Rainbow Dash's ruby eyes twitched, sparkled. She blinked, and a gloss of moisture ran over her vision.
Stretching above and beyond her figure was a huge stretch of cavernous metal chambers, polished like the finest gold. Runed pendulums and levers hung in a frozen snapshot of an ancient time long gone. The place had a sterile smell to it, reminiscent of the chambers well beneath the mountain of Windthrow.
“Whew...” Rainbow's voice echoed through the place as she brought a hoof to her pendant and gave birth to a ruby glow. “If only the Darkstinians could see this place; then they would be they who wet themselves...”
Prophetically, a dull rumble echoed through the labyrinthine chamber. Rainbow Dash sensed the civil unrest building on the surface of New Ring directly above. Feeling pressed for time, she scanned the local interiors until her eyes caught the wafting path of lavender light. Swiftly, she galloped after it, her hooves making lone clanking noises against the metallic surfaces as she hurried down a hallway, descended a spiraling stairwell, and threaded through a series of inert pistons to get to her obscure destination.
Images blurred past her: scenes etched in platinum murals depicting alicorns arriving upon a flat strip of landscape in a billowing nether of chaos. Priceless details of historical importance lingered on all sides of her path, but she didn't care. She was being drawn somewhere; she was always being drawn somewhere. All that mattered was the lavender path and the act of chasing it. It was just as important as chasing the rising sun.
Finally, Rainbow Dash rounded a last corner, and she saw it. Her ruby eyes twitched, and she froze upon the edge of an impossibly deep chasm. Stretching across it was a bridge, and in the center of it was a golden pedestal. Hovering in the center of the altar was a billowing flame of red light.
“Hmmm... Awesome sauce...” Rainbow Dash took a deep breath and bravely trotted towards the glow. Once within smelling distance, she cracked her limbs, exhaled, and reached two limbs forward.
She touched the flame, and yet she didn't. Rainbow Dash wasn't in the position to tell anymore. The worst dizzy spell in memory struck her like a club to the skull. The subterranean world of metal spun a million miles per second, and she was reeling from it.
With a voice cracking yelp, she teetered on her hooves, and fell...
Title Obtained: "The Mare of the Dancing Flames"
-Minty
Where can i get some of this Awesome sauce?
There are a hundred hinges I'm supposed to be doing right now. And here I am, not doing them.
That flame... It's to fall for!
...Bad pun was bad...
Zaap Nator (Z-ar-p N-ay-tor) sounds pretty similar to Darth Vader (D-ar-th V-ay-dor) don't you think?
Deconstructing the origins of names! Yay!
Well crap. Wake up Rainbow, you don't have ponies to help you this time! Hmmm, I have an 8:30 am class tomorrow... but I can't sleep right now anyway. Onward!
IIIIIt's Dashie's Fifth Marathon Evaluation Time!
Wow. My prediction came true frighteningly quickly. That's...kind of scary. And I'm thinking that I might be getting a better idea as to what these Factories are for. Perhaps each one is a sacred place ment to contain and protect those magical flames. Perhaps there are six temples...one for each Element. This flame's color was red. Hmm...does anyone remember what the other flame's color was? These are my thoughts so far.
-MASH
P.S. Ohhhhhhh we're halfway theeere,
Ohhhhhhhhohhhhhhh!
Liiiiiiiiivin' on a praaaaaaaaayer!
1647829 DAYUM.
1647829
Purple, I believe.
Element of Magic?
If this one is red it may be the shrine of the Element of Loyalty...
1647829 i just went back and reread the first chapter about the fire and it was red on a gold pedestal
achievements.schrankmonster.de/Achievement.aspx?text=Mare%20make%20fire.%20Fire%20burn%20hoof.
This whole arc is going much quicker than the last major one. Huh.
Into the deep.
And we fall. And fall. I wonder what these factories are supposed to be.
I'm going to agree, those flames probably have something to do with the separate Elements, assuming that there are six factory things
1647829 I think the previous one was also red...
If the quest is to get to the other side of the world and get that prism, and after all this time she's still not even halfway, then this series will go on for another 5 million words at least. These flames she's finding are almost definitely very, very important. The only theory I have that accounts for them is that these places are the equivalent of Precursor tech in Halo and beyond the alicorn's understanding.
The description in this chapter has some pretty big implications that no one seems to have mentioned. I assume that all of this machinery was already there when the alicorns touched down, so who/what put the murals there? There are three possibilities, all of them raising their own huge questions.
1. The murals were there when the alicorns landed. This conclusion shows that whoever/whatever existed before the alicorns was able to see the future. And if they knew about the alicorns ahead of time, then what else did they know?
2. Whoever came before the alicorns saw them and created a mural in response. In this case, the alicorns likely interacted with their precursors and so would have some knowledge of them, so why haven't we been told anything yet?
3. The alicorns placed the murals. If it was the alicorns, that means they must have been down there and must have seen the intricate workings of the world beneath them, in which case, did they study it at all or did they just leave and ignore it? And why put the murals there if the ponies never ventured down there?
All these questions just lying out in the open...
Come on, Dashie. You should've seen this dizzy spell coming- the exact thing happened when you touched the flame under windthrow.
I wonder what goes in awesome sauce
07/22/2019
23:16 UTC