//------------------------------//
// The Ice Sentinel XI 
// Story: Rainbow Dash's Unstoppable Ego 
// by MagicS 
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As the bellowing roar echoed across the range, Rainbow Dash stood in a crack midway up the slope of the tall mountain. Barely enough room to stand in on the steep slopes but it was possible if she kept her hooves in a straight line and her body pressed up. The noise of course got her attention and she knew exactly what it was even before she looked up to see the ice monster flying towards her again. Rainbow Dash didn’t sigh or anything but she was certainly dismayed to see that it was still coming after her and nothing she did seemed to work. Now she had no ideas on how to stop it.

Rainbow Dash jumped from where she was standing and opened up her wings to fly. She couldn’t just stay on the ground anymore even with her wing being injured.  

The logical thing to do might have been to just run away at this point. And she’d be lying if she said the thought didn’t at least cross her mind. But at the same time the way this thing kept coming at her even after she broke it, even after she evaded it for a whole day, showed how determined it was and there was absolutely no way Rainbow Dash was going to let herself be out-determined by some flying ice sculpture. If this thing wasn’t giving up then how could she? It was a challenge. At this point it was something she just couldn’t back down from, her pride wouldn’t allow it.

She had to prove that she could beat this thing for good.

Rainbow Dash looked up to the peak of the mountain and began her ascent. Far faster than the ice monster, she made it to the peak easily. Her left wing only ached slightly, she knew this wouldn’t be good for it in the long run but for now it could take it. She hovered around the icy top of the mountain where the peak became thin enough that she could pretty much wrap herself around it. The very point of the mountain too was so small that she’d need to balance on one hoof if she wanted to stand atop it. No reason for that right now though since all that would happen is she’d be surrounded by dark clouds and unable to see anything.

The ice monster screamed at Rainbow Dash once more as it approached and began ripping spikes from its back to throw at the pegasus. Rainbow Dash did nothing more than click her tongue at the predictable move and easily avoided the first few spears thrown at her. The last one to come at her though she reached out and grabbed as it passed by her body and swung around, throwing it back at the ice monster.

The spear impacted right on the monster’s left shoulder blade, piercing into and cracking it. It screeched in surprise and faltered in the air a bit while Rainbow Dash grinned.

“Maybe you should just stop throwing those slow spears at me?” She shouted at it.  

To its credit though the monster wasn’t waylaid for long. It bit down on the ice spike with its beak and tore it free, letting it drop far to the ground below. Rainbow Dash watched in annoyance as the shoulder blade instantly healed up and the monster zoomed towards her. It was right at the mountain so Dash flew around the thin spire and let the gargoyle land right on the peak, talons sinking into the rock for a grip as it crawled around like a cat climbing up a tree to get Rainbow Dash.  

Rainbow Dash floated around it with her superior speed and maneuverability, letting it crawl all over the peak and cover it in tiny holes from its talons. The monster still tried to cut her with its wings or stab her with its tail too but Rainbow Dash evaded all of its attacks for now.

The problem was this was all a delaying tactic. She was no closer to defeating it than she had been.

Hitting it with its own spear didn’t do anything either. Rainbow Dash thought and then jumped out of the way of a claw slamming down at her and cracking some of the ice around the peak.

The monster flicked its wing at her and shot off some of its feathers. They curved like boomerangs so she couldn’t just avoid them by hiding behind the thin peak, she had to duck below them and then do her best to avoid the razor tail shooting up the rocks right below that. The ice monster had kept its tail coiled back like a string and when it finally saw Rainbow Dash “vulnerable”, unleashed it like a striking snake.  

But Rainbow Dash kicked away from the mountain with her hooves and the tail didn’t even so much as graze her belly fur.  

With a cracking scream the monster jumped around the spire and slashed out at Rainbow Dash with a single free talon while the other three anchored it to the rock. The blue pegasus twisted to the side to avoid it and kicked the monsters forearm, no longer caring about the numbing effect since she knew this would be the final fight. It was just a feeling she had.

Of course the cold and numbing feeling was almost instant but Rainbow Dash was pretty sure she could handle it for a bit. She knew it would drain her energy and make her tired faster but she’d just have to force her body to continue on. She was stubborn enough for that. She was stubborn enough to keep fighting this thing for as long as it took. Regardless of how bad things were looking. 

Normally she didn’t like to complain about stuff like this but she was a little concerned. A rumbling from the clouds above her seemed to be a sign of how desperate things were. This was the kind of dark and dangerous place that a life or death struggle would take place at, that was for sure. The only thing missing was actual thunder and lightning and rain pouring down on the two of them. Well, it was far too cold for rain. Those clouds would only drop hail or storm unless a pegasus messed with them.

Rainbow Dash’s eyes opened wide. She dodged a slash from the monster and looked up at the black clouds rolling above the peak.

You don’t fight fire with fire and I couldn’t fight ice with ice. But maybe I can fight ice with water. Rainbow Dash’s wide eyes narrowed. 

The monster tried to slash at her again but Rainbow Dash quickly fluttered over its claws and headed for the very top of the mountain. Like the star on top of a Hearthswarming tree she stood on the pointy tip and glared at her adversary. “You coming up here or not?”

“KREEEE!” The monster started scampering up after her.

Rainbow Dash ignored it for the seconds it would take to reach her, instead looking at all the storm clouds around her. They certainly looked ready to erupt and begin raining lightning bolts and hail down on the rest of the mountain range. But Rainbow Dash wanted them to do something else. There was some preparing that she as a pegasus would have to do first though. She was just thankful for all those years of experience on the weather team. Something like what she had planned would be easy.  

Right as the monster made it to the tip and slashed at her, Rainbow Dash flew up into the clouds, not caring if the monster was following her or not, and she began to kick a bunch of the dark clouds together and putting her weather-manipulating pegasus magic to good use. She started to create a single big cloud centered right over the peak of the mountain, roiling with barely contained weather energy.  

It was then that the ice monster flew up through the cloud and tried to tear her to pieces again now that it could see her after briefly losing vision. Rainbow Dash practically ignored it again, molding her cloud just right as the slower ice monster tried to catch her. She needed her cloud big enough and with enough condensation and water in it. Flying about like a blur in the sky she put more and more pieces of cloud together while completely outrunning her adversary. If it was a normal creature or another pegasus they would’ve gotten monumentally dizzy trying to keep up with her.

Finally Rainbow Dash finished, her cloud now the size of a small house. As the ice monster flew in from above trying to grab her again the pony ducked down into the cloud and flew out the underside right above the tip of the mountain. The gargoyle followed through a second later, eyes searching for her. She flew down a bit around the peak with the monster again landing there and slashing at her as it crawled around on the now pockmarked rock.  

This time Rainbow Dash wasn’t just evading things though. When one more slash went wide she flew right inside the monster’s reach, right up to its face, and began rapidly pummeling it with her hooves. The numbing didn’t matter. She was going to be finishing things in a moment. Her punches cracked its skull and made it recoil, giving Rainbow Dash the opening to fly above the peak of the mountain and hover under her cloud as the monster healed.

“Hey!” She shouted down at it.

The ice monster’s skull swiveled about as the cracks fixed themselves and it climbed up the peak at her.

“Bye,” Rainbow Dash grinned and punched the cloud above her, releasing the weather inside.

An absolute monsoon of rain poured from the cloud. A concentrated torrent that made even the rainiest days in Ponyville look like nothing. Instantly Rainbow Dash and the monster were both drenched and Rainbow Dash felt her body begin to freeze up and frost cover her as the altitude combined with the cold climate almost immediately made the water turn to ice the moment it came out of the cloud. But Rainbow Dash’s drop in body temperature and new ornamentation was nothing compared to what happened to the ice monster. As a hot-blooded pony, Rainbow Dash’s body heat temporarily kept her from turning into a popsicle.

The monster had no such protection.

In fact its abnormally cold form made things even worse for it. The water instantly froze the moment it touched the monster and with practically an entire river falling on it it became encased in a thick layer of ice in just seconds. Stuck. As it stood atop the mountain it was like a statue and gargoyle now more than ever, a misshapen lump of ice with icicles hanging off it. One talon outstretched trying to fruitlessly reach her in its last bit of effort.

The rain stopped and Rainbow Dash shivered all over. She as well had ice hanging off her that she’d need to deal with in a moment but for now she’d be okay.

Rainbow Dash floated down to look the ironically frozen ice monster in the eye. “Guess what? Up here, in a place like this, you’re never, ever, going to unfreeze. See ya.” After she said that she watched as the glow from the ice monster’s eyes faintly grew dimmer and dimmer. She smirked and bolted away into the sky, leaving a rainbow trail behind.  





Elsewhere in the True North…

A toga wearing pegasus strutted about a room made of clouds. Before him sat a large panoramic window made of ice that had been manipulated by pegasus magic to function just as glass that would normally be used for windows. The pegasus stopped for a second and looked through his spectacles out the window at the city beyond it, buildings and homes all made out of clouds with similarly dressed and some armored pegasi flying around. His mouth twisted up in a smile at the scene and he brought up a yellow hoof to brush back his short, blue and white, mane before walking away from the window and deeper into the room.

It was a large and circular room with a domed ceiling where the center was completely taken up by a number of small pedestals (also made from clouds) that held glowing diamond shaped crystals floating above them. No, upon closer inspection they weren’t crystals at all, they were ice. Glowing shards of ice. There looked to be a set of smaller balls of ice resting around them in a circle right on top of each pedestal as well.

A sudden ringing from one of the ice pieces grabbed the attention of the toga wearing pegasus. He looked up in surprise and ran over to the offending ice shard just in time to watch it shatter and evaporate right in front of his face. The pegasus’ jaw dropped and he backed up in sheer disbelief, eyes wandering all over as he thought about what this meant.

“Sentinel 13 has been destroyed… but how?” The pegasus said barely above a whisper. His lips set in a thin line as his eyes narrowed. “Commander Blizzard must be notified at once!”

And he ran out of the room in haste.