Rainbow was a sweating, heaving mess by the time she reached her destination. She couldn't count how many times in the last three hours alone she could have sworn that the potion was going to wear off and her hooves would become limp as noodles once again. Nevertheless, she persisted against all odds, arriving at the lowest point of a dead valley that lay well below sea level.
From her lofty vantage point, Rainbow spotted what looked like a dense series of campsights. At night, they burned like little orange specks with an unfathomable amount of campfires. Lowering herself down, she realized that the earth was sundered in over a dozen places, and multiple wooden planks, walkways, and platforms had built over these pits. Columns of dark smoke rose out of every crevice in the earth, and Rainbow found it rather cumbersome to breathe straight.
As a result, when she finally touched down, it was almost in a complete collapse. Grunting, Rainbow Dash slapped the sack of loose chunks onto the dusty ground beside her and attempted to lay down for a breather. She instantly regretted it, though, on account of the stony earth feeling so hot that it nearly seared her fuzzy belly.
"Oooh! Aaach! Gaaah!" Rainbow Dash flapped the very tips of her wings, wincing as she hovered inches above the steamy earth. "What in the world?! Where is—"
"A-a-ahem..."
She glanced aside.
A stallion in a cloak was shuffling towards her from a series of tents, using a bladed polearm as a staff. He came to a stop, lowered his hood, and revealed an old, leprotic and thoroughly unamused expression.
"Uhhhh..." Rainbow Dash gulped and waved. "Hi there."
"Mmmmfffnngh..." The stallion squinted. "Hi yourself, Madame." His voice rolled with heavily accented vowels. "Pleeeeeeease tell me that you brought more raw meat for Cerberus."
"Huh?" Rainbow blinked. "No! You don't understand. I've had some nasty creeps on my tail, and—"
"You're not in a very decent place, Milady." Grimy teeth showed from under his muzzle. "Define 'nasty,' if you would be so darling."
"Friggin' dragons, okay?!" Rainbow Dash frowned. "Look, I don't want to be here any longer than I have to. I've got a delivery here for you guys and—"
"Well well well..." Another stallion in a cloak trotted up. "Now there's some color!"
"Getting lost on the edge of the world, eh, bird?" another rasped.
The first stallion hissed at the others. "Methusaleh! Nebachunezzer! Please... be polite." He sighed. "I don't see what the whole pull is for. We all know this place rotted our bits off decades ago."
"Awwww... can't a stallion dream a bit?"
"We had our chances to dream long before our sentences were carried out." He spat aside. "Methusaleh! Go fetch a cart! There may be no rest for the wicked, but at least the living can earn some respite, no?"
"Blargh," Methusaleh blarghed, and trotted off along with Nebachunezzer to do as he was told.
"Nice friends you've got there," Rainbow droned.
"Well, I can't kill them and I can't eat them, so they might as well be." The stallion smirked. "You've obviously been on a long trip. Still, we're going to need you to trot a little distance longer."
"What for?"
"Your bones are obviously equipped to function. Wish I could say the same about mine. When you've breathed in enough brimstone to burn Equestria five times over, it gets a little hard to do a push-up, much less play errand boy."
With a grunt, one of the fellow guards bucked a rickety wagon over. The stallion stopped it with his polearm and pivoted it towards Rainbow Dash. "There ya go, Madame. If you ask me, you should have brought a cart with you."
"I did!" Rainbow grunted as she heaved the sack of rattling parts into the wagon. "But like I said—"
"Dragons, right." He nodded and smirked. "Oh, how I giggle at the terrors of today. Gone are the days of Cosmic Foal Eaters and Hollow Bone Spiders. Now, Equestria has to rely on dragons and manticores and infernal breezies to fuel their imagination. Hah! It's no wonder Luna still hides in the moon!"
"Uhhhh..." Rainbow fidgeted. "Actually, she kind of sorta came back to Equestria and redeemed herself."
"Hah! Sure she did! Next thing you'll tell me, sea serpents can talk to the local populace!"
"Erm..."
"Eh, never you mind." He rolled a sleeve up and extended a gnarled hoof. "Hello, I'm Steve. Welcome to Tartarus."