Dawn brought with it another battle and as much as she would hate to admit it, Rainbow Dash found it normal enough that it wouldn’t have even warranted more than a line in her journal. Not that she was keeping a journal, but if she were that morning would have been a lot like a Daring Do line.
There was one thing that had caught her eye though. One of the pegasi who had been manning the fountain that morning was a filly of school-pony age. Her fur was blue. Her mane and tail were a purplish red. (Although a pony like Rarity would have called that color burgundy.) The filly’s eyes were the same rose color as Rainbow Dash’s. But more then that, every lick in the filly mane and tail, every subtle feature of her face reminded her of Scootaloo. And given the apparent nature of this world, she couldn’t help but wonder if that blue filly was this world’s version of her newly christened honorary sister.
However, more important things like breakfast and training with Cloud Sword prevented Dash from investigating the idea further.
Which brought her back to the oddities of the here and now.
Namely the training yard lacked the usual cloud mat for them to spar on this morning. On top of that the only other pony seemed to be Cloud Sword, making this the first time Rainbow Dash could remember having the training yard all to themselves. But the biggest oddity was Cloud’s greeting.
“You won’t need that,” he said, motioning to her armor.
That was new. Removing her armor made her wings flinch, thanks to the lingering soreness of using them as makeshift hooves to punch shadows with during that morning’s battle. Pulling the armored vest over her head and backing out she felt the weight slide off of her wings and torso. And with that sudden loss of weight she realized that she hadn’t taken off the armor since she’d first received it, even sleeping in it.
The sudden loss of twenty pounds of armor tickled her instincts. The call of the air whispered in her ear, tempting her to give in to her athletic side and once again become the fastest thing in the sky, even if only for a minute.
An upward glance reminded her that such innocent and playful ideas were forbidden in THIS sky.
“No mat, no armor. Does that mean my training is finished?”
“Not even close,” Cloud Sword answered with a laugh. “However, given recent events I think it’s time you take the most important test before we continue your training as paladin.”
“Okay, so what kinda test is that?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at the realization that the paladin was removing the sacred wing blades for only the second time since she’d met him.
“One of the reasons we know the sacred wing blades are a holy artifact is because they can be a little picky about who wares them. Twice during the age of peace that followed Lighting Dash’s adventures thieves tried to steal the wing blades and it was the wing blades themselves that stopped them.”
“The first would-be thief was shocked into submission. The Sky Knights found him twitching on the floor. The wing blades shocking him back into submission every time he tried to get back up, until the Sky Knights had taken them off of him.”
“The second thief turned out to also be a murderer. When she put on the sacred wing blades the lightning that came forth from the wing blades reduced her to ionized ash. Needless to say, after that we all understood that the sacred wing blades don’t like criminally minded ponies.”
At this point in his speech, Cloud gave the wing blades to Rainbow Dash.
“While we’ve never had the wing blades strike down a good pony, every once in a blue moon, a Sky Knight will dawn the sacred wing blades only to find that they withhold their magic from them. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are a good pony, but what I think of you doesn’t matter, only what the sacred wing blades think of you matters,” he added as he walked over to a weapon rack, where he retrieved a short sword.
Rainbow Dash held the folded armor with bladed wings on her hoof. Great, the vary morning after what she considered her greatest moral failing, she was being asked to let a magic artifact judge her heart. And now that she thought about it there was that one time she tried to steal that Daring Do book from the hospital… Did attempted theft count? Of course, she was totally going to sneak the book back into the hospital once she was done reading it.
On the other hoof she was the spirit of loyalty, and if these wing blades couldn’t get along with a spirit of harmony they clearly didn’t deserve to be called ‘sacred.’
Eventually her moment of hesitation came to an end and she pulled the silver vest over her head. As the vest came to her torso she pushed her wings into the bladed sleeves. With that done and no apparent reaction from the wing blades, she finally buckled the clasps on the front. With the wing blades secure, Rainbow Dash waited for some sign…
“So… what now?” she asked, when none came.
“Most of the sacred wing blades’ magics are passive in nature,” Cloud answered. “My apologies up front if this doesn’t work.”
At first she raised an eyebrow in confusion. It wasn’t until she saw the muscles in his neck tense up that she realized what her instructor was planning on doing with that sword in his mouth. And with no time to react he thrust the blade at the cutie mark on her flank.
Just before the blade hit her, a film of blue light appeared, blocking the blade’s path as if a unicorn had cast a shield spell just above Dash’s fur. Although the blade clearly slowed, the wall of light shattered and the blade pushed through, cutting into her flesh. And though the cut was shallow it was enough to draw a yip of pain from mare, who instinctively jumped away from the surprise attack.
“WHAT THE HEY? You didn’t even try to hold back! You could’ve really hurt me!”
“And yet, here you stand with little more than a scratch.”
The stallion’s response instantly deflated Rainbow Dash’s ire.
“You-you knew?”
“Well I wasn’t actually expecting the protective magic to be that strong. But I was expecting that.”
Cloud’s words were accompanied by him pointing to the red line that had formed on the white fur that was the cloud of Dash’s cutie mark.
A solitary drop of blood had escaped the cut. And despite being only seconds old the cut was already pressing itself closed enough to stop the bleeding, quickly becoming little more than a red line in the middle of her cutie mark.
“The healing powers of the sacred wing blades are the most basic magic that they share. Those who become more attuned to the wing blades are often granted other magics, like that protective spell that weakens the force of incoming blows even beyond the reach of the armored vest.” With a smile Cloud Sword added, “The sacred wing blades must really like you if they’re giving you that up front. Took a week before they started doing that for me.”
Dash watched silently as the cut slowly began to shrink in length, allowing Cloud to continue.
“I’ve personally seen broken bones heal in a day thanks to the sacred wing blades. Needless to say, a shallow cut won’t last long.”
True to his words the cut lasted little more then a minute. And once the last of the red line vanished into healthy skin even the droplet of blood staining Rainbow Dash’s fur suddenly dried and crumbled into dust in the span of a few seconds, leaving no trace of the wound that had been inflicted on her flank.
Rubbing a hoof over the former wound Dash felt nothing but the faint memory of pain.
“Cool, so this means I passed the test, right?”
“Indeed it does. Congratulations, Novice Paladin Rainbow Dash.” Then he added, “Now all that remains is to finish your training to the point that I don’t think I’m sending you to your death with no hope of victory.”
* * * * * * *
An orange pegasus filly with the reddish-purple mane (that a pony like Rarity would call violet.) sat fidgeting as she waited for the adults in the room to address her again.
The room in question was the basement in the Ponyville Library. At the moment several sciencey things were pushed to the edges to make room for the magic array that Twilight Sparkle had set up in the middle. Chalk markings on the floor had created a fancy ring with all kinds of runic symbols. Several crystals were positioned around the array. On a table off to the side there were some flasks and beakers filled with liquids of various colors.
As for the adults in the room, they consisted of Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rarity, and Twilight, who was currently mixing several of the potion-like substances on the worktable.
“Scootaloo, do you have it?”
There was the filly’s cue. Scootaloo pushed her muzzle into her wing. Safely tucked away among her own orange feathers was a single blue feather that was slightly too big to belong to a filly of her age. “Of course!” she said, as she pulled the blue feather out and presented it to Twilight Sparkle.
“And you’re certain that this feather came from Rainbow Dash, and not some other blue pegasus?”
“I saw Rainbow Dash shed it myself, when she was doing stunts over the park. I didn’t even let it hit the ground before I snagged it!”
Twilight couldn’t help but smile at the overly defensive tone of Scootaloo’s response.
“It’s alright, I believe you. I just wanted to make sure. The reagents for a locator spell of this caliber aren’t exactly easy to come by, and I just don’t want to waste all this effort.”
With that, the purple glow of Twilight’s magic levitated the feather from Scootaloo’s grasp and brought it over to a small mixing bowl. Dropping the feather into the glass bowl, the liquid inside turned from brown to green. And when the unicorn added some black yet glossy pedals, the contents of the bowl turned orange. Finally she added what looked to be red berries of some kind and the liquid began to bubble for a moment before turning pure white.
The purple aura of Twilight’s magic surrounded the bowl and levitated it over to the runic drawing on the floor, where she poured a little bit of the liquid on each of the crystals in the array. In turn each crystal lit up, glowing it’s own color and slowly creating a prismatic light by the time all of the gemstones were aglow.
Twilight poured the last of the liquid on the triangle-shaped crystal in the middle and returned the empty bowl to its table. Taking her place at the edge of the array she focused magic into her horn one more time.
As the light around the unicorn’s horn flared the light from the crystals began flow into the chalk markings, causing the entire array to shine. A beam of white light shot up off the top of the crystal in the middle, stopping a few feet above the floor. That light then opened up, becoming a ring. In the center of that ring more light gathered, as if being pulled in out of the ether, becoming a disc of light. The disc of light pulsed brightly three times and then vanished.
Twilight’s mouth fell agape.
The awestruck observers in the room slowly took their eyes away from the empty space that the light show had occupied. Though it took several seconds before anypony put the growing concern on all their minds to words, Pinkie Pie being the one to do so.
“So… Where’s Rainbow Dash?”
With the ice broken by the earth pony whose fur and mane were as pink as her name implied a mummer of similar responses came from the others.
“I… I don’t understand,” was what Twilight said to answer them.
“What’s wrong, sugarcube?” asked the orangeish-tan earth pony with a blond mane and a brown cowboy hat.
Given Twilight’s lack of a prompt response the white unicorn with a long purple mane spoke up instead.
“Isn’t it obvious, Applejack? The spell didn’t work right. Am I right, darling?”
“That’s just it Rarity. I’ve never seen a locator spell just fizzle out like that. It’s like… It’s like the spell thinks Rainbow Dash is just… gone.”
Twilight’s response brought a gasp and a hush to the room.
“When you say ‘gone,’ ya don’t mean…” Applejack couldn’t even being herself to finish the question.
The purple unicorn at the center of everypony’s attention closed her eyes for a moment.
“No. If she was dead, the spell would have shown us the location of her corpse.”
“It wasn’t a Rainbow Dash feather, was it?” Applejack asked with an accusing look.
“Was too!”
“I’m fairly sure Scootaloo is telling the truth. The spell should have shown us the source of the feather no matter where it came from. So the fact that is showed us nothing tells us that something strange is going on. Needless to say Rainbow Dash’s mysterious absence seems to match that circumstance.”
“What else does nothing mean?” Pinkie Pie’s question brought several odd looks her way. “Well she just said the spell showing us nothing meant it was Rainbow Dash’s feather! So nothing can mean something!”
“That’s… actually correct. Let me think.”
With that Twilight brought a hoof to her chin. And for a moment the master magic user muttered more or less to herself.
“What would cause the spell to fail…hmm…”
After a moment Twilight returned her gaze to her friends.
“Okay, I can only think of two reasons why the locator spell would show us nothing. The first being that the target was out of the range of the spell, however the spell I cast was strong enough that it should have shown us where Rainbow was anywhere in the world. So we can dismiss that possibility outright.”
“The second being that she is behind a magic ward.”
“A magic ward?”
“Yes. Simply put it’s a type of spell that blocks other forms of magic. I remember learning about them because the restricted section of the Canterlot archives have such magic wards to prevent remote sensing spells from viewing what’s inside. Those same wards would block a locator spell from sensing a pony who happened to be in the archive at the time you cast the spell.”
Rarity shook her head slightly.
“All due respect, darling. But I think we all know Rainbow Dash well enough to say she wouldn’t abandon her duties and friends for days on end for a trip to a library.”
“Agreed. But somepony could place a magic ward anywhere. On top of that, if a ward is left up and unchallenged, it can last hundreds of years. So it’s not all that impossible to find a magic ward protecting a place that has long since lost its significance. Add to that places like the Everfree forest that have wild magics that could interfere and there might even be a chance that Rainbow Dash doesn’t even know she’s in a place that magic can’t be used to find her.”