//------------------------------// // Chapter Forty Eight: Super Sight // Story: Heart of Magic // by TheCrimsonDM //------------------------------// Heart of Magic Chapter Forty Eight: Super Sight Written by TheCrimsonDM She’d thought she’d finally done it. Rainbow Dash had finally achieved a power so great, so fast and so cool she thought she could defeat Fluttershy. Of course now that she was lying on her back in the mud, her body aching and twitching, she realized she’d been a fool for thinking she could ever defeat Fluttershy. Hopefully Twilight’s assessment of this battle wouldn’t be too harsh on her, Rainbow already felt like the mud she was lying in for losing again. She also felt, smaller, younger… it was an odd feeling to say the least. Fluttershy landed next to where Rainbow Dash lay in the mud. Her eyes still had the red coloring of her batpony form but she was otherwise normal. Fluttershy stared down at her. “You almost got me that time.” Rainbow stared into the sky with a falling heart. “Yeah, sure. You still didn’t use your full strength to stop me. Like, can you read minds or something like Pinkie?” Fluttershy shook her head. “No, I’ve just learned how to fight you. You’re fast, you’re also very powerful, and that rainbow thing you did was really cool and bright, but you’re fighting style is still very easy to read. Of course most anyone you fight won’t be able to see you to learn your style when you’re doing that rainbow thing so uh… um, it doesn’t matter?” Rainbow Dash let out a sigh. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. You’ve just had too much practice against me so even if you can’t see me you know what I’m going to do anyway.” Fluttershy nodded. A second pair of hooves came crunching from the underbrush. Rainbow Dash looked over at Twilight. She was taller than she had been just a few years ago. In fact she was almost as tall as Big Mac now, it always felt a little awkward to look up at her. She had a wide eye as she stared down at Rainbow Dash. Yep, her came the scolding for not being very efficient. Twilight’s voice came out like a sharp knife. “Do you have any idea what you just did?” Rainbow Dash ground her teeth. “I lost.” “No, I mean what you just did to yourself?” Rainbow Dash looked over at her. “Uh… become a living rainbow?” Twilight looked up at the sky. Rainbow followed her gaze. Several of the clouds in the sky had rainbow colored holes torn through them from the battle. It was as fierce as it was short. “You know by now that every time you do a sonic rainboom you regress in age, you actually become two weeks younger. That rainbow thing you just did, it sped your body up so much to such an impossible extent that every single second you were in that form you were growing younger by days and weeks. I estimate for every minute you’ve spend in that form you’ve grown a year younger.” Rainbow Dash blinked. “A whole year!” Twilight nodded. “I’ve already come to terms with the fact you’ll be immortal thanks to your speedy hijinks, but this, this is dangerous. I’m sure your body can only regress to a certain age before it can no longer hold the power, but I would say your body might be only nineteen years old again. If you use that power again who knows how young you’ll become.” Rainbow Dash stared back up at the sky. “So uh… guess this is something I can’t really practice with then.” “It’s something you can’t use again.” Fluttershy added, “There was a reason I stopped you so quickly. As much fun as it was to see your power and speed, I could tell it was doing something bad to you.” Rainbow Dash closed her eyes. “So I finally find a power that lets me be close to beating Fluttershy and it’s too dangerous to use. How is life supposed to be fair…” *** Rainbow Dash barely had enough time to tell the others, “Get moving, I’ll catch up.” Before she leapt into the air and sped toward the corrupted alicorn at full speed. Rainbow Dash was still faster than this thing even with her base speed and power, she threw a hoof into its face and knocked it aside. The thing went flying a few feet before looking back at her. Dark magic bled from its horn and tendrils of energy lashed out at her. She flew around and between them with ease. Once more Rainbow flew in for a hit but was met with some kind of dark gray bubbled shield. She flew up and beams of black energy began flying in her direction. The thing’s attacks were steadily getting faster. With that shield in place and the magic being unleashed at her she realized she needed to end this quickly. Which she could do with ease. After all this wasn’t even her final form. It had been a few years since she’d even attempted this but it was time to try again. Rainbow Dash took off into the sky leaving a rainbow colored trail behind her. She broke through the purple clouds and kept going up. Once she was up high enough she looped around and began heading toward the ground and the corrupted alicorn. Her body tensed, energy surged through her and she watched as the world exploded around her in a wave of rainbow energy shoving the clouds away and allowing a beam of direct sunlight to come down onto the blighted forest below. She could see the corrupted alicorn down there looking up at her. Rainbow Dash increased her speed, felt more energy building up. So much energy it almost hurt. Just as she reached the corrupted fiend she exploded a second time and shoved her hoof at the shield. The shield crumbled and she went straight on through to smash her hoof against the thing’s face. It went sailing down and into the ground breaking trees and shaking the earth. Rainbow Dash didn’t have to look at herself to know how she looked. She’d seen it before and her rainbow colored hooves were proof enough that she’d done it. Her entire body was covered by a layer of rainbow energy, her mane and tail would be flowing as if being blown by a non existent wind and everywhere she moved she left a rainbow trail and sparkles behind. Rainbow Dash also knew the extreme price for using this form and needed to take down the creature once and for all immediately. The air rippled and grew cold in front of her as the Corrupted Alicorn teleported. Rainbow Dash grinned. “I haven’t had to use this in years. Consider yourself lucky.” Dark magic surged forth from its horn but it was so slow now. Rainbow moved around it and hit the thing in its side. It went sailing away from her as the magic was abruptly stopped. She flew ahead of it and hit it again sending in yet another direction. Once more Rainbow Dash flew ahead of it and hit it again. It was like playing tennis with herself and the corrupted alicorn was the ball. Finally she hit it with both of her forelegs smashing it down toward the earth. It hit the forest and carved a massive trench dozens of feet wide and maybe a hundred long with its body. It wasn’t going to be dead just yet. Rainbow Dash charged toward it. She could see it, the things body was all twisted and mangled. It was leaking dark liquid everywhere. One more attack and it would be finished. This time she was ending it. The energy collected around her hoof becoming an orb of rainbow and glitter. Rainbow Dash collided with the creature shoving the orb of energy into its face and as the orb exploded she leapt back. She watched the explosion of rainbow energy consume and devour the thing’s head and upper torso. Once it was gone all that was left was a pair of legs. Rainbow let the energy flow out of her body, she felt weaker, younger. Rainbow noticed the legs were still twitching. It was dead now, or at least dead again. How could it still twitch? She cautiously approached and saw it leaking a pool of dark liquid still. This was unsettling to say the least. Rainbow turned to go back to the ship her job was done here. A blade of dark energy lashed out from the pool and Rainbow Dash had just enough time to duck her head and body to the side. The blade cut through her right wing and white hot pain shot through Rainbow’s body. She rolled to the side screaming as the burning increased tenfold. She looked over and saw the blade of dark energy turn into tendrils. The tendrils were wrapped around a blue wing some feet away from her and the wing was turning into ash from its touch. Just as quickly as the blade appeared the tendrils were gone along with the blue wing. Despite her screaming and agony she knew where that blue wing had come form but couldn’t’ believe it. Looking over to her right side she saw it. Where her wing had once been was a stub, cauterized and twitching but no wing. Rainbow Dash tried to move, to run to flap her other wing but everything she did hurt. It hurt so bad to move. Rainbow Dash pushed through the pain and took a few steps. The airship was up above her. She could make it, she had to. Darkness encroached around her vision and with one more step it consumed her entirely. *** Blackout watched as her mom used power the likes of which she’d never seen before. Then she watched as she killed the Corrupted Alicorn as if it were nothing. Finally she watched as the thing took her mom’s wing and left Rainbow Dash lying wounded and unconscious on the ground. Twilight, Luna and Starlight had seen the fight but there attention was elsewhere as a looming shadow overhead grew ever closer. The temperature dropped as black flames washed over the ship. If not for those three using their combined magic to create a shield around the ship the flames would have eaten them all alive. Yet there lay Rainbow Dash, on the ground, vulnerable, dying. Blackout was about to lose another parent. Something inside her began to break, something that was important that she knew she was supposed to have. Her mother lay there, broken, dying, and about to leave for good. She’d already watched her dad die, she wasn’t about to let her mother go too. With the rest of the ponies stuck shielding the ship from cold dragon’s fire Blackout felt that important thing snap inside her head and her heart. Her body seemed to move on its own and she took flight into the air. She heard somepony screaming her name but it was quickly covered by the sound of a dragon’s roar. Blackout flew up into the air and flew high. She then turned and dived toward the ground as fast as she could. Her body was usually heavy and hard to control but this one time her body was fast, easy to move, and was speeding up faster than she ever expected. Blackout let out a roar of her own as she sped toward the earth where her mother's body lay. The air around her burst into black lightning. The faster she got the more something built up inside her. It was like electricity, burning hot throughout her body. With one final push for speed the world around her exploded into a pure blackness that she left behind the moment it appeared. She reached her mother’s body and swooped into pick her up. Rainbow Dash didn’t weigh nearly as much as Blackout assumed she would. Her speed was still impossibly fast as she made her way back to the ship and landed. She laid her mother on the ship and Twilight quickly reached their side. She was screaming but her words were muted for some reason. Twilight was quickly looking at the grizzly wound with a look of horror she’d never seen twilight wear before. The ship suddenly lurched backward and Blackout turned to see the place where the air had exploded around her. There was a ball of dark energy growing steadily in size. Chunks of earth, entire trees, undead monsters and more were being sucked up slowly from the earth into the black sphere consuming them and growing larger with each object it devoured. Blackout turned to see even the dragon was slowly being pulled toward it. It seemed to realize the danger it was in as changed targets focusing now on blasting cold flames toward the sphere but that only quickened its growth. Even though Blackout had never seen this before, she knew it was about to get a lot worse. Twilight screamed and her words were starting to become understandable, “-ship moving now! That’s a black hole!” Starlight and Luna’s magic combined into a sphere around the ship and the ship began moving faster than before toward the north. Toward home. The black hole left behind was growing smaller the further they got but she watched as it finally grew to an impossible amount size and then exploded. Everything it had grabbed, every tree, piece of earth, boulder or body was flung forward like a deadly projectile. It was only by pure luck they had gotten just far enough away that the projectiles wouldn’t reach them but that dragon was too close. The massive undead was torn the shreds and speared by dozens of trees. Blackout stared in amazement. Had she done that? Was that what she was capable of? Her stomach began to grumble and she felt entirely too weak. She looked down at herself and her eyes grew in horror. She was skinny. Her legs were almost bone and lean muscle, her stomach wasn’t rounded it was princess thin. Whatever that power she just used was, it seemed to make her skinny, skinny and beyond starving for food. She glanced at her mom and frowned. Rainbow Dash was breathing, she was okay and somewhere safe, thanks to her. But, her wing… her wing was gone. When Rainbow Dash woke up she’d be devastated to find out. Yet she was alive and for Blackout that was all that mattered.