//------------------------------// // Chapter 5B // Story: My World Is Empty Without You // by McPoodle //------------------------------// My World Is Empty Without You Chapter 5B Cabelleron and his henchponies carried Rainbow Dash—for surely this was Rainbow Dash, regardless of her current appearance—through the hole in the wall into a large rectangular room that had been elaborately carved out of the granite beneath the Royal Plaza. It looked to Rainbow like it must have taken months, if not years, to achieve this level of detail. Engravings, glyphs, and ritual paintings covered every hoofwidth of the walls and floor of the chamber, as well as the slides of the giant stone slab that dominated the room. The focus of all attention, the direction that every carved and painted figure looked towards in reverential awe, was the dais set at the far end of the room, backlit by the large blazer from which emerged the unnatural dancing red flame that was the sole source of illumination. In every detail, this chamber was a perfect replica of the Sacrifice Room from the Temple of Blood from the fallen Hayan Empire. Rainbow Dash was dropped on the slab by Caballeron and his gang, who looked decidedly out of place. Without a word they backed out of the room the way they came, then pried open the elevator doors and made their escape (observed by a hiding Pinkamena). Their place as Rainbow’s captors was replaced by Hayan priests, or rather, devoted native ponies of the Tenochtitlan Basin taking on the roles of the long-dead Hayans. With deliberate care, they placed shackles around Rainbow’s neck, hooves, and the bases of her wings and tail, and then pulled the chains attached to those shackles to eight iron rings set in the floor, pulling her body tight with an audible groan. Rainbow Dash turned her head as much as she could, given her bindings, and fixed her eyes on the master of ceremonies for her upcoming execution: the unique creature Ahuizotl, Daring Do’s arch-enemy. “Hiya!” she said brightly. The multiple concussions might have made her a little loopy. Rainbow Dash had expectations for this kind of scene, expectations set by dozens of movie series watched in her foalhood. The villain would give a long monologue, punctuated by maniacal laughter, and then for no very good reason would leave the hero or heroine alone, inevitably leading to the latter’s escape. But this villain didn’t give a monologue. Instead, he picked up a nasty knife with a wiggly blade in his tail-hand and a glass goblet in a regular hand and walked over to Rainbow’s side. “What’s the cup for?” Rainbow asked. “Your heart,” Ahuizotl replied. “Oh,” said Rainbow calmly. The priests began to chant in a foreign tongue. With a note of resignation, Rainbow turned her head back until she was staring at the ceiling. And on that ceiling, which Fluttershy couldn’t see from her ground-level perspective, the following words appeared: Fluttershy still has some measure of control – R. The final letter was in an elaborate cursive, and the entire script was 100%, beyond-obviously Rarity. “Then why is she doing this?” Rainbow asked nonsensically. It appeared that the stress had finally caused her to snap. The words from before were wiped like chalk off of a school board, and were then speedily replaced with a new message: She thinks you abandoned her for the Wonderbolts. The chanting increased in volume. After a moment, the bound pegasus took in a deep breath, turned her head to face away from Ahuizotl, and spoke, loudly and clearly: “There are two branches of the Wonderbolts: the rank-and-file, and the officer corps. When Spitfire took me out to dinner after winning the Best Young Flyer competition, she asked me to join the ‘Bolts as a private, right then and there. She also told me that I would have to spend the next two years at Wonderbolt HQ, every day except for holidays. Because that’s the rule for all new privates. I asked her if that rule applied to the officers, and she said no. So, I turned down her invitation. You know why? Because I would never abandon my friends like that. Never. I told her that I would wait until she thought me worthy to start as an officer, and if she thought my rejecting her now was insulting, well I guess I would never become a Wonderbolt. “That is the truth. Anypony who told you something different is a liar. …And also a stagepony who’s really good with illusions.” I… I… I had finally had enough! “You will stop this immediately!” I declared, entering the chamber and embracing Rainbow Dash. “I had no idea what was really going on, I swear!” “I believe you,” Rainbow replied with a pained grin. Pinkamena carefully edged her way around the back wall of the chamber, unnoticed by anypony. On reaching the missing Fourth Wall, she walked through it into a sort of black emptiness… that was interrupted by a quaint wooden cottage door opening into the interior of Fluttershy’s tree house. Pinkamena looked from the scene in the sacrificial chamber to the incongruous door. Making up her mind, she turned her back on the blood-red room, stepping through the cottage door. I backed up and looked around at my surroundings, as if for the first time. “So… this is the Emperor’s dream trap, right? And he was using me to hurt the rest of you!” For a moment, the entire room shook and blurred. When it came back into focus, the engravings and paintings were distorted, as if they had been put on the page with still-wet paint, and then brushed over by a careless hoof. Behind me, the sun began to rise above the horizon. I put a hoof to my head. “This isn’t real…” As I said this, the world began to fade out around me. “No!” Rainbow cried out, her voice faint. “You can’t wake up! Everything that happens to us in the dream does the same thing to our bodies in the waking world!” I squeezed my eyes shut and uttered a quiet squeal of desperation. “You… can’t just tell a pony to not wake up, Rainbow Dash!” “Oops.” Then, there were words. I watched them appear, scrawled in the air in delicate hornwriting. “As you feel your limbs grow numb, and the world drift away, you know you are a gentle pony, a good pony.” I trembled, closing my eyes. “How do… Rarity? Is that you?” “It is,” Rainbow Dash said softly. “She knows my mantra; say it out loud for me so I can keep my eyes closed,” I pleaded, desperate for Rainbow’s voice to say those calming words. Rainbow sighed, and I imagined her putting a wing around me like she had… before I had tortured her nearly to death. “As the worries of the day fade away, and all of your friends stand guard over you, you feel light, weightless, drifting, and finally falling, Fluttershy. The sky surrounds you on every side, and you can let go.” Everything, every pony and creature in the dream briefly felt completely weightless, before the dream settled back in, and I opened my eyes again, calm. Hovering high in the room on gentle wingbeats. And utterly asleep. The priests were all staring up at me at awe. It may have been because I was glowing. That happens to me sometimes in my dreams. “Well, don’t just stand there gaping!” Ahuizotl bellowed, his cheeks red with rage. “We have a sacrifice to complete!” The priests snapped to attention and resumed their chanting. “Wait, you all have to stop,” I said, quietly but firmly. I knew they all heard me, but they did nothing to honor my request. “What’s happening?” I asked Rainbow. “I don’t think you’re in control of the dream anymore,” Rainbow replied in a resigned tone. “Then who is?” “That would be me.” I looked over at the source of the new voice, a magical screen hanging on the fourth wall. It hadn’t been there an instant ago. Pictured on its surface was a stiff papier-mâché mask in the shape of Angel bunny’s face. The mask was then removed to reveal Oars in Wells, sitting in my study and working on my typewriter. “This interloper has seen too much,” Oars recited the words he was typing. “She must be sacrificed as well.” “This interloper has seen too much,” Ahuizotl said in a stiff voice. “She must be sacrificed as well.” The priests pulled me roughly down from the sky and over to the slab to join Rainbow. I tried to struggle, but it was no use. I looked helplessly over at the screen. “Does this mean that you’re the Dragon Emperor?” “Finally!” Oars cried out. “I have been waiting through five dreams for somepony to figure that out!” “But how?” I demanded. (I did this both out of curiosity and because I knew it would give Oars an excuse to gloat long enough for Rainbow to think of something amazing to get us out of this mess.) “Do you remember the dragon who tried to entrap Twilight Sparkle and the Princess in his dream, but they accidentally ended up putting him in a coma? That was the Emperor.” “That was the Dragon Emperor?” Rainbow asked. “He was smaller than Spike! I thought he was like… the Emperor’s shrimpy Court Wizard.” “But he was also the most-powerful being on the planet, more powerful than even the Sisters combined. And as you remember, I was his confederate, which meant that I alone knew the secret to his incredible power. He had stumbled on nothing less than the source of all magic in Equestria, the magic that the Sisters used to create ponykind seven millennia ago. “And with the Emperor dead… Well, let’s just say I made a little field trip to the Sister’s ancestral home and took out a rather large withdrawal. And that’s how I became—” With a loud “bong!”, the pompous unicorn’s words came to a sudden stop. Oars in Wells swayed for a few seconds, his eyes reeling, before falling over with a crash big enough to shake the entire cottage. Pinkamena then stepped into frame with my frying pan, now quite dented. “Wow, that guy really doesn’t know how to shut up, does he?” “Yay! It’s Darai! She was originally going to be your love interest, you know,” I told Daring… Rainbow? Rainbow lay back and blinked several times in quick succession. I make one fashion mistake in my dream, and that’s enough to wake up Rarity. I should be like... super awake right now! Far away, the distant sound of screaming began to be heard. Pinkamena glanced over her shoulder at the Cruciform, which was still resting on her back. “I’ll be right back,” she said, before darting out of frame. The earth pony dashed over to the open cottage door, which she promptly shut. “Okay, a teeny-tiny bit of reality bending,” she told herself. “Which anypony can do, because this is a dream. So...” She closed her eyes. “Ground floor! Royal Palace, Canterlot Annex, panicking crowds and evil villain wielding the Staff of Sameness. Going up!” She opened the door, and instead of seeing the Hayan Sacrifice Room, she found herself right behind what appeared to be a body double of the Chancellor. He was on the ground, along with everypony else. At least in the actor’s case, his cutie mark had been replaced with a black equals sign. Pinkamena grabbed the Cruciform from off of her back, pointed it at the crowd, and yelled, “Fix everything!” Nothing happened. Pinkamena looked down at the floor of the cottage she was still standing in, and then out at the stage. She sighed deeply. “This is going to hurt, isn’t it?” she asked nopony in particular. Then she stepped out of the cottage, so the Cruciform had a concrete reality to fix. She was right—it did hurt. And the part about the Cruciform working the second time. She was right about that as well. “Oh, that’s unfortunate,” I sighed. “A lot of ponies probably having their Self stripped from them. I don’t even know where I got that plotline from! I mean, seriously, Daring Dash, I’ve never done political drama before, why pin the conclusion of my main character on one?” “I wouldn’t know, Fluttershy,” Rainbow said calmly, “because I had it stuck in my head that only eggheads read for fun. I’m beginning to reconsider that opinion. Would you perhaps have any reading recommendations for a beginner such as myself?” “Oh,” I laughed softly. “Definitely none of my stuff, no, maybe um… Even though he’s trying to kill us, Oars actually writes some entertaining stuff, that might be fun for you. My stuff would, ah…” I stared off into the middle distance, trying to figure out how to say “make you realize my deep and complex feelings for you” without actually saying it like that. “Would you like me to unshackle you?” I asked hopefully. Rainbow turned her head to look at a thoroughly confused Ahuizotl. “Are we done here?” she asked with a grin. “Ah… where did that wall go?” He pointed his tail-hand behind me for that last part. Curiously, I turned my head and looked where he was pointing. And yes, it was a black void, but I must say that it was the most friendly and inviting black void that I had ever seen, so I guess that was alright. “Oh! I can fix this,” I said eagerly as I turned my head back to face him. “Not the wall thing, but the other thing—the reason for the whole ‘heart in a goblet’ thing. Um... Look, I never got to put it in a story, um… Mr. Ahuizotl? Your mother is still alive and living in the frozen North. You don’t have to perform a sacrifice to bring her back to life. You can unlock us and go.” The creature looked around him as he thought over the revelation he had just been given. Gently, he put down the sacrificial knife. He kneeled down to be close to Rainbow. “Is... is what she says the truth?” he whispered. “Word of God,” Rainbow said simply. “Huh,” Ahuizotl said as he stood back up. “Gentleponies, my faithful followers and fellow devotees of all things Hayan, I’m afraid that I have a confession to make: This ceremony is a sham. All of it. The Hayans never practiced pony sacrifice. I stole that from the Asstecs to make the Hayans more bad-flank.” The priests all moaned in disappointment. “But this was going to be awesome!” one of them whined. “We’ve all clearly been working way too hard lately, and maybe, just maybe, we got a bit too much into character,” Ahuizotl continued. “Or mind-controlled by a mad-pony. Same thing,” he added under his breath. “As such, I will be taking a month-long sabbatical out of the country. Go... have fun with your families or something while I’m gone. We’ll re-evaluate our priorities when I return.” “Oh, and releasing us?” I asked politely. I leaned over and whispered to Rainbow, “It’s going to be a single lever.” “Yeah, right!” Rainbow barked. “What kind of lame author would... I’m going to shut up right now.” One pull of a single lever later, the pair was released. “To be fair, I always liked the absurdity of it. The traps, the levers, it’s always silly no matter how real,” I explained to her as I stood and looked her over, frowning a little. “You… why is there so much blood?” I felt a little dizzy as the world slipped out of focus for a second before coming back sharp. Rainbow tried to roll off of the slab, and promptly landed in a pile on the granite floor. “Ow…” I sat next to her, somehow unable to touch her as long as she looked like… Her. Daring Do. The version of Rainbow whose strings I pulled. “Rainbow… Did I do this to you?” I asked softly. Rainbow turned her head to look up at me. “So, you admit this was you the whole time?” she said with a smile. “I gotta say, I didn’t think you had it in you. Totally bad flank.” “I… I never meant for it to be you, it was… It was Daring. Daring… see?” I reached out and gently pulled forward a bit of her monochrome mane, as if somehow that would help prove that I hadn’t tortured my closest friend for hours. “Am... am I interrupting?” We turned to see Darai... I guess I mean Pinkamena... standing in front of my cottage door. Which was... somehow... just sitting in the blackness like it belonged there the entire time. “Help me fix her,” I whimpered, trying to put the rest of the situation out of my mind as I gestured to Rainbow. “Please, please help me. I don’t know how.” “Right,” Pinkamena said, sitting down for a few seconds. “Oh wait, I know!” she cried out, and went back inside... my house? She came back out with my hope chest. “That’s my hope chest,” I told her. “Yes, but inside the chest is... let’s see... I think it’s... the Griffon’s Goblet! The mystical artifact whose ever-full waters can cure any ailment. I am thinking of the right artifact, right? I mean, it’s been so many years since…” I started to smile a little, and I even managed a soft little laugh. “You… you read my books!” I said gleefully. “The Griffon’s Goblet yeah, but if I was going to put it anywhere, it’d be in my closet! That’s where all of Daring’s stuff is.” “Right!” Pinkamena said with a huge smile as she put down the chest. “I’ll go ahead and let you do the honors.” “You’ll have to get it,” I said peacefully. “To use meta you can’t let someone who has an accurate memory of the contents of the closet open it first; if you open it though, I trust your description more than my own, so that’d be best.” With a huff, Pinkamena walked over, lifted Rainbow Dash onto her back, and took her over to the chest. “Open the stupid box!” she ordered. “Alright, alright,” Rainbow said. She reached out a feeble hoof and flipped open the box, revealing a glimmering chalice of gold and jewels. I breathed a sigh of relief, hunching my shoulders. “If… If I did it, and it didn’t work, then it’d be all my fault,” I whispered, looking away from the treasure. “But… But I knew you’d figure it out.” I scooted over and picked up the cup, before blinking my eyes quickly, then shutting them tight to eke out a tear into the crystalline matrix at the bottom of the goblet, where it shone and filled on its own, to the brim, with glittering golden light. “Please, Rainbow,” I said as I offered it to her. “Please be better.” Pinkamena pivoted to put Rainbow’s mouth closer to the goblet. She reached forward and began to sip. And as she drank the glow in the water transferred itself to her coat, which steadily increased in brightness until it was blinding. When the light had faded, Rainbow was exactly as I always remembered her. Not only that, but she was no longer Daring Do, but her own beautiful, prismatic self. Rainbow took to the air with her restored wings. Looking down at her colors, she asked, “Does this count as a self-insert?” “Only if I give you an author credit,” I said playfully, looking Rainbow over with overwhelming relief. “Otherwise it’s just libel, since I’m implying an Element of Harmony would go on crazy adventures to steal ancient relics, and everypony knows we don’t do that.” “Okay, well in that case, could you take some advice from a member of the preview audience?” “Beta readers,” Pinkamena interrupted. “Whatever. This story is a mess. I think you should trash it and start over.” “Hey now, this story isn’t so bad,” I said, smiling as I looked at her. “It’s the first of my novels with my favorite pony in it, that’s got to count for something. Name one thing that’s inappropriate.” Rainbow Dash blushed briefly, before pointing a silent hoof at the altar which still had quite a bit of her own blood on it. “Ok, but I wouldn’t have actually written ‘Oh pools of blood flowing over the stone,’ in the end product,” I objected with a huff. “It’d be something poetic about the pain, the wrenching. As long as you just describe the feelings but not the visuals, editors will give you a pass—that’s a lesson for the ages.” “Are you sure you can’t just write a mindless action adventure? Those have always been my favorite.” Rainbow said with a teasing smirk. I could feel my cheeks get hot, as my smile faded just a little. “For you, Rainbow? I'd write anything. Even Daring Do being a huge dummy who never so much as hears the word ‘politics’ in her life.” Fate took that moment to deliver Brass Quill... no, I need to keep things straight. Twilight Sparkle, Spike and Applejack burst into the room from the bottom of the elevator shaft. “Daring, we’re here to rescue you!” Spike announced. He was only able to do this because he had ridden the whole way on Twilight’s back—the other two were far too winded to speak. “Uh, wait... weren’t you tan before?” Rainbow had a mid-air laughing fit. “Wait, quick question, why didn’t we just bring a bomb to the Dragon Emperor's meeting?” I asked abruptly. “I just… A small bomb could have skipped so many steps.” “Total. Bad. Flank,” concluded Rainbow Dash. “I’m not a bad-flank,” I laughed. “I would never be brave enough to say that for real. I’m just too scared. Like, I’ve been in love with the real you for… twelve years now? And I could never ever tell you.” Every other pony in the room froze. “Any other loose ends you’d like me to tie up?” Pinkamena asked in a small voice. “Preferably far, far away from here?” “Yeah,” Rainbow said in a distant voice. “There are homicidal versions of Vinyl Scratch and the Wonderbolts on the third floor of this building.” “Oh, is that all? I’m on it!” Pinkamena exclaimed, running into the void for a few moments until stopping. “Or... I could take the stairs. That works!” And she soon exited the scene. Spike meanwhile hopped off of Twilight’s back and walked up the void. He stuck his arm into it, and the arm disappeared until he pulled it back out. “Hello darkness my old friend…” he whispered. I continued smiling, relaxing. My dream-friends were going to fix all the problems with my story. “Oh, and we should probably figure out where Oars is too, tie him up or something.” “Already did that!” drifted down Pinkamena’s voice from the second floor. Rainbow drifted quietly down to the floor, walked forward, and gently rested a wing over one of mine. “This would normally be the part where I’d warn you that I’m borderline obsessive, have a pathological hang-up over the subject of ‘loyalty’, live in a town full of psychos at the edge of a sentient forest, and wind up with the part about being in an ultra-powerful group dedicated to protecting the whole of Equestria from rogue gods and other miscellaneous threats. But you already know all of that. So... Pinkie Pie’s my daughter. I’m pretty sure you don’t know that one.” “I think the only surprise besides that is that you used ‘pathological’ correctly,” I admitted. “Probably my fault, I’m not writing you properly, but… you’re you enough.” I scooted closer and laid my head against her cheek. “I can be Pinkie’s co-mom. That actually sounds really nice. Where is she, by the way?” “That’s a really long story,” Twilight butted in. “Well that’s ok. OH!” I said with sudden energy, sitting up. “As long as I’m lucid dreaming, and I’ve got you here… Twilight! You’re an officiator, I know you are, can you marry me with Dream-Rainbow?” Twilight stared incredulously at me, then over to Applejack. “Hey!” the farm pony declared. “Why do you think I’ve got the answers?” Twilight sighed. “Fluttershy, don’t you think you might want to go on a date first? Or... move in together?” I laughed softly, shaking my head as I stepped over to Twilight and put a wing over her back, like I’d seen Celestia do before. “Oh Twilight… I know you don’t understand, but I’m a bad pony and everypony knows it, deep down. The real Rainbow Dash would know that, and it’d be perfectly natural for her to just want to be friends, because nopony could stand my presence for more than a few minutes, really. But this is just a fantasy! A dream fantasy! Just like you—a version of Twilight that asks me questions instead of always having the answers, and like Vinyl, but a version of her that has cool friends in her heads that I could meet and talk to separately, like some sort of super-spy! It’s all just to make myself happy… that’s what dreams are good for! And since I’m a fundamentally terrible pony unworthy of love, I’ll never have a wedding or marriage, and might as well just have one here, with a Rainbow that knows all my secrets and still loves me, and has Pinkie Pie as a daughter! I mean, how awesome is that? It’s so cool!” Rainbow Dash took a position next to me and addressed the purple unicorn. “Twilight, you’re using the wrong script.” “Wrong script…” Twilight looked off into the blackness for a few seconds before turning back to face the couple and putting on a stern expression. “Fluttershy Parula Fluffykins, I absolutely forbid you from marrying Rainbow Dash! She’s an utter hooligan, and a bad influence.” “Don’t care, because we’re eloping!” Rainbow declared with a loud raspberry. She then tossed me over her shoulder and flew off to do unspeakable things to me. Wait, give me a moment to get my thesaurus. They won’t be unspeakable for long... I couldn’t stop laughing, giggling, as I held Rainbow close, and slowly… the dream faded as we all woke up. Then, I remembered. I remembered what was going on, I remembered that those had been my actual friends, and I was actually hyperventilating in a crystalline coffin while numbly pondering whether I could fly out of the cave and all the way to Neighpon to start a new life before Rainbow could catch me.