Chapter One: Restless
View Online

Chase the Night

Chapter One: Restless

***

The clink of chains filled the dark basement, the moisture in the room was so thick Rainbow Dash felt as if she was choking on her own tongue as she opened her eyes she struggled against the chains that held her in place against the table. Her sky blue wings protruded through the backside of the table, held taut and stiff by a multitude of hooks ranging in size from small to large. The smell of blood and searing flesh permeated in the air as he peered over at the open fireplace and held aloft by a pair blackened hooks was... her cutie mark.

"Pinkie...wha...what are you doing..?" She looked back seeing Pinkie holding what looked like a carpenters hacksaw and her eyes went wide as she brought it close to Rainbow’s wings.

“No no no no, please! I'm begging you! Don't take my wings! Not again!"

Then the cutting began as it always did, with the exact same line Pinkie always said "Hope you don't mind, I think i'm gonna wing it now..."

Rainbow screamed as she played with her wing as if it was a marionette and started hacking at her wing bone with the saw as if it were an ax, sending searing pain through her entire body.

With each slash Dash screamed "Please stop! Please! PLEEEASE!!".

***

Rainbow screamed, bolting upright. Her mane and fur were damp and her heart raced, evident of her nightmare. Looking down, she noticed her trusty tortoise, Tank, holding a firm but playful bite on her hoof; his way of trying to wake her up from the nightmare.

“Thank you buddy- that nightmare… again. I don't get what's causing it…" She curled up next to Tank and it was only then did she notice the searing pain in her back. "OW! What in Equestria?!" She shot up, reaching back with her hoof to check her wing.

Touching it gingerly, she noticed how it hung limp and didn't respond when she tried to move it, and throbbed as if it were slammed between a pair of doors.

"Did I break it in my sleep...?" She eyed her wings in the mirror just beside her bed, she slowly dragged herself out of her comforter and sheets. The soft clopping of her hoofs on the tile that lined the floor leading through the hall made her feel uneasy, each step threatened to tear at her sanity. A soft turn of the handle and she opened the door to the wash room, clicking the lamp switch. The bright light it emitted reminded her that it was nearly 3am.

She glared into the mirror in front of her, black rings lined her eyes. Sighing, she opened the mirror, and behind it was a cupboard with shelves filled with various medications from painkillers to antibiotics, even the odd antidepressants. "Ohh, where did I put it?" She said to herself, soon after trying the cupboard under the sink. "Ahh, there you are."

She picked up the large medical kit she kept handy for when she hurt herself during Wonderbolt training. She had hurt herself plenty of times doing aerial acrobatics to know the basic of medical treatment from stitching wounds to splinting hooves and wings. She couldn't possibly perform surgery on anypony but she could definitely handle basic first aide.

She carried the heavy bag back to her bed, and setting it down reached into her nightstand and took out a medium sized bottle of apple cider brandy and set to work, pulling out a few sets of tape and a two sets of wing splints. She began the process of awkwardly splinting and bandaging her wings, and groaning in between swigs of brandy. "There, that should do it until i can get to Ponyville Hospital tomorrow."

The sounds of ripping of bandages and tape soon faded from the small apartment made of clouds as Rainbow finished her work.

She thought to herself. "My dreams...they couldn't be happening to me in reality… no, they're just that… nightmares." Having packed up the medical kit and tucked it safely under her bed, she once again curled up snugly beside her turtle Tank who was once again preparing to enter his hibernation phase as Winter was starting soon.

***

Again that sound, that smell, the sound of grinding metal and searing flesh but this time the dream was different. It felt more… alive. Every other time it followed a specific script, so specific that Rainbow would know what happened and when. She could anticipate the terror, although anticipating it didn't make it any less terrifying. The sheer thought of losing her wings, her flight was the worst thing she could possibly imagine. Flying was the only thing she had, besides Tank and her friends. Without it, she'd be lost. She'd go crazy.

Suddenly without any notice her head was pulled back by her rainbow-colored mane by some invisible force as a vice handle was turned by a bright pink hoof until it was so tight that Rainbow thought her skull would be crushed if she moved so much as an inch. "I hope it’s not too tight, I'd hate to make this an eye popping experience!" Pinkie laughed as she jumped on Rainbows chest, holding a small scalpel in her hoof, just millimeters away from her eye. "Now sit still, and be a good little skank while your dearest Pinkie makes pretty artwork on that face of yours."

"Pinkie..please stop...we're friends...please..GAHH!!" The sharp blade sliced into Rainbows lower eyelid with such precision as Pinkie removed her lower, then upper eyelids, then her upper and lower lips slowly with near surgical expertise. "Ahh...AHHH!!!" Rainbow wretched and heaved, fought and kicked as hard as she could.

"Of course we're friends, why else would I be doing this?"

Though it was useless as the chains clinked that held her remained tight as possible, the hooks in what remained of her wings ripped at her flesh. Pinkie held her head down against the vice, punching her in the face. "I SAID… SIT STILL YOU LITTLE BITCH!" Pinkie smiled bright then and calmly said "...otherwise you'll ruin my beautiful artwork."

Laughing her maniacal high pitched laugh, Pinkie used a pair of large barbed tweezers, presumably handmade to extract her eyes. Only she didn't use the scalpel to cut them out. "Hey Dashie, made you look!" She ripped them out with such force and ferocity that Dash's head was pulled out of the vice that held her head in place.

"AHHH!!!" Rainbow screamed, feeling her body hang limp as the table which held her was slowly raised aloft over a raging inferno at the center of the basement.

"It really is a shame you can't seen this Dash, it really is a sight to behold." Pinkie laughed, dancing in a circle around the inferno as she stopped just under Rainbow, slapping her a couple times on the face. "Awww don't pass out now, we haven't gotten to the fun parts yet." She cackled, Rainbow snickered and struggled to turn her head in the direction of that annoying cackle, falling rapidly in and out of consciousness as rivers of blood poured from her now empty eye sockets and into her mouth past her missing lips.

"Phuck yhou!" She spat, hearing an audible splat, knowing her very large boogies had definitely made contact in Pinkies eye. Rainbow smiled, she always was good at spitting boogies, especially at bullies.

Pinkie laughed, wiping the snot from her eye as she dragged a large piece of metal from across the room. "Time to wake up." She cackled, driving the metal trident through Rainbows empty eye sockets pinning her head to the back of the wooden table. Hearing a beaker smash on the floor, Pinkie turned around suddenly, seeing a black shadow in the shape of a unicorn "Who’s there?!" She roared. "Who’s come to ruin my fun?" In a flash of black smoke the figure was gone. "This is MY NIGHTMARE WORLD! MINE!" She screamed, her voice changing and sounded near demonic as the black smoke floated past her and slipped out through the very fabric of the dreams reality.

"Not for long, for I am the guardian of the Dreamscape and I choose what may or may not happen therein! And in this realm, no one is more powerful than I!" The black smoke bellowed from an invisible location. The image of Pinkie was suddenly sent flying across the basement.

"In this realm you are little more than an insect to me! So heed my warning, leave Rainbow Dash be, or you shall feel my wrath and there will be no where, nightmare or daylight that you can hide from ME!" As the voice screamed, the entire fabric of the nightmare seemed to be torn from its very stitches. The walls of the basement bled, the chains that held Rainbows dream-body snapped, allowing her body to fall and disappear into the inferno. The water in the cauldron atop the fireplace boiled. Pinkie was held aloft as the nightmare's Dreamscape was suddenly whisked away into pure white. "Begone from from this world foul creature!"

***

Rainbow bolted upright. "STOP!"

Her alarmed blaring to the official theme song of her dream team the Wonderbolts.

"Ow..." She groaned, inadvertently stretching her wings by force of habit and completely forgot about the splints and bandages. "That’s it, this nightmare business is not getting the best of me..." She groaned standing up, she wouldn't be able to fly down to the hospital today and Cloudsdale’s hospital would be closed today because of renovations declared by Celestia and Luna. They are making adjustments to allow earth ponies and unicorns to be seen there in case of emergencies.

She made her way outside and began waiting for her ride. Strapped along her side was her favorite saddlebag bearing the Junior Flying League's insignia, of two crossed lightning bolts in front of a pure white cloud. Eyeing the closed Cloudsdale Hospital she sighed, "Seriously, why not just build another hospital? Down there AND up here? Rather than force renovations and magic spells, us pegasi hate having our clouds muddled by magic." She groaned to herself as she grabbed a local Cloudsdale paper and boarded the arriving airship. A voice beamed over the speaker that soon filled the air overhead.

"Welcome to Cloudsdale Air, your friendly flight for everything pegasi that can't fly. If you can't fly, we'll be your wings. And remember, we are a free service, paid for by the Royal Knights Affairs Office. Some gave a feather, all gave a wing. Thank your local Knight today, first stop Ponyville Hospital."

Rainbow Dash groaned as her wing throbbed in protest when the airship came to the sudden halt at the air pad just outside the hospital. Lining up behind the many veteran Knights and other Pegasi seeking medical treatment at Ponyville's hospital while Cloudsdale's was being renovated. Folding her newspaper in half and tucking it into her saddlebag, the headline reading:

Mysterious Statue Discovered in the Badlands: Developing Story

Author's Note

This is an ongoing story, so please bare with me as i edit the chapters and tweak with the grammar, story, ect. It will get longer as i add/remove bits pls feel free to leave remarks in the comments. I appreciate and love constructive criticism; but pls dont be an ass about it.