Chapter 32
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Twilight’s Escape
Rainbow lay defeated beneath the apple tree, refusing to look up at Zephyr. She was still catching her breath from her Rainboom attempt.
“Rainbow…” She wasn’t watching Zephyr but she was sure he was looking at her. He sounded disappointed. “Can you actually DO the Sonic Rainboom?”
Rainbow shuffled her hooves nervously. She opened her mouth to speak, thoughts swimming around in her brain.
“Well, I can’t NOT do it, if that’s what you mean. It… depends.”
Some birds nearby started to sing a morning song. Rainbow glanced over and smiled.
“Hey! Those are some cool birds over there!”
“Rainbow!” Zephyr wouldn’t be distracted. Rainbow reluctantly turned to face him. Sure enough, there was a downward crease in his brow. Rainbow’s ears folded over.
“O-okay, fine. I admit it. I can’t really just do the Rainboom whenever I want, okay? I never could! It’s always just been something that happens, like at random!” Rainbow sighed and hung her head. “I only made it seem like I could because… I didn’t want to disappoint you, Zeph. I mean, you’re THE Zephyr!”
“And you’re THE Rainbow Dash!” Zephyr said, making Rainbow look up with some surprise. Zephyr smiled. “Yeah, I approached you originally because I wanted to learn the Rainboom, and yeah, it’s pretty cruddy that you can’t show me it or teach it to me…” Zephyr turned away for a moment, and Rainbow saw him look longingly in the distance. He shook his head and turned back, returning to a smile. “But hey! It’s cool! Because I realized you’re pretty awesome. Even if you can’t do the Rainboom whenever you want, you still did it once before — twice, even — and that’s something I can’t say.”
Zephyr held out a hoof and Rainbow grabbed it. He hoisted her up onto her legs.
“Listen, I ain’t perfect either. You didn’t have to go that far just to continue to impress me. You could have gotten pretty badly hurt there.”
Rainbow kicked at the ground with her hoof. She looked like a dejected filly, but only for a moment. She regained her confidence and stared down Zephyr.
“Bah! Me? Get hurt flying? Not a chance, buster!”
Zephyr continued smiling and rose a doubtful brow. Rainbow blushed lightly and snickered before replying.
“Okay, okay, you’re right. I guess it was silly of me, especially since I just told Jerri last night pretty much what you just told me.” Zephyr cocked his head.
“Jerri? Who’s that?”
“Oh, one of my teammates from the relay yesterday. She got hurt pretty bad because she was trying her best not to let me down.” Rainbow rolled her eyes and smiled. “I guess I should start taking my own advice.”
Zephyr punched Rainbow’s shoulder with his hoof.
“Ya think? Enough of this heart-to-heart stuff, I still want to show you my secret!”
Rainbow rubbed the spot Zephyr had punched. Confusion mired her face.
“Still? But I thought you wanted me to teach you the Rainboom first!”
Zephy shrugged nonchalantly then took to the air with a grin.
“Consider this a sign that we’re friends, then! I only ever show my friends this!”
Rainbow’s tail started to swoosh left to right and she took on a stance like an excited puppy, with wide eyes and an open smile.
“Are you saying there all your friends know this trick and you’re STILL the fastest?!”
Zephyr didn’t look back at Rainbow but just flapped his wings and starred out at the sun.
“No… that’s not it.” He paused and Rainbow flew up beside him. She looked over and saw that Zephyr was forcing a smile. “I don’t have any other friends.”
Rainbow opened her mouth to speak. Her eyes were bugging out. She tried to remember if she might still be asleep. A quick pinch told her she was not. Zephyr turned and gave her a genuine smile, complete with closed eyes.
“That was my lame way of saying you’re my only friend, so, I’ll show you anyway!”
Zephyr took off towards the atmosphere.
“Come on! Before I change my mind!”
Rainbow frowned.
How the heck doesn’t Zephyr have any friends? That makes no sense…
She flew after Zephyr, who had stopped on a cloud high above Sweet Apple Acres. When Rainbow reached the same cloud, she noticed that Zephyr was facing a stretch of sky that didn’t have a single cloud in its path as far as the eye could see. Zephyr took a deep breath and looked back at Rainbow with a confident grin.
“You ready for this, RB?”
Rainbow shook her head, perhaps a tad too eagerly.
“Uhhh, yeah? You’ve been hyping this up for the last few days! Time to put up or shut up, Zeph!”
Zephyr put his old, brass goggles down around his eyes. He assumed a stance where his back curved at a 45-degree angle, so that his front hooves and head were pressed close to the cloud and his back section was held up. He started to piston his wings like he was on a straightaway at the end of a marathon. He held himself in place despite the force of his flapping, which Rainbow had to put her own goggles on to mitigate.
“JUST WATCH FOR NOW RAINBOW,” Zephyr yelled above the sound of the wind his wings were generating, “I’LL EXPLAIN IT TO YOU AFTER!” Suddenly, Rainbow noticed visible, light blue streaks of wind start to appear around Zephyr’s wings. Eventually the light blue streaks turned into self-contained spheres of rotating wind that encapsulated Zephyr’s wings.
“DON’T BLINK!”
But Rainbow wasn’t prepared at all. She blinked. In that split second, she was thrown backwards on her cloud in the opposite direction. An unfathomably strong gust tossed her like a leaf in a tornado. Zephyr was nowhere to be seen, but a streak of light blue clouds traced a path straight forward, easily miles and miles away into the wild blue yonder. It all happened in one split second.
Rainbow was awestruck. She nearly dislocated her jaw. She didn’t dare blink again until she saw where Zephyr went. She looked every which way.
“Zeph!” she shouted. “Zeph!”
A gust of air behind her threw her mane in front of her face.
“Hiya,” said Zephyr. Rainbow spun around. There wasn’t a hint of exhaustion. His neon pink mane hung low to one side of his neck, goggles sitting square around his eyes, emerald irises full of energy just behind. From this close, Rainbow noticed his dark blue face had very immaculate features, similar to Maelstrom. In fact, if Rainbow didn’t know any better, there was even a resemblance.
“How the hay!” Rainbow began, all smiles, tail wagging, ears flicking. Her wings were open and jittery. “How’d you do that! I’ve never… that was unreal! Was that magic?” Rainbow started to walk around Zephyr, as if there was some secret to uncover about his speed. Zephyr shook his head and chuckled.
“I don’t know if you can call it magic. But it’s definitely not a normal way to fly. Here, I’ll go slow this time. Slower, anyway.”
Rainbow watched Zephyr closely, particularly around his wings. Zephyr took another deep breath and started to flap his wings, slower than before, but still faster than most ponies could keep up with. Rainbow squinted.
“Pay attention,” Zephyr explained, “This is the trick, if you wanna call it that.” Every few flaps of Zephyr’s wings, he broke the normal flapping rhythm for just a second and generated a stronger flap inwards towards his body. The combined stronger flaps eventually generated tiny streaks of light blue wind, which got larger as time went on, before the light blue wind formed small tornado-like swirling spheres that covered both Zephyr’s wings.
Rainbow gasped.
“That’s the trick! You’re creating large bursts of air and storing them with your wings?
Zephyr smiled smugly.
“Heh, you’re definitely an expert flyer to catch that. That’s right. The spheres of air act sort of like the engine in a train — well, I think. I don’t know much about trains…” Zephyr rubbed his chin with a hoof inquisitively. “Something like that anyway. It helps propel me forward quicker than you could just flapping your wings like normal.”
Zephyr slowly brought his flapping to a halt, the light blue spheres still swirling around his wings.
“I figured this out when I was younger, this was the thing I thought I could impress my uncle with, but by then nothing I did really caught his attention.”
Zephyr held open his wings, spheres and all. “You can also do this if you don’t want to use the built-up energy to fly fast…” Zephyr threw both of the spheres with his wings. They travelled a fair distance across the sky before bursting. The resulting gust, branching out 360 degrees on all axes, shifted the clouds in the sky and once again forced Rainbow and her cloud back. It threw her mane back into place.
Rainbow looked back at Zephyr with a huge grin.
“C-cool!”
Zephyr shrugged and laughed.
“Yeah? You’re right, it is cool! But I don’t think it has a practical use.”
Rainbow looked eager for more.
“Can you do it again, Zeph? If I just see it one more time, I think I can start practicing myself!”
Zephyr grinned and assumed his flying stance.
“Alright! After this, you’re on your own! We’ll train separately from here on out!”
* * *
The grumbling and rumbling in Twilight’s stomach had ceased. Her eyes were closed and she breathed in softly.
Calm. Focus. The plan will work.
She opened her eyes. The two guards outside her cell were talking to each other. Twilight felt enough energy to carry out her plan, but feigned weakness in attempting to stand. She wobbled her hooves.
“Hey! You two jerks!” Twilight said as saucily as she could. The two guards glared at her.
“What did you just call us? Keep quiet, fiend!”
“Don’t make us make you be quiet!”
Twilight grinned.
“You two colts? Please. Even now…” Twilight pretended to weakly fall down. She continued to smile at the guards, smug and confident. “… even now I could still take you. I’m a princess of Equestria. I could take over your minds and make you do whatever I want. You’d be my little colt slaves.”
One of the guards grabbed the cell bars and shouted at Twilight, full of fury.
“Cut that out before you regret it! You can barely stand, so stop talking big! Don’t think because you’re a mare we won’t come in there and shut you up!”
Twilight ignored him and looked over to one side of the room, as if deep in thought.
“Or maybe I’ll use my magic and make Tsunami my slave! My little prince slave! I’d have to shave that ridiculous mane of his off, of course. Maybe give him a nice collar—”
The guard roared and started reaching for the cell keys attached to his hip.
“That’s it! Let’s go, Shellshock! Let’s show the princess what happens to the fools who talk bad about our prince!”
The other guard nodded, equally as mad.
“I’m gonna enjoy this!”
The first guard opened the cell doors and raised a hoof to step inside. Twilight’s eyes opened wide. Her horn lit up, bright neon lavender, and she teleported behind the guards with an eldritch flash. The guards swung around, the confidence draining from their aghast faces.
“Oh h-horseshoes!” one of them yelled. Twilight glared at the guards and threw a pale-yellow spell at the one who opened the cell. She aimed it perfectly to land right between the space in his helmet where his eyes were. The magic quickly branched out and grabbed the other guard between the space in his helmet, and the tether between both guards pulled both their heads together like a spring-loaded beartrap snapping closed. Their heads bonked together hard enough to rattle their armor, and they fell to the floor, blank expressions on their faces.
“Can’t say I enjoyed that, myself,” Twilight said to herself, breathing heavily, “But… it had to be done.”
Twilight charged up her horn for a few moments, tightening the muscles in her hooves to brace herself. She released her spell and a bright flash with a loud burst of noise like thunder erupted from Twilight’s horn.
“L-let’s see if that worked…” she said to herself through pants.
Twilight used her magic once more to create a magical space in the air that reflected like a mirror. She looked at herself and smiled.
The mare grinning back didn’t look like Twilight at all. Instead, reflected by the mirrow, was a mare with a deep brown fur coat and a short, black buzz cut. She turned her face every which way to check for any defects.
“Right, disguise part one: check. Now for the finishing touch.”
Twilight grabbed the armor from one of the guards with her horn’s lavender glow and started to place it on herself. It took a some time to figure out how it was supposed to fit, but eventually, she made herself look just like one of the palace guards.
“Hopefully nopony who knows every guard’s face sees me,” she said as she started walking down the long corridor outside of the cell, “But I doubt that will happen. There must be hundreds of guards!”
Twilight reached the end of the corridor and came upon another corridor. There was only one obvious way to go: straight. The other paths led to other jail cells. A guard was stationed in front of what must have been an exit.
“Wha—hey, who are you? When did you go down that corridor?” he asked, sounding like he’d just seen a ghost. Twilight cleared her throat, searching for an answer.
“Uhhh…” she rolled her eyes. “I just, uhh, came when you weren’t looking. Went to check on Shellshock, he told me yesterday he wasn’t feeling good.”
The guard at the exit raised a brow, then lifted his helmet and scratched his cheek.
“R-really? Strange… I thought I was looking the whole time. I guess not — don’t tell Prince Tsunami, please!”
Twilight smirked.
“Your secret’s safe with me. Work on your focus, though. Might not be me that catches you slacking next time.”
Twilight walked past the guard. He watched her leave with a confused expression.
Once outside the jail chambers, Twilight breathed out in relief. She was already sweating bullets underneath the armor, a combination of stress and the stuffiness of the armor. Twilight stopped and looked at the ground.
Wait, I should have asked him about food! I need to get back to full energy if I want to get out of here… the Shapeshift and Magic Tether spells took a lot out of me, and I wasn’t that energized to begin with.
Twilight looked back up. She was now in a wider corridor, with a higher, vaulted ceiling. Portraits of different, regal-looking stallions adorned the walls at certain points. Candelabras illuminated the hallway, which had a red velvet carpet running in the middle of it. The brown stone walls glowed an eerie magenta.
Seems like all the walls in this palace are magic-proof.
Twilight spotted a pair of guards walking towards her, a stallion and a smaller mare, both in emerald-gem armor. She gulped.
Here goes nothing!
She waved at the guards and trotted over.
“H-hey, umm, I’m new to guard duty in the palace… when’s lunch? I’m starving…”
One of the guards, the mare, pointed behind her.
“Lunch is served at noon, follow this hallway and don’t turn down any other corridors until you see the white, wooden archway. Through there is the mess hall.”
Twilight nodded.
“Thanks. I appreciate that. Most ponies haven’t been telling me anything all day…”
The stallion spoke up.
“Not a problem. We all started new at some point. You should feel honored to serve in the palace, it brings us closer to Prince Tsunami and Clopstantine himself.” The stallion and mare brought a hoof to their chests and closed their eyes.
“He who is Great, thank Him for his presence,” they recited.
Twilight copied the words and gesture as best she could, then went on her way. The inside of her helmet was drenched with sweat. Her breathing was getting worse and her eyesight was wavering.
Whoa… getting’ woozy… need to eat… and get a drink of water… ugh…
Twilight admired the paintings on the wall and the occasional staute as she walked, and walked, and walked some more. The hallway winded forever, although she passed dozens of branching corridors and wooden, iron-plated doors as she trotted. Twilight wondered if she’d even get to the mess hall before passing out. There were constantly guards or servant ponies coming and going. It wouldn’t take long before her unconscious form was found if she did pass out, and by then the Shapeshift spell would have surely worn off.
Can’t let that happen… must stay awake!
A thought crossed Twilight’s mind. She walked and stared at the red carpet as she flipped through the images in her brain. Celestia’s disappointed face was front and center among them.
This was supposed to be an escape plan, but can I really return to Canterlot with nothing? I was supposed to uncover the secret behind the weird, nightly dreams that Luna and Celestia have been having. Princess Luna is sure it’s a form of magic coming from Clopstantinople…
Twilight sighed, her old doubts returning.
What kind of princess would I be if I just ran away now?! I need to find something… anything! Tsunami has got to be up to something! They saw him in their dreams!
Twilight raised her head once more, newly determined.
I won’t quit! I’m not leaving this palace until I find out once and for all what Tsunami is up to!