Rainbow Dash Around the World

by MagicS

Rewound Clock

Several months previously…

Rainbow Dash flew over the rocky and arid landscape that existed south of both the Great Camel Desert and the home of the giraffes. She had already gone far enough away from the small town she met Big Red in that she couldn’t have even really seen it anymore if she looked over her shoulder. And it had only been a few minutes since she had flown off. What could she say, she was excited. Even if the world in front of her just looked like a bunch of empty canyons and dry plains. There was something more to it, there had to be, and Rainbow Dash was going to find out what.

The mystery of Hoofica. It promised all sorts of adventure to her, she could feel it.

“There’s no way I’m turning back from this,” she grinned in anticipation as she continued to speed through the hot and dry sky.

Still though, there was absolutely nothing in front of her. If there really did used to be some old kingdom here it really had totally vanished. From horizon to horizon it just looked like uninhabited badlands. Rainbow Dash had flown over and been to similar places in the past, but none that were supposed to be full of cities and millions of ponies. If this is what Hoofica looked like before it vanished she almost couldn’t believe such a large country existed in an unforgiving place like this. Maybe that was just another part of the mystery. Maybe what she was seeing now had been part of what changed when it all vanished.

Rainbow Dash started whistling to herself as she flew over the empty landscape. At least she had finally now gotten used to the heat again after flying through the desert. She was pretty sure she could handle any climate, biome, or insane weather event the world threw at her now.

She looked down at the plateau she was flying over, pretty sure she was just about getting to the point that Big Red said was the start of Hoofica’s borders. That meant that if all this hubbub about Hoofica was true she should be coming across something at any moment.

How does an entire country vanish anyways?

Rainbow Dash frowned as she realized she was being dumb. “Oh wait… the Crystal Empire vanished for a thousand years. But that was like, Sombra doing some crazy magical thing, right? Ugh, I never asked Twilight about the specifics…” She folded her hooves while in mid-flight and thought. “But then again, if he could do it what’s to say some other pony could never do the same? But this place didn’t sound like it was just one big city. It’s a whole country. There has to be something weird going on.”

She passed over the plateau completely and started flying over a flatter stretch of land that looked like it at one point might have had a road going south. But over probable months of neglect it had been reclaimed by the dust and wind.

“What to do, what to do...” Rainbow Dash muttered, bored. Her heart wanted some adventuring right now but what if she kept on flying and never found anything out about Hoofica? “Come on, there’s nothing out here. When am I going to-”

She didn’t feel anything.

There hadn’t been a sign, a warning, her hairs on the back of her neck didn’t stand up. Nothing.

But suddenly one moment she was flying with an empty landscape in front of her, and in the next an exploding kaleidoscope of shifting colors clouded her vision. She had to instantly shut her eyes out of reflex and all her senses went out of wack—vaguely she discerned something that felt like a tiny mosquito bite on the back of her neck for an instant. Vertigo overtook her and it felt like she was tumbling through the sky, first down, then up, then all over the place.

She blinked a few times and the colors of the world slowly returned to normal but things were still blurry, her instincts told her she was upside-down and that she had to right herself or she’d crash.

“Hng!” Rainbow Dash grunted and turned around, pulling up and finally after a few more blinks she saw dark clouds in the sky clearly and the sensation of vertigo was gone.

Rainbow Dash slowed down and steadily flapped her wings until she stopped in a patient hover. Sweat was dripping down her body and she was breathing far heavier than she normally would’ve after such simple maneuvers. It was like she had been shocked, or had just got back up after fainting. The strange experience was making her body react in a more extreme manner.

“What… just happened?” Rainbow Dash questioned. She brought her hooves up to her eyes and rubbed them before taking a long look out at what now lied before her.

And where was she?

Her eyes widened as she saw a landscape and country almost completely different from what she had been looking at only moments before. Instead of dry plains, canyons, and rocky mountains and plateaus, she now saw wide open grassy plains, forests, hills, rivers and lakes, and—far more importantly than any of that—what were clearly towns and larger cities in the distance. It was a sprawling country ahead of her that reminded her more of Equestria than anywhere else she had been on her travels. If it was daytime she surely would’ve found it even more impressive and colorful to look at.

“Wait. What?” Rainbow Dash tilted her head. It was daytime.

She looked up at the sky and saw nothing but an impenetrable ceiling of black clouds rolling overhead. Thunder shook the heavens while lightning struck in the distance. The perpetually dark sky was like that in every direction.

“But… where did this come from? I didn’t see anything like this—it’s impossible,” Rainbow Dash frowned at the black clouds. There was something just not right about them. She could feel it as a pegasus experienced with working on the weather team, there was something totally wrong and unnatural about those clouds. It sent a chill down her spine.

“I was just flying around like normal and then...” she turned around and looked back—and her body froze in shock. “What the...”

Behind her, from ground to cloud, from right to left as far as the eye could see, stood a mesmerizing wall of shifting grey color. Rainbow Dash could only barely make out what was beyond it and recognized the landscape she had just been flying through. Her eyes glanced up again and saw the black clouds stopping and rolling off it, whatever this wall was it was clearly the thing separating this place from the outside world—maybe even disguising it. That had to have been why she hadn’t seen this coming.

Rainbow Dash bit her lip. “From the outside it all looked like a big empty nothing… this is uh… dang, what would Twilight and Starlight say? An invisibility spell? A cloaking spell? I swear they’ve talked about stuff like that before.” She huffed. “Well it’s definitely magic, even I can see that.”

She flew towards it to head on back outside and get another look-

When as soon as she got within a foot of it she felt a powerful force pushing her back and a light shock around her neck.

“Ow!” Rainbow Dash yelped and flew back, rubbing her neck. “What the hay?!”

Not one to give up so easily, Rainbow Dash grit her teeth and flew right back at it, even faster this time.

Again she was forcefully repelled and shocked. It felt strange, not like wind or something was physically pushing her, but more like how it felt when she was messing with some magnets Twilight had and tried jamming two of them together.

“What gives?!” Rainbow Dash angrily yelled and flew to another spot, then another, and another. She tested multiple different heights and latitudes of the shimmering wall of magic, but not a single point allowed her through. She was defeated and thrown back every single time.

Huffing in exhaustion after a dozen tries, Rainbow Dash finally got the message: she wasn’t getting out of here the same way she came in.

“Hey! Hey up there!”

Rainbow Dash looked down at the source of the voice yelling at her. There was a pony standing on the ground below, waving, standing outside of a shack—house was too generous a word—that had a small personal garden around it. The shack itself looked like it had only been put up relatively recently, and it sat in the middle of an open spot in the ground between a forest to the east and a large rock formation to the west. What she also saw was a road that came up from the south that the shack was built next to, it winded to the north before being cut off right at the grey wall. It must’ve been the road leading in and out of the northern border of Hoofica before this magic wall came down.

She flew down and landed right in front of him, still panting a bit. He was an earth pony stallion a fair bit older than her, with a grey-blue coat and a white beard on his chin with a piece of straw stuck in his mouth.

“Yo,” Rainbow Dash said to him.

He nodded to her. “Saw you come in. And saw you try and leave a few times.”

“Yeah...” Rainbow Dash dragged a hoof down her face and briefly glanced back at the wall before raising an eyebrow at him. “You mind telling me what’s going on here? I’m—this is Hoofica, isn’t it?”

“That it be,” he sighed and looked up at the dark sky. “Welcome to Hoofica, and I hope you can learn to love it, cause you’re going to be stuck here forever.”

---

Rainbow Dash gulped down some water from an old mason jar before setting it down on the table she was now sitting at and leveling her gaze at the pony sitting across from her.

“Thanks for the water, Mr-?”

“Cropduster would be the name,” he nodded. “Pleasure to meet you, although I doubt you can say the same.”

“Well I kind of figured something was going to happen as soon as I reached Hoofica but yeah,” Rainbow Dash rubbed the back of her neck. “My name’s Rainbow Dash by the way. So uh, would you happen to know what’s going on here?”

“Can’t say I know everything but I’ve got enough to inform you about the important stuff I’d say. That’s why I built this shack up here, to “welcome” newcomers such as yourself to Hoofica, make sure you all got a handle on the situation you’re in. Cause it aint exactly a nice one,” he said.

Rainbow Dash sat back and frowned. “Thanks for doing that at least. How many ponies have come through here?”

He shrugged. “Can’t say for sure, but not as many in the last few months. Seems ponies outside got the message to not come here for the most part. Some of the ones who have come through were just unlucky traveling merchants, couriers, hikers, and then there were a couple of search parties, and a few more brave souls from nearby.”

“Yeah I stopped at a small village just north of here, they told me a few ponies from their village had come here to see what had happened but...”

“Mhm,” Cropduster nodded.

Rainbow Dash sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Okay, so seriously, what is going on in this crazy place? What the hay is that big magical wall?”

“We call it the barrier. It went up months ago and at the same time the sky turned to what you saw. Nothing but dark clouds everywhere. And everypony in Hoofica... and everypony that’s come in since, gets this on their neck,” Cropduster turned his head and pointed to his neck, showing off a solid black band around it.

Rainbow Dash had noticed it earlier but she thought it was just a tattoo or something. “Wait... do I-”

“Yep,” he nodded and stood up, walking over to a cabinet and pulling a small hoofheld mirror out of a drawer. He walked up to Rainbow Dash and held it in front of her face, showing off the same black band that was around her neck. “You got it the moment you came through the barrier, it’s what keeps you from going back out.”

“I thought I felt something...” Rainbow Dash grimaced and rubbed a hoof around her neck while checking out the black band in the mirror. “Geez... so this is all like some kind of crazy magic spell? Who did all this? Why?”

“I couldn’t even begin to tell you the specifics of how it all works. As far as unicorn magic goes I aint ever seen nor head of anypony able to perform magic on this level. Neither has anypony else in Hoofica. But as for who’s responsible?” Cropduster’s expression darkened considerably. “Our Queen. Our own Queen’s the one that’s done this. She’s lost her dang mind.”

“Your own Queen?” Rainbow Dash was surprised.

Cropduster nodded. “That’s the word at least, ponies from the capitol have said as much, although I doubt those of us living all the way out here have even heard half of the whole story. But what we have heard is that the Queen’s decreed all of this.”

“But... why?” Rainbow Dash shrugged in confusion, holding her hooves out and waiting for an answer.

Cropduster scoffed. “Who knows? We’ve all been saying she’s gone nuts, that’s the only explanation I can think of. The King too for some reason hasn’t said or done anything, don’t hear nothing about him anymore. It’s all the Queen’s word. It’s just come out of nowhere, she’s never done something even remotely like this before.”

“I guess that explains why this is still up. If it’s your Queen I guess your army or whatever is still obeying her?” Rainbow asked.

“Yep. That’d be the case. I doubt there weren’t any that didn’t have a problem with all this but there must’ve been enough to silence them.”

Rainbow Dash nodded a couple times. “So there’s a huge magical barrier around your whole kingdom cause of your crazy Queen. Got it.”

“That’s not everything.”

“Huh?”

“That’s not the only thing that’s changed here. Or why nopony has tried revolting or fighting back against what’s happened here,” Cropduster said. There was a cold frown on his face and he brought up his hooves to rest his chin on them, leaning towards Rainbow Dash across the table. “You see, in the first few days this happened, nopony really knew what was going on, specially on the outskirts of the kingdom. Local mayors and leaders tried to keep order and sent messengers to the capitol and bigger cities, looking for answers. Well we got our answer.”

Cropduster’s eyes narrowed, old anger resurfacing. “A new group of ponies had been formed at the same time that the barrier went up. Out of the royal guards and others, they’re called the “Inquisitors”. Apparently the Queen made them to enforce the new way in Hoofica. And that new way meant that crops were burned, food was heavily rationed, personal belongings were taken and destroyed. Even things like children’s toys and books. The Inquisitors were sent to make sure all of that happened. No guards or police across the kingdom dared stand up to them. Anypony who did stand up to them got rounded up and taken away. I saw it all happen in my home town.”

“But... why? I don’t understand,” Rainbow Dash shook her head, her mouth open in shocked horror. “Why would anypony do that?”

“I don’t know the real reason behind it all. I don’t know what the big picture is, nopony I’ve talked to does. But I know what their short term goal is: making ponies completely miserable. Making the entire kingdom of Hoofica miserable.”

Rainbow Dash was about to ask why again when Cropduster held up a hoof.

“I don’t know. That’s just how it is. If you end up heading south from here and follow the road you’ll hit Far Rock, that’s the northernmost town in the country, and you’ll see it for yourself. You’ll see them for yourself too.”

“Them?”

“The posters...” Cropduster trailed. “It’s... a little difficult to explain, but you’ll get what I mean when you see them. Ponies will tell you the same things I have too.”

“Guess I know where I’m going next then,” Rainbow Dash dragged a hoof down her face.

“Actually there might be somewhere else you’ll want to go to first.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow at him. “Hm?”

“Since you’re an outsider, and you also stopped at that little village just a bit north of here, you might be interested in getting in touch with the other outsiders that have come in and are stranded here,” Cropduster said. “You probably saw the forest to the east of here when you were flying, right? Well every outsider that came in from the north earlier holed up in there, hiding from the Inquisitors and the rest of Hoofica. Since they didn’t have a home of their own to go to and they were afraid of being carted off and all they needed someplace to lay low. Truthfully I don’t think they had that much to worry about, the Inquisitors only came this far out into the countryside twice. And local ponies probably would’ve been happy enough to shelter them, but for obvious reasons they weren’t exactly going to be too trusting of Hoofica ponies. Anyways, I bet the ones who came from that village at least would like to hear how their family and friends are doing. And the rest probably want to know what’s going on in the outside world.”

“Yeah...” Rainbow Dash rubbed her chin in thought. “That’s probably a good idea. I mean, this country is a pretty big place right? I’m not going to be able to fly everywhere just in one day. Kind of hard to tell what time it is thanks to the sky but I’ll need to find a place to sleep later tonight too.” She nodded to herself. “Alright, I’m going to fly out to that forest next. Those ponies deserve to know... even though I probably won’t have a whole lot to say on what they want to hear about. I’ve kind of just been flying around and doing my own thing.”

Cropduster shrugged. “Better than nothing.”

“Heh, I should probably go now then. Thanks for the water and filling me in on what’s going on,” Rainbow Dash said to him. “You’re doing a really good thing here, dude.”

“Before you go, would you like anything to eat? I’ve got corn,” he offered.

Rainbow Dash’s stomach grumbled. It had been a little while since she had solid food. “Yeah, I think I could go for some corn.”

After chomping through a couple of cobs, Rainbow Dash left the small shack behind and flew up into the sky once more. She gave a single wave back to Cropduster before she looked around at the country of Hoofica. The dark sky had gotten even darker since she went into his shack, stray lightning bolts continued to strike random patches of ground everywhere, if there was a more miserable looking kingdom, Rainbow Dash didn’t want to see it. To the south she saw the supposed town of Far Rock nestled on the road not too far away, but for now she was headed east to the forest and the refugees said to live there.

There was a lot she still needed to find out about this place and why this had all happened.

Author's Note:

And now back to our regularly scheduled daily updates.

Comments

[TheCommunistDog]

Well that explains a lot.

In today’s chapter: Flashback! We finally see Rainbows POV of her first few hours in Hoofica.

[redmar]

It seems that from this point were back to Rainbow's POV. I guess we'll be seeing more of what happened to her before meeting Wish.

[Comma Typer]

And here... well, I have been far away from commenting on this, way too sparse since the bit with the giraffes. Still, with the Hoofica arc being quite long now and this being a significant enough shift, I figure I might as well say it now that it's going quite well. I keep getting pulled by the nature of Wish's father, by Wish's own dilemma about saving other ponies, and how they're going to escape somehow.

That'll be it for me, though, other than that you're still doing a great job with this (granted, it's now been more than half a year since these chapters were published but still). Thanks for the story, MagicS!