She no longer had to worry about her hooves freezing to the icy walls of the crevice, as long as she could get up there in the first place she could either shimmy up or use the hatchet to dig cuts into the ice and pull herself up with it. Rainbow Dash exhaled as she looked up at the crevice she had fallen down only an hour or two earlier. It was still open on top, snow hadn’t concealed it once more, so she had best get working now before her best opportunity slid on by.
“Piece of cake,” Rainbow Dash confidently grinned and cracked her hooves. She pulled the hatchet from one of the pockets on her down jacket and stood up on her back legs.
Rainbow Dash swung the hatchet as hard as she could at the icy surface of the cave wall in front of her, the rusted blade embedding about halfway in and getting stuck. Just what she wanted, it clearly wasn’t coming loose on its own. Rainbow Dash kept it grasped in her hoof and took a deep breath before pulling herself up by the hatchet and kicking her back hooves against the wall at the same time. She had to do this all in an instant, as soon as she reached the apex of her little lift and jump she kicked off the wall and jumped towards the opening of the crevice above her, pulling her hatchet out of the ice at the same time and readying it again.
“Haaa!” Rainbow Dash yelled and swung the hatchet at the inner wall of the crevice while reaching out to the other side with her boot-covered hoof in an attempt to wedge herself in.
The hatchet caught the ice and dug in deep but Rainbow’s weight almost tore it loose. It was only thanks to her firmly pressing her other limb against the wall of the crevice to lessen the amount of pressure on the tool that she didn’t end up falling back to the ground. Now Rainbow Dash hung loosely there inside the crevice, her head and front legs in it and the rest of her dangling beneath her. She couldn’t dislodge the hatchet just yet, she had to pull herself up and get her body all the way in.
A pony who wasn’t as athletic and in-shape as she was might have trouble with that, but even though upper-body strength wasn’t her best area, Rainbow Dash was able to easily pull the rest of herself up into the crevice. She pressed her back against one side of it and her hooves against the either—keeping herself perfectly pinned. She could tell she was still in a precarious position though. The boots she wore now were made for warmth, not grip, and they slid against the ice even with her pressing her limbs down as hard as she could. Rainbow knew she would need the hatchet to make it the rest of the way up without falling.
Carefully reaching back down to it she yanked it loose. Rainbow Dash only paused for a second longer to catch her breath before reaching up and striking the hatchet into a new spot over her head. It dug in well and Rainbow Dash copied the same process as before; hoisting herself carefully up and wedging herself in tight before pulling the hatchet out and stabbing it into a new spot. Rinse and repeat. It was way too slow going for Rainbow’s tastes and the surface was still almost twenty feet away. Despite how great of shape she was in too it was a draining process, she was using muscles she wasn’t used to and the cold was affecting her even through her new outfit. Rainbow Dash was already panting and breathing hard by the time she had made two more moves.
This is a real pain in the flank… She growled inside her head. She didn’t even want to yell out or say anything to waste energy, which just made her more annoyed.
Rainbow Dash reached up for the fourth time and smashed her hatchet into the ice. After she had pulled herself up and pulled the hatchet loose she noticed that the rusted blade was becoming chipped. It was either going to break or stop being able to make the cuts she needed very soon. Rainbow Dash bit the inside of her cheek and braced herself against the walls of the crevice as best she could.
A single glance up told her she was still only about halfway there and she definitely couldn’t risk just crawling up without the hatchet. She’d slide back down and that would be that. There was nothing she could do but take her chances with the hatchet. She clicked her tongue and raised it up above her head, aiming for a fresh spot in the ice.
Here goes. Rainbow Dash hammered it into the ice, upon which the blade fractured into dozens of tiny pieces.
Her eyes went wide as she suddenly found herself without the purchase her body had been expecting, her coiled muscles gave out and she started to slide down the icy crevice. Rainbow Dash pounded her boot-clad hooves against the ice but just like she had noticed earlier they were far too slick to stop her descent.
“No!” Rainbow Dash yelled and tried jamming the broken hatchet into the ice to slow her descent. Unfortunately all it did was drag and bounce off the wall.
Her head banged back against the wall during her fall and Rainbow Dash dropped the hatchet, shortly after falling right out of the crevice and back to the ground below. She hit it with a hard thud and groaned in pain before picking herself up. Gritting her teeth she slammed a hoof down on the ground. The blue pegasus panted breathlessly before squeezing her eyes shut and groaning in frustration. She sat down and stared at her broken hatchet, wracking her mind.
“Now what?”
“This is so not right,” Rainbow Dash said as she sadly looked down at the Reindeer skeleton. “But… there’s no way you would want someone else to end up the same way as you, right?”
She held the dull hoofsaw in her hooves and gulped. “Aw geez… that doesn’t make me feel any better about doing this at all...” Rainbow Dash bit her lip and walked over to the head of the skeleton. “Twilight, Fluttershy, I know you wouldn’t like me doing this but this totally doesn’t count as desecrating some creature. Totally doesn’t.”
With a deep sigh, Rainbow Dash got to work.
Minutes later she was back below the crevice with two tips of the Reindeer’s antlers gripped in her hooves. The hoofsaw and hatchet she had completely discarded, she’d get nothing else out of them, but with her new “tools” she could climb her way out of this crevice.
“Okay buddy, you’re helping me out a ton,” Rainbow said as she walked over to the wall and slammed the antler tip in her right hoof into the ice. She then brought up her left hoof and stabbed the other tip in slightly higher.
With a heave, Rainbow Dash pulled herself up and then took out the tip in her right hoof, bringing it back up higher and stabbing it in again. Foot by foot she did that until she was back at the crevice.
“This is going to take a while...” Rainbow Dash muttered.
It was just like before except now she didn’t have to brace herself against the walls of the crevice, with two things to plunge into the ice she could always hang off one and make sure she wasn’t going to fall. It took all of the strength she had in her limbs but Rainbow Dash made the slow climb up and up the crevice with the use of the cut off Reindeer antlers. She was breathing heavily and sweating inside the heavy jacket but the surface got closer and closer. She could feel the cold breeze from above and see the snow along the edges of the crevice. Almost there.
Rainbow Dash was thankful for that extra boost of energy she got from the seed bag earlier. Without it she might not have had the strength she needed to make this climb again.
She jammed the left antler tip into the ice and hoisted herself up, one more time and she’d be able to reach the surface and pull herself out of this stupid crevice. She wanted to put it all behind her already.
“Hrk!” Rainbow Dash grunted and thrust in the right antler tip, taking no time to pause or rest and throwing her left foreleg up and over the edge of the crevice. Her limb plopped into snow and she scrambled about with her back legs to push the rest of herself out onto the ground, finally rolling free and onto her back in the snow.
Rainbow Dash’s chest rose and fell in short bursts as she stared up at the cloudy sky until a small smile formed on her face. “That’s… how it’s done...”