Rainbow Dash Around the World

by MagicS


Will You Help Me?

“Wait, again?! Do we really need to go back down there again?” Dotty asked Wish nervously the following morning.

Yes, Dotty, we do,” Wish said to her as she hopped out of bed. “I’m going to talk to her again. And yes, alone.”

“B-But-”

“Nothing happened last time. You don’t need to worry about it,” Wish told her.

“But what if the Head Inquisitor is down there this morning?” Dotty grimaced.

Wish couldn’t stop her own grimace from appearing. “Well then… then I’ll tell her to leave me alone too.”

“R-Really?” Dotty blanched.

Yes,” Wish resolutely stated. “Even if she tries to stop us or says she’ll tell my father. No matter what, I’m going to talk to that pegasus again.” She raised an eyebrow at Dotty. “And you’re going to help me out, right?”

A nervous smile stretched across Dotty’s face. “Y-Yep! Of course I am.”

“Thank you, Dotty. I want to have breakfast first before we go back down there,” Wish said. She was pretty sure she wanted to be full of energy for her next visit. Something told her it was a good idea.

Dotty nodded. “Let’s get you cleaned up and then you can eat. I’ll draw your bath.”

The time spent taking a bath and getting her mane and tail done was unusually quiet thanks to Dotty’s nervousness and reticence. It was obvious that she had a lot of reservations about going back down to the dungeons. So did Wish for that matter, but she couldn’t exactly stop. She had to talk more with Rainbow Dash. Both to get over the nightmares, and get over everything strange inside this castle and the kingdom in general. Rainbow Dash knew things—there were a lot of secrets, maybe even uncomfortable ones, being held by her. As much as it bothered Wish, she knew that Rainbow Dash was the key to all of this. She had to help her. And then maybe she could get help too.

Only Wish could do this. Her nightmares… she knew that’s what they were telling her. Some of them at least. That she needed to act, that she finally needed to do something or nothing would change.

After the bath it was a hearty and delicious breakfast of pancakes stacked taller than she was. Complete with strawberries, eggs, plenty of syrup, and a nice big glass of cold milk. She had been so tired lately that she devoured the entire plate in front of her and guzzled the entire glass of milk down. For some reason despite her mental and physical exhaustion there was also something buried deep in her that was lighting a fire inside Wish. Some kind of renewed determination.

Maybe Dotty had noticed it as well, she didn’t even attempt to dissuade Wish again. In fact her mouth was once again clamped shut as they left Wish’s chambers and made the same long walk down to the dungeons that they made yesterday.

Wish was a little different. She didn’t have the same kind of nervousness or trepidation inside her. Her face was a strong frown that told any pony she looked at that she was serious right now. It might’ve been mostly because of who her father was, but neither Dotty nor anypony else wanted to speak up to her as she went through the castle.

That’s how it was right up until they made it to the dungeon, and Head Inquisitor Vox was waiting there for her.

The Head Inquisitor wasn’t standing right by the desk or right at the bottom of the stairs. She was out between the first couple of cells with a torch held in her magical grip and a smile on her face as she looked in at whoever it was that was imprisoned there. A tune was humming from her throat as Wish gulped and Dotty started trembling as soon as they both saw her when they reached the bottom of the stairs. Vox of course, as much of a sadist as she was, still pleasantly hummed along and acted like she hadn’t even noticed the two of them yet. Just so she could torment them further.

At the desk, the quiet Inquisitor averted his gaze from all of them.

Wish suspected he had told Vox about her visit yesterday and that’s why the Head Inquisitor was here waiting for them now.

Either way, she was here, and there was no getting to Rainbow Dash without going through her first.

Vox suddenly stopped humming and looked over at Wish and Dotty with a happy grin on her face. “Oh! I hadn’t noticed the two of you there. What brings you down to the dungeon today?”

“Ah, well, u-um, H-Head Inquisitor, it’s really nothing you see...” Dotty started fumbling around, pulling at her pigtails nervously before Wish cut her off.

“I’m down here to talk to the pegasus,” Wish said.

Vox’s grin widened. “Reeealy now?”

“Yes, really,” Wish didn’t waver or cower before Vox.

“Well now that’s news to me,” Vox chuckled and walked up to Wish and Dotty. “You see, I should always be notified if you want to talk to that prisoner. She’s a special case after all. And you’re a very special filly too. But neither me nor your father heard anything about you wanting to do this. Now I’m sure he wouldn’t mind though so long as you weren’t alone. So how about I tag along with you today and we can, heh, talk with the pegasus together. There’s no reason for you to want to talk to her all on your lonesome anyways. Things would probably even be so much better if you just let me do the talking and watched.”

There was silence in the dungeon as Wish looked up directly into Vox’s red eyes. Dotty was holding her breath as her eyes kept going from Vox to Wish and back to Vox. The other Inquisitor was busy looking at his hooves. Wish felt her teeth chatter slightly, she felt a coldness in her stomach, and the slightest of wobbling in her knees. She sucked in a deep breath to steady herself.

“No.”

Vox’s head tilted to the side, her grin frozen on her face and her left eye beginning to twitch. “I… I think I just misheard you, young lady.”

“You didn’t mishear. I’m going to go talk to the pegasus alone and I don’t want you anywhere near.”

Now, Dotty and the other Inquisitor were both staring at Wish with their jaws dropped open in surprise and amazement. Nopony, nopony at all, had ever spoken like that to the Head Inquisitor. And there were very obvious reasons why. The things she did… the things she was rumored to do, everypony was afraid of her.

And now this little filly who she was so used to terrorizing was standing up to her.

“Wish… do you remember the talk we had back in the royal carriage?” Vox asked as she laid a hoof on Wish’s shoulder. Not squeezing or hurting her, but still trying to menace the filly. “You remember that, right?”

“I do,” Wish nodded.

“So then why would you say something like this? Why would you say something that you know I don’t want to hear?” Vox’s pupils were quivering in her eyes.

Wish shrugged Vox’s hoof off her shoulder. “Because I can.”

A vein throbbed in Vox’s neck and her whole head started to twitch, her jaw was clenched tightly shut as she ground her teeth back and forth and a wheezing noise emerged from her throat. She brought a trembling hoof up to her pink mane and ran it through the long curtain of mane. “You… do you really not get what’s happening right now? You can’t say no to me.”

“I can and I will. Because-” Wish fought back the tremble in her own voice and body. “Because if you don’t let me see Rainbow Dash on my own right now, I’ll tell my father how I really felt after you did your… your Inquisitor duty. I’ll tell him some of the things you said and did to upset me. A-And you’ll be the one in trouble then.”

“Little… stupid… brat,” Vox growled as she yanked at her own mane.

“I’m not… I’m not scared of you, Vox.” Wish said to her.

That caused a low chuckle to emerge from the Head Inquisitor. “Is that so?”

“Yes. So you can just stay here while I go talk to Rainbow Dash, Dotty will watch over you,” Wish said, pointing up at her maid.

The maid in question had a look that said “Please don’t drag me into this” on her face, but she still nodded as soon as Wish said what her job was to be. Then refused to meet Vox’s eyes at all and failed her attempt at whistling nonchalantly.

“Really now… well I suppose I just have to listen to the young lady,” Vox said as she ground her teeth and a twisted smile distorted her mouth. “Haha… what a funny turn of events. Guess I’ll sit here with the maid and desk jockey while you have a private conversation with our special prisoner who shouldn’t even be here anymore, hahaha!”

Her wild laughter unnerved Wish and the other ponies, but Wish still stood her ground.

“Boy this sure is amusing!” Vox slapped her knee and looked at the Inquisitor at the desk. “Give the young lady a candle, she’ll need it after all if she’s going to walk down to that cell all alone again. And I’ll just stay here like a happy little pony with the maid. After all I sure wouldn’t want Master Dreamweaver and the Queen to get upset with me. Nope, no way, no how! Hahaha, what a fantastic surprise compared to how I thought this day was going to turn out! I suppose I’ll have to think about something fun to do to deal with all this stress! Sure won’t be fun for anypony else who annoys me today though!”

After that, Vox bit her lip almost hard enough to draw blood and paced over to the locked storage room door. She faced it and put a steadying hoof against the door, breathing in deeply and shuddering, repeatedly.

“Umm… here is your candle again,” the other Inquisitor said and hoofed over the source of light to Wish. Anything to take the focus away from Vox.

“Thank you,” Wish said to him and took it. She then looked over at Dotty, somewhat worried for the maid after the mood she had put Vox in, but pretty sure the Head Inquisitor wouldn’t do anything to her. “I’ll be back later, I don’t know how long.”

Dotty forced a smile onto her face. “T-Take however much time you need.”

She didn’t mean it, but the fact she was able to at least say it was nice.

Wish smiled back to her and nodded before turning and once more making the quiet and dark trip down through the dungeon to Rainbow Dash’s cell. It was almost humorous to think she had been struggling to get in here or thinking about what might be down here for a while, and now she had gone in and out of it several times in the past few days. There wasn’t any mystery left. And now she was trying to be strong enough to not find any horror with it either. That was still made difficult by the moans and grumbles she heard from some of the cells around her, along with the quiet whispers for help.

It hurt her to just keep on walking after hearing that, but there was nothing she could do right now. She had to help another pony first. She had to get help and then… then perhaps she could return the favor and stop whatever bad things were happening in this castle.

That was her goal at the moment as she made it to Rainbow Dash’s cell. One step at a time. The next step was talking with Rainbow Dash and maybe finally being able to shed some light on things.

“Rainbow Dash? It’s me again. I’m back, alone, just like you asked. Are you awake?” Wish asked the darkness.

The sound of a stomach growling greeted her.

“Yeah kid, I’m awake. And hungry,” Rainbow’s raspy voice came from the cell.

Wish winced. “I should’ve brought some food with me… I had a big breakfast, and I know you haven’t been given much to eat.”

“No big deal. Relax, I’ll live.”

Wish sat down and once again put the candle through the bars so it was close enough where she could see Rainbow Dash’s face. Despite the emaciated state of her body, her ruby eyes still shone with strength. “You’re really okay even after going through all the stuff Vox has put you through down here.”

“Meh,” Rainbow Dash attempted a small shrug. “I’ve been in some bad spots before, that helmet cage thing is definitely different, but I can take what the nutjob’s been dishing out.”

“I wouldn’t want to have to go through any of that...” Wish shuddered.

“Well and that’s why you’re here, right? You don’t want anypony to have to go through something like this. You want to help, don’t you?” Rainbow Dash asked her.

Wish raised an eyebrow at the pegasus. “Do you trust me enough now to talk about it?”

Rainbow Dash was silent for a second, her strong eyes gazing into Wish the whole time. Finally she took a deep breath and gazed even harder at Wish. “Do you have what it takes to help? Do you have it in you? Are you ready to hear things you might not want to hear? I’m sure you’ve dealt with stuff in here already, but are you really willing to believe in me and help? Do you really, really, think helping me is the right thing to do?”

“Yes,” Wish said as strongly as she could. “I-I’ve been afraid… I still am afraid… that’s why it’s taken me so long. But you’ve always been there in my mind, and then when I saw you… I think I finally understood. There’s stuff going on I don’t understand. And ponies have been acting strange ever since I came to this castle, I know that helping you is the right thing to do. I have to help you, to help myself, to help everypony. I-I’m the only one who can do it.”

“In the end… it always has to be you to help yourself. Don’t forget that,” Rainbow Dash said.

“I-It’s tough… I-”

“I know. I know it can be tough,” Rainbow Dash sighed. “You’re just a kid too, but sometimes you’ve just gotta do what you’ve gotta do. I’ll trust you, Wish. Cause to be honest, I need your help in more ways than one.”

“How?” Wish blinked. “And I thought you said you could already get out of here on your own? What more help do you need? Is there some other reason you’re still in the dungeon and haven’t broken free?”

“Well I guess you could say I’m here because of a really bad plan—and what annoys me the most about that is it wasn’t even my bad plan,” Rainbow Dash snorted.

“Huh?”

Rainbow Dash shook her head. “That part isn’t important, never mind. Anyways, I could sort of get out of here, but to do that it would take a little time and some other stuff would happen at the same time and I really can’t have that stuff happen yet without finding something first… and I can’t find that thing without getting out of here. So I’m kind of stuck. Because I’ve been in here so long—way longer than I figured I would be—I’ve been thinking of taking a gamble and just getting the ball rolling anyways, cause it wasn’t looking like I’d be able to do anything else.”

Understanding dawned on Wish’s face. “And then I came here. You need me to find whatever it is you’re looking for.”

“And preferably also get me out of these chains to make things easier before I do my thing,” Rainbow said. “I remember seeing keys on the wall when I was first brought down here.”

“Well… I don’t know how I’d get those without somepony stopping me,” the thought of so blatantly doing something she knew was against her father’s wishes also made her feel queasy, but she didn’t mention that. It may have been the right thing to do. It may not have been easy. “What’s the thing you’re looking for?”

Rainbow Dash breathed out her nose and turned her head slightly so Wish could see her neck. “You know how the sky changed when you came to the castle and everypony got these black bands on their necks?”

“Yeah,” Wish nodded.

“I know why that happened and what’s causing it. And what you don’t know—probably at least—is that at the moment that all happened, a barrier went up along the borders of Hoofica. Around the entire kingdom. Completely separating your country from the outside world,” Rainbow Dash told her.

Wish’s eyes widened. “B-But… how? Why?”

“To make sure ponies couldn’t leave. This wasn’t a shield or a wall to keep ponies out, it’s a huge magical barrier made to keep ponies in. If you were looking at Hoofica from the outside, all you’d see is empty space, mountains, valleys, a normal sky. It’s camouflage. Part of the barrier’s magic. But if you step inside then—zap! This black band appears around your neck and it stops you from leaving. That’s the first thing I learned when I came here. Even if you get close to the barrier and try to look out it’s just like a dark haze and you can’t really see anything. That’s why the sky across the whole kingdom went dark too.”

Rainbow Dash snorted and frowned. “Ponies check in, but they don’t check out. That’s the current state of Hoofica.”

“I-I don’t understand...” Wish shook her head. “And how is something like that even possible?”

“There’s a crystal. A magical crystal that’s being used to make and sustain the barrier. It’s somewhere in this castle but I don’t know where exactly—that’s what I need to find. If the barrier goes down, Hoofica is one step closer to being normal again,” Rainbow Dash looked away briefly, something Wish didn’t notice. “And your Queen loses the iron grip she had on the population...”

“The Queen...” Wish thought about the royal, her strange behavior, her apathy towards the King. “T-This was her idea? But why would she do all this in the first place? I don’t get it.”

Rainbow Dash bit her lip in hesitation, something Wish did notice this time. “F-From what I’ve heard, your Queen went off her rocker. Don’t know why exactly, but she threw out a lot of the old royal guards and changed a bunch of policies. She doesn’t seem to care about how all the ponies out in Hoofica are suffering, but I don’t really know what her deal is. Where she got the crystal from or what her goal is, but it doesn’t really matter, she just has to be stopped.”

Wish nodded as she took in what Rainbow Dash was saying, but her brow furrowed as she thought about it. Some things just didn’t add up. And there were other things she hadn’t mentioned at all even though they had to be involved too. She looked up into Rainbow Dash’s eyes. “Are you telling me the whole truth?”

“I-” Rainbow Dash winced. “I’m telling you what needs to be done to help Hoofica. I need to learn where that crystal is and then… then I can help everypony and put a stop to this.”

“But you’re still keeping secrets. You asked if I was willing to hear things I didn’t want to hear but you’re still...” Wish frowned.

“I just wanted to know how serious you were. You’re a good kid, there’s no reason to-” Rainbow Dash said.

“To tell me what?” Wish asked. “What… what do you really think I’m so afraid of hearing?”

Rainbow Dash had a sad, almost pitying, look on her face as she thought things over in her head before acquiescing. “The Queen… she’s just part of it. But she’s not the one really behind things, she didn’t start any of this. The one who did...” She trailed off and looked away.

“My father,” Wish’s eyes narrowed. “You’re going to say all of this is his fault. That he’s the one. M-My father, who l-loves me and who’s always, always, taken care of me...”

“Kid, you know as well as I do that this all started when you and your father came to this castle,” Rainbow Dash said. “Some, er, acquaintances of mine filled me in on some of the details. He cozied up to the Queen and got her favor to do pretty much anything. Then after that… all this happened. The barrier, the bands, those posters with your psycho friend started popping up everywhere, ponies started getting dragged down to this dungeon… and what was done to me was done to a lot of them. An “Inquisition” or whatever where Vox drains despair out of a pony. I got no idea what for, nopony does, but there’s no way it can be for anything good.”

“And so it’s my father who’s behind all this...” Wish angrily grasped the bars of the cell.

Rainbow Dash sighed. “Look, I don’t know what he’s doing in this castle, I’ve only met him personally once, so maybe we—I’m wrong. But, kid, Vox even said that thing that drains out emotions came from your father. He’s the one ordering all this to happen. Not the Queen or anypony else. It all starts with him.”

Wish’s tight grip turned her hooves white as she shook and stared hard at the floor of the dungeon. “S-So what are you saying?”

“Kid, I don’t know how else to break it to you—and I hate having to say it… but your father is evil.”

“He’s not!” Wish shouted and looked up at her with tears in her eyes. “He’s not! He’s not! HE’S NOT!

“Kid-”

“It’s the Queen, or Vox, or somepony else. I-I don’t know everything my father’s doing here either but he’s not evil!” Wish continued to yell.

“Look, I’m not saying you have to do anything about him, but you wanted to help me right? You wanted to help Hoofica?” Rainbow Dash asked her.

“I-I… I know something’s wrong here but my father isn’t to blame for it. He’s not! Whatever it is he’s working on, for whatever reason, it’s not what you think! It can’t be!” Suspicion gleamed in Wish’s eyes. “W-What were you going to do about him?”

Rainbow Dash winced. “Uhh… stop him?”

“S-So you weren’t even going to tell me that you were going to attack him, were you? You just wanted me to get you out of here so you could do that!” Wish accused.

“No! It’s not like that, I just-”

Wish banged her hooves against the bars. “Shut up! You’re a liar! Y-You’ve just been trying to trick me this whole time haven’t you?! Trick me into betraying my father and acting like you’re some good pony!”

“Kid...”

“Y-You even attacked the castle earlier a-and you were probably trying to reach my father and h-hurt him when you did that too, weren’t you?!” Wish now just yelled at Rainbow Dash while she cried.

Rainbow Dash for her part remained silent with a chastened grimace on her face, knowing that nothing she could say right now was going to get through to the furiously angry filly.

“Do you even know how he’s always been there for me? You can’t. You can’t at all. When my m-mom died, he held me as I cried and cried and ever since then it’s been just me and him alone. There’s no way he can be evil! Always, always… when I’ve been sad, when I needed a hug, when I needed him, he’s been there. I don’t care what you say or what else is happening around here. I know my father loves me and he’s not a bad pony! I know it!” Wish collapsed to her knees and started bawling even louder.

There wasn’t anything Rainbow Dash could do, she lied there with sad eyes and waited for Wish to quiet down. Each word the filly said was like a knife stabbing into her heart.

“I don’t believe you… I don’t trust you...” Wish mumbled.

Rainbow Dash’s head jerked up. “Kid, look-”

Wish angrily glared up at her. “And my name is Wish! That’s the name my father gave me!”

She got up and swiftly ran away from the cell. If Rainbow Dash had tried calling out to her, Wish didn’t hear her. She ran and ran with tears in her eyes, through almost complete darkness thanks to leaving the candle behind in her haste. It took her but a minute to get back to the first room of the dungeon where Dotty and Vox were. Wish went running right past them without a single look, flying up the stairs.

“W-Wish?!” Dotty yelled after her, she took a second look down the dark corridor and then at the Head Inquisitor before she quickly ran to catch up to the filly.

Vox meanwhile merely blinked before a cold grin pulled up her lips. “Heh.”