Wind. Incredibly powerful winds constantly attacking her from the right side of her body as Rainbow Dash barreled through the massive tornado that encompassed the north pole of the world. A lesser pegasus would be thrown away, carried off by the tornado and dumped who knows where. But not Rainbow Dash. She was in her element right now and she had faced far more powerful storms and other weather phenomena on her adventure. Not to mention going through this blasted tornado once before not too long ago. So this might as well have been nothing. This was a cakewalk. And it felt good. It felt good to beat her wings and push her body hard, push past the world she had just left behind and go into the beyond. She loved the thrill, she loved the beating of her heart, the blood pumping in her veins, the strain of muscle. This was her kind of flying, the exciting, daring sort of flight that others would shy away from.
This was the life. Flying hard and being awesome. Something like this even beat out taking a nap after a long day of kicking flank. She had almost forgotten just how good something simple like this could feel, stuck in the doldrums for a second too long for her taste back in Nogt. She may have come on this adventure in the first place looking for new kinds of excitement and awesome things to do, but she shouldn’t forget how to appreciate the stuff like this. Flying. And just how much she loved it.
She had flown so much through the northern parts of the world, flown for miles and miles over snow and mountains and frozen lakes and rivers. To be honest, Rainbow wasn’t sure if she really understood just how awesome it all was until now that she had left that part of her journey behind. But that was just how she was. Someday she was sure another pony from Equestria would visit and travel through it all and they could write a book or draw a map and catalog the whole place. Rainbow was just fine with her vivid memories of all the truly important things she did back there.
Still, she realized now that the journey she had been on hadn’t satisfied her in the way she was looking for. Cause all she had been doing was moving on and on. If she had stopped to think, to look around, to appreciate the awesome wonders and uniqueness of the new and unknown world around her, maybe she would’ve found a true goal and been content with her adventure a long time ago.
Rainbow Dash grinned as the wind whipped her bangs around her head. “But then I wouldn’t be the first pony to fly all the way around the world, now would I? That’s my goal now. That’s something solid, something real, something pretty darn awesome I’m working towards!”
And the first step when it came to reaching that new goal was getting out of this high-powered tornado.
“Cakewalk”. Rainbow Dash licked her lips and with a burst of energy flapped her wings harder. She propelled herself to the outer edge of the tornado winds immediately, the world beyond them becoming suddenly clearer. The only thing she still really wished for right now were some flight goggles. An item that would’ve done her a spectacular amount of good on the rest of her journey. Unfortunately that lack of preparation is what came with shooting off on this journey without a care in the world or second thought.
Idly, she realized she had just done the exact same thing in Nogt as she had in Ponyville. Maybe there was a lesson to learn there…
Nah. Speed, recklessness, and impatience were some of Rainbow Dash’s best friends. She’d never betray such great friends. They always seemed to be just what she needed in the end anyways and things worked out fine.
As the fierce wind and her own whipping hair got into her eyes though she still wished for those goggles. Powering through the tornado was nothing but she’d like to be able to see while doing it. All she knew now was that she was close to exiting it and entering the world beyond. The tornado was big but she had charged through thicker storms and banks of fog and other things in the past. The wind coming in from the right side of her body only threatened to throw her off course or carry her along with it for a while, it wasn’t coming from directly ahead and pushing against her. While she was fighting the current it wasn’t as difficult as it could have been.
And even if it was she still would’ve had no problem getting through it. What was a little wind compared to some of the other things she had had to push her way through on her journey so far?
Being hounded by a giant unkillable ice monster? Beating up a stupid muscle-head of a pegasus? Getting through a storm that made all other storms pale in comparison? It went on and on for her. She had done so much and still had it in her to do an endless amount of things more as long as it was awesome and exciting.
She hoped the other side of the world contained adventures for her even better than the ones she had already been on.
Rainbow Dash tore past the last layers of wind licking at her body and emerged beyond the north pole tornado, beyond the city of Nogt and the Reindeer, beyond one half of the True North that she had flown through. With a celebratory shout coming out of her lungs she threw up her hooves and stopped in mid-air. “Woohoo!”
Lots and lots of snow greeted the cheering pegasus.
Her face gradually took on a much more neutral expression as she folded her front legs in front of her chest and floated there with the large tornado right behind her. “Well, this is pretty much what I was expecting.”
In front of her was a landscape much the same as a large portion of the True North she had traveled through had been. Massive, endless, drifts of snow and tall mountains as far as the eye could see. A winterscape to end all others. Glacial peaks and valleys between the mountains stood in front of her while directly below was an ocean of piled up, untouched snow that was whiter than anything Rainbow Dash had seen in her life. The cloudy sky above only allowed a dim light to travel down, bathing the world in an opaque glow.
No half-frozen lake existed right past the tornado like on the other side. As Rainbow Dash looked back at the massive walls of rock that shot up into the sky, bordering the east and west sides of Nogt and the north pole, she saw nothing but cold rock and ice staring back at her. The monumentally old dividers of the northern world appeared so much darker on this side.
A smile once again tugged up the corners of Rainbow Dash’s mouth as she turned to look back ahead. Without a single word she began her new flight over the snow and towards the mountains.