13 - A Faint Connection
Princess Celestia let out a weary sigh as she landed upon one of the few clouds scattered above Ponyville. Her tired eyes swept across the village and surrounding countryside, taking one last look for any sign of her colourful daughter amid the fading oranges and pinks of sunset. Alas, just like every time before, there was no sign of Rainbow Dash.
This was becoming ridiculous. Over the course of that day, she and her search party had widened their search to encompass several miles of countryside around the settlement. They had brought out every trick in the book, including some of the most potent spells Celestia had at her disposal for locating things that would otherwise go undisturbed.
Aside from a particularly magical pool of water hidden underground in the Everfree—which she saw fit to seal away—there had been nothing of note. Nothing that gave her an idea of where her daughter had gone, at least.
“I take it your search did not go well?” came Luna’s voice from behind and above her. Snorting, Celestia turned her gaze to her younger sister. The blue alicorn touched gently down by Celestia’s side, a grim frown on her muzzle. “Were it at all different, I imagine you would have brought word without delay.”
Celestia was quiet for a few seconds before turning her attention back to the distant horizon. Her brow wrinkled in thought. “...We aren’t making any progress,” she muttered under her breath. Her ears lowered, and her lips peeled back to show her teeth in a frustrated grimace. “It’s been too long… By now, she will be far away from Ponyville. Too far for us to reliably base our search in this area. But without even a direction, we can’t hope to find her like this.”
Luna placed a hoof on Celestia’s back in a bid to reassure her. “Send words to the other settlements, then,” she suggested quietly. “Spread the word that Rainbow is missing. If anypony should see her, they would more than likely report it with all due haste.”
Celestia looked down, her expression darkening with doubt and concern. There was a problem with that plan... “Perhaps, but… Lulu, I do not want to cause my subjects any undue stress, not so soon after our confrontation with the changeling swarm. Ponies are still reeling from that struggle, and to learn that a Princess of Equestria has gone missing without a trace…”
Luna winced before draping a comforting wing over Celestia’s back. The two were quiet for a time, sharing the warmth. After a moment, Luna found her words and spoke in a low, comforting voice. “While it is true that the ponies of Equestria suffered greatly during Chrysalis’ invasion, it is also true that they hold the royal family in high regard, especially you and Rainbow. They all know that it was her bravery that enabled our victory. Therefore, a great many will be eager to do whatever they must to ensure that their princess is brought home safe.”
Celestia pondered the point for a few seconds, and soon conceded that Luna had a point. She gave a reluctant nod as a small, tender smile spread across her face. “Thank you, Luna… I shall return to Canterlot and spread the word, then.”
“Very well,” Luna said, withdrawing her hoof and wing. “I shall remain here and continue to coordinate the search efforts in the region. In addition, with any luck, I might have a lead that may help us learn more about Rainbow’s disappearance.”
Celestia’s smile vanished, replaced with a curious frown. “Is that so? What?”
Luna looked up towards the sky. After a moment, she winced, her horn lighting up with her signature blue aura. As Celestia’s sun dipped below the horizon, the moon rose on the other side, and soon, the world was bathed in the gentle blues and purples of the night. In the heavens, the stars came into view, twinkling gently against an infinite tapestry of obsidian.
“...The storm,” Luna finally said, narrowing her eyes at the night sky.
Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you say that storm was benign? An anomalous spectacle and little else?”
Luna looked back to her sister, her expression darkening. “I did say that, but there is a chance I was wrong. Twilight and the rest of my niece’s friends pointed out the timing of the event, not to mention the fact that, as far as I can tell, Rainbow Dash was outside and in the clouds when the storm reached its closest point. The following morning, she was gone.”
Luna gestured past at the sky around them. “As such, just maybe, if I can find a point where the residue of the storm is stronger, it may provide me with a thread that will lead me to Rainbow Dash.”
Celestia turned her own eyes up at the sky, thinking back on the curtains of light that had swallowed the heavens that night. They had been, somehow, magical in nature, that much was unquestionable. Ponies had been alarmed at the sight, but Luna’s own examination of it through magic and telescope both had lead to her announcing it as harmless. Ponies had slept well. Many had even stayed up to watch as it fell over the world. In most places, it stopped several miles above the ground before slowly fading, though it had apparently drawn much closer in others.
“Sister?” Luna’s voice drew Celestia out of her consideration. She turned back to Luna to see a curious look on her face.
Celestia shook her head. “Forgive me, I was lost in thought,” she explained before rising to her hooves. “If the storm did have something to do with my daughter’s disappearance, then we will need to learn all we can of it. Once I have sent word across Equestria for ponies to keep their eyes open, I aim to reach out to the best mages I know of to help study the phenomenon.”
A few names were already springing to mind.
Luna nodded. “Very well. I will see you soon, sister.”
Celestia gave her little sister a small smile before turning and leaping into the air, her eyes set on the city of Canterlot high on the mountainside.
Luna watched her elder sister fly away. Soon enough, Celestia disappeared into the distance, and the Princess of the Night was left to her own devices. She took a deep breath before looking ahead. Time to start searching.
Luna rose to her full height and leapt from her perch, reaching out with her magic in all directions. Her horn lit up, periodically pulsing at regular intervals. She sent out pulse after pulse of magic, and each one returned with little and less that was of any use. The town was all but devoid of magical energy, save for the unicorns who called the melting pot of a village their home.
For almost a full hour, Luna kept this up. She drifted lazily through the skies over Ponyville and even well past the town’s borders, barely registering the physical world in favour of observing the magic around her for anything out of place. She was about to give up and try another tactic when, finally, she got something.
Turning, Luna caught sight of the disturbance. Or rather, she caught sight of where she sensed it was coming from. Gazing at the seemingly unimportant spot of empty sky the disturbance occupied showed nothing out of the ordinary, but she could feel it as she drew closer. Her horn tingled with static the closer she got, like pins and needles along her most sensitive extremity.
After a moment of scanning, her lips twitched up into a gratified smile. “At last,” she breathed out. There was no doubt about it. This was a residue of the storm, all right. It was a mile or so outside of Ponyville, and so far from where Rainbow had been, but it was nevertheless more than she had started with.
Moving quickly, Luna gathered up a few stray clouds that had drifted out of the Everfree Forest nearby. It took a bit of force to make the primal weather submit, but it soon cowered under the wrath of the alicorn searching for her missing niece. She brought it back to the disturbance and settled down on her belly, trying to get comfortable.
She slowly relaxed, purging all unnecessary thoughts from her mind. After a few moments of what may have seemed like meditation, she lit her horn with pale magic. With a low rumble and a rush of intangible wind washing over her body, the waking world around her ceased to be.
When she opened her eyes, she was standing in the endless blue abyss of the dream realm. Orbs of light drifted past her, each one giving off faint echoes of the dreams within. She did not look at them for now, though. There were no nightmares that demanded her attention in Ponyville. Besides, she had a specific target she was looking for.
And it did not take her long to find it. Luna’s eyes widened when she saw a space in the void not far away from her that contrasted sharply with the surrounding calm. It looked almost like a thunderstorm, gold in colour and distorting the image behind it. It buzzed and crackled with energy, and the closer Luna drew to it, the more it became clear that this was the same disturbance she had found in the waking world. Or, at least, this was an effect caused by it.
“Odd,” she mused to herself, slowly circling around the churning mass of unfitting light to get a better look at it. It was at least four times her overall size, and when she peered through it at the dream realm beyond, she realized that something seemed… off about it. It was hard to place, but something was not right, and it set the fur on the back of her neck on end.
Taking a deep breath, she reached out and pushed into the golden light with a hoof. To her relief, it only offered minimal pushback before yielding under her weight. She passed through and was immediately hit by the sensation of being somewhere else. The jarring sensation was so abrupt that the flapping of her wings faltered for a moment. She was quick to regain her composure and touch down on a stray wisp of light.
“Alright…” she mumbled quietly to herself, glancing back at the anomaly. To her surprise, it seemed to have gotten smaller after she passed through. She quirked an eyebrow in confusion. “Strange… this whole ordeal grows more and more bewildering by the moment.”
Setting aside the oddity behind her for the time being, she turned her attention back to the dream realm. She somehow knew she wasn’t where she had started. She could feel it in her bones. When she had passed through the anomaly, it took her somewhere else…
Before she could contemplate the matter any further, though, her eyes were drawn to a familiar speck of light. She turned to look and saw a sphere of light, twinkling softly and slowly fading through all the colours of the rainbow. Her eyes widened. “Rainbow’s dream…” she breathed out, relief and hope filling her system.
Spreading out her wings, she kicked off and made her approach, reaching out with her hooves to touch the dream and gain entry.
She came to a stop a second later. Her eyes flew wide and shock flooded her system when a second orb, identical to the first, drifted lazily into view. Luna froze, her mind reeling. “What… two Rainbows?” she questioned, lowering her hooves. That should have been impossible. Every dream was unique. In all of her years, she had never once seen two dreams that were similar enough to be mistaken for one another, much less one that was identical to her niece's.
Deciding this needed further investigation, she resumed her journey for the nearest of the two orbs, hoping to get some answers.
Unfortunately, fate had other plans.
The further she moved from the anomaly that had brought her here, the more she realized that her representation in the dream realm was becoming less and less tangible. Looking down at her hooves, her eyes widened to see them distorting and blurring away. “What?! No, wait!” she cried out, hurling herself for the first orb in a desperate attempt to ground herself in a dream.
Too slow.
With an audible snap, Luna’s connection to the dream realm was cut. Gasping, her eyes snapped open back in the waking world, mind throbbing with every beat of her pounding heart. Taking a second to catch her breath, Luna closed her eyes to think about what had just happened.
She had been somewhere else in the dream realm entirely; somewhere far away from where she was now. How far, she could not say for sure, but the anomaly had served as her bridge and link to that location. It had shrunk when she passed through, and now…
Luna’s eyes opened again, and she reached out with her magic. After a few seconds, she allowed the glow to fade from her horn with a tired sigh. It was as she feared. Her interaction with the storm’s residue had disturbed it, causing its already unstable form to come undone. The disturbance in front of her had faded away completely.
She would get no answers here. If anything, she had been left with more questions, the biggest of which being why she had seen two separate dreams, both of which seemingly belonged to her strikingly-unique niece. Where had the anomaly taken her when she passed through it?
The silence around her yielded no answers. Soon, Luna gave a quiet growl of frustration before turning and making her way back to Ponyville. No matter. She didn’t need this specific disturbance to find her niece. She knew now that she could use them to track the pegasus down, and the storm had covered the entirety of Equestria.
All she needed was a bigger anomaly.
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Hmmm... can Discord of the changeling Twilight just open the rift and send the other Rainbow home?
Rainbow's dream? I wonder if there will be something like this:
bigger is better? okay XD
perhaps mark one down and let celestia and a group of mages study them?
So Luna can explore a small portion of the dream realm of Change's world. Helpful.
Nice work
Interesting that Luna can see Rainbow's dreams even from another world. Maybe that's going to hint her to where Rainbow actually is? Though getting her back may be the bigger problem.
Is Celestia going to recruit Starlight’s help?
Well shit
Technically, you're incorrect here Celestia; Rainbow Dash is in Ponyville.
Just not your Ponyville.
I wonder if Change-Princess Luna could detect this brief foray by Little Flashes-Princess Luna...
This might prove quite interesting.
Be careful what you wish for, Luna...
Here's a stumper. Is Princess Rainbow Dash closer to home than she started because she's moved to a spot in the dimension she's found herself in that's closer to home in her dimension than where she started? Or further from home because she's traveled so far from where the anomaly originally spat her out at?
And this is why you capture the magic to study it before using it.
we how have a huge clue.
now how to tract it down and get the right RD back?
Better be quicker. Entropy is a harsh mistress....
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