Where the Loyalty Lies
Rainbow looked back at the shocked Rarity, giving her a tired and annoyed look. “Well, didn’t you hear what I said? She’s going to regenerate in about five minutes and when she does she’s going to be really ticked off.”
“I… Rainbow…” gasped Rarity, still surprised to see her friend still alive and for the most part sane. “Is it really you?”
“Know anyone else… who is this awesome?” She gave a weak smile, more likely trying to convince herself than Rarity. “C’mon, I can get you out of here but we need to leave now. Like, now, now.”
“Oh, yes of course, darling,” nodded Rarity, taking a few cautious steps towards her pegasus friend. “Wait… how do I know I can trust you?”
Rainbow turned around and started to walk away. “Because if I wanted you dead Rarity I would have drove that spear into your skull and not Applejack’s, but if you want to sit here and wait for AJ to come back to life then be my guess.”
The unicorn looked at the seemly dead Applejack, already she could hear the growling and twisting of metal and the screeching of gears coming from her body. She started to twitch slightly, jerking unexpectedly as the hissing increased in volume.
“Lead the way dear,” she gulped.
“Mistress, are you sure we can trust her?” Frostbite asked. “I do not wish to see you betrayed again.”
“Well it’s not like we have much of a choice,” Rarity said, running after Rainbow and away from the resurrecting Applejack. “We’ll just have to be careful.”
“I hope you’re right,” sighed Frostbite, floating alongside the unicorn as they followed the pegasus into the thicket of snowy trees and bushes. “I really do…”
*****
3 months earlier
It had been possibly the worst storm since winter.
With over nine months of snow, everything natural had all but been diminished. Trees that once stood strong and green were now hunched and shrivelled, barren of any and all leaves like old ponies limping to their graves. A wildflower hadn’t been seen since the previous spring, so there was no hope in sprinkling the landscape with any colour that wasn’t the eyesore of white snow. Vegetation was all but a myth, expect in specially built habitats where ponies had managed to grow food to survive the endless winter. It had been a balancing act against the elements until now. Now it seemed that Mother Nature was determined to knock them off the scale.
Winds blew, hail and ice fell, the world outside was just half a step to becoming a frozen wasteland. Rarity watched from her cracked window in her room. She was busy putting up the last few boards to cover her window so she wouldn’t have to look at that horrid landscape anymore, or the world fall into chaos.
How many days has she been locked in her room? Ever since Granny Smith’s funeral, Rarity could no longer take the sight or thought of death, even though it was the only thought that dwelled in her mind, tearing at her soul with the impossible choice that she had to make. Countless times she had fallen ill to that thought, and her parents would come rushing up to nurse her back to health. She felt so selfish, reverting back to a child that her mother and father had to come running to her aid every time she had a tummy ache. But that’s just the way things were now. Much like the weather outside, she had changed for the worse.
“I think I need a few more nails,” she muttered to herself. She never was very handy with things like tools… she used to have friends for these sort of things. Even the weight of the hammer seemed to strain against her magical grip. When did she get so weak and pathetic? She supposed that it was due to lack of nourishment. It had never been a problem before, but she couldn’t seem to keep meals down anymore. Her body rejected the taste of food like a poison, perhaps her stomach didn’t think she deserved to eat. Perhaps she agreed with it.
The box of nails were on her dresser, so she abandoned her project to fetch the nails, leaving the boards hanging and the wind free to course into her room. It gave her a rather nasty chill and had her changing direction from her dresser to her coatrack where she quickly threw on her coat.
“Much better,” she thought. “Now to those nails—“
She didn’t get to finish her sentence as a pegasus was slammed into her window, his body almost breaking past the panes and rendering them cracked. He had not hit it nearly as hard as it sounded but it was enough to give the poor mare a scare. The pegasus wing seemed a little limp and was whisked away in the storm. He was probably part of the weather patrol, there was no other logical reason why somepony would be out in this mess. He was probably trying to do something about the weather, keep it tamed and under control. It’d be a pleasant change, ever since last December the weather has had a mind of its own, and the pegesi had troubles dealing with even the smallest flurries now.
And all Rarity could do was sigh and fix her window, and pray that in a few months this nightmare would be over.
*****
“Watch your steps from here on out, okay?” Rainbow mumbled. The three had finally outran the snarling and hissing of Applejack and were once again wandering blindly in the bleak and numbingly white forest. Rainbow was making sure to take a certain pattern of steps in the snow and Rarity did her best to mimic. She hadn’t the slightest idea why, though.
“Is there a reason why you’re walking so… funny, Rainbow Dash?” She asked.
“Traps,” Rainbow said. “They’re the only reason why I’m still sane. It keeps my hooves busy, nose clean and mind off bad thoughts. Adapt and burn, adapt and burn… clear and clean the traps, get lucky and snag some freak… adapt and burn… adapt and burn…”
“Adapt and burn?”
“That’s what I do now…” said the pegasus. “Call it my job, hobby and life’s work now. Watch your left, there’s a pit with some nubs in it. In fact that reminds me…” She started to drift aside to the left, dipping her hoof in the shallow snow until she knocked up a small rope. Rainbow picked it up with her teeth and pulled on it and a few feet away a plop of snow fell into the earth itself. “Give me a second. I need to deal with this.”
“Deal with what, dear?” Rarity asked, a little concerned for her friend.
“A few nubs,” smiled Rainbow, as she pulled out a few things from her cloak, a couple of sticks and a small thread. Intertwining the thread between one of the sticks she managed to make a sort of small bow and curled it around the other stick. She then pulled out a few tufts of dried wicker and started to make a fire. It was remarkable how she lit the stuff in only a few strokes before throwing the now flaming tuft of wicker into the hole, followed by a few terribly painful screams. “Like music to my ears,” Rainbow said in a dry joking voice, trying to make herself laugh.
Rarity was really concerned now. “What was in that hole?”
“I already told you, it was some nubs.”
“Yes, but what exactly is a nub?”
“You know… it’s just everything that’s wrong in here. Ponies that have gone bad and crazy, like Applejack. She’s one bad nub I’ve been trying to put down for a while but she’s like me… adapts and burns."
Painfully satirical, even in death those two were still trying to see which one was better than the other.
“So what you’re saying is… that there was ponies in that hole?”
“They’re not ponies!” Barked the pegasus. “They’ve given up! They don’t get to be called that anymore, they’re nubs! Everyone down here is a nub but me, taking the easy way out and kneeling to that… that monster! But not me… I’m not a quitter, I’ll keep adapting and burning until I get out of here, and I’m not going to take that bastard’s easy way out and kill you. Even though I could have done that countless of times and you wouldn’t have been able to do a thing about it.”
Rarity was stunned, she found even moving difficult and just stood in the snow and the silence. “If you could kill me… then why not just do it? I’m right here… and you clearly outmatch me, and you want to get out of here just as much as anypony, then why withhold my death?”
“Didn’t you listen to me?” Rainbow grumbled. “I’m not going to take the easy way out. To do that is to admit defeat and play by his rules, and I’m not going to sink to his level.” She turned up and glared at the sky. “Do you hear that, you maniac?! I’m not like these others! You can’t break me like them!” She started to break into tears. “You won’t make me into a monster like you… adapt and burn… adapt…” Rainbow fell to her knees. “… and burn.”
“Rainbow, dear…” sighed Rarity, comforting Rainbow by lifting her chin up and giving her something she probably hadn’t seen in a while; a friendly smile. “It’s okay, just let it all out.”
“I… I… I’ve died three times since I’ve been down here.”
“Excuse me?”
“Died, Rarity,” wept Rainbow. “I’ve died three times and each time I’ve died I’ve adapted to what I did wrong. First time was when I got lost and froze… I felt my heart stop beating for a solid week and my throat had gone tight… I walked around breathless and shivering… like a zombie. So when I finally came back I started leaving marks. Small things like cuts in trees or broken branches. That kept me alive for a while but then I ran into a nub and learned my second lesson, that it’s killed or be killed… and I was killed, torn to shreds and feasted on by a damn lost soul. So I adapted more and made my traps: Spike traps, snares, holes, even bombs. I learned the plants and made my weapons. I was able to defend myself… for a time. That’s when the most important lesson came, that I needed to do more than adapt and I needed to—“
“Burn,” Rarity said, cutting off Rainbow.
“Exactly,” nodded Rainbow. “It keeps them from reviving right away, otherwise they’ll be out no more than a week. Burning them keeps them down for months. Some of these suckers haven’t even resurrected from the first time I’ve burned them.”
“I’m terribly sorry for that, dear,” sobbed Rarity. “I wish there was something that I could do for you.”
“Well… there is one thing,” whispered Rainbow Dash.
“Anything.”
“I want you to go to Isis, save Spike from this hellhole and I want you to live,” she said. “I want you to live and start a family, and forget all about me and Applejack and everypony else down here. I want you to have the life we can’t and be happy for us.”
“Rainbow, I could never forget about you.”
“You will!” Rainbow barked. “You have to promise that you’ll marry that S.O.B dragon and have kids and be normal! You have to do this for me! Promise me!”
“I—“
“Promise me!” She roared, pulling Rarity into a headlock. “Promise me or I swear I’ll break you neck right now and no pony will leave here!”
“Rainbow,” the unicorn coughed. “You’re hurting me—“
“Promise me!”
“I can’t just forget about—“
“Promise me, damn it!”
“Rainbow please!”
“PROMISE ME!” She screeched, squeezing tighter on Rarity’s neck. There was no other option for the poor mare.
“Alright!” Rarity cried. “I promise…”
The pegasus loosened her grip on her friend. “Good… trust me, this is for the best.”
“Ehm,” Frostbite coughed. “Not to be rude or anything… but I think that we should be continuing. I don’t think it’s safe to bicker out here in the open. Rainbow, how far are we to the end of the forest?”
“About five minutes. Most of the nubs don’t venture this far out… they can’t leave the forest.”
“Good, then let us proceed, mistresses, and leave this forsaken forest.”
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Damn!
RD takes her loyalty pretty serious to threaten to kill someone for not promising to have a normal life
. Anyways, great chapter! Please update faster. I want Spikey to get out of that hellhole as soon as possible 
well, looks like Pinkie and Rainbow were the Only Sane ones out of the Mane 6 so far, I SHUDDER to think How Insane Twilight has gotten; somehow I get the feeling that it will make the Nervous Breakdown in Lesson Zero LOOK TAME In Comparison...
Please please, please PLEASE let Twilight be sane!
Oh what a wonderful story full of suspense, intrigue, and fallen ponies. I'm certain there is one pony who went down who was never offered a chance for escape that we might all be forgetting that our monstrous host also took from Equestria. Though I do think Twilight will be the biggest obstacle for Rarity, I'm just saying there might be another at work who might be a challenge on the way out for our hopeful, generous, and beautiful unicorn mare and her Spike.
I'm glad to see that Rainbow is still loyal to her friend.
If rainbow dash and PINKIE PIE are the sane ones, I don't wanna see twi. she will be all
2904309>>2905248 I'm not sure we can call Pinkie sane, just saner. She did have a bunch of drugged up ponies hostage, after all.
Dash is a survivor and fighter, a little death won't stop her.
2907109
what we meant by Pinkie and RD Keeping their Sanity is that they DID NOT Take up Hellfire's offer to bring them back to life by Killing Rarity, and taking her Fire of Hope. I also somehow get the feeling that Hellfire "Promised" Twilight to not only bring her back to life, but bring Celestia back as well and knowing your typical baddie who wants to take over the world, that Promise was a Blatant Lie to get Twilight to agree to his terms,.
2907130 Hence, saner, but not truly sane.
2907109 be fair, it was Hellfire that told her to do that, and she used self control to help her friend get out. Plus, she said she hated it. and rainbow dash needed something to do, and protection.
damn rainbow is awesome in this i hope she finds a way out
Good old RD.
NEEED UPPPDDDAAAATTEEEEEEEE
2905073 But it's true! Well... if I was Fluttershy.
Rainbow Dash is best Rambo/French woman from Lost.
Augh! Such a tease of a chapter! So excited for the next one though :D