//------------------------------//
// Chapter 18: A Visit from a Crow and a Rat 
// Story: Daring Do and the Hand of Doom 
// by Unwhole Hole 
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The rooms of the hotel were small. Too small, in fact. Daring Do was not able to bear sitting in it any longer, so she had moved herself instead to one of several small chair around a table that had been placed haphazardly on what amounted to little more than a landing on an otherwise narrow and winding staircase. Her notes lay in front of her, and she was in pain. 
Structurally, her injuries had been improved. She had long ago learned that wherever there was the option to, it was best to take up residence in a hotel where at least one of the staff had some level of medical training. In this particular hotel, those qualifications fell to a massive and gruff unicorn with a shaved head who operated the front desk. He had apparently been a medic in the provincial guard, and it showed. He was as effective as he was rough. Daring Do’s wing had been relocated and bandaged behind her, and her ribs had been reassembled by the unicorn essentially grasping them with magic and realigning them to the correct location. That was a rare talent, but even rarer was the ability to actually knit bone. This particular unicorn lacked it. Although the bones were joined, they were still broken. Hence the pain. 
So she sat, trying to remain still. Although she was incredibly tired, going to bed in this state was almost impossible. That, and the night before she had woken up with her head buried in Rainbow Dash’s chest fluff, which was ridiculously embarrassing. The night had grown late to the point where Celestia was beginning to raise the sun. Workers at the hotel would soon be arriving, and the night clerk would be going to bed. 
A door opened on the top floor. A moment later, Rainbow Dash looked down the stairs. Her mane was still wet from having just taken a shower. Seeing Daring Do, she proceeded slowly down the steps, making slight sounds with every one.
“Ow. Ouch. OW. EEP. Ow,” she moaned. “Wow. I haven’t been this sore since my first week in the Wonderbolts. I feel like I got…well, beat up by a minotaur. And a wizard. And a giant spider. And a robot.” She looked down the last few steps. “How do you do this every day?”
“Practice.” 
Rainbow Dash stretched, cracking her back audibly. It was admittedly an adorable sight. “Still working on those pages?”
Daring Do nodded absently rather than lying. “Yeah. Look at these lines.” She pointed at an exceedingly thin line that ran through several of the rubbings. “It doesn’t seem to be part of the text or images, and it’s almost too thin to notice. I wonder what that is…” Her aside was punctuated by a vigorous yawn.
“Are you coming to bed?”
Daring Do shook her head. Doing so was painful. “Not yet. You go ahead. I’m just going to stare at it for a bit. Who knows? Maybe something will come to me.” 
Rainbow Dash gave her a concerned look but smiled anyway. “Sure. Hey, if you need anything? Like, if there’s another robot or something? Just say the word. And I’ll punch it. Okay?”
Daring Do nodded again, and Rainbow Dash departed up the stairs. Watching her go, Daring Do sighed. When she had first met Rainbow Dash two years earlier, the mare had reminded her of herself. Now the similarities were even more clear- -as well as several key differences. Daring Do had desperately wanted to avoid putting another pony in danger, and yet she just had. Rainbow Dash had done splendidly, and yet somehow Daring Do felt deeply troubled by her own indiscretion.

The wind was harsh and frigid. It brought with it a strange and terrible smell, one produced by a toxic atmosphere dying of endless ionization: like choking ash, decay, and burning metal. The air was toxic; a single breath would have been fatal to any creature with organic lungs. Yet Daring Do continued to breath, inhaling the stink of a dead world. 
She initially found herself in the center of a sandstorm. Fear filled her, as she knew sandstorms well, and that if one was caught in one their chances were limited if they did not find shelter. Except there was not shelter. Even without seeing the world around her, she knew. There was no place to hide from the destruction. 
Then in an instant it cleared. The dust froze in the air for a moment, and Daring Do saw that it was not sand. It was crystals. Tiny ones, almost microscopic. They glimmered in a strange light, and then fell to the ground as the shadows approached.
With the opacity of the air gone, Daring Do could see the land around her, and she cried out in terror for reasons she could not understand. Stretching in every direction were plains of crystal. It spread endlessly in every direction, perfect, regular, and ordered. Yet the remnants of the world could still be seen amongst it. In the distance there was something that had been a city, its towers long since abandoned and burnt out. They were being overgrown and consumed by endless living crystal. Like the cities, the rest of the world was dead. There was no life. No life could exist. The crystal had made sure of it. 
Lightning flashed in the sky. Endless lightning, etching its way across the sky in numerous colors. The upper atmosphere was completely ionized with magic; no sunlight- -if this world even had a sun- -could reach the crystal below. But it did not care. It glowed from within. 
As her eyes came into focus, Daring Do saw the center of it all. Rising from the crystal stood a single, vast structure. Her mind rendered it as a tree, although it was not one. No tree could exist that was so many miles high, stretching into the atmosphere and filling it with lethal magic and radionuclides. 
That was when the shadows came. The planet was dead. It could not support life. Yet they had persisted, laughing as they forced their own world to burn. Their existence was impossible, and yet they continued to exist in spite of that fact. 
Daring Do could not see them clearly. They were like shadows to her. Only occasionally would she see the glimmer of metal or the light of the strange and terrible spells that covered their armored bodies. They were immensely tall and thin compared to her. They were not ponies; they did not move like equines. 
The shadows could not be seen completely, and yet Daring Do comprehended them. She saw their eyes, and understood that none of them would ever see again- -and yet they saw things that no sane being would even be able to begin to comprehend. Their bodies were withered but more than strong enough to stand in a world that abhorred all life. Inside their minds, Daring Do felt something she did not know the words to describe. The closest thing was laughing, endless hunger. It was a terrible thing, and Daring Do had to look away after only the barest of moments upon seeing it. 
She watched them pass, toward the crystal tree. They saw it, and it saw them. They comprehended it, but it could not comprehend them. It did not understand, as it did not have the capacity to. Its mind was incapable of conceiving of the impossible, and of how this situation came to be.
The shadows did not care. Even as they faded into the distance, Daring Do could see them raising strange picks. Then the crystal understood, as it had been deceived. The atmospheres changed as the entire planet was overcome with fear, as it begged in a strange and incomprehensible language for its life.
Then came the screaming. It was louder and more terrible than anything Daring Do could ever have imagined. She pressed her hooves over her ears, but it did not stop the sound as the shadows cut into the tree, tearing into its immortal and indestructible flesh, rending pieces off for their own purposes. She could not block out the screaming of the tree, or the laughter and weeping of those who surrounded it. 

Daring Do shot awake at the sound of screaming, only to find that the area around her was dead silent. She blinked, staring into the blackness, wondering where she was and how long she had been asleep. It also occurred to her that she was sweating badly, and still breathing hard. She had just had a horrible dream, although she could not remember it- -save for a single image of a metal hand holding a strange, gleaming pick. 
The scream ripped through the night again. Except that Daring Do quickly realized that it was not a scream at all. She stood up and turned- -wincing with pain in the process- -to see a small black shape perched on the crooked railing of the staircase. It was a crow. 
The bird turned to her, twisting its neck so that its pale yellow eyes could see her. Then it let out another quiet caw- -the sound Daring Do had mistook for screaming. Then the bird took flight, but not for very long. It landed slightly farther down the bannister and looked back at her, clucking quietly and expectantly. 
“What the heck?” muttered Daring Do, rubbing her eyes. “How did a crow even get in here?”
The crow did not answer. It only hopped forward impatiently. Daring Do had the strangest sense that it wanted her to follow it, and she did so, although slowly. 
Doing so was not easy. Sleeping sitting upright after both extreme exertion and several severe injuries had left Daring Do impossibly stiff; in addition, she had neglected to take the medication she used to keep her arthritis in check, resulting in her wings being completely frozen and aching with even the slightest motion. 
Despite this, she followed the crow. She was not even sure if she was still dreaming. As she descended the stares, she paused to look out one of the dirty windows that overlooked the streets outside. She saw nothing but darkness, which made no sense. It had been sunrise when she had fallen asleep; even with the naturally dim streets of this area, achieving this level of darkness would have required it to be the dead of night. 
The crow led her to the lobby, which turned out to be completely empty. The unicorn who normally waited behind the desk was nowhere to be found; he had either gone to bed or simply left. Behind where he stood, there was a dingy wall clock. Daring Do craned her neck to see it, squinting in the light of the moonbeams that shone through the windows. 
“Gosh darn it,” she swore quietly, noting that the time was just past one o’clock. She had slept for twenty hours at least. Twenty hours spent doing nothing useful while Caballeron was getting closer to the Hand of Doom.
The crow did not seem to notice her dismay, or if he did, he did not care. He instead took flight toward the far end of the room, where he landed on the lid of a large clay pot. Daring Do did not know what purpose that pot had served, although she suspected it had something to do with the storage of pickles. She grimaced as the idea occurred to her that this particular bird was only trying to get her to feed it a snack. 
Sighing, Daring Do walked quietly across the dark room to the large pot. 
“You want food?” she asked the bird. “Fine. It’s not like I’m doing anything else anyway.”
The bird began tapping rapidly on the clay lid, urging Daring Do onward. She took her time, though. There was no sense in rushing; if the bird was hungry, he could wait a few more minutes. 
When she reached it, the bird flew anyway and took a place in the rafters overhead. Daring Do slowly shifted the heavy lid off the pot and looked in. 
Although it was difficult to see in the darkness, she quickly realized from smell alone that this pot was empty and had been so for a long time. It was meant to be decorative. Somehow, though, something was illuminating the bottom with a barely perceptible blue light. 
Confused, Daring Do reached in and removed the object. She set it on the floor in front of her and leaned close, looking at it carefully. Then in an instant she realized what it was, and she immediately regretted every having touched it. Every drop of blood in her body went cold, and her pain suddenly seemed to become far more dull and distant.
“RAINBOW DASH!” she cried, not caring whether or not there were other guests in the hotel. 
Something overhead thumped, and an angry and pained cry could be heard, followed by a door slamming and the rush of wings as Rainbow Dash descended the stairs at a speed so great she left a slightly luminescent rainbow-colored contrail behind her.
“What is it?” she cried, still clearly bleary-eyed and confused. “Where am I? Why is Rarity greasy? Huh? Who?” She turned her head to the wall clock and squinted. “What? If it’s one, why is it so dark in here? Did I go blind?” 
“Stop talking! We have a problem!”
Rainbow Dash looked both concerned and indignant. “Can it wait?”
“I don’t know. Can it?” 
Daring Do leaned to the side and revealed the object now sitting on the floor: a black cylindrical object roughly a food wide and a quarter that in diameter, the front of which was covered in a dimly-glowing display screen linked to the central tube by several thin wires. 
Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened immensely as she realized what it was. “That- -is that a bomb?!” 
“No, it’s a set of frilly blinders- -WHAT DO YOU THINK?”
Rainbow Dash’s wings extended in panic and she began to stamp her feet from fear. “Well- -what do we do? You can defuse it, right?”
“How the heck am I supposed to know how to diffuse a bomb?! What do I look like?!”
“You look like Daring Do!”
“I can barely read the numbers on the top! It’s displaying in ancient Solarian!” Daring Do very gingerly tapped the display, which was certainly counting down although in some kind of encrypted text. As soon as she touched the display, the entire bomb snapped in the middle. The metal casing retracted, pushing outward, to reveal the insides. Both she and Rainbow Dash jumped back, but it did not detonate.
Inside, it consisted of a slightly smaller glass cylinder that contained two triple-helixes of a glassy but luminescent substance within. Both of them linked to and formed a clasp around a piece of a pointed gemstone, which was glowing violent orange. 
“Oh no,” whispered Daring Do as she recognized the piece inside it. 
“What do you mean ‘oh no’? Why did you just say ‘oh no’?!”
“That’s a fragment of a phoenix star,” said Daring Do. She leaned back and closed her eyes, thinking for a moment. Then she sat up. 
“What- -what does that mean?” stammered Rainbow Dash. 
“It’s bad.”
“Then we need to get everypony out of here!”
“It wouldn’t help. That fragment alone could take out a city block. But there’s not just one fragment.”
“What- -what do you mean?”
Daring Do turned to Rainbow Dash, her eyes cold and fearful. “A phoenix star has between five and seven points. They’re magically connected, and they can’t exist very far apart- -that means this isn’t the only bomb.”
Rainbow Dash gasped. “Then we have to find the others!”
“There’s no time,” said Daring Do, her hopes falling as she translated the Solarian numbers on the display. “It’s too late. There’s no way we could search the whole hotel before time runs out.”
Rainbow Dash stared at the bomb, and then at Daring Do- -and a strange expression crossed her face. “I can,” she said, suddenly grinning even as her eyes betrayed her fear. “I can find them! I’m fast enough!”
Before Daring Do could stop her, Rainbow Dash accelerated. The force was so great that it produced a small explosion of its own, pushing Daring Do back and nearly deafening her. Before she even landed, she saw a rainbow trail pass by her, over the bomb. The bomb vanished in an instant as the contrail spread and moved throughout the lobby. Every door and case was suddenly thrown open, and office supplies and papers were strewn about. It only took a fraction of a second. Then the contrail went back upstairs. 
Rainbow Dash was fast. Faster than anything Daring Do had ever witnessed, in fact. But there was no way she could be fast enough. There was no other alternative, though. If she failed, the hotel would be destroyed- -and her and Daring Do along with it. 
Daring Do stood and stumbled toward the door. She threw herself against it, forcing it open and nearly knocking it off its hinges. As she did, she turned around and looked at the crow, still in the rafters. He seemed completely unperturbed.
“Are you going to go or not?”
The crow did not reply.
“Stupid bird,” muttered Daring Do. She then spread her badly injured wings and, despite the pain, forced herself to fly. 
She had barely taken flight when a rainbow-colored contrail shot through the top of the building and shot directly upward into the night’s sky. In her head, Daring Do was counting the seconds. The fact that the hotel did not detonate as Rainbow Dash departed it indicated that she had indeed acquired all the fragments of the star, but she was out of time. The last second ticked out.
“RAINBOW!” cried Daring Do.	
Her cry was drowned out by a massive explosion. The light struck before the sound, illuminating the entire city in blinding white light. The shockwave hit a fraction of a second later: a deafening rush of sound that nearly knocked Daring Do over. 
For a moment, there was nothing to see. There was too much light. Then, as it faded into a dull fiery glow and as pieces of concentrated incendiary energy rained down over the city, Daring Do was able to peer up at the sky. Even in the brief time she had been given, Rainbow Dash had managed to get the explosive components high enough into the sky for them to detonate safely without injuring anypony on the ground. Despite that, Daring Do felt no joy. She only felt sick. It was impossible to tell if Rainbow Dash had managed to get away from the blast herself in time. 
Then she saw it: a still-smoking pony-shaped object falling from where the explosion had occurred. Daring Do spread her wings and shot toward where the shape was falling, but the instant she started she knew that she would be slow. Rainbow Dash was falling too fast; she would reach the ground before Daring Do could reach her.
“Rainbow! RAINBOW! Wake up! WAKE UP!”
In the distance, Daring Do saw Rainbow Dash’s eyes open- -and then watched as the young mare clasped her wings close to her body, turning over gracefully in the air and suddenly snapping them outward just in time to pull up at the last moment before she struck a building. Daring Do smiled; as impossible as it had been, Rainbow Dash had succeeded. 
Her smile did not last long. Down below in the city streets, she suddenly noticed a dark figure moving through the shadows, illuminated only partially by the now dimly glowing pieces of phoenix star descending from above. She was heading away from the hotel. 
“No you don’t!” cried Daring Do, immediately knowing in her gut who was responsible for the blast. She pulled her wings together and began a sharp dive. It should have hurt, but she no longer felt any pain. Only the rush of the chase, the thrill of the adventure- -and righteous anger at this fool having put innocent ponies in danger. Including Rainbow Dash. 
Daring Do swooped down in an instant and cut off the fleeing pony’s escape route. Her adversary was dressed in a black cloak and wore a mask that appeared to be completely opaque. The fleeing pony stepped back, clearly surprised, and turned with surprising agility. With one leap, she shot upward onto the roof of a nearby fruit stall. Her hooves barely made indentations in the cloth as she crossed it, heading toward one of the many thin alleyways that dotted the street. Daring Do knew those alleys well, and knew that they led to an indecipherable labyrinth of  narrow streets for which no map existed. If the mare managed to reach that alley, she would vanish completely.
“No you DON’T!” cried Daring Do, unfurling her whip. She snapped it, and the tip flew outward, wrapping around the escaping pony’s ankle. The pony jumped up and twirled like a dancer. She raised one of her hooves and a long, narrow blade extended from somewhere in her sleeve. With a swift motion, she slashed at the whip. The blade sparked and cut deeply into it, but not all the way through. The mare had clearly not been expecting to encounter a whip made from the shed skin of a dragon, and her balance was thrown off completely when the end of the whip was not severed.
Daring Do took this as her chance. She yanked the whip backward with all her might. The force pulled her adversary from her perch, dragging her toward Daring Do. Daring Do pulled her head back, and before the pony could wing her blade a second time slammed her forehead into the pony’s mask, shattering it in a single impact. 
The whole world went black, and Daring Do felt herself fall. Then there was nothing.