Wings won’t work – Watch your step – Taunting voices – An uncool friend – Old discussions brought up – Hey, free cider!
The first thing Rainbow Dash did was put her saddlebags on the ground and make an inventory check. “Okay, first off. Headlamp, do you work?” It clicked with light both first and second time she tested it. “Good, no getting ambushed by things in the dark. Okay, next. Rope.”
The rope was there. Rainbow wasn’t sure if she actually needed it but she presumed Applejack wouldn’t feel comfortable with Rainbow in here without it. Okay, what else was there?
A little notebook. Twilight had been cooped up in her cabin on the voyage to Bretonia, apparently, to write down everything she remembered from their time up in the Crystal Empire when Sombra was threatening it. It was supposed to be a little guideline on how to work against Sombra’s magic. The ‘work together’ part was actively nullified by him so she had to watch out for traps.
A brochure on intrinsic magic circles. Okay, look through that one later…
Hoof-claw? Check. Rainbow flexed and retracted its claws to make sure it still worked.
Small crowbar? Check. Flashbang? Check. Trail rations? Check. Magnifying glass? Check. Yep, Rainbow Dash was good to go. “Okay, now I’m coming for you, Tempest!”
Though the first thing that Rainbow Dash noticed was the large mist that permeated throughout the cave, making it hard for her to see. Didn’t know condensation could cause that.
Rainbow flexed her wings. Who needed rope when you had wings? She lifted off the ground and flew, surprisingly carefully into the cave. Given the darkness and the density of the condensation, along with Applejack telling her story of her own cave, Rainbow wasn’t in a hurry. There could be corners in here and she wasn’t keen to-
Thud!
“What?” When did Rainbow hit the ground? When did she descend at all? Or was the cave tunnel just going up?
No, it was flat. Rainbow got up on her hooves and flapped her wings again. Only… she didn’t get off the ground. She kept flapping, harder and harder, and still she wouldn’t lift off the ground. “Come on!” She tried again. “Come on, let me fly!” After her third, long attempt, she collapsed to the ground.
“...Oh. I get it. This isn’t condensation. This is some weird mist that weakens my wingpower so that I can’t fly, is that it?!” The last words echoed through the tunnel, with nothing answering her.
Well, guess she’s walking now. Bucking enchantment.
“You’re just weak~...” Tempest’s voice taunted her in a ‘ghost-ish’ tone.
Screw it, she’s gonna run.
Rainbow bolted through the tunnel at a speed she withheld only for running competitions with Applejack, so it was easy peasy to get through the empty, long ha-
Okay, skip long. Skip long! Rainbow screeched herself to a halt as she came into a massive cavern. Whoa, that was a long drop. She couldn’t even see the bottom of the cavern. Was the Tower Cliff really that big on the inside?
“So… watch your step, huh,” Rainbow said to herself and began looking for ledges. She hoped that Fluttershy was gonna be okay. On the plus side, Rainbow wouldn’t have to worry about her claustrophobia. Much.
Oh, there was a ledge below her. Okay, careful so I don’t slip, she thought and clung to the edge as much she could in order to get her rear hooves as accurate as possible. Then she let go and landed safely. Rainbow let out a breath of relief she didn’t know she held.
“Wow. I need to learn how Applejack pulls it off. She makes it look so easy. And on top of that I can’t fly in here, I just had to get involved in a situation where I need to fly. This is just plain cheating.”
Not that she wouldn’t expect less from a guy who thinks fighting fairly means ramming a horn into somepony’s eye. When she first noticed Fluttershy’s eye injury, Rainbow Dash almost went berserk. There are some things you just don’t do. She had to learn the hard way that you don’t prank Fluttershy, and unless you’re really keen to have a nice friendly chat with Harry the Bear’s claws, you don’t physically harm her either.
Okay, better find another ledge. There’s got to be something around here. Unless she was supposed to climb upwards, going down seems the better option. Wait, climb? Rainbow looked up with her headlamp to check if there were any ledges up there.
No. Going down it is. Rainbow sighed. This was going to take a long while.
“Oh my, there’s a pegasus down there who’s not flying. Is she stunted or something?”
Tempest was out there, actively taunting her. Rainbow Dash knew she wanted to prove him wrong, but with this fog in the cavern, it probably wasn’t a good idea to react. Her luck was bound sooner or later to change, Stars be willing.
“Oh, dear,” Tempest said in the dark. “It seems our little stunty here doesn’t know where she’s going. Shouldn’t pegasi be going up all the time?”
Just ignore him, just ignore him, Rainbow kept repeating to herself. He was gonna be hog-tied and delivered to Spitfire by the end of all this and - whoops, there went her mind off again. What is wrong with me? I gotta stay focused on what is happening now, not something that might happen in the future.
Rainbow found herself on a ledge that didn’t have a path that led to another safe ledge where she could continue. “Okay, I think I need to jump from here…” She looked about and saw a little ledge a fair bit away. She really needed to go see Applejack about these things. “I gotta concentrate so I make the jump.”
“Hey, what’s up!”
“Waah!” Rainbow jumped blindly at how close that shout was and almost slipped off the edge of the ledge she was aiming for. “No no, no no!” She clammered on as much as she could until she got all four legs up. Panting hard, she turned to the edge. “Don’t do that! Don’t interrupt me when I’m trying to concentrate!”
“Or you’ll do what?”
“I’m gonna tie you up like a cow at a rodeo and present you to Spitfire with a nobbly thing up your butt!” She shouted back. Where did that come from?
There were a few seconds before Tempest replied back. “Kinky.”
“I know!” Rainbow turned away from the edge. “Now shut up and let me concentrate so I can get through here!”
“Really, so you don’t want a little tip from me?”
“No!”
“Fine, I won’t tell you to look up.”
“Yeah, don’t tell me to- what?” Rainbow looked up. Above her was a line of clouds, too thick to be of the mist, yet very narrow, so narrow ponies could only walk across in a single line. It couldn’t have been more than ten ponies up. But with her wingpower disabled by Sombra, that may as well have been from the ground to Cloudsdale. “Ooooh. I get it. I just found that by a stroke of luck.”
“...Yes. Stroke of luck.”
Now that last comment got Rainbow thinking. Tempest was working for Sombra, and no villain would actively try to help the hero in the deep dungeon. Daring Do was a prime example to draw on. Unless Sombra was using those clouds as some kind of bait to lure her into a trap. She had no way of knowing that, but there wasn’t like any other choice she had but to go forward. But what Tempest said gave her a small headache. Was it Sombra deliberately using him to guide Rainbow into a trap, or was it the actual Tempest trying to help her defeat Sombra?
…
Wow, that one was gonna stick with her for a long time.
Her first priority was to find a way up to the clouds. There was no path up for her to go. Guess that meant more climbing. Rainbow Dash hoped there was minor ledges she could use.
In the dark, underground, it’s easy to lose track of time. Rainbow Dash had lost it when she finally got up to the ledge where the cloud path started. It can’t have been more than two hours, judging from her breath, but she honestly didn’t know. It was bad enough with her not able to fly but this was just plain cheating.
It hadn’t even been an easy climb. There had been no ledges, no paths for her to use. So she had to go the hard way, straight up the cliff. A combination of using her hoof-claws, the rope and the crowbar enabled her to create grooves in the rock to pull herself upward and thus scale the large wall.
Meanwhile, Sombra must have taken over Tempest again and was taunting her efforts again since he laughed at the notion that a pegasus had to climb. Rainbow Dash hated that. And Sombra must have had a smug face when he said those words. She’d like nothing more than to smash it in.
Rainbow panted hard, tuning out Sombra so she could focus more on getting her energy back. The breath came back, slowing down. The sweat didn’t stop, though. Either she was more exhausted than she thought or it was really, really hot in there. Twilight would probably go egghead mode and say something like it was because she was underground and therefore closer to the world’s central core that was in a constant flux of molten earth surrounding a massive metal ball that made it so hot in there. Pish-posh, everypony knew that heat came from the sun and the earth was absorbing its rays and stored it within.
Then something occurred to her. Rainbow Dash noted that for all her time spent in here, there wasn’t a single monster waiting in ambush for her. At least, not yet. The cliffs would have made a perfect ambush spot. They could have dumped rocks, or made up a strong gust of wind. A dash of that (doh, that was a pun. Better not let Pinkie find out) and Rainbow would definitely have fallen off.
Yet nothing had happened. Was Sombra expecting her to just fall down on her own? That was a dumb plan.
Either he’s gotten dumber since the Crystal Empire, or he’s up to something again. I honestly can’t decide with this guy. Part of me wants to believe he’s running scared of us getting them together, but he doesn’t reveal anything. What is wrong with this guy?
Rainbow put aside those thoughts for the moment and began to turn to the clouds, but something in the corner of the eye caught her attention.
A single word floating in midair barely illuminated by her headlamp as she turned to it. It was covered in darkness and was in that boring Courier style you found in those typewriters.
BUDDY
Buddy? Why would that word be here? Was that even a word in his vocabulary? Maybe it was something out of the other ponies’ mind and he just snatched it to make it seem applicable to her.
Or did he snatch it out of her head? Nah, she’d have kicked his ethereal flank back to where it belonged if he tried that. Rainbow tilted her head, though. Why would it be here?
And why, out of every word he could have picked to create a trap if he so wanted, did he choose just that word? Well, it wasn’t working anyway. It was in plain light thanks to her headlamp and nothing was working to it.
Unless…
Rainbow moved her headlamp so the main beam hit the word and almost immediately, BUDDY seared with sparks. She took the beam for a moment and the sparks stopped. She resumed it again.
About two seconds later, the word disappeared in a very small explosion that caused noise and a lot of light. Rainbow was merely inconvenienced by the light, all she had to do was blink it out but it cost her precious time and she would barely be able to protect herself from anyone coming up from behind.
Then a voice cut through the lights. It was the last voice she expected to hear in this of all places.
“Whoa, Rainbow. You might need to lie down.”
“Gilda?”
“Last I checked, that was my name,” Gilda retorted in a bored tone. Rainbow’s sight came back and she saw that Gilda was there and yet… not there. “Oh, you got it back now? You pegasi dweebs bounce back fast.”
“You… you’re not really here,” was all Rainbow Dash could say.
“Well, gee, wonder what gave that away? The see-through thing? It’s lame but I’m stuck like this. Least I’m slim, unlike you.”
“What are you even doing here?” Rainbow asked. “Is this another trap set by Sombra?”
“Set by who?” Gilda replied. “But hey, it’s a brilliant trap, letting the one you want cornered and dead reunited with an old friend from Junior Flight Camp. Way to go, Sombra. Whoever you are, now again.”
Rainbow frowned. “Yeah, we are old friends. As in, we’re no longer friends. You only looked out to be cool and number one, no matter who got hurt in the process.”
“Wow, you got a way with words there, Dash. I’m sure the coach would love to see you talk to a wingmate like that.”
“I’m just setting the record straight in case you forgot. If you really are Gilda. At this point, I just… don’t know,” Rainbow said totally frustrated. Why would Sombra do this?
“I don’t think I am the actual Gilda,” Gilda said. “I just look like her and talk like her.”
“So you admit that you are a fake.”
“As if the see-through wasn’t enough of a hint, already.” Gilda began walking up next to Rainbow. “Anyhoo, seems you and I are stuck together.”
“I’m filled with joy,” Rainbow said monotonous. It was bad enough she couldn’t fly but now she had to deal with Gilda? Who loves to fly above everything else besides being cool at the expense of others?
“So, mind telling me what we’re up against?”
“What I’m up against. You are transparent which means you don’t have a physical body, therefore you can’t be harmed, nor can you inflict harm.”
“Whoa, big words coming from you? That’s new. So what are you up against, if you’re gonna be like that?”
Rainbow told her.
“...Wow. You don’t do anything demi-like, do you, Dash?”
“No, I don’t. Anyway, I don’t know how much I am in here–”
“Where are we, anyway?”
“Underneath Tower Cliff in Bretonia,” Rainbow filled in, “but so far I don’t know how much further there is.”
“And you’re stuck on the ground like a lame earth pony.”
“Hey!”
“Okay, a demi-griffin,” Gilda corrected herself. “Better?”
“A little,” Rainbow replied and then sighed. “Let’s just get moving. I wanna move as soon as possible.” She didn’t jump on the cloud immediately, thinking it could be yet another trap of Sombra. She tapped it lightly with a forehoof first. It had a connection. Satisfied, Rainbow jumped on. “Good. At least some of the stuff in here won’t try to kill me.”
“Gee, could you be more vague than that?” Gilda asked, flying next to her. “But how would you know what would like to kill you and what wouldn’t?”
“I don’t,” Rainbow replied. “With this guy, I honestly don’t know and I can’t tell. And– Hey, what happened to Tempest?”
“Who?”
“Tempest. A pegasus working with Sombra. He was out there taunting me in this stupid mist, calling me names, saying I’m weak, blah, blah, blah.”
“So, your coltfriend, basically,” Gilda dropped deadpan.
Rainbow spat out something she didn’t think she had. “What?!”
“Come on. Your last one was like that.”
“Hey, don’t bring in my dating life into this! Where did that even come from?”
“Dash, for all you know, I could just be a figment of your imagination or something. Plus, didn’t you actually date someone like that once?”
“I am not discussing what happened between me and “Speedy” Bolt. Period,” Rainbow told Gilda sternly. “And you were off gliding off with that green pegasus, weren’t you?”
“No, that was the other Gilda. The Real Gilda. I’m Fake Gilda. So how can I have coltfriends if I don’t really exist?”
“Then why did you bring up dating in the first place?”
“Maybe you thought of something that might have considered that Tempest guy as a coltfriend, or maybe I just said that and now you can’t get it out of your head. Watch your step.”
“Watch my–” Rainbow stopped herself as she saw that she had almost walked off the cloud line by accident while talking to Gilda. “Whoa… Okay, I think I got it.”
“What?”
“You were placed here by Sombra deliberately just so you could annoy me or distract me so that I’d fall down there.”
“If I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t have told you to watch your step.”
“Then it’s annoying me,” Rainbow corrected herself and got moving on the cloud path again. “But the thing that bugs me is that you are here. If I wanted a buddy, I could have gone with Soarin, Fleetfoot, Misty Fly, you know, someone I know and think is real cool.”
“And I’m not cool?” Gilda asked swooshing by.
“Hm... let me think back on what you did back in Ponyville after we saw each other for the first time in years.”
“Look, point is, you can’t really choose your buddies, since we’re using that word now.”
“You’re being a whole lot more talkative than Real Gilda is. She doesn’t like talking at all, more like doing things.”
“Like you?”
“Well, I can’t do much, except keep walking. Plus, I can’t fly so my favorite activity is out. Might as well talk.”
“Fair enough,” Fake Gilda agreed. “What I’m trying to say is that sometimes you can’t decide who gets to be your buddy and who is ousted from your group of buddies.”
“So how come, even though I haven’t seen Gilda for two years now and she called me a lame-o for siding with my other friends she found lame and I said she wasn’t cool for saying that, she’s still my buddy?”
Gilda flapped her wings in silence for a few seconds. “I don’t think she had gotten used to the reality of how life works. Ponies and griffins grow up and need to change to go with the flow. It’s been two years. Maybe Gilda has changed and this is me–”
“Wait, does that mean that the way you’re talking right now is me thinking that’s how Gilda talks nowadays, or is it Sombra who made you talk like that at first and now I can’t shake it off?”
“Maybe you should ask this Sombra dweeb when we get the lame nerd,” Gilda answered.
“Aaaand now I’m confused again.” Rainbow took a look back at how far she had come. All she could see was darkness. The cliff had disappeared in the dark, leaving her just on the cloud path. “I feel like I could use a drink. Water, cider, something. I’m feeling parched.”
Gilda was quiet. “Gilda?” Rainbow called out. “Oh, great. Now she’s being quiet. She didn’t go away, did she?” Rainbow didn’t receive an answer from her ‘buddy’. Perfect. Now all she had to do was keep an eye on the path.
About five minutes later, she spotted something floating in mid-air. Rainbow could barely see the outline of it, but it was definitely bobbing up and down. Rainbow decided to hurry up. She couldn’t run, but she sped up as fast she could without the clouds bursting up.
It was a barrel with a tap, suspended freely without any magic aura. Rainbow walked up to it. Next to it, was a wooden mug. The same kind of mug they used in Ponyville during Cider Season.
Rainbow was stumped. Why would a barrel be here? Sombra put it here, obviously. But why would he do that? Was it filled with poison? Was it drugged? Was it contaminated in any way? How can this be a good sign at all? All she knew was that she was thirsty and she was getting somewhat desperate. Next dungeon? Pack water bottles and food packs.
Rainbow took the mug gently and placed it under the tap. She opened it. Cider poured out, its appearance like a godsend to her. She closed the tap quickly, though and removed the mug. Couldn’t be too careful. Especially with Sombra, from what Twilight had told them before.
The cider’s smell checked out okay. Yet Rainbow was reluctant to taste it. As much as she loved the stuff, it was cider provided by Sombra. And if that wasn’t enough cause to be worried, the fact that it showed up now was.
Rainbow tasted it anyway, just to quench her thirst. It tasted like liquid gold.
She had another two mugs of the stuff. Though after the first, it couldn’t have been to stop being thirsty. “Ahh,” she relieved, “that felt good. That felt really good.”
Rainbow thought she would regret it some time later, but it was getting late and time was vital. For all she knew, Fluttershy could be having trouble as well in the Woods.
Rainbow took the mug off her, it floating off into the darkness, and kept walking. There was still danger up ahead and the monsters could be preparing themselves via Sombra’s instructions.
All of a sudden, though, the path stopped. There was no fork, no turn in another direction, just a clear stop. What? Why would– Was this a dead end all along?! Rainbow wanted to scream in frustration. She had tried every other passage. There hasn’t even been a locked door, just a straight up dead end so far!
Wait, was there something on the other side? Rainbow redirected her headlamp to look in the direction where the path ended. Fortunately, there was something, a new cloud path. It was a long jump over there, but Rainbow had confidence she could jump that gap. She was gonna need a running start, though.
She took a number of pony lengths on the path and then asserted her standing. Much thanks to her races with Applejack, she learned that one of the key things to a good sprint was in the start, how you made sure to burst forward as fast you can to get a good lead over other ponies. “Okay, gotta time it right so I don’t tumble backward when I get there.”
Her eyes became focused on the spot she wanted to land on. “One.”
Her hind legs tensed up with muscles. “Two.”
Her fore legs rose up, ready to catch the body at the first kick. “THREE!”
She bursted forth across the path…
She jumped...
...She missed.
"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shi–"
Crunch!
Ooooh, I bet that hurts..."