Three Days Later
Rainbow Dash’s hooves beat against barren earth, clouds of dust kicking up in her wake. The sun beat down overhead and beads of sweat dripped down her body as tired and tight muscles kept her body moving. She had been running laps in the courtyard where the guards trained for an hour now, stopping every so often for a long drink of cold water before getting back to it.
Her last few days had been much of the same: eating massive breakfasts that she and Rarity prepared, running and exercising for most of the day, and avoiding King Sombra and Sunset Shimmer as best as she could. It wasn’t much, but it was what she needed.
The act of working out like this was refreshing, something that she hadn’t done on the ground in what felt like forever. She spent most of her days in the sky, practicing tricks and maneuvers. There was something refreshing about running though, about hooves in dirt. The physicality of it all.
Dash came to a stop at the finish line of the makeshift track, where a table with several jugs of water had been set up for her. Spitfire had it set up after the first day so Dash could stay outside instead of going inside every time she needed a break. She trotted over to the table and sat on her haunches as she pulled one of the jugs down.
She was feeling better and better with each day, stronger too. She was burning as many calories as she consumed each day, already turning her skinny and frail form more wiry and tough. Dash was shorter than most other pegasi, leading to any excess weight she put on more noticeable than others. For now she would be thankful for a more lean physique.
She chugged the cool water down until half of the jug was empty and let out a happy sigh when she pulled it from her lips. She set it down and looked up to the sky, bringing her wing up to block out the sun so she could see without being blinded.
It was a beautiful, if a little hot, day. A few clouds dotted the sky, being moved to wherever they needed to be for the upcoming weather schedule by diligent and hardworking pegasi. A group of guards flew in formation over the castle and in between the clouds, their crystalline armor gleaming in the midday sun. The sounds of the city reached over the castle walls, the sound of socializing ponies going about their days.
It felt like a perfect day.
“Rainbow Dash!” A voice, one she immediately recognized as belonging to Sunset Shimmer, called her name shattered the perfect moment and drew her head back down to the ground. A group of ponies were crossing the courtyard from the castle, chief among them being Spitfire and Sunset Shimmer. Dash stood up and put the jug on the table and waited for them to approach.
“Getting enough exercise in, Dash?” Spitfire beamed as she spoke. She admired the work ethic, the relentless pursuit of betterment, and she was happy to see her adoptive sister in that pursuit.
“I could always do more.” Dash admitted with a matching smile.
“Well we might be able to help with that.” Sunset interjected as she took an elongated box from one of the armored stallions behind her. “It was finished this morning.” The case came to rest on the table with the water as it was relinquished from Sunset’s magical grip. The latches on the case were clicked open by the same magic and it opened to reveal the contents.
Inside was a metal facsimile of a wing crafted of gold and silver. At the point where each of the feathers, sharpened like knives, met the main structure rested a sapphire. Then one last sapphire sat at the base of the thing. The whole thing glimmered and shone in the sun overhead, catching the light no matter the angle.
“Rare just finished fitting the gems this morning.” Spitfire spoke quietly but wasn’t able to keep the smile from her voice. “I’ve never seen the armory make something so fast, especially a prosthetic like this.”
Dash lifted the wing from the case with her hooves. Being metal, she expected it to be heavy. It wasn’t though, it was light and felt almost like a stiff breeze might carry it away. She wished it looked a little less ostentatious, but as long as it worked she wouldn’t complain too much.
“Be gentle with it!” A stallion surged forward and took the wing from Dash’s hooves with a golden aura of magic. “This is delicate hardware! You can’t just toss it around in your hooves.” He was a unicorn, an amber horn poking out of a ragged vermillion mane confirmed that much. Energetic cyan eyes studied the mechanical wing from behind a pair of round spectacles that looked eerily similar to Rainbow Dash’s own. To match his mane, a scraggly beard hung from his chin. “We’ll help you set it in and make sure it works, then we’ll be on our way. If you need any maintenance, just come see me.”
“And you are…?” Rainbow Dash recognized the stallion vaguely, but she couldn’t pin a name down. She had definitely seen him before.
“Oh right, your memory problems.” The stallion muttered and pushed his glasses up on his muzzle. “Sunburst, I’m His Majesty’s court mage and-”
“-my brother.” Sunset Shimmer finished.
“Now stand still.” Sunburst adjusted his glasses again as he moved the metal wing to Rainbow’s side. “You’ll feel a little tingle-well, maybe a shock-as it connects.” He took his time lining up the prosthetic before sliding it over the stump.
There was indeed a shock as the base of the metal wing connected with her flesh. Every hair on her body stood on end as a surge of what she assumed was magic pushed through the nerves of her body all the way up to her brain. It was like catching a second wind she didn’t know she needed. The new wing on her back now stood straight and its metal wings flared out, the jewels glowing with power.
“Please try to lay your wing flat against your back.” Sunburst asked, his eyes traveling up and down the appendage. “Don’t think too hard about it, just like you would with your other wing.”
Dash did as she was asked and tucked the wing against her side. She looked back and forth between the new wing and the real one, unable to tell the difference when it came to the dimensions alone. It was almost a perfect replica, save for the whole ‘being made of metal’ thing. She raised both of her wings and curled the feathers, amazed at the flexibility of the silver and gold-plated limb. Magic was truly a marvelous thing, she had to admit.
“Get used to it for a day or two. Move it around, let your body get acclimated to the magic. Pegasi aren’t used to such direct sources of power connected to their bodies, so just relax. You don’t want your body to reject it.” Sunburst’s voice was full of calm consideration, but there was an underlying urgency in those words. “It’ll probably be a few days, maybe a week, before you can attempt to fly.”
“No way.” Dash rotated the new wing and continued to flex it. She could feel the breeze move over it and saw the metallic feathers react as if they were natural. It felt normal, not like some sort of prosthetic.
Rainbow Dash’s hooves beat against barren earth, clouds of dust kicking up in her wake. Her wings spread out and rushing wind rustled the primaries, both real and fake, as she closed her eyes for a moment and focused on the sensation. It felt like a lifetime since she had shifted into a headspace for flight, but it was like a perfectly tailored suit. It just felt right.
She had a couple of hundred feet of runway ahead of her, wind was coming right at her so takeoff might be a bit of a challenge. Good, she needed one. Her wings beat once. She still expected the new one to fall off of her side due to the weight, but truly she couldn’t tell the difference. They beat again and again and again until she achieved lift.
Hooves left the ground and the tyranny of the earth was left behind. As her eyes opened again, she was greeted with a sight she wasn’t sure she would ever see again. The only thing in front of her was the blue of the sky and the freedom of flight. Her heart soared on new wings and a wave of euphoria washed over her soul like a tsunami.
The now-complete pegasus did nothing but fly around the courtyard where she had been practicing previously. She ignored everything but the sensation of flight, the sense of freedom she had reacquired. She wasn’t quite up with the clouds yet, she knew she was far too tired to go that high at the moment. For now she would be content with staying about fifty feet off of the ground. Greater heights would come soon enough.
“How’s it feel?” Spitfire, who shed her armor, had taken off and risen to the same altitude in a few seconds. Both mares stopped and hovered in place to talk.
“Better than you could ever imagine.” Rainbow Dash couldn’t keep the smile from her face as she spoke. “It’s a bit stiff, but I think that’s just how it’s going to feel. I’m worried about more technical stuff though, I’m not really sure how much control I have over it.”
“One thing at a time, Dash.” Spitfire chuckled. “You’re still not up to full strength yet. Maybe just focus on the basics before you try to do any corkscrews or barrel rolls. “
“Please.” Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes playfully at the captain. “I could outfly you even at fifty percent strength!
“You couldn’t beat me in a race on a good day at one-hundred percent!” Spitfire fired back and gave Dash’s shoulder a light punch. “All of your fancy flying can’t beat pure speed, and I don’t think you can hit that fifth ‘Rainboom’ gear right now.”
Dash was about ninety-nine percent sure she was faster than Spitfire. In the Wonderbolts that was tenths of a second of difference, but it mattered. In a straightaway, Dash would bet on herself over Spitfire one-hundred times out of one-hundred. In something a bit more complicated, an obstacle course or even a track with more curves or changes in elevation, Spitfire would have the upper hoof. There was no denying who was faster, though. Only one pony in all of the world had the speed necessary to create a Sonic Rainboom and it wasn’t Spitfire.
“Wanna bet?”
“Dashie, you’re in no shape to r-”
“You scared?”
“No, I’m not scared of racing somepony who spent three months starving and wasting away and just started to fly again five minutes ago.”
“Then what do you have to lose?”
“You’re really going to make me do this?” Spitfire let out a deep sigh. “Alright, just don’t act like I didn’t warn you.” The unarmored captain rolled her neck and stretched out her limbs. “Let’s start at one end of the courtyard and go to the other end. That’s…” She eyeballed the distance and hummed for a moment. “...a thousand feet? Give or take a hundred.”
“Sounds good to me.”
The two made their way to one end of the courtyard and landed. Dash rotated her wings and stretched, getting as loose as possible before the race could start. Her long bout of exercising beforehand had already left her sore and ready to call it a day, but now this was a matter of pride. She would take a sore body over a wounded pride any day.
“Ready…” Spitfire spoke as she dug her hooves into the hardened soil. Rainbow Dash joined her, assuming a stance like her body was a coiled spring ready to be shot from a cannon.
“Set…” Rainbow Dash said next as they both flared their wings out.
“Go!” They yelled in unison.
They disappeared in a wingbeat, leaving only a cloud of dust behind. Rainbow’s body screamed at the stress she was putting it through, the exertion tearing at the muscles in her back. In the first few seconds she was neck and neck with Spitfire, and the shocked expression from the other mare showed just how unexpected that was.
The effort was grueling, it was like nothing she had ever experienced before. She had flown while exhausted, yes, but it was never like this. Before she always had this ability to push to one-hundred percent even if she was nowhere close to it. She felt her wingbeats start to syncopate and she started to fall behind Spitfire in the standings.
They had stayed side by side until they had about one hundred yards ago and Dash’s strained body finally faltered. She didn’t just slow down, the unused muscles associated with flight seized up and she dropped like a rock. If she had not been only ten or so feet off of the ground, the fall would’ve been severely dangerous. Instead she just tumbled ass over teakettle across the ground, her body picking up dust and dirt. She came to a stop, finally, about ninety feet from the declared finish line.
It was only when her body finally came to a complete stop that her mind caught up. New scrapes and bruises had already sprouted up from her tumble across the terrain and the ache and exhaustion caught up to her. Her eyes closed and she let out a long and low groan that resonated with the dirt and pebbles around her.
“Is the wing okay?” Sunburst was the first one by her side and had her artificial wing raised and was inspecting it closely. “Oh thank the stars, it’s fine. The charms held up, good.”
“I’m fine too, thanks.” Dash yanked her wing away from the stallion and tucked it against her side. She stood, her legs protesting the action wholeheartedly, and winced. “I’m gonna feel this in the morning…”
“I’ve…never seen you fly that fast before.” Spitfire, who hadn’t even broken a sweat from their race, landed by Rainbow Dash’s side. She steadied the exhausted and sore pegasus with a hoof and shook her head. “But I told you so, I knew you weren’t ready.”
“Gotta test your limits, it’s the only way to overcome them.” Rainbow retorted as she stretched out her muscles to alleviate some of the burning pain that consumed them. “And I told you that I could outfly you at fifty percent. I’m just not even at fifty percent yet.”
“If that’s the case then you’ve been holding back for your entire life.” The answer was muttered with a hefty dollop of annoyance added on top. “I should throw you in an ice bath for this, you probably need it anyways.”
“I would kill for an ice bath and a nice deep massage.” Rainbow Dash replied with a longing sigh. “I missed this, though. The burn. The pain. It means it was a good workout.”
“You’re crazy.” Spitfire laughed as both mares trotted back towards the castle. “It’s like you’ve never met a wall you weren’t glad to bash your head against.”
“I’ll stop when a wall finally wins.”
—-
“I miss you.” A metal locket turned over in Rainbow Dash’s hooves. It was something that had been at her home in the city. Rarity had gone and packed up some of her stuff to bring here while she recovered, this locket being one of them. It was a simple thing made of gold with no markings on its outside that could fit in the frog of her hoof.
Inside was a treasure so precious she could barely stand to open it. There was no force on the planet, not even her own sadness, that could stop her from opening it again. There was just a picture inside, a picture of two fillies. One had a wild rainbow mane and a bright smile, the other had a long pink mane she hid behind.
She had half expected the locket to feature three butterflies engraved on its surface, but that would’ve been impossible. Here, in this world, Fluttershy never got her cutie mark. She never had the chance.
“It’s my fault.”
The rainboom scared her.
Sent her falling.
It was a weight on her soul.
The one weight that would add no strength over time.
It was so hard to keep composure when the weight of two worlds were pressing down on her heart. Even alone in Spitfire and Rarity’s guest room, her room now, she felt the need to keep herself together.
“I miss all of you.” She thought about the other mares that made up her friend circle. What would they do if they were here? Alone and isolated they would be in the same position she was, but what if they were all here? How would they deal with this? Their six heads together were better than any one of them alone.
Here it was just Rainbow Dash, though. Rarity was here too, but it wasn’t the same. There were no Elements of Harmony. No grand friendship. It was just herself and a game of two truths and a lie with reality
“No, no lies. Just the two truths.” She reminded herself. This world was real, but so was the other one in her memories. Sombra had even said it and confirmed it. He had seen it too. If it had actually happened or was happening somewhere else, in some different world, was another question. That was the grand design of fate, though. This world was the one that was not meant to be but was happening all the same, so both were true and she carried them both with her.
Her body had already given out once today from strain, how long before her mind would follow from all of this?