Philosophy, it had to be philosophy.
It had taken Rainbow Dash the better part of a week to find the secret entrance in the roof of the storeroom, and using that she finally managed to complete the stealth training exercise in an acceptable enough fashion to move on.
But it turned out the last set of lessons Cloud Sword insisted on was philosophy.
While Dash didn’t mind reading the book her ancestor had written the first time, rereading it wasn’t helping. Mainly because it didn’t include anything about how he’d gotten back to Equestria. That and she really had no interest in the philosophies of her however-many-greats-great-grandpa. And his adventures weren’t in his book of teaching the ways of the paladin. Only a few bits of tactical advise mixed in with a bunch of philosophical sayings.
It didn’t help that philosophical saying were usually written in cryptic ways that needed to be translated into normal speech just to make sense. Like who cares how much time it takes a river to flow? Or whatever the heck that saying was suppose to be about.
Then a hoof came slamming down right in front of Dash’s glazed-over eyes.
“Care to repeat what I just said?”
“Is ‘no’ an option?”
“No.”
“Something about water and time and it being a fancy way of saying patterns repeat.”
Cloud Sword blinked at the blue mare for a moment.
“Well at least you caught the meaning.”
“Why couldn’t you have just said things repeat and been done with it?”
“Because knowledge is what you have learned from others, understanding comes from learning how to figuring it out yourself. That is how wisdom is found. And without wisdom, there is no difference between a paladin and a warrior.”
“And you’ve said that enough times that I know that speech word for word.”
“And yet you still lack the wisdom not to ask questions to which that speech is the answer.”
Dash planted her face firmly on her desk. That comeback was new. And annoyingly enough she had no retort. Not that this was debate class. It was philosophy class. Not that she would sign up for that willingly either.
As mush as she tried to tell herself that this was for the sake of bringing all those Equestria ponies home and becoming the big hero both here and back home she just couldn’t get her mind to make the connection between funny sayings and fighting shadow pegasi.
Cloud gave a deep sigh. What was he suppose to do with this mare? She was unlike anypony who he’d trained to take the position of paladin before. She didn’t even have the basic foundation to work with. At least all of his past students understood that aspiring to be the paladin meant needing to be philosopher enough to be a good leader. But Rainbow Dash didn’t seem to care about that at all, it was like all she wanted to do was be a hero, not a leader…
Come to think of it, wasn’t the only reason she was doing this to learn how her ancestor had gone home?
“Hmm… perhaps I’m going about this all wrong. You only care about defeating the evils that plague our land and going home, right?”
“You are the wisest stallion in the world,” Dash answered, mostly sarcastically.
Cloud Sword nodded, ignoring the smirk from his student.
“Then perhaps your past complaints hold some merit. Let me think. What are the relevant understandings needed for the combat side of a paladin?” he said, the last part being more along the lines of thinking out loud.
After a moment of tapping his chin Cloud looked up and said, “I suppose the two things are to understand philosophy well enough to be a seeker of truth, to find what is right. And the devotion to do what is right, no matter what hardships must be overcome to do so… Why are you smiling?”
“Devotion, in other words, loyalty. Pretty sure I’ve got that one licked already. So that just leaves how do I be a seeker of truth?”
“Yes, how do you do that, I wonder?”
* * * * * * *
Two days later, the lessons had moved out of the classroom and into the training yard. Cloud wasn’t sure why, but for some reason Rainbow Dash seemed to actually listen to boring things if she was kept physically active. And, odd and difficult as it was, if trying to hold a quiz while swinging hooves at each other was the way to get the mare to learn, then that’s what he was going to do.
It probably didn’t hurt that brawling helped mask his frustration too.
What little progress they’d made had once again hit a stone wall. If Dash had had the mindset of a philosopher from the get go, she’d probably be rather good at it. She was rather good a seeing the simple truths for what they were. The problem came from her preference for the simple truths of life being so strong that she couldn’t see past the surface when the truth wasn’t the easy observation to make.
“What is the nature of truth?” He asked, as they locked their front legs together, turning the brawl into a pushing fight with their hind legs instead.
“The truth is absolute and unchanging.”
Dash gave the answer he’d taught her. But that was just the problem, these were just words. The understanding behind them still eluded her voice, her eyes. It was knowing that two plus two equaled four, but not knowing why two plus two equaled four.
“Do your eyes always tell you the truth?”
“Well, yeah.”
Once again a reflex answer with no thought behind it.
“What if a unicorn casts an illusion spell, are your eyes telling you the truth then?”
Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened and for a moment she forgot to put her weight into the pushing match they were having, causing her hind legs to buckle and the two to tumble to the mat.
“Well… no. I guess not.”
Dash planted a hoof on her own forehead. In hindsight that was rather obvious, between Discord making her see a small puff of cloud as all of Cloudsdale and a changeling queen masquerading as Princess Cadence, she was quite familiar to seeing things that weren’t true.
Sitting up Dash wore a rare thoughtful look.
“So, if you can’t trust your senses, how do you find the truth?”
“Challenge with boldness even your most sacred ideas. For only the truth can withstand infinite scrutiny. Try to break your own ideas, find the flaws in them and revise the idea until you can’t find a way to break it anymore. And when you discover something new, see if you can use that to break the idea. When you have exhausted all other options, only the truth remains.”
“That sounds like an awful lot to do in the middle of a fight.”
“Yes, it is. We’re still on the theory side of learning to be a seeker of truth, not the practical application of it. Ideally you should already know the truth before you’re in a fight as it is a bit hard to gather evidence in the middle of one. Namely you should have taken the time to pass fair judgment on your opponent before you choose to fight them. You know, make sure that they are the bad guy rather then just some big misunderstanding going on.”
The sudden loss of focus in her eyes made it clear that the wheels were turning in her mind, but she needed another push.
“Look around you, this is not your world, and you’ve only been here for what, almost three weeks now? Surely there must be some assumptions you’ve made of this place that you haven’t truly put to the test.”
First Rainbow Dash looked at the floor. But when she looked back up there was a suspicious look in her eyes.
“How do I know you and your Sky Knights are the good guys here? How do I know that this whole war of yours isn’t because you took this castle from them and they are only trying to get it back?”
“Finally!” Cloud rejoiced. “You’re dead wrong, of course, as that doesn’t explain why they’d come after pegasi from another world. But that’s the kind of question a seeker of truth would ask. Now come.”
“Come where?”
“To put that idea to the test and further prove that the Dark Summoner and her shadow puppets are the bad guys here.”
* * * * * * *
Several hours of sneaky flying later and Rainbow Dash and her mentor arrived in the bushes near a remote building west of the town that should’ve been Ponyville but wasn’t.
Sneaking their way down into a ditch they found a unicorn mare with a faded orange coat and faded yellow mane waiting for them. On top of that, she had on a slightly bolder orange cape and wizard hat, both decorated with yellow stars. A soft golden glow surrounded her horn, almost matching the color of her eyes.
“Is it enough to peek?”
Cloud Sword’s whispered question was answered with a silent nod and a cautious gesture of a hoof.
A few feet away a golden glow was forming an arch seemingly in an empty space by a bush. Cloud motioned toward the magic and whispered.
“Don’t touch the edges, that’s the hole in the protection spell we’re going to use to get close to the building without tripping the alarm.”
Once they were on the other side, Dash couldn’t help but whisper a question.
“Who was that?”
“The unicorn? They call her Trixie the Wise, she’s probably the most skilled unicorn to defy the Dark Summoner and help us Sky Knights. Personally I’ve found her to be the kindest, more selfless pony I’ve ever met.”
“Definitely opposite land… In some ways at least…” Dash muttered to herself too quietly to be heard.
Cloud Sword put hoof to his lips to signal for silence as they crept up toward the smooth, gray side of the building. The walls weren’t even painted and the cut granite blocks were clearly seen. Small windows with thick iron bars left little to guess about the nature of the building.
Using a particularly polished tip of his wing guards as a mirror, Cloud peeked through one of the windows. Content that there were no guards looking back he poked his head up and looked through the window directly. Then he shook his head and moved on.
When Dash looked through for herself she found both the cell below the window and the one across the hall were empty.
From the next window over, Cloud actualy motioned for the rainbow-tailed mare to look in. She quickly joined her instructor and did so.
While the cell below the window was also empty, the one across the hall had a pegasus colt lying on the floor. Judging from his size he had to still be in the school-pony age range. The child’s coat was purple and his mane was white. Iron shackles connected his back left leg to the wall opposite the door of his cell, but they had enough slack that he wouldn’t have been hindered in reaching most of it, just the last foot or two before the door would’ve been out of his reach. Finally, around his waist was a lasso of the shadow pegasi, the line went out of his cell through the bars before being hung from the ceiling by a series of hooks going down the hall and out of sight.
The ears of both intruders perked up as the sound of hoofsteps echoed on the cold stone floors inside. They quickly ducked out of sight and listened, as the sound grew closer. The hoofsteps came to a stop before the young pegasus’ cell. Then, following a ceramic clink, came a mare’s voice.
“Meal time.”
Daring to peek back in the window, Dash and Cloud saw that the speaker, who currently had her back to the two spies, was a green unicorn with a darker green mane. The ceramic noise proved to be a bowl of what looked like oatmeal, now placed on the floor just in front of the child, well within his reach.
At first there was a clear hunger in the child’s eyes. He even began to reach forward with one hoof as if to move the bowl closer. But then despair overtook his eyes and he covered his muzzle with his leg, as if to shield his nose from the sent of the food.
“No,” he managed to say in a weak voice.
There was a hint of remorse in the unicorn’s voice when she responded.
“Sorry kid, but I can’t let you starve. A corpse doesn’t make spirit energy for the master to use.”
With her words, a pink glow emitted from the unicorn’s horn and a similar glow surrounded the colt and the oatmeal. Held within the magic, the young pegasus was lifted into the air slightly and it quickly became clear that it was only the unicorn’s magic that was making him chew and swallow his meal.
Tears began to flow from the child’s eyes, and between mouthfuls he whimpered.
“No… Please… let… me… die…”
Rainbow Dash would have gasped in horror if she wasn’t too horrified to gasp. What evil could being a child to begging for death? No, she didn’t want to know the answer to that. Even in her lowest hour nothing in Equestria could’ve brought her to do that. Curl up in a ball and cry herself to sleep. Sure. But beg for death? Never.
Cloud placed his hoof on Dash’s forehead and gently pushed her down, until she was out of sight of those inside the prison. Her hind legs buckled and she fell to a sitting position.
Thankfully the unicorn prison staff member had long since finished her work and left before Rainbow Dash recovered enough to speak.
“We have to help him!” she said, perhaps a little too loudly.
A hoof being jammed in her mouth and a quick reminder that they were behind enemy lines silenced her. A few tense seconds of waiting yet failing to hear an alarm brought a touch of relief to the two trespassers. Though that didn’t stop Dash from insisting that they help.
With that Cloud sighed in defeat and poked his head back up into the window.
“Pisst! Hey kid!” The child’s eyes darted around until they found the stallion speaking to him. “I know how bad it can feel to have those lassos tied to you for days, trust me. But you can’t give up. The Sky Knights will raid this place once we have everything in place and we’ll bust you out of there. Just hold out for a few weeks and you’ll be free, I promise.”
With a flicker of hope restored to the colt’s eyes, Cloud Sword ducked back down.
“A few WEEKS? We can’t leave him hanging in there that long!”
“We don’t have a choice. The logistics aren’t in place to raid this pace now. Just look at him, the prisoners aren’t ever in a condition to travel. And they found the last of our hideouts after the last time we raided this place. And as long the Dark Summoner’s overlords run Ponyton we can’t just run them straight to Liberty Castle. And besides there’s going to be more than just him in there, so are you really going to have the heart to leave all the others behind for the two we can carry out on our own?”
That thought gave Rainbow Dash pause.
“Please just wait for a proper raid to be ready, when we can get them all out with a good chance of not just being recaptured right away.”
“Fine! But I don’t like it.” Dash yielded.
* * * * * * *
They had barely returned to Liberty Castle when Dash asked, “You said that the overlords in Ponyton were the reason that you can’t bust into that prison?”
“Yes. It would be suicide to cause a ruckus at the prison and then try to go through the middle of town while it’s still an enemy stronghold. Why?” Cloud Sword said. Not sure what to make of the look in the mare’s eyes.
“And these overlords are the only reason the town is in under the control of the Dark Summoner?”
“The Dark Summoner rules through fear and force. Without her agents there, the shadow pegasi could be pushed out of town and the town’s ponies have no love for the Summoner. Nor do the unicorn and earth ponies of Ponyton hate normal pegasi. So I doubt they’d try to stop us from bringing those we rescue from the prison through town without the fear of the overlords hanging over their heads.”
Cloud might have continued his explanation of how the ponies of Ponyton were good ponies, but he saw something in Rainbow Dash’s eyes that stopped him. Something important was going on in the mare’s mind, something that he knew better than to interrupt. And when the eyes of sky-blue mare came back into focus the playful athlete that once shown in them was gone. Now those eyes burned with the fire of a righteous hero determined to shatter the darkness.
“I’m going to stop them, and you’re going to tell me how.”
“As you wish, Paladin Rainbow Dash.”