//------------------------------//
// Prologue: One of many Nights 
// Story: Guardians of Many Hues 
// by TadStone 
//------------------------------//


Guardians of many Hues








Tad Stone

Proofreader: twilight-the-pony



Prologue: One of many Nights

Sweat, pain and a dark lit sky. Those were the elements that all of her dreams were made of. Hard work was her life, flight her life’s goal, and every single day at dawn, those two aspects of her life would join together, an inner compulsion for perfection permeating all of her actions once Luna’s reign had begun.

Where other ponies preferred to stay in their warm and fluffy beds at night, she was training. Where other ponies stayed up late to get lost gazing into the endless beauty of the night, Rainbow had no eyes for the blinking firmament, a tangled mess of rainbow lines and loops trailing in her wake as she sped through the sky in complicated figures.

If one had been able to keep up with her and have a closer look, they would have seen her muscles shaking badly despite still flawlessly reacting to her commands in neat twists and turns.

Bruises were always hard to spot behind the thick, tangled coat, especially the purple ones, but they were there nevertheless. Some already weeks old, some from barely minutes ago when she had hit a huge tree during one of her manoeuvres, breaking several impressively thick branches.

All in all, she was a spectacular sight to behold, night and day, but still unwelcome after dark for all but a few, loud noises and glaring spectral light interfering with the sleeping habits of the ponies below.

For this reason, and maybe also because of a few restraining orders, Rainbow Dash had moved her training grounds to the uninhabited woods between Ponyville and Trottingham, an area where none of those nagging ponies could interfere with her self-enforced drill.

Wincing at the burning pain in her wings, Dash sped forward one more time, readying herself for the last and most taxing maneuver.  

Small beads of sweat rolled down the length of her body, moved by strong winds and glistening in the darkness as they left their host.

The season was changing, cold masses of air shoving their way into the land, causing leaves to fall and ponies to shiver. And yet, she was still burning inside from exertion.

All in all, by her standards it had been pretty normal training session so far: hard, but satisfying.

It was only when she had sunken tiredly into a nearby cloud, that she noticed the burning cold around her. As with every pegasus, she could easily resist low temperatures, but it still felt unpleasant, a tingling sensation like a thousand small frost needles eating their way into her extremities.

A loud yawn escaped into the darkness, followed by the cracking sound her limbs always made when stretching them. This cloud would have to do for the night.