//------------------------------// // Chapter 24 // Story: The Collapse // by Lightwavers //------------------------------// Applejack braced herself against the side of the cave entrance and looked back inside, then immediately averted her eyes from the...thing in the center. The six multicolored gems still surrounded the area where the tree had been, but the tree itself was gone. In its place was a rip in reality, a multidimensional twisting of the fundamental nature of reality that made her sick to even look at. “Right. Now I don’t know about y’all, but I don’t think they’re going to be coming out anytime soon,” Applejack said. She couldn’t help but stare at Pinkie Pie. Maybe she had another trick? The pink mare slowly shook her head. Applejack couldn’t help feeling a stab of disappointment. “Well. The Everfree should be nice and destroyed after...that,” Applejack said, waving a hoof behind her, then snatching it back. The portal thing couldn’t drag them back in from outside the cavern, but it was uncomfortable to feel her hoof drifting away all by itself. “So I reckon we ought to find everypony it caught and free them. One of them’s bound to know enough magic to help Twilight and Rainbow get out of that. Assuming they weren’t dead. “Um. That sounds nice. But there are an awful lot of rocks in the way,” Fluttershy said. Applejack finally took a good look at the outside. “Well buck.” The entire moat was filled with rocks and dirt. “Looks like we’d best start digging.” The good thing about being dead was how peaceful it was. Like drifting in the sea, without the need to breathe. And her ribs weren’t hurting anymore. That was definitely a plus. “Rainbow. Stop sleeping and help me find a way out.” “What?” Rainbow Dash opened her eyes. She was in the Aether. The pegasi are the most secretive tribe in Equestria. They can live up to six hundred years old, double the age of unicorns, and triple that of earth ponies. And that’s it. Pegasi don’t have the ability to naturally suck magic out of nowhere or absorb it from the earth like the other two tribes. They don’t have super strength even without any training, or an innate understanding of the workings of reality. They’re just ponies. Ones that can’t even fly. The pegasi’s wings are vestigial, kept only for their looks. Then a unicorn discovered a secretive pegasus cloud city with an innovative cloud-walking spell and changed the world. With several years of study, experimentation, and the grudging helpfulness of the pegasi, she found a way to break into the place unicorns got their magic from. There, she found the Aether Crystals, shards of pure magic. Unicorns were much more powerful back then, and she was able to harvest hundreds of the Crystals before she ran out of magic. Magic starvation is a real, deadly threat that most fall unconscious before experiencing. In a panic, she drove an Aether Crystal into her chest. She survived. For a few days. Long enough to give every pegasus a Crystal of their own and teach them an extremely costly way back to the Aether. Then her natural magic came back, interfered with her new Crystal, and killed her. The pegasi came to a conclusion. Any unicorn could become an unstoppable powerhouse for a few days before killing themselves if they knew about the Crystals. Or, worse, they might even figure out how to consume an unlimited amount without dying. And so it became a secret. A secret that the Everfree apparently knew about. After it had taken her Crystal, Rainbow Dash had blustered, had hoped, had endured. But she’d had the knowledge, deep down in a place so far away from conscious thought that she wouldn’t have admitted it even to herself, that destroying the Everfree wasn’t going to restore her magic. And now she could do it. She could find an Aether Crystal. She desperately scrambled against empty space. There was a pinkish mist as far as she could see in all directions, and bright pink sparks lit up and disappeared in the distance. “Rainbow!” She finally looked behind herself, and tried to jump against nothing. Twilight appeared to be...swimming toward her. “I can’t move!” she shouted. “Relax,” Twilight called back. “Move slowly. Slow enough, and you can sort of push against it.” Rainbow tried it and felt something stretch against her legs like elastic before popping. This was hard. She was used to fast. Sudden. Not...slow. She tried again. That’s right, sort of catch the elastic, and push. Then catch it again and push. There was a certain rhythm to it. She had to slow down to get hold of...whatever it was she was pushing against, but then she could push as hard as she wanted. It was actually kind of fun. “Hey, Twilight?” she asked once she reached the other mare. “Yeah?” “Have you seen anything...unusual?” Twilight gave her a flat stare. “I mean, anything except this weird mist stuff and those lights.” “Rainbow, we’ve been here for a minute at most. I haven’t exactly had time to look around.” “Then let’s explore!” Rainbow Dash made the slow-then-fast swimming motions that were necessary to get around in this place, shooting off in a random direction. “Rainbow, wait!” “What is it?” Rainbow drifted to a halt and looked at the unicorn with a raised eyebrow. “Geometry is...weird here.” “Going to have to be a bit clearer than that.” Twilight drifted up beside Rainbow Dash again. Upside down. That was cool. “Okay. So basically, every time we move, we move...more. Finding a specific place here would probably be impossible. Like...geometry is non-euclidean here. Triangles add up to less than one-eighty degrees.” “And you know that how?” “I can sense magic. Every time I move I have to stop sensing it because I get really nauseous.” “Great. Anything else?” Rainbow Dash said, flapping her wings and drifting forward a bit. Oh. She hadn’t been able to use her wings for so long. She’d kind of been ignoring them. No more, she promised herself. “Yes! Exploring is a bad idea. We should stick right here and figure out how to get out of here.” “How about instead, I explore and you stay behind me and do that?” Rainbow Dash pumped her wings and shot off toward a distant speck of light, not allow Twilight time to respond. “No! Rainbow!” Yep, Twilight was following. Didn’t matter that she was yelling. Then Rainbow saw it. An Aether Crystal. A thick covering of pink mist obscured it, but it was still visible. It had some amount of clear edges. If she tried to look at them too hard, they blurred together. Whatever, not important. Rainbow swept the tiny thing up in a wing. Now she had magic! Oh. No she didn’t. She needed somepony else with magic to put it in. Meanwhile…she could find a bigger Crystal. One that would fit her current body. Then she’d be able to go even faster. Maybe pull off another rainboom. “C’mon Twilight!” she called, spinning away, wings reluctantly tucked back against her body. Not going to risk losing the Crystal, even if it was small. It might be the last one. Then she saw the first multicolored blob. It was both shapeless and easy to make out. Changing colors, all colors, and no colors. And it was heading toward her.