Shadows

She had to push. She wasn’t sure what she was pushing but whatever it was, it was stopping her from going as fast as she wanted. She wanted to go faster, faster than anyone else. It felt good going fast. This weird stretching sensation that this pushing had, felt even better. She just wanted to break this last barrier, and then she knew she could go as fast as she wanted. She was going so fast!

It occurred to her that she had been racing some other pegasi, but she realized she couldn’t care about them. Just this delicious burst of speed and she felt that she could just slip away.

She felt rather than saw the barrier stretch beyond anything she had ever known.

Crackoooooooom!!!!

The visible light spectrum parted and she went faster than anything she could imagine. The world blazed by her at an impossible clip...

And just as suddenly the world stopped and lost color. More specifically everything but Rainbow Dash stopped and lost color. She hovered and tried to figure out where all the color went. She couldn’t think of a reason why there was no color. She flew around confusedly and stopped. All around her were massive buildings grey through and through.

All the clouds were grey. Not that clouds weren’t already grey, but this grey was like that of a cloud that was half way between storming and doing nothing. It was a boring grey, and that was something that unnerved her.

It was lonely out here, her mane being the only speck of color in a vast grey wilderness. It seemed endless.

She must have wandered for hours on end looking for anything familiar. She tried to gather her bearings and failing that, tried to figure out why she was there at least. She came up with one explanation.

With the massive speed boost she had, she had flown to an unfamiliar city. She paused for a moment on a cloud, and saw something remarkable.

On a lonely cloud devoid of any other structure there sat a Massive door. And it had no color. It was a deep obsidian and she felt it shouldn’t be there, and was covered in overly intricate designs that seemed to say "I’m not here." The door was even slightly ajar, exposing her to color.

Supposing that color meant good things, she flew inside. It was a hallway. Inside the hallway everything was a muted shade of red. There were windows everywhere and they let in light, but the light itself was red. The shadows she cast were of crimson, and the glass of the windows was just the palest hint of pink. Outside the window Cloudsdale was done up in several shades of red.

The door at the end of hallway however was orange. It was done up in the style of the previous door except that when she opened this door, the world inside was orange.

The next door was yellow, then green, blue, indigo and finally violet.

The end of the violet hallway however was red. A deep, foreboding red. Instead of a forget me door, this one seemed to say “If you open this door you will regret it for the rest of your life.” The most important difference though, was that when she went to open this door, There was a pony behind it.

This pony was grey, and cold, and silent, and swift.

Then it spoke.