Rainbow Dash was breathing hard as she slowly flew down to the crater Karkona had made when he hit the ground. It wasn’t the most tired she had been in her life but it was up there. He had landed on his back and was now stuck halfway in the ground with his legs shooting straight up like they were petrified while his trunk hung limply from his face. Rainbow Dash walked over and got a closer look at his eyes. Totally white. They had rolled back into his head, showing how completely unconscious he was. In fact the only sign that he was still alive was a very faint movement from his chest showing he was still breathing. Honestly though, Twilight, Fluttershy, some of the others too, might’ve been mad at her but Rainbow wasn’t sure she would care too much if he wasn’t breathing. She only hoped he had been exaggerating about what he said he did to Larkon.
She looked deep at his unconscious face and then over to the army he had brought with him. They were picking themselves up while Murrank and those other guys she had fought were still out cold too. “Okay, so now what do I do?”
“We can take care of him from here.”
Rainbow Dash looked behind her to see Ollaron and the other Sages walking over the craggy ground towards her and the downed Karkona. She raised an eyebrow at them.
“What do you mean?”
Ollaron walked right up to Karkona and laid his trunk across the would-be-king’s forehead. “This one… darkness consumes him. We could all tell his heart was pitch black when speaking to him.”
“So what about it? I could’ve told you that,” Rainbow Dash shrugged.
“We will take Karkona back to our shrine and imprison him in the darkness beneath it. There he will stay until he is purified of his evil,” Ollaron said.
Rainbow Dash glanced at Karkona and grimaced. “Might take a while.”
“Time is something we have in abundance,” Nillse said.
“Right,” Rainbow Dash nodded. “I still don’t get it though… what do you mean by purified?”
This time it was Ollaron’s turn to shrug. “Call it meditation, or reflection, or even retribution if you will, but the mystical properties of the Sacred Spring have infused and permeated everything around here. Deep in the darkness of the shrine, Karkona will be all alone, unable to see, hear, or feel anything. All he will have with him is his thoughts and all he will be able to do is think. Until such a time comes when he reaches tranquility and inner peace he will never be able to leave that inner sanctum.”
“Then it’s gonna take even longer than I thought for him,” Rainbow Dash grimaced. But she sighed in relief too and wiped some of the sweat from her brow with her wing. “But it’s your guys’s call and everything, he’s a mammoth like you.”
“Thank you, you continue to do us a great favor,” Nillse said.
“That leaves the question of the rest of them though,” Damark said and pointed with his trunk towards the entrance of the Sacred Spring’s enclave.
Rainbow Dash followed where he was pointing and saw Karkona’s army standing there at a complete loss. Some of them looked angry, others just afraid, and all of them still had their weapons. Their big leader was defeated but they were still a threat if they chose to be. Rainbow Dash however felt absolutely no fear or worry when she looked at them, they were just dumb thugs and she’d deal with them.
“You can leave them to me, I’ll take care of it,” Rainbow told them.
“I trust you,” Ollaron said and looked back at his fellow Sages. “Come, help me bring this one back to the shrine.”
Ollaron and the others went to pick Karkona up and out of his crater, he was firmly wedged in but they eventually managed to make him budge and pull him out, still totally unconscious. Ollaron and Damark carried him between them, propped up on their shoulders while Zemara and Nillse dusted him off. However his army saw them doing this and some of them began to stomp forward across the broken ground to stop them from taking Karkona wherever it was they were going.
“Stop! Where are you taking Karkona?!” One of the more courageous thugs demanded.
But Rainbow Dash flew between him and the Sages, getting him and the rest of the army to stop cold in their tracks while Karkona continued to be taken towards the shrine.
“That’s as far as you go,” Rainbow Dash said to them. “Unless you want to try your luck against me?”
She watched as the fight left their faces, clearly none of them willing to defy her. Rainbow Dash slowly looked up and down their ranks with a firm frown on her face. She wanted them to see how serious she was and watch as Karkona continued to leave their grasps. The question was though, what did she do with them? She said she would handle it and she meant it and these guys were just as complicit in all of this as Karkona was… she couldn’t just let things go.
“Karkona’s never going to cause problems for mammoths ever again. It’s over. You’re never getting the power of the Sacred Spring either. It’s all over, okay?” Rainbow Dash said to them, threatening any to interrupt her with a harsh glare. “So here’s what’s going to happen; you’re going to throw down all your weapons and armor, get those four guys who are still knocked out, and then you’re going to leave.”
“But-” the same mammoth tried to speak up before Rainbow Dash sharply lifted up her hoof and cut him off.
“And by leave I don’t mean “Walk back to the city”. I mean leave.” Rainbow Dash narrowed her eyes at them. “You’re never bothering that city or the mammoths that live there again either.”
“But where will we go?” Another mammoth asked her, fear evident in his voice.
“I don’t know and to be honest I don’t really care. That’s your problem. So hurry up and get rid of these weapons and then head off somewhere else through the mountains. I’m going to check to make sure that none of you try going back to the city.”
And so it was that the hundreds of mammoths who had followed Karkona dropped their spears, hammers, axes, flails, armor, shields and so forth and were left to despondently wander out of the Sacred Spring and soon off the trail and elsewhere into the mountains. Murrank, Alok, and the other two unconscious mammoths were carried off by some others as well. Some of them prepared to eke out a living in this mountain range while others were thinking of crossing it and going somewhere new entirely. Either way, none were going to disobey the commands and threat of Rainbow Dash. Not after she had defeated Karkona and was greater than any mammoth. The threat they posed to their fellow mammoths was now gone and it would go a long way to bringing true peace to the city of mammoths.
Rainbow Dash silently stood there as she watched them the entire time and when the last mammoth shamefully marched out of the Sacred Spring she looked over just in time to see the four Sages carrying Karkona into the shadowed entrance of their shrine. It was done. She’d have to look over things just as she promised but for now?
With a groan of relief she flopped over onto her back and stared up at the sky. “Finally.”
She couldn’t quite take a nap with everything she needed to do, but a moment of rest was sorely needed and deserved. Rainbow Dash closed her eyes and breathed in and out, letting her chest rise and fall in slow motions. She kept like that for a moment longer until a whistling sound reached her ears. Her brow furrowed and her ears twitched, wondering what that sound was.
“Huh?” Rainbow Dash opened up her eyes and looked just in time for the whistling sound to grow louder and an object falling from the sky at great speed smash into the ground a short distance away from her.
“What the?!” She jumped up, startled, and hovered in the air away from it while looking at the newly formed smoking crater.
At first she only heard the sound of crumbling rock and pebbles scattering about but then came the sound of hooves clattering against the ground and a shadowy figure grew from inside the smoke. “Hehehehe, hahahaha...” manic laughter came from the figure as it stepped forward and out of the smoke.
A large pegasus with a beaten up blue coat and a white and black mane that was frayed and shot out all across his head like it had been combed with a lawnmower.
Blizzard had seen better days.
“Oh come on!” Rainbow Dash yelled and threw out her hooves in pure annoyance. “Again? You’re still chasing me?”
His eyes were just as crazed as his laughter as he stared down Rainbow Dash and smiled. “Finally, yes finally I’ve found you again...”
Two more figures then came out of the sky much more gently, landing behind Blizzard and staring down Dash. Rainbow Dash narrowed her eyes at the other old nemeses she recognized: Former Captains East and West Wind.
“So you guys are with him too this time?” She said to the purple twins.
“Indeed,” West Wind said.
“And we’ve been searching for you for quite a while,” East Wind said.
Blizzard’s face twisted down into an angry grimace as he looked back at this loyal followers. “The two of you stay back! She’s mine, just like I’ve always said!”
“Yes sir,” they replied in unison and nodded. When Blizzard took his attention away from them though they gave each other nervous looks. Seems they were aware of Blizzard’s vastly deteriorated mental state.
But Rainbow Dash just rolled her eyes at all of it anyways. “Dude, I can’t even tell you how much way more important stuff I have to do right now. Do you even know how little I’ve thought about you since I last saw you? I don’t care about your vendetta or anything.”
“Well I care about defeating you! I must destroy you for the sake of the Empire!” Blizzard yelled.
Rainbow Dash shook her head and turned to the side, motioning that she was going to leave. “Just go away, Blizzard. I’ve got stuff to do that actually matters.”
“Raaargh!” Blizzard screamed and flew at her. He was going to try and tackle her out of the air with his superior size and strength.
Rainbow just turned her head with coldly apathetic eyes towards him and lifted her hoof up. Blizzard wasn’t even paying attention to anything she was doing, he was tunnel-visioned on taking her down and crushing her with his own powerful hooves and wings. Once he was at her he began to close his front legs around her body—and Rainbow Dash’s hoof smashed across his jaw and sent him flying down to the ground. He bounced off the ground once before tumbling to a stop and groaning in pain at the power of her blow.
“C-Commander?!” East and West Wind yelled, flying over to him.
“Sorry, but you’re not going to beat me today,” Rainbow said as she lowered herself to the ground and yawned.
Blizzard unsteadily rose to his hooves, his eyes were glassy with shock and his knees were shaking. “W-What just happened...” He lifted his head and looked towards Rainbow Dash. “What did you just do? You aren’t that strong… your punches could never hurt me...”
Rainbow Dash grinned and curled up her front leg that she had hit him with a couple of time. “I’ve been doing more push-ups lately.”
“Aaaarghhh!” Blizzard yelled in frustration and threw East and West Wind aside before charging at Rainbow Dash again. This time when he got to her he threw out his wing to club her with it, the same thing he had done to knock her out when they first met long ago.
Without a word and not even moving her legs, Rainbow Dash lifted up her own wing and blocked his. Blizzard’s wing buckled and folded against Rainbow Dash’s and it wasn’t even able to make her budge in the slightest. He was shocked, his jaw dropping at how his wing was like a piece of tissue paper trying to snap a metal beam.
“T-This is impossible!” East Wind said as he and his brother watched.
“Blizzard’s wings can shatter boulders but they’re bending against her wing...” West Wind said.
Rainbow Dash then shoved his wing away with her own in an effortless display of power. He stumbled from the sudden push and couldn’t react as Rainbow Dash spun around and kicked him hard in the chest. Sending him flying backwards as he yelped in pain and eventually collided with the cliff wall that enclosed the Sacred Spring.
He created an indent in the rock and groaned as he fell to the ground, his limbs all felt limp and weak and his body screamed at him in pain from the blows Rainbow Dash had dealt him. It was impossible. How was she stronger than him? He was Commander Blizzard!
“Something is wrong… this isn’t how things should be going...” Blizzard protested to himself as he forced himself up. “I refuse to accept this! There’s no way this can be happening!”
Despite the pain he flapped his wings and flew at full speed towards Rainbow Dash. Blizzard was nothing if not persistent. But Rainbow Dash was absolutely done with him. She wasn’t in the mood to play around with or sate his petty desires for revenge. And now she had the power to do what she had always wanted to do to him in the first place. So as Blizzard wildly flew at her in a desperate attempt to defeat her, Rainbow Dash merely made a wing assisted hop into the air and spun, bringing a back leg down onto the top of his skull right as he reached her and kicking him into the ground with the same kind of force she had used to fight Karkona. Blizzard collided head first with the ground and even Rainbow winced as she saw his head bounce off the rock while his body collapsed like a rag doll.
“Six knockouts, one day,” Rainbow said to herself as she then walked around and grabbed Blizzard’s tail. Her eyes turned to the stunned East and West Wind. “Hey you two, when this guy wakes up tell him to leave me alone. Now go fetch.” She lifted Blizzard up and spun around like a tornado before letting him go and throwing him clear out of the Sacred Spring and into the mountains to the south.
“C-Commander!” East Wind yelled and immediately flew after the diminishing speck of Blizzard.
West Wind gawked in disbelief, throwing glances back and forth between Rainbow Dash and Blizzard before he too blasted off after his brother.
Rainbow Dash sighed in annoyance and shook her head. “Geez, I wanted to relax for a minute and this is what I get? Whatever—gotta get back to the city now. Please be okay, Larkon.”