Act I - 02 - Where the Wind Will Whisper to Me...
Act One:
"Pride Comes Before the Fall"
Chapter Two
"Where the Wind will Whisper to Me"
The Rainbow Bridge was a truly massive structure, stretching almost three miles in length from the end of Asgard to the edge of Hrosscant, where the planet ended in sheer cliff. The bridge was constructed out pure crystal that enabled massive amounts of magical energy to flow through it. It was so named because of the various colors that the crystals would refract as the energy surged through, making the bridge a constant kaleidoscope of colors.
Perched at the end of the bridge, and seemingly suspended over the edge of a cliff, was the Bifrost itself.
It was a massive golden sphere with a large golden spire that jutted skyward. When activated the sphere would spin at blinding speed and the spire would point out into space, slicing a sliver in space time that could be used to travel the vast distances between the realms that formed Yggdrasil, the world tree.
Of course, none of that was Rainbow Dash’s mind as she came in for a landing in front of the Bifrost, followed by Spitfire, Soarin, Flitter and Cloudchaser, with Trixie galloping up behind them.
In front of them stood a large midnight blue alicorn, whose mane ebbed and shimmered as if it were made of the very night sky itself. She stared ahead unblinking, her blue eyes keeping steady watch on the horizon, her left iris glinting with what looked like a crescent moon. She was dressed in cool silver armor engraved with constellations, galaxies, and belts of asteroids; and a scabbard containing an immense sword hung at her side, primed to cut down any who would dare to enter without her permission.
Trixie whispered to Rainbow Dash: “Now, let me handle this.” Rainbow Dash nodded and Trixie trotted up to the alicorn, her entire face shifting into an expression of the most bright and candid openness.
“Good eventide Auntie Luna, I—”
“Best Beloved Beatrix, thou art not suitably equipped for where thou art headed,” Luna said, her stoic tone severing through Trixie’s sunny one.
Trixie chuckled, her laugh like the chiming of little bells. “Whatever dost thou mean, my dearest Aunt?”
Luna leveled her impassive gaze at Trixie. “Trixie, thou canst not have deluded thyself into the belief that thou canst cloud thy purpose from mine eyes.”
Trixie’s smiling mask faltered. “I…I, well—”
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes and trotted up. “Auntie, can you let us through?”
Luna turned to look down at Rainbow Dash. “Not in all mine years as The Sentinel has an enemy crept past my watch.” She paused and her expression wavered ever so slightly, her brow tightening pensively. “Until today.” Her voice was tinged with disappointment.
“I know, Auntie,” Rainbow Dash said gently, nodding in agreement.
“Indeed, I wish to know by what sorcery such strange occurrences happened this day,” Luna said, turning to face the distance again.
“Tell no one, even Mother, of our jaunt and I promise you I will find out what happened today.” Rainbow Dash paused, then added solemnly, “It must be grave, Aunt, to have slipped past your watch…grave enough to threaten Asgard.” She watched Luna expectantly.
Luna turned to look again at Rainbow Dash. “Thou hast mine sacred oath as Sentinel of the Bifrost.”
Rainbow Dash smiled. “Thanks, Auntie!” She turned to her friends and beckoned them to come.
Her friends all smiled and trotted up, offering their timid thanks to Luna, who simply nodded.
Spitfire glided up to Trixie, a smug grin on her face. “What’s the matter, Trixie? Did your silver tongue turn to stone?”
“No, but if you continue I’ll make certain yours does,” Trixie hissed, her eyes flashing a ferocious green.
Spitfire was about to make a comeback when Soarin nudged her along. “Come now, let’s not fight.”
Spitfire nodded and, giving Trixie one last glare, flew ahead with Soarin, with Trixie and Luna following behind.
They entered the spacious chamber which had star maps and ancient runes crafted into the globular walls. Luna’s horn glowed as she lifted her sword and placed into a large socket in the very center of the room, directly beneath the spire. A blinding light burst from the sword and shot up into the spire and the Bifrost roared to life. The light unfolded outward and split apart like branches of a tree, reaching up and around the golden colored walls.
The vast amount of magical energy caused the fur on the ponies bodies to tingle, sending shivers down their spines.
“I must warn thee, my children, I shall uphold my oath unto my sister to protect these realms,” Luna announced. “If thy return threatens the safety of Asgard and those who inhabit it, the gate will remain shut unto thee and thou wilt be left to whatever fate is ordained for thee there.”
The thought of an ordained death sentence was at the forefront of the ponies’ minds. Soarin was the first to speak.
“Um, Miss Gatekeeper ma’am, couldn’t you just keep the gate open for us? That way if something goes wrong we can just come right back, right?”
Luna shook her head. “My child, keeping the bridge open would unleash the full power of the Bi-Frost and destroy Hekkerhiem, and thee with it.”
Soarin’s eyes shrunk to pinpricks and he turned pale. “Oh. I…I always wondered about that.”
“Don’t worry, Auntie. We have no plans to die today,” Rainbow Dash said, doing her most to sound assertive, despite the queasiness pinching her stomach.
“None do,” Luna said coldly. “Yet I have seen Death still manage to catch them. It caught my father, it caught thine; beware lest you go unto them and follow Death.”
“We’ll be sure to remember that Auntie,” Trixie said, sounding unusually anxious as well.
“Well, off we go,” Rainbow Dash said.
She stepped forward and let the gravity of the wormhole pull her in, followed by Spitfire, Flitter, Cloudchaser, Soarin and last of all, Trixie.
/////////////////////////////
The trip to Hekkerhiem was over in less than a minute as the six ponies traveled through what looked like a tube made of pure spinning rainbow of lights.
The Bifrost set them on the desolate world that was Hekkerhiem, leaving a knotted rune imprint in the ground beneath their hooves. Trixie looked over her shoulder.
“What do you know, Luna managed to drop us off on the edge of a cliff. How delightful.”
The other ponies turned to see that, indeed, they were standing on the edge of a steep overhang with the snarled, shadowy land of Hekkerhiem stretching out for miles beneath.
They also found that they were surrounded by a clinging green mist that limited vision to no more than eight feet in any direction.
“Well, at least this means nopony can sneak up on us from behind,” Spitfire said, gripping the hilt of her sword.
“Stay sharp, okay?” Rainbow Dash said tersely.
The others nodded, each taking out their weapons. All except Soarin, who stumbled around for a few seconds trying to get his bearings.
“You know, I’m really starting to hate these trips,” he said as he finally settled onto his hooves and pulled out his axe.
Spitfire rolled her eyes and chuckled. “You always say that, and yet here you are.”
Soarin shrugged. “What can I say; Rainbow Dash is a great persuader.”
Cloudchaser shook her head. “We really shouldn’t be here.”
Flitter nodded. “Yeah, it’s creepy.” She looked up at what appeared like a withered tree that had strange green goo dribbling off it.
“Let’s move,” Rainbow Dash said. She started to trot into the mist. “Remember, stay close or you’ll get lost in the mist.”
“And no flying, you never know who might be up the sky with you,” Trixie said, glancing upwards into the clouded skies.
“Oh joy divine,” Cloudchaser whispered to herself as they all trotted along.
The wind moaned sorrowfully and hissing, creaking and snapping sounds wafted through the air as the ponies marched steadily through the mist. Now and then they caught sight of what seemed to be ruins of disintegrating fortresses and castles.
Every so often a rumble sounded in the distance as if something large was collapsing in on itself, sending shivers down the ponies’ spines, or strange wails and moans that the ponies hoped were some kind of native creature and not ghosts or some form of restless spirit.
They continued to walk for what could have been a few minutes or a few hours, there was no telling the time in the dimness, the ponies whispering feebly amongst themselves to lighten the tension.
“Where are they?” Spitfire finally said what everypony was thinking, wariness evident in her voice.
“They’re probably hiding. Like cowards,” Rainbow Dash said contemptuously.
“Or they're just waiting to jump out of the mist and cut our throats,” Cloudchaser pointed out. Flitter groaned.
“By Faust, Cloudchaser, you’re such a downer.”
Trixie, who had been bringing up the rear much of the walk, now came up beside Rainbow Dash at the head of the company. She leaned close and whispered, “They might not be here at all, Rainbow. I’ve heard the war so ruined the planet that the changing of the seasons agitates the magic toxins left here. They fill the air so the changelings must migrate beneath the surface of the planet.”
Rainbow Dash simply shrugged. “We’ve been walking for hours and we’re still alive.”
Trixie shook her head. “You understand Rainbow, there are also magical traps leftover from the war still embedded all over this place. Injurious spells, lethal poisons and illusions that lead you into quicksand and pits filled with—”
“Stop. You’re giving Cloudchaser a run for her money,” Rainbow Dash huffed.
“Grandfather and Father died here and they were greater warriors than we,” Trixie answered.
“The changeling queen killed them, not some hedge witch’s spell,” Rainbow Dash said, her voice brittle with bitterness.
Trixie paused for a moment, and then spoke in a lower, almost quavering voice, “I think I hear them, Rainbow.”
Rainbow Dash’s eyes darted about and her muscles becoming taut. She instinctively tightened her grip on Mjolnir. “Changelings?”
“No. Father and Grandfather.”
Rainbow Dash almost stopped dead in her track. “What?” She said so loudly that the others jumped and everything fell into a sudden, startled silence silent, even the mist seemed to freeze.
Rainbow Dash flashed a smile over her shoulder at her friends and continued forward. She waited until the others started whispering among each other again before she turned back to Trixie.
“Trixie, you were the last pony I thought some smog would get to.”
“This isn’t smog,” Trixie snapped. “This is the scars of a damaged atmosphere.”
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “So it’s advanced smog.”
“I’m serious, Rainbow Dash. I hear their voices, I can’t catch their words but I can perceive their whispering.”
Rainbow Dash paused, her eyes scanning the terrain. “It’s just the wind in the...rocks.”
“I know what wind sounds like, might I remind you we spent a horrible fortnight on that moor in Vindhiem. The wind was so loud we could barely sleep. This isn’t wind.” Trixie’s voice had become eerily faint and her eyes seemed to glass over with a flinching dread. “This—these—are voices…and there’s lots of them. And they are angry.”
Rainbow Dash turned to directly face her sister. “Trixie, stop it,” she said, trying her best to imitate her mother’s tone when she was issuing a command. “Grandfather and Father were not some wicked souls damned to wander the land for their sins. They were killed in battle, their deaths were honorable.” She leaned in to stare into Trixie’s eyes, her own eyes beginning to burn and sting with emotion. “That’s why we’re here. To prove to her, to all of them, that our fathers did not perish in vain. That the victory they won with their deaths is still ours, turning even her triumphs into the instruments of her defeat.”
There was a strained silence between them for long moment.
Trixie pulled back abruptly, her expression suddenly calm. “My, how poetic we are today.”
Rainbow Dash stifled a sigh of relief but couldn’t hide a smile. “I’ve been practicing it since we landed, just in case I need to make a rousing speech. Did it sound rehearsed?”
Trixie smiled, but the smile seemed somewhat distant. “No, you sounded very fierce and resolved.”
Suddenly, the mist cleared away to reveal a decaying, massive structure that was the Changeling Palace.
It had various blackened spikes clawing their way into the sky, only to have their tops broken off jaggedly, giving the palace the appearance of a thorned crown.
“Well…this looks all very welcoming,” Trixie muttered.
Soarin shuffled from one foot to the other, chewing his lip. “Do you think it's smart going in there? Looks like the perfect spot for an ambush.”
The other ponies glanced at each knowingly but Rainbow Dash plowed forward without a word. The others looked at one another, sighed deeply in unison, and then followed grimly.
The roof had several gigantic holes in it, allowing the ponies to look up and see the hazy skies above. Occasionally, some scaled creatures would scuttle by, apparently frightened by the sounding of their footsteps, and vanish into the various piles of debris that lay scattered around.
Spitfire cursed under her breath after nearly tripping over a piece of broken crockery. “By Faust, this place goes on forever.”
“How do we even know we haven’t passed through this place before?” Flitter said.
“All these halls look the same,” Cloudchaser said.
“And I’m pretty sure I recognize that pile of rocks over there...” Soarin said.
“Anyone have some oats we could mark a trail with?” Rainbow Dash asked.
The other ponies all looked at Soarin. He frowned. “What?”
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Kidding, ponies. Just kidding.”
“Ohh…” Everypony said together and then laughed softly, all except Trixie, who again was lagging behind. She kept wincing and stumbling like she was walking through some unseen brambles and she sometimes even balked at the corners and doorways they went through, eyeing the murky passage and only just managing to creep after her companions.
Spitfire eyed her suspiciously and trotted up to Rainbow Dash’s side. “What is wrong with Trixie? She’s been acting bizarre since we landed.”
“She’s just upset because this is where our father died,” Rainbow Dash said, hoping that sour memory would shut Spitfire up. But apparently the pony was determined to be troublesome.
“She’s not acting upset, she’s acting scared. She’s walking around here like the whole place is set to swallow her up any minute. And you two were whispering just before we got here and she looked downright scared.”
“Are you scared?” Rainbow Dash asked sharply, casting a glance over her shoulder.
“Of course, but I don’t go creeping around like a frightened filly! Everypony’s spooked as it is, we don’t need her acting like the place is jinxed.” Spitfire insisted, her voice terse.
Rainbow Dash turned to face Spitfire. “Leave her be, Spitfire. You do your job and I’ll handle Trixie.”
There was a brief silence between the two, as Spitfire stepped back. “Fine. But keep in mind my job is only as good as the help I’m given. One weak link breaks the chain.”
Spitfire fell back with the others and Rainbow Dashed marched on, her jaw set tight.
For the first time she doubted the wisdom of taking her friends along on this mission, the consequences and the risk didn’t seem to sit well with any of them.
Was she the only one in the entire realm who understood what this mission meant, why they had to do this? This wasn’t a game or a leisure trip or an adventure seeking like any before; this was queenly business, this was her royal duty to her kingdom and her ancestors.
Was she the only one thinking of any of this? This was why she should be queen, this was why Mother needed to step down, this was—
“Trixie?”
Soarin’s voice snapped Rainbow Dash out of her thoughts and she along with the rest of the ponies turned to hiss, “Shhhhh!”
“Trixie’s still down there,” Soarin said, pointing down the hall they had just come down.
Trixie stood at the entrance of the hall but her face was turned to the right, looking down another narrower hallway they had passed by.
“Trixie!” Soarin called softly.
“Get over here!” Spitfire hissed.
Trixie didn’t seem to hear them but remained frozen in place, staring down the tight, dark passageway.
Spitfire gave Rainbow Dash an I told you so look before Rainbow Dash, sighing in exasperation, walked back down the hall to her sister with the others at her heels.
“Trixie, why don’t you—” She stopped short when she finally caught sight of Trixie’s face.
It was so pale Rainbow Dash thought she was about to faint and her pupils were nothing but specks floating in the icy ocean of her lavender eyes. Her entire body was drawn so tight she looked as if she had been turned to stone. The only thing moving were her ears, twitching as if trying to catch a wavering note of noise.
“Trixie…”
“They’re down there.” Trixie’s voice was rasping as if it were being wrung out of her. She lifted her hoof and pointed it, quivering, down the passage.
Later, Rainbow Dash knew the only thing her sister could have meant was what she eventually answered, but in the moment with the look on Trixie’s face, all she could think and say was, “Father?”
“Changelings.”
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Good chapter I like the intensity
2097817 Well be sure to go and thank my co-writer. She wrote a lot of this too you know.
Credit where credit is due.
I like this story alot wich is saying something I'm not big on crossovers
2101654 Well then I hope we don't dissapoint
2131795 Yes.
How better to humble a brash pegasus? Take away their ability to fly.
It's all very psychological.
Dang. That's intense. Good cliffhanger though.
Shit, let the fight begin. Wow, this was beautiful, you did a very great job...damn, I have a feeling something is seriously going to go wrong, but I love the spense
“Best beloved Trixie, thou art not suitably equipped for wherest thou are headed,”
doesn't need the 'st' at the end of 'where', and the second 'are' should be 'art'
“Trixie, thou canst have deluded thyself into the belief thou can cloud thy purpose from mine eyes.”
'canst not have'
'belief that thou canst'
“I know Auntie,”
needs a comma after 'know'
“Not in all mine years as The Sentinel hast an enemy crept past my watch.”
doesn't need the 't' at the end, it's just 'has an enemy'
The Bifrost set them on the desolate world that was Hekkerhiem, leave a knotted rune imprint in a ground beneath their hooves.
typos
“Stay sharp okay?”
needs a comma after 'sharp'
“You know, I’m really starting to hate these trips,” He said
extraneous capital letter
“Or their just waiting to jump out of the mist and cut our throats,” Cloudchaser pointed out. Flitter groaned.
“By Faust Cloudchaser, you’re such a downer.”
*they're
*needs a comma after 'Faust'
“They might not be here at all, Rainbow. I’ve heard the war so ruined the planet that the changing of the seasons agitates the magic toxins left here and they fill the air so the changelings must migrate beneath the surface of the planet.”
That is one helluva run-on sentence. I would definitely consider breaking that up into two or three smaller sentences.
“Stop. You’re giving Cloudchaser a run for her money.” Rainbow Dash huffed.
“Grandfather and Father died here and they were greater warriors than we.” Trixie answered.
those periods should probably be commas.
“I’m serious Rainbow Dash."
needs a comma after 'serious'
She leaned in to stare into Trixie’s eyes, her own eyes being to burn and sting with emotion.
typo?
Suddenly, the mist cleared away to reveal a decaying, massive structure that was the Changeling Palace.
>This could probably be a bit better; as it is, you're just telling us that it's the palace. I think you could probably improve by switching the 'this is the changeling palace' part with some of the description in the paragraph immediately following. This is minor and opinionated, so not a huge deal. still, thought I'd mention it.
“Do you think its smart going in there? Looks like the perfect spot for an ambush.”
*it's
Overall feedback:
Very nice. Tense and a little foreboding there at the end. Trixie's parts are especially intriguing and quite well done. Can't wait to see where this goes.
2246850 Fixed as much as I could. That palace description however would require rewriting the whole scene
I love evanescence!
Right, I don't have much to say as my Ma's trapped both cats in my room and one could serve as a ship's foghorn if she wanted to. But I was able to follow the story at the very least. Certainly not my favourite chapter why? Well it's one of those suspense building chapters and the issue with me is, I hate scenes in the horror films with suspense (Yes I'm a horror-film addict, yet I hate suspense) I just find it plain boring, it's like having to live on flavourless crisps, I don't give a Sam, get on with it!
But good to see character development and exploring the land of the Changelings. No idea what to think of Luna. I know she serves as Heimdall, but thus far she's too much like Heimdall and well I'm one of Luna's many fans, so it's disappointing when her depiction is more like the person she's depicting and now like her. It's the feeling I'm getting anyways, so I could be wrong and Luna only is seen in a couple of episodes of MLP:FIM, so I won't get all aggressive about it. But I thought I'd openly share that I dislike the depiction of Luna so far. Everyone else is fine however.... And Trixie's a rapist in your story... Yeah, still trying to get over that.
This story is leagues ahead of what I've read in Captain Equestria.
Looking forward to finishing it