Hello There, Desolation, My Only Friend
Rainbow Dash didn't know how long she had been awake. All she knew was pain.
She lay in the warm sun, her body bathed in sand and grit.
Eventually, after much stirring, she moved her limbs. Her legs and wings appeared to be intact. Fighting a stiff ache, she shuffled forward in the first direction she could. Only after tilting her head up did she notice Yaerfaerda, and she pivoted her weary figure in its direction.
She opened her eyes, spotting a dull sky of brown hues wafting overhead. Maybe it was evening... or morning. Maybe it didn't matter.
With a groan, Rainbow Dash reached back and fiddled through Arcanista's pack. She tried pulling out the canvas tent, but only fumbled ineffectually. At last, sighing, she simply yanked the blanket out and threw it over herself, collapsing back to the stone and lying dead still.
Night stretched over the Grand Choke like a dark ceiling.
Rainbow Dash started trotting an hour ago. She stumbled eastward, limping. Her hooves pulled her forward, but did little more to ease the passage. She winced from her bruises, wavering left and right.
She tilted her bleary eyes up. Something bright loomed in the sky, drowning out the stars with its light.
With a parched breath, Rainbow slithered to a stop. She sat in place, lungs heaving and muscles aching. Raising her hoof, she stroked her fetlock across her pendant. The lightning bolt glowed as she tilted her neck up, aiming it at the bright orb in the sky.
Moonlight glinted off the golden bands surrounding the Element. It brought a glittering shine to the center of the Choke.
Rainbow sat and sat some more.
Nothing happened.
She blinked. She ran her hoof over the pendant once more. The lighting bolt glowed, then dimmed.
All was silent, save for the howling winds blowing in and out of the narrow chasms all around her.
Rainbow Dash panted and panted. She lay back completely, spreading her limbs as she arched her body up, practically thrusting the pendant towards the sky.
All was empty and dead.
Rainbow squinted at the moon. She bit her lip, pondering that perhaps it hadn't completely waxed yet. So, with a shudder, she pressed onwards, shuffling east, though she hung her head the whole time.
Rainbow Dash sat on the edge of a canyon, squinting against the morning light. She held a Heaven's Slice to her muzzle, nibbling on it with dull motions of her teeth. Her eyes swam circles around the distant Yaerfaerda symbol.
Dirt and sand clung to her feathers, but she didn't make any attempt to shake the sediment loose.
She smelled like sweat and mud, but her canteen was half-full and her nostrils burnt around the edges. She continued sitting in place, anchored by her sighs and the dull taste of the Val Roan delicacy.
She considered inhaling some Nebulum, but changed her mind. She had to preserve her precious resources... although she was starting to wonder why.
It was night again.
Rainbow Dash sat on a cloud.
She held her breath, tilting her neck up at the bright moon in the sky.
Her pendant stopped glittering.
Panting for breath, she reached a hoof up and brushed it again.
The ruby bolt glowed, shone, and dimmed once more.
Rainbow cursed under her breath, giving the Element another brush.
All the while, the moon lingered above, cool and bright, reflecting the pegasus' tear-streaked cheeks.
Rainbow Dash glided east, her goggles reflecting the rising sun.
She clenched her jaw, watching as the etched canyons finally coalesced into large valleys and dipping ravines. And—just like that—the Grand Choke finally ceased being an immaculate plateau of untouched stone. The entire plain dissipated, replaced by craggy hills and jagged peaks of stone.
The horizon had become uneven. Everything was erratic and unpredictable. Rainbow's eyes caught multiple layers of geological strata—shimmering in the rising sunlight.
She was so concentrated on the jarring change to the landscape that she didn't notice she was descending. Suddenly, the mare saw the tops of small mountains slicing at her belly. She gasped, flapping her wings harder to ascend the summits.
She rose into the sky, but with great difficulty. Rainbow's sweaty brow furrowed as she flapped her wings harder. Perhaps it was her imagination, but it seemed as though it was taking twice as much effort to keep herself aloft.
She shuddered slightly, panting for breath. Clenching her jaw, she ascended high enough to throw her body into an easy glide, allowing the winds to carry her aloft as she scaled ravine after ravine, chasing Yaerfaerda.
Rainbow Dash tilted her head up.
The moon loomed in the sky once more.
Under the cool kiss of night, she held her breath and lifted herself up towards the clouds.
The ascent was slow and cumbersome. She nearly threw her lungs out with the sheer effort of flapping her wings. At last, however, she reached the clouds. Her eyes caught the misty beds glimmering in silver reflections of the lunar orb. Exhaling in relief, she touched down.
And her body plunged through the clouds.
Rainbow gasped, falling, flailing. She flapped her wings, angled herself out, and glided back to an even level.
The mare's heart pulsed through her neck and veins. Wincing, she flapped her wings again, pulling herself up onto another cloud bed. She touched down slowly this time, keeping her wings spread and her muscles poised.
Sure enough, as soon as her hooves made contact, they sank through the wispy material.
Rainbow's eyes narrowed. She levitated in place, swirling her fetlock through the cloud. The vaporous bits of water parted ways, dissipating upon her pegasus touch. Try as she might, she couldn't grip a single strip of the foggy material. It simply refused to obey her hoof motions.
Fidgeting, Rainbow chose instead to glide towards the nearest mountain summit. She landed awkwardly, but managed to keep from slipping downhill.
With a wheezing breath, she tilted her neck up, aiming her pendant at the moon once again. She swore it was the brightest she had seen the heavenly body in over a month.
And yet, as she stroked the ruby lightning pendant and activated it's glow, there was no connection whatsoever. No silver glow of enchantment. No ethereal voice rolling off her fuzzy earlobes.
Rainbow breathed heavily... and then she started to hyperventilate. She gnashed her teeth, rubbing the pendant harder and harder. For hours, she struggled to form a connection, hissing under her breath with each concentrated effort.
At last, with aching muscles, she gave up, slumping to the rock bed beneath her and trying to collect her thoughts.
It was no use. Her mind was racing a million miles per second. She darted her eyes between the moon, the desert, and Yaerfaerda.
She bit her lip, feeling a lump form in her throat. Exhausted and drained, she closed her eyes, but Yaerfaerda still haunted her.
Sniffling, the pegasus fought hot tears, and it was the effort alone that finally lulled her to sleep.
Rainbow Dash woke to a hissing noise.
The pony's first thought was of changelings... chaos dragons... quarry eels.
In a frantic burst, the mare awoke. She jerked to her hooves, staring fitfully across the dawn-drenched valleys of the Grand Choke.
The hissing continued, growing louder, sharper in pitch.
Panicking, the mare spun around.
The hissing was behind her now.
She twirled and looked east.
The hissing now came from the west.
Rainbow Dash's brow furrowed. Then, with a nervous breath, she turned to look at her packs.
Steam was venting out of Arcanista's satchel.
Rainbow's heart skipped a beat. Instantly, she stripped of her packs and squatted atop the jagged summit. She fumbled through Arcanista's bag, opening it up and pulling contents out. At last, she winced, eyes quivering.
The Heaven's Slices were dissolving at a rapid pace. One by one, they vented their enchanted essence, turning charcoal black until only five or four of them were left.
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There it is, the magic dead zone. Now its only a matter of seeing how long the pendent will hold out. RD still has a very long way to go. Really freaking sucks that its likely she won't get to talk to Luna again.
RIP all magic ever
So now begins IC's foray into the Psychological!
...I think...
That first paragraph seems...oddly familiar somehow. Maybe it's just me.
Umm...this is not good. Either Luna's not home or-
...Fuck.
Oh fuck.
OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK NO NOT NOW!
The magic draining's hit, and it's hitting hard! No pegasus cloud magic. No communication with Luna. And soon no food.
Oh, this massively sucks.
And this may mean she never gets to talk to Luna again...
Interesting that whatever magic it is that allows her to see the Yaerfaerda symbol is unaffected.
Is chaos magic affected too? It may be that she can remove the pendant here, and only here.
If chaos magic is not affected, then clearly neither is the magic of Harmony.
If the mega canyons have anything flowing in teh bottom, tehy should end up at teh ocean, and always flowing downhill. Its slow, but far faster than hiking all the way, in get any sort of climb at a shallow angle up teh wall as high as possible, then glide to the bottom, and repeat, given glidng is far faster, and if the maths are right, she could get far further, except for rubble, due to ground effect, but its still very strenuous.
Well, theres the end of the compressed rations, hopefully the Nebulum damped down the Heavens slices. Its not very pleasant when something you thought perfectly innocous has a good go at setting your pocket on fire.
Never carry NiMH batteries in the same pocket as your keys.
...I've come to talk to you again.
i find interesting is that some of them are left
why?
5699458
Only one response can adequately express my feelings
shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit
ALERT! ALERT! CODE: FUCK THIS SHIT, WE'RE ALL DOOMED
Ironically, a technologically based civilization would have no issue with the choke, and might completely miss it.
5699491
And thus passes the Spark of the world...
Remember, Rainbow, all pleasure may be temporary, but the same holds true for pain. This, too, must pass away.
5699436
Oh geez...if the pendant wears out from the drain, and the chaos magic persists, Rainbow might not even have a choice...
5699496
That also kind of struck me as odd.
Welcome to the true Grand Choke. You've now been effectively stripped of everything you know and love. No connection to the princesses. No magic. No flight. No Noble Jury. No Eljunbyro. You have minimal supplies, and only one direction to travel. And so I ask:
How Long Before The Isolation Breaks You?
We've seen this before. More than anything, even death itself, Rainbow fears being alone. She gets self destructive and reckless when she's alone. it's like a defense mechanism. She does it to keep from thinking about what she's lost and how far she has to go. Except out in the waste, there are no monsters to throw herself against, no caves to explore, no enemies to fight. Just miles and miles of lifeless rock and the thoughts in her head. If she's going to survive this, she's going to need to settle things in her mind, or she will go mad.
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you 'grave for me:
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
5699512
I do not believe that's going to happen, though. The pendant shouldn't fail, the elements are intrinsic to the plane and shouldn't be damaged by the Choke's magic- unless, of course, the spell on the Grand Choke is from the space beyond the ring.
The dreaded anti-magic zone?!
Thou hast rustled mine jimmies! (╯ಠ_ರೃ)╯︵ ┻━┻
c2.staticflickr.com/6/5166/5277260637_d4555b41bf.jpg
Well... we can hope that the Choke is having the same effect on the chaos magic as it is on the harmony magic.
Perhaps Dash... Perhaps you should have stuck around Val Roa until the fullmoon to let Luna know what the hell was gonna happen, she might have had some wisdom for you.
-Treachery and deceit, kingdom of conceit Yaerfaerda.
My pancakes! Fuck!
5699539
sd.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/i/keep-calm-and-ahh-fuck-this-shit-start-panicking.png
RIP Magic
I wonder if, somewhere, we'll come across a nation that uses good ol' oil and/or steam instead of the fancy technomancy we've all become accustomed to?
I believe I said something about the magical dead zone last chapter...
In purp's words,
Teehee...
I-I get to feel good about this. I don't make good calls very often.
This line, I think, gets across just how psychologically taxing this journey through the Choke has been on Rainbow.
5699629
I can't decide if it would be kinder to her for her to be dead or remain alive.
Welp... We're here. In the area of no-magic. I do not like this place...
5699645 dead, of course but she needs to live
she has to, not for her
for everyone else
this is the pain of loyalty
you lose your own free will to those that you bind yourself to
5699446
Oh, hello, there.
quillshiv.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/tumblr_m336xlo7xy1qd86q9o1_500.png?w=551
Pfft. You can do without magic for a couple chapters. Magic is for sheltered cis het uni stal shitlords anyways. It's just an invention of the 1% to trigger the rest of us with their privilege.
Welp, looks like we've entered the no magic zone.
No Luna for now, or for the rest of the books. I bet this book will end with Rainbow Dash losing consciousness, and then the next book starting with a group of new characters similar to Eljunbyro with Dash awake or still out for a bunch of chapters.
I never thought I would see ponies panicking about losing signal like humans do. Except Dash really needs some of Luna's soothing voice right now.
First a trek through boring nothingness, and now a trek through a different kind of nothingness.
Well, things are sure to get interesting now.
5699679
N- Swan..... why?5699599
You know, I realized that if RD had been able to commission a steam powered airship with a bucket load of cargo space, she could've easily traversed the Choke. And brave adventurers might have been able to accompany her without worrying about falling behind.
Silence can be the noisiest thing you may ever experience. Not the silence you find when you turn off your TV or computer for once, but the one you find yourself subjected to when you're in a dull, lifeless, utterly dead place. It is enough to drive you insane. The voices in your head become all you know, and before you realize, reality has slipped away.
Well at least flying is hard and not impossible...yet. Also feels great to get caught up again.
5699966
I'll leave you to mull over that some more.
But yeah, it seems she's been rationing the wrong rations mostly. Not a good thing to realize this late.
5700020 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bag_of_holding Bags of holding work differently than normal travel packs, containing their own pocket dimension.
Let's see, that's about 8 days of food and perhaps just as much water. She might be able to make it to the sea, after that? Not so sure.
Still at play:
Discord mode- unsure of how chaotic beings would take a trip like this, the reversed polarity might make it easier. Right now it would be like a human tiptoeing around antimatter, when the option exists to become antimatter.
Axan- rd might not make it on her own power, an immortal defiantly could.
The Choke- this place remains largely unexplored, who is to say it is lifeless? Some of those original ponies might have offspring in this desert, or there might be an exotic race like bat ponies living in isolation. It's anyone's guess.
Distance- she's been gone about a week, at a conservative 50 mph at 5 days of flight for about 15 hours each day is about 3700 miles. How big is this place?
Keep calm and start panicking.
Well, in the immortal words of Lewis Black:
"HOOOOOLY SHIT, WE'RE FUCKED! WE'RE FUCKED! STICK STRAWS UP YOUR NOSE! THE RIVER OF SHIT IS RISING!"
Well at least we know that the lack of communication isn't permanent, cos if the magic dead zone permanently wrecked the element, we would be seeing a lot more of chaotic Dash.
So this anti-magical infection is what Yaerfaerda is no longer in control of... Rainbow getting to fix it may make her implode...or she doesn't make it. It may have not been this strong when others crossed. This is an exceptional test. Without Rainbow restoring the other parts of the machine world, this spreads. This explains why Chrysalis was trying to create so much turmoil and soak up emotions of the Val Roans. Crossing this would be even a challenge for her at the optimal of her power. This is why she sacrificed so many drones.
I wonder if Axan is still expanding her own diminishing magic to keep an eye on her at this point. It might well be fatal for dragons to try and enter this area.
The purple things are warning beacons and Rainbow Dash is an ultimate custodian with none to carry on her responsibility should she pass away here...that is known. I wonder what else will fail her as she continues.
Welp, no need to read the next 28 chapters and 6 more books, RD dies here.
Callin' it now.
Dash, you knew this was going to happen eventually. You brought plenty of regular food...right?
Hopefully she can remain airborne, albeit with significantly more effort throughout. Grounded Dash is a very unhappy Dash.
I reckon that the canyons are a giant warning sign, like you get on electrical devices. Sort of a "WARNING: DO NOT ENTER - 10,000 VOLTS - RISK OF DEATH"
I wonder if the choke is an actual choke. Used to prevent magical interference on one of the major power lines that link up the matrices of the ring. You see chokes on things like USB leads.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choke_%28electronics%29
5699880 Yeah. It's basically a desert. A real desert with no decent water or food, wild storms and bog-standard non-magical weather a la the Everfree. This would be about as hard to cross as one here. As you point out, the issue seems to be that ponies are so bound up in magic that they forget to think outside the magic box and do things with technology instead.
I also think that perhaps the issue is more that ponies are so used to being infused with magic that what actually kills them is the mental pressure of being left bereft of that innate power. It's a bit like when you're somewhere deadly silent, or perfectly dark. Your brain struggles to process what you're not seeing, and your ears start to ring because you're actually surrounded by light and noise all the time. Puts a whole new perspective on the Equestrians on Earth stories you often see on here.
Welcome to the dead zone. Now you are truly alone, East Horse. No friends, no princesses, no contact. Only you, the landscape.... and Yaerfaerda.
Further into the zone, will she have to cease flying in case she falls out the sky? I'm pretty sure due to Pegasus magic providing more lift, Pegasi wings are anatomically smaller than should be possible to keep them airborne.
This chapter and the isolation Dash is facing made me think of this song.
5699679
Swanny, save that for S5 premiere.
Well....this is not good.
Well butts... Butts butts butts. That is not good.