//------------------------------//
// Eyes On the Prize 
// Story: Ofolrodi 
// by Imploding Colon 
//------------------------------//

A roll of thunder.

Twilight Sparkle hovered in place, her ghostly ears twitching.

All alongside the mare, the rest of her friends formed an ethereal line of gawking faces.  All otherworldly eyes were locked on the corpse of Axan—or more appropriately the hazy patch of ruby light levitating just above the corpse of Axan.

"What is it, Twilight?" Applejack asked in a breathy tone.  She floated closest to Rainbow Dash, looking over their anchor's shoulder.  "Some sort of magic spell?  Perhaps a message or a vision?"

"I..."  Twilight grimaced.  She slowly shook her head while her eyes remained locked on the phenomenon.  "I don't have any clue."

"Well, don't ya sense anythang, sugarcube?"

"There is a release of magic," Twilight said.  "Mortuana's transformation spell is still dissolving all around Axan's body.  But... that started back in the Gondola.  This...?"  She gestured nervously at the glowing cloud of ruby mist.  "I can't even begin to guess."

"Maybe it's something to do with Dashie!" Pinkie Pie suggested, smiling momentarily.  "She's always seeing invisible glowy stuff with her awesome eyes!  What if—on this side of the pancake world—we can see the same thing to?"

"Yes—but you forget, darling..."  Rarity gestured back at the rest of the Herald who were also stupefied.  "Our flesh-and-blood friends see it too."

"Oh yeah..."  Pinkie rubbed her scrunched nose.  "Well, then, poop.  Just what is this nonsense?  We're only sixty minutes in and already the Dark Side is making my brain go 'kersplaatikins!'"

"I sense something," Fluttershy said.

The rest of the mares flashed her a look.

Rainbow Dash leaned in.  "What is it, Fluttershy?"

Ariel and Wildcard glanced over curiously.

"It's... hard to say," Fluttershy stammered.  "It's... it's almost as if Remna..."  She winced, then corrected herself.  "As if Axan is still here."

"But she ain't," Applejack declared.  "You felt the candle of her dragon life flicker to nothin' earlier—didn't ya?  Just like all the brave bat ponies back up in the fight with the Frostknifers?"

Pinkie Pie raised a hoof.  "Don't you mean back down in the fight with the Frostknifers?"

Applejack glared daggers at her.  "T'ain't the time, sugarcube..."

"I know that she's dead," Fluttershy admitted with a nod.  "I felt her life slipping away shortly after we all landed here on the Dark Side.  Even still."  She bit her bottom lip.  "I... I feel now as though she's here.  Or... perhaps a part of her."

"Where do you sense it, Fluttershy?" Rainbow Dash asked.

Fluttershy merely pointed.

Rainbow's eyes reflected the lingering ruby cloud.  Her ears folded back in nervous contemplation.

"This sort of a thing never happened back on the Light Side," Rarity declared.  "So why here?"

"Oooh!"  Pinkie Pie did a ghostly hop in place.  "Maybe it always happens with Divine Matriarchs!"

Applejack looked at Rainbow.  "Did this sort of a thang happened with Nevrem... Neville... Newark—?"

"Nevlamas?"  Rainbow shook her head.  "No.  But... like Rarity said... we are on the Dark Side."

"Soooooooooo..."  Pinkie Pie rubbed her fuzzy ghost-nose.  "...death has a pretty glittery shadow over here?"

Ariel floated closer.  "Rainbow?"  Her voice was calm and soothing as she rested a friendly hoof on Rainbow's shoulder.  "Talk to us.  What are your best-besties saying?"

"Fluttershy... senses something from that hazy light," Rainbow Dash said.  "Sure, she felt it when Axan died.  But she's saying that she's still sensing Axan now."

"She's sensing Axan???"

"Just... faintly."  Rainbow sighed out her nostrils.  "Honestly, Ariel, I don't understand it much myself.  And from the sound of it—neither does she."  She glanced over her shoulder, then looked directly at Ariel.  "Tell me.  Do you see any ruby lights floating around me?"

Ariel looked at Axan's corpse, then back to the air surrounding Rainbow Dash.  "Not at all, Rainbow."

Rainbow sighed again.  "Ah well..."

"Why?"

"I dunno."  Rainbow folded her forelimbs and leaned back on her haunches.  "For a second there—I was kinda sorta hoping you and the rest of the Herald could finally see my friends."

"Currious..."  Kepler shuffled over, adjusting his spectacles.  "Might you be implying that the starrk contrrast between harrmony and chaos may allow us a glance into the afterrlife herre on the Darrk Side?"

Rainbow stifled a bittersweet chuckle.  "You're a crazy wyvern, Kep.  You know that?"  She gestured at Axan's corpse yet again.  "For all we know, her dragon blood could just be releasing magical hemoglobin burps—"

Ariel suddenly gasped and clasped Rainbow's forelimb.  "Rainbow Dash!"

"Huh?"  Rainbow blinked.  "What?"  She looked at her fetlock in Ariel's grasp—and it was glowing in multiple places.  "Uhm..."

"Whoah nelly!" Applejack gasped, clutching the brim of her hat.

"Oh wow!"  Twilight Sparkle floated closer.  "Rainbow, don't move!"

The pegasus was already locked in place.  She and Ariel gawked at an array of glowing bands clinging to Rainbow's person.

"Okay..."  Pinkie Pie squinted.  "Why is Dashie becoming a night light?"

"Do... do you feel okay, Rainbow?" Fluttershy asked.

"I... feel just fine..."  Rainbow looked at her limbs and tail.  "Just... trying to understand—"

"Yourr injurries, Rrainbow One," Kepler said.

"Huh?"

Kepler pointed with a claw.  "Look again."

Rainbow and Ariel took a calm moment to reexamine what they were looking at.  It became evident that Rainbow was only glowing in the various spots of her body where she had been wounded.  More specifically—

"It's the blood," Flynn said from a few paces away.  He waved a fetlock—where a shallow cut sustained in the Gondola's arrival was now glowing with faint luminescence.  "Behold..."

Shivering, Ariel looked at herself.  A dim light emanated from her shallow bruises.

Logan glanced at himself... then at Seraphimus' figure lying a few meters away.  "How come we weren't all glowy early?"

"Who knows?" Flynn remarked.  "Maybe it... took us a while to acclimate to the Dark Side."

Wildcard was glowing the most out of the group; his feathers and flesh were grazed and nicked in over two dozen places.  The Desperado peaked under a fresh bandage, and it was like slipping kerosene into a lamp.  With his one good arm, he raised Bard's staff into view.  Stained splotches of blood pulsated dimly under the starlight.

"Okay..."  Rainbow Dash took a shuddering breath.  "Take note: our blood glows in the dark on this side of the Plane."

"But..."  Rarity grimaced.  Hard.  "Why?"

"I can think of several possible explanations," Twilight Sparkle remarked.  "But I'd need more information before I could effectively draw—"

"Girls!" Fluttershy gasped.  "Rainbow!"  She pointed above Axan's corpse.  "Look!"

Rainbow spun about to see that the ruby haze had thinned slightly.  What's more... it was shifting... drawing away like a cloud.  The motion wasn't jerky or sudden; nothing indicated intelligence or purpose.  However, the gentle sway in its movement increased in speed—as if an invisible wind was pushing it away from the Edge.  The speed picked up even more, and the ruby light ribboned out... almost becoming a beam of red energy.  Before anything else could happen, the glowing luminescence sank into the stone earth... vanishing completely.

"Did... did you see that?!" Pinkie exclaimed.

"I most certainly did!" Rarity stammered breathily.  "It... it was almost as though it was headed somewhere!"

"Into the earth?" Applejack suggested.

"No," Twilight shook her head.  "I mean—yes—but not just that."  She turned to look at Rainbow Dash.  "It was headed away from the Edge... quite obviously."

"Where could it be going?" Fluttershy asked.

At this point, Rainbow Dash was staring out... and upwards at the curved landscape yawning before them.  Her eyes traveled up... up... up.

"This... this is nuts," Ariel could be heard rambling in the background.  "What's going on in this friggin' place?"

"I suspect we will eventually discoverr forr ourrselves," Kepler remarked.

"We should live that long," Logan muttered.  The anger in his voice had dissolved almost entirely.

Twilight Sparkle leaned in towards Rainbow Dash.  "Rainbow... I know this is all a lot to take in.  But I have to ask..."  Her lavender brow furrowed.  "Do you have the vision?"

Rainbow murmured out the side of her muzzle as she stared into the bent horizon.  "Vision?"

"Yaerfaerda?  Utaan?  Anything?"  Rainbow gulped.  "It was you who guided us to the Gondola at the edge of the world to begin with.  Maybe... erm..."  She fidgeted.  "I-I guess I was hoping that maybe the powers given to Austraeoh could be of aid to us here too..."

Rainbow exhaled.  "I do see something..."

The rest of the ghostly mares perked up.

"Well...?"  Twilight pressed her hooves together.  "What is it?  A beacon?  More entrances to the machine world?"

Rainbow slowly shook her head.  She stretched her hoof upwards at an angle, pointing at a fixed spot in the very dead center of the dark plane.  "I see it."

The rest of the mares—and the Herald even—peered after Rainbow's gesture.  But they were at a loss to see what Rainbow was referring to.

"What?" Rarity asked.  "What do you see, darling?"

Rainbow Dash shuddered.  Her eyes locked on a tiny, infinitesimal speck of gold.  And even though it was too impossibly far away for her natural vision to ever conceivably take into account... she was certain—on the inside—that the speck was shaped like a pyramid.

"What else?" she murmured.