Half-Hour Horses

by HoofAndQuill

Pegasus' Dilemma [Drama]

(The prompt:

“It’s getting colder in this ditch where I lie.
I’m feeling older, and I’m wondering why.
Well, I heard they told her it was tell and live or die.
I didn’t know her, but I know why she lied.
I didn’t know her, but I know why she died …”
(Hanson, "This Time Around"))

This was the grossest thing ever. That was really about the only thing Rainbow Dash could think of to call the cocoon she was stuck in. Gross. It was full of slime, really bad-tasting slime with a sour, viscous feel to it. She didn't have to breathe, but she could still talk, and she was pretty sure she'd been in here for a couple days but she hadn't had to eat or drink anything. But it was still gross, and her wings twitched constantly from wanting to fly.

She heard their hoofsteps long before she actually saw them in the dim light. When she saw that one of the shapes was a lot taller than the other two, she flared her wings and swam back against the back side of her cocoon. The two changeling guards walked up to her first, and then the Queen stepped forward into the gentle green glow of the prison.

There was a smile on her lips, but it wasn't a happy one. "Hello, little pony. Ready to talk?"

Rainbow Dash kicked the front of the cocoon, even though she knew trying to break it was pointless. "No! Get out of here! My friends are gonna find me!"

The Queen chuckled darkly. "But they won't. We've already replaced Rarity and Pinkie Pie. The Princess' other friends will soon be mine too, and then she won't be able to fight us."

The glow in the room brightened slightly, and Rainbow Dash could dimly see Rarity and Pinkie floating in their own cocoons, looking at her with widening eyes. This wasn't good. "So what? There's no way your bug is as awesome as me! Twilight will know, and then you'll all be in trouble!"

"That's exactly why I'm here." The Queen took a step closer to the cocoon, her height and presence making Rainbow feel small and helpless. "I know you have a little codeword for Twilight. To prove to her that you are who you say you are. Tell me."

Rainbow Dash grinned. "Yeah right! Why would I tell you?"

Another low chuckle, the Queen's sharp teeth gleaming in the sickly green light. "Because if you don't, we'll just kill you now."

Rainbow looked aside, though there wasn't much to see but the opaque side of her prison. "Why don't you just read my mind or whatever?"

"Your Princess is smarter than she seems. There's magic blocking that part of your mind, and we can't break it. But we have other ways to get the information..."

Rainbow refuse to even look back to the Queen. After a second or two, the Queen's grin turned into a scowl. "You're wasting your time. Your friends already told us theirs, and my changelings can keep Twilight from suspecting anything for a while. If you don't tell us, she'll never find you in time."

"Yeah right, you probably have us in the Everfree forest or something, right next to Ponyville."

The Queen's scowl deepened. "You think that knowing where we are will make it easier to escape? You can't get out of there. We're far from Ponyville, in a ruin in the badlands."

Dash looked down at the floor, surprised she was only now noticing it was made of some kind of baked clay. Yeah, she knew this place. Twilight would never look this far fast enough. "So, you wanna know my password, right?"

The Queen nodded, a glint in her eyes as her victory seemed certain.

"How's this for a password?" Rainbow Dash shimmied around in her cocoon, fighting the limited space, until she was head-down in it with her rear facing up toward the queen, and flicked her tail up, thumping her hind legs against the front of the prison just to emphasize her point. Pinkie Pie giggled in her own cocoon, while Rarity pretended to be offended.

The Queen didn't have to pretend, slamming her hooves down loudly against the floor. "Cut the feeding to this pony! She is to starve!"

Rainbow banged her hooves against the front again. "What? You're not going to take me out of here and fight me for it?"

Letting out another low chuckle, the Queen stared down at her with hatred in her eyes. "Of course not. I won't give you a chance to fly back to Ponyville. You'll die a slow death, alone in that prison."

Rainbow Dash drooped, and shuffled her way back right side up. She bit her lip, and then shook her head. "It's... It's 'where's the Griffon's Goblet.'. That's my password."

Pinkie Pie made a little sigh of disappointment, and Rarity just turned and looked away. Rainbow Dash frowned at them, but what choice did she have? The Queen smiled maliciously, and turned around to leave. "Don't reconnect the feeding line. She's no use to us anymore anyway."

Rainbow bashed her hooves hard against the front of the cocoon, but it didn't break any more than it had the last hundred times. The changelings left the room, and the light dimmed enough that she couldn't see her friends anymore. She frowned into the darkness. They thought she'd given away the password.

But Rainbow wasn't about to give that up. Even if she did, she was dead anyway. But if Rainbow knew anything, she knew Twilight. And Twilight knew Daring Do books. It had been this temple that she'd found the Griffon's Goblet, in the second book of the series. Yeah, the password was wrong, and maybe Twilight wouldn't figure it out fast enough. But she might make it soon enough to save Pinkie and Rarity, and Rainbow wasn't about to leave her friends hanging.

She sighed and lay back in the thick goop of her little prison. She really hoped that Twilight's egghead brain was as fast and smart as it needed to be.