//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: Premonitions // Story: Dark Horizons // by shadow hunter //------------------------------// The wind flew past her face as she ran. She was nearing exhaustion, but she didn’t dare stop or even slow down. She knew that something was behind her, and for some reason she just had to get away from it. There was a dull throbbing pain in her right side as she ran, almost mindlessly, avoiding trees, dodging rocks and branches in the path, frantically trying to escape from whatever was after her. She recognized that she was running through the Everfree Forest but had no idea what part of it, or even for how long she had been running. As she whipped past another low-hanging tree branch, a part of her bright and colorful mane snagged on it and left a tuft of multicoloured hair behind her. Great, thought Rainbow Dash, another way for them to find me. She suddenly realized that she was running and not flying, having seemingly completely forgotten about her wings. She leapt into the air and tried to spread her wings but a searing bolt of pain shot through the right side of her body, causing her to come crashing to the ground in a very ungraceful tumbling heap. She rolled head-over-hindquarters down a gentle slope, finally stopping at the bottom. She moaned and sat up to look at her side and see what had gone wrong. She stared in disbelief at what awaited her gaze. Six long slashes ran down the right side of her body, starting from her front leg and continuing up and across her battered right wing to end just before her tail. She was shocked that she hadn’t noticed them before, but realized that fear must have overcome her and dulled the pain to a less noticeable level. She quickly came to her senses and realized that if the creature that had caused her wounds was chasing her, the last thing she wanted to do was sit still. But which direction should she go? She wasn’t entirely sure which direction she had come tumbling from, so she took off in a direction that seemed to continue slightly downhill. This she hoped would lead her away from them. That was when she heard it. A low, sinister sounding growl from the woods, which seemed to be coming from her left, so she quickly veered off to the right, only to be confronted by a thick mass of underbrush that she was sure would not be easy to get through. She began to look frantically around for a way out, but was unable to see any other option than to continue in the direction she was already headed, so she pushed herself onwards. She was not used to running so much, naturally preferring to fly, so her legs were beginning to feel like they might collapse underneath her at any given moment. She heard another growl from behind her and pushed herself even harder. She glanced backwards, but couldn’t make out anything at the speed she was running. Then she felt her hoof snag on something, causing her to sprawl on the ground and slide to a halt. She tried to regain her footing, but in her panic all she could do was scramble in the dirt. She heard more growls, this time from on two sides of her, and to her right a set of pointed eyes glowed menacingly from the undergrowth. She scrambled away from the thicket the creature was in, only to feel herself hit something hairy behind her. She froze in fear and slowly looked up, into a menacing pair of eyes and a gaping mouth of sharp teeth. The creature growled, raised a large six-clawed paw, and then swung it down towards her with a tremendous amount of force. At the very last moment before it hit her, she let out a small scream. ~*~*~*~ “AAAAAAHHH!” Rainbow Dash jolted out of her sleep, tumbling off the edge of her bed. She fell to the floor struggling to untangle herself from her blankets. She freed herself and stood there for a while, before sitting down and realizing that she was in her home and safe from what must have been just a dream. “Good, only a dream…” she mumbled. She waited for her racing heart to calm down and, just to make sure, she checked her right side but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Thoroughly shaken, she decided she should brave another attempt at sleep before the morning came. She gathered her blankets off the floor and crawled back into her bed, curling up carefully before falling into a deep, dreamless sleep. ~*~*~*~ When she awoke the next morning, she decided to clear up her thoughts with a quick morning flight. She walked outside onto her front step and stretched her wings. She noticed that her whole body was slightly sore, probably from being tense for the second half of her night. Well, here goes nothing! She launched herself off her step and into the air, glad to be flying once again. As she flew, she let her subconscious take over while she mulled last night’s dream over in her head. She just couldn’t shake a feeling of dread about the dream. Every time she thought about it, she would get the shivers and she would have to take a moment to get her grip on herself again. Although she would never admit it to anypony, her dream had really shaken her. It took her only a few seconds to deduce where she would most likely find information on dreams and their meanings; a library. She didn’t want to seem so fainthearted as to be distressed by a mere dream but, on the other hand, she knew she had to find some answers to why it shook her so badly. After much deliberation, she came to the conclusion that she would sneak into Twilight’s house that night to see what she could find out. After all, her library is sorted alphabetically so all I would have to do would be look under ‘D’ right? How hard can that be? She concluded her flight and returned home to wait for nightfall. ~*~*~*~ She wasn’t really sure what time would be best for sneaking into somepony else’s house, but she assumed that after midnight would do fine. It was quite some time before she finally decided that she was ready and had gathered enough courage to go ahead with her plan. She reasoned that what Twilight didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, so all she had to do was avoid getting caught. She carefully approached Twilight’s library, stopping momentarily to take a good look to make sure nopony else was around, before heading up to the door. Careful not to make any rushed movements, she took her time to carefully open and then shut the door quietly. When the door closed, she was in darkness. The only sources of dim light in the library came from the windows and, despite knowing nopony should be up at this hour, she avoided them just to be safe. Creeping along the wall, she found the shelf with titles beginning with ‘A’ and continued until she found ‘D’. The only problem was that spike’s ladder was resting against the ‘D’ shelf. Carefully she grabbed it and slid it slowly across the floor. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she concentrated on not making any noise. She heard a thud behind her and whirled to face the source of the noise. In her concentration to stay as quiet as possible, she hadn’t noticed that she backed into a small pile of books, which were now toppled along the floor. Carefully replacing them, she returned to the ‘D’ shelf and began to search for a book relating to dreams. That was when the lights turned on. She spun around to see a startled Twilight regarding her with a very surprised expression. “Rainbow Dash? What are you doing in here?” she asked, as Rainbow quickly tried to work out some kind of an excuse. “Ummm, well… I can’t sleep lately, so I thought you might have a book that might help me? Oh, but I didn’t want to disturb you so I figured I would try to be quiet…” her voice trailed off at the end of her sentence as she noticed that Twilight was clearly not buying it. “Then why were you looking under ‘D’? Sleep starts with an ‘S’ and the ‘S’ shelf is in the next room.” “Yeah, but I thought… ummmmm…” Twilight noticed that Rainbow’s eyes were becoming wider, she was beginning to paw at the floor, and she was sweating slightly. Three signs that point to a liar, she thought. “Rainbow, why are you really here?” she asked, choosing her words carefully, “You know I am always happy to help a friend in need, and you said that lately you haven’t been able to sleep. Couldn’t you have come to see me during the day?” “Well, yeah I guess so…” Rainbow quickly tried to search for another excuse to use, but found none. Closing her eyes, she admitted “The truth is Twi… I… well I had a dream and it kind of freaked me out... just a bit.” “Oh Rainbow, that’s not unusual for any of us. I have just the book for you too but, if I am to lend it to you, you must agree never to go skulking around my library at night again.” “All right, I’m sorry Twilight.” Rainbow dash replied, lowering her head slightly. “It’s alright Rainbow, we have all done things in the shadow of poor judgments” Twilight said softly to her friend, as she used her magic to pull a book down from the shelf. “I think this book should be able to answer any questions you may have about your dreams.” She laid the book on the floor in front of her friend. Rainbow Dash eyed the book titled ‘Dreams: an Analyst’s Guide’ suspiciously, wondering if it was even possible to come up with a duller name. “Thanks Twi, and I really am sorry about sneaking around on you like that.” “Don’t worry yourself over that now. It’s all behind us, but now I need to get some sleep” Twilight replied with a smile. “Of course, goodnight Twilight” “Goodnight Rainbow Dash” The two friends parted ways, one heading out the door while the other returned to her bed. Now to get home and read this book she thought, hardly able to believe that she actually wanted to read a book. She arrived home and immediately curled up in bed to read. Not ten seconds after opening the cover and reading the introductory sentence, she was sound asleep. ~*~*~*~ When Rainbow Dash awoke the next morning, all she could see was darkness. She scrambled briefly, causing the book she had been reading last night to fall off her face. Feeling rather sheepish, she headed to the kitchen, whipped up a quick salad, and sat down on the couch with the book. She opened it and began to read, hoping she could manage to stay awake while doing so. After skimming through the introduction, which went into fascinating detail about the boring-sounding middle-aged stallion who wrote the book, she arrived at the first parts of useful information. Little is known about dreams, it began, but that is why I wrote this book. For some, dreams are simply our minds experimenting with scenarios, while for others they can sometimes be premonitions. Upon reading this, Rainbow’s mouthful of salad shot out of her mouth with a horrendous velocity. Ignoring the mess she had just made she flipped to the index and searched for ‘Premonitions’. Her hoof shook slightly as she searched for the entry, found it, and turned to the appropriate page. She glanced along the page until she saw the table she was looking for, titled ‘Was Your Dream a Premonition?’ She read through the table, mentally checking off factors as she went. When she reached the end of the list, she realized that she had checked off almost every checkbox except for one. The last checkbox in the list, and the only unchecked one, stated ‘Has your dream come true?’ She sat in shock. She had seen how she was going to die. But did she die? She didn’t know for sure, since she woke up right when she was hit. She noticed one last phrase that caught her attention. At the bottom of the page there was one line written in red that said ‘NOTE: Even if your dream was a premonition, there is still a possibility it may not occur.’ That line gave her very little reassurance…