Rainbow Dash screeches to a halt. The fluffy white powder that coats the path flies in all directions, momentarily blinding her. The sound of her heart beating ever faster pounds against her ears, and her eyes grow wide as dinner plates.
Alone in the Everfree, she stands stark still, staring straight into the darkness before her.
There’s no questioning it now. She definitely heard something. Heard it. An ominous creature looming just beyond the veil of darkness, waiting for her to waltz into its trap and become the first ever pegasus-kebob.
At first, the noise was quiet. Nothing more than a low thrum, muffled by the thick crystals of snow falling all around her. As soon as she wrote it off as a product of her overactive imagination, however, the volume of the noise picked up ever so slightly. It grew to a constant rumble, coming from all directions at once. The strange noise wrapped her up in it’s cold, numbing blanket. Despite its overbearing presence, the sound was barely audible, so she once again decided it had to be nothing.
This process repeated over and over for some time—much like a fly slamming into a window again and again, desperately groping for freedom just close enough to see but not to touch.
Then, just like that, the noise stopped. Now, moments afterward, there is nothing but Rainbow and the all-consuming silence. The world around her seems frozen. The snow on the ground and in the air insulate the forest, keeping everything perfectly quiet. That pervasive absence of sound compounds into a fierce roar deep within her ears. Combined with the constant thump thump thumping of her heart rattling about her chest, her head is reeling. She can hardly breathe.
Suddenly, she hears Twilight’s prancing hoofsteps crunching through the snow just behind her. She is roughly fifty feet back, Rainbow estimates. She doesn’t dare turn around to check, though. If she takes her sight off the wall of darkness in front of her—even for a moment—then the creature will slip away.
At roughly fifteen feet back, the sound of Twilight’s hooffalls cease. Rainbow can feel the other mare’s look boring through the back of Rainbow's head, questioning her.
“Uh, Rainbow? What’s wrong?”
“I heard something,” she whispers.
“Heard what?”
“Quiet down!” Rainbow whisper-shouts. “And I heard it. Something. I don’t know. All I know is that that thing is out there somewhere, watching us.”
Twilight lets out a snort, rolls her eyes, and closes the small distance still between them. “I think you’re going crazy. I don’t hear anything at all.”
Rainbow nods once, very slowly. Her eyes never leave the patch of shadows in front of them. “That’s the problem. This whole time I’ve been hearing this dumb growling sound. Then it suddenly stopped, just like that.”
Twilight cocks her head to the side, lips pursed. “Of course it’s going to be quiet out here, Rainbow. We’re in the forest at night during the dead of winter. All the animals are either hibernating or sleeping.”
With a sigh, Rainbow finally tears her gaze from the darkened path before them. Her head hangs low and a scowl worms its way onto her snow-coated snout.
“All but one,” she mumbles under her breath.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” Rainbow replies, turning her gaze to meet Twilight’s. “Are you sure you wanna go through with this, Twi? Can’t we do this some other time when it’s not, y’know, snowing?”
“I told you, we can’t,” Twilight says. “I already told you that the moonblossom is a night-blooming flower, and it only sprouts for one night every seventeen years. It always happens during the winter after the cicadas come to the surface, and this year the entomologists were able to calculate the exact day it would happen. Were you not paying attention when I was telling you all of this earlier?”
Rainbow’s scowl deepens further, if possible. “To be honest, no, I wasn’t paying attention. I was more concerned with convincing you to stop being an idiot and postpone this stupid trip. Seriously, why the hay would you ever go into the Everfree alone? At night? During a snowstorm? Without telling anypony?”
“I’ve been waiting for this day since I was just a little filly, Rainbow. I missed seeing the moonblossom once already, and I’m not going to miss it again. Besides, a little snow never hurt anypony.”
Rainbow stomps her hoof on the ground, though the action isn’t nearly as expressive when it’s muffled by the powder underhoof. “This is the Everfree Forest we’re talking about, Twilight! You know, the place where unimaginable horrors lurk at night? That ring any bells?”
“I knew that if I told you girls—” she stops to send another glare Rainbow’s way “—then you would try to convince me not to go. I figured it would be best to leave you all out of this.”
Sensing her imminent defeat, Rainbow decides to switch tactics. “Please, Twi? I promise I’ll come with you again in seventeen more years when they come back. Heck, I’ll even make you a map with all the flowers’ locations beforehand! You won’t even have to look for them!”
Twilight’s brow furrows and her nose crinkles, forming an adorable pout. “It’s not like anypony is forcing you to stay here with me, Dash. If you want to head back, then do us both a favor and head back already. You weren’t even supposed to catch me leaving town in the first place.”
“But I can’t just leave you out here alone. What if you get hurt… or worse?”
Twilight’s scowl slowly fades away, and the ghost of a smile takes its place. She leans into Rainbow and nuzzles her, burying her head in the crook of the other mare’s neck.
“I appreciate the gesture, Rainbow, but I’m not a helpless little filly. I’ve got magic and wings now. I’d like to think I could hold my own against anything the forest could throw at me.”
Rainbow grumbles unintelligibly under her breath, reluctantly returning the hug.
Just then, an icy breeze blows through the forest, whipping the snow falling from the sky into a frenzy. They both shiver simultaneously. Rainbow instinctively wraps her wing around Twilight and pulls her closer, trying to retain warmth.
“What creatures are you worried about anyway?” Twilight asks. “I’m pretty sure the two of us together could take on most anything.”
“I’unno,” Rainbow says with a shrug. “Like, but what if it’s something we’ve never seen before? What if it’s some sort of phantom or something, or even a demonic creature escapted from Tartarus? I know you’ve heard the stories they tell us as foals, Twilight. You know what I’m talking about.”
Twilight pulls away from Rainbow, looking her straight in the eyes. “Don’t tell me you buy into all that paranormal mumbo jumbo, Dash.”
“I mean, why not? I mean, who’s to say those… things don’t really exist?”
The left side of Twilight’s mouth curls upward, and she lets out a small huff of air. “I think the darkness is playing tricks on your mind, Dash. There is no noise, there are no paranormal creatures, and there is definitely not a… thing out there watching us.”
Rainbow shifts her weight from side to side, staring at the ground. “Just ’cause you can’t see it doesn’t mean that it’s not there.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t mean that it is either.”
Silence. Rainbow’s mouth opens and closes as she searches for something, anything to say, but there are no words. She clamps her mouth shut and stands there, mute.
Twilight gives Rainbow a once-over, donning the same worried look as earlier. “Honestly, there’s no way to know for sure, Rainbow. You’ll never know if there is a creature out there.”
Rainbow’s heart leaps into her throat. For some reason, that simple fact scares her even more than any monster ever could.
“All right, let’s go get this over with. All your superstitious nonsense is giving me goosebumps, and I really don’t want to be out here in the cold any longer than I have to be.” She takes a few steps forward before turning her head around to look back at the pegasus. “Oh, and Dash? This time, try to stay with me instead of scouting ahead for your silly little monsters.”
At that, Twilight spins around again and heads down the path. It isn’t until her silhouette has been completely devoured by the darkness that it hits Rainbow Dash.
The sound of her heart beating pounds against her ears like the drumbeat to her own death march. She shivers once more, though this time it isn’t because of the cold.
Alone in the Everfree, she stands stark still, staring straight into the darkness before her.
This time, the darkness stares back.
