It was early morning when Applejack, armed with a large spool of rope and a bundle of tools, approached the entrance to the cave. She braced herself, took a deep breath and bellowed at the top of her lungs,”Hey! Dragon! I’m here to play your stupid game!”
She was answered by a reverberating noise that she could only guess was a yawn. She moved aside to make space and after a minute or so the dragon emerged from the cave.
“So, are you ready to challenge me?” asked the dragon, looking down on her.
Applejack didn’t look up at him, her eyes shielded by the rim of her hat. “As ready’s I’ll ever be.”
Satisfied with her answer, the giant reptile pointed towards a flat piece of terrain some distance away. “Follow me then,” he growled before spreading his wings and leaping into the air, much more agile than his giant bulk suggested.
Sighing, Applejack cantered after him.
The dragon landed among a group of large boulders. He sat there watching as Applejack caught up with him. Finally he picked one of the rocks and threw it into the air. It landed right next to Applejack, embedding itself partially in the ground.
“There,” said the dragon. “This is our field. You can start planting from here,” he pointed his claw to the left, “to there. The first with three rows done wins.
Applejack stared at the dragon, then at the boulder that had nearly crushed her. Finally she unwrapped her tool set and picked up a pick.
***
Twilight was sitting down in the circle, her muzzle scrunched in concentration. She opened her eyes and sighed dejectedly.
How long have I been sitting here? she thought. She looked around. Nothing had changed in the ruins. It was still day, but she couldn’t see the sun and the shadows didn’t seem to move. She didn’t feel sleepy or hungry either, just strained from her effort. She tried to count her breaths, but quickly realised how pointless it was.
Ugh… no wonder he went crazy living here!
Closing her eyes again, she returned to her efforts. If what he said is true, this whole place is nothing but magic. There should be plenty of energy here. I just need to pull and focus it.
***
music link
“Is everypony ready?” asked Pincushion, looking at the flight team. Everypony stood at attention and puffed their chests, with only Fluttershy falling slightly behind. The officer looked at her inquisitively.
“We’re ready to go,” said Rainbow Dash, a bit louder than she had to, jumping in front of the group. “We can move out and corrall that cloud as soon as you give the signal.”
Though she could only see one of Pincushion’s eyes, Rainbow Dash could feel his gaze boring into her. She returned it, glaring at the stallion’s face until he shrugged and stepped back.
“In that case,” he said,”I trust you know what to do. The other teams are on their way already. You can move out right now.”
With a flap of her wings, Rainbow Dash took to the air. She turned to look at the other pegasi. “You heard him, team! We’re moving out!” she shouted.
The weather team cheered and took to the air, following their leader.
***
Applejack put the pick away. There was now a narrow crack in the boulder. The farmpony rummaged through her equipment, finally finding what she was looking for: a thick metal wedge. with a wide base. She used her teeth to drive the wedge into the crack, then turned around and bucked it repeatedly, until she heard a loud crunch. The boulder split into several smaller pieces. Applejack winced, shaking her hind leg, then picked up a hammer.
Meanwhile, the dragon kept sprawled on the ground, with his enormous head propped on his claws. He seemed to be dozing off.
***
*bzzt*
Twilight opened her eyes and stared at the tip of her horn. There had been a tiny spark there, just a moment before.
“Finally!” she exclaimed, jumping around the circle. “I can do magic! I can…” she gradually slowed down, stopped, plopped down and almost broke down crying.
Is this all I can do now? How long has it taken me? It takes months for foals to learn the basics. Have my friends finished their tests yet? Are they ok? Obsidian said time matters little here. Does it mean I have as much time as I want? No, that would be ridiculous. After all, this… Dissonance borders the real world and time surely matters there.
She took a deep breath to calm herself down and then stood back up.
“No matter how much time I have, I can’t waste it like this! I need to finish recovering my magic.”
She paused and listened, but the empty space past the broken wall seemed to absorb her voice, returning no echo.
I should probably stop talking to myself. Obsidian might be listening and then he’ll laugh at me. Or ridicule me at any rate. I wonder if he speaks to himself. I’ve never heard him do it, but then again, he had nopony to talk to here for who knows how long.
Twilight closed her eyes and focused. After several tries her horn threw another spark.
“This is useless,” she sighed. “I wish I had a book to help me.”
At this her ears perked up. Books! This place is full of them. Obsidian said they’re all ruined though… Still, I always learn in the library. Perhaps practicing there will make it easier for me to focus properly?
She looked towards the stairs, then up. Instantly her stomach protested.
This doesn’t make sense, she thought, staring into the maze of staircases above her. They aren’t just tangled and broken and at weird angles. There’s something… geometrically wrong with them.
She tried to remember walking them with Obsidian before. Back then she just followed him blindly, more focused on him and his staff than on her surroundings. Perhaps this was the way to do it? She looked at her hooves and approached the stairs. The nausea is an illusion, my stomach isn’t really here, she thought intently as she began climbing up.
The first minute of climbing was easy. Twilight’s idea of ignoring her surroundings in favour of the path under her hooves seemed to pay off. However, while she could keep moving easily, actually navigating the maze turned out to be another matter entirely. Even though she didn’t have any particular destination in mind beyond ‘one of the side towers’, she found herself taking turn after turn surrounded by nothing but decayed wood. Finally, groaning in frustration, she chanced a look around.
There were stairs in all directions, much more than could possibly fit in the space between the towers, a tangled mass so great Twilight could barely see the light from the outside. She looked up and saw the white, dusty ceiling far above her.
It’s not the ceiling - It’s the floor!
Twilight fell flat, trying to hold onto something, anything, but it was too late. She felt the gravity re-assert itself, up becoming down until she fell, flailing, breaking through some bannisters in her way before landing painfully on another stair, a cloud of dust and splinters in her wake.
She stayed there, among broken wood, wracked with pain and too scared to move lest she invited another fall.
This cannot end like this! Think, Twilight! Think! You’ve been through worse than this. First, focus to banish the pain.
As she calmed down, her eyes still closed, Twilight started thinking of what had happened.
I didn’t start falling until I saw I was upside down. I don’t think there was a reverse gravity spell. I wasn’t doing anything. Or was I? Obsidian said this place can be controlled with will. I think, I did this to myself then. I think, I’ll have to open my eyes now.
She did just that. She was still where she had fallen. Looking up, she could just see only a tangle of stairways. That was good, as it meant the floor was probably still beneath her.
Ok, nothing has changed. I think. I’m not falling again. Now I need to get up and then what? Should I focus on not falling? Can I order down to be up to walk an upside down path? I did it without thinking before. If only Pinkie Pie was here. She’s great at things that make no sense…
Slowly rising, Twilight examined her surroundings. As she looked around, she found an entrance to one of the towers just a couple meters from her. There was no obvious path leading there though and it was just a bit too far for a jump.
If only I could teleport. Well, then I wouldn’t need to go there in the first place. I should have just stayed on the ground level. This is a nightmare.
Twilight blinked. Perhaps it is. I remember seeing a book on lucid dreaming somewhere in the library. I wish I had the time to ever take a look inside it. If only I could… yes, that’s it. Trying to figure out this maze will only give me a headache. I must walk it with a clear idea of where I want to get. This doorway. She turned dramatically and pointed at the entrance to the tower. Then she took a deep breath, exhaled deliberately and started walking in the direction she felt would get her closer to it.
***
music link
Applejack threw away a shovel and wiped the sweat from her brow. Behind her there was a long line of mounds of earth, each marking a spot where she had buried a piece of a shattered rock. As far as she had managed to learn the previous evening, this was how it was done.
Now she had to find another big rock to crack. Just looking for small stones would not do, they wouldn’t grow properly. At least rocks were abundant here; Applejack had brought a harness for hauling heavy weights, but not having to use it was a relief.
Suddenly the dragon stirred, looked around the challenge field, yawned again, then picked one of the big boulders and crushed it between his front claws. He then started walking in a line, a pile of stone shards in one paw, planting them one by one with the other.
***
It took Twilight 12 turns to walk in the right direction, but she did it. She finally found herself on the stairs leading up towards the tower. Almost running the last couple of steps she entered the tower and immediately collapsed on the stone floor.
There, she thought, breathing heavily, I made it. I don’t think I even had to walk upside down. Though the last couple of flights were weirdly steep-
Just to make sure she looked around. The room was right side up and to her joy, filled with bookshelves. Twilight picked herself off the ground and surveyed the room in more detail. It too seemed larger than should fit in the tower as she had seen it from the outside. There were traces of white dust everywhere and the books on the shelves really seemed pressed into a solid mass by the weight of ages.
I wonder why this place is so huge, Twilight thought. Did Obsidian make it like this on purpose?
She shook her head and returned to the task at hoof. No more stairs, no more distractions. I’m in a library. A really old library, full of books. This is where I learn best. So let’s practice. Draw the energy, then focus it through some sort of feeling. Now what should I use? Hate? No, that’s ridiculous. I’m sure he didn’t mean it. What then? Something joyful? My passion for learning perhaps?
She tried to remember her study nights and focus on the feeling, but before she could fully concentrate, she started feeling lightheaded and confused. There were bits of magical knowledge everywhere, bits she couldn’t remember right now, years of education undone by a simple spell. Unable to keep her focus, Twilight groaned in frustration.
I wonder what Discord uses? Probably nothing. That’s why he brings so much chaos, he just thinks whatever, and pumps in raw energy. But I need something. Something familiar? Something to associate with magic, that isn’t related to knowledge? What is my earliest experience?
She tried to remember all the parts the memory spell wasn’t blocking: what she got were jumbled pieces of pictures from her childhood, hours of training, lots of hard work with little effect.
No, that’s not it. The magic kindergarten is not what I need. I loathed that place. I was useless then, the egghead who could understand everything and do nothing. I wasn’t really good at magic until-
Twilight felt a drop of sweat on her neck. The memory was blurry, partially blocked, but still vivid enough: the entry exam, her efforts to hatch the dragon egg and the catastrophic wild surge that followed.
Princess Celestia saved everypony and then I was too excited about my cutie mark to worry, but I don’t want… that to happen again. I need something to hold on to, and not fear!
There was a spark of magic on Twilight’s horn, then another. Startled, she jerked her head backward and ended up losing her balance, slumping on the rump. She squeezed her eyes shut, but still she could see the glow growing brighter.
Focus, Twilight! Think! Something familiar, something to control it with! Safe, controlled, focused… home! My friends! They’re always with me when I… lose control!
Still squeezing her eyes shut, Twilight tried to remember something to calm her down. Images flashed before her eyes: her sitting in her treehouse, studying, Spike sleeping peacefully in his basket. The fateful sleepover with Rarity and Applejack and how much fun they had together after the initial craziness was finally over with. The gleam in Rainbow’s eye when she got her hooves on the latest Daring Do book. Pinkie Pie, the spark of tamed chaos in her life. Fluttershy, always there to help whenever she was needed…
“My friends are counting on me! They need me as much as I need them! I cannot fail!”
It was only then Twilight realised she had been shouting. The panic disappeared, replaced by a sense of purpose. The unicorn opened her eyes and saw her horn glowing like a lantern, with a strong, but stable lavender light.
“Of course!” she exclaimed, “The magic of Friendship! That’s what Obsidian used to explain his way of using magic. The only experience I had with doing it his way.”
She sighed and extinguished her horn slowly.
“I should have started with that. I guess I was too worried to think straight.”
She started pacing around the room.
Now that I have made the first step, I should think carefully of what to do next. There can’t be any more mistakes. My friends are counting on me. I need to be ready for any chance to get out of here, with Obsidian’s help or not. But first, I need to get stronger. Let’s see what I can do about undoing that memory spell.
Twilight straightened and braced herself. She thought of the spell inside her head and her desire to be rid of it. The reaction wasn’t instantaneous, but she felt the power flowing into her horn; the magic of friendship had blazed her a trail to follow and now that she had grasped the basic concept, it was just a matter of following the formula.
Think of the outcome, Twilight. Focus on success, nothing else. Energy follows attention.
Twilight started closing her eyes, ready to focus her energy inward. Then her eyes snapped open.
What is that!?
The gathered power dispersed like a bursting soap bubble, leaving Twilight momentarily dizzy and dazed. As soon as she recovered, she ran towards the bookshelf in front on her.
This wasn’t here before.
The bookshelf still had a worn out and dusty appearance, but not nearly on the level it had been before. What was more unusual, Twilight could now see the titles on the backs of the books. She gasped in amazement as she recognized the tomes.
This is… my bookshelf from my first year in princess Celestia’s school! These are my old school books. What are they doing here?
She looked around once again. The room looked warmer and less ruined and there was a distinctive circle on the floor, around the spot she had stood while casting a moment before - free of dust and with a subtly different pattern to the stone tiles.
And that’s from my dorm room too!
Twilight smiled at the warm memories. Without thinking she extended her telekinesis to grab the first book on the shelf, “the basics of unicorn magic”, and flipped through the pages.
The inside looked… familiar. Twilight knew what a deja-vu was, but this was stronger than any she had experienced, every page screaming of things she didn’t remember, but still felt she should. She kept looking at one page after another, mumbling under her breath as her analytical mind was trying to make sense of what was happening.
“I don’t think this is Obsidian’s doing. Did I do this myself? It would be similar to what happened before. Except I’m not exhausted this time. Is it because I was actively charging up, or just because this is smaller than those visions from before? Obsidian did tell me to conjure something to drink - wait. I don’t remember the contents. How did I summon a book I couldn’t remember?”
She looked back at the pages.
“There are two possibilities. Either this is just an approximation, and the spells written in the book are rubbish, or… it really is made from my memories, despite the fact that I can’t remember them now.”
She sat down with the open book.
“There is one way to find out.”
***
music link
Dash looked at the black cloud. Up close it looked bigger and more menacing.
I though it would be smaller. Am I losing my touch? Or did the dragon snore a lot tonight?
She turned to look at her team. I’m sure glad I have an extra pair of wings, even if it’s Fluttershy. Every bit of wing power might count.
She turned and gave an encouraging wink to the yellow pegasus. Fluttershy mumbled something inaudible in return. For some reason Dash felt she was upset by the sentiment.
Ok, Fluttershy. you’re on my side. If you start losing wingpower, I can make up for it. The whirlwind will stay symmetrical.
She gestured to Cloud Kicker, her second in the team. The lavender mare nodded and started flying away, taking her position opposite Dash. Between the two of them they would form the beginning of the funnel. The rest of the weather team fell neatly into positions.
***
“Victory is mine!” roared the dragon, spreading his wings for effect. Applejack gave him an annoyed look from under her hat. She was covered in sweat and dust and aching all over from her effort. She had two and a half row of planted rocks to show for it, as much as the dragon allowed before finally getting bored with the game. Applejack leaned forward and started picking up her tools.
“So, you’ve lost, little pony,” roared the dragon. “Now you have to go away and never bother me again. Show your face here again and I will eat you.”
“Don’t worry,” said Applejack, “I don’t want to ever go close to you ever again.” She threw the bundle of tools across her back and turned away, moving at a brisk pace. She heard the dragon flap his wings behind her and hastened to a gallop. She had just cleared the treeline when she heard an angry roar shaking the gorge.
***
The first couple of pages were dedicated to the simple exercises, basic energy control, things like keeping a light effect steady to maintain a stable magic flow.
It all makes sense so far, thought Twilight. To really make sure, I’d need to cast a proper spell. I’m sure I can do the light spell already. She prepared and looked up at her horn. A ball of lavender light appeared on the tip and stayed there. Twilight looked down at the written description.
Wait, I’m not doing it right. I think I’ve cut a few corners here.
She examined the description again. Yes. It can all be simplified, just like Obsidian said. Well, except for that part at the beginning where I almost blew myself up. This isn’t the right way to teach foals magic. The question remains, is the extra risk worth it? I’m not a foal. I can handle myself. Could I really double my power here? I don’t trust Obsidian, but that’s all the more reason to find out. If we can’t get to the Elements, then my magic is the most powerful weapon me and the girls have. Now, where can I find a spell that would be good for such a test?
***
music link
Applejack ran up a rocky outcropping. She had discarded her bundle of tools in the trees, but even without the extra weight that last run took the rest of her strength. She stopped, gasping for breath even as she looked around for signs of pony activity.
“There we are!” called Carrot Top from behind one of the boulders. With a loud rumbling noise the excavatron emerged into view, Flim and Flam atop it.
“Where are my friends?” demanded Applejack loudly, stumbling towards the machine. In response, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie ran out from behind the rock, slamming into the farmpony in a horribly dusty group hug.
“You all okay?” asked Applejack as she recovered her breath.
“Yup!” said Pinkie Pie. “Flim and Flam dug a hole almost right under our cage. Just ‘bam!’ and we were all free. Good thing too, Twilight’s horn was getting really achy from that weird hat the dragon put on her!”
“Now, let us come home and get ready in case the dragon returns,” said Twilight. The rest nodded.
“Now that we’re all together, we can face it,” said Applejack. “We just need to get our elements. If it comes to Ponyville, we’ll be ready.”
“Right you are, dear,” said Rarity. “Though I hope I can also find a time for a shower before anything happens.”
“I still don’t like it,” said Carrot Top squinting at the excavatron and then at Applejack. “If you really had to trust… those two, why not just use the machine to win the game? Why anger the dragon by cheating him like this? And you of all ponies?”
Applejack sighed. “It was never about the game. I had to play it because that dragon’s a jerk. And he’d never let me win, fancy machines or not. I was there to save my friends and that’s what I did.”
“I wouldn’t like to disrupt a philosophical discussion,” said Flim from the top of his machine, “but there’s still a matter of payment.”
Everypony looked at him, then at Applejack. The farmpony took off her hat, a heavy bag of coins inside it.
“Now, that’s remarkable,” said Rarity. “The Flim Flam brothers not taking their payment up front?”
“We wanted to,” said Flam, “but your friend here didn’t trust us enough. Regrettable, really.”
“Fortunately,” said Flim, “we knew we could trust her. So in the end we managed to reach an agreement.”
Applejack lifted the bag on her hoof and threw it towards the Flim Flam brothers. Suddenly Rainbow Dash flew up and caught it in her hooves. “Hey, wait! Don’t they already have enough money?”
“What do you mean, Rainbow?” demanded Carrot Top.
Rainbow pointed at the large container at the back of the excavatron. “Well, they took a lot of treasure from the dragon’s hoard.”
The brothers looked at each other. “We figured out the dragon would be angry anyway, so there was no harm in increasing our profit,” said Flam, looking down at the gathered mares.
“That gold is not a part of our agreement though,” said Flim, scowling at Rainbow Dash. “We still expect to be paid.”
“What?!” screamed Carrot Top. She almost looked like she was about to catch fire. “You robbed… a dragon! You will get us all burned! And you still expect to get Applejack’s life savings after that?”
The mares formed a half-circle around the excavatron, staring the two entrepreneurs down, Rainbow Dash still clutching the bag of money. Out from the gorge, a dragon’s roar echoed.
“I just told you,” said Flam, “He’d be furious anyway, with us breaking into his lair. And we did that at your request, in return for promised payment.” He squinted at Rainbow Dash. “We’re not leaving without it.”
“Give it to them, Rainbow,” said Applejack.
Her friends looked at her in shock.
“But… why?” said Dash, sqeezing the money bag to her chest.
“They didn’t deserve it,” said Carrot Top. “And you surely deserve better treatment than that.”
Applejack glared at her. “Ya think my savings for my friends’ life is not a fair trade? Besides, I gave my word. I ain’t gonna break it. I might still need it.”
Rainbow Dash looked from Applejack, to Carrot Top, to the Flim Flam brothers. Finally, with a sigh, she released her grip on the bag. Flim grabbed it with his telekinesis and threw into the container in the back of their vehicle.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” he said. “But now we must go.”
The girls moved aside as the excavatron turned around, driving down the rocky path leading west, away from the village, rapidly gaining speed.
“So, what do we do now?” asked Rainbow Dash.
“Well, we need to get to Ponyville as quickly as possible,” said Twilight. The princess sent me the Elements of Harmony before she left. With them, we should be able to-”
She was interrupted by a deafening roar. A giant, winged shadow fell upon the ponies. They all looked up just in time to get hit by a gust of wind as the flying reptile made a sharp turn, flying away from them and after the escaping machine.
“I… I don’t think they’ll escape unharmed this time,” said Rarity, picking herself up from the ground, her mane frazzled by the blast.
“Well, it is their own fault,” said Dash. “Now we must hurry.”
“Is everypony okay?” asked Twilight.
“I’m okay…” whispered Fluttershy barely audibly.
The rest of the mares just nodded. One by one they picked themselves up, shook off the dust and started galloping towards Ponyville, Twilight Sparkle leading the group. Applejack smiled as she ran with them, her tiredness momentarily forgotten. There were things to be done now. She could feel tired later. As she ran towards the white light ahead, Pinkie Pie skipping by her side, she didn’t notice the scowling form of Carrot Top collapsing into inky blackness behind her.
***
Twilight was sitting in a growing circle of slightly mouldy tomes, a notebook full of scribbled notes in front of her. She had found an inkwell and a pen by looking for it intently until it finally appeared on one of the shelves as if it had always been there.
She looked down to double check her notes, then groaned in frustration.
I can’t compare it like this. At my level of power, I can perform all of these spells both ways. It feels a bit harder doing it by the book, but how can I measure the difference? I’ve found every book I could remember and I think I’ve re-learned a lot already. It seems I still got it. But how can I test anything here? Transformation magic is pointless, because nothing here is real. I can’t try age magic without something alive. I can’t do long distance teleport, because… I’m not even sure how distance works here. I don’t think I should try teleporting in the stairwell. Perhaps -
She looked towards the door.
Those huge pieces of rubble are still down on the ground floor, aren’t they? I could try my telekinetic lifting capacity.
She picked herself up, calming her thoughts to pick up the books with her magic and get them back to their right spots on the shelves.
Oh no, how much time did I spend here reading?
The old books rose into the air in her grip, surrounding her like a school of fish. there were dozens of them, nearly half the content of all the shelves in the room, memories picked from all of Twilight’s years of study. She vaguely remembered re-reading all of them.
It’s one of these days, isn’t it? My mane must be a mess. Is my eye twitching?
Twilight almost rushed in search of a mirror before stopping herself and meticulously replacing all the books on the shelves.
That’s not important now. I think I can comb my mane just thinking about it, but that’s not important. First things first. How much time has passed? Obsidian hasn’t tried to find me yet. Does it mean the tests aren’t finished? I need to find him and ask. Either way I need to get to the ground floor.
She walked through the door and looked through the stairs, trying to locate a way down.
Ok, stairwell take two. Focus on the result. Don’t think of… focus on the result.
She started walking down, thinking as hard as she could about finding herself on the dusty floor of the lowest level. It wasn’t easy, her brain buzzing with thoughts, now that it had been freed from the distraction of books. A couple times Twilight thought she lost her direction, but dared not look around to confirm it. At one point she got so nervous, she considered coming back and finding a spell that would make her cling to surfaces. Just when she was about to admit she was hopelessly lost, the last path ended in another tower entrance.
“Grr… this is the wrong way,” she groaned aloud. “I need to… wait, I remember this place.”
She quickly trotted inside and down an internal stairwell, her horn illuminating the dark passage. Just as she remembered, the way down ended with a closed door.
“Of course,” she sighed. “I kept thinking about my friends. That’s why I ended up in here.”
She prodded the door, but it remained shut. Carefully, Twilight prepared to cast a spell.
Okay… careful now. I hope it isn’t anything like what king Sombra used. Perhaps I should just blast the door off the hinges? No, that could cause more trouble. Let’s see…
She carefully probed the aura surrounding the door. She could feel the magic binding it shut and within it, something more subtle, like a coiled spring. She started pumping more magic into the door, holding the threatening bits still with her power while she worked the lock. A bead of sweat appeared on her brow, but she barely noticed it, too focused on her task.
‘click’
There, she thought, open. Nothing exploded, I’m not paralyzed, no alarm has sounded. I’m not trapped in an illusion. I think.
She prodded the door again and this time it swung open, revealing the round room with the strange flower growing in the middle of it. Twilight silently walked in and approached the plant.
“Okay, flower… show me my friends.”
If the plant understood, it didn’t show it. Instead Twilight had a feeling of being pulled in and then the familiar sensation of numbing cold and light-headedness.
Ah, it’s much worse than when he started it first, she thought, but maintained the connection, watching intently as the amarantine petals grew darker and more vivid, before a vision started forming in the middle of the flower.
***
music link
“Harder!” shouted Rainbow Dash over the roaring wind. Around her the pegasi were pooling all their strength into the group effort, the cloud of black fumes slowly thickening as the whirlwind compressed it closer and closer to the tip of the mountain.
It’s still too big. We need to push harder, thought Dash.
She couldn’t see straight through the cloud, but she could feel Cloud Kicker on the other side, keeping pace with her. It was still a bit too early to break symmetry. This was no tornado day with dozens of pegasi, where flapping as hard as they could would do the job. They needed to actually cooperate to keep the funnel in shape between them..
The fumes weren’t that hard to pull, but slightly slow to react, as if oily. Dash wanted nothing more than to finish the job, shrink the funnel enough that she could just keep it going on her own while the others pushed it south.
The noise got louder and Dash realised that it wasn’t just the whirlwind roaring. She looked down and saw a thicker stream of fumes coming out of the cave. It seemed the plan to take care of the dragon didn’t quite work.
Something yellow flew past and Rainbow’s heart skipped a beat. Fluttershy twisted in the air, her instinct taking over when she heard the dragon’s roar. In a panicked effort to make herself look small she folded her wings and though she suppressed it before actually falling, the sudden loss of maneuverability changed her from a pegasus shaping the funnel to an object carried by the wind. Dash dove after her to stabilise her flight, but she could already see she would be too late. She watched helplessly as the panicked mare collided with Thunderlane, knocking him off course. Cloud Kicker and Blossomforth were too far on the other side to see it, too late to compensate. The funnel bulged and then burst, its force scattering the weather team in all directions.
Rainbow Dash was the first to recover her flight control. She turned around and flapped her wings, blowing the fumes away from her. She tried to locate her teammates: several were trying to regain control, some were falling. Blossomforth did too well, stopping herself in the air only to be engulfed by the cloud. Dash was horrified to see her bulging eyes as she started choking, just before the expanding cloud hid her from view.
There was nothing Dash could do there. Instead she dove down, trying to lend help the only way she could, by catching her falling teammates. She could see Thunderlane finally stabilising his flight. Below, Fluttershy was still falling, her limbs flailing wildly.
Dash accelerated, trying to catch her friend before she could hit the jagged rocks below. But just as she was about to reach her, she found herself flying through a cloud of molting feathers. Fluttershy was falling apart, a vaguely pegasus-shaped creature of solid darkness revealed as her fur fell away. The thing half-cried, half-hissed at Rainbow Dash before melting away. Suddenly the pegasus realised that the rocks were much closer than she had thought. She flapped her wings hard, a pointy rock scratching across her side as she dodged it with a swerve that almost threw her back. She tried to lose some speed while avoiding the rest of the rocks, but steering away from the mountain made her fall into a dark cloud bank that hadn’t been there before. She fell through inky blackness and then suddenly she found herself in an endless, starry void.