Teleportation is supposed to be instant. She knows that. Many unicorns think it actually is- but they would be mistaken. Even the fastest spell takes time. Even Twilight had thought teleportation as instant, once- and hadn’t been able to understand why no unicorn can teleport something in significant motion, like an arrow. Why shields are more effective than simply teleporting out of the way.
But she knows. She’d told Twilight, after her first experience in the teleportation tunnel. They’re not instant- far from it. She doesn’t know exactly which units to use, but to her high-speed Pegasus mind, each stage of the spell- buildup, departure, transit, and arrival- has perceptible duration. This time, she is able to take advantage of the sudden surge of free magic in accelerating her senses even more. It’ll only last for the teleport, maybe a second after- but she’ll experience it as if it took a few seconds.
Teleportation is inefficient. The amount of mana that gets left behind, spilled from the matrix as free magic, is enormous. She’d never realized this before- but now, suddenly, she knows what the bright flash is. She’s absorbed much of this spare power already, effectively negating the flash- and allowing her to see during departure. She watches as an arrow is loosed in their direction. It’ll hit them before the teleport takes hold, she knows- probably kill them. Her eyes instantly trace its path, identify its destiny… No. Nothing shoots Rarity. Not only is she the one teleporting everypony, meaning her mid-teleport death would likely kill everypony, but this arrow is headed straight for her eye.
She dives forwards. She knows she has but a fraction of a second- a duration normally invisible to the eye, now stretched impossibly long. She knows she still has no strength. She’d gotten a meal, so it’s better than it was earlier, but she remains too weak to dive properly. She doesn’t expect to be able to do anything.
But the magic accelerating her perception seems to disagree with that assessment. She feels it change patterns once, twice. Far faster than any unicorn. The sound of a snapping talon sounds in the back of her head as it changes a third time, amplifying itself as it accelerates her form as well. Her weakness presents no hurdle; she feels her muscles burn from the strain she is exerting on them, she feels them attempt to give out. She feels the magic force them to keep working anyways.
She sees herself accelerate impossibly into the path of the arrow, twisting through the air as she does so. She swings a hoof, timed just right to effortlessly deflect the offending object into the ceiling.
Then she spreads her wings, braking hard to avoid faceplanting the wall before the teleport could take hold. She just barely touches the ground with her hooves again when it takes hold- and everypony disappears into the teleport tunnel. She feels the magic flowing, carrying everypony away. Taking them to safety…
She’s still moving. None of her limbs are- that acceleration has gone. But she’s still moving, off to the side, away from her friends.
Her eyes don’t have time to widen, but it’s impossibly long for her mind. She’d managed to protect everypony, though- to protect Rarity. Death by teleport mishap isn’t how she planned on going but, she supposes, at least she died whilst valiantly protecting a friend.
She comes into contact with the wall of the teleportation tunnel, penetrating it- and feeling the burn of the aether. This is how she’ll die. The incredible forces that form up the Aether- and that disintegrate unprotected ponies in moments.
Her vision goes dark as her head passes through the wall, into the Aether proper. She lets out a sigh- or would, if time were moving fast enough. Normally, it’s over in the blink of an eye, she knows. The experiencing pony wouldn’t even have time to experience it.
Not for her. Her still accelerated mind processes every last tidbit of the burn consuming her body in excruciating detail. Because of this, she notices when it begins to fade.
Perhaps her nerves are burning out? Or maybe it’s her pain centers? Whatever- she’ll probably never find out, and nopony has ever lived through the experience to tell the tale, so she has no reference.
The pain continues to fade, like the shock pain from a blow, fading away before the bruise and its related pain form. She begins to wonder if she’d happened across somepony else’s teleportation tunnel- an incredibly unlikely event- before she hears him.
She hears his nefarious chuckle.
Then, she feels the shock of the arrival stage of a teleport. With no teleport magic present, she doesn’t know what it could be.
Finally, her vision returns. Her hearing does also- and the rest of her senses, including direction… And gravity. She twists in midair, her acceleration fading, and flaps for all she’s worth to catch herself.
Normally, this kind of buzzing would put her dangerously beyond Rainboom velocity. However, her normal pegasus magic isn’t working. The accelerating magic has faded away, worn off. She ignores the sudden burn against her chest, focusing on her landing- and, despite her rapidly accelerating fall, lands lightly on the forest floor. Here, she makes a quick search around her, and sets off perpendicularly to the great big clear patch she’d seen sliding through the woods.
She sets off at a gallop, running as fast as she ever could.
Perhaps this is the afterlife? Her weakness has been rather simply erased. Though, if it is the afterlife, why does her pegasus magic not function- and what is that giant thing coming towards her? She can’t hear it at all, but she can feel the ground quaking under her hooves. She can even see the shaking, before long- and she glances to her side.
The trees are disintegrating themselves, splintering apart and smashing into that massive trench, about a half-dozen meters deep. The disintegration is progressing with alarming speed- but it’s not alone.
Her keen vision picks out a ripple in the air, even as she bounds out of its path. The trees aren’t destroying themselves- they’re being trampled.
“Hope.”
She hits the next tree at a full gallop, rocketing up it like only she can, even without her magic, and takes off from the top. Still without her magic- but her angled trajectory takes her overtop whatever is trampling the trees, hopefully down on top of it.
As she flips, she watches it come. She can only see it as a faint ripple, but she’s able to make out an outline, the contours. She lands with all four hooves on one of the giant pipes sticking out the front, sliding almost instantly to brace herself against the panel it projects itself from. Once her motion matches the thing’s, mostly at least, she looks down- and hops off.
A single wing-balanced twenty-meter drop before, she stands on an oddly textured surface, bracing herself against the weird texture to hold her position with the steady bouncing as she looks around at it.
She takes a look around before turning to walk perpendicular to its path of travel, her outstretched wings balancing her expertly as she looks down through it at the trenches. Her hooves set down carefully between the gigantic bumps as she heads for what she hopes is the middle of the thing.
At one point, she glances up to see light shining from something. It’s higher up than she- and she can’t see whatever it is, like it’s hidden behind something. This piques her curiosity- and she trots towards it, deftly navigating around all these weird square bumps and the larger, rounder ones with sticks pointing out.
Finally, she reaches the light source. It’s a hole, through which a solid metal interior can be seen. Interesting for an invisible object to have- but, she supposes, Twilight could do it. She’d once turned the Golden Oak Library invisible in just this manner, when protecting her books against a known book burner. She had holed up inside with Twilight, standing ready not only to extinguish flames but to snuff out one Torched Literature, if he found them. He never had.
So, she hops inside. A metal door closes unsurprisingly behind her as she trots down the moving hallway, following the lights. She’d never seen a moving building before- especially one this large. It takes her several minutes to finally reach the end of the light trail, which turns out to be yet another door sliding open in front of her. She looks around as she steps silently into the round room. The middle is dominated by some kind of chair; this one looks like it’s designed for a pony to lie back in. A single stick rises from one foreleg-rest, but it’s a minor detail.
Then there’s the giant windows in front of it- wait, not windows. They’re something different, as if a unicorn were projecting something on a wall. She’d seen Twilight pull off something similar, once, though she did it to decorate a blank wall in the absence of proper materials. Suffice it to say, Rarity had not been satisfied.
These things seem to be a bit more important than decoration, though- and the motion of the image would suggest either an active unicorn… Or another thing unicorns know little to nothing about. She examines each one in turn. Some of them are fairly nondescript, like the one that shows a top-down view of the terrain around them, a single icon in the middle as the ground slides slowly past. Some of them are more cryptic- like the two covered in incomprehensible characters. Maybe Twilight would be able to translate them, if she were here- but as they stand, or hang, or whatever it is they’re doing, they’re meaningless to her.
But even these, despite filling half the room, are a minor detail. The most important detail rests on the back of that weird seat.
A necklace.
Her necklace.
Her Element of Harmony.
She reclaims it, tossing it around her neck- and promptly pausing to pull it somewhat away from her chest.
Her fur, directly underneath the gemstone, matches it perfectly. The golden necklace portion does not appear on her fur- only the lightning-bolt-shaped ruby. She touches it, shifting- yep, it’s fur, just like her cutie mark. Is that what had burned as she flew down? She drops her Element back down against it, looking back up at the peaceful, and gently lit, room. “Thank you,” she states.
As if she hadn’t been surprised enough by this thing, she gets a fully unexpected response. The words it uses are completely incomprehensible to her- but the entire room answers. Verbally.
She practically leaps into the air in surprise, landing back solidly on her hooves. “What!?”
It speaks again- and this time, it uses words she can understand. It puzzles her a little; it’s pulling words out of two different languages. The Equestrian seems stunted slightly, like the foreigner that’s still learning- but the Griffish it fills in the gaps with- presumably, the words it doesn’t know- is fluent.
“Welcome aboard, Commander. I must apologize for-”
She interrupts, waving a hoof- and answering entirely in Griffish. “Yeah yeah, skip to the important part- and call me Rainbow Dash.” She pauses for a second. “And, um, apologies accepted.” She didn’t want to be rude to a stranger, after all.
It complies- and speaks entirely in Griffish. “General departed to the south two point three one five hours ago, fully suited and armed, with apparent knowledge of whatever blocked out the Sun. We are currently on a pursuit course, to add my firepower to hers; she exceeded communications range five two point five six minutes ago, but showed no deviation from her course prior. As we speak, Pointy is resting while Sergeant and-” a word she doesn’t understand- “discuss something with Apple.”
“Who?”
“Apologies. I’ve been unable to understand the local language since I arrived and, in the absence of proper names, have been using nicknames. This-” an image appears on a screen- “is-”
“Princess Luna.”
“Thank you. I’ve been calling her General.”
A raised eyebrow. “General?”
“Affirmative. She appeared to be one when she charged after you into battle.”
“Ahh. Then Sergeant?”
“I met him some time before I began applying nicknames; I have identified him as Sergeant because I believe that to be his rank, if I am interpreting the badges that were visible in that fort correctly.”
While it speaks, the image appears onscreen. Three images, specifically- one of the stallion without his armor, cutie mark visible; the second, wearing his damaged Royal Armor; the third, simply zoomed in on his badge.
She starts at the first. It doesn’t look familiar- though the middle one looks familiar. She can’t tell exactly where, until she looks to the third- and effortlessly reads his name.
“Sergeant Stone, one of Equestria’s finest.” She nods. “He and who were teaching somepony to fly?”
“He and-” incomprehensible- “are, actually. I apologize, the term I used for her doesn’t translate. It is the name of one of my most powerful weapons. The words it is composed of,-” incomprehensible- “and-” incomprehensible- “, translate to ‘Hell’ and ‘Bore’ respectively. The weapon was so named in part because of its destructive potential.”
She blinks a few times, staring at the screen. “Wow.”
“Either way, she probably has a-!”
The photo had appeared on the screen, and she cuts him off with an excited scream. “Fluttershy!”
“Thought so. Then, Apple-”
“Applejack!”
“I was closer than I thought. Pointy’s name is probably not the same?”
“Twilight!”
“Called it.”
She stares at the pictures for a couple seconds more. “Do they know I’m here?”
“They have not been informed. I do not understand the local language; this is the first time I have attempted communication outside Concordiat Standard.”
“Huh?”
“It’s the language of my builders. None have shown any understanding thereof.”
“Ahh…” She raises a hoof to her chest, hovering it over her Element. “I wonder…?”
“Alerting them prior to your appearance might be considered disadvantageous; none of them have gotten used to their armor’s strength assist. Alternately, if they are forewarned to watch their current bone-crushing strength, it could be considered advantageous inst- Wait one. Connection to Princess Luna has been restored.”
She draws in a breath. “She okay?”
“Her vitals check out, though her ammunition is nearly exhausted. She appears to be on a grieved revenge run, after witnessing this scene.” The image changes, now showing a clear image…
The bed in the middle is covered in blood. Fragments of cut feathers lie everywhere- and a set of completely untouched Royal Armor can be seen in the corner. It’s Princess Celestia’s bedroom- where they had teleported her from, right in front of the attacking minotaurs. She’d had several deep gashes and an abandoned sword or two sticking out of her side when Rarity made her mass teleport, taking all of the survivors straight to the Ponyville General Hospital. At that point, only Pinkie had been unscathed- and Rarity had Twilight’s crown still in her saddlebag.
“I estimate a 13.49% chance somepony died on this bed, though a 97.39% chance the wounds were lethal, if only one pony was in the bed.”
“Princess Celestia was still alive when we teleported her away. I… I didn’t stop to count the swords sticking out of her side.”
“She didn’t fight, did she?”
She shakes her head. “No. I think she gave up on life, because her sister is… Wait. Not dead- Luna’s her sister.”
“I estimate a 99.37% chance that, if Celestia survives, the two falsely believe each other dead.”
She nods silently. “I need to go to Ponyville.” She turns back towards the door- but finds it closed.
“Not without your armor, I’m afraid- your flight does seem to still be missing.”
She blinks twice, hanging her head. “Right.”
“Oh don’t worry- my technology can do a lot. Making flying objects- like, say, suits of armor- is easy. The hard part was making the flight natural.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Where is it?”
Ten seconds later, she leaves the room, fully armored- and armed. He’s very kindly playing the instructions on the inside of her helmet, which looks like a three-dimensional unicorn projection- such as Rarity is known to use when visualizing new designs. She’s got a full loadout, complete with the massive two-part one and all those little spears.
She hasn’t noticed the mark on the left side of her chestplate, just above the chain of her Element. The insignia of a full commander of the Dinochrome Brigade.
She doesn’t realize it, but as she gallops up the passage to the exit, she- and her weapons- disappear smoothly into thin air. The door slides open to let nothing out- and the rainbow shockwave rippling through the dark sky has no contrail leading out from it.