//------------------------------//
// Prologue 
// Story: Wingmares 
// by CouchCrusader 
//------------------------------//

The counselors took a clear stand on the issue from the first day of summer flight camp: any pegasus caught flying Cloudsdale Circuit after hours would face permanent expulsion. The miles of towering cloud-link fences and red “NO ENTRY” signs surrounding the Circuit enhanced the gravity of the counselors' warnings. On this particular afternoon, the miles of thunderheads churning out of the weather factories did what they could to help drive daredevils away, and most campers were happy to comply with the camp staff’s policies.

Rainbow Dash wasn’t like most campers. As soon as she heard the instructors had closed the Circuit two hours early, that meant private track time all for herself. How generous of them.

Little more than a cyan blip beneath the darkening curve of the sky, the pegasus quickly tunneled her way beneath the fence sequestering the Circuit’s southeastern hairpin. Emerging from below with bits of cloud lodged in her prismatic mane, she shook them out and surveyed the track before her.

A double line of nimbus rings rose up to her from below, forming the course’s tallest point where they came together. To her left, the double heads of Lark’s Head Loop swayed in the mounting wind. To her right loomed the large, rising stretch of Titan’s Curve.

Rainbow Dash stamped her hoof. Just that morning, she had been on the verge of setting a new personal record for the Circuit’s hardest test of stamina—only to have her run sabotaged by them.

She was never sure how they got away with it. The instructors would be elsewhere, or occupied with another pony, but they would never, ever be watching.

The air pulsed with electric potential, standing Rainbow’s coat straight up, and every breath of its petrichor galvanized her heart as it beat against her chest. She stared down the descending line of rings to her right, opened her wings in the unstable air, and squatted into a ready stance. All she heard was a pounding in her ears.

A lightning bolt ripped the sky in two; the thunder shattered what remained, and she hurled herself into space.