“Alchemy… Alchemy… Aha!”

Rainbow Dash came to a skidding stop as she located the building she was looking for. The home of Dark Sword’s friend, Goldshine, which also served as the only Alchemy shop in the entire town. The shop was nestled between two other buildings, looking as though it had almost been added as an afterthought. The tight space left no room for an alley between the buildings, and revealed to Rainbow that there was really only one way in: the front door.

Rainbow Dash was wary however, as the front door seemed to be missing entirely. Her left hand hovering over her weapon, she cautiously stepped forwards and peeked through the only window on the front of the house. Upon seeing inside, her heart sank.

“No no no!” she cried out, horror plastered to her face as she ran to the empty doorway and hopped inside.

The room beyond was a total mess. Everywhere she looked she saw broken tables and smashed pots, piles of wrecked plants and ruined potion ingredients. The back of the room had a counter which extended from the wall, but it too had been totally smashed in. The cabinets beneath it had been ransacked, their contents spilled onto the floor and trampled.

“Argh! Dammit!” Rainbow pounded her right hand against the wall behind her before stomping her way deeper into the front room. “There goes this idea...”

Rainbow knew that it had been a long shot from the get-go, but it was the best plan she had. She had hoped that finding Goldshine’s home might reveal some clues to help her figure out any part of this. If Twilight had been forced into the game like she had been, then… What did that mean, exactly?

Standing in the center of the room, Rainbow huffed and crossed her arms over her chest, her gauntlets clinking against her armor. She mentally went over each piece of the puzzle that she had.

First off, it was quite apparent now that she really was Dark Sword. Somehow, when she entered the game, her mind had synced up with her character’s mind, granting her access to Dark Sword’s talent and abilities. It didn’t really make sense, but either way, she couldn’t deny that it had happened.

Next, she knew that Twilight had more likely than not been forced into the game as well. What that portended though, she hadn’t the foggiest. Twilight had been the game master, not a player, so there would be no character for her mind to sync with. What, then, would happen to her? Was it possible that she might have been synced with an NPC that was close to the storyline?

Lastly, there was the situation with Goldshine. Disregarding the fact that she may in fact be Twilight, she was Dark Sword’s only friend and ally in this horrible town, and she had been taken captive by some gang of underhanded bullies and thieves. Being held in the temporary holding cells of the town prison implied that this gang had power over the guards as well, and who knows how far that influence could reach…

Rainbow Dash put her hands on her face and sighed. She knew what the best course of action was. There was really only one option before her.

I have to rescue Goldshine… Twilight or not, I can’t let her stay there.

She had just turned to leave when a sound echoed out from deeper in the building. One of her ears twitched in its direction, trying to suss out what it was. The sound itself had the consistency of a hoofstep…

Rainbow held her breath and cautiously made her way over to the back wall, though in all honesty her metal armor clanking about didn’t make her very stealthy. Next to one end of the broken cabinet was a doorway which entered into Goldshine’s personal home in the back of the building. The door had been shattered, leaving only it’s top half dangling pathetically on a single bent hinge. The rest of the door was in multiple pieces and spread about the floor of the room beyond.

Her eyes scanned the mess; this room had also seemingly been ransacked. The debris littering the place was less like alchemy though, and was more akin to personal affects. A table with broken cutlery and plates had been smashed downwards, splitting in the center. A bookshelf had been thrown to the ground beside it, lopsided as it was resting on a pile of battered books. With most of their spines broken and their pages torn out, it almost looked like someone had been searching through them.

Rainbow turned and looked to the other side of the room and gasped. There on the other wall was a massive, circular scorch mark at about arm’s height. In the center was a blackened hole which penetrated straight through and entered the room beyond. Glancing through the hole itself revealed the next room over to be Goldshine’s bedroom. Rainbow rubbed a hand over the scorch mark but, despite that, none of the burn had smeared onto her gauntlet.

She stepped away, her hand lightly dragging along the wall. As she looked about the rest of the room, she came to a conclusion: the burn in the wall had happened some time ago, probably a few weeks by Rainbow’s estimate, yet the rest of the destruction was entirely recent. Also, she was once again astounded by just how much her own perceptics had altered by having taken Dark Sword’s mind in this world. After all, the old her would never have figured out all that about the destruction; that was clearly another bit of Dark Sword making its way into her thoughts.

She decided to put it to the test and walked into Goldshine’s bedroom, the condition of the room nearly matching that of the previous ones. Taking a moment, she made an active decision: I’m going to look around this room and see what I can find.

It was like magic. Whereas before her ability to observe the wrecked rooms was minimal yet noticeable, it was now ten times that. Her eyes zoomed about the room, taking in the conditions of items and the way in which things were broken. A mental checklist was being made of everything she was learning; broken lamp, smashed upon the wall before falling to the floor; broken bedpost, dented by a durable object on one side, snapped clean off at its base; history book, ripped in half by somepony grabbing both covers and tearing in opposite directions, sending pages flying.

Rainbow’s mind reeled as it went through the data. To some degree it was disorienting and made her feel slightly nauseous, but at the same time she couldn’t act on the feeling. Her body was too busy inspecting everything for her to stop and puke. Her hooves carried her from piece to piece, her hands maneuvered objects and her eyes scanned over them, learning everything they could.

At last, after a few minutes of looking, it was done. She mentally felt off center, but physically there was no such thing. She screwed up her eyes for a moment and mentally forced herself out of the feeling before taking a deep breath.

“Okay… What the hell was that?” Her question was mostly rhetorical. Rainbow Dash already had a pretty good idea what that was…

In roleplaying with Twilight, she had learned that you needed to declare your actions. If she wanted Dark Sword to get in position and prepare to fight back, she had to say this to Twilight. If she wanted Dark Sword to look around a room, Twilight needed to be told. At these times, Rainbow Dash would then roll a die and use her characters pre-existing skills to determine how well she did at that particular thing, thus presenting the possibility of either getting lucky and succeeding, or failing completely.

Rainbow Dash figured that what she had just done was declare her intention to do an action, in this case ‘Search Goldshine’s bedroom’, and then she must have somehow done so. Granted, she didn’t roll a die to see how well she did, so she wasn’t certain of that, but… How many other possibilities were there?

Oh god…, she thought, one hand on her hip and the other on her face. I’m still playing by the games rules…

She didn’t have long to think on that however. Suddenly the result of her search was at the forefront of her mind. Something was odd about it, as though there was something in her search that she had found but… didn’t quite connect the dots about in her head. Taking the time to think about it, she quickly realized what it was that she had missed.

Dashing over to the broken dresser against the wall opposite the doorway, she found her efforts instantly rewarded. There, sitting inside under some broken drawers, was a purple die. She dug down and shifted through the broken wooden frame and retrieved the object, holding it inbetween her thumb and forefinger. Rainbow’s face went blank as she looked at it, taking in all four of its numbered sides. She’d seen it before.

“This is Twilight’s…” she said, her voice breathless. A small smile formed on her lips, but it died quickly; this was also not good news. For one thing, she was certain this was Twilight’s die. She had seen all of her dice back in the library’s kitchen, and they were all themed; a dark purple color with white inlaid numbers on each facet. Trouble is, when she had been sucked into the game by the book, Twilight’s dice had not been present on the table.

They must have been sucked in with her! And one of them is here, in Goldshine’s house! Goldshine really must be Twilight!

Rainbow clenched the four sided die in her hand. Goldshine was Twilight, and Goldshine had been taken… Rainbow had work to do!

Pocketing the die in her backpack, she turned to leave the bedroom when one last thought poked its way forward. Rainbow had been wearing clothes in the real world when she got sucked into the game… yet she wasn’t wearing them here. She had been placed in Dark Sword’s armor, and was equipped with Dark Sword’s items. If Twilight had come in here and taken Goldshine’s place, then why did she still have her dice…? Would they not have disappeared like Rainbow’s clothes had, only for her to then take the place of Goldshine?

A worried frown crept onto her lips, her eyebrows knitting together wearily. That would imply Twilight wasn’t Goldshine, but if that was the case… and this building had been practically destroyed… then where was she?

Rainbow’s thought process was skewered to bits as she suddenly heard somepony talking in hushed tones back in the front room. That’s right! I only came back here because I heard somepony moving… How’d they sneak past me?

She decided that this time she’d have her weapon fully drawn and removed it as slowly as she could. With it at the ready she took a step, only to stop as the realization of just how loud she was came to mind.

“Hmm…” Thinking briefly, she decided to try something. I’m going to sneak as quietly as I can into the front room without disturbing whoever’s in there.

If it wasn’t for the fact that she was now being extremely quiet, she would have let out a startled ‘Whoa!’ as her body began moving forwards, much quieter than it had before. She was still wearing armor of course, so she wasn’t exactly stealthy, but it was deadened to a point where it wasn’t easy to hear. Without making much noise at all, she wound up at the broken door that led back out into the front room, where the shop had been.

Glancing around the doorframe, she spotted the source of the earlier voice. A blue pegasus stallion, wearing a badly sewn brown tunic, was rummaging through the broken tables and pocketing plants and bits of alchemical supplies and reagents. He kept whispering to himself, repeating a mantra of what it was he was looking for over and over again.

I’m gonna inspect him from afar.

He didn’t appear to have any weapons, and the only item of significance that he owned was a wellmade rucksack. In it he was storing all of the items that he was looting, and he was careful to keep it from snagging on broken, sharp panels and pieces of furniture. His eyes were bloodshot and his face had worry lines, giving him a stressed appearance. One of his wings had four ruffled feathers, and the other-

Okay, enough! Enough! That’s good… Jeez. I’m gonna have to be more specific in my decisions…

She thought about it a moment and decided to lower her weapon. She didn’t sheathe it though; this pegasus was looting her friends business afterall. Stepping out around the frame and purposefully crunching a pot into further broken shards, she made her presence known to the looter.

“Gah!” he shouted, spinning about and holding his shaky hands before him in an amateur boxing stance. Gradually he began stepping backwards, away from Rainbow Dash. “I-I’m sorry, just, p-please, this isn’t what it looks like! I swear, I just- Oof!”

Rainbow smirked as the poor pony tripped on a broken table leg that rolled out from under his hoof, causing him to fall onto his back. There was a loud crunch as his body further destroyed the already ruined detritus.

“Okay then, Klutz. Tell me what this ‘looks like’ and then I’ll be the judge.”

Grunting in pain, he slowly pushed himself off the broken table beneath him. “Ow… Eergh… I… I’m sorry, I swear to you, I’m not the one who destroyed this shop…”

Rainbow deadpanned. “No, it looks like you’re a looter taking advantage of somepony elses ruin.”

“O-oh… Well, uh…” His eyes glanced about, his mouth making a shaky grin. His hands wrung tight around the flap of the rucksack he was holding. “I guess, I mean, what I want to say is- Er, uh… Yeah, that’s technically true. But –” he cried out, dropping the rucksack and throwing his palms forward in a servile manner “– I’m only taking the ingredients to make a particular tonic!”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow, though her sword lowered a tad more. “A tonic?”

The pony frantically nodded his head. “Yes, yes, that’s all! I swear! I had actually come here yesterday hoping to take one, but… But, I couldn’t. When I arrived, there was somepony else already here. They were angry, yelling and screaming… They destroyed the place! Tore apart shelves and smashed tables! I was so scared, I just… I ran away.”

“But you still needed the tonic.”

“Exactly,” he said, relaxing slightly. “I had to come back.”

Thinking about it, Rainbow sheathed her sword fully before taking up a less hostile stance, her arms casually crossed in front of her. “What do you need the tonic for, anyways?”

“Well, it’s my little filly… She’s sick.”

“What with?”

“Uh… Er… H-horsentery…” he mumbled, abashedly looking down.

Rainbow blinked in surprise. “Horsentery?”

“You mean, you don’t know…? Uh, well, you see… When she has to go to the bathroom, it, uh-”

“Agh! No, gross dude!” Rainbow cried out, her face in a grimace. “Look I know what it is, it just- Ew, no. I was just surprised to hear that horsentery exists here.”

It was the stallion's turn to be confused. “What- ‘Here’? What do you mean, ‘here’?”

“You know, this made up world. It’s not Equestria, so… I just thought... that… Uh…” She trailed off as she saw his expression. “Um… N-nevermind. Ignore that. Just... Just take the ingredients you need for your tonic and nothing else.”

“Uh… Of course, I mean, that’s all I was here for in the first place.” He quickly dropped back to his knees and continued searching for the supplies he needed for his tonic, occasionally stealing furtive glances over in Rainbow’s direction.

Rainbow stood still for a minute, thinking over what she had just learned. There was something that didn’t make sense… Something that didn’t quite add up with the rest of what she knew. Her eyes wandered the room a bit as she thought, revealing more and more to her about just how thorough the destruction had been.

“Hmm… You said you were here when all this” – she idly waved a hoof around the room – “was happening?”

The stallion stopped rummaging through a broken pot and looked up at her from the corner of his eye. “Uh, yeah…”

“Well?” she encouraged, her arms once again crossed over her chest. “Who was it?”

“Well I… I don’t actually know,” he admitted, a sheepish and apologetic smile stretching his lips.

“Hmm… Well, did you at least see what the pony looked like?”

“Well, that’s the thing… It wasn’t a pony…” He shrunk down a bit and gripped his rucksack a little tighter, a nervous tension causing his shoulders to shiver. His eyes got a faraway look as he seemingly recalled what he had seen the previous day.

Rainbow, however, wasn’t amused. “What do you mean, it ‘wasn’t a pony’? What was it then? A gryphon? I can’t see why you’d be so scared of a-”

“It was a monster!” he cried out, cutting Rainbow off. She instinctively twitched backwards a bit, surprised by his outburst. “It was black as night, without fur! It stood on two legs, like a pony, but it wasn’t one! It had no fur and yet there on its back were two massive, black wings like a pegasus! There on its head was a massive horn, like a unicorn, but it wasn’t one! It wasn’t a pony! When it cried out in anger, its voice was bestial and full of rage! It-! It-!"

“Enough!” Rainbow cried out, more to calm the frantic pony than anything else. He had started hugging himself tightly and digging his fingernails into his arms.

Jeez, reacting like this just by remembering it…? It’s no wonder he ran away. I’m surprised he came back here at all…

“Listen, you need to get your tonic and get out of here. I don’t know what that thing was, but it’s gone now. That doesn’t mean it won’t come back though, so for your sake you should get out of here quick.”

The pony simply nodded, the only response he could seemingly give.

“You know, one thing bothers me… You were in the back room when I first entered the shop, right?”

His head jerked sideways slightly to look in her direction. “Uh… N-no…”

“Uh, no, you were. I heard you back there. That’s why I went looking around back there in the first place, and then you somehow snuck past me.”

The pony’s eyebrows were creased as he looked at her fully, his hands loosening a bit from his biceps. “No… No I wasn’t… I came in here and then you came in from the back…”

Rainbow’s eyes widened. She suddenly felt like she was being watched. Spinning around and drawing her weapon as quick as she could, she faced the door leading to Goldshine’s living space. She stared into the back room, an uneasy chill crawling down her spine. I know I heard something back there before… If not him, then who…?

With a gasp, her mind decided to remind her of what she had just learned.

No. Not who... What.

A few tense moments went by before she realized that there was no sound at all. Even the stallion behind her had frozen in place, waiting for something to happen. He didn’t even dare breathe. Rainbow let out a breath, turning sideways slightly to talk to him again, yet keeping an eye on the back room.

“You should leave. Finish gathering your supplies and get out.” Her voice wasn’t angry.

The sound of him scrambling to finish reached her ears. She slightly lowered her weapon and put the tip back in it’s sheath. Giving one last solid glance to the back room, she slid it all the way until it clicked into place.

“I have to go. Don’t stay here long,” she said, not even looking at him. She had stepped across the room and was at the front door.

“... You knew her, didn’t you?”

Rainbow froze in place, one hand against the doorframe. “Yeah.”

“I’m really sorry… She was a great pony… One of the only kind folks in this entire blasted town…” A scraping sound reached Rainbow’s ears as he pushed himself off the floorboards. “She didn’t deserve what happened to her.”

Rainbow blinked. This sounded like something more than just imprisonment. She turned her head and threw her gaze over her shoulder. “What are you talking about? What happened?”

He looked at her as though she had two heads. “Wait, you mean… You don’t know?”

Rainbow’s teeth grit together. “Know what? What happened to her?”

“She, uh… Well, they say she went insane. When the guards were dragging her out of the place, she kept screaming something over and over, as though she was trying to talk to somepony who wasn’t listening. It was always the same thing.”

Rainbow’s grip tightened, cracking a part of the already damaged door frame. “What was it…?” Part of her didn’t want to know. Twilight was missing? Some kind of monster or a demon had destroyed Goldshine’s shop? Goldshine apparently had lost her mind? This was just getting worse by the minute…

“It’s kind of hard to remember, but… It was something along the lines of ‘knowledge of the game’. There was something else after that, but I don’t recall what it was… I’m sorry.”

... Oh no…

“I have to go!” Rainbow leapt out of the building and unfurled her wings, forcing herself into the open air. With a few strong flaps, she had already risen up past the roofs of the nearby buildings.

I need to find Twilight, now!

Author's Note

Extra credit for you readers! The first one of you to tell me which episode of MLP has the word ‘horsentery’ in it, and also where it is SAID in the episode, will win a prize.

That prize? Ask me anything about the fic and I will answer it, truthfully. Most likely not detailed, but I will answer nonetheless. Example: “Vertorm! Vertorm! Will there be AppleDash in this fic!?” My answer? “Get out.”

Just kidding. I love AppleDash.