Rainbow galloped across a world of darkness and sweat. She felt her heart pounding in her chest—and she focused on it. The mare stressed her mental faculties to the breaking point, attempting to envision the blood circulating through her arteries... every artery. The night was empty, mindless, and wild. She went wild with it.
She couldn't count how many times she had fallen down. The bruises had spread and spread until her whole body was just a big rattling bottle of pain. She held her breath tightly, tightening her lungs in expectation of the next tumble she would take. And she took many falls... many... many falls. Falling on her chest. Sliding on her side. Plopping back on her flank and even a few times where she rolled crazily over her back.
And every time—panting and wincing—she pulled herself back up.
Her hooves merely tingled. The pain only stretched so far. Everything else was a nebulous cloud that confounded her... angered her.
"Rnnnngh... goddess dang it..."
Rainbow Dash gnashed her teeth and kept going. Starlight streaked overhead. She heard the distant howl of timberwolves and attempted to outrun their echo. She failed everytime.
"Ooomf!" Falling to her side, Rainbow Dash struggled to get up again. However, the pain was mind-splitting this time, and she squeaked inwardly like a lost foal. Curling up, she hugged her limbs to her chest—rubbing her fetlocks together in a desperate bid for feeling... any feeling.
She couldn't tell how many hours she had been at it. The moon was never in the same place in the sky each time she checked. Certainly, she had to have been sleepy, exhausted—but there was no telling beyond the consistent pain throbbing through her available senses.
With a wheezing breath, she rolled over until she was lying on her back.
The night sky was broken up by the shapes of branches and windblown leaves. Rainbow Dash couldn't remember having sprinted so close to the forest. It was damnably dark, and for all she knew—she could have been over a mile away from the outskirts of Ponyville... a length achieved through constant stumbling, pratfalling, and rising up to her hooves again.
A fear flickered through her mind: where exactly were her saddlebags? What if someone or some thing had found them—alone and abandoned on the hilltop—and stolen them while Rainbow had been floundering around like a moron?
The fearful notion drove its spurs into the pegasus. Grunting, she struggled once more to get up... and once more she failed.
She lay prone on her back, waiting for anything—be it a timberwolf attack, a lightning bolt, the world opening up to swallow her whole. Anything but tears.
It occurred to Rainbow Dash that she rarely ever got what she wanted. Being incapable of winning it was what absolutely crushed her.
The weight was almost enough to squeeze the tears out. Almost.
Instead, unconsciousness set in, and Rainbow greeted the dark-upon-dark with a relieved whimper...
And was silent.