She couldn’t see the thing that taunted her so. And yet, she knew it was there, haunting her sleep, nibbling at her consciousness during her waking hours. Though she might laugh it off, and say she was fine, she had yet to have a single good night’s rest ever since coming back. More often than not, she awoke in the middle of the night, sweating ice and breathing hard. She simply couldn’t shake the feeling that ever since she came back, something had shifted inside her.
It was twelve months later, when she was finally beginning to get a full night’s rest once more that the dreams started. The actual events of each dream varied, but they always ended the same way. A mocking laugh echoing around her skull, and the vision of a smile, filled with teeth far too sharp to be a pony’s. She never told anypony about these dreams. But the worst part was that somehow, she knew the mouth with the teeth and the laugh were hers, and that terrified her.
When the stars and planets align
And moon covers sun while on high
The walls of the prison will vanish.
To save the world from hell,
Search for the Death’s Knoll
And the tome of Ancient Binding.
Take book and Knoll,
And stand upon the top of the world,
Recite the spell of Deep Imprisonment
And all will be well.
She watched in equal parts horror and fascination as the moon slid over the sun with agonizing slowness, and somehow knew that somewhere, the Gates were opening. Behind her, Twilight Sparkle was rushing about, trying to find the right spell in the ancient book, her words an inaudible mutter to her ears. The instant the moon fully covered the sun, a ringing began to echo in her ears, quickly growing to painful levels, and then, something inside her changed. Then she changed on the outside.
She took off once her hearing returned, revelling in the power of her new visage, and couldn’t help but laugh. This was fantastic! So much power, so much speed. So much better than her old, weak form. She angled her body downwards, speeding up tremendously, and the cone formed around her far quicker than she had ever managed it before. She broke through the barrier, and the sky lit on fire in six different colours.
As the new and improved pegasus soared through the sky, trailing fire, destruction and a mocking laugh in her wake, as she had once trailed rainbows, she remembered the purple pony on the mountain. She couldn’t let the purple pony complete the spell that would at best, seal away her new power, or at worst, drag her down into the Eternal Prison. She changed direction in a heartbeat, and was back at the mountain in a second.
As the former pegasus and the purple princess fought, the pegasus remembered that had it not been for an innocent and well-intentioned desire to rescue her ‘friends’ once upon a time, this might have never come to pass, and she never would have had this power. For she was Rainbow Dash, and she was Loyal to herself, and nothing would ever change that.