The Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Mare

One misstep ground bone against bone, deep, gross and needling. Rainbow Dash cursed quietly and hobbled along.

"Fuckin'... why don't you spit in my mouth while you're at it, huh?" she grumbled, eyes turned upward to the overcast canopy. Wispy trees and their beards of leaves brushed the sky from all sides.

So quiet. So peaceful. Just right for her tastes. Water on cracked lips, anyways.

She set her eyes back on the road. It spilled down the hill into a crowded courtyard. Her odd hobble made the descent into the lake of bodies slower than she would have liked.

Her leg throbbed. The metal cage around her shin clanked with each step. Not enough time together to tune it out quite yet, but the cage was not taken for granted. The bars firmly affixed themselves to the straps below and above her shin. Instead of an airy blue like the rest of her body, white wrappings overtook her leg. A spatter of red ringed the middle of the cast.

Once more, Rainbow cursed to herself. Her haste must have aggravated the wound. No matter. She’d seen her flesh sheared to the bone after worse wipeouts and hadn’t thought twice about them. The pain took a lot of the sickening edge off, she admitted to herself.

Much the same, her tangent into the subject of injury delayed acknowledgement of her situation. Upon closer inspection, the crowds of ponies — unicorns — toted around swollen, obese saddlebags and conversed with little discrepancy in volume of address. Indeed, their voices remained somewhat hushed and respectful. Nothing like the fellows Dash would call her people. Not at all.

“Cuh-reepy,” she muttered. Dash’s skull allowed passage to the notion that this was not actually an abnormal occurrence. Rather, the idea that a group of ponies so subdued, so two-faced, could be this large… in a word, that put her on edge.

So much like they were at battle. No pegasi hid things from each other unless they were foe. No Cloudsdalian, anyways.

The one-two of discomfort rounded off with her solitary pinions. Not one to be so meek, Dash held her head high when the first stragglers of the horny bunch took notice of her. They turned their heads initially, but her nature prompted them to turn away and side-eye this alien. Her body thrust upon her a choice: to gulp or to choke on it. Her throat tensed, and she hastened her step. Their ocular prods nudged her rump and ribs and wings, traitorous wings that fluttered from the tension.

Rainbow bit her lip and focused on the stone trail under her hooves. A dear friend had spoken to her once, and those words came to mind.

The nobles… don’t hold pegasi in very high esteem, I’m sorry to say. They, I — we still have our preconceptions of your kind, Dash. Layabouts, cowards, flexible, durable, tireless, lithe…

The nobility are especially fond of your wings. I’ve done some thinking… and I get the feeling that the envy from being so close to alicorns makes them crave those beautiful wings of yours. So worthless, so unnecessary, and yet… so delectable.

They hold earth ponies in esteem. They can’t replicate the work they do for Equestria, and their tenacity and loyalty is hard to deny. Pegasi, they say, were put on this planet by the Great Traversera for the indulgence of other races. They say that… that what you do for our Equestria is purely for our decadence.

A teacher of mine said this once: “Pegasi sweep, with their wings, the shadows and webs along the pearly road the rest of us follow into our destinies, so that we may feel content with our supremacy and ignore all else in our land. Princess Celestia’s stature points to an inner strength, her horn to otherwordly insight. And her wings…

Point to delusion.”

Rainbow brushed shoulders with someone.

A small, brief contact, yet her heart clenched. A pulse of magical aura against her rump propelled her a few inches away from the mare with whom she made that illicit contact. Rainbow peeked behind herself at the mare, and saw an upturned muzzle. The mare shut the eye that she faced Rainbow with, or perhaps both. With another second gone, Rainbow remained, watching for a sign of life from the mare. She cracked her eye open, then shooed the pegasus away with her hoof.

A colt, a dweeb of a character whom few would entrust their lunch pail to, puffed his shoulders out when Rainbow ducked low and dared to step in his direction. The pegasus noticed the shift at once and jerked her shoulder the other way. He raised a leg, a stiff and jerky gesture to present his extended hoof, and then he glanced behind himself. His bravado collapsed at that moment, and he himself moved away from the pegasus, whose hobble only put four or five meters between them. Upon a round of snickering from his peers, he buried his face in his hooves.

Should historians wonder, this bright minded unicorn couldn’t fight his own battle against a crippled pegasus who barely knew he existed.

The bright, careening eyesore then entered the presence of two great mares. Joined at the hip, as they themselves would assert. The shorter bore a filigree tiara about her horn, and the mane upon her head flowed as an exquisite banner fit to make a princess feel envy. To her left, the significant other enjoyed a strong set of legs and sinewy, slim build. Jewels of the body abounded upon the mare, especially her ears, for her body itself was a piece of art.

The two made sport of outnumbered prey, baring the fangs of weighty inheritance and exquisite tutelage. These best of friends did not partake in knives, did not even prepare their stews with them. Rather, their white, youthful teeth rent the flesh of their victims asunder, for teeth hardly sufficed in games of deceit, where their bond relied on complete trust. The day they would feast upon one another still remained inevitable.

The lowly pegasus kicked up dirt behind their backs, and they paid little mind at the time. Only upon admiring one another more closely would they discover the calamitous crime Rainbow committed unto their persons, and with the discovery, their next victim would not know the pleasure of their company before the main course.

Rainbow soon realized a silver lining in this cowing cloud of piercing observation: she was beneath them. A low-hanging fruit, a greasy treat only an obese colt would partake. To do something so basal in company so esteemed could fell the tallest of the student body. Already had her jaunt forced one of them to scramble for his dignity.

She shook her head. The impressive arch which granted passage to the bowels of the school stood only a few moments away. Perhaps with an end in sight, she could regain her composure, deflated with a prick only a few moments ago. The pegasus stood audacious when she played on her terms. This alien world robbed her of the pedestal beneath her hooves, but it couldn't rob any worthy pegasus of their faith in direction.

The huge door creaked open. Clearly designed for magic use, it forced Rainbow to heave with her shoulder and all the weight her three legs could spare.

Immediately she noticed a gaggle of unicorns speaking in Hush in the corner. None had taken notice of the labored entry or the even more labored pegasus leaning against the doorway. Rainbow cursed under her breath; the jinxes and tonics meant to ease her pain and hasten her healing had robbed her of more strength than she knew. Even if she huffed and puffed from such a feat, it usually took her only seconds to recover herself. Now, however, a good couple of minutes went by until she felt well enough to shuffle along once more.

Despite her pride, the pegasus looked up to the signage attached to the ceiling. A clear, likely glass, substance comprised the directions above each wide hall branching from the lobby, inlaid with gold letters. The one front and center read “BlueBlood Academy Theatre”.

'Gag,' she thought to herself. Not one to make such an emote among this company while in her state, Dash entertained a series of derisive thoughts upon that name as she shuffled to the lieu of ‘Administrative Offices’. As far as her limited knowledge of her quarry went, this mare could be easily sought where many books reside. The pegasus concluded the head office would likely yield the mysterious mare.

Many years ago, young Rainbow Dash lived under the assumption that large volumes of books were only to be found in the possession of unicorns. No pegasus would have the desire nor means to haul libraries of information on their impulsive impulse across the land. Nay, she came to realize. Her inevitable foray into the principal's office around the second grade quashed the preconception. Only later, whence she came upon the offices of the esteemed Wonderbolts, a branch of a branch of the greater Equestrian military, did the notion completely turn upon itself into a jocular quasar doomed to flush down into the black pits of vacuous misinformation. She felt quite silly, in other words. No decent military would forego good bookkeeping.

The thought flared and concluded in less than two seconds, and when it did so, the pegasus experienced another chill. Militaire…

What sort of pony was she looking for? Though her trusted alicorn friend would hardly keep bad company, this place did not have an air of friendliness. Was this what her alicorn friend lived by, day in and day out, before her destined departure to Ponyville? No wonder she left that life behind. A more brightly lit segment crept into sight when the hall exceeded a reasonable length in the pegasus’s opinion. On either side bunked ritzy marble counters where a unicorn stationed each, dressed with enough snap to ruin an industrial crane.

She approached the handsome colt on instinct, turning from the older mare. He raised a brow, but Rainbow kept her cool.

"How may I help you, ma'am?"

"To the point. I'm fine with that," Dash said, looking into his eyes. The corner of his eye twitched slightly. “I’m guessing you think this’ll be short, huh? I don’t have any business here?”

He shuffled something on the counter. “Not at all, ma’am. We at the Blueblood Academy are eager to welcome all kinds of creatures, and we respect all kinds of contributions to our reputable pool of resources gathered from the young, open minds who have walked in and out of these doors.”

Bits. Dash shrugged. “Well, that surely is inspiring.” She propped onto the desk and tapped it twice with her the hoof of her injured leg. The colt winced at the sight of the blood. “Look, I’m looking for a pony named Moondancer. I know you got doodles to draw and whatnot. I get it, really. But,” Dash said, tapping the desk again, "this is kinda urgent. I’m sure you turned away at least twenty of Celestia’s nephews and at least ten of her children, so I won’t pull that card. Just tell her that ‘Twilight sent me.’”

The name elicited the smallest of gasps. He eyed her once more, nodding to himself. “I see. I’d honor this request, but I’m afraid no one has a tab on her location at the moment. The paperwork has gone cattywampus in the headmaster’s office since she vanished a day or so ago, and none have come forth with any sort of tips.”

“Fuckin’...” Dash mumbled. She rubbed her chin for show, then looked back up to the colt. “How about you let me have a look? Promise I won’t touch anything if it looks expensive or important or whatever. Can’t promise my leg won’t snap in half again and I make your library into dominoes, though.”

The colt put his hoof to his mouth and hummed. His eyes stroked her rainbow mane a few times, then her wings in a detached manner. She certainly preferred it that way. “I suppose I should have faith in you, ma’am. It’s not like a hero needs study to make miracles happen. Though…” he murmured, “I suppose I should tell you of Ms. Moondancer. She’s quite reclusive, though certainly good company. She tends to be distressed if she’s subject to company that goes beyond mere business, and she happens to have a knack for her disappearing acts.”

Rainbow shrugged, then turned back the way she came. She spared a glance over her shoulder to the colt. “Thanks, pal. I’ll find her. No sweat.” Her colorful tail flicked in his direction. “You got a good head on your shoulders.”

He returned a small smile as she hobbled off. The older mare opposite of him cocked a brow, though he simply went back to reading the next missive on his desk without acknowledging her, just like usual.

The mind of Rainbow wandered once more, heading down the overly long corridor. Why would a pony her alicorn friend set straight seek solitude as much as the colt made it sound? Was there a friendship problem to be found here? With no need to, Rainbow let her excited snickering go unsilenced. It may not have been as earthshaking as ‘a moon witch turning a slew of villages into a demonic army every full moon’, but it was a task only she was in a position to complete.

The atrium came and went, and the pegasus made her way up a merciful set of plush stairs to the ‘Cultural Library’. It came as little surprise that the libraries each dedicated themselves to rather narrow fields without diminishing in volume, as her quick peeks into the previous three demonstrated. Her motives were twofold for choosing this as her first destination: a desire of insight onto the unicorns at the school, and the assumption that this Moondancer was much like her alicorn friend, who found her fresh rabbit holes away from more practical trains of thought. To wit, the thoughts sounded more like: “Maybe I can see what’s up with these stuffy, creepy hornheads, and maybe this pony is studying what Twi was studying last time I actually paid attention.”

To her misfortune, Rainbow felt her eyelids droop the moment she set hoof into the spacious chamber. Indeed, the platinum frames and ornaments dotting the library and the curious motes of dust catching the sunset pouring into the room provided a stimulating view, but the sheer emptiness could not escape the most sensitive pinions on her wings. The lack of disturbance itched her wings greatly, yet at the same time sapped her of sensation. Either the assignments of the day happened to pertain mostly to science, or few unicorns at the school found reason to seek cultural knowledge. ‘Why research the only culture that matters if you live it every day?’ Rainbow mused. She certainly couldn’t deny holding such a sentiment once.

Rainbow Dash clamoured to the bedside before anyone else. Push, shove; all fair game. The sight of Applejack as a literal mummy tore a pit into her stomach, a stone punching through the floorboards. Specks of blood barely seeped through the layers of bandages across her chest and forelegs, so she assumed them to be fresh. Her friend’s chest rose and fell almost too gently for her eye to detect, and the expression etched onto her bruised and cut-up face grated with the… the peace, the serenity. Her heart quickened.

“A-Applejack! Say something!” Rainbow leaned closer and reached out to the still mare’s cheek, but a mist of light blue seized her foreleg a mere instant just before contact.

She growled and whipped to the right, where her good unicorn friend matched her hate-filled expression with a startling ice in her light blue eyes. The pegasus swallowed when the austere cold didn’t fade, but rather grew.

“Let go of me, Rarity.”

“She’s injured, Rainbow Dash. Even if she’s unconscious, she can still feel pain.”

Dash tore her foreleg free from the magic, and Rarity staggered back from the brute force that broke her hold. “She-she’s right here, damn it! I can’t just… I can’t…” Though she reached once more, some inkling between her eyes stopped her. Not Rarity. Perhaps that stare drove an ice sickleinto her mind, telling her to desist.

She shuddered, but before the image could creep back to mind, a warm hold embraced her shoulders. “Oh, I know how you feel, dear. I truly feel helpless too, but we shan’t be selfish. Applejack is a strong mare, and her strength will pull her through.”

The stiff pegasus relaxed upon snuggling the velvet in Rarity’s voice. “She’s the toughest bitch I’ve ever met, Rares. I wonder sometimes if it’s even real, what she can get away with.”

Rarity tittered into Rainbow’s ear. The pegasus defrosted even more. “Not many earth ponies can say they stalled an entire house caught in a landslide long enough for the family to evacuate, for one. Far fewer can say they did it by themselves.”

Could that be put into words? What she felt then? Countless books hung from the branches, well in her reach. Despite her hunger, Dash shuffled onward past shelves and shelves of knowledge. Could what it meant to be an Equestrian be summarized by the words in this library?

Normally, the pegasus paid little thought to most of the books her alicorn friend had a taste for. The life, the work, the faces in all those pages never appeared real to Rainbow Dash. In a sense, the past was far from real in her eye. An act of heroism yesterday became a bullet point tomorrow, yet one act of villainy become a persistent stain for a long, long time. Why accept such a backwards concept as reality? Her mind stored information much like the world at large. Could anyone argue that to be wrong way to live?

Were all the dead and bygone authors peering at her from all angles judging her for it?

Promptly, Dash slapped her own cheek. The thoughts had their way with her again, spat and soiled her face, and she could hardly tell where she had come from. Turning back, she saw one of the labyrinthine angles she observed from above. A quick trot back to the turn revealed a branching path, and this time she couldn’t be certain where she came from. Her useless wings twitched by her sides.

Certainly, Moondancer would have an easy time hiding here! Dealing with unicorns, they relied on tricks rather than reflex and speed to avoid pursuit. Any party had deception at their disposal, the wild card in every aspect of living. Did the mare hide with a simple trick and clever deception, or did she use a cheap, reality-bending hex to cover her trail? Her alicorn friend certainly would keep company capable of commanding conjurations of that caliber.

The sun dimmed further. One by one, torches along the rails and walls flickered to life, doing away with all shadow in the room and blanketing it in a less sheer, more inviting light. Rainbow plopped on her behind and furrowed her brow with the sudden development. Perhaps this Moondancer was so clever as to account for the movement of light during the day, and her guise considered it and covered itself up, or perhaps she was less clever, and her ruse only abused the artificial light come nighttime whence its weakness exposed itself during a certain time of day.

Either way, the task became more difficult.

Difficult…

“So, uh, why did I catch you snooping around the dump at night, Twilight?” Rainbow asked the alicorn, who hunched over the sack of pilfered refuse as if it were a cub only a mother could love.

The little dragon by Rainbow’s side answered first. “She’s trying to figure out this one spell again. That spell.” He shuddered.

A crumpled can coldcocked his cranium to his mere acrimony.

“I have a good feeling this time, Spike! I know I’m onto something now, I just know it!” She hugged her sack tighter.

With a bit of eagerness, Rainbow did her rightful duty and kicked the can out of sight. “What spell, exactly? ‘One mare’s trash’?”

The alicorn’s frown deepened when Spike stomped forth slapped the sack like a baby’s bottom. “She’s trying that stupid pocket dimension spell again! Did you know she didn’t sleep for three days practicing it once, and decided ‘Hey! Let’s throw allof Spike’s stash into this magic hellhole and see what happens!’”

“I already made it up to you, Spike! Can we just ‘bucking’ let it go!” Twilight turned away with her precious. “It’s the one spell I’ve never even begun to use in the most fundamental level, Rainbow. My pride as a student of magic depends on me figuring this one out!”

The pegasus hummed as the two siblings carried on their argument, oblivious to her existence once more. A spell Twilight could never cast?

She growled. Her tail flicked with nerves. “Just fuckin’ great, Dash. You don’t even know what’s possible or not with magic, and you think you can hunt a unicorn genius?” Lead weights clamped to her eyelids. In a short moment, the ceiling above shimmered as a pond in a swamp.

A mighty yawn. Certainly a rarity, she found the call of sleep reaching her ears well before midnight, if it all some nights. Rainbow sniffed, recalling her other pegasus friend and Rarity hounding her about ‘getting enough sleep’. Athletes don’t stop just because their muscles scream at them; couldn’t they understand? Whatever ethereal creature responsible for sleep — a cat, perhaps — pawed at her throat, her ears and her belly. She need to sleep. Nay, she would be driven mad denied any longer.

A simple pegasus trick; Rainbow stomped her good hoof into the plush carpet, a touch of magic cupped in it. Electricity crackled, and upon pulling her hoof from the carpet, three little swirls of wind sliced at the fibers, filling the vacuum her hoof created. She repeated it until a patch about her size was no more, and brushed the sheared carpet with her wing into a pile. Too dizzy for much more thought, she knocked some nearby books from their shelves, and took the ones that popped open and pushed them in a formation around the fiber, a bowl. Thus, Dash made a pillow and promptly collapsed into it, face first.

***

Waking to a mare one has never met staring one dead in the eye was an experience Dash had dealt with only once, whence her first night spent in her ‘quiet’ little town. Though that pink perpetrator wound up a lifelong friend, she still didn’t care for the experience on principle. The lurch in her chest upon parsing the purple irises scanning her face and the disgusting grubs for eyebrows displaying clear judgmentality went ignored by the rest of her body.

“Why are you looking for me?” the mare said to her.

Rainbow blinked a few times, the shock having passed. The way this pony pursed her lips, narrowed those brows, put Dash on edge. Thus, she retorted, “That’s not a very nice way to say ‘good morning'.”

A moan of annoyance, then the mare turned away from her, stomping her hooves into the carpet and muttering to herself. Dash sat upright, though a stray weight inside her head nearly tipped her balance, and she had to brace herself with the opposite hoof; the good one, mercifully. The room about her was still dim in the night, but the shelves walling the two in took a more sane, rectangular shape. A lacquered table rest to her left, putting a generous space between itself and the wall of books. Her neck cracked a few times, alerting her to the absence of her makeshift pillow. That realization finally hinted to the sleepy fool that she had been moved by some means.

The window caught her focus next, filled with a dim blackness with a clear film over it. Had she slept til the crack of dawn?

The mare’s muttering intensified into a speaking voice. “Now-now why would Twilight send her lackey— no! Send one of her best friends to-to me, hm? Is there some crisis she needs my help with? I-I’m not cut out for that, not at all, no. No. It has to be something else, surely! Fu-why are my hooves so dusty?” The mare kicked at the carpet and grunted most unladylike.

"Hey," Dash barked. The mare hopped in place and twisted around to meet Rainbow. Her brow glistened in the dull morning light, now that the candles slowly began to die.

"Y-yes, miss? Ma'am?"

"Being polite now, huh? You looked like you wanted to throttle me when I woke up, Moondancer." Rainbow straightened her mane while Moondancer gaped like a bass.

"Sorry for that. I just don't like when ponies look for me."

"How come you brought me here, then?"

Moondancer scoffed. She mimicked Rainbow’s motion, tidying up her straight, flowing mane, signs of dampness at the ends. It certainly didn't suit the crazy mare to Rainbow's eye. "You're a pegasus, injured at that. You have a transmutant solution in your body, which is incredibly hard to procure. Lastly, I recognized your cutie mark from Twilight's stories."

Her jaw dropped. "How did you figure out what my medicine was called?" In haste, Dash quickly searched her forelegs for nicks.

"Your wings have almost no magic radiating from them." In pink aura, a scroll moved through the air and unfurled between the two mares, and on it was printed a map of the library. From the entrance to a big, black 'X' snaked a dotted red line. The directions depicted instilled an itch in her joints. Both ears perked. The unicorn smirked. "Pegasi rain little 'flakes' of thaumic radiation from their wings in rhythm with their heart. The sporadic and alarmingly thin trail I followed told me enough."

Both wings twitched in opposing manners. “So, what makes you think I’m looking for you in the first place? I didn’t give no reason why I was here yet.”

“Please. I doubt you have any real business here besides talking to me.”

The implication broiled Dash’s temper. “Well, you... I... gah!" She leaned back against a nearby shelf. "So you caught me. I still got this though. You ready to hear it?" After a lazy polish against her chest, Dash raised her hoof to point at Moondancer. "Twilight didn't send me."

In an instant the haughty heat in her face drained, and Moondancer stepped back. "W-what?"

Rainbow snickered. "You don't know her very well if you think she'd make me hobble here like this. She'd carry me on her back sooner than that.” Her left wing flexed to cover her chest and she held her head high. “No, I came here for something else. A favor.”

Moondancer stared at — through — the pegasus for a moment. A noticeable bulge wiggled on her throat, and she wiped her nose before taking a seat on the floor, a listless expression worn while she studied the interesting matting. Twinkling brow, thinking aloud and speaking to herself, Moondancer appeared far from passable to Rainbow’s standards. Perhaps, Luna forbid, she needed help?

So, she scratched the back of her head and searched for words. “What’s… what’s wrong, Moondancer? You’re kinda freaking me out here. Are you mad, scared or what? And are you even listening to me?”

Quickly, the unicorn raised a hoof to her mouth and bit down on it. The clink riled worms at the back of Rainbow’s throat. The mare’s visible teeth appeared caked in plaque; that, or the space between her front teeth simple couldn’t be seen in the dim light. Her somewhat neat and prim mane certainly threw Dash’s image for her off. Her eyes sagged more and more as she thought on the pegasus’ words, or perhaps of something else entirely. Something stirred by them.

“You… you say that you’re not here on her behalf?” Moondancer clicked her tongue. “Oh, oh that’s unlikely. Is it? It certainly isn’t expected, no. Why would someone come to find a stranger, if not for business on the behalf of common friends?” The hoof which fell victim to her mindless nibbling stamped the ground. “No, no, that’s not the only reasonable conclusion. Did Twilight speak of a thing — a service — I could provide?”

Quite rudely did Rainbow break Moondancer’s thought train. Thought caravan more described the pace of her ability to draw conclusions in her state, however. “You can just ask me that, you know.”

A sharp gasp sanded Dash’s ears. “Oh, of course!” The unicorn whipped around to face Dash. Whatever neurotic imps that piloted the mare’s actions plastered a quick, lopsided smile to her face. “Why are you here? I demand an explanation, if you don’t mind.”

“‘Demand’? I didn’t think demands were what good hosts made.”

“Shut up.” Moondancer snorted. “I don’t care if Princess Twilight is best friends with you or if she likes to lick you clean every night. I’d like a little warning before having to find you in a near coma in my library for no good reason, do you understand?”

Though her face flared, the pegasus faltered from a throb behind her eyes. She hunched over and buried her eyes into her foreleg, but made sure her bared teeth could be seen. “Oh, sorry for almost dying while looking for your pasty ass. Won’t ever happen again, I promise.”

“Honestly! What could be worth dragging your worthless corpse through transmutation therapy to Canterlot? I assume you were being treated in Ponyville, so that just makes it worse!”

The manic concern tickled Rainbow. It certainly felt familiar, and so her anger slipped away. She wiped a bead of water from the corner of her eye and did her best to express as much sass as she could muster. “You better believe that Twi would keep someone like me around. I’m dumb enough to pull that shit, but just smart enough to still be awesome when it counts.”

The unicorn dropped and clamped her jaw shut twice. Only twice, then busied herself with kneading her hooves. With a lack of care, they ground as misshapen stones. “W-what is it that you needed, ma’am?” she mumbled, not meeting eye to eye.

“Ugh, just cut that out, okay?” Rainbow rubbed her temple. The sensation offered a detour from the road of caltrops her eyeballs rolled upon. A tiny flame burned in her chest, which warded off the specter of agony. Her bad leg throbbed no worse than when she passed out, fortunately. “How about you tell me what’s on your mind, Moony, before I tell you what I needed to ask? I can tell something big is eating at you.”

Her host shook her head violently. “Out of the question. It’s a matter I’ve set upon dealing with myself. There’s no way you could help in your sorry state.”

“Look, you. I’m not retarded or anything. I’m not gonna get myself killed if it definitely won’t get me anywhere. I sure as heck won’t just up and die if you vent at me a little.”

For some reason, Moondancer scoffed. “Classy.”

Dash grinned. “How about I put it like this, then? Just tell me what’s up, and I’ll be a good courier and pass it onto her. I can do that much while they’re gone.”

A lick of the lips, then a bite. Whatever query Moondancer had prepared seemed to fall to the wayside, behind her eyes. The little rhythmic sway of her body ceased, one Dash only noticed when it did cease at all. The unicorn spared a glance to Rainbow, then to her left and right then back to her hooves, pressed to the ground, just so that her wrists knuckled through her pale coat.

A book wiggled on the shelf behind the unicorn. Though her body didn’t shift in any way, the further the book slid off in the hold of her magic, the lower her head appeared to sink. The spine itself was white, where gold metal clasped it in three points. Not a single letter appeared to identify it, and upon craning her neck to see the cover, someone looked back at Rainbow. The pegasus yelped in fright and hopped a foot or so into the air, and still Moondancer didn’t react. Quick thinking forced most of her weight on her good leg, and she nearly fell to her face.

By the time her eyes focused once more, the unicorn held the strange tome between her hooves. The backside that Dash beheld did not house a phantom eye like the cover, though the split second of observation was enough to conclude that the back held the same silver ring the front did, but a duller slip of glass — or metal? — in the center. A hint of blush ran into Rainbow’s cheeks as Moondancer stared blankly at the book’s cover.

“This book,” Moondancer said, “It’s… someone’s in trouble. She came and taunted me, she took the book and… I’m not sure what happened.” A little sniffle snuffled from her snout. “She used magic, a-and then the book flipped to a blank page, and... It could have been me! I-I’m not sure what to do.”

“You’re not making any sense, girly.” Rainbow sighed and leaned in close, though a peculiar scent about the mare stopped her, and she decided to be content with being closer to her side. Still, her heart truly did quiver at the sight of the unicorn. “What happened? Did someone hurt you, ‘cuz I can set ‘em straight if you say the word.” She pounded her forehooves together for emphasis. The thunderstorm in her shoulder put much strain on her voice. “Then can we talk about the f-f-favor I need?”

A little cloth levitated from the table towards the book, which Moondancer used to polish the front cover. Little specks of light danced on her cheek from her unsteady grip on it. After a moment of stillness, she heaved a sigh as if she forgot to breath for too long. “I think she’s in danger. I-I don’t know why she looked so worn out, so unkempt. The way she stumbled into my room—"

"So where is she?" Dash cut in with a harsh tone. She winced. Her little swell of impatience was most unbecoming. A caricature of the sun princess scraped out yet another talley against her on the imaginary chalkboard.

And yet, Moondancer chuckled, which eased Rainbow’s panic. "Oh, she's right here with us. In this — this thing." She shook her head. "I just thought it was a collector's item. I didn't even bother to check it for curses, hexes, anything!"

That old book. The caretaker hadn't opened it once, yet Rainbow could see the weight held inside. She moved closer, entranced, to peer upon the crystalline mirror. Her spine tingled; the way she could see her and Moondancer's eye movements, facial twitches and such appeared nothing like any other mirror she had seen. The reflections didn't match, her gut said. One glance lagged by the tenth of a moment. One motion of the jaw happened before she felt it. The surface must have been warped. The medicine was getting to her head.

That's all.

"You're not seeing things." Moondancer narrowed her eyes. However, only one brow went low. The other raised in mirth along with her lip on the same side. The narrowed eye met with Dash's, but the gleeful one looked ahead to nothing in particular. "I only know the most rudimentary things," the grave Moondancer said, whilst the jolly one lent her mouth painfully tensed to maintain her smile, "about this book. I know it predates Equestria and that no other copy exists. Now I know about its magical properties. Though, even after that unicorn used this enchanted object to go inside, the book refuses to open."

Rainbow bit her lip watching the bizarre visage. "H-how are you sure she's inside?"

"She told me herself, of course." The jolly eye flicked at Rainbow, red and dry. Her lip frayed at the corner and blood dripped down her chin. Looking at the unicorn's chest, she saw that there was no blood. "She must have known where the book was because of the thicket of enchantments upon it. Even after all these years, the spells are impossibly encrypted, so I can only deduce that she knew what to look for. She must have heard something before. Maybe she's the rightful owner?"

Dash gasped. Her hazy brain clicked upon a genius realization. "Maybe the book is, like, her secret base?! Twilight said something about pocket dimensions."

Unfortunately, her companion shook her head. "Why would she jump in while a complete stranger has a hold of it? I could easily report this to an official and defeat the purpose of her little secret. Why wouldn't she just take it and split? Vanish with it? ”

"She might be fixing herself up in there." Dash's ears folded back, imagining the state of this mystery mare.

"I considered that." Slowly, Moondancer set the tome down between herself and Rainbow. She idly flipped it open to a random page, a blank one. One at a time her magic leafed through, yielding nothing. “Maybe she’s confident. I haven’t tested it yet for fear of bringing another pony harm, but I get the feeling that destroying or even damaging this book isn’t something to be done so easily.”

In one swift motion, Dash’s hoof clamped down on the book, and Moondancer squeaked from the sudden rupture of her aura. “Let’s stop wondering then. I’m sick of being useless right now! Just get me in there so I can figure out what’s going on.”

Dash puffed her chest out at her companion's signs of doubt. Her lips made soundless motions.  "Y-you can't be serious. You're in no shape to grapple a breezie, let alone go into some unknown pocket dimension."

"I don't care. Between the two of us, you're the only one who can mess with the book from the outside, so naturally I should be the guinea pig that goes inside." Many debates with her alicorn friend molded such an argument. “Let’s call it a trade. How about that? I’m pretty desperate,” she said, waggling her eyebrows.

"You could die alone where no one would find the body."

"That's in the contract I signed when I tried out for the Wonderbolts."

As hard as she could, Moondancer pounded her forehooves against the book. A visible vibration overtook her legs, though she merely winced. "I'm not gonna tell Twilight, 'Oh, sorry, but your best friend fucking died on my behalf and I don't know why or how violent it was.' I'm not going to let you do this!"

Her voice echoed throughout the cultural library. Rainbow’s ears swiveled, perked straight up, and steam billowed from her nose. However, before she could retort, that silly little vibration ran through Moondancer's legs once more. The unicorn screwed her eyes shut, in overwhelming pain.

The wonderful aggression faded back to helplessness. "Moondancer!" Dash cried out.

A stream of words rose from the ground, a steady chain snaking into the air. Her reflexive lunge to reach the pained unicorn met solid resistance. The black iron gibberish snagged her chest, and yet another length sprouted on either side of her. All around that book words did web and scurry, out from under it and all across the carpet, gliding along like weightless insects, riding the fibers dancing in the rising arcane gusts. Moondancer managed a peek from her tense eyes, but the sight merely forced her to duck lower. Her face nearly touched the wicked volume.

The black segments of alien characters chilled Dash through her coat and rasped her skin with all her weight thrown against them. The force giving the words life didn’t even budge with the modicum of strength her body could provide. The tighter of a ball Moondancer curled into, the harder Dash pushed. With more columns rising from behind to box her in, she reached forward and cried the unicorn’s name through the winds and the drone of magic, magic that stung her skin and her joints with the sheer pressure.

A switch flipped. The words halted in their advance, and the library became dead silent. In the little glade of the lull, two tempos of breath played out. The prison of phrases held Dash in place, but she would not have chosen to move either way. Moondancer merely tilted her head. The windswept mane on her head covered her eye, the eye she pleaded to Dash with. The pegasus’s lip bled between her teeth.

Thunder.

The air thundered again. All the air collapsed inward, toward the vacuous tome. No single breath stayed behind, and Rainbow’s chest heaved. Her ears rang. Did they bleed?

When the slicing winds died down, the frail pegasus turned her eyes upward. Upon a tight vortex of dust and torn pages rest the curled up Moondancer. The chains about the massive chamber slowly receded to the book at the center of the dwarf tempest, through the pages, only to stream through the plate on the cover up to Moondancer. The words fed themselves through her barely cracked eyes in a splash of inkiness, into her mouth and ears.

Rainbow held her breath for a long, painful stretch. The thin air carried little sound, leaving the ring in her ears to torment her. Moondancer remained, deathly still.

Was she…

The mare's head whipped up to face her. Plastered upon it, the horribly gleeful expression sent waves of dread crashing from its eyes, white eyes, and Dash was swept from her hooves.

A choked cry, sob, wiped out in the maelstrom of wind surrounding Moondancer. Vessels burst in her eyes unflinching, wind and dust tearing at them. The blood from her eyes and lips swirled into the air to a single point at the tip of her horn. Between her legs, a tremendous force pressed the tome into the ground, sheared clean in the violent winds down to the failing concrete.

The coat upon her legs did not meet such a fate, for wicked hands cupped her frail, little body. Up above, as Rainbow watched in horror, a ghostly figure sculpted by the dust and fibers and winds embraced the unicorn with bizarre arms, far outside proportion befitting any creature she had seen. It had no face to speak of. The pressure of Moondancer's gaze already threatened Rainbow's mortal heart into bursting as it was.

Unknowingly, the pegasus had anchored herself with all her bodily aura, which spilled from her hooves like a catastrophic leak. Her crippled leg quickly oozed blood, having lost its thaumic wrappings in the face of the tremendous force. Just as soon, Rainbow's vision blurred. The creature looked down upon her. Weakness stole her footing.

It looked down upon Rainbow just the same. Weak. Helpless.

With a silent prayer, Rainbow Dash buried her face into the ground.