The strips of daylight sky crumpled away, leaving a cloudless, starry stretch of night. Below, where Fluttershy's cottage had been sitting, a big stone castle rose up, torches burning along the walls and tickling Dash's nose with smoke even though she was still pretty high above them.
Weirdly, she recognized the castle with its one tower sticking up right in the middle of the place. A light glowed dimly from the single window at the top of the tower, and the breeze that wafted over Dash carried an unmistakable sigh to her ears. "Oh, dear," a soft and familiar voice muttered. "Will nopony come to rescue me from this dreadful place?"
Dash's wings froze, dropping her a dozen yards or so before she could force herself to start flapping again.
"Ah, yes," a much snarkier voice said beside her, and she glared over at Hades sitting in a floating armchair, about two dozen balloons tied to it. "Daydreams are wonderful: am I right, or am I right?"
For all that she wanted to start yelling or kicking or maybe just flit on over there and pop his balloons, Dash instead asked, "You wanna tell me what's going on?"
"Maybe." He shrugged, then gave her a snaggle-toothed grin. "Congratulations on getting rid of Discord, by the way. That guy's always given me the creeps. He looks too much like me for comfort, y'know?"
"Really?" Dash let herself smile at him. "You creep yourself out?"
"You bet I do." Every bit of his grin vanished. "I'd creep you out, too, if you had half a brain in your head."
"Huh." It took some effort, but she kept everything cool and calm. "Too bad you're not dealing with somepony smarter, then, isn't it? 'Cause all I feel when I look at you is a little bit tired and a little bit irritated."
Hades nodded. "Oh, I hear you. I mean, if I had my druthers, I'd be tying rocks to your wings and punting you toward the nearest pit of hot tar right now."
Dash very carefully kept everything unclenched. "If you had your what?" she asked.
"Never mind." Sighing, he waved his lion paw at the tower below them. "How 'bout you just do what you came here to do, huh? Rescue the maiden fair, vanquish the villain, and return to your kingdom in triumph."
She dared one glance at the tower and could barely stifle her shudder. It was everything she'd ever daydreamed, after all—Fluttershy pining for a hero; Dash right there to swoop down, fight off the danger, and carry her away; the two of them flying to safety, Eff cuddling against Dash's chest, maybe stretching that incredible sunset-yellow neck and touching those lips to—
With all the discipline she'd learned during her years training on her own and then with the Wonderbolts, Dash stomped that fantasy out of her mind even more ruthlessly than she always did. "Nah," she said, turning back to Hades. "Y'know what I'd rather do?" Taking a breath, thinking about what was around her, feeling the itches along her wings, she concentrated, spun a couple times in place, and said, "I'd rather see where Fluttershy actually is right now instead of all this daydream stuff."
A strangled gasp beside her, and the night sky vanished, a bright, warm afternoon taking its place. Below her now stretched a field of flowers, purple and blue and orange and yellow, with woods around the edges and misty mountains beyond that. A single wide-spreading oak tree stood where the castle tower had been, and underneath it, Dash could see Fluttershy curled up, her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling, the smile on her face clearly visible even from this altitude.
"Now see here!" Hades shouted, and the idyllic scene sputtered out like a film slipping its sprockets, the castle and the stars and the torchlit landscape flickering back. "That's incredibly rude, you know, popping into another customer's daydream!"
"Is that a fact?" Dash folded her forelegs across her chest. "So how come you've been popping me and Discord around all over the place?"
"That's different." With a sniff, he pointed to the golden crown that sparkled into being around his antlers. "I'm in charge of Mythos. When I do something, it's legal by definition."
"Wow." Pointing at her own head, Dash imagined a similar crown—just sleeker and snazzier—swirling a little rainbow cyclone between her ears. "Turns out I can do stuff, too. Wanna compare notes?"
Hades snorted. "You're only here under my sufferance, y'know. And when I say suffer—"
"Whatever." Dash spun again, switched from the night and castle scene to the day and meadow scene. She still had no idea what Hades was planning, but if he wanted Eff asleep— "Yo, Fluttershy!" she shouted, pitching her voice to carry the distance. "You checked those woods for squirrels yet? Might be they need help with their nut gathering!"
"Will you just—?" Flames shot from Hades's claws, flashing across the sky and bringing back the night. "Are you trying to upset me?"
"Pretty much." Another spin, and they were floating over Fluttershy's tree again. "Squirrels, Eff! I'm telling you, they're probably all over the place out there!"
"That's it!" Hades leaped from his floating chair, all his balloons bursting and sending the stink of black pepper flooding over Dash. She couldn't stop a sneeze from squinching her eyes closed for a fraction of an instant, and when she forced them open, she and Hades were floating in an ocean of gray clouds, Hades with his fists on his hips and a sneer on his lips. "Do you want me to rescind your invitation to participate in this beta test? Is that what you want?"
Keeping her imagination stretched, Dash shook her head, laughed loudly, and waved at him like he was a gnat she couldn't be bothered to squish, all the while hoping that he wouldn't notice what she was really doing. "Get real! I mean, yeah, maybe you don't give me the creeps like you want to, but I definitely know that you are a creep! So if you could've made my powers go away, you would've done it, like, ten or twenty minutes ago! I don't know what the deal is with this place or why I'm all wrapped up in it, but—"
A deep bell went off somewhere, a slow gong that shook Dash's ribs and made the hairs at the base of her mane get all prickly. "That," Hades said, his eyes literally lighting up, yellow and red glowing embers embedded in his weird head. The bell tolled again. "That's what the deal is." A third chime rolled over them. "'Cause that's six o'clock."
"What?" Dash craned her neck around to see where the sun was, but everything was only clouds. "It was barely noon when I got here!" A fourth chime struck. "No way it's been six hours!"
Hades shrugged in time with the fifth chime. "Time flies when you're daydreaming: am I right, or am I right?" He brushed his claws against the fur of his chest as the sixth chime sounded. "And now that Fluttershy's slept an entire afternoon in my realm, she's mine, never to leave my side again for as long as—"
"Ummm..." It was the quietest little sound in the world, but Dash practically cheered when she heard it drifting up from below the gray clouds. "Actually, Hades, I've been awake for a minute or two now, ever since Rainbow started talking about squirrels."
As funny as it was, the way Hades's jaw came unhinged, swinging his bearded chin down to smack against the base of his long, thin neck, Dash couldn't quite laugh, not while everything was still so shaky. "It's odd," Fluttershy was going on. "I can hear you both, but I can't see you. Are you hiding in the tree?"
A flick of her imagination sent the clouds flying, clearing away to show Fluttershy standing a few paces away from the base of the oak and peering up at its leaves. "Here we are, Eff!" Dash called. Locking gazes with the wide-eyed Hades, she pointed to the ground. "How 'bout we join her, huh?" Not waiting for him, she angled her wings and drifted down to land beside Fluttershy. "You okay?"
Fluttershy seemed to consider the question. "A little confused, maybe." She gestured in that delicate way of hers past Dash, Dash glancing back quickly to see Hades settling like a grouchy little fog bank on the grass behind her. "Hades stopped by the house this morning to thank me for the party, and we got to talking while I did my chores." Her forehead wrinkled. "I remember feeling very sleepy all of a sudden and Hades showing me this lovely meadow to rest in." She gave a gasp. "Goodness! Have I really been napping here all day?"
"Looks like." Dash shrugged, sliding half a step sideways to keep Hades in her peripheral vision. "How 'bout we head on home now, though, huh?"
Even with the afternoon sky darkening to evening around them, Hades's eyes weren't glowing as much as they had been a minute ago. "I dunno," he said, and a metal and glass contraption that Dash recognized from school as a sextant appeared in his outstretched paw. Squinting into the eyepiece, he shook his head. "It's getting late: better you just stay the night here and start off fresh in the morning. Am I right, or am I—?"
"Will you stop saying that?" Dash couldn't keep from leaping into a hover. "It's maybe not the most annoying thing in the world, but it's in the top ten easy!"
"Hey!" Hades buzzed over, his chest stuck out and his head cocked back on his neck: all Dash could think of was how much he looked like a rooster. "You wanna piece of me, Flychick? That what you want?"
"Rainbow! Hades!" Even Fluttershy's scolding tone was gentle. "There's no need to be rude! We're all friends here! Although..." And while nothing about her got any harsher, Dash couldn't mistake the edge that entered her voice. "I find myself wondering just the tiniest bit, Hades, what you meant when you said that I was going to be yours and that I would never leave your side again."
"What, that?" Hades settled to the ground and flicked his eagle talons. "It's merely a common figure of speech where I come from! It means that I hope we'll always be the best of friends!"
Dash pretended to sneeze so she could cover up saying the word "Fewmets!" as loudly as possible.
The look Fluttershy gave her was nowhere near a glare, but Hades more than made up for it. He drew his head back like she'd smacked him in the face and asked, "Just what exactly are you implying, Rainbow Dash?"
And because Dash was sick and tired of him and all this stupid daydream stuff— "I'm saying that you're a liar and a jerkwad and a stinking ball of slime who wants to lock Fluttershy up in some box so you can take her out and lick her any time you want to or something! You don't care about her! You don't care about anything but yourself!" And just for good measure, she leaped up, cocked a hoof, and actually did smack him in the face.
"Insolence!" Hades rolled with the punch and spun into a cyclone, Dash rearing back with her wings spread to make herself as big a target as possible. The clouds rushed in again swirling and all acrackle with lightning, and Dash ground her teeth together, straining to imagine an eye of still air around her and Fluttershy.
"And the hypocrisy!" Hades went on, his voice blasting from the storm. "How are you any better, Rainbow Dash? Not even noticing when you kicked her off the clouds at flight school! Always treating her like she's an invalid or simple-minded or worse! Locking her up in the imaginary tower of your daydreams so you can swoop down and rescue her over and over again! I'm at least honest about the ways in which I want her to be mine! You don't even respect her enough to tell her how you've felt for all these years!"
The temperature inside Dash's gut dropped to freezing, and the little gasp of breath behind her seemed a hundred times louder than the crashing thunder and the wailing winds.
"Shut up!" Flinging herself into the roar of the tornado, Dash kept a part of her imagination focused on Fluttershy's bubble while summoning up every dive and trick and kick she'd learned wrangling the wild weather that came out of the Everfree. In her head, she saw herself scattering Hades's whole massive system with one sweep of her wings, and a fraction of an instant later, she actually did it, slicing the storm in half, smashing the lower part to mist against the grass of Fluttershy's meadow and grinding the upper part against the invisible wall of the tropopause until it became nothing but a slight breeze.
Panting, Dash gave a quick glance at Fluttershy below, huddled to the ground under the now-leafless oak tree. Then she glared at Hades, glaring back at her a dozen yards further up. "Fine!" he shouted. "You wanna make it a contest? We'll make it a contest!" He swooped down and shoved his frowning muzzle into Dash's face. "Winner takes Fluttershy."
It took some effort not to smack him again; instead, Dash concentrated, flapped her wings a little harder, and imagined the breeze into one that was strong enough to push him back a couple yards. "Fluttershy's a pony," she said through clenched teeth, "not a prize."
He snorted. "Shows what you know." His claws came up, light flashing from them, and Dash blinked to see that she was standing back on the ground beside Fluttershy and the oak tree, Hades in front of them. "So here's the challenge. You walk out of here, the two of you, and you don't look back. Simple: am I right, or am I right?"
The bare branches of the oak tree rustled, but Dash didn't move, waiting for the catch.
Again, the grin that slid along Hades's snout looked as crooked as a first-timer's try at pumpkin carving. "But if either one of you so much as glances back for any reason at all, Fluttershy's mine and you, Drainbow Gash, are out of my life and hers for good. Oh, and just to make it more fair?" He slashed the air, and Dash felt something rise from her back, a weight she hadn't really noticed she'd been carrying before. "Since you've wrecked the whole daydream realm of Mythos, I don't need your imagination to anchor it anymore. So there's all your powers gone."
Fog seemed to roll in, everything getting more indistinct, and Hades flicked his claws. "Go on, then," he said. "Turn around and start walking." Despite the haze, Dash could still see his jagged grin just fine. "Let's see how far you get."
Not letting herself scream or stomp or give him the kick in the head he so badly needed, Dash kept her narrowed gaze fixed on his. "Fluttershy?" she said. "Get going, and don't turn around for anything. You got that?"
"Rainbow?" The quiver in Fluttershy's voice almost shattered every plan Dash was trying to slap together. "What about you?"
"I'll be right behind you." Dash's throat tried to squeeze shut, but she forced the words out. "You know I'd never leave you hanging."
"You're right. I do know that."
The gentle shuffle of hooves in grass came to Dash's ears, and only then did she break eye contact with Hades, his grin still as toothy as before. Ahead of her, Fluttershy was stepping steadily toward the woods, shrouded in mist at the edge of the meadow. "I'll keep talking," Dash said, "so you'll know I'm here, but you've gotta promise me you won't turn around. Pinkie Promise even, all right?"
Fluttershy nodded. One front hoof came up to touch her chest, she said the word, "Cross—"
And white light burst out behind them. "Not so fast, Hades!" Twilight's unmistakable voice rang out.
The groan that followed, Dash knew, could only have come from Discord. "Do we have to use that cliché?" he asked.
"Silence, knave!" A mare's voice, deeper than Twilight's, but Dash couldn't—
Ahead of her, Fluttershy's ears perked. "Oh! That's Princess Luna! Rainbow, we're—!"
"You can't!" Hades was screaming so loudly, Dash could barely hear Fluttershy. "I won't—!"
The light snuffed out quicker than a candle under a water faucet, and through the fog around them, Dash saw that they were suddenly in the middle of the woods, a cold and utter silence drooping over them.
Fluttershy's shoulders twitched, and everything inside Dash clenched. "No!" she shouted. "Don't turn around! It might be a trick!"
"A...trick?" Fluttershy froze. "You think Hades would do that?"
"Oh, yeah." Coming up behind Fluttershy, Dash almost gave her a push, but that would likely startle her into looking back. "So let's just keep going till we're out—or, y'know, till Twilight pops up in front of us and tells us they've put Hades in a bottle. If she can prove she's Twilight, I mean."
"Can—?" Fluttershy's ears fell. "Can you prove you're Rainbow Dash? "
As much as Dash wanted to heave a sigh, she didn't. "Well, I'm the one telling you not to turn around, right? If I was Hades, I wouldn't be doing that."
"Oh. Yes. I—" Standing behind her, Dash couldn't see Fluttershy blush, but she knew from the way her head dipped that that gorgeous yellow face was turning more than a little orange. "I'm sorry," she murmured.
"Yeah, well..." A sudden realization struck Dash: for once in her life, she could look at Fluttershy as much as she wanted to and not have to worry about Fluttershy catching her. She swallowed, her gaze lighting for an instant on the gentle curves of Fluttershy's hindquarters, but she ground her teeth, forced herself to look away, focused on the shadowy trees to their right. "You just keep us moving. I mean, you go out into the woods all the time, so you know what a path looks like when animals use it, right?"
That got Fluttershy's ears to twitch. "I...I do know that, don't I?"
"Okay." Dash took a breath, somehow kept the churning in her gut from coming anywhere near her throat. "So see if you can find a way that's maybe had some traffic, and we'll see if that doesn't get us out of here."
"I can do that." Her ears came up almost the whole way, and she started forward. "And you'll keep talking, you said? So...so I'll know you're still there?"
Despite everything, Dash could almost laugh, falling in behind Fluttershy and very carefully keeping her eyes pointed at anything that wasn't sweet swaying yellow and pink. "Yeah, Eff. I'll talk about anything you want to."
"Ummm," was all Fluttershy said, but it was enough to get all Dash's innards clenching again. "When Hades turned into that cyclone, things got a little scary. So I'm not sure, but I think I heard him say something about—"
"Can we please talk about something else?" Most of Dash's muscles were whining their desire to stretch, to flap, to fly her away from this place and this conversation. But Hades had said 'walk out,' and knowing him, he meant it. "And by that, I mean anything else?"
"It's just—" Fluttershy's head dipped again, and this time, Dash was sure she could feel the heat from Fluttershy's blush. "He said you have...feelings?"
A trick: that's all this could be. Hades was trying to make her freak out, break and run and smash all her daydreams into nightmares. She had to stop this before her whole life went spinning completely out of control. "You're my best friend, Eff, the one pony who's always been there and always will be. That's why you know me better than any of the others ever could. You've seen me at my best and at my worst right from the starting line, and you...you're the eye of my storm, y'know?"
She'd clenched her jaw so tight, her teeth hurt, and while nothing she'd said was a lie, it was a lot closer to the truth than she'd ever wanted to get. Stupid Hades! Why'd he have to come along and tip over the careful and perfect balance Dash had spent so many years setting up?
A giggle from ahead perked Dash's ears: she'd been halfway expecting to hear a sob. "The eye of the storm." Fluttershy nodded. "I like that. I've always thought I was more a rock in the middle of a river, sitting there and watching everything flow past me."
"Nah," Dash said almost without thinking. "That's Applejack."
Fluttershy giggled again. "You know, she's the only pony I can think of who'd take it as a compliment if you called her a rock."
"How about Pinkie's sister?"
"Oh! Of course! Maud!" Fluttershy altered their course slightly, aiming their steps around the right side of a large elm. "You know, I've never thought about it before, but I wonder what she thinks about the tradition of birth stones. Do you suppose she finds it silly?"
"Are you kidding? She prob'bly invented it." Slipping into a monotone, Dash did an impression of Maud talking about what stones went with what personalities. That got Fluttershy giggling some more, and the talk moved to wondering about Pinkie's childhood, about Pinkie and Applejack being related, about Applejack's grandfather who'd recently moved back to Ponyville.
Safe topics, in other words, and Dash slowly let her bunched-up muscles relax. Time went on, though Dash wasn't sure how much, nothing anywhere but silence and fog and ghostly tree trunks drifting past. And while she always liked chatting with Fluttershy, after a while, Dash decided to try flexing her imagination just in case Hades really was as big of a liar and a jerk as she thought.
Fluttershy had been telling some story about Rarity's cat when she stopped in mid-sentence and said, "Rainbow? Is that something up ahead?"
"Maybe?" The fog did seem to be darker, and as they continued forward, Dash realized— "I think it's, like, the side of a mountain or a cliff face or something." She forced her wings to stay furled. "Just keep walking, though. It might be another stupid trick."
The darkness took on craggy features as they got closer, and Dash had to swallow. It looked like a big wall of rock stretching above the trees as far as she could see and away into the mist on both sides. How were they supposed to—?
"A cave!" Fluttershy pointed at the wall. "Rainbow? Can you see it? Straight ahead at ground level! It's lighter than the rock around it!" She broke into more of a trot.
"Yeah..." A way out was what Dash had imagined, and picking up her pace to match Fluttershy's, she could see through the rough archway to rocks and dirt with what looked like regular daylight shining on them.
Fluttershy's steps faltered. "Wait. Are we...inside a cave right now?" Raising her head, she glanced up and sideways.
"Careful!" Dash tried not to shout it; she didn't want to alarm Fluttershy into looking back, after all. "Just keep your eyes forward, walk right out into the sunshine, and don't turn around."
"Yes. Of course. Forward." With a crisp nod, Fluttershy moved into a canter that carried her quickly through the arch in the stone wall, and most of the ice in Dash's stomach melted. "Rainbow! It...it looks we're near the far end of Ghastly Gorge! Yes!" She pointed to the left. "That's where we had the finish line for your pet race!"
Taking a breath, Dash stopped just inside the cave, unfurled her imagination, and whispered, "You're gonna fall asleep now, Eff, and when you wake up, you won't remember any of this. It'll be like a dream. Nothing but a dream..."
Outside, Fluttershy gave a huge yawn. Her eyes folded shut, her knees buckled, and she folded herself into a cute little heap, her head resting on her forelegs and her breathing slow and regular.
With a swallow, Dash trotted into the sunlight, picked Fluttershy up, and flew her home.