Daring Do and the Hand of Doom

by Unwhole Hole

Chapter 59: Harvestor of Sorrow

The dial clicked as Rainbow Dash turned one of its numerous intricate disks. Her ability to escape knots had not been as good as she had expected, and the best she had been able to do was to free one of her hooves. Not even a front one. She was turning the dial with one of her rear legs.

“Thank Celestia’s butt I’m flexible,” she said, craning her neck to try to see what she was doing. She had already broken one of the central cogs at least, and perhaps a few more. Another time she had almost passed out; in fact, whenever the dial ticked in certain positions, she could feel her body responding with changes in physiology. It was an odd sensation.

The dial suddenly clicked and the central moonstone was exposed.

“HA!” cried Rainbow Dash. She looked at White. “Did you see that?”

White glared at her. Or would have, if she had still possessed eyes.

“Oh,” said Rainbow Dash. “Sorry. Well, if you could see…and talk…you’d be telling me how awesome I am! I’m sure this will work!”

White raised an eyebrow. Or Rainbow Dash thought she did; her eyebrows were as white as the rest of her.

“Don’t be so negative! Come on, what’s the worst that could happen?”

She turned the dial, raising the moonstone slightly. “I’ll be back in a second. Just got to save Daring Do, defeat the Questlords, and grab the Hand of Doom. Oh mane this is gonna be cool!”

She then kicked the center of the dial.

The effect was instantaneous and immediate. Rainbow Dash was overcome by a sense of falling, and of the world inverting, all moving in an instant. Instinctively, she tried to compensate by turning her wings and moving her legs, as if she were falling from a height or had just been lunched from a dizzitron. Of course, she had not actually fallen; the result was that she simply flailed on her back on the ground, pulling up clouds of dust and ash.

Confused- -and slightly embarrassed- -she sat up. There were no longer ropes around her, because she was no longer in the same place. Or was, but not in the same way.

The land was dull and gray, and the air- -if there even was air- -seemed to lack any specific temperature. The sky was dark, and any light in the world seemed to come from the luminescent ash that was slowly drifting downward from the sky, forming small and silent drifts across the ground.

Rainbow Dash stood up. There was a path before her, indicated by a space where the floor was made of something like brick and by large, obliquely placed stone-like hoops that had been placed obliquely over it. Beyond the path stood enormous but long-dead trees. They looked like they might even have been fossilized. Something that was not trees grew on their crowns, reaching upward toward the sunless sky. Rainbow Dash was glad she could not see what it was.

“Well at least there’s no ropes,” she said. She took a step forward and winced. “Even though I seem to be out one lung. And a ventricle, whatever that is.” She paused to catch her breath. Her body in this phase was still as pale and damaged as it had been before. Her joints hurt and she could feel strange things shifting inside her when she walked. The dial in her chest, though, had stopped clicking. In the same way that White had never lost her eyes or voice when in this phase, Rainbow Dash had never been poisoned. Not by iocane, at least.

Then she stood. “Okay,” she said. “So, this world corresponds with the regular one. So all I need to do is walk out of this room and exactly where Daring Do is, then snap back.” She looked down at the dial, and to her dismay the moonstone had already started to corrode. It had enough power for the return trip, but not a second jump. She would only have one chance.

“Except that I was asleep when they brought me here,” she said. “So I don’t know where HERE actually is.” She looked out into the ash-filled landscape. “Annnnd I’m talking to myself again.” She heard something move in darkness. She turned, but saw only long hoofsteps through the ash. As if a pony had been dragged. “At least I hope I’m talking to myself.”

“You aren’t,” said a soft voice over her shoulder.

Rainbow Dash turned. An alicorn was standing at least twenty feet behind her, its large eyes glimmering in some unseen light. It was thin and sickly, but oddly familiar. Rainbow Dash realized why. Its skin- -it had no fur- -was pale blue, and the thin mane it wore had dull rainbow stripes in it.

“Well, it’s good to know I have fans even over here,” said Rainbow Dash as she slowly backed away.

The alicorn smiled, and it moved. It did not walk, exactly, but rather seemed to float, suspended by its own magic as its hooves dragged through the top layer of ash. As it came closer, it began to materialize. The colors became more intense and saturated, until it stood before her looking just like a sickly, exceedingly tall and gaunt alicorn version of herself. Two more also appeared. Both of them had the same color scheme, but they remained ghostly and distant. Beyond them only eyes watched from the shadows.

Rainbow Dash took another step back. The alicorn’s smile grew. Now that she was solid, Rainbow Dash could see her teeth. They had no analog to any animal she knew of.

“Yeah, I’m out of here.”

Rainbow Dash took off, soaring through the archways that made up the path. She immediately realized that doing so was a mistake. Her body felt incredibly heavy, and her one remaining lung burned. She felt a cold chill run down her spine. All the effort she had expended to keep herself physically fit meant nothing in this world. This was what it would be like if it was all taken from her. That she could fly with all the speed and grace of an especially well-fed Fluttershy. It was her worst fear in the whole world.

Unable to continue, she dropped, landing in a pile of ash that went up to her knees. She began to run, or at least try to. It was not easy. The material resisted her motion with every step, and there were hard things in it. Hard things that Rainbow Dash quickly realized were bones.

She turned back, looking into the void, and realized that the alicorns following her were gone. They had just vanished. In fact, she began to doubt if they had ever been there at all. Her heart was beating, and beating wrong. It hurt. This place was getting to her, and she began to wonder if she had made a horrible mistake.

Carefully, she turned back to the path- -only to find that the hoops marking were beginning to end. Rainbow Dash could see them for another fifty meters or so, rising up a distant hill. As they went, they decayed, until they were nothing more than corroded gray pylons. They had been abandoned for an incredible span of time, and nopony had bothered to repair them.

“Well buck me…” sighed Rainbow Dash, feeling herself on the verge of collapse.

“I’d rather not.”

Rainbow Dash turned to face the alicorn that was now standing beside her. There were not tracks that led up to her, and her hooves seemed to rest on the ash without leaving an indentation.

“GAH!” Rainbow Dash did not know what else to do. She instead acted on her pure, keen Pegasus instincts- -and punched the alicorn in the chest.

What she hit was not flesh. At least it did not feel like flesh. It was more like punching an overripe melon. There was something hard on the outside like a rind, and then something inside that was sickly, soft, and cold. To her horror, Rainbow Dash realized that her fist had gone in up to the elbow.

“S- -sorry! Whoa, I didn’t mean to do that!”

Her apology was interrupted by a sudden smell. Not a bad one, but defiantly not a good one either. Rainbow Dash had smelled a lot of things in her life, but had no idea how to even categorize what this alicorn suddenly smelled like.

Fluid dripped past her hoof. It was pale and yellow. Then she felt something move. Segmented, metallic tendrils emerged from the wound, crawling up her hoof.

“Would you kindly remove your hoof from my chest?”

Rainbow Dash did not need to be told twice. When she did, it left an enormous hole. She saw the glimmer of metal- -a lot of metal, including gnarled trunks that met with the worm-like tendrils- -and flesh that would have been more at-home in an anemic citrus fruit than inside a pony.

“Sorry.”

“Please refrain from striking us. We do not feel pain. But we do not enjoy injury either.”

The edges of the would suddenly began to move. Rainbow Dash watched as in less than a second it closed and repaired without even a semblance of a scar.

“What- -what even are you?”

The alicorn looked down at her with large, violet eyes. “A pony.”

“Then who were you?”

This question seemed to amuse the alicorn. “No one. Unlike yourself.”

Rainbow Dash took a step back, and fell up to her body in the ash. The alicorn only stared, as she had no eyelids.

“Things decay quickly here,” said the alicorn. “This place once thrived. But just as in your world, it has ended.” The tip of her horn ignited, and Rainbow Dash was forced to turn away. For some reason the blue light it produced hurt her inside in a way that she did not understand.

Suddenly she fell, landing hard on a path made of a single piece of endless green stone. The ash rustled and dispersed into the air, assembling itself instead as a kind of lightly glowing and foul-smelling fog.

“Why did you do that? Now I can’t see.”

“Of course you can. I have left your retinas intact. Until next week.”

“Wh- -what?”

“You always do well in surgery. Which is why I like you.” She started walking. Not floating this time, at least not completely. Her legs were at least moving, but her motion was that of something that had no mass despite her clear solidity.

“Wait! Where are you going?”

“Abandoned areas become home to aberrations. And you do not have the dead-mage to protect you this time.”

“Protect me from what, exactly?”

“From aberrations.” She paused. “And from me.”

Rainbow Dash frowned and stiffened, ready to attack. The alicorn was clearly fragile, but Rainbow Dash had no idea if it was even possible to fight whatever it was.

“Are you going to fight me?” asked the alicorn, cocking her head. Somehow it wasan immensely grotesque action.

“Maybe. Are you going to try to hurt me?”

“Yes. But not right now. You are Rainbow Dash. The Element of Loyalty, and the Rainbow-Bearer. You are much beloved by Dagon.”

“And what exactly is ‘Dagon’? And does ‘beloved’ mean I’m going to have to give birth to weird fish-pony hybrids?”

“You misunderstand Dagon’s nature. But I cannot explain it. Your language has evolved to the point where it lacks the necessary vocabulary.”

“So I’m not going to have to give birth to fish-pony hybrids?”

“No.”

“Okay. Good. That’s a good start.” Rainbow Dash relaxed, but only slightly. “So what are you going to do?”

The alicorn began moving. Rainbow Dash understood that she was meant to follow. “You represent a considerable investment of resources,” she said. “I have expended a considerable amount of work studying you.”

Rainbow Dash froze. “My lungs- -you did this, didn’t you?!”

“Yes,” said the alicorn, calmly. “Among other things.”

“You’re insane! This- -”

“Never once hurt you, did it? Perhaps you felt it a little. A strange ache with no explanation. A sharp pain with no apparent source that seems of no consequence at the time. Maybe a thin mark here or there that fades quickly without a scar.” She looked down at Rainbow Dash. Her irises were violet, like Rainbow Dash’s, but her pupils were deep blue. “We are out of phase, and can never coexist. This is as close as we can normally come to your world. You do not feel what we do here. No pony is meant to come to this place.”

“Well, I did.”

“Clearly. And now that you are here, I cannot allow my work to be ruined.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“Meaning I’m willing to suspend protocol, if only for a brief time. To get you back where you need to be, unharmed and largely whole. So that we can continue the experiments.”

Rainbow Dash shivered, but she did not see many other alternatives. “Do you have a name?” she asked. It had almost become an instinct. If things were going badly, she had to at least try to use the power of friendship.

“We all have the same name. We are Harvestor.”

The other two rainbow-maned alicorns appeared beside them. Their bodies still remained distinctly non-solid; they had not materialized properly. Nor did they speak.

Comments

[KeePony]

Dagon so this going Lovecraftian horror. Oh No!