Rainbow Dash's Unstoppable Ego

by MagicS

A Mammoth of a Problem I

Dash opened her mouth wide in a yawn and rubbed her eyes to get the sleep out. She had slept under a tree the previous night and while it was pretty cold there was only a light amount of frost on the ground. Thankfully there hadn’t been a storm and the sky was clear and sunny. Another day perfect for traveling.

There was a tall cliff ahead of her and once she reached that and stood atop it it should give her a commanding view of what was coming up next. More mountains likely. She didn’t think it was cynical to think that, just realistic at this point. Snow and mountains and frozen lakes and rivers. Honestly what else could she have expected from up here? It’s not like this was Equestria and the rest of the landmass her home occupied with all its different climates and biomes.

Although there was one difference to this area so far though. Slightly to the east was a very large and very deep looking lake that she had seen when flying the previous day. It extended north past the line of the cliff and she was excited to see how far it went. Water like that made it more likely there was a town around, and it wasn’t even frozen over like so many of the other lakes and rivers she had seen up here so it might just be worth checking out to see if there was anything special about it.

She got up onto her hooves and stretched her wings, turning and flexing them to make sure they were in perfect working condition. She popped her shoulders and rocked back and forth on the balls of her hooves. Everything felt fine and dandy to her.

“Okay. This is the day something happens. I can feel it,” she said to herself.

Taking a big stretch she groaned as she felt the fatigue leaving her muscles and then sighed in relief. Just like how any pegasus in as good a shape as her should feel after an uninterrupted night of sleep she didn’t have any aches or pains. Chalk that up to how much she made sure to keep in tip-top physical condition. And maybe the occasional spa visit helped too.

Rainbow Dash grinned and hovered up a few feet. “Next stop, cliff.”

She shot like a lightning bolt towards it, eager to see the next stretch of her journey. The height of the cliff would’ve been nothing to sneeze at if she couldn’t fly but thankfully that proved no obstacle to a pegasus like her. She made it to the snow-caked top of the cliff with ease and kicked away some of the freshly fallen powder beneath her hooves. Standing tall she could now look out as far as the eye could see at the northern landscape in front of her. Despite her cynical assumption that it was probably going to be more mountains it actually turned out to be a wide valley.

It was just bordered by more mountains.

Rainbow Dash saw the lake extending quite a bit into the valley before stopping, its surface was serene and a blue so deep it was almost black the entire way. The outskirts of the valley were actually not fully covered in snow either and Rainbow Dash could see fresh grasslands and shrubbery for a good deal of it. It wasn’t enough to call the valley fertile but it was at least not a desert of snow and frozen over tundra. The mountains that completely enclosed it (aside from the one area where the lake cut in) were tall and clustered tightly together. It was a range of shark teeth all growing right up against each other, entrance on hoof into the valley would be near impossible. And bringing something like a wagon with you would be totally impossible.

Of course what really made Rainbow Dash get her eyes to widen in surprise and a smile to start spreading on her face was the large city nestled in the valley. Civilization. And to her the sign of a new adventure.

It was a widespread city with hundreds upon hundreds of buildings that she could see, some of them quite large too, mansion and even palace sized, although none shot up into the sky like the Manehattan skyscrapers. There was a wall around a large portion of the city and a river leading from the northern end of the lake that curved around and bisected the western side of the city and then went up all the way to the mountains at the north side of the valley. Outside of the wall the far west side of the city was maybe about a quarter of the city’s size in total, the buildings were smaller, mostly homes probably. To the east of the city on the other side of the lake Rainbow Dash saw what she was pretty sure were farms or at least some area of the land that was much greener and more uniform than the surrounding valley. Along the lakeshore were a number of docks and boats moored in the water.

Either way this was clearly a bustling and alive city. Rainbow Dash could see the telltale sings of chimney smoke and the aura of the city and the entire valley just called out to her. She thought about flying right into it, right to the very center of the city and saying hi to whoever it was that lived there, but some might not really appreciate that and she wanted to make a good first impression. If they had a large wall around their city in the first place they probably wouldn’t take kindly to some pony from who knows where just flying over it.

So Rainbow Dash made the decision to fly to the valley floor and walk into the city. As annoying as that is for her.

When she got down there though she saw that there was a road—more of a path really—that came from the city and went allll the way out to the mountains on the southwest side of the valley before disappearing into the foothills. Since the road would obviously take her right where she needed to go she figured she might as well keep on it. It was a grungy dirt road overgrown with weeds on most of it and a layer of frost from the previous night but it still worked.

She trotted down it at an easy pace, despite her excitement and impatience she didn’t want to start running down it cause that’d probably look weird to whoever was living in the city too. But it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes till she got to the first few buildings at the edge of the city. There was something nagging at the back of her head while she walked down the road though but she couldn’t place what it was. Ignoring it for now she continued on.

Closer to the houses outside the wall she noticed that there wasn’t anyone or anything wandering the streets or walking around up there, even though it was well late enough in the morning for people to be awake. In fact none of the chimney smoke came from this area outside the walls either. That’s weird, the city obviously wasn’t abandoned but was this area?

Rainbow Dash narrowed her eyes to look harder at the closest buildings. They definitely didn’t seem occupied and a couple looked like they were partially torn down. Not destroyed or dilapidated but it looked like they were intentionally dismantled and the building materials had been taken elsewhere.

And they were big.

“What the?” Rainbow Dash muttered as she made it to the first few houses and other buildings. They were positively huge, the front door and entrance to a house just to the side of the road she was on was as big as the average house in Ponyville. It’s like these were built to the specifications of giants. The scale was still right for everything, just taken to a huge level. That’s what that nagging was, the road she was walking on was also way wider than a normal road back home.

Being right next to the homes now she felt downright tiny in comparison. Almost like she had woken up to find herself shrunken down to the size of a mouse. Her perspective from up on the cliff must’ve been off, the huge size of some of the other buildings probably made these seem like normal size houses. Which meant that everything must’ve been bigger than it looked from up there.

“Geez, so I’m just meeting giants all the time now?” She said as she continued walking down the road, looking past every building to see any signs of life.

Still nothing but now she was close enough where she could start hearing sounds coming from the city wall and behind it. Voices, things moving, it all carried over the wall so she picked up the pace to continue down the road. The path she was on took her almost straight to the wall and she could see a gate now directly ahead. As the wall loomed closer, Rainbow Dash estimated it to be a good forty feet tall. It was made of smooth stone blocks cemented together while the gate was thick wooden boards and didn’t appear to have anyway or anyone to open it from the outside.

“I could just fly over but...” Rainbow sighed and walked right up to the wooden gate, lifting a hoof and pounding hard on it repeatedly. “Hello! Anybody back there? Open up!”

Her pounding continued until she heard something moving behind the gate. Heavy plodding footsteps that actually slightly shook the ground where Rainbow Dash stood. Seems like whoever populated this city really were giants.

A panel about ten feet up on the gate slid open and one exceptionally big eyeball took up the entire space of it, looking around at its own height for whoever was knocking on the gate. “Who is it?” Came the voice from the other side.

Rainbow Dash couldn’t help but grow an amused grin on her face. “Down here, dude.”

The eyeball angled down and Rainbow Dash could almost see the eyebrow above it shooting up in surprise. “Oh! Who are you?”

His voice sounded friendly and innocently curious, not exactly what Dash was expecting but she wasn’t going to complain. She had assumed that most places in the True North wouldn’t exactly be friendly but so far after the nice reception she got from the tunnel ponies it was looking like hospitality was just as alive up here as it was in Equestria.

“My name’s Rainbow Dash, I come from a place called Equestria way to the south. I’m in the middle of an adventure right now and I found your city,” she waved up to the big eye.

“My word! Wait just one moment please!” The excited voice said and the eye pulled away from the little window, sliding it back shut.

“Alright.” Rainbow Dash shrugged and sat down. She could hear that gate guard or whatever he was talking to some others behind the wall, and then a bunch of shuffling as she felt through the shaking ground that a bunch of them must’ve been moving.

The little window then slid back open and the eye reappeared. “Okay, thank you for your patience! Could you back up a little bit now? The gate opens outward.” The eye left again but came back a split-second later. “Oh right! You’re a pony, correct?”

“Uh, yeah?” Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow at his eye as she backed up a few steps. “You guys don’t get many ponies around here?”

The figure chuckled. “We know of ponies but no, we certainly don’t get many visitors.”

He shut the window again and Rainbow Dash heard him walking away from the gate, the next moment a loud creaking sound rang out from the wooden gate and with a heavy grind the doors began opening toward her right down the middle. Rainbow Dash stood there, beaming in delight. She couldn’t wait to see this city and the creatures that lived here. This giant stuff, the strong feeling of adventure she got, was this place what she had been looking for this entire time? She hoped so.

As the doors opened fully she saw a huge figure standing in the middle of the road that continued on past the gate. He must’ve been the guy she was talking to. There were two others as well on either side of the road.

Rainbow Dash was now able to get her first look at who lived here. As expected, they were huge. Maybe twelve feet tall, built like hairy mountains, standing on four legs just like she did. But their shoulders were high and even humped a little, the hair that covered their bodies was shaggy and thick and all of them were the same brownish color with only slight variation in shade. Most noticeable of all was the long trunks and pearly white tusks they all bore.

A slow feeling of familiarity came upon Rainbow Dash the more she took in their details.

She knew she had never seen creatures like this before, but she felt like she had heard about something very similar to them from someone.

Yeah… she had. She remembered now. William the yak had told her about creatures that lived up in the True North. The dangerous, vicious, warlike creatures that drove the yaks south from their ancestral homes.

Rainbow Dash bit her lip as she took a second look at the not giant, but mammoth, creature in front of her. And the hair that wasn’t shaggy that covered them; but woolly.

“Welcome,” the gatekeeper said to her with a large smile while the other four pulled out trumpets and loudly blew into them. “To the city of mammoths!”

Author's Note:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89jOPAGJq-M

Comments

[THERDSTORYWHISPERER]

Great chapter!

[MagicS]

10543324
It's been a pretty far trip so far.

[StarzGecko]

12 feet? I think they would be taller