the world will not get us anywhere. There has to be a perfectly reasonable explanation behind all this. Princess Celestia has helped us through much worse. I'm sure she will clear things up eventually. In the meantime, we'll just have to keep calm and wait." At this juncture, she turned a reproving glare on the girl with the disheveled mane, who twisted her zipper of a mouth into an apologetic simper. "A brain-eating alien? Seriously?"

Having delivered her lecture satisfactorily, the studious pony waited for the seeds of reason to sprout in her listeners' minds. The symptoms of guilt and embarrassment—the lowered heads and eyes—showed up almost instantly, and the rate at which they spread through the crowd attested to her persuasive oratory. And her stare.

Before long, darkness settled over the town, as did a silence which felt anything except peaceful. The gash upon the surface of the heavens retained a sickly, yellowish fluorescence, but its once blinding resplendence had waned. Twilight didn't know what the thing was any better than Pinkie Pie. The prospect of finding out didn't entrance her at all; rather, it did the exact opposite. Despite her misgivings, she took it for granted that Princess Celestia, and Luna for that matter, wouldn't simply disregard an event of such magnitude. Meteor showers, to her understanding, were rarely ever included in the nightly schedule, and this, by the looks of it, didn't qualify as one. Shooting stars gave off white light and fell smoothly; what the sky barfed on them had been drenched in angry green blazes and raged down like lightning.

But even her hopes came crashing down when a second bomb dropped on her world, disguised in a galling pretext. No more than a couple of minutes had elapsed since she had brought the matter to a favorable close, when the vague flapping of wings resounded from far off. It grew louder and harsher until two advancing rows of buff silhouettes were visible in the distance. A somewhat round object wheeled along the air, close behind them. A carriage, it appeared.

At length, the group of flying shadows resolved into a squad of armored pegasi, carrying what was undoubtedly a coach from the Royal Guard. The guards alighted harshly on the elevated platform in front of the town hall, forcing the Mayor, who had been struggling upon it to soothe the crowd from the very beginning, to stage-dive for her life. Spearing cold, searching glowers at the mass of astounded civilians, they stood in silence, as though expectant of orders from a superior to perform their next move. A whole, tense minute passed by, in which no words whatsoever were exchanged. Then, the coach door swung open, and through it descended a dark gray unicorn clad in a golden armor similar to those his subordinates wore.

His blue eyes fell accusingly upon the static citizens. "I must have a word with the Mayor of Ponyville at once."

Without delay, the throng split apart, supplying a narrow path for the requested mare (who had somehow wound up at the very back) to walk through. She trudged to the front and, having clambered onto the stage, worked the rest of her way to the center. Making eye contact with her, the stallion carried on in his gruff manner of expression:

"My unit has been sent here to carry out the orders specified in this scroll, signed by Princess Celestia herself."

The guard floated the mentioned document over to her. Keeping it steadily suspended in the air, he proceeded to unroll it with as much delicacy as his military magic allowed him to. The Mayor scrutinized it with tense, narrowed eyes, at times absently mouthing the words as she read, but mostly just keeping a stoic face that only fueled the unease. The pegasi having removed their harnesses and gathered behind their commander, the gray-maned mare gulped back what definitely wasn't a sigh of relief and veered timidly toward the overwrought flock, which fell silent in preparation for the sentence.

As the information—that Princess Celestia had decreed that all residents in Ponyville must remain within town limits until the officer in charge considered it safe to do otherwise—tickled Twilight's eardrums, her frame began to quiver and her heart raced with a fresh burst of adrenaline. The ensuing gasps of the crowd were but a distant echo in the maelstrom of inner voices flurrying through her head. Two of her best friends were absent, one of them lived awfully close to the zone of impact, and if what looked more and more likely to be an alien craved a juicy brain for dinner, nothing or nopony would stand in its way.

"She can't be serious," muttered Rarity, her eyes flicking in the farm pony's direction.

"She sounded pretty serious to me," replied Applejack, who in turn sought comfort in her pensive friend. "Whataya make of it, Twi?"

"I don't know what to make of it."

Her terse reply seemed to have taken the girls by surprise, but not one of them objected. The filly was busy listening to the whispers and screams inside begging her to please come up with a good plan and to please hurry up. Yet, a shadow accompanied every fleeting thought, and they all grinned at her and sang out a truth she had heretofore shunted aside: that she dealt with something she required protection from. That what she felt was fear, and it had been all along.

The commanding officer wrapped up the suspicious conversation he was holding with one of the guards and soon centered on an even more suspicious task. A blue glow enfolded his long horn, following which a guitar pick the size of a hoof glided out of the carriage.

Rarity aimed her wondering gaze at the queer artifact. "What do you think it is, Twilight?"

"I think… I think it's a Seeker."

"A what now?" interposed Applejack, her visage expressive of a greater perplexity than the one carved in the fashionista's.

"A Seeker," she repeated. "They're very rare amulets. The great sorcerers from Ancient Equestria would use them to track down… well, anything. I had no idea they still existed."

The guard drew the device closer to his muzzle and murmured hastily to its base. The purple unicorn couldn't make out what passed his lips, but then again she didn't need to. As soon as the Seeker shot away and disappeared into the gloom, she figured out he'd spoken the trigger phrase. Subsequently, the same guard ordered six of his subordinates, who stood behind him in a firm stance and with chests puffed out, to chase it and (this shook her a little) to be extremely careful. The command obeyed, and the six stallions far out of sight, he flung a glimpse back over his shoulder at the Mayor, then focused on the front. He addressed the citizens in a tone simultaneously delicate and authoritarian, entreating them to return to their respective homes and indicating that all would be duly explained in the morning.

His words of reassurance, nevertheless, didn't sound at all reassuring to Twilight or, to all appearances, any Ponyvillian present. But seeing as the other six officers who had stayed didn't seem too keen on talking out the issue, everypony deemed it best to comply.

"I'm terribly worried about Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash," admitted Rarity, as the group flowed along in the retreating current of disgruntled ponies. "I do hope they're alright."

Applejack's head swiveled back and forth in a restless fashion. "Ah guess we're gonna have to find out for ourselves!" she exclaimed, her eyes having finally landed on a dark alley ahead and to the left.

The Apple family athlete didn't bother to look back in case the guards were watching; instead, she hurried her pace. When the time was right, she broke free from the moving throng with a subtle leap to the side—an action that elicited shrill squeaks from Pinkie Pie. She then spun round and motioned to her friends to do the same.

The party pony hopped first, the couturier followed, and the student took her turn last. Without disturbing that order, the trio made haste into the narrow darkness of the alley behind their guide. They kept quiet in it until the clatter of hooves died down and they were sure not a single soul roamed the streets. Only after the longest fifteen minutes of their lives—after the street lamps had winked out and Ponyville descended into an almost deathly silence—did one of the girls dare to speak.

"So," started the apple-bucker, in a low voice that wasn't quite a whisper, "who do we check on first?"

"I'm almost certain Rainbow Dash is fine," argued Rarity, whose aversion to dark, musty places appeared to strengthen with the contribution of Pinkie's moans. "I think we should go to Fluttershy's cottage first. If anypony is in danger, it's her. I can't begin to—Uhmm, Twilight?" An awkward half-smile flickered across her muzzle. "Could you undo the spell now?"

Celestia's apprentice traced her friend's glance all the way to the pink face with the glittery, diamond orbs. Offering a deprecatory grin, she fell to removing the zipper wiggling frantically under the untidy filly's nose.

"Ah'm with Rarity here," chipped in Applejack, resuming the thread of the foregoing conversation. "RD's the toughest pegasus out there. Ah reckon she can take care of herself a ton better than Fluttershy."

"So it's settled." Twilight looked round at her friends. On receiving their consent, she summoned a feeble spark upon the tip of her horn. As she closed her eyes, soft billows of magic slowly engulfed the group.

"Okay, here it goes!"

* * *

What…? Where am I?

That was the first clear thought that flashed through Rainbow Dash's mind since she had regained consciousness about a minute ago. She could hear the distorted echo of the question inside her head as if she had bellowed it out into the corridor of a huge stadium. A bunch of loose ideas had come and gone before, although they lacked coherence and related more to perceptions of her new environment than meaningful insights.

Her lids barred her weary magenta orbs from the rest of the world, but her other senses filled in the blanks with surprising accuracy. She could tell she lay on her back on what might've been the fluffiest cloud in all of Equestria. Yet, tight chains seemed to fasten her wings to her sides and bind her hooves together, adding an uncomfortable extra load on her body. How or why she had wound up there and in such a condition, she had absolutely no idea. She'd plunked herself down somewhere in the sky earlier this afternoon, after devoting a good two hours of practice to her latest tricks. But the cloud hadn't felt nearly as soft then, and, so far as she knew, she hadn't committed a crime to deserve such rough treatment.

She didn't remember much about what she'd done during the morning, if indeed she had done anything at all. Wait. She did recall having agreed to toil in the fields tomorrow from dawn to dusk, on condition that she wasn't required to help with the preparations today. Because she didn't want to work today. Not after her little dispute with that dimwitted DJ who actually thought it would be better to bring Reining In Sunday instead of Buck 120.

The Wonderbolts loved Buck 120.

"Are you certain you have hidden his memories deep enough?"

Who said that?

Her eyes popped open as the icy, feminine voice swept into her ears. Her pupils shriveled at the swell of white light that welcomed her back. Before her vision adjusted to the bright surroundings, an answer to the previous query floated past her from the opposite direction.

"I have made use of all my Influence. I may even have inflicted permanent damage. It would be unwise to persevere, Tempest."

Two equine figures loomed over her, one at her hind hooves, the other almost above her. They glared down at her as if she had murdered somepony. The pegasus close to her head bore a turquoise coat and a resplendent white mane, the former partially wrapped in a silver armor, the latter almost completely concealed in a helmet.

"I am merely following Clock Wise's orders," muttered that mare, expelling a sigh that struck Rainbow Dash as cold as a winter breeze. "They do seem irrational. I suspect he has been infected by pony emotions."

The other, like her companion, was dressed in a shiny war garb. The light reflected from her body almost as intensely as it did from her defensive attire. Her mane and tail shared the same raven-black color, without the faintest streak of a different hue upon them. A funny blotch on either flank, like a ghost cut out of black cardboard, disrupted the uniformity of her silvery fur.

"He does peek into the other realm more often than he used to," she conceded.

What the hay is going on here?

The cyan pegasus attempted to hop onto her hooves, the desire to beat some answers out of her captors already burning through her veins. She grunted and screamed in anger while writhing on the soft, white flooring. After a moment, she gave up on her endeavors, although out of exhaustion rather than in defeat. Her heart hammered inside her rib cage in hopes of busting out for fresh air. Her throat felt sore and dry, as if she'd stretched out her vocal cords to the limit. The grunts and screams, however, resounded exclusively in her head. And she was pretty sure her body had remained as still as a corpse all the while.

"We will have to deal with him eventually," stated the one called Tempest. "And when the time comes, I will expect you to make the right decision, Obscura."

"A rebellion, Tempest? You would go that far?"

This new voice, she mused, sounded way creepier than the other two. As muffled steps drew nearer, Dash's mind played a slideshow of hideous sights that might befit the approaching entity. When the mare figured in her screen of vision, she was greatly surprised to find a dark blue pegasus with a sleek, gold mane. She would've thought of her armor as the perfect Nightmare Night costume. Had she stumbled upon it while browsing through a magazine, she might've admired every detail in all the sharp bones which composed its jagged structure.

"I never said such a thing, Coldkiss."

"You didn't have to," she countered, shooting a hungry glower at the prisoner but nevertheless maintaining her creepy, stoical tone. "The idea was implied."

An almost imperceptible frown drew upon the turquoise guard's muzzle. "He is planning to let him free in spite of his actions. And you," she added, her head tilted to one side in apparent confusion, "you will not interfere? I believe you have the Influence to stop this." She aimed her hoof depreciatingly at the supine form beneath her, a gesture that only served to send more fire surging through the cyan pony's veins. "Why won't you take him?"

"As long as Eternity sheds Its light on him," replied the blue mare with a latent smile, "I cannot touch him. And why would I, even if I could? To promote this absurd vendetta you're pursuing against Clock Wise?"

Rainbow Dash squirmed under her bandage of chains in another futile effort to escape. She didn't have the faintest clue as to who these tough loonies could possibly be, why they insisted on referring to her as a "he," or what meaning that recurrent name—Clock Wise—held. Truth be told, she didn't care to find out any more than she looked forward to helping Applejack in the fields tomorrow.

"Let me go!" she tried to yell, although nothing more than a mute breath issued through her lips.

"Besides," the guard in the skeleton armor went on, oblivious to the prisoner's struggles, "he will not last very long in that other realm Clock Wise wants to confine him to."

"Why won't he?" interjected Obscura, who had hitherto paid close attention to the conversation with a meek countenance.

"That world is very peculiar, to say the least. From the day they draw in their first breath to those long seconds before they let out their last, ponies are subjected to a variety of stimuli and sensations. They are forced to dwell in a very hostile environment. Nonetheless, their bodies have grown accustomed to the constant attacks of the outside, and so they have succeeded in delaying the inevitable.

"But we… we possess no Influence there, and we are certainly not prepared to tolerate a change in setting. Mortality will wear him down fast. His body will be overwhelmed by his surroundings. Eventually, his heart will give out. And then,"—a shiver rushed through the hostage's back at her easiness of manner—"he will be mine. I won't have a choice."

Sapped of almost all her strength, the pinned pony allowed herself to pant for about five seconds, then shut out the lights and sounds of the weird universe she found herself trapped in. Okay, Dash, she psyched herself up, you can do this. She sucked in as much air as her lungs could take, her diaphragm stiffening underneath.

"Let. Me—

"Rainbow…"

That bubbly cry underneath the surface, it went on and on and on.

"Rainbow… Rainbow…"

Or maybe she was the one underwater.

"Wake up… Rainbow… please!"

"—GO!"

A dull thud and the disordered clinking of tablespoons spilling onto the floor (or they might've been forks) shook the numbness out of her. She sat bolt upright on the couch, gulping for air as if she'd been drowning in the bottom of the deepest lake. She speared disoriented glances around the living room, unable to explain to herself how she recognized the drapes, or the wooden kitchen table, or the overly varnished shelves. Or how she could've woken up on a couch with a familiar upholstery pattern when she had zonked out on some random cloud.

Casting her confused gaze down at the rug, she focused on the yellow pegasus splayed upon it. The long fringe of her pink mane flopped over the right side of her face when she stared up at her, hiding half a grimace and a tearful blue eye. A bunch of metal ornaments lay strewn on the floor near a little table that had been knocked upside down.

"Fluttershy? What…" Her head swung to painful degrees as she examined the place one last time. "What am I doing in your cottage?"

"Oh, Rainbow!" burst out the mare, her look of shock reverting to one of mild nervousness. "I'm so glad you're alright. When I saw you falling off that cloud, I just didn't know what to—"

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" The cyan pony hopped off the couch and helped the girl to her hooves. "You saw me falling off a cloud?"

Fluttershy set the table back onto its oaken legs and placed the ornaments on top one after another. "At first, I thought you were working on a new trick. But then I noticed your wings were still, and that your eyes were closed, and you kept falling… And with that flash of light… Oh, I just didn't know what to—"

The rainbow-maned pegasus raised both eyebrows in surprise. "Wait, you lost me again. What flash of light?"

"I don't know what it was." The yellow mare interrupted her current task and fixed her worried frown on her. "I've never seen anything like it. It was as if… as if a star had fallen from the sky. Thank Celestia I managed to bring you in before it crashed!"

"Before it crashed?" she repeated, her features scrunched up in a weird, sort of focused fashion. "Where exactly did it crash?"

The sparkly blue orbs drifting timidly toward the nearest window, she hurried to it and pressed her muzzle against the cool glass. Beyond the bridge traversing the little river, a short distance away from the boundary of the Everfree, spirals of green smoke reached out for the sky from a crater carved into the center of the field. A somewhat wide, misshapen ring of ashes had replaced the lush grasses encircling the impact spot. Some of the front pillars of the forest had caught on fire, too. She could discern the tops of the flames through the hazy screen. They would rise high and angry and feed until the wood and leaves burned to ashes, at which point they would cling to their next victim.

Rainbow Dash didn't waste a second. Before her pal could even think of warning her against it, she burst out through the door and took wing, disappearing behind the ascending billows of moonlit smoke. It didn't take her too long to return, but all the same long enough for Fluttershy to give up her wait for her and lock herself back inside the cottage. Pushing along a heavy cloud she had found despite the clearness of the night, she proceeded, in swift rounds, to empty its contents over the affected perimeter. The flames hissed in agony as the raindrops reduced them to harmless vapor. Soon, the only remnants of their suppressed uprising were a couple of charred trees and a small number of roasted grassland patches.

The weather pony then positioned the cloud above the crater for good measure. The yellow pegasus, who had by now mustered as much courage as to step outside her home, and cross the bridge (although she had done so with a reluctant, almost shuffling gait), stared on petrified, like somepony threatened with a sword to the neck. Rainbow Dash gave the fluffy container a light kick. Rainwater poured down instantly afterwards, eliciting a prolonged burp of an awful green gas from the hole, which was succeeded by short, foalish coughs.

"What the…?" She descended cautiously into the gaping wound in the ground as the other filly scuffed closer.

Fluttershy bent her head down over it, her eyes bluer than ever under the effect of beading tears. "It's… It's a little colt!"

The cyan mare looked down at the motionless form with a less effusive kind of dismay, her lower lip trapped beneath her teeth. He must've been seven or eight, nine at the most. His whitish gray coat highlighted the green of his mane, and his tail, she mused, was unusually long for a colt's. A specific feature (which wasn't quite his) stood out from the rest in all its silvery resplendence. And it made Dash's spine tingle. Somepony had swathed the little guy's chest and hooves in chains the same way those winged nutjobs had done to her in her dream.

"Hey, pal, you alright?" she muttered, shaking his frame lightly as her friend sat beside her and rested her quivering hoof on his forehead. "Come on! Wake up!"

"He's so cold!" interjected Fluttershy, almost in a gasp. "Poor thing! He must be terribly ill. We have to get him inside."

"Who did this to you?" pursued the other. "What happened?"

There was a whisper. A sigh. Then silence.

Both girls strained to wring another word from him, but without any luck. Rainbow Dash picked the child up, laid him on her back, and headed to the cottage behind the animal keeper. And while she straggled along, the coolness of the chains permeated her fur and bit her skin, and a part of her dwelt on the unsettling simplicity of what she assumed had been the colt's answer to her last question.

"I fell," he'd said.