//------------------------------//
// All Else Fails?  Thread the Needle. 
// Story: Yaerfaerda 
// by Imploding Colon 
//------------------------------//

	Rainbow Dash didn't start to panic until she found that none of the twisting ravines were winding their way northeast.  As she glided through the narrow chasms, they took her further and further west, with a left turn for every right turn, keeping her along a straight path.  She had hoped to bend east and fly under the cyclones before they consumed the air above and within the ravines altogether.  However, as the seconds roared into frantic minutes, she found herself subjected to louder and louder gales.

At one point, Rainbow Dash reached a chasm so thin that she could stretch her legs out on either side and wedge herself in place.  Wincing, she stared straight up through her goggles.  The slit of light that spelled the sky had almost vanished entirely, leaving her with a brown malaise of swirling sediment—growing denser and denser as the winds carried it deep down into the very canyon where she was entrenched.

The dust and sand below her kicked up, blowing into her face. The pegasus wheezed, coughed.  She held a hoof over mouth and struggled to hold her breath.  Muscles aching, she squeezed through the ultra-thin chasm and glided ahead—more like threw herself ahead.  She felt her blood pulsing through her head, but there was no way she could hear the pulse above the audible mayhem all around her.

At last, the canyon walls pivoted eastward.  Rainbow Dash knew this because she saw the Yaerfaerda symbol blinking wildly ahead of her.  At first, this summoned a gasp of joy from deep within her being.  It was short-lived, however, for only a few dozen meters into the flight she ran into a dead end.

Rainbow Dash hovered at a stop, clenching her teeth.  By now, the cyclonic winds had rushed completely into the chasm, picking up and swirling about every speck of dust.  Rainbow grunted as she was thrown left... thrown right... then tugged forward.  With each random motion of her windblown body, she bumped and collided with the stone walls of the rigid ravine all the harder.  At last, with desperation, she planted her blank against the dead end, attempting to brace her limbs against the walls of the canyon.  All this did was pin her deeper under a piling mountain of sand—the same sand that lifted from the wind's twirling force and repeatedly enveloped her upper body and face.

If it weren't for Scootaloo's goggles, Rainbow Dash would be blind by now.  However, that was the least of her concerns.  There was little to no opportunities to breathe; the sand lifted so consistently and violently against her muzzle that Rainbow Dash could scarcely manage a single inhale.

As a result, she doubled over, wheezing and sputtering as the sand roared up, around, and through her.  The flesh on her body began to chaff, agitated by the murderous grit of the sandstorm billowing across her coat.  The pain increased exponentially, starting low at first, but then growing more and more excruciating with each second Rainbow Dash was refused an even breath.

She tried covering her muzzle with her hooves, but this did little to ease her.  The world was growing heavier, foggier.  The pegasus' extremities were growing numb; she could barely feel the edge of her twitching ears.  At last, as the darkness spread through the corner of her vision, she stared straight up.

It was then that Rainbow Dash glimpsed—through the swirling mists of brown sediment—the very heart of the cyclone.  It twirled and writhed directly above her and the chasm, undulating with earthen colors streaking by in counter clockwise madness.  From the violent speeds with which the mud-brown currents spun, Rainbow guessed that it would tear steel itself asunder.

For the first time in days, Rainbow Dash felt something rip through her chest—something exciting.  If she wasn't being pounded by sand at every blink, she might even have smiled.  Instead, she yelled... and yelled louder, throwing herself skyward as she fearlessly flew into the heart of the maelstrom.

Rainbow Dash ascended, wings slicing through the edge of the vertical passageway of twirling sediment.  She climbed through the currents, screaming into the tunnel of death, even as the dust filled her muzzle and nostrils.

When the winds finally caught her, she spat into them, fighting and thrashing as her wings threatened to rip off at any second.  With much struggle, she finally jerked herself forward, kicked against a quivering cloud of dirtied mist, and shot upwards like a bullet.  All of the sudden, she could hear her own ghastly wails—for she had successfully pierced her way through the summit of the clouds.

There was no victory to enjoy.  The very moment she flew up through the cyclone, her body went flailing in a random direction.  The strength had been utterly sapped from her bones, and she twirled multiple times before finally descending in an eastward lunge, plowing through painful waves of dense clouds as the rough surface of the stone earth soared into her vision.

Rainbow Dash was unconscious before she could register the pain of impact.