Rainbow Dash Around the World

by MagicS

Stormlands

Rainbow Dash woke up on a small island still in the southern ocean but thankfully north enough that things were no longer snowy or icy. It wasn’t a warm island to be sure but she at least didn’t have to worry about being frozen solid without her winter gear anymore. She yawned and stood up, her stomach decently filled after snacking on the edible flowers and grass she had found here. Not as good as real food but it suited her purposes just fine. Now she could get back into the sky and continue her flight north. A quick glance up at the sky told her it might not have even been six in the morning yet, she was going to get a lot of work done today.

Weather wasn’t as nice as yesterday though. The sky was fairly cloudy and there was a decent wind in the air, not a storm, but nothing that would be fun to fly through either. The further north she looked the more overcast it seemed to get as well. Maybe her good luck with weather was starting to run out and she’d be back to having to go through all sorts of garbage on this last leg back to Equestria. Oh well—kind of made it more interesting in its own way.

Rainbow Dash stretched and went to the edge of the island, looking down at the water as the waves lapped up against the rocky coast. The ocean was pretty choppy here too and like the weather in the sky it would probably get worse the further north she went too. Good thing she didn’t need to swim in it.

She took another look north to see if there were any islands she could see or perhaps something else out there but came up with nothing. Looks like she was still a far enough ways away from her next stop. If she didn’t find another island she was going to have to make a cloud bed at some point. Traveling distance may not have been nearly as far as when crossing the Grand Ocean but she was still a little worried about being stuck in the middle of nowhere with no solid ground beneath her. She might not be able to find another place with food for a while if she was unlucky. Getting that thought out of her head though, since it never paid to be pessimistic, Rainbow Dash opened her wings and took to the sky.

Letting the breeze partially carry her, she rose up high above the water and just beneath the lowest clouds. The early morning sun was only visible in gaps, big rays of sunlight punching holes through the clouds and onto the ocean. It was pretty in a way. Though the wind was a bother with it constantly whipping and pulling at her, dragging her mane across her face and ruffling her feathers. Seemed like that’s how it was going to be for the entire rest of the day.

Probably shouldn’t complain. It was better now than it would be in just a bit of flying.

Holding her hooves in front of her and making a great flap of her wings, Rainbow Dash sped off north.

---

The weather really wasn’t so bad. Not yet at least. Not compared to a few other stormy places she had been. It was just constant, constant and unyielding. But the sky was a darker gray now and the cloud cover no longer had any holes in it. In about an hour it looked like she’d be flying through a real storm, if the darker sky, rain and lightning clouds to the north, were any indication.

“I wonder if… I wonder if the Stormlands are right in front of me? Am I going to fly over them if I don’t change direction?” Rainbow Dash wondered.

She wasn’t purposefully trying to go to them or avoid them. She just knew they were somewhere close by, and it would make sense if they were at the epicenter of all the bad weather down here. Wouldn’t it be kind of fun if she went to the Storm King’s old home? She hadn’t really heard anything about it since the last time. There was probably something cool to do there.

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Something cool? It’ll be a nice place to explore though.”

It wouldn’t surprise her if it was a place in bad shape that could use some help or fixing up either. She had gone from place to place without much of a plan, looking for either excitement or a way to help out even in places that seemingly didn’t need her at first. The Stormlands were a place she could think of that almost certainly could use her being there just for the sake of her being there. A pony like her would brighten up the place.

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash smirked. “Let’s go have some fun.”

Rainbow Dash flew a bit harder and made sure she was going straight to the stormiest part of the sky. She couldn’t see the island yet or anything but it was a decently sized place, wasn’t it? She didn’t think she would miss it if she kept flying in this direction. It would be kind of nice to just stop at another random place like in the old days of her adventure. She was in the Grand Ocean for so long she had almost forgot what making a short stop was like. Choosing to see someplace new, just on her own, it would be like one of her old trips like in the swamp or through the desert.

The rumble of thunder and the howling of ever stronger wind grew the further she went. Rainbow every now and then looked down at the ocean and saw a restless surface of whitecaps and waves rushing about that would’ve made sailing a terror. Feeling a drop of water on her muzzle she looked up at the now black clouds overhead—there wasn’t a downpour coming from them but raindrops were becoming more and more common. She’d just have to power through all of this until she saw the Storm King’s island.

There were flashes of lightning on the horizon that she could see now, making Rainbow Dash grin as she was even more certain she was going to the right place. She could’ve done without the wind blowing in from the west and tearing at her body but she had flown through worse and unrulier wind. Anything that wasn’t directly trying to swat her out of the sky was easy enough to deal with.

Her stomach was starting to feel a little empty though—the lack of any real food earlier was becoming an issue. She wouldn’t starve in the next day or anything but it would be uncomfortable. Hopefully the Stormlands had plenty of stuff for a pony to eat. If not… eh, something always worked out. She wasn’t planning on doing anything super intensive or energy consuming for a while anyways. Rainbow knew how much she could push herself.

Gliding along like that for a while and the lightning started to crackle and strike more frequently. Rainbow Dash could now peer ahead and saw a dark spot rising up from the ocean behind a curtain of rain.

“Bingo,” she said as the island became more pronounced.

A large island of jagged cliffs and mountains as far as she could see. There might have been a forest tucked away on it somewhere too. The waters around the main island were filled with rocks that would’ve made getting to it by boat absurdly treacherous. Rainbow Dash couldn’t see any buildings on the island from where she was but she imagined there had to be a castle or keep somewhere that the Storm King used to reside in. It might’ve just been too dark right now to see thanks to the storm. It being the middle of the day didn’t matter if it was almost always going to be overcast with dark clouds and rain coming down.

Rainbow Dash exhaled and flew lower towards the island as she got closer. The wind had gotten worse and she wanted to land soon if possible. The worry of a random lightning bolt hitting her was there in her mind too.

She was pretty low in the sky now, pretty much in the middle of the ocean and below the clouds and going right towards the most level part of the island. Flapping along, going through the wind, she still didn’t really see anything.

She heard something though. Something soaring up at her at high-speed.

“Wha-” Rainbow Dash couldn’t finish before a rock going at practically supersonic speeds smashed into her left wing and nearly snapped it. She heard and felt the pop in the middle of her wing as for a second the world slowed down around her. A glance to her wing showed it bent and the outside half on the other side of her joint flailing loosely in the wind. Sprained? Broken? Dislocated? Then the world sped up again and Rainbow Dash was falling.

“Crud, crud, crud!” Rainbow yelled as she tried to recover, tried to glide on her one good wing even knowing that was impossible.

No way. She couldn’t fly or even glide with one wing possibly broken like this, her left wing wasn’t responding at all. She couldn’t straighten out and she went into a spiral towards the ocean with no way to pull out from it.

Rainbow Dash moved as best she could to avoid the rocks—the violent ocean waters growing closer in her vision—and closed her eyes tight.

Author's Note:

Comments

[RoboRed]

Uhh...wow. I wasn't expecting that.

Well, here we are back here again. It'll be interesting to see how some loose ends get tied up. I'm not expecting something massively grand in scale after the last couple arcs (arc and a half). But then again, who can say?

Rainbow being grounded for a bit will definitely make things interesting for sure.

[redmar]

That's not a good start for the Stormlands.

[Redlord321]

Did some throw a rock at Rainbow?