“Ahhh, this heat is crazy…” Rainbow wheezes to herself, the rock still seeming so far away. The sun hasn’t budged from its position at the top of the sky since she arrived, and the heat was beginning to get to her. “Living here without my wings is hard…” She thinks, blinking as sweat drips down from her forehead. The cap offers some protection for her eyes and muzzle, but the shadow barely extends past the bridge of her nose, and the sand reflecting the heat and light back into her face didn’t help much.
“Stay focused, Dash…stay focused…stay…” Something moves on her sides, and she looks over wearily. “M-my wings?!” She gawks at the now freely moving wings on her sides. “Did they dry off…?” She asks herself, looking at the wings. She moves them slowly up and down, feeling a slight burn from the joints. She gives them one massive flap, lifting herself into the air, and feels an intense burning sensation come from her back. “Gh…!” She twitches in pain from it, falling to the ground with a thud. She coughs through the cloud of dust rising up around her, and looks at her wings. “Dry…and now on fire…great.” Rainbow slowly closes her wings, keeping them latched to her sides, and she looks around. The rock now stands monolithically tall above her, now only a quarter of a mile away or so.
“When did…you know what, not even gonna ask.” She says, eyes half closed, and she quickly covers the last of the distance in a slow jog. “Shade at last…” She coos, smiling as she enters the shadow. As she enters the shadow though, her legs suddenly lose all their strength, and she collapses, faceplanting.
“What the?!” She thinks as she spits out sand, trying to move her legs. They refuse to budge, instead her wings flap open and beat a few times, feeling brand new. “Is…this some kind of puzzle? Or just the world playing tricks on me?” She asks herself out loud, looking at the powerful wings now ready to be used. She looks around herself before seeing something on the rock she’s never seen before.
There’s a picture of an Equestrian on the rock, a simple silhouette, with a cross drawn over it. It has the design of an earth pony, and it looks just like Rainbow. “Weird…” She whispers, before looking over at her saddle bag. She grabs it in her mouth, taking it off, and inspecting the contents.
“Water’s there, medkit…even the notes, everything looks untouched.” She says, raising an eyebrow in confusion. “I can’t even bother with asking about the logic here, can I?” She says, shrugging, before putting the saddle bag back on, and trying to lift off. No matter how hard she beats her wings or how fast she does, she can’t get off the ground.
“Oh come on, it’s just one thing after another here!!” She shouts at the rock. She looks over the rock near her picture, and spots another image beside it. It’s a picture of her saddle bag, with a pair of wings on it, also crossed out.
“Ok…so my body apparently doesn’t work here, and…my saddle bag isn’t allowed wings…isn’t…isn’t allowed to fly?” Rainbow cocks her head, staring at the image, moving the meaning through her mind. “…Is this like how I wasn’t able to fly when I left the lake?” She asks herself. “So it…is a big puzzle. Hmm…so I’m not allowed to move around here without flying…and that saddle bag with wings must mean I can’t fly with this on. So when I fly up, I’ll be leaving my supplies behind.” She looks down in thought, furrowing her brow.
“So it’s a survival test…I need my bag to move water, but what about food?” She wonders, before taking her bag off and testing her wings again. Sure enough, she easily floats up into the air. “That’s more like it!” She says with glee before blasting off into the air, making sure to keep the rock in view. After reaching her old vantage point, she looks around. “Water’s that way at that blue patch…so what about those shadows I saw?” She looks around, thinking. “What the hay is edible in a desert, anyway?”
“…There they are!” She exclaims with a smile, spotting the group of shadows off in the distance. She launches herself towards it, flying straight towards it instead of simply flying around in messy circles. She had a job to do now, and however much she enjoyed the desert compared to there, it had to be done. Her smile disappears into a serious look as the shadows come into view, and she touches down rather easily, regaining control of her legs. She quickly tests her wings again, floating up and easing herself back down.
“So now I’ve got control over my whole body…but if it’s like the rock, there’s some special rule here.” She grimaces before looking around herself. Apple trees surround her, extending far into the sky, way bigger than what the shadows Rainbow saw from the air suggested.
“Not questioning, not questioning.” She says to herself before flying up towards one of the trees’ branches, looking at the fruit on it. “Fat ones, skinny ones, some as big as my head…” Rainbow giggles to herself, seeing the fruit, some truly as big as her head. She grabs one of the apples and snaps it off the branch, it feeling as light as a feather. “Rainbow Dash, the Hercules of Pegasi!” She heroically exclaims with a big smile, before digging her teeth into the massive apple. Suddenly she feels like she grows heavier, and she starts lowering herself to the ground. Her weight increases still and she starts falling faster, before landing on the ground with a massive thud.
“BOOF!” All the air escapes from Rainbow’s lungs as she hits the ground, feeling extremely heavy. “What’s that apple made of?! LEAD?!” She shouts at the massive apple, seeing a drawing on the side of it. It looks like a large paper weight with a plus sign on it. “Oh I KNEW there was going to be some rule here…so I have full control of my body, but now I feel like someone just put a dragon on my back…” She shoves herself to her hooves, feeling about three times heavier than before. “Dh…shoot, I feel like a tank!” She grunts under her own weight, looking around at the trees. “Ah, curse my hunger!”
“Just have to get this food home…” Rainbow grunts, grabbing the massive apple with her mouth. It lifts off the ground without much trouble, and she heads out of the small group of trees. “Alright…so now I have shelter…food…and water. Now is this puzzle really just survival? When does it end?” Rainbow asks herself, trudging heavily through the sand, each step putting a crater down under her hoof. “Please, no more surprises, world…I really wanna go home.” She grunts through the apple, stomping along the sand.
After five minutes of walking, her legs finally feeling like they’re going to let her torso drop to the ground, and likely fall straight through the desert, she opens her wings and starts flapping. She slowly rises up, but hardly at the same speed as before. “Any flight is good flight right now…” She thinks, flying higher and higher. She lifts up her hooves with hard effort, and takes the apple in her grip, taking it out of her mouth so she can look around.
The rock shows itself to her left, the oasis off to the right. “Well, destination is obvious…let’s finish this.” Rainbow says to herself, slowly flopping through the air towards the shade. A strong gust of wind hits her in the face, and she loses her grip on the apple, it floating away. “No! No no no no!” She screams, chasing the apple through the air, putting as much strength as she can muster into her wings. She shuts her eyes tight and clenches her teeth, suddenly hating the world with an insane fury, when suddenly she feels herself get thrown forward in an explosion of speed, easily catching up with the apple, and she grabs it, then looks at her wings. “What was that?” She asks herself, noticing nothing different with her wings or body. She starts falling again, quickly flapping her wings so she doesn’t kill herself by falling from this height. She slowly goes back to a hovering state, looking around for the rock with her apple in hand. “There it is…” She says, looking at the monolithic rock standing a mile away, and she starts flying towards it.
After half an hour of flying, she finally makes it to the shade, crashing to the ground in exhaustion. “Haaa…huff…I…I did it…!” Rainbow chuckles weakly to herself, staring at the massive apple and her saddle bag in the shade. She gets to her hooves, surprised that they haven’t given out, and looks up at the rock. Three new designs have appeared, replacing the crossed out images.
One is of an apple, another is of a bottle of water, and the last is a picture of a black shape in the form of a rock. All three are checked off.
“Survival…done…at last…!” Rainbow chuckles to herself, moving over to the bag, opening it and knocking back the small bottle of water she got. Then she turns her attention to the apple, devouring a quarter of it, no longer feeling heavy. “Food…water…and now…” Smiling, she collapses onto the ground, passing out from exhaustion before she can finish her sentence.
“…Nice sunset tonight.” Rainbow says, laying on a concrete floor overlooking Equestria.
“It’s rare that we’re stationed here, so lucky us, eh?” A familiar voice says beside her, and she looks over to see Sehn.
“Too true.” Rainbow says with a smile, looking back towards her home. “…Three months left…”
“Yeah…it’ll be tough to see you go, kid.” Sehn says to Rainbow, sounding rather solemn.
“To be honest, I can’t wait to get back to my home country, fly around…experience life. I’ll probably leave and never turn back.” Rainbow says, looking out past the Cerberus Gate.
“Not even gonna give us a parting thought, eh? Mean lady, you are.” Sehn says jokingly, chuckling.
“You and Loki, I’m definitely going to miss…you were the only friends I had during my year of service here. I’ll be sad when I leave you two behind, but…well, I belong in Equestria, not here.”
“True. You’re the one friend I’ve had besides Loki…so it’ll be hard to see you go. Maybe I’ll drop by Equestria, do a fly-by of Cloudsdale.” Rainbow looks over at Sehn with a smirk, him returning it.
“I don’t think the Royal Guard would like one of you guys suddenly traipsing into Equestria…but I think I’d like the visit.” Her smirk grows into a smile.
“Then I’ll drop by as soon as I can after you leave. See if I can get any vacation time or something…doubt it though, my promotion has pretty much quadrupled my paper work, and training all the new Corporals is a pain.” Sehn says with a grimace, walking over to Rainbow’s side of the tower, taking a seat next to her. “Got any friends back home? Never did ask you.”
“Not really…but I do know this one girl, Fluttershy. Real crybaby, can’t stand up for herself, not much of a backbone either…but I like her. Hopefully I can see her again…last time I saw her, I was racing through Cloudsdale.” Rainbow frowns, and feels a pat on the shoulder from Sehn.
“Though I doubt you Equestrians follow the same rules as us, there’s always a pull between friends. We hate each other, yet we get along just fine, don’t we?”
“Rapids under the bridge.” Rainbow giggles, “Such a worn out saying…”
“Hey, it still has meaning, doesn’t it?” Sehn says with a big smile.
“True, true…” Rainbow says, returning the smile. They both look out over the sunset, the mountains at their sides acting as a vent for the light. “Celestia working her magic again…your princess sure can do some amazing things.” Sehn says, staring off into the distance.
“Hmm…she can’t fly as fast as the Wonderbolts!” Rainbow says with a coy smile.
“I bet she could. Probably some spell in there that’d boost her speed. I know I could outfly anyone though!” Sehn says with a smile and a raise of the eyebrows.
“Oh come on, you couldn’t beat me in any of the races we had during patrols!” Rainbow laughs, hitting Sehn in the arm. “Though tell you what. After my service is done, we’ll both train, and in two years, we’ll race again. That’ll decide which of us is really faster. Deal?”
“Oho, you’re ON. I’ll make you eat my dust.” Sehn says with a smile and a laugh. Rainbow looks back out into the sunset in thought. She had all her friends back in Ponyville…but she was friends with Sehn too? This didn’t feel like something shoved into her mind either…it was a dream of her past. Why was she serving with him in the army though? She lays her head down on the small wall surrounding the tower, staring off into the sun set, and slowly closes her eyes. “G’night, kid.” Sehn says as the darkness takes her once more.
“Uuuuh…” Rainbow yawns, rubbing her forehead, the familiar dripping of water entering her hearing again. “That was a nice dream…wish that was real and this was just a nightmare…” Rainbow says to herself, staring off into the darkness of the hall. Off in the distance is a silhouette, more solid-looking than the fence from before. She slowly gets to her feet, surprised that her thirst seems to have disappeared, along with her hunger. “Guess that dream did more than just make me feel better…” Rainbow says to herself, wiping some blood off her side. She picks the lantern up again and heads towards the silhouette in front of her.
“A door?” Rainbow asks herself, looking at the might steel gate in front of her, a single keyhole in the center of the door. A note is taped just above it, and Rainbow moves forward to read it.
The three gates of the soul, locked tight,
A power unknown is kept out of sight.
Keys to the heart are within your grasp,
But to gain them is a most perplexing task.
The first gate lies before you,
A simple task for you to do.
Unlock the gate and open the way,
Let no question in your mind hold your mission at bay.
“Unlock the gate? Using what?” Rainbow asks the door through the handle of the lantern, poking the note. Something falls out from behind it, hitting the wooden flooring in front of the door. It looks like a medal of some kind, containing a cloud design in a hollow circle. “Using…this?” Rainbow asks herself through the handle of the lantern, touching the medal. It begins to shine, an appendage appearing from the side of it in the form of a key.
The key hovers upwards, and hangs itself from Rainbow’s neck by a string. “Cool…” She smiles, taking the key in her hoof and jamming it into the lock. She turns it, and massive tumblers behind the door click and sway away, metal grinding and gears turning, the key tail disappearing from the medal. The door opens, revealing the fog once more, and Rainbow takes a deep breath of moderately fresh air.
“Free at last…” She says to herself, and she walks outside, leaving that dreaded tunnel behind. She turns, watching the door slowly close behind her and lock itself, a simple wooden wall in one of the smaller houses of Ponyville. Rainbow nods lightly in satisfaction, looking around herself. The first riddle is finished, now all she needed to do was find Sehn and get to her house. With that, she sprints off towards Sugar Cube Corner, the last place she saw him.