Laments of the Dimension-Stranded ⁽ᴿᵉᵐᵃᵏᵉ⁾

They drove southward until they hit a wall. It was a giant mountain, a steep cliff of rock that blocked their path. They were forced to drive northwest in an attempt to circumvent the insurmountable obstacle.

They drove until the dual suns of Nowhere disappeared below the horizon and chilling mist spilled forth from the forest. They stopped to rest for the evening.

Rainbow shivered and scooted closer to the inelegant fire they had created. It was no more than a bundle of twigs set alight, but it emitted pleasant warmth and staved off the chill of the fog.

"It's cold tonight, isn't it?"

Vincent leaned against the trunk of an ochre curly tree, puffing a cigarette and exhaling smoke. "Maybe a little. I'm wearing two layers of clothes, though. You're naked."

"But it's summer, right? It was so hot earlier today."

He withdrew the cigarette from his mouth and tapped it lightly with his index finger to discard ashes. "Try not to think too hard about it."

She huddled near the fire and rubbed her extremities. Her wings fluttered as she shivered.

He snickered. "You look like a dying wasp. I packed some blankets if you want some."

Before she could reply, a gust of chilling air doused their fire, and the cherry of Vincent's cigarette extinguished. He rolled his thumb over his lighter's metal wheel to summon sparks and ignited it once again, then puffed

In the pause that followed, Rainbow had the audacity to believe the weather had subsided. Then another blast of chilly air struck her. The air inexplicably came from the south, despite the fact they had specifically chosen their camping spot because it was adjacent to the southern rock wall so it would serve as a natural windbreak. She stood to investigate.

When Vincent noticed her movement, he scrambled to the pickup to retrieve a jar of fireflies.

The fog hampered visibility, but, fortunately, the dim glow of Nowhere’s moon aided minimally in the illumination of their surroundings. Rainbow identified the wide mouth of a cave before them, nestled behind camouflage of dangling vines and dense undergrowth. Another wave of chilly air validated her suspicions: there was something magical inside of the cave that expelled the cold air. "I... think there’s something magical in there. It’s just a gut feeling I have. We should check it out. Maybe it's what we've been looking for."

Vincent shook the jar of fireflies he clutched to awaken them from their slumber. "It's not that I don't have faith in you, Dash, but... your sixth sense hasn't exactly been spot-on accurate so far." He paused, then shrugged and offered the jar to her. "Screw it. Hold the light for me."

Fog that originated from outside spilled through the cave mouth and pooled on the floor. Residual twilight glinted on the walls eerily. Rainbow intentionally raised her foreleg and clopped her hoof against the grey stone, and the loud sound echoed, bouncing briefly before being absorbed by the black void.

"You must be freezing." Vincent walked alongside her while he clutched his rifle securely in both hands, prepared to react to any dangerous situations should they arise.

Rainbow tucked her multicolored tail between her rear legs as she shivered. “Yeah, maybe a little." She gently tapped her jar of orange fireflies in an attempt to persuade them to generate more light, but they were unconvinced.

"Wait." He thrusted his palm vertically in a 'halt' gesture, then cautiously approached the precipice of a vertical drop before them. He stepped carefully and deliberately to assure he didn't slip. “Light, please.”

She neared the precipice and gazed down into the hole. Predictably, the dim glow of the jar of fireflies in her wing failed to properly illuminate the bottom. The opaque darkness was impenetrable.

"Watch your step." He circumnavigated the obstacle slowly and cautiously to avoid the danger of tripping and falling.

"Don't have to tell me twice. Geez. This place must go down pretty far." She shimmied around the hole. "Gosh, it's dark. This place sure looks like Tartarus, but, dang, I really wish it glowed like it, too."

"I got a flashlight just in case. We'll be fine.” Vincent tested the flashlight attachment mounted to the rail on the handguard of his Kalashnikov rifle. Confirming it was functional, he deactivated it in order to conserve its meager charge. "Are you afraid of the dark?"

"No, not normally," she protested. "It's just... it sounds like..." A wave of cold air washed over her, and she trembled. "It sounds like breathing.”

"The cave is alive!" He mocked her mercilessly and smirked.

She stopped walking and pondered the prospect. “Don't pretend you aren't scared, too. You can't lie.” She kicked some small stones with a hoof in an attempt to distract herself from her fright.

“No, not really. This isn't a horror movie—I'm not scared of the dark because I already know what's there. Most creatures in Nowhere aren't much of a threat. I can keep them off of us, no problem."

“Movies?”

“Film, you know? Moving pictures?" Vincent sighed in a bittersweet fashion as he engaged in nostalgic remembrance. As they took a brief break, he halted and leaned against the wall. "Hey, if we make it out together, you want to watch some with me? My dad introduced me to some old classics. I could share ‘em with you if you'd be interested.”

“What makes you think we’ll be together? Best case scenario is... we both go home, right?”

“Oh." He pursed his lips.

“Well, if it means anything, yeah, I’d like to hang out with you and try some of your movies." Rainbow was silent momentarily. “You and me, we're not... We weren’t ever meant to be together, you know. I hated you the first few days I was here. Sorry, I just... ” She considered retracting her words, believing she had gone too far, but Vincent spoke and interrupted her doubtful thoughts.

“I know. I get it. It was hard enough for me to believe this was real, so, I get why you think the way you do. You are different from me. We came from different places, didn't we?" He trailed off and left the thought incomplete.

Rainbow was unsure how to respond to such a remark. She walked in silence as she considered what little knowledge of Vincent’s world he had divulged. She pondered information about his home she had inferred without any explicit explanations. It sounded like... chaos and anarchy. Definitely not a place where she would want to live, and one she perhaps couldn't tolerate at all. But that didn't make the prospect of losing her friend any easier to accept.

"What about her?"

"I know. I was just thinking about that, too." He sighed. "I don't think I'm going to have the ability to choose what happens with us, so... I hope I can see her again."

"I wish you could be there, too." That was the implication for both of them, she thought.

The tunnel broadened into a cavern with a ground scattered with stalagmites and encrusted with a flat sheet of opaque ice. The illumination provided by Rainbow's orange fireflies reflected brilliantly off of the smooth teal ice and cast blueish-greenish light onto the walls of the cave.

"Whoa—!" Her hooves slipped. She scrambled on the unstable surface in an attempt to regain traction, but, inevitably, she fell onto her flank. Her glass jar clattered noisily onto the hard surface and skidded away.

Vincent snickered. He observed from the safety of the mouth of the cavern and silently judged her blunder from afar.

"Hey, I can hear you over there! Shut up! This is a lot slippier than it looks." She stood slowly to avoid slipping and carefully approached her jar with her healthy wing extended to maintain her balance. When in range, she bowed her neck and plucked it from the ice with her teeth delicately. "Phew..." Her flank was freezing. Her body quaked as she shivered, and she hugged her torso with her wing in a desperate attempt to retain her body heat.

"Try not to do that again, alright?"

Rainbow transferred the jar from her mouth to her wing. She attempted to walk as she gingerly placed one hoof in front of the other. Unfortunately, due either to her body as it trembled involuntarily as she kept herself warm or the lack of sufficient traction on the slick ground, one misstep proved to be fatal. She slipped again and was propelled, hurtling and yelling, over the precipice of an unseen hole down into a pitch-black void. She tumbled on the way down. Her ribs struck a hard surface, and her body weight compressed her chest, which forced a sharp squawk from her throat as oxygen rapidly evacuated her lungs. Once she finally collapsed onto the bottom of the fissure, her jar of fireflies quickly followed. They crashed against the hard rock ground and smashed loudly, and the delicate plinking of glass shards bouncing sounded.

"Dash! You alright?!" Vincent's distant concerns echoed in the fissure.

Rainbow groaned painfully. She summoned willpower and she stood, but she swayed, overwhelmed by dizziness. There were sharp stabs of pain in her chest and legs, but, overwhelmingly, her sprained wing loudly protested its unwarranted movement. She tasted the unmistakable tang of blood. She had probably bit her own tongue.

Free of the confining walls of the jar, the orange fireflies ascended into the air and chirped confusedly as they explored. A gentle glow of light behind them attracted Rainbow's attention, and she squinted and peered into the darkness.

The blue glow brightened as the creature that emitted it uttered a quiet clicking sound. It uncoiled its massive serpentine body and opened one gigantic eye to examine the interloper with the contempt one might feel when being pestered by an annoying insect. It inhaled and snorted irritably. It appeared emaciated, bony with shrunken skin. Bands surrounded its elongated body that emitted blinding vivid artic-blue luminescence that illuminated the entire gigantic chamber.

Rainbow's cry of alarm was drowned out as the colossal dragon opened its gaping maw and roared resoundingly. It spat a cloud of tiny water particles that descended and clung to every surface, including her coat and mane, where they magically froze upon contact. She hurriedly shook the ice crystals off of herself, scurried away with a cry of fear, and started to climb the chasm wall as quickly as physically possible.

"Oh fuck! Holy shit!" Vincent fired a burst of shots at the dragon that pursued her. In the tight confines of the tunnels, it was deafeningly loud. The bullets ricocheted audibly off of the monster's impenetrable spiky armor as they failed to penetrate.

As she climbed and neared the precipice of the plateau where her companion stood, he kneeled and extended a hand. She grasped it, and he hauled her from the abyss.

She galloped the precise moment her hooves touched the ground. Vincent was right behind her. He attempted to hold his rifle steady and shine the flashlight beam in the direction they recklessly sprinted. The thin beam that swayed erratically in tandem with Vincent's bodily motions as he sprinted was their only source of light in the otherwise pitch-black darkness.

They emerged from the cave, and Rainbow darted into the forest. She shoved aside branches and bushes as she dashed through.

The dragon relentlessly pursued them. It effortlessly demolished trees. Its enormous mass snapped their dense trunks like flimsy twigs. It roared furiously, which coated the forest in a mist of magical ice crystals.

"Where the hell are we going?!” Vincent demanded as he kept pace with her.

Rainbow panted exhaustedly as she struggled to control the pace of her breaths during the manic sprint. "I don't know yet! Stay close!"

She detected her hooves clopping on stone, which confused her briefly. It was only when she gazed down that it occurred to her the terrain beneath her had transitioned from grass to jet-black stone. "GET BACK!" She planted her hooves firmly against the ground and came to a screeching halt. She decelerated not a moment too soon before she sent herself careering over the edge into the effervescing ocean of green sludge below.

Behind, the dragon smashed through a final line of trees. She had just enough time to rotate to face it before it withdrew its massive body inward, bent its joints, angled its snout toward her, and pounced. In a heart-palpitating moment of terror, it sailed through the air and spread its claws in preparation to tear her to shreds. It soared… and landed directly into the acid lake beyond her position. It had fatally miscalculated its jump.

The dragon convulsed, thrashed, and wailed in agony as the voracious acidic sludge clung to its body and dissolved it. The vivid blue glow that emanated from its bands faded as its lifeforce waned. Its corpse withered like a dying flower and finally decomposed into ash that was absorbed by the lake insatiably. Whatever particles remained were swept away by the wind.

Rainbow collapsed onto her haunches and heaved a sigh of exhaustion. By the thoughtless green tide, the dragon had died. She understood exactly what had happened, and she suspected she should have felt relieved, but... she felt guilty. Yet another victim had been claimed by the unfairness of the world.

"Vince... I caused this. We shouldn't have gone down there. I woke it up.” Her ears drooped sadly. "It was just angry we..."

Vincent knelt beside her and gingerly pressed an abrasion on her shoulder where her blue fur and skin had worn away. She winced and jerked aside instinctively. As the adrenaline that flooded her system dwindled, she became keenly aware of her injured wing's persistent objections and the new small injuries that dotted her body.

He retrieved his rifle from where he had inadvertently dropped it. "Come on, let's head back to the truck. Those IFAKs had small plasters that'd be perfect." He waved to indicate that she should follow and began to head back. To avoid snagging thorns and thick undergrowth, he passed unimpeded through the gigantic way tunneled through the forest by the dragon. She regarded the new path with sickening guilt, then, hesitantly, followed.

Even while she uneventfully rested on her haunches, Rainbow swayed to and fro. The sensation of dizziness persisted. Maybe she had struck her head against the ground harder than she’d initially thought.

"Alright..." Vincent curled his legs beneath himself and sat on the ground. He waved and beckoned with a hand. "Come on. It's okay."

She was tentative initially, though Rainbow eventually relented and neared. She crawled into his lap, rested her body weight on the ground, and placed her head atop his crossed legs. Aided by the light provided by the pickup's headlights, he employed his dexterous fingers to delicately pluck small chunks of ice from her fur and freezing flesh. It was unpleasant, but she gritted her teeth and resolved to remain as still as possible.

"I can't believe we went in a huge circle these past few days." Rainbow heaved a sigh. "I guess that means... you were right, my sixth-sense stuff doesn't work."

He patted her on the head reassuringly. "I don't think so. You knew that big lizard was down there. In the future, if you mention you feel something, I'll be more inclined to believe you, alright?"

As the numerous cuts and scrapes that dotted her body were dabbed with antibacterial wipes and covered with small plasters, she unfurled her left wing partly to permit access beneath it. "Can I tell you something? It's something I've never told anypony before... I haven't even told my friends."

”Yeah, of course." His facial expression was solemn as he patiently waited for her to continue.

After her injuries were treated, Rainbow remained in his lap. She looked up and maintained consistent eye contact. "A few years ago, I had a dream. There was a war in the Frozen North. King Sombra returned and imprisoned Princess Cadence and her family and led an army against Celestia. I served with the Wonderbolts on the frontlines near the Crystal Empire... and... I lost my wing to a magic blast." She clenched her eyes tightly as she recalled the painful memory. "Twilight and Spike retrieved the Crystal Heart and stopped Sombra when he came back. But if they had failed, then... maybe that’s what my world would have become under his control.

"Even though the Elements of Harmony and the princesses do their part to keep the peace, and Equestria hasn't seen a big conflict for hundreds of years, I'm constantly doing drills with my team under Spitfire's command. Mostly about looking the best and representing the Wonderbolts properly. But every now and then, we're instructed on how we'd be expected to react to a serious threat to Equestria—war. It's my job. It would be my responsibility. I have to be there for the sake of Equestria. And that thought... really scares me." She lowered her head and clenched her eyes in remorse. "I never really thought about that part when I signed up. I just wanted to be on a pro flight team and practice with the best of the best."

Vincent patted her head and tenderly stroked one of her ears. "Based on what you've told me about your home, I don't think you have to worry about being ready for that any time soon. The chance of that happening sounds pretty low. For now, being a good flier, representing the Wonderbolts—that sounds like a great gig to me. You look good in uniform?"

"I was born to wear it. My friends definitely thought so, the first time they saw me." Her remark was accompanied by a small, fleeting smile as she remembered her friends' cheers and encouraging remarks.

"I'd like to see that." He chuckled lightly, but his tone indicated he was sincere.

"So, what happened with you? Were you enlisted? Did you go because you were ordered to?"

"No, I signed up for it. I was looking for my big break. Back then, I thought the meaning of my life wasn't... personal enough to me, I guess. Recruitment promised me I'd find purpose with them, but I never did. I get now that's just somethin' they tell everyone. They're there for a couple reasons, and making friends isn't one of them."

"Is it... really that horrible when you're out there?"

Vincent was silent as he considered the magnitude of her query. "Yeah, it is." He gazed thoughtfully into the nearby perimeter of the forest. "I was one of the lucky ones, actually. I went back home. A lot of other guys I knew didn't get that."

The reminder evoked vivid imagery in her mind of the faces of the soldiers, distorted in grimaces of anguish. Rainbow flinched and whimpered. She rolled to her side and hunched her shoulders as she retreated into a sad huddle.

Accompanied by the subtle rumble of the truck’s engine, the sounds of nature were all around. Insects chirped. Herds of fireflies concealed beneath flower petals chittered and emitted subdued illuminations. She reminisced about the nostalgic memory of crickets chirping in the meadows that heralded the settling of every dusk back home, but it offered little relief from her sorrow. A lone teardrop descended her cheek and trailed through her facial fur.

Vincent breathed a long, drawn-out exhalation. "Look, I don't know what you like to hear, but... I don't have any lines of bullshit to help win you over. I know the worst things always seem to happen to the best people. That's how it is, isn't it? I think you've learned that by now. So, you have to appreciate what you have when you have it."

Rainbow craned her neck to look. Through wet eyes blurry with tears, she was surprised to see an unanticipated expression on his face: a feeble smile, a courageous defiance of hopelessness, a silent communication that he recognized the internal fear she battled, saw it and called it by name. She thought it was the type of bravery she could only seek to inadequately imitate and could never hope to truly achieve.

As she felt the consoling weight of his arms over her, her ears folded, and she smiled peacefully. She coiled her forelegs around his waist and reciprocated the hug. It felt a little awkward, what with the position of her body, but it felt right.