"I totally got this…" Rainbow Dash was slumped on one of only two clouds in the sky; the other being her home. "No Twilight to bug me, all my work done, and best of yet, no crazy monsters attacking Ponyville." She pulled more of the soft cloud over herself, her eyes closing as a "well deserved" nap settled in around her, dulling her senses.
Something teased at the sleeping mare's weather-sense. It was something that felt both "wrong" and "bad" all rolled together into something "terrible". Poking her head up, shaking a little to get her senses and her mane in order, Rainbow Dash look toward Canterlot and a chill poured over her. "That is the weirdest cloud I have ever…" The air itself choked her, she watched as the crazed, multi-hued clouds ripped through the air and ground alike, approaching Ponyville.
Rainbow Dash's whole body felt paralyzed as she saw the train tracks leading to Canterlot ripping themselves from the ground, twisted into pretzels by what could be nothing else but "magic gone wrong". "Not on my watch." Loyalty—an element near to Dash's heart—burned like fury in her. If that is what it does to the train tracks, what will it do to the town?
A wing pushed outwards from each side of Dash's body and she kicked at the cloud still around her, instantly dissipating it. She fell, her wings catching air and giving her momentum as she swooped forward. Below, she saw a pink blur moving around town. Gotta be that Pinkie Sense, good job, but you aren't needed! "Awesome work Pinkie Pie!" Dash's lungs burned from how loud she yelled. "You take care of the ground, I got the sky!"
Pumping her wings, Rainbow Dash built altitude back up as she ascended higher even than the onrushing cloud-front. "Best way to stop a cloud is to buck it, the best way to stop all that is to buck it harder. Time to shine!" At the apogee of her climb, Dash folded her wings down so barely any was exposed, her dive began. The wind ripped at her face, her mane, she clove the air faster and faster until it happened.
Rainboom.
Arresting her descent, Dash looked at what her blast of light and air had accomplished. "Wow, it slowed it a bit…" Excitement came, the rush of a battle she knew she could win. "Time for another, maybe a double!" Again Rainbow Dash climbed up, pumping her wings and burning energy, this time as she came down, immediately after her first Rainboom she arced back up but couldn't expend enough energy to make the curve she needed.
Winging around, gaining more altitude, the pegasus dove sharply again. A second blast of light, air, and magic spun out, slamming into the front of magic.
Panting now, Rainbow Dash took a moment to check on her work. The main front of clouds had slowed a little, but something was happening deeper in she couldn't see. "More, huh? I bet another two or three should do it!"
Again and again the pegasus performed the most amazing and magical of aerial maneuvers, and each time she lost more of her stamina to the effort to drive back the cloud. Panting, she hovered after a countless amount of Rainbooms. The clouds still came, and worse, they had regained their original momentum.
"It seemed to be working…" Rainbow shot herself into a high arc and pulled off her first ever double Rainboom. She had begun it in the same way she had in Canterlot, at her best friend's brother's wedding. Dash shot her first Rainboom on the up-arc, pouring her strength into her wings to drive her upwards, through the barrier that held back all other fliers. She didn't pause at her apogee, she shot through it. Slamming down again, she pumped her wings, gaining astounding speed. She tore that barrier again and screamed in glory, a wordless cry of victory.
Just as her wings snapped out from the last rapporting blast, she felt something give, but it wasn't her muscles or bones, nor even her feathers—not at first. Rainbow Dash felt drained of something, something important. Her sharp mind—well, sharp when it needed to be—brought up the boring lecture she had mostly snored through, of Twilight explaining that there was magic in everypony, that it let pegasi fly, earth ponies work the farms, and unicorns work their horns.
It was gone, she had used all of hers.
"Well buck…" Now Rainbow's tendons strained, the muscles in her back ached abominably as the full weight of her equine body was put on them, for the first time, unaided. A snap sounded, pain shot through her back as her left wing gave in completely. The ground was spinning, or she was, Rainbow knew she was done. "Least… I… tried…" Soft cloud poured around her, over her—through her.
The pain in Rainbow's wing was suddenly nothing. These weren't the soft clouds she slept on, they weren't even the angry little storm clouds that sometimes escaped the pull of the Everfree Forest. These clouds were magic, they were mad, swirling and slicing the air. Rainbow was buffeted and thrown as pain seared every nerve, first blistering her sensitive flesh, then halting all feeling for nearly six, blessed heartbeats.
Somepony is screaming. Rainbow Dash was on the ground, there was a lot of noise, an immense amount of pain and both her wings were broken, bones snapped in multiple places. She looked at her primaries, all had melted like cheese in a warm oven.
Then something else hit her. The screaming sound stopped, part of Dash realizing it had been her, but the pain intensified. Every fiber of her being was ripped at by magic gone mad. It dove into her, seeking out the place where its tame brother lived, and found nothing. Rainbow Dash had used up every reserve she had and, inside where her magic should have been, something new took root.
~~~~~+++++~~~~~
"Still yourself and try not to move, lest your condition never improve."
Rainbow Dash tried to open her eyes, but something was covering them. She made another feeble effort to move and stopped as the pain almost blacked her out again. "…" Her throat felt like it did moments after eating the chilli cupcake Pinkie had once made for her. The words she had been just told filtered through the pain and torment. Zecora!
Pain exploded everywhere again, Rainbow's wings rubbed on something course and the world went blessedly black painless. "I am dreaming." The mare smiled happily. "Thank Celestia I am dreaming! Princess Luna!" Her voice echoed through the dream. "PRINCESS LUNA!" She waited, it might have been ten seconds, or forever, but there was no answer.
"What do I do? What happened?" Rainbow flew lazily through the sky of her dreams. Nothing hurts. The thought distracted Dash, she stopped flying and hovered. "Why would it be odd nothing is hurting? What happened?"
The dream-scape changed, shifted, Rainbow was sleeping on a cloud as waves of bad clouds poured in toward Ponyville. She slept on as chaotic magic clouds rolled over the town, smashing houses, shops, and ponies alike. Then it hit her.
"Help!" Rainbow Dash screamed the single word out, her chest panting hard. She looked around the room and realized that, even with no sensation of anything covering her face, she couldn't see anything but a soft glow.
"Calm yourself down brave pony, keeping this up will end poorly." Zecora's words distracted Rainbow from some pain, but the loss of her sight was forcing adrenaline into her system.
"Rainbow Dash?" Fluttershy's voice, soft, scared, cut through all the emotion and chemical hype in Dash. Rainbow turned her head, following her ears to the point where she was sure her friend was. "Rainbow Dash, are you okay?"
A hoof—a gentle hoof—touched Rainbow's cheek. The pain there seemed to ease. "What happened? What was that cloud?" The repeating touch… she realized her friend was "petting" her. Despite how demeaning it would be if somepony else saw it, Rainbow actually felt better, more herself, with each stroke.
"I don't know. I saw it coming and Zecora warned me to get all my little friends into the Everfree Forest. The forest is worse now, Rainbow, it scares me but…" Fluttershy's voice trailed off, her worry evident in each word. Leaning up, not caring about the pain, Rainbow nuzzled her cheek against the still hoof on her snout. "Oh, sorry… things were not good. Harry herded all of us down into his den and then he…" She trailed off again, soft sobs coming from her as Fluttershy remembered her biggest forest friend using his own body to shield her.
"He saved you though, right?" Rainbow felt a fire inside, a fire that being near her best friend quenched. Something about that fire felt… strange. "Harry, saved you?"
"He tried." Fluttershy's tears fell and she moved closer to Rainbow, pulling the blue pegasus' head into her lap. Rainbow closed her eyes to the soft glowing patterns of the room and submitted to the attention.
Only to keep 'Shy from crying more. Rainbow nuzzled into the other mare's belly. Something inside Dash stirred, something hungry.
"I climbed out from under him, when the first wave of it had passed." Fluttershy's voice was tiny, soft. She stroked her friend's mane. "Then the second one hit. I… I died."
Zecora watched the odd scene. A pristine yellow and pink pegasus, comforting and being comforted by… It took a lot of the zebra's strong constitution to even look on the broken pony. Rainbow Dash had fallen from the sky, her wings were rent, half of one was missing, and worse, the breaks were all splintered. Her feathers had burned and curled up, some even fell out, her fur had fared better, but on the pegasus' legs and wings, a deep black taint had seeped in and, as Zecora watched, it seemed to reach up her legs and down into her back with purple-black lines.
"You didn't die, Fluttershy." Rainbow Dash felt she should have paid attention to something in her friend’s words, but she was completely distracted by the surety with which the mare had said she had died. "So, then, what 'killed' you?"
"A tree. The base of it rotted with the crazed magic, the second blast pushed it over." Fluttershy would have trembled at explaining her own death, but petting Rainbow seemed to comfort her; her best friend felt different, wilder, strange. "I woke up when Zecora found me."
There was silence. Both Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy expected the zebra to fill in the gap with her account of events.
The door of the hut opened and admitted another pony, mane dark and matted her body wrapped in a thick and heavy cloak. She found a spot among the group and parked her plot. "Like, you finally woke? That is so calming to my chakra."
"Tree Hugger?" Fluttershy almost left Dash, and as the still-injured pegasus sensed that she almost moved away from her and let out a tiny growl. Fluttershy settled back, stroking Rainbow's mane. "Oh, it is so good to see you."
"The tale of Tree's part, I am sure she will impart." Finally, the pair heard Zecora's voice, soft, unusually so.
"You I found, Sister of the Forest, and you were totally missing all your karma." The confirmation had Dash tremble a little. "Something totally gnarly came from the north, the humors of it were a real bummer." Tree Hugger reached out a hoof, gently touching Rainbow Dash's snout. "I was already bringing you back to our stripy shamen, when I found her," Tree's eyes dampened, "I thought by the time I would return I would have two less karmic friends."
"She really died?" Rainbow Dash couldn't stop herself, jerking up a little and being soothed back by her friend's attention.
"She was down, no whispers, no chakra." Tree looked up at Fluttershy. "But, like, your big buzz-harshing friend was there, I know we like, couldn't center ourselves to relate properly, but he wasn't totally bad."
Zecora lifted out the big spoon and tasted her brew.
As was the prerogative of any storyteller, the earth pony waited until the moment she knew they would both ask, before continuing. "Discord."
The petting stopped, Fluttershy jerked out of the slight daze every listener entered when a master bard was imparting wisdom. "Discord? Was he…?" Zecora nodded slowly. "Why?"
Rainbow Dash felt her friend's tears rain down, felt the thing inside her reach, grasping, clawing, wanting to know what had made the "nice mare" cry. The thing inside reached up and through Dash, reached up physically and rubbed her cheek to her friend's.
"Dash?" Fluttershy looked down, astonished, broken from her shock by her best friend. Rainbow opened her eyes and looked up at Shy. "Your eyes!" She gasped, but didn't fall back from the sight. Gone were the big pupils, gone was the soft cerise rings. In the middle of her friend's eyes was a blood red, tiny pupil; radiating from that, in all directions, red cracked lines. The scariest bit was the rest of her eyes, they were inky-black. "Can you see?"
It was a struggle for Dash, to fight that new part of herself, the part that was so fiercely- Loyal, but loyalty wasn't like this before... "I… there is a soft glow everywhere, I can kind of see a shadow… that is you?"
Fluttershy flared her wings and watched Rainbow's strange eyes flick to them, tracking the movement as she pulled one back. "You can see, then." She lifted a hoof instinctively, rubbing behind one of Rainbow's ears; the cute little scrunched-up smile her friend affected, got her giggling.
A howl came from outside, Rainbow's ears twitched and she felt that loyalty inside her shift like mercury. Pulling from Fluttershy's snuggle she ignored the pain and wounds, leaping to the door.
"R-R-Rainbow?" Fluttershy's eyes were wide, from the ruined wings on Dash's back poured dark black streamers, fluttering and looking like a bad parody of her wings. "RAINBOW DASH!" The voice held command, it held everything that Loyalty respected and Dash felt herself turn back to her friend and she couldn't look back away. "Rainbow come back here this instant." Fluttershy didn't like using her "look" on her little friends, let alone her big ones. As the other pegasus turned, she saw that Dash's tail, too, had devolved into long black streamers.
"It is the new magic crazed and wild, all must stay within lest be beguiled." Zecora's eyes were wide, answering the unasked question.
"Dash." Fluttershy reached out and patted the small bed her friend had been on; those odd eyes tracked the motion, and before Fluttershy could pull her hoof back, her friend gave it a nuzzle. A chill went up Fluttershy's back at just how animal-like her friend acted.
What is going on? I feel really odd. Rainbow nuzzled the hoof, only then realizing how odd she was acting. "Sorry… I keep feeling something inside me… It…"
"Totally your loyalty, Strange Sister, your karma was balanced around it like, before all this. Now it is black, but you can't stop being what you are." Tree's eyes held no sorrow, just acceptance of what has happened.
Giving a sigh, the zebra began to pour Rainbow a measure of the soup she had cooked, but added some extra things. Bringing the bowl over, she didn't speak until Rainbow had drunk it all down, and passed out.
"It is inside her? The corrupted magic." Fluttershy brushed at the other pegasus' mane with a hoof. Zecora nodded. "And it has her loyalty… will it be enough for her to keep control?" She really wanted Zecora to nod again, but she didn't expect the mare to turn and walk away. "Well, if it is like that, I will fight it too!" Fluttershy reached a hoof up and tried to brush the ribbon-wings down against Dash's spine. Pain flared in her hoof, searing up her leg and diving into her heart. Fluttershy felt life pull from her, felt everything fade as it started to grow dark.
"Curious." Zecora had witnessed the dark come too, at the moment of Fluttershy's death.
~~~~~+++++~~~~~
Lifting her head, gasping, Fluttershy looked around the little hut. It was apparently morning again and… and she could breathe and feel again. She felt the oddest tingle, the softest breeze, it sounded like Discord. "Yay!”
Author's Note
So I do this "Ask x" thing, x can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and ~~I~~ they will definitely hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories and of course, ~~I~~ They will answer the best question(s) in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer, try and keep it to one answer per post! ~~I~~ They will pick one question per chapter.
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