V. I Found You, For You Were Fearless and My Only One
It had gone rather horribly wrong.
Stealing had seemed rather easy, with the aid of magic. She’d skulked behind the pegasus guard, slowly undoing the keys that hung from the side of his saddlebag. They’d come free and how she’d grinned. The locked doors into the makeshift prisons the cultists and their hired muscle had set up wouldn’t stop her now! She’d even managed to get it perfectly with just one eye, the other wrapped in bandages.
Until, with a wicked, toothy smile, the stallion had turned. She nabbed the keys out of the air with her mouth and ran.
Her hooves beat a wild staccato upon the cold tile. The shouts of gleeful pursuit followed. They had her now, they were sure of it. There was nowhere to run. Eventually, they’d outrun her and she’d be theirs. If she hadn’t been hot with effort and fear, she’d have shivered.
She was higher up in the citadel, running along the outside wall. To her right, sunlight poured in, and to her left, the walkway ended and showed a wide open chamber, where a few earth ponies milled about, calling for others to join the chase.
The brothers were nowhere to be found.
Her heart wouldn’t be still; her eyes darted from place to place. There had to be a way out. Ahead was a door and a wall, and she assumed it was a guardhouse. Grateful, she put on another burst of speed and flung open the door with her magic. She raced through.
She closed it behind her and looked around wildly, the keys still in her mouth. There! A stair heading up. She took it, opening the trap door in the ceiling to go up into the next chamber and closing it behind her.
This was a simple hallway with a single colonnade and another set of long, tall windows. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to hide, only doors that would probably lead into old shops or quarters. Closets.
She jogged down the hall, opening each door she came to, looking for a hallway or a room she could hide in.
One of them led to a large room, filled with old statues. She ducked into this new place, and closed the doors just as voices began to drift up from out of the guardhouse.
The chamber was strange, with a lower ceiling than she’d expected. The statues were mostly unfinished, and she suspected it had once been the workshop of some craftspony for the monarch.
Outside, she heard voices.
Rarity considered her options. There was a door on the other side, leading to another long colonnaded walk, and a closet with ancient tools hanging in it on racks. One option, really.
She peeked out into the new hall, only to see a stallion coming around the corner to her left. She ducked back in, slumping against the wall with a strangled moan. One option indeed. Never think that again, Rarity. If you get a chance to think anything, that is.
So she retreated into the tool closet and shut the door preserved door with her magic, shivering a little at the strange touch of this place’s enchantment. As it closed, she was plunged into total darkness.
Rarity struggled to control her breathing. It came fast, panicked. She fidgeted, and something cold and metal touched her. She put both hooves over her mouth to hold in the scream of surprise.
She closed her eyes, even though nothing around her was changed, and carefully laid down. Breathe softly... breathe softly... come now, Rarity, you can do this. She didn’t dare try another sound barrier. If they spoke in the statue room, or made any noise at all, it would echo too much. They’d drag her out into the light and she’d be finished.
Or worse. It came to her with little warning—
They both got their eyeful, as if they were trying to convince themselves that this was the pony who had killed their associate. An unpleasant smile slowly blossomed on the face of the larger stallion, and it made her feel exposed and dirty.
—and then she was back in the closet, her throat feeling dry.
They’d passed, arguing over who had lost her, and Rarity had trembled as silently as she could manage.
It was deathly silent now, but she had no way of knowing what that meant. There could still be ponies out there, looking for her, just watching. She would open that door and they’d be on her in a heartbeat, hoofblades out. Those awful eyes and those evil grins...
Hoofblades. She worried about the wound on her face. We all have to sacrifice a bit of our beauty eventually, Rarity. But it was hard to accept. She’d wrapped it up as best she could, but there’d been precious little water left in her small canteen to clean the wound.
She was glad that there were no mirrors to be found and no time to look in them. Slowly, she raised her hoof up, but then stopped it short of touching the bandages. What would Rainbow think? Would Rainbow be dismayed? Certainly not as dismayed as Rarity was.
Rarity laid her head down on her hooves and waited.
This was stupid. She was in a closet, for Celestia’s sake. A closet. Rainbow was somewhere on this level of the acropolis, and she was in a damn closet, afraid to come out. Root and Branch had probably already saved Rainbow. Right now, she knew her pegasus was probably asking them where she was. They’d shrug, and she’d know.She’d know that Rarity had been useless all along, hadn’t accomplished it, in the end. That she’d not had the heart to risk.
You came all this way, didn’t you?
Well, yes, but that made it worse. She’d come all this way, over miles and miles. Over an ocean, even, to an entirely new continent. Only to be stopped here right at the end. By challenges less fearsome than the storm in the airship that had borne her, or the long walk from the shore to Jannah.
Rarity, you can’t stay here forever.
Why not? Rainbow could go on without her. She would only burden her, as she always had. Poor, stupid, flightless Rarity with her dresses. She was an anchor. Root and Branch would get Rainbow out.
You’re being stupid. I’m being stupid.
Maybe. She rolled onto her back and stared at nothing in the pitch black.
You love Rainbow, don’t you Rarity? You love her with every little bit of your heart. The thought of living without her leaves you cold. You almost beat up Twilight just for her location. You almost told the Princess of all of Equestria where she could stuff her caution, all for Rainbow.
Love. Love didn’t make her better at fighting and rescuing. And being sneaky.
No, but it helps. Great heart will not be denied.
That was literally the stupidest line she’d ever heard. Where in Equestria had she gotten that? Had she read it somewhere? But stupid or not, she couldn’t stay here forever. She frowned at the darkness above her. Rarity would simply have to leave this closet.
So she stood and scooted closer to the opening. Her shoulders tensed, and she gritted her teeth. With a soft push from her hoof, the door opened and she readied her magic to throw any assailant against the wall.
But there was nopony there. She closed her eyes, and let out a long sigh as tension left her limbs.
The cell had been empty.
The doors had all been opened.
Chaos ruled.
Even without the guards talking in the center of the trampled, dead garden, it wasn’t that hard to tell what had happened here: Root and Branch. Or perhaps—she almost didn’t dare to hope it—Rainbow had found a way out by herself. The prisoners, in short order, had poured out into the halls. She’d seen a few dead ponies around the door, and she’d mourned them as long as she could afford.
Which wasn’t much. The once complacent mercenaries were riled up, an indolent hive of bees driven into fury. Twice she’d avoided detection only by a fraction of a second, ducking into a room just as pursuit turned the corner. There’d be precious little sneaking up left to do. It would be all face to face confrontation now.
Or none. If Rainbow had indeed escaped...
But she could consider that somewhere safer. The stone bench was not quite the safest place for planning. The two mercenaries fidgeted, waiting. For what, she didn’t know.
Rarity peeked around the bench again, just to make sure they hadn’t moved.
One of them was gone, and she froze. The other looked confused, and wandered out of her sight. Where is he? Time to move,Rarity!
She felt something on her back, and a hoof covered her mouth. Her mind went blank with absolute panic, and she bit down on the blue hoof. She kicked at the air.
“Ow! Gods, Rarity, I know you’re happy to see me, but can the whole bitin’ thing wait? Dammit, that hurts. I know how you get sometimes, but...”
She let go and awkwardly turned over so that she lay on her back.
Rainbow, surprised, rolled off. Rarity was on her in a heartbeat, hugging her fiercely. The guards and the citadel around her faded away.
“Rares, hey, whoa there—”
“Rainbow, if you love me, you will shut up and let me kiss you and cry and hopefully not get caught,” Rarity whispered, and Rainbow shut up. And Rarity got her kiss.
“They went off into the other hallway, towards the High Market. That’s what they call it. I’m pretty sure they’ve rounded up at least some of the runaways. Poor fools,” she ended softly, grimacing. “I don’t know how many got off this floor.”
“How did you get out?”
“That can wait,” Rainbow said quickly, standing. “C’mon, back the way you came.”
Oh, right. Guards. Stealth.
Rarity stood as well, and they took off down the hallway. She followed Rainbow’s lead, her heart full and her lips curling up into a kind of delirious smile. She’d not expected things to go this way, but she didn’t think she minded.
“To answer... your question,” Rainbow began as their hooves beat the marble in time, “you’d be surprised how much brute force I can put into a good kick. Those weren’t meant to be cells. They were meant to be bedrooms. I guess for servants? I don’t know.”
“Probably...” she said, almost tripping when Rainbow stopped her at an intersection. Cautiously, the pegasus peeked around the corner. Rarity heard her breathing loud in her ears. It was far too loud, and with every breath she could almost imagine somepony hearing it and coming to find the source.
Rainbow turned back to her.
“I had like... weeks to work on it. And they just let me, I guess assuming that the doors would hold. I’m athletic, but I’m smaller than most of them. I may have thrown a few tantrums to convince them I just did that kind of thing,” she whispered. “Coast is clear, I think.”
Rarity smiled. “Smart, Dash. Why now, though?”
She shrugged, and then gestured with her head. Quickly, they crossed the intersection. Rainbow continued talking softly as they trotted down the hall.
“Guards were talking about you being in the citadel, and you know I had to come find you! I mean, how could I not?”
She chuckled. “Oh, Dash! It’s been so long. I cannot wait to get out of this place.”
Rainbow smiled at her. Not quite the award winning smile she loved, but they were also on the run. She’d have plenty of time to get one of those out of her later. All the time in the world, because Celestia knew she’d never let Rainbow leave the house again after this. She laughed despite herself.
They ran in silence. She panted, and her hooves burned, but she was happy. A month of desperate lonely searching had led her to these blessed halls and Rainbow. Rainbow, who for all of her suffering was still strong and smiling.
Captivity had been good to her, surprisingly. Her legs had retained much of their tone and strength, and they were as exquisite as Rarity remembered. Her mane was longer than it had been in Ponyville, but it wasn’t as dirty as Rarity had imagined it would be.
“Where are we headed?” she asked, as Rainbow paused at the entranceway into a new hall. Running through the center was a small pond that Rarity assumed had once been filled with fish. The walls broke from the uniformly white surfaces standard throughout the rest of the citadel.
As with the streets of the inner ring, she was filled with a strange certainty. Oh, these... they must be—
“Well, first, we’re headed here. The old royal suites. This is the—”
“Antechamber, yes. How do you know that?”
Rainbow stopped and stared at her, mouth open. “I... heard it? I mean, I’ve heard some of the names of rooms and stuff. Here and there. Where did you hear that?”
“I... don’t know. I’ll explain it later.”
The feeling of being watched was almost physical. Rarity shivered.
“Anyway, you were saying?” she said, a bit too forcefully.
“Uh... yeah, right. Sorry. From here, we’ll head up until we can reach the top. I’ll fly us down to a higher up building, and—”
Rarity interrupted for the second time as they walked around the pond.
“Dash, you can’t fly me that far! You know your wing is hurt from... you know. Twilight’s wedding. The maze, and the trap?”
She stared blankly at Rarity for a moment before shaking her head. “Right. Right, sorry. Okay, anyway. There’s a few other buildings up there... gods, I’m dumb. I totally forgot. I’m sorry, Rarity.”
“It’s... quite alright,” Rarity responded, tilting her head and looking Dash over. She looked fine, but Rarity hadn’t considered what captivity might have done to her mind. Horribly, the thought of D’Jalin using his magic on Rainbow’s memories came to her and she squelched it in a hurry. They’d find out later, when this was all said and done. Oh, please don’t let it be that. I don’t want that... monster’s hooves in my memories with Dash. Well, our memories.
“It’s alright,” she repeated. “But what will our plan be now?”
Rainbow shuffled forward, still leading. “We can head up, let these fools wander around for a little bit, and then we’ll take another entrance back down into the citadel.”
“Misdirection,” Rarity mused, trying to shake off the suspicion that D’Jalin might have hurt Rainbow in ways she couldn’t see. She was being forgetful, not walking or talking quite like the Rainbow she knew... but she couldn’t bear to think of that madzebra rooting around in her love’s head. Not after what she’d seen him command in that atrium. Not after the dance.
“Rainbow... are you feeling alright?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Fine.” They left the antechamber and walked through richly dressed chambers. Rarity found them all familiar. Were they similar to her temporary quarters in the palace tower, perhaps? "I'm kind of improvising, here."
As Rainbow led her, Rarity found herself more and more troubled. The feeling of being followed became more and more intense. No longer did the strange knowledge seem like mere similarity. She felt as if she’d walked these very halls, looked at these tapestries. The table in the dining room that she passed... she had eaten at it, she felt certain. She remembered meals down to exactly how much the cook had over seasoned them. Everything.
Rarity didn’t know what it meant.
“Almost there, Rarity,” Rainbow said, grinning back at her. She smiled, glad to have Dash a little more confident. Somepony here had to be! She certainly wasn’t.
She watched Rainbow, the smile lingering on her lips. I’ve never been so happy to see those wings in my life. It’s odd, how you remember things differently than how they really are...
“Here we go!” Rainbow announced with a big grin as they turned yet another corner. There, in front of her, was a small stairway. She looked over at Rainbow skeptically.
“That’s it? Isn’t there supposed to be some species of... Temple or some such up there?”
“Er... yeah?”
“One would think the way to such a temple would be paved with a bit more...” she waved her hoof around. “Grandeur. But I can criticize their choices later. You first.”
Rainbow climbed up ahead of her, and opened the door on the ceiling, looking around. She turned back to Rarity.
“Coast is clear, Rarity!” She called, and disappeared up into whatever structure was above them.
Probably some sort of reliquary. Something felt wrong, but she couldn’t place it. As she climbed the stairs, things rattled about in her brain. As she reached the top step, it finally clicked.
The wing that was injured long ago was too perfect. Her legs were too perfect. The way she talked was too perfect, not careless enough.
“You always call me Rares,” she said dully, staring at the wall in front of her where a mosaic of a familiar alicorn stared back. Behind her, there was a green flash that cast an eerie glow on the wall.
“Nopony’s perfect,” replied a gravelly, foreign voice.
She was thrown forward, something hitting her in the back of the head. The golden alicorn swam before her vision, and as she slumped against the wall and into oblivion, she had the most absurd thought: she recognized the golden pony on the wall.