"Ha! What a joke, 'Chaser! You can't even fly upwind for a minute! How do you expect to kick out a whole storm?!" Rainbow Dash taunted her friend.
"Oh, yeah? Just watch me!" Cloudchaser swooped into action, dodging hoards of cloud mass as she darted against the flow of the storm.
Rainbow Dash was almost impressed, as she leapt off the ground and flew in after her. As the two sped through the spinning mess of dark clouds, it began to slow down. They kept on the pressure, as the funnel began to slow even more. Rainbow Dash squinted through the flurry of snow and clouds. She thought she heard a faint voice through the roaring of the storm, but she couldn't make it out. The voice repeated what it said before, but this time it was much more audible. It was Nimbus, another member of her weather team, shouting at the top of his lungs from outside the storm.
"Watch out! You're getting dangerously close to the eye!!" he yelled. When Rainbow finally comprehended, she had already been thrown into the cage of clouds, the eye of the storm.
"Heh... whoops." Rainbow Dash regained her bearings as she observed the walls of raging clouds spinning around her. She was, however, a little bit confused as to why Nimbus looked so worried when she fell out of formation. Falling into the eye of a storm is really no big deal; you can just fly out of the top, unless... Rainbow's eyes went wide. ...it's a capped storm.
A capped storm is exactly what you'd think it is: A storm that is so dense, that the top of it is blocked of by a layer of solid cloud -- a "cap" if you will. Rainbow Dash attempted to charge back into the storm, only to be thrown back into the eye moments later. Nevertheless, Rainbow wasn't ready to give up quite yet.
She began to fly in circles, getting progressively faster until her appearance was nothing but a blurry, rainbow-colored ring. Once she felt that she had enough speed built up, she jetted into the cloud barrier yet again. This time, however, she punched through to the other side of the clouds, free from the prison of grey.
"Hey guys! Did you see that?! I just... Guys?" She glanced around, but to her dismay, none of her team were visible, which forced her to realize that she was surrounded by dense, foggy wind. She shivered a little while she scanned for her friends. After searching for another four minutes, give or take, the rain and hail started pouring down. As stubborn and prideful as Rainbow Dash was, she knew she was a goner if she stayed out much longer; she needed to find shelter.
She squinted through the bedlam and panned about her surroundings. For the longest time, all she could see was grey, until a rock face became visible. She darted for it out of fear that it might slip out of her view as quickly as it came in. She clung to the wet rock and started searching again. To her left was nothing but more rock and a small tree that was about ready to get uprooted. On her right, at first glance, it looked like more rock, but after closer inspection, it became clear that there was a cave in the cliffside. She jetted towards the cave, fighting the icy wind. The cold was setting in remarkably fast. At this point, the sharp, biting pain of the freezing gusts had subsided into a numb, dull aching as Rainbow pressed for the opening in the rock.
Finally, she arrived. She lowered herself to the ground near a group of boulders, shielding herself from the wind. She was now soaked with freezing water, which, when combined with blasting wind, did not bode well. She knew that if she didn't do something quickly, she would suffer an icy end. She climbed to her hooves and surveyed her surroundings. She thought. To prevent herself from freezing to death, she would need something to generate heat. She was going to need to build a fire... somehow.
She gazed into the dark throat of the cave. She gulped. It didn't look inviting, to say the least. She knew she wouldn't find anything to build a fire down there; she wouldn't even be able to see. She turned around and proceeded back towards the entrance of the cave. She shielded her face with a foreleg as the chilling winds returned. Growing precariously out of the rock was a small pine sapling, a few feet in length. She grasped it in her mouth and yanked it back and forth until it broke free from the dry earth. She trotted pridefully with her stick back to the boulders. She placed it on the ground, then realized she had to find something to start the fire with. What's that stuff called that survivors use to start fires? Fling? Flant? ...Flint!
She began to search the ground for the elusive rock. After about five minutes of grabbing random pebbles and striking them on the ground to see if they made sparks, she finally found a piece. It was a dark grey, oblong stone, about the size of a golf ball. She returned to her firewood with her trusty flint and began striking it against the ground, whilst trying to catch the sparks in the fire. It doesn't look like the sparks are doing anything... Am I even doing this right?
Finally, the wood caught fire. Rainbow Dash didn't know much about keeping a fire going, so she did all she knew how to do, which was shield it from oncoming wind to make sure it didn't go out. Once the fire had grown large enough to sustain itself, she leaned back on the rocks behind her and relaxed. She finally had a source of warmth.
It was, however, short-lived, as a gust of wind came bounding through the cave and blew out her fire after it had been burning for about seven minutes. She pouted, letting out a moan of disapproval. This time, she was out of options. There was no convenient firewood or flint for her to start a fire with. She decided that she could only wait the storm out, and hope that it ended soon.
She curled up next to the still-red embers, trying to take advantage of any heat it was still giving off, until it finally went black altogether. She began to shiver.
Rainbow Dash lifted her head off the cold, damp ground. Had she been... sleeping? She could not account for the past few minutes... hours? She glanced outside. Still blizzarding... Just then, Rainbow noticed a blowing sensation. Not the icy wind from outside, but more of a warm, gentle tug. Whether or not she was hallucinating, she could not tell. The tugging became more enthusiastic, so much so that Rainbow had to get up and find out what it was. At this point, it was so strong that she knew it couldn't be a figment of her imagination, unless she was completely losing it. The sensation was beckoning her towards the deep, dark cavern. Any fear that she previously harbored of entering the cave had dissipated. The tugging felt like a warm embrace. To sum up the feeling she was experiencing, she felt overwhelmingly... secure.
As she descended into the tunnel, her visibility quickly began to drop until she couldn't see her own hooves in front of her face. To her surprise, however, the windy sensation seemed to be guiding her through the cave. After all, she'd made it this far in without running into any walls. The breeze took her around twists and turns, bends and curves, until she was sure she would never find her way back out. Eventually, she determined by a change in the way her hoofsteps echoed, she had entered a room of sorts.
The breeze vanished.
For a few moments, Rainbow panicked as she came to terms with the literally and metaphorically cold reality of the situation. That warm feeling was the only thing telling her where to go, and she would be utterly lost if it didn't come back.
Suddenly, the room began to glow a faint gold. Light, coming from seemingly nowhere, illuminated the cave. She observed her now visible surroundings. It was a small, egg shaped intersection between several tunnels, three to be exact. The ceiling was only about six feet above the ground, and covered with dangling roots. A few dusty boulders scattered the floor, upon one of which Rainbow Dash sat to take a breather. The more she thought about her situation, the more she began to doubt herself. So, recap. I notice a warm wind. I follow it. I end up in an empty room and now, the room's glowing. Yeah, I think it's leading me right to the mayor of Creepytown.
She broke from her thoughts when she realized that the far end of the room was glowing more brightly than the near. Curiously, Rainbow stood up and trotted over to investigate. Upon closer inspection, an unlit lantern revealed itself, hanging from the ceiling. Rainbow examined the lantern, before determining that the lantern needed fuel to work. She let out a sigh. What are you trying to show me?
The glanced around glumly when something caught her eye. Directly below the lantern was a pile of reddish rocks. It was not, however, the rocks that grabbed her attention, but rather what was poking out from under it. The corner of a sheet of paper was just visible under the rock in the dim light.
With great effort, Rainbow muscled the rocks away to reveal an indentation in the ground, clearly scraped into the cave floor with some sort of tool. Inside the indentation lay a piece of notebook paper covered with numbers. They were rather sloppily scrawled in quill ink. The numbers meant nothing to Rainbow, but she concluded it must be some kind of cipher or code. At the bottom of the page was a small insignia, also drawn in pen, that Rainbow could only describe as a ball with oblong rings around it. Written next to the insignia were three letters: "DML". Perplexed, Rainbow sighed and folded up the sheet of paper and put it in her weather team saddlebag.
As if on cue, the glow, the warmth, all of it vanished instantly. Rainbow gasped. How am I supposed to find my way back now?! Then, she noticed a dim blue light coming from one of the tunnels. She followed the tunnel until she found herself back at the mouth of the cave. The embers in her fire had finally died out completely. The storm had passed, and the sun was shining brightly, which explained why the visibility in the cave was good enough for her to find her way back. Rainbow was thrilled to see the harsh weather had subsided, and that she could finally be on her way. However, the cave had brought her a whole new problem. Rainbow stood and contemplated for a few moments, before taking off for the library.