Rainbow Dash was tackled to the ground, and when she struck it she bounced. She watched as the mist hit her, and as it circled around her the dial in her chest clicked audibly. A pale sphere erected itself around her, and the fog seemed to etch and attack at its surface.
“Daring Do?” she cried, stepping back to where she had seen her idol fall. “Daring Do, where are you?”
Something was wrong. There was no visibility, and almost no light, save for a reddish glow that either came from the fire-stone or perhaps more disturbingly from the fog itself. Although the fog could not penetrate Rainbow Dash’s shield, it had surrounded her and made navigation impossible.
Rainbow Dash took several hesitant steps forward. Daring Do was nowhere to be found. So she took more- -and more. Soon she was outright running.
Yet this was impossible. The room was small and roughly circular. She would have been able to cross it in ten seconds flat, even at a light jog. Instead, it seemed to continue onward forever, spreading out as she ran. The fog made her perceptions of thinks like distance highly distorted, but her Wonderbolts training told her that the room had expanded to at least the size of a gymnasium and that she was not running in circles.
Her instinctive response was to attempt to fly, either to get over the fog or to swirl it into a cyclone and dissipate it. She spread her wings and flapped them, but despite the effort she went nowhere. The air from her wings simply passed downward and pressed on the base of her bubble; in a contained environment, she found that she was not able to fly at all.
Which also mean that her air supply was finite.
Immediately, her hoof went to the dial. She had to get help. White, Sweetie Drops, White’s sister, Zel, even Rogue or Withers- -they were all still in the other phase. Maybe even Harvestor, if Rainbow Dash could find her.
But there was no time. Rainbow Dash had no idea what this gas was or what it did, or how long it would take her to get her friends- -or if she could even figure out how to bring them back to this place.
If there was a decision to be made, it was made for her. While she slowed and turned through the fog, trying to find her location, she saw a black shape move through the mist.
“Flock?” she said, shivering for some reason. “Flock, wait!”
She ran toward where the black shape had gone- -and emerged into a space where the fog was thinner, and where there was some visibility.
Flock was there. Rainbow Dash approached him, but stopped when she saw the look on his face. She did not know what it was, or if there was a word for it. Pure terror, perhaps, but it was tinged with something else, the name of which Rainbow Dash did not know.
“No,” said Flock. His voice was quiet and thin, but not quite a whisper. More like a low croak. “No, no, you can’t be here…you can’t…”
“Flock? FLOCK!” Rainbow Dash tried to wave her hoof in front of his face but only hit the inside of her protective bubble. He was not reacting to her; in fact, he was looking off into space. Rainbow Dash turned slowly to see what exactly was so frightening.
What she saw momentarily confused her. It was not terrifying at all, but just strange. The fog seemed to break away, revealing, of all things, a cobblestone street. The fog continued to trail down it, but it grew to a pale green-white, the color of an old bruise. Through it, Rainbow Dash could see a road running through a city of tall, dark buildings lit only by dim gas lights. To her, it looked just like the illustrations of old ninth-century Pondon from her foalhood copy of “A Hearth’s Warming Tale”.
A sound of hooves clicking on cobblestones could suddenly be heard. All else was silent in the fog, save for the almost imperceptible sound of the gas-lamp flames flickering in the night. Rainbow Dash felt her mane stand on end, and suddenly her thoughts were not those of Hearthswarming. Rather, her mind floated to old stories about Equestria’s most infamous donkey, Jack the Snipper.
Except that the figure that emerged from the fog was no donkey. It was a stallion- -or at least Rainbow Dash thought at first. As the features of the pony became clearer, though, Rainbow Dash realized that she was a mare. A large and masculine mare, but a mare nonetheless.
She was dressed in anachronistic clothing; a jacket under a red Inverness cape, with a white puff of a blouse and a silver broach near her neck. She wore no trousers; rather, her legs up to her shoulders and hips were covered in heavy steel boots, and the junction with her flesh was marked heavily with tattoos. Except that Rainbow Dash did not think that they were boots. They did not bend the same way, and she could hear the sound of mechansims driving almost silently as the mare lifted her legs with masterful precision.
Suddenly Rainbow Dash remembered. This mare was the one in the faded sepia photograph in Flock’s castle.
“Corvius,” she said, slowly. She had a Bittish accent, and her voice was remarkably feminine despite her appearance.
“Silversmith,” said Flock. “You can’t be here. You can’t.”
“Why?” she said, anger tinging her voice. “Why can’t I, Corvius? Is it because you killed me?”
Flock let out a low wail. He tried to stifle it, but to no avail. “I didn’t- -you know I didn’t- -”
“Really?” She began to step forward. The cobblestone path seemed to materialize as she moved, forming more of the fog into the street of anachronistic Pondon. “How long has it been? Since when did you learn to lie to my face?”
“I’m not lying! You lived to be ninety four! You died in your bed, peacefully…”
“Peacefully?” sneered the earth-mare. “PEACEFULLY? No death is peaceful, Corvius. You would know that. Or maybe you wouldn’t.”
“I lost you to old age…”
“But you might as well have killed me yourself. I thought I was your friend, I thought my life had some tiny, insignificant meaning to you. But I guess that was too much to ask, now, wasn’t it?”
“There was nothing I could do!” wailed Flock.
“Yes there was. There always was.” She turned and for the first time recognized Rainbow Dash. She slowly lifted a metallic hoof and pointed to Rainbow Dash’s chest. “The dial…”
“No. NO! Your body is cursed- -”
“Cursed because of YOUR failure!” She was suddenly yelling, and Flock shrank. “You took my legs, Flock! You took my life! I dedicated it all to you, to OUR work- -and you let me die!”
“There was nothing- -”
“Was there nothing you could do for Sombra? For YOURSELF? You didn’t have a problem those times, did you?”
“You have no idea what you are asking, there’s a cost- -”
The fog suddenly grew thick. Rainbow Dash was forced to take a step back, almost as though it were exerting force on her shield bubble, both trying to crack it and to push her away from Flock. Rainbow Dash struggled, but could not resist the thickening mist. Before she lost all visibility, though, she saw Flock’s face once more, and saw that he was growing remarkably gaunt. Thin red streaks were slowly starting to cross his flesh, and his eyes were growing distant. She heard him release a slow, somber wail, and then heard no more.
She passed through the mist, and found herself approaching somewhere else. She ran to catch up to it, but it caught up to her first. A new world seemed to roll in around her, coming in in exactly the way the fog departed. This one was not the same as before. Rather, Rainbow Dash found herself in a long hallway with a high ceiling. For the first time in a long time, she was not in a cave or industrial chamber, but instead she found herself in a house. The walls were wood-paneled in mahogany and ebony, and the decorating was sumptuous- -yet somehow the whole of it was dark and ominous.
Thin fog rolled down the edges of the halls past statues, paintings, and trophies that Rainbow Dash did not want to look at. Or perhaps it was smoke, released from a fire or from a pipe. The sight of it made Rainbow Dash feel cold inside, yet, for some reason, she felt her hooves carrying her forward, echoing on the wooden floor.
The hallway was long and dark, but led to a room lit by a fire. For a moment Rainbow Dash wondered if it was the crystal fire, and she had at least found some kind of landmark- -but it was impossible to know.
Instead, she found herself in a kind of study. The furniture it contained was lavish, and many of the decorations were in gold or precious metals, locked in antique cases or set on shelves amongst rare books that had never been read since their purchase. Rainbow Dash could almost smell the scent of the room, but was glad she could not. If she could smell it, that meant the fog had reached her.
The only light in the room was from a glowing, crackling fire. A pony was sitting beside it, facing away. Slowly, though, Rainbow Dash watched him rise. He wore a jacket that would not have looked out of place in the world of the metal-legged mare that Flock was trapped in, but in this case it seemed to be meant to be an anachronism in the opposite direction. It was red, worn open, and a piece of leopard-skin cloth was wrapped around the stallion’s shoulder- -except that Rainbow Dash did not think it was fabric at all.
Rainbow Dash gasped when he rose, because he was Caballeron- -save for the fact that his mane was pure white, and his eyes were piercing blue.
“You little failure,” he said, setting down his cider glass with a clink onto a small table edged with mother-of-pearl. He seemed to be staring at Rainbow Dash.
“Father, I’m sorry.”
Rainbow Dash jumped. She had not realized that she was even standing next to a pony, but she was. He had been hidden in shadows, but now Rainbow Dash saw him clearly: a young colt, thin and sickly, with long black hair tied back into an aristocratic ponytail. His clothing was expensive but well-worn and dark. His eyes sat beneath thick eyebrows, and were downcast. They were also green.
“Caballeron,” said Rainbow Dash, realizing just who the colt was.
“How dare you come here, Pontrancio?”
“Father, I- -”
“Don’t SPEAK unless I TELL YOU TO!” bellowed the old stallion. “The sound of your voice, it makes me sick. And do not call me your ‘father’. A mistake like you does not deserve a father. Does not deserve my name.” He laughed sardonically. “Or is that what you came here for? To get your inheritance early, perhaps?”
Caballeron’s face contorted, but only slightly. The amount of effort he needed to remain composure was vast, but he managed it. “No. I would never.”
“Really?” The elder Caballeron leaned in close. His eyes were vicious, lit by the same light that his son’s eyes would bear later in life. “It doesn’t tempt you at all? The thought of my money? Of having it all to yourself? To squander on your ridiculous degree, or perhaps your pointless adventures in the jungle?”
Caballeron gasped and took a step back.
“You can’t talk to him like that!” cried Rainbow Dash.
“Of course I can,” said the stallion, suddenly turning toward Rainbow Dash and startling her so hard that her wings extended involuntarily. “I am his father, after all.”
He turned back to Caballeron. “Do you think I haven’t noticed, that I wouldn’t realize? What you did to your birthright? Do you think I didn’t SEE?!” He gestured upward, and Rainbow Dash gasped, because the room was no longer beautiful. It had not been for a long, long time. The expensive antique wallpaper was peeling away, and the books had rotted and moldered. The furniture had all been sold, or left to rot from the dripping, mold-encrusted holes in the sagging ceiling. Where paintings had once hung were only voids from where they had been taken and sold; none of the instruments and treasures that lined the room remained. The floor was covered in a thick layer of reddish dust.
“What does the Caballeron name mean, anymore?” asked the stallion, slowly. The boy recoiled, tears rolling down his face as he looked onto the decay of what had once been beautiful and proud. “We had wealth. We had power. We had lineage. But now our manor has crumbled, and our fields are fallow or overgrown with weeds. And what have you done? Fled us for some pointless idea of ‘education’? Or for a life free of responsibility?”
“Father, I’ve tried!” protested Caballeron. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to rebuild! To make our name what it once was! To get back out fortune- -”
His protest was interrupted by the sound of a hoof slapping across his face. Caballeron cried out silently in surprise, even though Rainbow Dash realized that this was familiar to him- -and yet never expected. The force of the blow nearly knocked his weakened frame to the floor.
“A weakling! A useless academic! Tried? TRIED? You’re a mercenary! A criminal! A hired thug! Every day you drag the Caballeron name through dust, through mud and manure, and you have the gall to tell me you are TRYING?!”
“Father, I am- -”
Another blow. “You FAILED! It’s YOUR FAULT! You ended out lineage, brought a thousand years of Caballerons to shame! Look at them! LOOK AT THEM!”
He picked up Caballeron’s head and forced him to stare down the now ruined hallway that Rainbow Dash had just come through. Rainbow Dash looked as well, and realized that it was full of ponies. Stallions, mares, dressed in every kind of clothing from every era- -all staring, all watching, all accusing Caballeron of failing them. Of being the last, and rendering their lives and their every effort pointless. They hated him, and he knew it.
“I’m sorry!” he cried, not wailing but truly apologizing, softly. He seemed even more sickly, with red lines of infection growing from invisible wounds throughout his body. “I’m sorry. Please…please accept my apology, I can’t bear it…”
The elder Caballeron sneered. “None of us will ever accept an apology from you. You do not deserve the name Caballeron.”
The fog grew thick again, and once again Rainbow Dash was forced out. It was not a place she was meant to be, after all; the only reason she could be was because of the dial. Even then, the air in the bubble was beginning to get stale. Her respiration rate was increasing as the dial ticked faster and faster. Time was running out- -but she was beginning to understand.
Once again the fog began to clear. Rainbow Dash knew what was coming. The mist caused pain, drawing on a pony’s worst fears and worst memories- -their shame and their regrets, their sadness and conflict. Flock had outlived perhaps the only friend he had ever had, and Caballeron had lived in the ruined shadow of his overbearing father. That meant that only two ponies remained- -Rainbow Dash herself, and Daring Do.
What Daring Do’s fear was, Rainbow Dash could not fathom. She had thought that she had come to know Daring Do, if only through her stories, and the Daring Do she knew was afraid of nothing. No monster, no hopeless situation, no unsolvable puzzle could contain or defeat her. She would always find a way out- -which meant there was a chance she was immune to the mist. Or a chance that her fear was so horrible and terrifying that Rainbow Dash would not be able to bear looking upon it.
Yet she could not stop. There was nowhere to stop in the red fog, as it spread onward forever in all directions- -and all directions led to the same place. Soon enough, the fog began to grow thin. The vision began to manifest.
And yet as it did, Rainbow Dash suddenly found herself incredibly confused. She had expected something horrendous and ghastly, a place so terrible that even Daring Do would not be able to summon enough hope to find her way out of it. Instead, she found herself in a slightly aging building.
The air smelled strange. Like a combination of cleaning solutions, applesauce both fresh and rotten, and aging bleach. It was unpleasant and unfamiliar, and Rainbow Dash could almost see it drifting through the air as a thin cloud.
Hallways stretched out into the building; their floors were tiled in institutional-grade linoleum, and their ceilings were made of boring white tiles. It was clean, and sun was shining through the windows. Rainbow Dash turned to see a group of elderly ponies sitting in chairs, watching a single old television or reading books. One moved past Rainbow Dash absently, shaking as she slowly moved her walker.
“What?” said Rainbow Dash. “Where the heck am I?”
“You’re right here, silly filly,” said the old mare, smiling and chucking so vigorously that her dentures almost came out.
Still befuddled, Rainbow Dash walked through the area, past a desk where two red-uniformed ponies were sitting. They were meant to be watching the elderly ponies, but instead were looking through a large glass door behind their desk that led to a small courtyard outside.
“She doesn’t want to be with the others?” asked a plump mare.
“Nah,” said a younger stallion. “But it’s not like she knows the difference anyway. There’s nothing in there. Just empty space.”
Rainbow Dash walked around the desk and gasped. Just outside the opened door, sitting in a wheelchair on the wooden porch, was Daring Do. She was old, but somehow still looked youthful. Her face was barely wrinkled, although her mane and the tips of her feathers had become pale yellow-white. It was her eyes, though, that Daring Do found the most heartbreaking. They were blank and empty, staring vacantly at the blooming crabapples in the gardens.
“She wasn’t always like that,” said the mare. “She used to be able to talk. She told me such stories. About adventures and exotic locations, artifacts and handsome zebras.” She sighed. “It was all so strange.”
“An effect of the dimension,” shrugged the stallion, looking at some yellowed papers in a manila folder. “The file says she lived alone. Spent her whole life that way. She was a recluse. She wrote some books, I guess. She’s probably just conflating them with real life.”
The mare laughed softly. “She thinks she’s Daring Do?”
“I guess. I don’t know what the name is. Nobody reads anymore. Nobody cares. All those adventures are just made up anyway. Just the fantasies of a mare who couldn’t bring herself to live a real life.”
“That isn’t true!” protested Rainbow Dash.
“Of course it is,” replied the Stallion. He slapped the folder on the desk. “It’s in the file.” He looked out the window at Daring Do. “None of that stuff ever happened.”
“Yes it did! Ask anypony- -”
“That won’t really be possible,” said the mare. “After all, nopony ever comes.”
“Wh- -what?”
“Duh,” said the stallion. “She’s been sitting in that chair for twenty years, joints too fried to even stand up on her own. Whole body falling apart, but she keeps going for some reason. And that whole time, do you know how many visitors she’s gotten?” He held up his hooves, pressing them together to form the shape of a “O”. “Zero.”
“No! NO! That’s not true!” Rainbow Dash ran to Daring Do, but found that the glass door was suddenly closed- -and had no handle to open it. “DARING DO!” she cried. “It’s me! It’s Rainbow Dash! I’m your biggest fan, and don’t believe ANYTHING those two butts are saying! I know it was real! I know it was ALL real! And I don’t care if you can’t go on adventures anymore, I’ll still come visit you! Every day if I have to! Please, just wake up! WAKE UP!”
Daring Do continued to stare, but her empty eyes slowly turned. For a moment, Rainbow Dash felt her breath catch with anticipation as Daring Do’s brow was slowly furrowed- -and as she raised a thin, sickly hoof covered in badly infected red lines. She pointed.
Then Rainbow Dash looked down- -and saw the hole in her shield, and the red fog flowing in.
The world suddenly vanished and was replaced by something else. Rainbow Dash had to blink as she waited for her eyes to become accustomed to the light. She was no longer in a nursing home, or in a decaying manor, or in the streets of ninth-century Pondon.
Instead, she found herself standing in a grassy field- -although the grass was strange and different from any form of plant she recognized. A pale white-colored fog was slowly drifting over the rolling hills, although there was little light to illuminate. Rainbow Dash looked up at the sky, and saw that although the edges of the world were lit with dim light and the sky somehow showed the lights of a distant cityscape, there was neither a sun nor a moon. She found herself in a world of eternal twilight.
The fog began to part but not clear, and Rainbow Dash suddenly realized what kind of field she was standing in. It was a cemetery.
“Why am I here?” she asked to nopony at all. “I’m not afraid of cemeteries. Unless there are zombies. Are there going to be zombies? Because I’ll punch them right in their FACES!”
She shadowboxed for a moment, but there was no response. Only the chill of the air, and a strange smell she could not place. Like the whole world was burning.
So she started walking, past the collapsed gravestones overgrown with alien vines that had learned in ancient times how to grow in darkness alone. None of the names were legible. They had eroded away or been covered in moss and lichen. No pony would ever know who was buried there.
A sound broke the silence. It was quiet and distant, and although it was not violent or gruesome, it still gave Rainbow Dash chills. It was a dull scraping sound that repeated every few seconds.
That sound was not good, and yet Rainbow Dash began to follow it. Not that it mattered if she did. This space only gave the illusion of multiple paths; every direction invariably led into the mist, and because of that every path would surely lead to the same location.
“I know what you’re doing,” said Rainbow Dash. “I’ve already figured it out. It’s all a trick. To get me to be afraid. Well it’s not going to work, because I’ve already seen it coming. You can’t surprise me.”
She crested a small hill. The fog parted, and she found herself faced by a group of graves apart from the others. One of them was open. The sound coming from it was that of a shovel; a thestral with blue hair and large blue eyes was in the process of digging.
The thestral looked up at Rainbow Dash. She did not smile, but she did stop shoveling and lifted herself out of the grave.
“Funny,” she said. “There’s no skull in that one. I suppose that makes my job harder. But it doesn’t really matter to you, does it?” She shrugged. “Or maybe it does.”
Rainbow Dash had no idea what she meant by that. Before she could ask, the thestral passed into the fog behind her and vanished completely.
“O…kay?”
Rainbow Dash turned back to the graves- -and they had come closer. As she looked, suddenly she understood who they belonged to, and the horror within her started to grow.
There were five of them. At one point, they had probably been relatively lavish, but in the intervening centuries they had been forgotten and left to become overgrown with vines and to crumble under the acid rain of an endlessly industrializing planet. There had been statues, statues that two hundred years ago Rainbow Dash might have been able to name: Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie- -and one additional toppled statue, its head severed and half-sunk face-down into the muddy earth.
That was the grave that was open, the one that Rainbow Dash found herself staring into. The shovel still sat on top of the half unburied stone coffin. At one time the top of the coffin had been decorated with gemstones assembled into a symbol, although the gems had long-since been stolen, perhaps by the thestral herself. Their setting was still very clear, though. It was the sign of a cloud producing a rainbow. It was Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark. This was her grave.
“Ohhhh this is bad,” she said. Then, suddenly, her neck prickled. There was something she had not realized, something obvious she had not taken account of- -and something deathly important.
She looked up, and realized that she was not alone. Something was approaching her through the fog. When Rainbow Dash saw it, she took a step back, if only out of some deep, instinctive fear. The creature that approached her did not walk, but floated, trailing long ethereal robes behind it. For a moment Rainbow Dash thought it was Scarlet Mist, but as it emerged, she realized she had no idea who it was.
The figure was immensely tall and gaunt, looking almost as thin and disturbing as Harvestor. Yet it was not Harvestor. This pony had no wings. She was a unicorn- -or had been, once. Now three horns sat in her head: one long, spiraled one that seemed faded and oddly gray, and two carved of metal that penetrated her skull and were surrounded by ancient scar tissue. The formation was exactly like the heads of those strange creatures that had been carved in stone at the entrance to the Necroforge.
The difference was in her face. She wore a mask, but not one like Scarlet Mist wore. Instead, it was shaped almost perfectly like that of a pony, carved or cast out of a single piece of perfect metal. The face had no pupils and no expression. It was blank and devoid of identity.
“Who- -who are you?” asked Rainbow Dash, her voice shaking.
“You know exactly who I am,” said the stranger. Rainbow Dash shuddered because she did, although she refused to admit it.
“No. No, I have no idea.”
“Five graves, Rainbow Dash. Five graves.”
Rainbow Dash gulped and closed her eye as the realization suddenly occurred to her, what she had already known. “Five graves. Not six.”
The pony removed her cloak. There was no word for the rust-colored garment she wore beneath, although it seemed to be some derivative of a containment suit of some sort. The pony beneath was tall and gaunt, but unlike Harvestor and the other ponies seemed to radiate dark power instead of sterile decay. Rainbow Dash understood why. Beneath the cloak, this pony had two gray stumps where wings had once sat. She had long ago been a real, true alicorn.
Then she removed the mask. It was heavy, but moved easily in her red magic. Rainbow Dash closed her eyes, but that did not stop her from seeing. The eyes that stared back had grown old and were bloodshot with whatever disease kept Flock alive, but they were familiar. They were Twilight’s.
“Rainbow Dash,” she said, her voice quiet and friendly- -but covering deep-seated hatred.
“You’re not real,” said Rainbow Dash. “This is an illusion. It’s meant to hurt me, but I won’t let it.”
Rainbow Dash still did not open her eyes- -until a hoof clad in a strange white metal brushed along her face. She opened her eyes to see Twilight’s pale hoof brushing back her mane- -and Twilight staring, unblinkingly.
“Technically?” she said. “Yes. I suppose I am. But only to a point.”
Rainbow Dash took a step back. A hideous smile crossed Twilight’s face.
“See. You understand it already, don’t you? Although maybe you just can’t articulate your feelings. But I can. After all, nopony knows you better than I do.” She looked up at the sky, which was dotted not by stars but by structures built by pony hooves that Rainbow Dash could not comprehend. “Not here, especially. Everypony who ever knew you or even knew who you were is long gone.”
“So this…this is the future?”
“A future, yes. One of many possible futures, but it serves to illustrate my point, doesn’t it?”
“Twilight…why are you looking at me like that?”
“Isn’t it obvious, Rainbow Dash? It’s because I hate you.”
She began to walk. Her motions were elegant but labored. It was apparent she had not walked on her hooves in many decades, or was wracked by some affliction that left no outer marks. “Regardless of what I come to be, the result is always the same, isn’t it? You already saw Flock’s vision. How he outlived the one friend he ever had. How he has no one left because he chose immortality over friendship. Consider this the inverse of the situation.”
“You’re. Not. REAL.”
“But the concept of me is!” Twilight leaned forward suddenly, a smile crossing her face. She laughed Twilight’s laugh, although it was a ragged and dusty sound. “You can’t deny that. Believe me, I tried. For so many years. As an alicorn, I will live forever. You know that. You’ve always known, even if you didn’t know that you knew. No matter how many years, centuries, millennia, I keep going- -and you do not.”
Rainbow Dash gasped. Her mind was clutching fruitlessly for ways to defend against the argument. It was an illusion- -but what it represented was an undeniable truth. Flock and Caballeron had been haunted by the failures of their pasts, while Daring Do and Rainbow Dash were haunted by the future. In Rainbow Dash’s case, though, that future was an inviolable fact. Twilight was immortal- -and all of her friends were not.
“They called you the Element of Loyalty,” said Twilight, softly. “I trusted you. Trusted that you would always be there, to be strong when I couldn’t.”
“And was! I mean I am!”
Twilight slowly pointed to the grave. “Then why did you betray me?”
Rainbow Dash’s jaw quivered, and Twilight seemed to drift toward her.
“You were supposed to be my friend. I trusted you. I loved you. And then you LEFT ME. All alone. You all left me, but you were the worst. Because you didn’t just betray me.” She pointed to the crumbling statues, now so old that the ponies they were meant to represent could barely be recognized. “You betrayed them too.”
“No. No, I wouldn’t! I can’t!”
“It was a flight accident. A stunt that went wrong. You were the first. You didn’t just leave me all alone, leave me crying every time I thought about you. You left all them too.” She shook her head. “But at least they got to go too. They don’t care now, do they? But I do. Just looking at you makes me sick. Do you know how many times I cried?”
“Twilight…there’s nothing I can do.”
“Does that change the outcome? I don’t think it does. I’m still alone. You pretended to be my friend, and then left me alone. All alone.”
“I wasn’t pretending! Twilight, I AM your friend!”
“No.” Twilight’s voice suddenly gained a slight echo of somepony else’s. Somepony Rainbow Dash could almost recognize. “You’re no better than Commander Hurricane. In fact you’re just like her. I know the legend. The real one, not the one Pegasi tell each other to make them feel better. Gigantes gave her the Spear because he loved her. It was a gift meant for a friend without compare. Then when he was sick, and when he was in desperate need of her help- -she ran him through with it.” Her face contorted. “I wish you had done that to me. It would be less cruel. Because then I wouldn’t have to spend an eternity thinking about it.”
Rainbow Dash took another step back. She realized that she was shaking. “She didn’t- -I didn’t- -”
“She did. As for you? Not yet. But you will. Try as you might. You will ALWAYS betray me.”
Rainbow Dash closed her eyes, but she could still feel the illusion around her- -but it was not the illusion that she feared. She suddenly understood that. Flock, Caballeron, Daring Do- -they might well have figured out exactly what she knew, that none of this was real- -and yet outside the illusion, all of it was.
She pressed her hooves to her eyes and took them away. They felt hot and pained, and she saw the infection spreading. Her blue fur was graying, and her body was growing weak and thin as her life drained away. The dial in her chest clicked faster and faster, trying to compensate, but there was nothing to compensate for. Soon it would be connected to something that it would not be able to keep alive, no matter how hard it tried.
Twilight glared at her. “I trusted you, Rainbow Dash. And you let me down. You let us all down…”
“No,” moaned Rainbow Dash. She shook her head. In her mind, she knew that it was all an illusion- -but she could not stop herself. She was staring to see this version of Twilight as her friend, and she was becoming unable to distinguish between what the red mist wanted her to see and the real Twilight. And so she gave in. She did not have the strength to resist it anymore, and in her mind the Twilight before her became the real Twilight. Her friend.
HER FRIEND.
Rainbow Dash opened her eyes and stared into Twilight’s. “You know what, Twilight? Buck you.”
Twilight almost seemed to jump back in surprise. Her eyes were wide with a pure lack of understanding. This was not how it was supposed to go.
“You can’t- -you can’t say that to me!”
“Sure I can,” said Rainbow Dash, standing up and brushing herself off. “Because you’re being a MASSIVE steed right now. Sorry. I know. That’s mean, but it’s the Applejack truth. I mean, I show up, I say hi, and what do you do? Trade cool stories, catch up, tell me why you’ve got three horns and no wings? No. You start yelling at me. That’s not cool.”
“And it’s not the point! I’m a representation of the future! One where you gave up on me!”
“More like a representation where the future’s all weird and you’re a jerk. Come on. This isn’t how friends treat each other. You know that.”
“We’re not friends! Not anymore! You left me! You betrayed me! You weren’t loyal!”
“That’s not how it works.” Rainbow Dash stepped forward, and Twilight took a step back. “You mean I got old and died? Sure. Yeah. I guess that’ll happen eventually. I mean, I’m pretty awesome, but I probably can’t make it more than five, six hundred years tops.”
Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “You’re a Pegasus, you only live ninety maximum- -”
“Yeah, well, I’m also Rainbow Dash. Trust me on this. I’ll find a way. Watch. Four hundred years from now? I’ll be right there and still beating you in races. I mean, if your wings grow back. I’m going to assume they do.”
“The wings are a metaphor!”
“Sure they are.”
Twilight sputtered. “But even then, I’m still immortal! I’ll keep going- -”
Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Yeah. Sure. That’ll happen, I guess. And it’ll be real sad. But you clearly expected it. I guess we all did.” She gestured at the graves. “But what does that matter?”
“NOTHING matters more! You betrayed me!”
“Really? When? Apart from the, you know, getting dead part. When wasn’t I at your side? When did I ever turn my back on you, or any of my friends? Never. Because I’m Rainbow Dash. I’m not like Commander Hurricane. I mean, I’m epic and all, but I’m not about to do…what she did.”
“But you left me behind!”
Rainbow Dash took another step forward, and Twilight took two back- -falling into the open grave. Her face was suddenly level with Rainbow Dash’s.
“Twilight,” said Rainbow Dash, being absolutely serious. “I’m not going to get a chance to say this when you really are old and I’m just ten or twenty chapters in the old record books. I tried. I gave it my all, every bit I had in the tank. But things happen. I can’t do the impossible. Well, most of the time. But you’ll get over it.”
“But I can’t- -”
“Applejack did. So did Scoots. You will too. I mean, you’re a Princess.”
“But it hurts.”
“Well, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I can’t be there with you forever. I just can’t. I’ll do what I can, and then I’ll do twenty percent more. And when I can’t? Things will be okay.” She reached out and hugged Twilight. Somewhere in the distance, a voice so far away it was almost imperceptible screamed in agony.
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND!!”
Something above Rainbow Dash cracked, and she looked up. Part of Twilight’s face seemed to have fallen away, like a highly realistic ceramic mask. Except that this was a bizarre and impossible inversion: the mask was beneath the face. The mask of Scarlet Mist.
And as she saw it, Rainbow Dash felt the illusion break. The fog around her dissipated, and she fell to the ground.