//------------------------------// // On the Horizon // Story: Rainbow Dash's Unstoppable Ego // by MagicS //------------------------------// The pegasus from Equestria (who was now incredibly far from home) was warmed up and well rested thanks to how easygoing she took it yesterday. Her wings were once more carrying her high over the world with nothing but snow and rocks whizzing by below her. She was pleasantly humming to herself with the wind blowing through her mane, the cold was at a near freezing temperature with her flying up like this but she ignored it. Maybe some frost would gather on her feathers but so what? She’d shake it off just like always. By the time she returned to Equestria she was going to be so used to cold weather it would probably start to feel hot on a normal day. There wasn’t much of anything in front of her that she could see so far when she looked. A dense fog, or mist, clouded the horizon. Whatever was further north was yet still a mystery. Although there couldn’t be much left for her to see and travel over until it became “south”. That was one absolute certainty that Rainbow Dash knew: the north pole was close. Close enough where she doubted there could be anything big or major in-between her and it. That misty whiteness on the horizon was getting closer now and Rainbow Dash flapped her wings harder so she could shoot through it like an arrow. There was a feeling she had inside her heart telling her that the goal line was approaching and all she needed to do was get through this one last spot. She kept herself pretty low to the ground as she flew hard towards the mist, it was possible she could’ve flown above it completely but she wanted to go into it in case anything was in there. Although she suspected that wasn’t the case and what she was after would be beyond the mists. Once she hit the mists she felt the extra moisture in the air collect on her and ice formed on her extremities. No surprise there. It was extremely cold now flying through here, almost like an ice shower, but Rainbow Dash was enduring. The cold was just a reminder of being alive anyways and she had dealt with much worse. Rainbow Dash made a sharp corkscrew in the air in order to both get her blood pumping some more and blast away the cold mist around her. No matter where she was or what she was doing in the sky she loved her air acrobatics. It was a truly wondrous feeling to be up here and flying with her whole side of the world below her. Rainbow Dash may not have fully appreciated that accomplishment but it was something amazing nonetheless. How many ponies had ever been up here? She hadn’t seen a pony since leaving the metal mountain. How many creatures in general could ever say they had traveled up here or had gone as far anywhere as Rainbow Dash? Not many. Not many at all. And she was still going with the top of the world being her next destination and stop. The wind picked up as she traveled through the white mist, buffeting her as she blindly forced her way onward. She had to squint her eyes to keep it from hurting too much—now that she thought about it the metal mountain would’ve been the perfect place to get goggles. There was no way they wouldn’t have had something like that or similar in there. But it had totally slipped her mind while she was inside the city. So now it was still just her and the raw weather out here. Rainbow Dash grit her teeth and ignored it all, she could whine and complain about stuff later. A shake of her head got all the frost off the tips of her mane and yet another burst of speed from her wings freed her up from the rest. When she blasted ahead again she left a little frost outline of a pegasus behind for a brief instant before it was blown away. Now a cone of wind was around her, spreading from her outstretched hooves in front of her, and she was picturing in her mind shooting out of the mist and discovering what lied beyond. And at long last did she make it out. With a final puff and a harsh flap of her wings the whiteness that obscured everything else disappeared and Rainbow Dash found herself in a wide open expanse of land with the sun shining down at her once more. The world was back into focus and her adrenaline kept her heart pounding in her chest. Coldness still dominated her sensations and an icy wind that was even more chilling than what she had felt before blew about her fur and feathers. Perhaps that was a sign, or a symbol of where she was now. Rainbow Dash slowed down her flight before eventually coming to a stop and hovering in place as she looked at what was before her. The blue pegasus was hovering over a tall cliff that plunged down seven hundred feet towards a lake that stretched from east to west as far as the eye could see. Massive ice floes and ice bergs floated around in it, crashing into each other and against the unyielding rock of the cliff. Barely any of the actual water down there could be seen between all the ice, crossing it would be suicidally treacherous for anyone that didn’t have wings. Past the lake the shore on the other side was rocky and jagged with a field of snow beyond the rocks that led to… something that looked very familiar to Rainbow Dash. “So this is it, huh?” Rainbow Dash said as she looked upon the absolutely massive stone walls that rose up on the horizon. Like the lake, they too stretched east to west before disappearing off in the distance. Rainbow Dash recognized this kind of thing well, too. It was exactly like the barrier that she had passed to enter the True North. The cliffs to the north were impossibly, unnaturally, high, piercing the heavens themselves. Could she fly above them? She would try if she had to but she honestly didn’t know if such a thing was even possible. That said, though, there was something different about this wall of rock that made her think she wouldn’t have to try something like that. A gap directly in front of her that would’ve been large enough to fit a city inside. It was a far cry from the narrow passage that she had learned about from the yaks and flown through near the start of her journey. Of course the gap wasn’t just empty space, no, there was something else filling it up that might make getting past this barrier even more difficult. A massive swirling tornado of dark clouds shot up through the entire gap, offering not even the slightest amount of space to travel through. Rainbow Dash looked up towards the sky but the tornado just kept going up into the clouds, looking as unnatural as any crazy weather she had seen. It reminded her briefly of the massive storm created by that giant pegasus she had conquered. But that was more akin to a vast hurricane, this was indeed a much more centralized and focused tornado. Just a single column of intense wind that stayed right there in-between the two walls of rock that separated this part of the world from the next. And Rainbow Dash knew in her heart of hearts that that was it. That was the north pole she was looking at. She had made it to the top of the world. She didn’t know why a giant tornado was spiraling around and surrounding it but she was going to find out. After all, she’d flown through worse. That tornado didn’t scare her one bit.