//------------------------------//
// Rainbow Dash I 
// Story: The Infinite Cavern 
// by Magenta Sky 
//------------------------------//

Rainbow Dash had had a bad day. Not only had she broken her wing, she was stuck in Ponyville General Hospital. Her bed was on the second floor of the hospital. The walls were sea blue, with green-painted wood paneling covering the bottom half of the wall. Rainbow was ignoring her surroundings, her snout stuck in Daring Do and the Cultists of Sentinel Hill, the latest entry in the Daring Do series. She had already read the first seven chapters, and was engrossed in the story.


Daring walked into the village. It was a quaint place, located at the border between the Red Hills and the rainforest. Buildings constructed out of oxide clay and straw lined the road, but Daring was only interested in finding food and a place to sleep. She tried to ask the locals questions, but their Llamanese was unlike the language she had learned before coming to the Llama empire. Their limited communication lead Daring to a wall-less building, under which stood the largest Minotaur she had ever met. He had fiery red eyes and brown hair, and was holding a glowing chain. 
"These Llamas said to talk to you" Daring asked in accented Llamanese.
"What use do I have with you?" The minotaurs body started to glow as he thus replied in Llamanese.
"I'm looking for a cult near this village."
"The Cosi worshippers?" The minotaur swore in an unidentifiable language. "Why do you want to meet those Llamanappers?"


Rainbow's reading was interrupted by a knock on her door. She scrambled to get ready, tying herself up and landing on her back. Flustered by her embarrassing situation, she reluctantly invited the pony at the door in. A unicorn colt walked in that Rainbow had never seen before. He carried himself awkwardly. His mane was bright blue, his coat pinkish-gold, and his eyes dark-grey. He appeared to have just gotten his Cutie Mark, a rod with a snake rapped around it. He was carrying a tray on his back. A cup of apple juice, some tofu curry on rice, and a brownie were the foods on the tray.
"Miss Dash, h-here's your food."
"Thanks... Uh, what's your name?"
"Healing Salve."
"Thanks, Healing Salve."
Healing Salve left the room as Rainbow stuck her snout into her food. The curry was tastier than hospital food had any right to be, but it was more than made up for by the nauseating taste of the apple juice. After finishing her lunch and her retching, Rainbow returned to her book.



After an hour of reading a loud thump drew Rainbow out of her book. She looked around, trying to determine the direction the sound came from. After a few seconds of no sound, she returned to her book. *Thump.* Another noise filled Rainbows room. Rainbow got up and opened the door. Looking down the hallway both ways, she saw nopony. None of the lights were on except one flickering light. As Rainbow walked down the hallway, cracks spread along the walls. She took sharp intakes of breath, trying to see it as something other than the work of a monster. The doors she passed swung open and closed, creaking as they did so. 
"There's no reason to be scared, Rainbow. There's just nobody in this creepy hospital in the middle of the day." Rainbow turned and ran back to her room. She shut the door and flopped onto her bed. She buried herself in her blankets, and waited. No noises came for a couple minutes, so Rainbow stuck her head out of the covers. She looked around, and saw nothing and nopony except for some cracks in the wall. She chose to ignore the cracks and got out her book.
"'Daring Do and the minotaur, Vaca de Ira, walked into the cultist's lair. Glowing cracks lined the walls of the temple, and rainbow crystals of bismuth grew out of the floor'-- wait, glowing cracks in the wall?" Rainbow stopped reading when she noticed a shining light around the edge of her book. She looked up to find herself surrounded by luminescent cracks in the walls. The fissures she had seen before had started glowing.
Rainbow quickly packed her book into her saddlebags, and ran out of her room. The glow was still surrounding her as she ran down the hall toward the stairs. As she ran she saw one of the doctors walk out of a room in front of her. Rainbow stopped right in front of him.
"Doc, I'm seeing glowing cracks in the wall and a light in the hallway keeps flickering and there's no pony around except you. What's going on?"
"Changelings. I'm surrounded by changelings," the doctor whispered under his breath.
"What was that, Doctor... uh, what's your name?"
"My name is Pediatric Care, Changeling!" The doctor attempted to kick Rainbow with his forelegs, but she stepped back. The doctor's eyes looked crazed, as if he could not see Rainbow Dash in front of him.
"I'm no changeling, doc. What's gotten into you?"
"Get back here changeling!" His grimace transformed into a smile wider than anypony's could be. His assault continued, and Rainbow backed up, trying to get away from the madpony.
"I don't want to hurt you, doc. But I will if you don't stop trying to murder me!" Rainbow felt like she was going mad. The doctor was trying to kill her; Glowing cracks surrounded her; the hospital was empty and dark. The mad doctor attempted to push her towards the corner, but she noticed and decided to buck him in the face. *Crack!* Doctor Care's jaw broke, and consciousness left the him. 
After checking that Doctor Care was still alive, Rainbow decided that she needed to leave the hospital as soon as possible. If one pony had gone murderously mad inside the hospital, others probably had as well. She went down the hallway to the first room with front-facing windows, confident that she could manage a short flight on her broken wing. She walked inside, shutting the door behind her. The room was a double room divided into two by a curtain. Rainbow stealthily wended her way to the window, trying not to attract attention. The only light in the room came through the cracks in the wall. Prismatic crystals grew out of the floor and ceiling, reflecting the light in a variety of colors onto the rest of the room. As Rainbow made to open the window, she stepped on a crystal. *Crrrrack.* The noise echoed around the room, wilting to silence. 
A group of ponies, five fellow patients, came out from behind the curtain. Rainbow almost thought that she had found help, but they were hobbling along, groaning. She panicked, struggling to open the window without using her flight. Failing to open the window, Rainbow decided to try her luck at the front door. She ran past the ponies, barely avoiding a bite from the lead pony. The zomponies continued to groan as she ran down the hallway and down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs she found Healing Salve lying on the floor in a pool of blood. At the horrifying sight of a pony with a bashed in skull she blanched, almost throwing up on the floor. She held her barf in, and continued to run to the entrance of the hospital. A lesser pony might have given up, but she was Rainbow "Danger" Dash. She was not about to admit defeat.
Once at the entrance hall she noticed a large group of ponies milling about the entrance. She continued her run hoping beyond hope to make it out of Ponyville General Hospital, or Ponyville General Insane Asylum as she thought it should be called. She ran towards the wall, using a chair next to it as a springboard. She jumped over the heads of the ponies, and ran out the door of the hospital. 
Rainbow was hyperventilating as she tried to calm herself down: "You're safe. Those zomponies won't hurt you."
As she used a breathing exercise Twilight had taught her, she noticed that the cracks she saw earlier covered the ground about her. This panicked her more, so she screamed and ran. As she ran she saw her friends heading towards the hospital and stopped. Her friends were with two creatures that looked almost like minotaurs, but she was more frightened by the possibility of them being zomponies.
"Stay back. Are you your normal selves?" Rainbow asked as she continued to hyperventilate.
"Rainbow, we're ourselves. And we're as normal as we'll ever be," answered Twilight as she went and hugged her marefriend. Rainbow squeezed Twilight, trying to avoid crying.
"Why wouldn't we be our normal selves?" asked Fluttershy.
"I concur with Fluttershy here. Why do you think we'd be different?" asked Rarity.
Rainbow wormed her way out of Twilight's grip and said, "Because the hospitals gone crazy! There are cracks in the walls, which I'm still seeing now, that glowed! There were also rainbow crystals growing off the walls, and the other patients were going crazy!"
"I think that Rainbow must be correct, Twilight. I can see ponies hobbling out of the hospital," said said the taller of the two minotaur-ish things.
Zomponies were spewing forth from the hospital, hobbling and groaning as they walked towards Twilight and her friends.
"Everyone, run to Twilight's place!" yelled the smaller almost minotaur. Twilight formed a shield bubble around the hospital.
"There is no need for anypony to panic!" Twilight said as she started hyperventilating. Rainbow put her wing over Twilight, calming her down. "Rainbow will explain herself, and we will walk calmly to the library."
Rainbow put on her best bravado face "I was reading the latest Daring Do when I noticed that the hospital was empty. Being the brave pony I am, I decided to investigate the lack of light. As I walked down the empty and dark hallway, I noticed cracks in the walls around me. I decided that there was nothing out here, and went back to read. As I read the cracks in the wall began to glow, so I went out to find a doctor or a nurse. I ran into Doctor Care, but he thought I was a changeling. He attacked me and I fought back and defeated him.
"I tried to escape through a window, but a group of zomponies made that impossible. I ran to the front door, but as I went I saw the nurse that brought my lunch lying dead on the floor. I almost puked at the gory sight, but I continued to run towards the front door. I did a sweet jump off a chair, and found myself out here. I saw that the glowing cracks were on the ground, so I ran to find y'all."