//------------------------------// // ==Part Nineteen: Into the Muzzle of Madness== // Story: Appledashery // by Just Essay //------------------------------// Rainbow Dash looked left. Ink black walls drifted lazily by. She looked right. Identical walls of obsidian rock glistened with the ruby light coming from the Chalice's stone. She bit her lip, glancing straight ahead. Pitch black air loomed, hovering just beyond the penumbra of her light source like a moving curtain. Every trotting step she took sent an eerie echo reverberating both to the front and to the back of her, dwindling away to a hushed murmur at the furthest reaches of the seemingly endless cave. "Hrmmmff..." Rainbow Dash nevertheless squinted, leaning her head forward. Occasionally she would quicken her pace, hoping that an opening of sorts—a cavern or a partition or a chamber—would open up and shatter that unnerving sense of claustrophobia. However, with each progressive meter she covered, there was no such relief. She nearly slipped, and her wings spread out to compensate. Balancing her saddlebags at the last second, she kept from falling on her belly. Looking down, she observed how slick the floor was. The walls were covered with a similar moisture, making them glossy and glass-like in the glow from her magical stone. Rainbow assumed that there had to have been a large source of moisture somewhere ahead... or above. Every so often, she would feel a drop of moisture hit her wingfeathers from some fixed point in the straight corridor's ceiling. There as no time to pause and investigate further—as if she would even find anything. She didn't dare drop the glowing stone in her grasp either—not just for the fear of going blind while deep in the heart of a mountain, but due to the fact that she fully-knew that doing so would cause the winds to pick up again, and she had crossed so much distance that being blown back the way she came would amount to firing a cannonball clear across the continent. A fuzzy blue cannonball. So, shuddering, she pressed on, blinking tiredly into the ruby glow. "You know..." Lancie pointed with his talon from where he perched on Rainbow's flank. "If you strapped the thing to your neck, it could come in handy." "Meh." "Almost makes you wish you had a gold pendant to go with it." He smiled. "Or would you prefer a prism." "I don't know what you're even talking about half the time," she muttered. "I'd have it no other way, Sparky," Lancie said. Scratching his stone scalp, he gazed past her twitching ears. "How long do you suppose this corridor stretches for anyways?" "I'unno," Rainbow said, stifling a yawn. "Wuh oh! Is the white knight about to take a wimpy nap?" "Gotta... keep... moving..." Rainbow Dash grumbled, moving forward in a steady lurch. "Apple Bloom... needs a cure..." "The little rascal won't be living up to her name if there's no waking mare out there to fetch the chaos shards." "Yeah, but if I try and sleep in this cruddy passage?" Rainbow grumbled, "I could lose the stone and get blown to bits." "I could hold it for you!" "... ... ..." "Have you lost trust in me that quickly?" Lancie folded his arms with a pout. "Why, I must say, I'm rather hurt! And to think I didn't lift a finger to help you out when you and that griffon girl fought." "Gilda and I weren't fighting." "Blows were exchanged, my little punk." "That was different," Rainbow grumbled. "That was a prelude." "To what?" She sighed. "Resolution..." "Pfft! You?!" Lancie grinned wide. "Resolve anything?! Since when?" "Mrmmfff..." Rainbow Dash rubbed her fuzzy muzzle and continued, blinking blearily. "Guess I'm just changing, is all..." "Rats to that. And to think I was getting used to you." "You have a wild imagination." "And you have a bony backside. Damnation! Ever thought of eating more cheese and crackers, girl?" Lancie reclined lazily on her flank. "I wan't something cushy for my tushy when we're out here being all aloofy!" "I have as many muscles as I need to." "Obviously not enough to gallop us faster through this mess." "What I wanna know is..." Rainbow Dash's face scrunched. "...how did someone as massive as Fibb make it through this mess?" "Eh... he probably feasted on the flesh of his cohorts for fuel." Rainbow was silent. "What? No snappy, bitter retort, Sparky?" "Nah..." Rainbow wretched, her face pale. "For once... I think your exaggeration is spot on." "Hmmm... it's the end of the world as we know it." "Not until I save Apple Bloom, it isn't," Rainbow muttered, then pressed on—becoming a dull ruby beacon in the depths of darkness. "After that... the cosmos are up for grabs." "Don't I know it," Lancie slurred, and the two vanished beyond the inky, confined air. Part Nineteen: Into the Muzzle of Madness (Where Rainbow Dash scales the impossible for a filly's life)