Darkness engulfed Rainbow Dash. The light revealed itself ahead, along with the metal stand were the ball recently had been. Rainbow Dash looked back. She saw the golden ball plummet, catching a small glimpse of the book compartment hole on its surface that saved her life. The ball hit the floor below with a boom that caused the temple to rumble. There was a horrifying voice coming from the Myst book.
“Atrus! Come here quick. There’s been an accident!” She heard Catherine’s shouting. Rainbow Dash looked into the Myst book. She saw Atrus sprinting into the room. Catherine looked into the linking window. A smile formed on her face.
“You’re alive!” She exclaimed while pressing her hand against her mouth. Atrus looked bewildered at Rainbow Dash.
“What happened?” He asked.
Rainbow Dash felt the chock lay itself, and the anger rising.
“What happened? I was nearly turned to mush by one of your boring puzzles, that’s what happened!”
“But are you okay?!” Atrus asked insisting. Rainbow Dash was getting ready to rant more but felt her mouth jam while the question of genuine worry reached her heart. Her angry face bordered between anger and softness.
“I mean, what…!” She sighted. “Yes Atrus, I’m fine.”
“And the book?” Catherine asked.
“Yes, what happened to the book?” Atrus also asked.
Rainbow Dash raised her hooves.
“Well, I just had its entire altar rolling over me, I think I would have noticed if it smeared a book up against my face!”
“But how is this possible? There should be no deadly traps on this island.” Catherine wailed.
Rainbow Dash squinted her eyes at the area were the ball had been.
“But somepony thought.” She trotted up to the holder. “See, both these gigantic screws went loose at the same time.” Rainbow Dash hoof motioned one of the screws hanging limply from its hole.
“You know what Rainbow Dash? I’m having a hard time thinking that was a coincidence too.” Catherine agreed.
“But who?” Atrus asked.
Rainbow Dash’s face twisted in anger.
“Who? I’ll tell you who, whoever knows the solutions to the puzzles and knows how they work, that’s who. I asked you before back at the temple Atrus, and now I’ll ask again.” Rainbow Dash raised her wings in aggression. “WHO ELSE KNOWS ABOUT MY QUEST!?”
“No one, no one except us Atrus. Isn’t that right?” Catherine asked her husband. Atrus kept his eyes at the transmission window, catching a glance at Rainbow Dash’s frowning face. He raised his arms in a display of innocence.
“Well don’t look at us, we have no linking book. We’re stuck her in Tomahna.”
“Sure, you didn’t make one Atrus?” Rainbow Dash asked. Atrus felt his blood boil.
“Of course not! If I had one I wouldn’t have had reason to send Stranger now, would I?! It’s not my fault that you crashed my party.”
Rainbow Dash wiggled her tail. She grumped.
“Wait!” Catherine broke in. “I have an idea. Head for the first Myst island Rainbow Dash.”
“Should I? So far all I’ve gotten while following your guidelines are arrows to the face!”
“There is a secret room behind a secret door beside the boat. It will take you to a projector. I have modified it to keep track of inter age activity. It is possible that we could pick up the track of whoever is linking into Myst.”
“Could you do that my little rebel?” Atrus asked snootily.
“I still have the writing hands.” Catherine replied.
“Hello? Love birds, my little pony who almost got crushed over here!” Rainbow Dash blasted.
———————————————
It didn’t take long before the familiar sight of the Myst island came into view. Rainbow Dash made a banking turn and aimed for the harbor, lowly rated when taking into consideration that the only anchored boat laid on the ocean floor. Rainbow Dash eventually found the secret door that Catherine had been talking about. Her hooves sent echoes as she moved down along the pathway into a lightly lit area. It contained a round metal thing with a grid in the middle. Rainbow Dash saw a large round button.
“Rainbow Dash?” Atrus now spoke. Catherine had left the room. “I have been thinking, I know my wife wants to help, but I really think that you should head to Tomahna.”
“I know Atrus. But let’s give her a chance, maybe we’ll find something.”
Rainbow Dash pressed the button. There was a flickering shape above the round grid.
The shapes took the form of stony ruins and cliffs formed like mushrooms. Stone daggers soared the sky. A lagoon widened around the island with small lakes inside it.
“What is that place?” Rainbow Dash asked.
Atrus looked at the image. He recognized the age. The notion pierced his brain like a cold ice block held against his ear. ‘Gehn, set loose in Serenia?!’
The projector image of his daughter’s school age reformed in his mind into an image of his daughter. ‘Yeesha!’
“Rainbow Dash. I know where Gehn is going. Use the Tomahna linking book to get to me. Now!” Atrus ordered. His voice had a firmness due to his emotions circulating.
Rainbow Dash brought up the now completed Tomahna book. She was just about to press her hoof against the linking window when she heard a male voice. Her eyeballs turned to the projector. The shapes of Serenia crumbled and reformed into a shape of a creature. As it became clearer Rainbow Dash could see its stallion mule below its funky mane. One of its pegasus wings raised as it wailed in the projector.
“Help! I’m at the prison island! I’ve been…” The transmission ended.
While the projector image faded the eyes of the Pegasus pony remained hard, the image of her father, Bow Hothoof calling out for help, still reflecting inside them.
“Dad!”
Rainbow Dash turned horrified face to the Myst book.
“Atrus, I have to help him!”
Atrus imagined Yeesha trapped in the brute arms of his own monster dad.
“Save him?” Atrus blurted.
Rainbow Dash felt her blood turn warm, her heart thumping up to her head.
“What kind of a question is that!? I have to save him, he’s my dad!?”
Atrus felt cornered by the aggressive Pegasus pony.
“Father?” Atrus blurted with a tinge of disgust. “You don’t need your father.”
Rainbow Dash raised her wings until she looked three times her normal size.
“I don’t need…? I DON’T NEED!? He is MY FATHER!”
Atrus could see his own father look away from him when he wanted to show him the first age he had written.
“Your father will only hold you back!”
“Hold me back? What in the world are you talking about?! My father is there for me, he cheers me on when I race, he helps me when I have trouble learning, he even taught me how to fly…!”
Rainbow Dash kept telling why her father was good and why she needed to save him. To Atrus it sounded like bragging. He felt his heart rocket up to his head.
“Well, not MY FATHER! My father told me he DIDN’T LOVE ME! He told me he HATED ME! He told me he would take me out to the forest and LEAVE ME! He told me he would LAUGH while all the other children BULLIED me!”
Atrus dark voice sounded like a freight train coming through as he roared. Rainbow Dash’s angry eyes flickered.
“You might have a dream dad Rainbow Dash, but my dad had a dream that I had never been born!”
“Well you’re living in a dream if you believe that you can keep me away from my dad!”
Rainbow Dash’s furious eyes filled with tears. She flung the Myst book onto the floor in rage.
“Now STAY THERE and be a book, like the egghead you are!”
Rainbow Dash spread her wings and rocketed out of the projector room, leaving Atrus alone, thinking of what in the world he just said.
Even though Rainbow Dash had never been there she immediately knew from her sky memory where the prison island was. But her mind didn’t go to the prison island, it went to her father. Or no, not really. It went for…
Rainbow Dash shook her head that circulated with post anger thoughts. She growled to keep her concentration. The prison island laid ahead. The prison itself laid like a billboard ball on top of the central mountain. Rainbow Dash landed on a catwalk that lead into the mountain. Her face was bent in determination as she trotted inside.
Rainbow Dash entered the elevator. She stretched her hoof to press the button. She felt her flank burn when something suddenly stuck her. She gave out a raspy gasp and turned around. She caught a small glance of a figure wearing a storm west and a crossbow before the world went dark.
——————————————————
Rainbow Dash moaned. She felt her stomach ache from the poison. She opened her eyes, the prison bars blurry at first. Slowly the rest of the décor came into view. One of them appeared to be some kind of box with a sheet thrown over it. Beside it there was a furnace, still glowing with coals. Rainbow Dash spotted the Myst transmission book lying on a table nearby. Rainbow Dash realized immediately that her life was in danger. She tried to stretch her wings, in vain it turned out as they had been tied to her back by a rope.
“Atrus?” She called the book. There was no answer. “Atrus!”
A character could be seen walking behind the windows. It appeared to be a man in a storm suit. Rainbow Dash had a bad feeling who it was.
“Catherine.” She called the book.
“Catherine!”
The door opened. The man walked in and pulled up his mask. Rainbow Dash’s face dropped in disbelief.
“Catherine?”
Catherine walked up to the table. She grabbed the Myst book.
“No, Atrus!” Rainbow Dash called in desperation. Catherine opened a burning furnace.
“ATRUS!”
Catherine threw the Myst book into the furnace. The sound of hissing paper glue could be heard before the furnace lid slammed closed. There was a moment of awkward silence.
“Catherine? I don’t understand.”
“You’re not a mother. How could you understand?”
Rainbow Dash’s sad eyes slowly shifted into angry.
“You were the one who tried to kill me in that temple!”
“Scare you.” Catherine corrected, still without looking her in the eyes.” I was a marksman during the Riven revolution. If I wanted to kill you, you would have died the moment you walked out of that cage, but you wouldn’t take the hint. Such a foolish little pony. Well, it matters little now.”
Catherine brought up a book from her bag. It was dark and had a symbol in the front. Its edges were ornamented.
“Is that the Book Of Eternity? But why? Why imprison me?! Why…?”
Catherine interrupted Rainbow Dash by laughing. “Oh, my little pony. There is no such thing as a ‘Book Of Eternity’.”
Rainbow Dash’s confused eyes floated in the middle of her face. Catherine opened the book and put it against the prison bars, allowing Rainbow Dash to look straight into the eyes of an old man. He had a bald head and a military uniform with big buttons in the middle. His familiar grin inside the linking window caused her blood to freeze.
“Gehn.” She whispered. She looked at Catherine. “So, the Book Of Eternity was Gehns prison book all along!?”
“Did it never occur to you why those balls that lead you to solve that color puzzle had rebel knives on them? I thought you were a smart pony.” Catherine teased.
“But Atrus? Why didn’t…?”
“Why didn’t Atrus tell you? The same reason he decided to store his father’s prison book on one of the Myst islands instead of his bookshelf.” Catherine leaned her head closer to the bars and whispered.
“Shame.”
Rainbow Dash thought back on the fight she had with Atrus, regret filling her heart.
“Atrus.” She whispered.
Catherine turned around. She proceeded taking of the rest of her storm uniform.
“But how did you get here?” Rainbow Dash asked.
Catherine reached into her bag and brought up another book. This book was brighter and had a darker spine. It had capital letters written in gold. ‘MYST’
“That is the original Myst book.” Rainbow Dash concluded hoarsely.
“The one that Stranger found on earth.” Catherine added.
“So, you were the one who stole it from Atrus?”
“And made it look like a burglary. I had to, or else Atrus would have known immediately who took the prison book.”
“But why are you doing this? Why do you want the prison book?”
Rainbow Dash caught sight of Catherine’s blank gaze. It made her realize the unsettling truth.
“You’re planning on releasing him. You’re planning on releasing Gehn!”
Catherine started walking around the cage. Rainbow Dash flung her hooves around as she spouted out her questions.
“But you lead a revolution against him. You said he was a tyrant!”
“That was a long time ago. My father in law have been imprisoned for eight years, he’s a changed man. Not that Atrus would care, seeing he belongs to the family.”
“What do you mean? Atrus cares!” Rainbow Dash stated. Catherine laughed.
“Oh, my little pony. Atrus doesn’t care, he doesn’t care for any of his family members. Sure, when they are small and cute everything is mellow, but when they grow up and turn bearded and ugly he plunges his face into his books again.”
Catherine looked at the front cover of the prison book.
“And then, one day that ugly family member does something stupid, first then he pulls his own ugly face away from his books.” Catherine said the last part concludingly, the resentment in her voice obvious.
“But instead talking to them or help them getting good at what they do, you know, like a father does.” There was a snarl in Catherine’s voice. “…He writes himself a prison book to watch them turn old inside them.”
Rainbow Dash now realized the connection.
“You are talking about the imprisonment of your sons? Wasn’t that you who convinced him?”
Catherine laughed again. Her laughter was low and unbothered, unsettling considering she could have been a murderer at this point.
“My little pony. You are a brute, you know that Rainbow Dash? And just like every brute you are weak minded. I was a rebel leader for several years, I only told you what you and Atrus wanted to hear.”
Rainbow Dash felt her mind flip, along with all the words Catherine said to her before.
“It was he who convinced you.” Rainbow Dash concluded.
Catherine smiled at Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash’s eyes turned sad.
“But your sons choose their fate. They plundered…”
Catherine’s smiling face turned into a storm of anger. She slammed her hands against the prison bars, causing Rainbow Dash to stagger.
“Don’t you dare tell me about choice, you’re not a mother! I was forced to watch my own sons grow above their twenties inside those prison ages! I watched them live the rest of their short lives like some unwanted fugitives! I saw their bodies lying inside that chamber after their foolish ideas backfired, ideas that could have been my heritage if Atrus did his job as a father!”
Catherine’s voice now cracked.
“And now he is sending Yeesha away! How long before she gets her own ‘foolish ideas’?! Gehn might be a tyrant, but at least he cares about his own blood!”
Rainbow Dash sad eyes remembered what Atrus told her about Gehn.
“That’s not what I heard.”
“It doesn’t matter what you’ve heard, you have no idea what our family has endured!”
“No, I don’t.” Rainbow Dash’s sad eyes hardened. “But I know you kidnapped mine, and you did try to kill me by loosening that golden ball.”
Catherine’s crying turned into a blank stare, Rainbow Dash’s angry eyes burned red fire.
“You’re lucky I’m inside this cage lady.”
Catherine raised her chin in authority, her crying washed away.
“Well, at least putting it that way makes this simple.” Catherine walked to the table. She picked up the prison book and opened it.
“Now, you might still wonder why you’re here. As it turns out this older prison book is not like the ones my sons were captured in. While their books were ages of their own, fully accessible through other linking books, this book takes the user to a dark void between links.”
Rainbow Dash looked angry at Catherine as she talked.
“There is no way to rewrite this book without killing the person inside, nor is there any way of getting a linking book inside it. The only way to get my father in law out of it is for someone else to use it and then switch place with him.”
Catherine opened the book and put the linking window against the prison bars. Rainbow Dash saw Gehn looking at her with a combination of begging and teasing eyes.
“Now, my little pony, if you would be so kind?”