Artus expected the patient and cunning Stranger to once again travel into his age of Myst and solve the puzzles that awaits there. Would he settle for an impatient and brutish pegasus pony with a rainbow mane instead?
Rainbow Dash finds herself on a strange and desolate series of islands. With no other soul on the islands she reluctantly befriends a bookworm named Artus, a human with a strained family life behind him. While communicating via a page transmission inside a link book he informs Rainbow Dash that these islands that he calls Myst are his and his wife's creations and that he need her to find him a special book and return it to his lab.
To accomplish this Rainbow Dash needs to do what Artus had the mysterious Stranger do when he came to one of the Myst islands long ago, solve it's clever puzzles. But do the impulsive Pegasus pony have the patience to wait for slowly opening book shelves, reading dragged out text sections and remembering patterns seen hours ago? And do the usually patient Artus have the social competence to calm down as he watches Rainbow Dash brute force her way through his puzzles?
With no way back to Equestria, nor any other help than the half crazy egg headed human the question burns within the Pegasus pony. What if she fails? Will she ever see her family and friends again?
There was no answer. Rainbow Dash could hear books being shoveled above her rainbow colored mane. Twilight was hovering in front of the bookshelf located inside her castle library. Rainbow Dash raised her blue pegasus wings in an upset manner.
“Twilight?” Rainbow Dash retried.
There still was no answer. Twilight breathed heavily.
“Where is it? Where is it?” She kept on repeating.
Rainbow Dash felt her chance of getting Twilight to join her on her evening flight narrow by the second. Once the alicorn Twilight had committed herself into a study it would usually take days for her to consider it finished.
“Twilight?!” Rainbow Dash raised her voice.
“Sirrus... Achenar... Atrus... Where are you... Where?” Twilight blurted while frantically searching through the bookshelf.
A book fell down from the shelf. It landed page up in front of Rainbow Dash.
“Twili...” Rainbow Dash felt her words jam as her eyes festered on a shimmering light coming from the book. She squinted. Both pages were pure white without anything written on them. One of the pages had some kind if of attachment, a sort of picture glued onto the page. But why was it...?
Rainbow Dash walked closer. She leaned her head over the book. The attached picture appeared to be of a landscape. A vast sea widened with a group of smaller islands. There was a forrest now. Why was there a forrest now all the sudden? Well, that was just the point. The picture in the book wasn't static, it was moving! It almost looked like a unicorn was flying over the land and projected what she saw into the book. But why would anypony do that?
Curious, Rainbow Dash leaned her hoof forward to touch the moving picture. There was a horrified voice from above.
“Rainbow Dash? NO...!”
The world flashed around Rainbow Dash. She felt herself fall into a vacuum.
Rainbow Dash opened her eyes and gasped. She could hear the wind blow through the steel bars in front of her. She flung her eyes around in panic. The walls around her was made out of solid metal, creating a space not much bigger than a closet. Rainbow Dash pressed her hooves against the steel bars. They wouldn’t budge. She was trapped!
“Hello?” Rainbow Dash wailed.
There was no answer. Her scream echoed through the forrest outside the steel bars.
“Hello!? Can anypony hear me!?”
“You...There is no time...Age unstable...Must find...Linking book...” A voice below spoke while being interrupted by what appeared to be transmission disturbances.
Rainbow Dash looked down. She saw a book lay spine up on the metal floor inside her small space. Hesitantly she reached down her hoof and picked it up. She looked at the front page. Once again it had pure white pages with a picture glued to one of them. A figure seemed to be fading in and out of it.
“Hello...Can...Hear me...?” The figure appeared to ask.
“Hello?” Rainbow Dash said.
Finally the figure in the picture became clear, along with his voice. It was a creature with a red robe. He had a large beard and nerdy glasses. He was looking down at a table as he spoke.
“Ah, finally. There is little time. You need to find the linking book and...” The mans eyes squinted when he looked into at Rainbow Dash from his weird face in a book perspective.
“...Wait? Who are you?!” The man asked bewildered.
“Me?” Rainbow Dash hesitated. “I’m Rainbow Dash. Can you help me? Im trapped...?”
“Who are you?” The man didn’t appear to listen. ”Whats the meaning of this? Where is the Stranger?!”
“The Stranger?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Yes. Stranger? Did you steal the book from him?!” The man asked darkly. Rainbow Dash face twisted in anger.
“Wait a minute. That’s not how things are going to work out here. I’m the one who’s trapped after all!” Rainbow Dash hoof motioned the steel cage. “Despite, I don’t even know who you are.”
“My name is Atrus. I am the creator of the age of which you have entered,” Atrus then added firmly “...Without permission.”
“Hold on! Age? What do you mean, ‘enter’. There’s only one way to enter a new age and that's on your birthday.”
“No stupid, not that kind of age. The ‘book’, the world that you’re in.” Atrus straightened his glasses. “As I said, my name is Atrus and I am the master in the art of age creation. I write down the details into the book and then the world creates itself through the carefully thought out rules that I set up, that i ‘describe’ on the pages of the book, allowing us to...”
“Wait, hold on. So what you’re basically saying is that I am INSIDE the book!?” Rainbow asked.
“Yes... Well, inside the world described in the book more accurately put. The age you’re in now is called Myst.”
“Myst?”
“Yes, Myst. But there’s a problem.” Atrus said.
“A problem?!” Rainbow Dash felt the cage narrow more and more while the worrying word circulated her mind.
“You see, there's currently no way out of that age.”
“No way out!?” Rainbow Dash wailed.
“Yes. But you see, there may be a way to create one. All you need to do is to find the five book pages currently being kept as sacred objects around the island. You will then have to insert them into the D’ni linking book located in the village, after you've found the book of eternity of course. That should open a link to my lab.”
“Your lab? But i don’t want to go to your lab! I want to go home!”
“Even if you could there’s no way i let you. I need that book of eternity.”
“No!” Rainbow Dash blasted. “I need to be with my friends. In fact, soon you’ll see them. there’s no way Twilight is going to just leave me here.”
Atrus smiled nervously. He straightened his glasses
“Well, I'm afraid you’re out of luck blue pony. You see, that book you just wasted on yourself is a one use only. You’re friends won’t be able to reach you and you won’t be able to reach them.”
“Fine. So I'm trapped here?!” Rainbow Dash asked incredulously.
“Actually, you're not. You just need to use that lever above you.”
Rainbow Dash looked up. She spotted a small lever above the steel bars. She reached out her hoof. Atrus continued talking.
“Now, as I said, iv'e designed a series of puzzles so that the locals wouldn’t be able to reach the book of eternity. These was really meant for Stranger to solve but I guess you will have to do...”
The lever broke.
“...Aaaaand that's it. You broke it.”
“I broke it?”
“Yes, it’s broken now.”
Rainbow Dash looked at the broken lever in her hoof then at Atrus with a bewildered face.
“A, hehe. Yea, i can see that. How do i fix it?”
“No, you broke the lever, you broke everything. There is no way out of that cage now. Five years of puzzle designing down the drain.”
Atrus turned his face down and leaned it against his closed fist. He made a long sigh.
“Huuuuuuuuuuuuh.”
“Wait? You’re not giving up on me, are you?”
Atrus did not answer Rainbow Dash's desperate plea. He picked up a quill and started writing.
“Atrus? What are you doing?”
Atrus still didn’t answer. He mumbled to himself in a crazy manner.
“And then Achenar said that he would burn it and then Sirrus said that he would rewrite it and then Yeesha spilled the tea all over it’s pages...” Atrus muttered.
“Atrus?!” Rainbow Dash cried.
“You know. At first I doubted you, thinking there is no way you will be as good as Stranger to solve my puzzles.” Atrus spoke firmly while writing. “You couldn’t even make it through the first door without completely breaking my age.”
Atrus made a punctuation with his quill. He then dipped it in the ink glass. He leaned back in his chair and sighed again. He reached out his hand and appeared to be closing the book of which were transmitting to Rainbow Dash.
“Wait Atrus!”
“Maybe you’ll find a way out, maybe not. Ether way I’m going to design a new age. This one will have a sunny beach, a bar and an unlimited supply of ice cream. Maybe we’ll see each other there.”
“Atrus! No. DON’T LEAVE ME!” Rainbow Dash wailed.
The transmission ended. The picture previously showing Atrus face jittered with a series of blinking black and white dots, a cracking sound as they went. Rainbow Dash closed the book. She looked with a desperate face out toward the forrest. She imagined this image being the view she would be forced to settle with for the rest of her life. She felt her muscles pull in panic. Rainbow Dash threw herself forward and shook the bars.
“Help! Please! Somepony! Anypony! Please, HELP ME!”
The young pegasus filly tried to strain her eyes, understand the letters. To Rainbow Dash the text seemed to go on repeat. Or was it she who just read the same passage over and over again? And what exactly did she read? Rainbow Dash lowered her eyebrows in frustration. Her hooves shook. She wanted to stretch them while soaring the sky. She heard a subdued note coming from somewhere. She was to frustrated to bother investigating it though.
“Waaaaaaaah.” She moaned in frustration. The chair made squeaking sounds behind her as she leaned back at it. There was a familiar shadow closing in over her.
“Nothing is impossible for my Rainbow Dash.” Hothoof stated proudly.
“Well, this is. I’m never gonna past that fliers theory test.” Rainbow Dash wailed hopelessly.
“Come on. Let me help you.”
Bow Hothoof sat down beside his daughter. He pointed his hoof at a passage.
“What does this say?” He asked, another subdued note sounding as he did. It was almost like the shimmering sun coming in from the window into Rainbow Dash's childhood room sang to her.
Rainbow Dash read the passage to her father with a bored face.
“Yes, and what does this say?” He asked.
Rainbow Dash read the next passage. The patching sun sent colored beams from her fathers rainbow mane. His presence slowly washed away the aching feeling inside her stomach. There were the sound of another note.
“Wow. My daughter is great at flying AND reading.”
‘Reading... Reading...Reading...Reading’ The proud words of the pegasus pony’s father circulated her mind as she was looking at the Myst book laying on the steel floor. Rainbow Dash had tried her best to get some sleep. She felt the hunger press against her stomach.
Rainbow Dash reached out her hoof and grabbed the book. She went through it’s pages. They were all as blank as her mind usually was when trying to read them. The linking window was still blurring with dots. Rainbow Dash closed the book. She looked at the broken lever laying on the floor.
“Stupid Atrus.” She muttered. Her eyes festered on the hole above were the lever had recently been in business.
“Might as well try.”
Rainbow Dash picked up the lever. She tried to jam it back in place. The lever fitted perfectly in the hole but it couldn’t be pulled. Rainbow Dash released the lever. The small cage resonated when the lever hit the floor, the same floor of which there was a series of dentals forming a round sphere.
Rainbow Dash squinted her eyes. She studied the dentals. She tried to touch them with her hoof. The dentals seemed strange considering they were placed in a esthetically illogical place on the floor. Not that Rainbow Dash was much for esthetics, might as well have brought along Rarity for that. But this Rainbow Dash could tell. She looked around her. The walls had round screws going in a straight line, circulating her prison.
It was indeed straight, all except for one place. Above the line there were seven more screws, again odd from an esthetics perspective. Rainbow Dash walked over and touched one of them. She pressed her hoof against it. This caused the screw to retract inward. There were the chiming sound of a note. The face of the pegasus pony twisted in bewilderment, her mouth bending sideways. She tried pushing the other seven screws.
Rainbow Dash pressed the buttons in every possible combination. Each one resulting in a different note. She was sure this was some kind of code, but what was the combination?
An half-hour went. Rainbow Dash tried to find patters but no matter her attempts the only thing sounding was the note that the button conjured. Rainbow Dash growled. She slammed the buttons in frustration, resulting in a disharmonic blur of notes.
The minutes went, hours eventually. Soon the sun started to fade beyond the horizon. Rainbow Dash felt her stomach ache with hunger along with her heart. The anger slowly transformed into a round hard stone inside her throat. She crumbled down onto the metal floor. She leaned her head close to the narrow opening between the bars. The sky opened itself above, showing it’s clouds soft and white, but Rainbow Dash would never reach them again.
‘Father.’
Rainbow Dash felt the stone inside her throat rise to her head. She snorted. The forrest world went blurry with tears. She felt the crying calm her down and slowly put her back to sleep.
Rainbow Dash opened her eyes. The morning sun patched through the treetops above before hitting the steel bars. The wind blew against her face, shilling the wet parts of her chin were the tears had yet to dry out. She heard the sound of another subdued note. Was it the same as...?
“Am i dreaming still?”
The notion that this was all a bad dream sent Rainbow Dash into a temporary state of happiness. But now she heard another note. She looked up toward the tree crowns outside the cage and spotted several metal rings of different sizes, all held up with metal pipes planted in the ground. Rainbow Dash counted five of them in total. She heard her own voice speak inside her mind.
‘This is impossible dad.’
‘Nothing is impossible for my Rainbow Dash.’ Her father answered.
The eyes of the pegasus pony widened. She rose up to her hooves. She listened as the wind blew through each ring, creating a different note depending. She noticed that the pipes connecting them to the ground was of different lengths, placing the rings in different levels from it. Rainbow Dash turned to the screw buttons again. She pressed the buttons that made the same notes as the rings, starting with the ring furthest up, proceeding toward the one closest to the ground. The first time it didn’t work. She tried again. It still didn’t work.
She looked outside again. She noticed that one of the rings was slightly tilting. Rainbow Dash tried again, this time taking into account that the tilting ring would have been higher than the ring beside if it hadn't tilted.
There were a clicking sound. Rainbow Dash watched the dentals on the floor part, revealing a small opening. Rainbow Dash walked up to it. She looked down the hole that seemed to bend slightly into a mechanical contraption. Rainbow Dash leaned her eyeballs to the left, catching sight of the broken lever. She picked it up, placed it in the hole and pulled.
There were a rapid sound of five notes sounding from highest to lowest. The sound of metal sliding against rock followed when the steel bars retracted into the roof. Rainbow Dash felt that stone inside her throat fade away, making way for a inner smile, her face staying in bewilderment though. She picked up the Myst book and proceeded outside.
Rainbow Dash felt her legs stretch in relief as she exited the cage. She looked around. There were birds singing above the treetops and animals sneaking inside the bushes. She heard one animal make a strange slurping sound.
Rainbow Dash walked across a wooden bridge, crossing a creek below, the water flowing gently. Her eyes wailed around, sparkling with a combination of confusion and wonder. This was nothing like the nature that she had seen around Ponyville. The trees curved into odd shapes. Plants rose like they wanted to hug the sky.
“The sky!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed. She spread her pegasus wings and thrusted.
Nothing could have prepared Rainbow Dash for what she was about to see from sky view. She wailed her head around in wonder.
Several islands laid themselves before the vast sea appeared to go on forever. The Myst islands seemed to be connected by some sort of railway track, if there ever was a train that could traverse on a single track that is. Rainbow Dash counted six islands in total, five if you discounted the one that seemed to be just one big golden sphere.
In the middle of all the islands there seemed to be a huge crater, probably a volcano. Rainbow Dash spotted some kind of temple ahead. Maybe there would be souls there that knew anything about this place. Rainbow Dash needed to find a way back to Equestria and, unfortunately if Artus were right, she would have to do it alone.
The air laid still outside the stone temple. The influence of the sun caused the rocky path to burn Rainbow Dash underneath her hooves as she landed. It pressed against Rainbow Dash the fact that the still air did not contrast the presence of life. The temple seemed as empty as the pages inside her Myst book, counting the empty heart of the human inside. Speaking of...
“Hello...Can you...Rainbow Dash?”
Rainbow Dash frowned. She reached down into the custom made strap she had made for the Myst book. She opened it. The image of Atrus ugly face made Rainbow Dash’s ‘artery’ work alright.
“YOU! You left me to starve! You left me to...!”
“Ok calm down.” Atrus urged inside the book. “I think i know how to get you out of that cage. You see, I remembered when my wife Catherine and I added the other Myst islands. She might have made some adjustments to the industrial rules as well, resulting in some contraptions having double purposes which in turn means that there could be double ways of operating them.”
Rainbow Dash felt like she was talking to a colt version of Twilight Sparkle. Her furious eyes glared underneath her raggedy rainbow mane.
“What are you talking about? I’m already out!”
Atrus face widened in surprise. Rainbow Dash kept ranting.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the musical screw thingys inside the cage? I thought you designed this place!”
“Musical screw thingys? Interesting...” Artus wandered of into his thoughts. Rainbow Dash waved her hoof incredulously.
“Hello, angry pony you left to die over here!”
“I thought i’d known that but i could never have imagined.” Artus thought out loud.
“Imagined? You couldn’t have imagined that i would be angry for leaving me in a cage!?”
“You really managed to get out of that cage?” Atrus asked with a tinge of wonder.
The anger flowed Rainbow Dash’s every being, her pride was stronger though. She grinned.
“Haha, yea. Because I'm awesome.”
“Maybe she isn’t as worthless as i thought.” Artus whispered out loud. Rainbow Dash’s face twisted in anger.
“Well, maybe you aren’t as PREPOSTEROUS as i thought!” Rainbow Dash blasted sarcastically. She continued with an incredulous voice.
“That’s it. I’m done. I’m sorry but i really need to get back...”
“...Back to Equestria.” Artus interrupted. Now it was Rainbow Dash’s face that widened in surprise.
“How can you possibly know about Equestria?”
“I thought i’d seen you ponies in a book, or maybe in an age description somewhere.” Artus leaned forward and put his folded hands on his desk.
”Listen pony, you and I may not have started of on the right foot, but it seems clear to me that we need each other. I need you because there is no other way of me getting that book of eternity now when you’ve used up that link book, you need me because there is no other way you will be able to find your way home again without the help from someone with a vast knowledge of the ages. So, let’s make a deal.”
Rainbow Dash grumped.
“Alright, let’s hear it.”
“You will continue on gathering those pages and find the book of eternity. In the meantime i will do all i can and look through the books about The World Of Equestria And It’s Wondrous Creatures, which i believe were the name of the book. I will give you pointers on your adventure when i can but you need to keep your eyes and ears open, every small detail could be a clue to a solution. I advice you find yourself something to take notes on.”
Artus leaned back into his chair again. He picked up a book and started reading. He straightened his glasses and continued.
“The age of Myst used to be just one small island, but with my help my wife Catherine took the liberty of expanding Myst to look like her birthplace, the now crumbled age Riven.”
“Riven? Crumbled?” Rainbow Dash tried her best to understand. Only the promise of getting back to Equestria was holding her back from teasing this Egghead. Not that she was ever a bully really, but this human made it hard to resist.
“The art of age writing might seem like playing God to some, you simply take a pencil and make your dream world exactly how you want it to be.” Artus looked up from his book and continued in a dark tone.
“No notion could be more wrong. Age writing is like government managing, but even more complex. Every rule you make, even the smallest changes you make in it’s foundation could have dire consequences higher up in the event chain. One written word could be the difference between a stable age or an age tearing itself apart, like the Star Fissure was in Riven.”
“Star Fissure?” A grin of incredulous had started to form on the pegasus pony’s face.
“A anomaly appearing due to clumsy age writing. The Star Fissure showed itself as a stethoscope pointing down at the ground in that age. A long time ago I had my assistant Stranger open the hatch in the ground and look through that stethoscope. In there he could see the stars along with his home planet Earth hovering out in a breathable version of space.”
And with that Rainbow Dash could take it no longer. She bursted out in a raspy laughter.
“OAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA! What are... Waha... What are you eggheads doing out here?! Age writing? Riven? Star Fissure? Watching stars through a hole in the ground? Stranger, now what kind of a name is that? Didn’t he have real name?!” Tears were running down cheeks of the laughing pegasus pony. Atrus remained punctual.
“He wasn’t much of a talker Stranger. Either way, the opening of the Star Fissure caused the natural logistics of Riven to collapse. I barely made it out of there before my home world was gone forever.”
Rainbow Dash wiped the tears from her eyes.
“Only you? What happened to Stranger?”
“Stranger? He returned to his home planet by jumping into the Star Fissure and flew home to earth again.”
The warmth from the hot sun laid whiteness to the still air around the temple. It’s influence was cut in pieces by the exploding laughter of the rainbow, tears being it’s rain.
“OAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Rainbow Dash’s hooves sent echoes along the stony pathway. The stone walls had long lines running across them due to erosion. Ahead seemed to be some kind of door with a lock. Four round glass spheres where fastened in front of it. To the sides of the door the pathway parted, giving Rainbow Dash the choice to either go left or right.
She walked up to the door. She tried to push it with her hooves but the door wouldn’t budge. She tried to press the big red button under the glass spheres, but nothing happened. She tried to fiddle with the glass spheres. Inside the spheres Rainbow Dash spotted five minuscule balls that were held airborne by bent iron holders.
Together the composition made four glass spheres with five hovering iron balls inside like a miniature version of an old ancient planetarium. The iron balls spun around inside like a planetarium would when Rainbow Dash spun the spheres, although there were no apparent space logic involved. Not that Rainbow Dash would ever notice. All she did was wondering how anyone could have place these spheres here and not above somepony’s baby crib where it belonged.
She leaned her head above the spheres and noticed that three red dots had been painted on the iron holder underneath, allowing for a number of ways they can be lined with the spinning balls inside. Rainbow Dash brought up the Myst book.
“Atrus?”
The link book image became clear. Atrus was reading like Twilight during a scientific research.
“Atrus?”
Still no answer.
“Atrus!?”
Atrus now looked at Rainbow Dash. Her face was frowned. She head motioned the spheres. Atrus raised his shoulders.
“So?” He asked.
“What’s the combination?”
Atrus sighed.
“I told you Rainbow Dash. In the making of an age you use descriptions and general rules. I merely described these devices.”
“So?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“So, i don’t know the exact combination!” Atrus answered irritatingly. He looked with interest what the linking book showed. “I could however describe to you the relevance those glass spheres have to the locals and their beliefs. when...”
“Alright, alright. I get it. I’ll find the combination.” Rainbow Dash stopped this from turning into a boring Twilight conversation.
Rainbow Dash walked down the left pathway. Eventually it lead her into a big round room. Apart from where she came from two more doorways opened inside the round room. One of them seemed to lead outside due to the patching light, the other seemed to be some kind of joke because there were only a brick wall behind it, along with the number 1 engraved on it.
“Whoever built this, i hoped they didn’t pay him in advance.” She told herself.
Rainbow Dash walked back and tried the right path from the glass sphere door. It lead her to a dead end. She noticed a button on the right side of the dead end. She pressed it with her hoof. There were the sound of rocks moving, slowly, slowly, slooooowly.
Eventually Rainbow Dash was greeted with the round room again. It appeared that the button had spun it around, allowing her to approach it from a different angle. Once again one of the doorways lead into a brick wall. This time the wall showed the number 3.
Rainbow Dash soon discovered that the other two entrances to the room also had buttons. She figured that a pathway was hidden somewhere behind the walls and that she needed to line up the room just right to be able to reach it from either side. She decided to try and approach the room from the outside entrance. She trotted around, pressed the button and watched the room spin around, slowly, slowly, slooooowly.
“Gaaaaaaah.” Rainbow Dash moaned in boredom.
This time one of the doorways revealed a path that lead further inside the temple. Eventually the path opened into a huge hall. Big colored windows decorated the walls. A huge stone figure of a pig like mammal towered in the middle. In front of the stone figure there seemed to be some kind of sacrifice altar. Withered roses and fruits had been placed in front of it.
Rainbow Dash trotted up to it. She found a pile of small papers glued together into some kind of note block. Three coal sticks laid beside it. She took them, figuring they would be useful for taking notes with. She also found a pouch to store the note block in.
On the stone pillars of the temple where four metal bug sculptures. A small rope hanged down from underneath them. Rainbow Dash pulled one, resulting in the bug opening it’s wings and revealing five dots in a complicated starlike pattern. A lamp glowed red beside the bug as it opened.
The other three bugs would turn out to have the same star patterns in different variations. They also had different number of lamps beside them, numbering them from one to four lamps. Rainbow Dash felt the frustration grow inside her as she noted down all the patterns, along with the number of lamps that glowed. It seemed logical that all this had something to do with the glass spheres, but were do the four red dots underneath the glass spheres come in? Rainbow Dash felt her cocky mind working overtime. Was she about to go star watching now? Was she going to the Star Fissure?! Rainbow Dash shook her head in frustration.
‘This is impossible dad.’
‘Nothing is impossible for my Rainbow Dash.’ The answer from Bow Hothoof circulated her mind.
Rainbow Dash calmed down, figuring she must have missed something. It was in this state of calmness that she noticed the TV screen on the wall. She trotted up to it. There were two buttons beside it. She pressed the first one and heard the sound of a door opening on the other side of the hall, revealing sunlight. Great, now she didn’t need to go through that boring spinning room to enter the main hall. She pressed the other button. This booted up the TV screen, revealing some kind of security camera. It showed the spinning room from a roof perspective, along with four red dots on the floor inside it!
“Great. Now I'm getting somewhere.” Rainbow Dash spoke to herself.
It soon turned out that, dependent on which bug was open, the pattern of that bug would be overlaid onto the screen, showing clearly how the red dots fitted with the ball pattern. This together with the number of bug lamps showed which pattern was number one, two, three and four.
“Yes! Time to open ourselves a door!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed
After writing down the patterns Rainbow Dash made her way back to the glass sphere puzzle. She spun the spheres around until they lined with the written down combination. She pushed the big round button under the spheres.
Nothing happened.
Rainbow Dash felt her mind boil. What had she missed now!? Her face widened as the realization came.
‘The numbers inside the rotating room!’
The truth slided thick like sirup against her brain. Rainbow Dash would have to go back to the round rotating room, take note which number was shown on the brick wall, go around the temple to the main hall, open the bug that corresponded with the current number inside the rotating room, and THEN look how the pattern on the main hall screen compared with the red dots.
So Rainbow Dash did that. She watched the round room spin around, slowly, slowly, slooooowly.
“Whaaaaaaa.” Rainbow Dash moaned.
After being forced to watch the room spin around four times she had the combination. She approached the glass sphere puzzle. She placed her hoof on the first sphere, losing grip of the paper in the progress. It limply sailed down into a water puddle on the floor. Rainbow Dash’s pupils diminished, her right eyebrow twitched.
The air laid thick inside the small condensed pathway. Around a corner there were the sound of a button being pushed. The sound of rocks sliding followed, it slided slowly, slowly slooooooooooooooowly.”
“GAAAAAAAAAH!” A raspy roar of frustration suddenly echoed along the pathway.
Rainbow Dash felt her anger calm when she finally watched the glass sphere door open after entering the right combination. It revealed a room with a pedestal. On top of the pedestal was a glass showcase. Inside the showcase was a piece of paper. It was one of the book pages that was needed to open the link book to Atrus library.
After putting the paper inside her newly acquired pouch Rainbow Dash trotted toward the exit via the main pathway. She brought up her Myst book to rub her awesomeness in Atrus face.
“Atrus. Are you...?”
There was a swooshing sound, followed by the sound of wood hitting rock. An arrow fell down and landed in front of Rainbow Dash. She wailed her head around. An arrow swooshed by only centimeters from her face. Rainbow Dash galloped as fast as her pegasi hooves could carry her. There was another swoosh. A cracked clay pot toppled in front of her, the arrow spinning around in circles from the impact. Rainbow Dash saw the sunlight engulf her as she exited the dangerous hallway. Once outside she jumped and took cover behind a rock.
“Huuuuh....Huuuuh...Huuuuh!” She breathed heavily. There was an answer coming from the Myst book.
“Yes Rainbow Dash? I guess you've come to ask for help. You know, there’s really no shame in...”
“Atrus! Somepony is trying to kill me!”
“Kill you? What...”
“They shot at me Atrus, somepony with a bow and arrow!”
There were silence. Rainbow Dash leaned over the rock and glanced back toward the temple entrance. There was nopony there. She quickly went back into cover.
“How many folks are there that knows about my quest Atrus?!” Rainbow Dash demanded.
“Alright, let’s not jump into early conclusions here. There are many possibilities...”
“Possibilities?! May i remind you that I’m the one getting murdered here!”
“Did you see who it was?”
Rainbow Dash shook her horrified face.
“Well then we can’t possibly know yet now, can we?” Atrus wavered his palms in a calming gesture. “Just make sure you get out of there. We can return for the book page later.”
“Theres no need for that. I have it.” Rainbow Dash informed and raised her wings. Once airborne she left the temple behind her, the book page safely tucked inside her pouch. One down, four to go. After that she would only need to find the book of eternity, and then leave this boring slash horrifying place once and for all.
Rainbow Dash thought she saw a dim light in the distance. The thin fog slowly revealed the towering presence of a lighthouse. Below the lighthouse was a series of slides running back and forth.
“I didn’t know this place had a waterpark.” Rainbow Dash remarked. There were an enthusiastic reply coming from her book strap.
“Although this is no tourist resort there have been plans among other native people to establish mechanized day camps for kids, and counting in the differences in world structures studied from the Crystal Viewer...”
“Okay. Okay, it’s just slides, plain and simple!” Rainbow Dash boomed.
She landed at the top of the light house and looked out over the eery fairground which she guessed was called Dirt Land. She spotted a river running down from the mainland. The river seemed to part itself right into one of the slides before running into the sea.
“It’s another puzzle, isn’t it?” Rainbow Dash sulked.
“Maybe you should fly down and find out?” Atrus proposed.
Rainbow Dash turned around and looked in the middle of the lighthouse top. She spotted a key that had been locked to a chain. The chain was fastened onto rusty iron plate that had been loosely screwed to the floor.
“Huh?” Rainbow Dash blurted when she heard the clonking sound. The inside of the lighthouse appeared to be filled with water!
“Ehe, why are there water inside the lighthouse? Aren’t lighthouse’s supposed to guide boats AWAY from the water?!”
“Hmmm, They must have used it for some kind of alternative to the river, in case they needed flowing water.” Atrus replied from the Myst book.
“Or they figured there weren't enough crazy design choices being made on this island.” Rainbow Dash said, almost feeling like Rarity. She spread her wings and thrusted, beginning her decent toward the park.
Rainbow Dash landed on a wooden pathway. It squeaked as her hooves pressed down on it. She could see a hut ahead. She trotted up to the door and pushed. It was locked. Atrus felt useful.
“Well, i guess we’ll have to find another way in...”
Rainbow Dash turned around and used her strong hind hooves to kick the door in, a big chunk of wood rocketing as she did.
“...Or just kick the door in like we were a group of special forces.”
“No, i am. You’re my nerdy sidekick, the hacker, the coward who trot around in terror while I dual wield the bad guys.” Rainbow Dash teased as she entered the dimly lit hut.
Once inside they could hear the sound of pumping. The biggest hose Rainbow Dash had ever seen ran through the floor, apparently plunging into the water surface below the hut. Beside the hose was a big metal pump. On the pump was a lever along with a symbol of a lighthouse. The symbol was shining, revealing it’s blue colors that looked like it represented water.
Rainbow Dash pulled the lever.
The intense sound of water flowing roared. Rainbow Dash wailed her head slightly to the left. There was a big metal plate in front of Rainbow Dash. It had a button on it along with a round hole. It appeared that the metal plate could be opened. Hooves alone wouldn’t budge it though.
“How do i open this?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Maybe you should brute kick it in?” Atrus asked sarcastically. Rainbow Dash laughed confidently.
“Haha, yea, i guess i could, but my back hooves feels a little stiff today” Rainbow Dash stretched one of her hooves so that it made clicking sounds, ”probably better if we did it your boring way this time.”
“Then maybe we should find the object that fits inside that round hole.” Atrus proposed, somehow remaining ignorant to Rainbow Dash’s rude ways.
Rainbow Dash looked around. Her eyes festered on the pump again. The water had stopped flowing and the symbol of the lighthouse had blackened. She guessed that meant that the lighthouse had been emptied of water, making it actually a lighthouse again.
“Maybe we’ll find something inside the lighthouse.” Rainbow Dash brainstormed.
Rainbow Dash flew to the top of the lighthouse. To her pride it had indeed been emptied. She looked down between the stairs that ran in circles along the inside of the lighthouse. She spotted a chest laying at it’s bottom. Her eyeballs turned toward the key fastened on the rusty plate again. Atrus lit up.
“I remember this! It’s from one of the sub ages that i made while living in Myst. You need to open that chest with the key. But to do that you first need to use a small valve located at the side of the chest and empty it from water. That way it will float to the top once you activate that pump and refill the lighthouse again.”
Rainbow Dash could already feel her hooves aching thinking about that long progress. She reached out her hoof.
“And then while having it floating on top you should be able to grab that key and...”
There were the sound of wood breaking when Rainbow Dash ripped the key from the floor, the chain along with the rusty plate following, her strong hoof muscles showing.
“...And rip the key from the floor like an angry gorilla, that works to. No, i insist, keep breaking my age, i’m just the writer.” Atrus wailed incredulously.
”Ah, he. No Atrus. You said it yourself, you only describe the basic rules of the age, not the details. But since i am the only one here now I decide about the details. You go back ’describing’ my awesomeness now while i stay here and take care of business.” Rainbow Dash teased.
”Well, I can think of a few descriptions alright.” Atrus muttered.
It would soon turn out that the chest contained a round sphere made out granite. Having acquired it, Rainbow Dash made her way back to the hut again. She placed the granite inside the hole and pressed the button. This opened the metal plate, revealing a glass panel. Behind the glass panel pointed four huge glass pipes toward the sky. All of them had a red line painted on them. At the bottom of each pipe was a ball. Rainbow Dash noticed two levers placed in front of her. When she pulled the levers something moved at the back of the glass pipes. Rainbow Dash’s mouth bent in bewilderment.
“And what in the name of Celestia am is supposed to do here?”
“Celestia?” Atrus whispered dreamily. “Where have i heard...?” His voice dwindled of. He appeared to leave his office.
Rainbow Dash must have spent almost fifteen minutes fiddling with the levers. Something was moving back there, but those frigging glass pipes were in the way.
“Get out of the way pipes!” Rainbow Dash blasted. She moaned and released the levers.
Out of fun Rainbow Dash decided to fill up the lighthouse again. She pulled the pump lever and heard the water suck up the big hose. After a couple of minutes the lighthouse lamp lit up again and the pump stopped. Rainbow Dash pulled the lever. A roar of water sounded, followed by the splash of water hitting the glass panel.
“Huh?” Rainbow Dash turned her head.
Above the huge glass pipes a slide had been pulled up by a string. The slide sprayed a constant stream of water. Rainbow Dash grabbed the two levers and found that she could control the slide with them. It was then that she noticed that the tops of the glass pipes had holes in them.
Her tung hanged out of her mouth in concentration as she aimed the water stream above the hole. The pipe started to fill, resulting in the ball at its bottom floating higher. It didn’t take long for the pegasus pony to figure out that she needed to get all four balls in level with the red line painted on respective pipe. It was now that Rainbow Dash started noticing how frustrating it was to control the hanging slide.
“Huh, come on!” She urged the dead object.
She managed to fill the first pipe so that the ball surfaced just at the red line. Rainbow Dash pulled away the water stream. The pipe stopped filling. It was now that Rainbow Dash noticed that the water level inside the pipe was sinking. Somewhere underneath the pipe the water ran out. The muddy truth slowly festered itself inside her head like the stench of one of Pinkie Pies moldy pies.
...She would have to fill each pipe in such a way that she managed to get the last ball in level with the red line at the same time the water in the other pipes had emptied their balls in line, lines that were in different level from the ground. As if that wasn’t enough, just as Rainbow Dash realized this the water stopped and the slide lowered again. The lighthouse was empty.
“I must do this ON TIME!” Rainbow Dash wailed.
———————————————
The cold wind blew through the water park. A squeaking sound could be heard slightly before it’s source jumped with his four frog legs into the bushes. The still water flowed above the slides, powering small generators along the way, giving power to the households.
Rainbow Dash had never been a pony of deep concentration, but if anypony would have asked her if she could take the sound of flowing water she would have been more than glad to sit down, watch it flow, peacefully and gently, feeling it’s soft touch giving her mind a massage. Indeed, she would have been so happy inside.
Rainbow Dash’s furious face jittered with red veins. The last ball wasn't even close of reaching the red line when the water flow stopped for the sixth time.
“STUPID WATER!” She roared. The lighthouse would have to be filled again. The following minutes she would have to hear the sucking of the hose again. It would suck, and suck, and suck and finally, just like everything else in this room it would s...(Bleep).
This time it was close.
“Yes, yes, YES!”
Rainbow Dashs happy face widened. The last ball was just about to reach it. It did reach it, but the other ball sank to low. The water stopped. A crazy smile festered on Rainbow Dash’s face.
“Yes... It’s water. Bottoms up. Wuahahahahah!” Rainbow Dash’s crazy laughter subdued inside the thick hut. At that same moment Atrus returned to his desk.
“Rainbow Dash? Are you alright?”
“It’s water Atrus!” Rainbow Dash blasted with a happy face.
There were a short silence.
“Water. You mean...?”
“Yes, i mean.... Hahahahah... I mean it’s amazing Atrus. I love water!”
Atrus itched his neck nervously. “Sooooo do i Rainbow Dash.” He continued hesitantly. “In fact, water is our most important chemical substance.”
Rainbow Dash felt like a chemical substance alright. She talked slowly in a crazy speech level.
“It’s flowing... And flowing... And flowing... And the balls are floating.”
“Balls, they float?” Atrus asked, not sure what he himself meant with the question. Rainbow Dash’s blue eyes widened.
“Oh yes.” She paused and smiled. “They float.” A random red ballon sailed past behind the pegasus pony.
“Are you okay Rainbow Dash?” Atrus asked.
“Hihihi...Haaaaah... Iv’e never been better.”
Rainbow Dash’s blue face widened into a plea, as if to say ‘Take me away from here’.
“Never been better.” She whispered.
It would take three more tries before the device finally decided that the balls were close enough. There was a clicking sound.
“YES!” Rainbow Dash blasted out in joy. She saw a bridge fall down outside the glass panel. Rainbow Dash had a bed feeling inside.
She walked outside and over the bridge. She entered a wooden door and saw the second page laying inside a glass showcase in the middle of the room. From above the weak sunlight entered a large gap in the roof and shone over the case, the gray sky laying beyond it. Rainbow Dash’s face widened in disbelief.
“What? I could have used my wings to get here ALL THIS TIME!?”
Inside her mind Rainbow Dash heard the flowing of all the water the last half hour sounding at the same time in one blurry jittery. Her eyeballs went upward as she fell sideways and fainted.
When Rainbow Dash exited the hut she at least had the second book page inside her pouch she thought. But now another question formed inside Rainbow Dash’s mind.
“But Atrus?”
“Yes Dashie.”
Rainbow Dash’s face twisted in bewilderement.
“You called me Dashie?”
“Yes...” Atrus dwindled. “Just, i don’t know. Anyway, what was it?”
“I just wondered why you didn’t come here yourself. I mean, you are the author after all? Couldn’t you just write a new linking book?”
“Writing a linking book is an old D’ni art.” Atrus paused. “...That i happen to master, as part D’ni myself. But it would take to long. The book of eternity would be gone by then.”
“Gone? You mean...?” Rainbow Dash’s face lowered in anger. “Wait a minute, you knew i was going to get attacked, didn’t you?!”
Atrus sighed.
“You asked me why i’m not here, well a couple of nights ago i could have been, but the original Myst linking book was stolen during a break in at the time. ” Atrus voice grew darker. “Listen Rainbow Dash, the book of eternity is a well sought after relic. Many people out there would go long ways to get it.”
“But why didn’t you tell me this from the start?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“I didn’t know if i could trust you. You remember how i left you in that cage, didn’t you? I had to make sure that you weren’t a spy.”
“A spy? Of who?”
There were silence. Atrus seemed to make up his mind about something.
“A spy of my father.” He finally said. Rainbow Dash’s mouth bent sideways in bewilderment.
“Your father?”
Atrus itched his nose. He folded his hands, put them on the table, and told the story.
“Long ago, in the now crumbled age Riven I was saved by Catherine from drowning after linking to that age. We eventually fell in love but my father had promised himself to her. You see, my father Gehn had learned me to write ages when i was 14. I came to Riven hoping to get to know him again after all those years, but eventually i realized that the man i once knew as my father had grown mad by power.”
“A bully heh?” Rainbow Dash added.
“You can call him that.” Atrus admitted. “Catherine had been his greatest student and he vowed to marry her. That would allow him to gain control of the art since he wasn’t too good himself. He couldn’t write linking books my father. He tried again and again but he always ended up burning his failed attempts. The ages he did create were unstable due to his clumsy writing. His clumsy references created contradictions.”
“Let’s just say he wasn’t the best of writing his age rules consistent. But the main reason why he was so dangerous was his beliefs, that the writer of an age was also it’s rightful ruler.”
Atrus leaned closer to the link window. His voice gained a dark seriousness.
“Rainbow Dash. I have told you before that the writing of an age is a process of general descriptions, but the notion my father brought was one of punctual control. His lust for power lead his one track mind to destroy entire civilizations. He caused millions of people living in his ages misery, only because of his own selfish needs. So believe me when i say it Dashie, that i had no choice but to capture him inside a prison book.”
“A prison book?” Rainbow Dash felt this turning into The Game Of Eggheads.
“A book that’s designed to be a one man prison. It takes you into a void between links where there’s no way out.”
“Huh.” Rainbow Dash nodded, not sure how to rate the current functionality of Atrus family.
“But it didn’t went without sacrifices. Before i had Stranger preform the deed there was a bloody civil war in Riven. My wife Cathrine lead the rebels against Gehn’s men.”
Atrus brought forth a book and opened the pages. He showed it to Rainbow Dash through the linking window.
“You see here?” Atrus showed a picture of a knife that had been formed like a triangle. Its handle was round with a iron line running through the circle.
“That is a rebel knife, the one that stood for the rebels belief that Catherine was the true ruler of Riven.” Atrus put away the book. “Catherine was eventually captured. It was then that i sent Stranger. Stranger managed to fool Gehn into thinking that the prison book was a link out of Riven. But here is where you come in”
Atrus voice grew dark again.
“I really hope that it isn’t the case, but if it is then Gehn might have been set free on this island.”
“Set free?” Rainbow Dash’s face twisted in confidence. ”Well, if that is the case then I’ll know a thing or two about handling escaped fugitives!” Rainbow Dash boomed, thinking about when she helped defeat Tirek.
“That, or it might be one of his men. Either way, i heard you back at the temple, i don’t believe either that the attempt on your life was a coincidence. That is why I must insist on you to be careful Rainbow Dash. Gehn is a very dangerous man.”
There was a shadow moving somewhere behind the thin fog. Rainbow Dash gasped.
“Who’s there?”
There was no answer. Rainbow Dash raised her wings in aggression.
“Listen bud, if you don’t answer me right now i am going to be really mad!” She shouted.
There still was no answer.
“I am counting to three. One... Two...
A figure appeared ahead. He had his authoritarian chin raised high. The human male looked sideways at Rainbow Dash. His eyes glowed behind his old face. Rainbow Dash felt her blood freeze.
“Gehn.” She whispered
After a moment of hesitation she thrusted and rocketed toward the human figure. The figure turned around and walked behind the corner. Rainbow Dash rounded the corner. Her angry face stayed in place before falling into disbelief. The man was gone!
“Rainbow Dash? What’s going on?” Atrus asked, horrified after hearing her whisper his fathers name.
“I’m leaving, thats whats going on.”
Rainbow Dash spread her wings and took of into the dim fog, leaving behind her the ghost rides of boring.
Rainbow Dash watched the village from her cloud perch in the sky. Only the sound of the wind could be heard along with the occasional animal. She heard a clucking sound coming from a pound nearby, barely got a glimpse of it’s source before the fish swam below it’s depths. Below the ponds outcropping was a hut. It connected to the other huts via log constructed pathways. Might as well still have been part of the tree’s they were constructed from because this place were as inhabited as the thickest forrest.
“Why are there no residents here?” Rainbow Dash asked Atrus. His answer came from the Myst book.
“My wife, Catherine, she never really got over the loss of her home, even though her people were evacuated before Riven’s destruction. She remade some of our new Myst islands to look like her home. She convinced some of her people to move in again but...” Atrus hesitated.
“But?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Well, lets say if someone made a copy out of you, no matter how god it may be, would it still be you?”
Rainbow Dash laughed. “Well, i know for certain it wouldn’t be nearly as awesome.”
“Neither did the residents. Writing something to look like something else could have ghastly consequences, literarily. It didn’t take long before the residents started seeing things, things that existed in Riven but only partly in this copy. I call it differences in writing styles, they called it ghosts.”
“Ghosts? Now, that is ridiculous. There are no such thing as ghosts!” Rainbow Dash blasted suspiciously fast.
“The village people seemed to think otherwise. They quickly deemed this place cursed and moved out. Now Catherine will have to settle for the sight of her birthplace mainly, rather than it’s life.” Atrus said, then teasing. ”But it’s ok if you’re scared.”
“Me? Scared? Ha, no way!” Rainbow Dash blasted.
“That’s good, because i’m positively certain that the next book page is down there. This is also the place we are probably going to find my linking book to my lab, after we put the five pages inside it that is. You should keep your eyes open.”
Rainbow Dash made her way down to the wooden pathway. Only the lake slamming against the rocky bed could be heard along with the wind. The bright sun mixed with the wooden huts made everything look like a tourist resort creepily devoid of tourists. Above the cliffs Rainbow Dash spotted a strange guard tower formed like a cup with a pointy bottom. Wooden pathways riddled above, making way for the hovering series of neighborhoods. The wood of the huts had seemed white and fresh from afar but as Rainbow Dash got closer it became apparent that the wood was rotting. Loose building material hanged down from the ceilings inside the deterring households.
Despite her confidence Rainbow Dash felt her heart creep up on her. She flung her eyeballs nervously around. One of the hanging building materials broke and fell toward the water. There were a big splash.
“HUH!?” Rainbow Dash gasped and turned around rapidly.
“Rainbow Dash? See, I knew you were scared.” Atrus teased from the strap around Rainbow Dash’s belly.
“Me? Oh no it was... uuuh.... A fish!” Rainbow Dash lied. Atrus laughed.
“Well, i guess he jumped out of the water then just to show you how surprised he was of seeing a pony here.”
“Hehehehe, yea, i guess so.” Rainbow Dash laughed nervously, bizarrely feeling like she got good company by that none existing fish.
Soon the dense village widened, making way for some kind of folk house. Round lamps made out of fabric hanged down from the tilting roof. Its walls made out of strong timber composed the steady gathering place, mighty compared to all the other huts that were mostly constructed by thin wood.
‘As good a place as any to start.’ Rainbow Dash thought.
Upon entering the folk hut Rainbow Dash was surprised to se that it still had lights.
“How does this place still have lights on?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“The lights run on electricity. If i don’t misremember there is a dam nearby. The generators are probably still in function.”
Rainbow Dash entered a gathering hall. On the wall she spotted a cascade of lamps hanging in straight lines. She bent her mouth in bewilderment as she realized that only some of them were lit.
Rainbow Dash counted five lines. The first line had all six lamps glowing while the next only had three. The next line only had one and so on.
“Atrus? Why are this room so oddly lit?” Rainbow Dash asked. She had the Myst book hanging open inside her strap so that Atrus could see.
“I don’t know, maybe it’s a part of their tradition?”
“You don’t know that? You know, for the creator of this world you don’t really know much about it.” Rainbow Dash teased. There was an irritating answer.
“As i told you already, i merely describe the basic rules of the age. The culture is created by the inhabitants themselves.” Atrus lectured. Rainbow Dash laughed.
“Ha, yea right. Blame your forgetfulness on your book characters.” Dash boomed. Atrus grumped.
“Careful Rainbow Dash, or i might decide to make some pony adjustments on the first paragraphs. Despite, the people wasn’t written in, they were brought here by my...” Atrus hesitated. He sighed. “...My wife.” There was an obvious irritation in his voice. Rainbow Dash wasn’t the pony to delve into relationship dilemmas.
“Hey, as long as i don't have to doge arrows i’m good!”
Rainbow Dash looked around. She discovered a panel at the other end of the room. It had five buttons. She tried to press the first one. This resulted in four of the six lamps on the first row to go out and appear on the third row instead, leaving that row with only five lamps. It turned out that all five buttons removed a fixed amount of lamps from their corresponding row, adding the same amount to another row. Rainbow Dash’s eyebrows twisted in bewilderment.
“Well this looks easy.” She remarked sarcastically. “Whats the solution here?”
“Maybe those books have the answer?” Atrus asked. Rainbow Dash looked around and spotted a book shelf.
“You mean that shelf?”
“Yes, you better get started.”
‘You better get started.’ The phrase echoed inside Rainbow Dash’s simple mind. The jittery of all the books made her sight almost go blurry.
“Huuuuuuuh” She moaned.
Rainbow Dash walked up to the book shelf. She ran her hoof through the books.
“I’ll be going away for a while. Try and look for clues regarding thirty lights divided up to five rows. It should have some relevance to the traditions of this village.” Atrus said.
“You’re leaving me again?” Rainbow Dash asked with a tinge of desperation in her voice.
“I need to go and look for clues about your world. You do want to get back to Equestria again, do you?”
Rainbow Dash closed her eyes and sighed, nothing would give her more joy, and right now she only had one path to follow. She opened her eyes again and picked the first book that she had her hoof on.
Once Atrus was gone Rainbow Dash sat down by the closest chair in the gathering hall. She opened the book and looked at the words. It was like looking into a sand pile, trying to single out the corns.
Of course Rainbow Dash was not new to reading. Her favorite book of all time was Daring Do, an adventure book series about a treasure hunting pony named Daring Do. She had an entire Daring Do collection in Ponyville.
But those books were all exiting and full of action. They had images and big clear letters. These books were all complicated, boring and on top of that the letters were all written by quill, curving in complicated ways that made them hard to make out. Rainbow Dash must have spent almost a minute trying to figure out that the first word in the book contained an S.
An half hour passed, Rainbow Dash felt herself become more single minded the further she read. It was more about what the words said rather what they meant. Rainbow Dash felt her brain wrinkle, her eyebrows shrinking, her breath intensifying. She suddenly realized that she hadn’t understood a single paragraph the last three pages.
Rainbow Dash raised her hooves and slammed them at the table. She violently shoveled the book sideways. The words were gone, but the emptiness remained. She took a second to calm herself.
“Dad?” Rainbow Dash whispered.
She expected to hear him answer. ‘Yes Dashie’? She expected to hear his hooves walk up behind her, once again. She expected that patching sunlight to send colored beams through his rainbow mane, once again. She expected him to pick up the book and point at the first phrase, once again. She expected him to ask her to read it from the top, once again.
But dad wasn’t there. Rainbow Dash was astray from home and nopony else would come for her. This should be the ideal situation for Rainbow Dash, the brave and loyal adventurer, not afraid to defy the fiercest storm.
But this was no ordinary storm of violent winds and slashing rain. No, this was a word storm of complicated letters and difficult to understand writing. If she failed this she would be stuck here forever, never seeing her friends again, only because she couldn’t remember a silly phrase. Rainbow Dash finally understood how Twilight Sparkle felt.
But Twilight was well suited to face this storm. Rainbow Dash was nothing, worthless, a complete idiot. She stared blankly down at the table as her mind raced, feeling her stomach ache in a odd way. There were a male voice coming from the Myst book.
“Rainbow Dash?” Atrus asked.
“Hmmm.” Rainbow Dash mumbled weakly.
“Is everything alright?”
Rainbow Dash flung her eyeballs to the right, slightly catching a glance at the human male inside the Myst book.
“Yea.” She sounded disinterested.
Atrus looked with a hesitant face at the sulking pony inside the book. It was obvious that Rainbow Dash had trouble reading. A distant memory sailed past inside Atrus mind. He closed his eyes, trying to grasp one more look at his son Sirrus having the same problem, slightly before surrendering to reality again and accepting that the son he failed was dead. He felt something awakening, something he haven't felt for a long time.
“Come on, let me se it.” Atrus said.
Rainbow Dash raised her melancholic face from the table. She reached out her hoof and grabbed the ruffled up book.
“Alright, i’ll read to you the first words and then you repeat. Ok?”
“Mmmm.” Rainbow Dash mumbled weakly.
“It was the third phase of the celebrations.”
There were a moment of silence. Rainbow Dash opened her mouth and read weakly.
“It was the third phase of the celebrations.”
“The power source have been double checked for faults,” Atrus read.
“The power source have been double checked for faults,” Rainbow Dash read.
“to prevent an incident of breakdown like the last time.”
“to prevent an incident of...” Rainbow Dash felt her mouth jam.
“You see, thats b, r and e. Breakdown. Notice how the writer have drawn a line between B and e and then simply marked the small r with a curve?”
Rainbow Dash heard what Atrus said, but she couldn’t hear the words that she just read. She snorted. Tears formed in her eyes.
“There, there. You're doing great so far.” Atrus comforted.
“Yea.” She mumbled with a broken voice.
“Is it that you can't remember the words from the book?”
Rainbow Dash hesitated. She managed to muster a small nod.
“How long has it been that way for you?” Atrus asked.
“Forever.” Rainbow Dash mannaged. “I’m an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot my little pony, you just have dyslexia, thats all.”
“Dyslexia?”
“You’re having trouble remembering words you read. It’s a common reading disorder that in no way makes you different from anyone else.” Atrus assured. Rainbow Dash snorted again.
“I knew there were something wrong with me.”
“Only if you were sick.” Atrus said.
“But you just told me i was.”
“Dyslexia is not a sickness, it’s a state of mind that means special hardships when it comes to reading. Dyslexia a reading disability, not a learning disability like some people wrongly believes. You solved that cage puzzle without me, you solved that water puzzle, you even solved that temple puzzle, that one was a doozie. You’re the smartest pony that i have ever known.”
Rainbow Dash felt a smile form beneath her teary eyes.
“But i’m the ONLY pony that you have ever known.”
“See, you even deduced that.” Atrus said. His dark and comforting voice laid itself inside the pegasus pony’s aching chest. It felt lighter as she laughed again.
“You’re not an idiot.” Atrus continued. “You’ll learn everything that I have learned and more, only in a different way. But let’s work with what we have first. Now, where were we?”
Atrus helped Rainbow Dash to read the remaining chapter of the book, they even managed to throw in a bonus writing lesson. Rainbow Dash remembered when she wrote her entries into Twilights friendship journal. She remembered when she made big holes in it’s pages so that her friends wouldn’t see how clunky her letters were.
Atrus learned Rainbow Dash how to sweep the coal stick into graceful lines. They eventually found the answer to the lamp puzzle. It corresponded to how many celebration stars there were in the night sky during the first, second, third, forth and fifth week of the sea celebrations. Atrus gave her a mini homework to write down one of the passages.
“Not bad Rainbow Dash.” He complimented the result.
“Thanks.” Rainbow Dash replied in a modest voice. A part of her wanted to roar out her awesomeness like she always did, but for some reason she felt more awesome being modest with Atrus, a guy whom she had started to grow respect for.
Once it was time to enter the solution the puzzle itself wasn’t very difficult. But it would have been significantly more difficult without Atrus. As for Rainbow Dash, she felt smarter for every second she were in his presence.
There were a clicking sound when all the rows was lit correctly. The wooden table inside the gathering hall opened and revealed a book page. The book page was lying on top of a book. When Rainbow Dash removed the page the title of the book revealed itself in capital letters: TOMAHNA
“That is the age where me and Cathrine lives.” Atrus informed.
“Cathrine.” Rainbow Dash mirrored. “Where is she now?”
“She’s been visiting our daughter Yeesha. Our daughter is receiving education in an age called Serenia. But i suspect it won't be long before Cathrine is back. You’ll see her soon i recon. Now, try and put the pages inside the linking book.”
Rainbow Dash browsed until she came to where the book was blank. She put the page she acquired from the temple into the book. There was a bright flash of light. Rainbow Dash had to cover her eyes. Once she looked again the page had been magically mended inside the book, it’s writing synced with the rest of the content. She did the same thing with the other two pages she had. Rainbow Dash blasted out her happiness.
“Great! Now i only need to find the last two pages, find the Book Of Eternity and then...” Rainbow Dash saw something move in the corner of the hut.
“Who’s there?” She asked aggressively. She was getting tired of seeing ponies without actually seeing them every time she finished a puzzle. “Listen! If you don’t answer me right now i promise you i will sonic rainboom you in the face!”
There was only silence. Rainbow Dash walked up to where he saw the shadow. She noticed a wide open back door ahead.
The brightness of the day engulfed the pegasus pony. Above her the wooden neighborhood towered. Wooden balconies had been fastened outside the skyward houses. She wailed her angry eyes around.
“Show yourself!” She commanded again.
She turned her head to the right. Her eyes festered on a man standing on one of the balconies. She raised her wings, ready to pounce.
“I see you! Answer me right now or i’ll smack you!”
The man didn’t move. Two more shapes appeared on the balcony. It was a human woman holding a baby.
“Huh?” Rainbow Dash blurted, her mouth bending sideways in bewilderment.
The man turned around. He looked at Rainbow Dash with bright white eyes. The woman with the child disappeared out of thin air. Rainbow Dash’s pupils diminished in horror. Her hooves started shaking. She wailed her eyes around rapidly as more and more shapes started to walk out on their respective balconies. Rainbow Dash wanted to fly away, but she felt her wings jam. A face appeared only centimeters in front of her eyes before blowing away with the wind.
“WAAAA!” Rainbow Dash screamed. She turned around and galloped down the wooden pathway. All around her shapes were peaking their head from the gaping doorways of their huts. The fact that all this was happening right in the middle of bright daylight somehow made it even more creepy. Rainbow Dash felt her heart beat faster. She picked up the pace. She saw a small storage ahead.
The door into the storage hut slammed open. Rainbow Dash was horrified to discover that there was no way out of the hut. She closed the door, grabbed a shovel and leaned it against the door, preventing it from opening from the outside. She galloped into a sub room and crawled in under a table. Her tail was crammed underneath her shaking blue body. Her hind legs packed together like a shrimp. Her hard eyes festered on the doorway.
There were a long moment of silence. Rainbow Dash felt the shaking stop. It exploded again once she heard the sound of boots hitting the wooden floor. A man appeared just around the doorframe. He had his face riveted forward as he faced away from Rainbow Dash. He had a white vest and a pointy nose, his head half bold.
“NO! You do not speak his name! He is NOT MY SON!” The man suddenly exploded.
Slowly the old man turned his authoritarian face toward her. Rainbow Dash's heart thumped so fast she couldn’t hear her own thoughts, nor her reasoning. She raised her wings and rocketed toward the doorway, rammed the man and flew through the wooden wall behind him which broke into hundreds of flying wooden shrapnels. She proceeded out into the brightness of the day toward the clouds in the sky.
Rainbow Dash still felt the beating of her own heart as she sailed among the clouds. Below her the numerous islands of Myst laid. She spotted the temple where she got her first book page, a dry island with only the occasional tree patch. She spotted the swamp island that had the annoying water puzzle, the same island also having a bunch of towering rock spikes and a swampy lake surrounded by cliffs. She looked back at the village island behind her. It was dense with thick forest’s and sparkled with glowing plants. Rainbow Dash wailed her head and caught sight of the huge golden bowl that covered up its own island entirely. She wondered what awaited inside that thing.
She could still remember that old man that she saw inside the storage hut. She remembered his military uniform having the biggest buttons that she had ever seen. She remembered the bald top of his head with only a patch of hair at the sides. She remembers the man’s voice. Even though she wasn’t Rarity, her Ponyville unicorn friend that was way better on judging character than her, Rainbow Dash was sure that she recalled none other than the voice of evil himself, a voice cold and devoid of empathy, and the worst part was that she knew to whom that cold voice belonged to. It belonged to Gehn.
Atrus was right. His father had been set free on the islands, and he was looking for the Book Of Eternity. Rainbow Dash still didn’t know what exactly the book of eternity was. She scolded herself for not asking Atrus way earlier. Still, without knowing what it was, after everything the humans involved had gone through to get to it, Rainbow Dash had a feeling that she should keep Gehn away from it. As for her Ponyville friends they would have to wait, Atrus was her friend now, and Rainbow Dash never left her friends hanging. This was Atrus fight, and that made it her fight as well.
"I don't know what she's doing now..." She heard Atrus voice inside the Myst book.
Rainbow Dash landed on a cloud. She brought up the Myst book.
"Atrus?"
"Rainbow Dash, I would like you to meet my wife, Catherine."
A human woman came into view inside the transmission window. By the look of her she seemed to be of another ethnicity than Atrus. Her dark hair hanged down from the sides of her head. Her eyes were big and her voice had an accent foreign to the one of Atrus. She immediately threw herself into Atrus chair and spoke with conviction.
“Listen Rainbow Dash, I’m sorry we’ll have to make our introductions short, but it’s imperative that you make your way to that golden dome island and retrieve the book of eternity right now.”
“It’s too dangerous Catherine, she’ll be better off having the last page before risking it.” Atrus argued.
“But there’s no time.” Catherine replied her husband.
“There is time. Gehns men will never figure out how to get to it, but with your help Rainbow Dash will have no troubles.”
A raspy voice broke in.
“Hello! Sorry to interrupt your family meeting, but can somepony please tell me what in the name of Celestia the Book Of Eternity is?”
Catherine and Atrus looked and nodded at each other. Atrus kissed her.
“I’ll be inside the library.” He said and walked out of the room. Catherine seemed to look after him before turning to Rainbow Dash inside the book.
“The Book Of Eternity is a special book that is said to have the power of linking its reader to any age. Unlike other linking books that stays in the age that the reader links from this powerful D’ni artifact allows the reader to take it wherever he links.”
Catherine looked over her shoulders, as if making sure that nobody was listening.
“Listen Rainbow Dash, I’ll help you get to the other pages, but after that we really have to make sure that the Book Of Eternity does not fall into Gehns hands. If it does he will use it to invade all the ages within his imagination and enslave its populations, just like he enslaved my people in Riven.”
Rainbow Dash liked the spirit of Catherine.
“Consider it done lady!” She saluted.
“Good. Together we will make this quick. Now, can you see the island with the rocky mountains and pipelines?”
Rainbow Dash already knew which island Catherine meant. As a Wonderbolt trained flyer she memorized everything that she saw from the sky. She made a downward spiral. She landed on a rocky outcropping. Below her she spotted a round metal construction with pipes connected to it. A lake widened beside it.
“Do you see the steam building?” Catherine asked.
“Is that what that thing is?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Yes. You need to turn off the heat and drain it from water, that way you will be able to enter its main pipe. That should take you to the train station.”
“Train station? Can’t I just use my wings?!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed, remembering with horror the half hour she spent listening to a hose sucking up water instead of simply flying to the page.
“This is not that kind of train, this Is an underwater train. It leads to an underwater base that is sealed off from above.”
“Oh. Right.”
Catherine guided Rainbow Dash to turn off the heat before draining the boiler of water and raising the catwalk inside. It was a process that required Rainbow Dash to move back and forth between valves both outside the boiler and in the middle of the lake at the end of docking bridge. It felt so simple when Catherine told her what to do. Rainbow Dash could easily imagine herself galloping back and forth for a while without her help. Once inside the boiler she entered a large pipe that ran down underneath. Darkness engulfed her.
“I can’t see a ting in here.”
“Hold up the Myst book.” Catherine instructed. Rainbow Dash did as she told. Catherine shone a lamp light at her end, causing it to illuminate the pipe at Rainbow Dash’s end. Her hooves sent metallic echoes along the pipe, still dense with the warmth from the hot water.
“You should see a valve soon to your left.” Catherine said.
Rainbow Dash spotted a red valve. Her tongue hanged out of her mouth as she used all her strength to pull it. It opened a hatch that lead out of the pipe into a maintenance area.
“This is one of the areas where the steam is currently being used. You will now close the hatch after exiting, unlock the backdoor of this station, fly back to the boiler and restart it again. That should allow you to use the train in here.
“Thanks Catherine. How come you know more about this place than Atrus does?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Atrus may have written many of the islands foundations, but I perfected it.” Catherine replied.
“Wow, so you must be really good at writing ages then?”
“Oh, my husband is better” Catherine waved her hand modestly. “…but I have written my share of ages yes. This one here is one of my more boring ones though, unlike Atrus I like to make my ages more artistic. You should visit my age of Katarn. Not that pleasant vacation spot granted, but it does offers an exiting hike into a forest with glowing fireflies and beautiful plants.” Catherine sounded almost like Rarity at the end.
“Well, I know a friend who is going to love it then.” Rainbow Dash added, thinking about Fluttershy.
Rainbow Dash did as Catherine instructed. Once the steam was running again she made her way back to the station and down the corridor, entering a blue lit area. In front of her the blue sub surface sea opened itself behind the thick glass that held the water outside. The track runner looked more like a mining wagon rather than a train. It had a big lever inside. Rainbow Dash trotted up and jumped into the wagon.
“Now, pull the lever and enjoy the ride my little pony. The glass tunnel runs all the way so be sure to take in all the water creatures that Myst has to offer on the way” Catherine said.
“Hey, as long as I get there in one piece I’m fine.” Rainbow Dash boomed and pulled the lever. The wagon released. Slowly it descended down the tunnel. It quickly gained speed.
“Ooaa.”
Rainbow Dash felt her stomach drop when the wagon suddenly accelerated to double speed. Rainbow Dash was rapidly starting to wonder what Catherine meant by ‘Take in all the water creatures.’ Everything there was to take in blurred past her so fast due to the gradually accelerating ride. There was another major drop.
“OOOOAAAA!”
The track was lit up by red strip lights that circulated the outside of the glass tunnel. They swooshed by in an increasingly faster pace.
“Oh YEA! THIS IS AWESOME!” Rainbow Dash blasted with a smile on her face. There were female laughter coming from the Myst book.
“Enjoy the ride? Be sure to look up, you might see a sea whale.”
It was then as if Catherine had placed and order in advance. Suddenly the light from the surface was covered by a massive shadow. Rainbow Dash looked up in wonder and festered her eyes on the biggest fish that she had ever seen.
The side eye of the creature seemed to look down on Rainbow Dash as she rocketed by below. The eye was comically small compared to the rest of his body. He then gave out a whale cry that was so deep that it rumbled the train track.
Suddenly Rainbow Dash entered a part of the tunnel that no longer ran through the sea. Darkness engulfed her. Light glimmered ahead while the wagon started to slow down. It stopped at another train station. Rainbow Dash jumped out and felt the adrenaline pumping.
“OH YEA! That was AWESOME! Can I go again!?” Rainbow Dash exclaimed. Catherine laughed.
“If you want to my little pony, if you want to, but let’s get that book page first.” Catherine leaned in closer to the Myst transmission book. “We do not want our egg headed boy becoming too worked up now, do we?”
Rainbow Dash laughed. “I guess you’re right.”
“He is charming though.” Catherine stated smiling while running her hand through her dark hair. Rainbow Dash turned her head downward and put her hoof behind it, not sure how to feel about herself blushing at that statement.
Rainbow Dash made her way through the underwater base. She eventually came into some sort of control room. In the middle of it there was a panel that had four levers and a red button. In front of the panel was a small enclosed compartment that looked like it could be opened. Its hull was made out of glass. Rainbow Dash looked inside and spotted the forth book page. She guessed that she needed to solve the puzzle with the four levers. She tried to use them, but nothing happened.
“Alright, Catherine. What do I do here?”
Catherine looked right into the transmission window and smiled. Rainbow Dash laughed nervously.
“You don’t mean…?”
“What fun would a puzzle be if one already knew the answer? Despite, I heard from Atrus that you were a smart pony.” Catherine said.
Rainbow Dash grinned confidently. “Yea, I am pretty smart. But wasn’t it you who said that we should get to the Book Of Eternity as fast as possible?”
“I did. But since we’re not taking that road…” Catherine said teasingly and smiled again into the Myst book. Rainbow Dash shook her head as if to say ‘Same old eggheads.’
“Alright. What do we have here?” Rainbow Dash studied the situation. She brought out her note block. She already knew that the levers did nothing and that there were four of them. What could they correspond to? She looked around for something else in the room that there were four of. She found nothing. Alright, what about that something outside the room?
She looked out the big window overlooking the ocean floor. She spotted four round weights that seemed to be held up by buoys above water level. Alright, was there a way to see what was up there? Rainbow Dash looked up and spotted a hatch.
Rainbow Dash felt the warm breeze hit her in the face when she was greeted with a dessert area. She spotted a shack. Behind it there was a bridge that lead out into the water. She spotted the four buoys floating, reachable from the bridge. She exited the hatch and walked out on it, feeling it swaying by the sea waves.
“So, what’s this Equestria age that Atrus keeps talking about?” Catherine asked.
“Equestria isn’t one of your ages lady, Equestria is my home.”
“How do you know it isn’t another age, pony?” Catherine asked.
Rainbow Dash now noticed that the buoys all had control panels on them, but nothing indicated that they could be used, no lights, nothing. She looked around. She spotted a pipe that connected to the bridge. Out of its end four hose’s lead into each buoy. She wondered where the pipe lead. Rainbow Dash were glad that she was a Pegasus and not Atrus assistant Stranger or else she would have to use the surface railway to follow the pipe.
“Because I grew up there.” Rainbow Dash replied as she took to the sky.
“And I grew up in Riven, wouldn’t have known about any other age if it weren’t for Gehns teachings.”
“Gehn taught you?” Rainbow Dash asked with a tinge of surprise in her voice.
“He did, before he realized how good a student I was and arranged a forced marriage to keep my talent for himself.”
Rainbow Dash was now over the area she was before. She spotted the boiler that she shut down earlier to enter the underwater railway. The revelation hit her in the head like the adrenaline that ride gave her. This pipe she now followed was one of the alternatives she had earlier when she needed to stop the boiler. She flew down to the bridge leading out into the and turned the valve there, redirecting the steam into the buoy pipe.
When she came back she was disappointed to find that the buoy controls still showed no sign of life. Maybe she could do something now down below the control room? She went down the hatch again and walked up to the panel with the four levers.
The lever still didn’t work. She pressed the red button.
There were the sound of an engine starting behind her. The panel in front of her lit up. The weights outside each lit up with a red light.
“I see you’re getting somewhere my little pony.” Catherine said.
Rainbow Dash tried the levers. Each one of them sent the corresponding weight up a notch. When pulling the lever backwards that weight went down the same amount.
“But what’s the combination?” Rainbow Dash asked herself.
She spotted a table close by that had lit up after activating the generator. She trotted up to it and discovered a book. Inside the book she found notes from the captains of the station, along with the solution to the buoy puzzle. She noted it down into her note book.
“Not bad pony, I see Atrus have taught you to write.”
“He did, I never thought I would be able to write these letters.” Rainbow Dash said, then then thinking to herself. ‘Have to keep it a secret to my Wonderbolt friends, or else they’ll think I’m an egghead.’
It didn’t take long for Rainbow Dash to find out that she could alter the amount of steam added to each weight by changing the settings of the control panels that she spotted on the buoys outside.
“I heard Atrus mention that you two had sons.” Rainbow Dash recalled as she fiddled with the levers.
“We did. But they went corrupt and started plundering their fathers ages. In the end we had no choice but to imprison them inside prison books.” There was a firmness in Catherine’s voice. Rainbow Dash stopped fiddling. She turned her face up in bewilderment.
“Wow, hold on now lady, slow down. So you’re telling me that you were forced to use prison books, not only on Atrus father, but also on your own sons!?”
“Hm.” Catherine mumbled firmly. “I knew that it had to be done, but Atrus was resilient to the idea. I had a hard time convincing him I’ll tell you.”
“Jie, what a rough ride your family has had.” Rainbow Dash stated.
Catherine stared blankly into the transmitting window, her face bordering between certainty and uncertainty. She snorted, but there were no tears. She turned her head.
“Yea.” She said.
Rainbow Dash held her breath as the last weight went into position. There were the sound of steam leaking out from machinery when the glass compartment containing the book page opened. Rainbow Dash reached in and grabbed it. She brought out the Tomahna linking book and inserted the page. A bright light followed before the page had been neatly mended with the book.
“Is that what that is? It looks like a cloud factory with a construction helmet!” Rainbow Dash blasted.
In front of Rainbow Dash, a round building stood. There was a dock below the observatory with a boat that seemed to have sunk, only the mast sticking out of the surface. Above the observatory laid upon a hill, what had to be, the biggest cogs that Rainbow Dash had ever seen. Below the observatory was a forest, not that it would necessarily be taken as one and not a patch of bushes since that was exactly how it looked when one took into account the gigantic pine tree that speared the sky. To the left of the observatory there was a spaceship.
“Alright, this has to be the strangest island that I have ever seen!”
“Thanks for that.” Catherine said and laughed passive aggressively. “It is the first Myst island that I made, and the only one that existed for a while.”
“Hold on? you made it?!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed surprised. “I thought that Atrus made it.”
“Did you know? I see Atrus is still taking the glory of my work. This is where Atrus and I raised Achenar and Sirrus before they decided to destroy their father’s work.”
“And then you had to imprison them.” Rainbow Dash recalled. “What happened to them?”
“Sirrus managed to escape from his prison book. They both then decided to kidnap our daughter Yeesha and travel to Serenia, the age where she now receives education.” For some reason there was an emphasis on the word ‘Education’ as Catherine spoke the word. “Once there Sirrus tried to switch body with Yeesha.”
Rainbow Dash had to block her breathing completely not to burst out in an awkward laugher of incredulous.
“And why in the world would he do that?!”
“So that he would be taught the art of age writing of course. I convinced Atrus not to teach Achenar and Sirrus since I feared they would abuse it once they knew it. Sirrus knew though that our daughter was being taught the art so he did what his selfish heart desired. In the end it ended up killing them both.”
Rainbow Dash stopped. She hovered midair.
“Wait? So, you’re telling me that both of your sons are dead?!”
“Yes. Did Atrus never tell you that?”
Rainbow Dash shook her head.
“Odd, I never knew he would still be sad about what happened. After all these years I thought he had gotten over it.”
“You don’t say.” Rainbow Dash said suspiciously. An odd feeling slowly started to creep up on her about the real extent of the brothers roles in all this. Not that Rainbow Dash doubted… Or did she?
Rainbow Dash landed outside the observatory. Upon entering she was greeted with an oval roof and a chair that allowed the user to lay down and look up. Catherine then had her turn of the lights and lay down.
After a projector showed her all the stars in the sky she had to write down a number of constellations from different time periods. It was by far the most boring thing Rainbow Dash had ever done. Yes, even more boring than the water puzzle. After writing down the constellations she had to go outside, pull a few levers and raise the sunken boat. Rainbow Dash had no idea how a few levers managed to raise a sunken boat but whatever, at least now she had her hoof on the last page.
“Great. Can we get that book of eternity now?!” Rainbow Dash asked impatiently while putting the last page in the Tomahna linking book.
“My little pony, there is no time to waste. Let’s just hope that whoever is chasing you hasn’t gotten to it first.” Catherine said. Rainbow Dash sighed.
“Can you stop calling me that?”
“Call you what?”
“My little pony, it sounds so cutesy.”
“Why not? Atrus calls me my little rebel. You shouldn’t be afraid to be womanly Rainbow Dash. After all, just like with the men and their charm, our beauty is our greatest weapon.”
Rainbow Dash laughed.
“Yea right. I’ll be sure to call ‘Beauty’ when I need a wooden door kicked in.”
“And I’ll be sure to let her know. After all, my beauty allowed me to raise an army of rebels and overthrow a tyrant.”
“I heard it was Stranger. Why is he called that, by the way? Didn’t he have a real name?”
Catherine giggled.
“Now my little pony, that is a question that is way too philosophical to answer at the time. Now, let’s fly over to that golden temple and finish this.”
The temple sphere building sent flashing reflections from its surface when Rainbow Dash went for landing. She landed just outside on a catwalk. She looked up.
The sun patched through beyond the buildings round borders. It was amazing how something so clearly hand built could have been made so perfectly round. Only the door in its middle broke the roundness of the sun like temple.
Upon entering Rainbow Dash was immediately greeted with a row of running engines. For a ‘temple’ this sure looked mechanical.
“What kind of ‘temple’ has engines in it?”
“What did you expect a temple to look like?” Catherine asked.
“For example, where’s the altar, the ancient stone sculptures, the withering red carpet, the huge windows?”
“That depends on the culture. You should visit more of the mechanized ages me and Atrus have created. Machines are holy to these cultures and therefore they get a place inside their temples as a part of their heritage, just like these ones were a part of mine.”
“Right. So, what does your ‘heritage’ require me to do here?”
“There should be a panel right in the middle of this room.”
Rainbow Dash looked around. She spotted a round golden altar with something that looked like described. Rainbow Dash’s hooves sent metallic echoes among the sound of turning of gears and releasing steam from the engines. The first thing Rainbow Dash noticed on top of the control panel was the flat blue shapes of different sizes. When she got closer she spotted that the shapes had holes in them. As for the number of symbols there were five of them. They were surrounded by blue.
“Why are there symbols of the Myst islands on this panel?” Rainbow Dash asked. Catherine laughed surprised.
“You noticed that those shapes represented the Myst islands immediately?”
“Ah, yea. Of course, I’m a Pegasus Wonderbolt! I always need to keep an eye open from the sky.” Rainbow Dash raised her wings and put on a confident grin. “Now, if you would just tell me what to do here than we’ll be done here.”
Catherine smiled passively into the transmission window. Rainbow Dash put her hoof over her face and sighed.
“Oh, come on!”
“What? You were doing so great, you might even be better at this than Stranger.”
Rainbow Dash’s angry face quickly reformed into a confident grin. She looked at the islands again.
Alright, so there had to be something about the holes in them. Rainbow Dash looked up. She spotted twelve holders, each one containing a ball of a different color. Above each holder was a lever. Rainbow Dash pulled one of the levers. She heard a ‘brumming’ sound coming out of a speaker.
“Huh?” Rainbow Dash blurted.
She picked up the orange ball that laid inside the corresponding bowl and placed it inside one of the holes of the biggest island, the one that had the temple puzzle Rainbow Dash remembered. As she did that the island started glowing the same color as the ball. It soon turned out that each of the island started glowing the same color as the ball when put in one of the islands holes. Two colors couldn’t be put in the same island though.
“Alright, so five of the twelve colors are right.” Rainbow Dash noted out loud. But which color? And in which island and hole? For the first time since the village Rainbow Dash felt that overwhelming feeling again. She closed her eyes while feeling the panic growing.
“What would Twilight do?” Rainbow Dash thought out loud.
“Twilight?” Catherine asked.
Rainbow Dash didn’t answer. Her mind raced like her wings during a flight competition.
‘This is impossible dad.’ She heard herself say.
‘Nothing is impossible for my Rainbow Dash.’ She heard her father’s reply.
Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened.
“The animals!” She whispered to herself. She reached out her hoof and pulled another lever, the one above the red ball. The speaker gave out a slurping sound. Rainbow Dash squinted her eyes.
“The slurp?” Her eyes widened again. “The slurp!”
Rainbow Dash recalled the slurping animal she heard when she first exited the cage at the very beginning of her adventure. She pulled several more levers. While pulling the lever above he green ball she recognized the squeaking sound that frog animal gave during the annoying water puzzle. She heard the clucking sound coming from the cobalt ball, recognizing that from the Village. She pulled the lever by the jasmine orange ball, resulting in a dark sound that rumbled the speaker.
“The sea whales!” Rainbow Dash whispered.
Rainbow Dash picked up each ball corresponding to the sound she recognized and put it on the island where she heard the sound, but in which hole where she supposed to put it? She looked at the red ball, the one that belonged to the slurp animal. She remembered that one being on the same island as the temple. Rainbow Dash gasped.
“The red dots!” She exclaimed.
Rainbow Dash left the balls as they were. She spread her wings and flew out of the temple. Catherine remained silent as she watched with awe how smart this seemingly brutish Pegasus pony really was.
Rainbow Dash entered the temple through the backdoor and festered her eyes at the pig animal again, the one that had sacrifices put on the altar in front of it. She could see those metal bugs that could be opened by a string to the right.
“Red, red, red.” The color went on repeat inside her head. Rainbow Dash saw the sun beams patch through the colored temple windows. She wailed her eyes upward to look at them, her eyes continuing as the revelation showed itself on the temple ceiling, a revelation in the shape of a giant ball with the symbol of the rebel knife dented onto it.
Rainbow Dash spread her wings again and exited the temple. She flew above the clouds and landed on one, brought up her note block and noted down the position of the temple.
Rainbow Dash revisited each island where she found the book pages. She noticed one of the floating balls in the water puzzle having a rebel knife symbol. She found a ball being kept as an ornament inside the gathering hut in the village. She found a ball laying underwater outside the underwater base, visible from the windows.
Upon visiting the original Myst island she found one ball built into the steering wheel of the boat. But what was the animal and the ball color for that island? Rainbow Dash pondered on this as she trotted around. She trotted up the stairs and leaned herself against those giant cog wheels. Rainbow Dash heard a familiar sound. She looked right and caught a good glance of the cockroach. It was the same bug that could be opened inside the temple, apparently this is the island where they could be found. The bug spread its wings and ‘brummed’ of into the air.
Rainbow Dash still heard the ‘brum’ inside her head when she put the orange ball inside the shape that looked like the Myst island, inside the hole that corresponded to where one could find the sunken boat. She caught a brief glance at all the other balls being in position before she heard a clonking sound. The entire map lit up. It closed and descended into the big golden ball that had started spinning downward, slowly revealing an opening.
“You did it my little pony!” Catherine exclaimed inside the Myst book. There were the sound of metal sliding against each other. The entire golden ball loosened from its fastened position and came rolling toward Rainbow Dash.
“OAAAH!” Rainbow Dash wailed.
She tripped on her tail and fell on her back. She saw the ball surface coming toward her, the squeaking sound it made along the floor witnessing how many ton it weighted, and how mushed she would be in just a moment. Rainbow Dash pupils gained a dark core as they imagined how death would feel like. They watched the golden surface roll closer.
Darkness engulfed Rainbow Dash. The light revealed itself ahead, along with the metal stand were the ball recently had been. Rainbow Dash looked back. She saw the golden ball plummet, catching a small glimpse of the book compartment hole on its surface that saved her life. The ball hit the floor below with a boom that caused the temple to rumble. There was a horrifying voice coming from the Myst book.
“Atrus! Come here quick. There’s been an accident!” She heard Catherine’s shouting. Rainbow Dash looked into the Myst book. She saw Atrus sprinting into the room. Catherine looked into the linking window. A smile formed on her face.
“You’re alive!” She exclaimed while pressing her hand against her mouth. Atrus looked bewildered at Rainbow Dash.
“What happened?” He asked.
Rainbow Dash felt the chock lay itself, and the anger rising.
“What happened? I was nearly turned to mush by one of your boring puzzles, that’s what happened!”
“But are you okay?!” Atrus asked insisting. Rainbow Dash was getting ready to rant more but felt her mouth jam while the question of genuine worry reached her heart. Her angry face bordered between anger and softness.
“I mean, what…!” She sighted. “Yes Atrus, I’m fine.”
“And the book?” Catherine asked.
“Yes, what happened to the book?” Atrus also asked.
Rainbow Dash raised her hooves.
“Well, I just had its entire altar rolling over me, I think I would have noticed if it smeared a book up against my face!”
“But how is this possible? There should be no deadly traps on this island.” Catherine wailed.
Rainbow Dash squinted her eyes at the area were the ball had been.
“But somepony thought.” She trotted up to the holder. “See, both these gigantic screws went loose at the same time.” Rainbow Dash hoof motioned one of the screws hanging limply from its hole.
“You know what Rainbow Dash? I’m having a hard time thinking that was a coincidence too.” Catherine agreed.
“But who?” Atrus asked.
Rainbow Dash’s face twisted in anger.
“Who? I’ll tell you who, whoever knows the solutions to the puzzles and knows how they work, that’s who. I asked you before back at the temple Atrus, and now I’ll ask again.” Rainbow Dash raised her wings in aggression. “WHO ELSE KNOWS ABOUT MY QUEST!?”
“No one, no one except us Atrus. Isn’t that right?” Catherine asked her husband. Atrus kept his eyes at the transmission window, catching a glance at Rainbow Dash’s frowning face. He raised his arms in a display of innocence.
“Well don’t look at us, we have no linking book. We’re stuck her in Tomahna.”
“Sure, you didn’t make one Atrus?” Rainbow Dash asked. Atrus felt his blood boil.
“Of course not! If I had one I wouldn’t have had reason to send Stranger now, would I?! It’s not my fault that you crashed my party.”
Rainbow Dash wiggled her tail. She grumped.
“Wait!” Catherine broke in. “I have an idea. Head for the first Myst island Rainbow Dash.”
“Should I? So far all I’ve gotten while following your guidelines are arrows to the face!”
“There is a secret room behind a secret door beside the boat. It will take you to a projector. I have modified it to keep track of inter age activity. It is possible that we could pick up the track of whoever is linking into Myst.”
“Could you do that my little rebel?” Atrus asked snootily.
“I still have the writing hands.” Catherine replied.
“Hello? Love birds, my little pony who almost got crushed over here!” Rainbow Dash blasted.
———————————————
It didn’t take long before the familiar sight of the Myst island came into view. Rainbow Dash made a banking turn and aimed for the harbor, lowly rated when taking into consideration that the only anchored boat laid on the ocean floor. Rainbow Dash eventually found the secret door that Catherine had been talking about. Her hooves sent echoes as she moved down along the pathway into a lightly lit area. It contained a round metal thing with a grid in the middle. Rainbow Dash saw a large round button.
“Rainbow Dash?” Atrus now spoke. Catherine had left the room. “I have been thinking, I know my wife wants to help, but I really think that you should head to Tomahna.”
“I know Atrus. But let’s give her a chance, maybe we’ll find something.”
Rainbow Dash pressed the button. There was a flickering shape above the round grid.
The shapes took the form of stony ruins and cliffs formed like mushrooms. Stone daggers soared the sky. A lagoon widened around the island with small lakes inside it.
“What is that place?” Rainbow Dash asked.
Atrus looked at the image. He recognized the age. The notion pierced his brain like a cold ice block held against his ear. ‘Gehn, set loose in Serenia?!’
The projector image of his daughter’s school age reformed in his mind into an image of his daughter. ‘Yeesha!’
“Rainbow Dash. I know where Gehn is going. Use the Tomahna linking book to get to me. Now!” Atrus ordered. His voice had a firmness due to his emotions circulating.
Rainbow Dash brought up the now completed Tomahna book. She was just about to press her hoof against the linking window when she heard a male voice. Her eyeballs turned to the projector. The shapes of Serenia crumbled and reformed into a shape of a creature. As it became clearer Rainbow Dash could see its stallion mule below its funky mane. One of its pegasus wings raised as it wailed in the projector.
“Help! I’m at the prison island! I’ve been…” The transmission ended.
While the projector image faded the eyes of the Pegasus pony remained hard, the image of her father, Bow Hothoof calling out for help, still reflecting inside them.
“Dad!”
Rainbow Dash turned horrified face to the Myst book.
“Atrus, I have to help him!”
Atrus imagined Yeesha trapped in the brute arms of his own monster dad.
“Save him?” Atrus blurted.
Rainbow Dash felt her blood turn warm, her heart thumping up to her head.
“What kind of a question is that!? I have to save him, he’s my dad!?”
Atrus felt cornered by the aggressive Pegasus pony.
“Father?” Atrus blurted with a tinge of disgust. “You don’t need your father.”
Rainbow Dash raised her wings until she looked three times her normal size.
“I don’t need…? I DON’T NEED!? He is MY FATHER!”
Atrus could see his own father look away from him when he wanted to show him the first age he had written.
“Your father will only hold you back!”
“Hold me back? What in the world are you talking about?! My father is there for me, he cheers me on when I race, he helps me when I have trouble learning, he even taught me how to fly…!”
Rainbow Dash kept telling why her father was good and why she needed to save him. To Atrus it sounded like bragging. He felt his heart rocket up to his head.
“Well, not MY FATHER! My father told me he DIDN’T LOVE ME! He told me he HATED ME! He told me he would take me out to the forest and LEAVE ME! He told me he would LAUGH while all the other children BULLIED me!”
Atrus dark voice sounded like a freight train coming through as he roared. Rainbow Dash’s angry eyes flickered.
“You might have a dream dad Rainbow Dash, but my dad had a dream that I had never been born!”
“Well you’re living in a dream if you believe that you can keep me away from my dad!”
Rainbow Dash’s furious eyes filled with tears. She flung the Myst book onto the floor in rage.
“Now STAY THERE and be a book, like the egghead you are!”
Rainbow Dash spread her wings and rocketed out of the projector room, leaving Atrus alone, thinking of what in the world he just said.
Even though Rainbow Dash had never been there she immediately knew from her sky memory where the prison island was. But her mind didn’t go to the prison island, it went to her father. Or no, not really. It went for…
Rainbow Dash shook her head that circulated with post anger thoughts. She growled to keep her concentration. The prison island laid ahead. The prison itself laid like a billboard ball on top of the central mountain. Rainbow Dash landed on a catwalk that lead into the mountain. Her face was bent in determination as she trotted inside.
Rainbow Dash entered the elevator. She stretched her hoof to press the button. She felt her flank burn when something suddenly stuck her. She gave out a raspy gasp and turned around. She caught a small glance of a figure wearing a storm west and a crossbow before the world went dark.
——————————————————
Rainbow Dash moaned. She felt her stomach ache from the poison. She opened her eyes, the prison bars blurry at first. Slowly the rest of the décor came into view. One of them appeared to be some kind of box with a sheet thrown over it. Beside it there was a furnace, still glowing with coals. Rainbow Dash spotted the Myst transmission book lying on a table nearby. Rainbow Dash realized immediately that her life was in danger. She tried to stretch her wings, in vain it turned out as they had been tied to her back by a rope.
“Atrus?” She called the book. There was no answer. “Atrus!”
A character could be seen walking behind the windows. It appeared to be a man in a storm suit. Rainbow Dash had a bad feeling who it was.
“Catherine.” She called the book.
“Catherine!”
The door opened. The man walked in and pulled up his mask. Rainbow Dash’s face dropped in disbelief.
“Catherine?”
Catherine walked up to the table. She grabbed the Myst book.
“No, Atrus!” Rainbow Dash called in desperation. Catherine opened a burning furnace.
“ATRUS!”
Catherine threw the Myst book into the furnace. The sound of hissing paper glue could be heard before the furnace lid slammed closed. There was a moment of awkward silence.
“Catherine? I don’t understand.”
“You’re not a mother. How could you understand?”
Rainbow Dash’s sad eyes slowly shifted into angry.
“You were the one who tried to kill me in that temple!”
“Scare you.” Catherine corrected, still without looking her in the eyes.” I was a marksman during the Riven revolution. If I wanted to kill you, you would have died the moment you walked out of that cage, but you wouldn’t take the hint. Such a foolish little pony. Well, it matters little now.”
Catherine brought up a book from her bag. It was dark and had a symbol in the front. Its edges were ornamented.
“Is that the Book Of Eternity? But why? Why imprison me?! Why…?”
Catherine interrupted Rainbow Dash by laughing. “Oh, my little pony. There is no such thing as a ‘Book Of Eternity’.”
Rainbow Dash’s confused eyes floated in the middle of her face. Catherine opened the book and put it against the prison bars, allowing Rainbow Dash to look straight into the eyes of an old man. He had a bald head and a military uniform with big buttons in the middle. His familiar grin inside the linking window caused her blood to freeze.
“Gehn.” She whispered. She looked at Catherine. “So, the Book Of Eternity was Gehns prison book all along!?”
“Did it never occur to you why those balls that lead you to solve that color puzzle had rebel knives on them? I thought you were a smart pony.” Catherine teased.
“But Atrus? Why didn’t…?”
“Why didn’t Atrus tell you? The same reason he decided to store his father’s prison book on one of the Myst islands instead of his bookshelf.” Catherine leaned her head closer to the bars and whispered.
“Shame.”
Rainbow Dash thought back on the fight she had with Atrus, regret filling her heart.
“Atrus.” She whispered.
Catherine turned around. She proceeded taking of the rest of her storm uniform.
“But how did you get here?” Rainbow Dash asked.
Catherine reached into her bag and brought up another book. This book was brighter and had a darker spine. It had capital letters written in gold. ‘MYST’
“That is the original Myst book.” Rainbow Dash concluded hoarsely.
“The one that Stranger found on earth.” Catherine added.
“So, you were the one who stole it from Atrus?”
“And made it look like a burglary. I had to, or else Atrus would have known immediately who took the prison book.”
“But why are you doing this? Why do you want the prison book?”
Rainbow Dash caught sight of Catherine’s blank gaze. It made her realize the unsettling truth.
“You’re planning on releasing him. You’re planning on releasing Gehn!”
Catherine started walking around the cage. Rainbow Dash flung her hooves around as she spouted out her questions.
“But you lead a revolution against him. You said he was a tyrant!”
“That was a long time ago. My father in law have been imprisoned for eight years, he’s a changed man. Not that Atrus would care, seeing he belongs to the family.”
“What do you mean? Atrus cares!” Rainbow Dash stated. Catherine laughed.
“Oh, my little pony. Atrus doesn’t care, he doesn’t care for any of his family members. Sure, when they are small and cute everything is mellow, but when they grow up and turn bearded and ugly he plunges his face into his books again.”
Catherine looked at the front cover of the prison book.
“And then, one day that ugly family member does something stupid, first then he pulls his own ugly face away from his books.” Catherine said the last part concludingly, the resentment in her voice obvious.
“But instead talking to them or help them getting good at what they do, you know, like a father does.” There was a snarl in Catherine’s voice. “…He writes himself a prison book to watch them turn old inside them.”
Rainbow Dash now realized the connection.
“You are talking about the imprisonment of your sons? Wasn’t that you who convinced him?”
Catherine laughed again. Her laughter was low and unbothered, unsettling considering she could have been a murderer at this point.
“My little pony. You are a brute, you know that Rainbow Dash? And just like every brute you are weak minded. I was a rebel leader for several years, I only told you what you and Atrus wanted to hear.”
Rainbow Dash felt her mind flip, along with all the words Catherine said to her before.
“It was he who convinced you.” Rainbow Dash concluded.
Catherine smiled at Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash’s eyes turned sad.
“But your sons choose their fate. They plundered…”
Catherine’s smiling face turned into a storm of anger. She slammed her hands against the prison bars, causing Rainbow Dash to stagger.
“Don’t you dare tell me about choice, you’re not a mother! I was forced to watch my own sons grow above their twenties inside those prison ages! I watched them live the rest of their short lives like some unwanted fugitives! I saw their bodies lying inside that chamber after their foolish ideas backfired, ideas that could have been my heritage if Atrus did his job as a father!”
Catherine’s voice now cracked.
“And now he is sending Yeesha away! How long before she gets her own ‘foolish ideas’?! Gehn might be a tyrant, but at least he cares about his own blood!”
Rainbow Dash sad eyes remembered what Atrus told her about Gehn.
“That’s not what I heard.”
“It doesn’t matter what you’ve heard, you have no idea what our family has endured!”
“No, I don’t.” Rainbow Dash’s sad eyes hardened. “But I know you kidnapped mine, and you did try to kill me by loosening that golden ball.”
Catherine’s crying turned into a blank stare, Rainbow Dash’s angry eyes burned red fire.
“You’re lucky I’m inside this cage lady.”
Catherine raised her chin in authority, her crying washed away.
“Well, at least putting it that way makes this simple.” Catherine walked to the table. She picked up the prison book and opened it.
“Now, you might still wonder why you’re here. As it turns out this older prison book is not like the ones my sons were captured in. While their books were ages of their own, fully accessible through other linking books, this book takes the user to a dark void between links.”
Rainbow Dash looked angry at Catherine as she talked.
“There is no way to rewrite this book without killing the person inside, nor is there any way of getting a linking book inside it. The only way to get my father in law out of it is for someone else to use it and then switch place with him.”
Catherine opened the book and put the linking window against the prison bars. Rainbow Dash saw Gehn looking at her with a combination of begging and teasing eyes.
Rainbow Dash had her eyes riveted at the open page and the linking window inside it. She tried to imagine herself spending eight years inside a prison book, the half-crazy smile of the man inside envisioning who she will be at that time.
“And what if I refuse?” She asked, the anger burning in her eyes.
“If you refuse,” Catherine closed the book and walked up to a square object. She grabbed the cover and tore it away, revealing a smaller cage with a familiar rainbow mane inside. She picked up a stick that sparkled with electricity
“We’ll do this the hard way.”
Catherine pressed the stick against the sleeping stallion. The shock woke him up. Bow Hothoof screamed in pain.
“Dad!?” Rainbow Dash wailed.
“Rainbow Dash?!” Bow Hothoof shouted in disbelief. He remembered when he foolishly screamed out his location at the recorder. Regret filled his heart. “I am so sorry Dashie that I lead you here.”
“It’s alright dad. I’ll get you out of there!”
Catherine gave him another shock. The electricity caused his wings to flicker before he crumbled to the ground.
“Hey, you leave my dad alone!” Rainbow Dash roared.
Catherine didn’t answer. She walked up to Rainbow Dash’s cage and put the linking page against the bars.
Rainbow Dash’s red pupils glared at Catherine. Catherine’s apathetic face showed no sign of flinching while the realization suddenly hit her. This rainbow pony would be to stubborn to ether use the book or accept that she had the upper hand.
“Fine. Then we’ll switch.” Catherine said darkly.
Catherine took the book away from the bars and turned to Bow Hothoof.
Rainbow Dash saw Catherine looking at Bow Hothoof when the taser suddenly came. Rainbow Dash felt all her muscles pull at once. She crumbled to the ground. Her raspy scream made the prison bars rumble around her, Bow Hothoofs desperate pleading buried somewhere behind it. The electricity stopped.
“I have all day.” Catherine said. Rainbow Dash pulled herself together.
“No dad, she hasn’t! Atrus will realize that something is wrong! He will come and…” Rainbow Dash gasped when the taser suddenly came again. She felt her hooves stretch out by the tensions.
“Don’t…Do…. It!” Rainbow Dash managed.
“No! STOP HURTING MY DAUGHTER!” Bow Hothoof cried out. Catherine pulled away the taser from the ruffled-up Pegasus pony.
“I’ll do it!” Hothoof agreed with a broken voice.
“No dad.” Rainbow Dash managed.
Catherine walked up to Bow Hothoofs cage. She pressed the linking window against it.
“But you must promise to release her!” He demanded.
“I have no reason to keep her. I’ll let her loose in the woods somewhere later.” Catherine promised. Bow Hothoof looked at Rainbow Dash.
“It will be alright Dashie.”
Rainbow Dash wanted to scream out to her dad. She wanted to tell him that she loved him. But the lagging pain from the shocks made her tongue jam. She watched Bow Hothoof touch the linking book and disappear out of thin air. As he did Gehn appeared inside the pony only cage. He squatted in an embarrassing position.
“Let me out of here!” He blasted.
Catherine took out the key chain and unlocked the cage, using the wrong key several times before managing.
“Come on, I feel like a chimpanzee in here!”
Catherine grabbed Gehns arm and helped him out of the cage. She folded her arms around him and started crying.
“For so long I waited, for so long.”
“It’s all right now Catherine. I promise things will be different. Soon the whole family will be together.” Gehn said.
“Even Atrus?”
“Even Atrus, just as I promised. Neither he or I may like it, but for once in our lives we will find a way.”
Catherine tightened her grip around her father in law. She buried her face in his shoulders, feeling every worry about the future disappear. Finally, things would be as Atrus always intended but never had the means to achieve.
Suddenly Catherine felt pierced by her emotions, literally. She gasped and raised her shaking arms. She looked at Gehn with her mouth open, his cold gaze of remorselessness floating inside his pupils.
“But, you promised.” Catherine managed.
“I promised that our family would be together. But with our history, only in death will that be possible, my dear Catherine.”
Gehn pulled out his arm. There was a squeaking sound when Catherine’s hands pressed against Gehns chest while sliding down. She crumbled to the floor. The rebel knife in Gehns hand sparkled red with blood. Rainbow Dash looked on in disbelief.
“I am sorry that you had to whiteness that Rainbow Dash, I really do.” Gehn spoke punctually with a clear voice. “There is no reason to lie, there was a time when I would have called this moment a chance for the D’ni dynasty to rise once again. But now, quite frankly, I don’t really care anymore.”
Gehn was alarmingly straight to the point. He put the knife in his pocket. Rainbow Dash looked at the floor and caught sight of Catherine’s fading eyes, regret swimming inside them. She reached out her hand and flung the key chain into Rainbow Dash’s cage.
Catherine then died.
“I will now use this linking book.” Gehn brought up the Tomahna book from Catherine’s bag. “Once I am in Tomahna I will kill Atrus and I will kill Yeesha. I will then rid me of myself. In three days everything, every suffering that my train wreck of a family has endured, all of it will be over. As long as you don’t get in my way you have nothing to fear. I am regretful for your father, I really am. I pray that you will find a solution. Maybe you can switch place now and then?”
“Or how about you getting back into prison where you belong, murderer?!” A raspy voice demanded.
Gehn turned around. Rainbow Dash was out of her cage, glaring at him with determined red eyes. Gehn smiled
“Well, then let’s get this over with!” He blasted, almost merrily.
Gehn reached into a corner behind the door. He brought out two sheets with swords in them. He tossed the first sword with sheet and everything in front of Rainbow Dash’s hooves. He then took out his own sword and charged the Pegasus pony without warning.
Rainbow Dash reached down and grabbed the sword handle with two hooves, no time to un-sheet before being forced to block. There were the sound of metal slamming against plastic. Rainbow Dash flung Gehns sword sideways, causing her own sword to un-sheet. The sheet went flying across the room.
“Waaaa!” Gehn roared and stabbed.
Rainbow Dash moved sideways and dodged it. She tossed her sword up into the air and grabbed it with her mouth, allowing her to strike Gehns exposed flank. But Gehns human hand was way more agile with a sword than a pony mouth or hoof. He turned his hand and blocked it. He then leaned forward pressed it against his attacker, causing the locking blades to slide right in front of Rainbow Dash’s horrified face.
But the hooves of the pony was way more stable than the two legs of the human. Rainbow Dash used all four of hers and pressed him back, forcing him to stretch his back leg not to fall backwards. He rose his blade and hurled Rainbow Dash sideways, allowing him to detach his blade. He then swung it randomly through the air. Rainbow Dash backed away and heard the cutting sound of the blade swooshing. A globe on the table had its base cut, causing it to loosen and roll down to the floor in a bump.
Gehn and Rainbow Dash kept coming at each other. The room filled with the clinging of their swords. Glasses were shattered by the flinging blades. Curtains were cut so that their other half’s barely connected at their bottoms. Gehn kicked Rainbow Dash in the flank, causing her to gasp and crumble, the sword sliding against the floor. Gehn raised his sword to stab her on the ground. Rainbow Dash pushed her hooves forward and rocketed toward Gehn, past his blade and rammed him in the chest.
They both grumped and crumbled into a table. Rainbow Dash raised her hooves to smack the smug tyrant in the face. Gehn managed to grab her hoof and render her unable, all while throwing his own punch. Rainbow Dash felt her eye burn by Gehns fist. She had it closed while allowing the grogginess to lay itself. Gehn reached down into his pockets and brought out the rebel knife, still covered in Christine’s blood. Rainbow Dash got up on her hooves and backed away from the mad general, her eye blue by his punch. They both breathed heavily while studying each other.
“I have to admit pony, you have fighting spirit, and you are strong. So far you have shown yourself to be a much better son than Atrus ever was.”
“He’s a much better father than you’ll ever be!” Rainbow Dash blasted and charged Gehn, faster than he was able to stab her with his knife.
They both fell onto a bookshelf, causing all the books to fall down. Gehn was able to push Rainbow Dash away. His legs shook while Rainbow Dash’s pony hooves showed no sign of tiring. Gehn grumped and ran to the table. He grabbed the Tomahna linking book and opened it.
Rainbow Dash spotted an open book with a linking window lying on the floor. She grabbed it with her mouth and galloped toward Gehn. She folded her hooves around him and pressed her hoof against it.
Both Gehn and Rainbow Dash disappeared out of thin air, along with several other books they were standing on. The book Rainbow Dash linked with fell to the floor. Its title read in capital letters.
‘RIVEN’
———————————
The blackness of space widened infinitely around Rainbow Dash and Gehn as they floated. Even though this was space Rainbow Dash was able to breath the air inside the Star Fissure as she tried to stop herself from spinning. She growled in frustration while trying in vain to use her wings that were still tied to her back. Rainbow Dash could see a green and blue planet. She guessed the planet was Earth. All around her the Star Fissure widened like salt dots on a black surface. The air swooshed with the remainder of the crumbled age Riven that were nothing more now than a creek of small rocks flying in circles.
Rainbow Dash spotted the prison book containing her father flying ahead. The Tomahna linking book that would take her to Atrus flew beside it. It was the only way out of here. She paddled her hooves and felt herself gradually gaining speed. She felt stirring to her right. Gehn was having the same idea. He sailed past her with his much better swimming arms. But he was tired, Rainbow Dash could hear it. She paddled her hooves faster. She gained in on him. She kept her eyes riveted on the Tomahna linking book.
Gehn flung his head sideways. He saw Rainbow Dash coming closer. The Tomahna linking book was just ahead. She would reach it before him in this pace, but as her flank came closer that would not matter. Gehn brought out the rebel knife. He pulled his arm backward, ready to plunge it into Rainbow Dash’s heart. She came closer, closer, closer. A silhouette of a book appeared behind the pony. The book labeled MYST opened and revealed it’s linking window in a bright flash. The flash blinded Gehn.
“Waaah!” He gasped.
Rainbow Dash wailed around and saw the knife. She hurled herself sideways and, with one strong motion of her hoof she kicked Gehn in the arm, causing Gehn to strike himself. Gehn gave a loud gasp. He looked at Rainbow Dash with his eyes and mouth open. His arms and legs stretched out like a sea star while he sailed slowly toward the blackness of the star fissure, the rebel symbol from the knife plunged in his chest sparkling as he went.
Rainbow Dash proceeded paddling for the Tomahna linking book. Once she had her hooves on it she felt the relief pour over her like warm water. At the same moment a rock came flying. It hit Bow Hothoofs prison book and caused it to rocket toward space in an accelerating speed. The water turned cold.
“Dad!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed. She paddled her hooves as fast as she could. She felt her heart drop to her stomach when she realized that she would never catch up with the book, along with the hope of ever seeing her dad again.
“No! DAD!”
Rainbow Dash was just about to give up and break down when a silhouette suddenly came flying through space. The silhouette was of a human, that Rainbow Dash could tell, but who was it? The silhouette came closer. Rainbow Dash felt her breathing stop.
The silhouette was now hovering face to face with her, his own face being completely black with neither eyes or mouth. The flying silhouette should have scared Rainbow Dash to death, but for some reason she didn’t feel scared at all. Instead she felt hopeful, bordering between sadness and happiness. Was it because she was just happy sporadically, or could it be that she was just glad of finally meet him in person?
“Stranger?”
Stranger reached out the human hands, even they completely silhouetted. Rainbow Dash felt her wings unfold when Stranger tied them free.
Rainbow Dash nodded at Stranger. You nodded back.
Rainbow Dash thrusted her wings and set of for the book. Even though there were no winds in space the air velocity allowed her to gain speed. She saw the prison book grow smaller ahead.
“I’m coming dad!” Rainbow Dash flew faster. But the more speed she acquired the more speed the book seemed to gain. The book was now only a speck in space. Rainbow Dash’s eyes filled with tears.
“Dad! No dad! Don’t leave me dad!” Rainbow Dash flapped her wings faster. A membrane had started to form around her. It became bigger and bigger.
You had your eyes riveted on the fabric of space when a huge explosion suddenly filled the void. For the first time in history space had become home of a giant rainbow. It retracted outward like a breaking water surface. Out of the circle came a straight rainbow. It rocketed toward the blackness, seemingly ready to discover what laid beyond it.
You looked hopefully at its colors. For the first time since you entered this dark void you felt true happiness. For the first time you knew for certain that, even though space mostly consisted of black and white, there would always be colors painted somewhere behind it.
——————————————
Atrus suddenly became alert when he heard the familiar sound of a linking being done. He rose from his office chair and made his way to the library. Once he entered it the sun patched through its round windows. It shone of over a rainbow mane holding a book in her hooves. She looked apathetic down at its cover with her ears lowered in sadness. Atrus walked up to her and laid his hand on her head.
“Atrus.” Rainbow Dash spoke weakly.
“Rainbow Dash.” Atrus said.
“He’s trapped, Atrus.”
“Look at me Rainbow Dash.”
For the first time Rainbow Dash looked straight into Atrus face. His brown eyes laid peacefully inside his calm, bearded profile. Rainbow Dash’s red eyes sparkled as they bordered between sadness and hope.
“Can you get him out, Atrus?” She asked.
Atrus grabbed the prison book and opened it. He saw Rainbow Dash’s father looking at him with confounding eyes.
“Where is Gehn?” Atrus asked.
“Dead.” Rainbow Dash answered plainly. “And he killed Catherine to.” Rainbow Dash though she might as well say it.
“What? He killed Catherine, my wife!” Atrus wailed.
“She wanted to release him.”
“Release him?”
Rainbow Dash told Atrus what happened inside the prison and why Catherine wanted to release Gehn. Atrus stared in disbelief at the Rainbow pony.
“But can you get him out, Atrus?” Rainbow Dash asked again, her voice growing more and more desperate.
“I can try.” Atrus said. He sounded more comforting than certain. Rainbow Dash opened the prison book. She watched the unaware Bow Hothoof look at her in confusion.
“Rainbow Dash, where am I? What is this place?”
“It’s fine dad.” Rainbow Dash smiled. “You’ll be out soon.” She lied with a cracked voice.
Bow Hothoof looked at her bewildered when she closed the book. Rainbow Dash could only see the front cover of it when her vision went blurry with tears.
Atrus watched the shaking piece of mane in front of him. The sobbing and snorting of Rainbow Dash was accompanied by the dropping of her tears hitting the cover of the prison book. Rainbow Dash’s unfolded wings laid limply at her sides, her ears hanging down the sides of her head.
“Dad… Dad… Dad…” She kept sobbing.
Atrus fell down into the chair behind him. He felt a strange ball form inside his stomach as he listened to the pony crying over the black prison book.
“Dad.” He whispered.
Atrus rose from his seat. He went down to his knees and folded his arms around the mane of the rainbow pony. Rainbow Dash turned her teary face and let it rest over Atrus left shoulder. A minute passed. Rainbow Dash’s crying faded to snorting. Atrus grabbed the prison book and got up on his legs. He opened it and saw the second dad this book had imprisoned looking at him like he expected him to say something. Atrus then appeared to be speaking to Bow Hothoof.
“I should have been there for you when you needed me. I should have taught you what I knew and helped you help me.” Atrus closed his eyes. His voice cracked when he finished. “I’m so sorry.”
Rainbow Dash looked to her left. She saw Atrus lay his hand inside the book and disappear. The rainbow mane of her dad then had the sun send colored patches, once again.
”Dad!”
Rainbow Dash galloped to Bow Hothoof and folded her hooves around him.
“Oh dad.”
“Rainbow Dash, I found you, I finally found you!”
“But how did you get here dad?”
“Twilight Sparkle managed to use her magic and allow the linking book one more travel. Your friends were right in the middle of a discussion on which pony they would send through. While they were talking I sneaked inside the library.”
Rainbow Dash looked at her father, who grinned meanly. Rainbow Dash laughed.
“And I really need to get a lock on that library of mine.” Twilight Sparkle scolded herself.
Rainbow Dash gasped. She wailed her head around. She saw the familiar smile of, not only the alicorn princess, but also Fluttershy, Rarity, Apple Jack and Pinkie Pie. She felt a huge smile form on her face.
“Friends!” Rainbow Dash galloped forward and folded her wings around her best friends in the world.
“Eh, hello!? Egghead who sacrificed his freedom over here!” A voice sounded from the prison book.
“Atrus! I can’t believe you did that.” Rainbow Dash exclaimed.
“I can. I should never have made this prison book. Even though Gehn needed to be stopped it was nothing more than a stupid writing experiment. I was blind to make it, as blind as i was about my wife’s feelings,” Atrus paused, then empathized ”…and you, Rainbow Dash. I’m so sorry that I let my own hatred for my father stand in the way of the love for your own. All I ask of you now is that you find Yeesha and tell her that I love her.”
“It’s alright Atrus. We’ll take turn spending time inside the book.” Rainbow Dash proposed. There was a firm answer.
“No. I absolutely not, forbid you!” Atrus shook his finger. “I made this book, this is my prison!”
The other ponies now came into view of the linking window, a smiling lavender face being up front.
“Who are you?” Atrus asked.
“My name is Twilight Sparkle.” Twilight was in ecstasy, her big happy-to-meet-her-idol eyes sparkled like her name. “Oh, it’s so nice to finally meet you Atrus! Ever since I began my study in age writing I have been a huge fan of your work.”
Atrus looked bewildered at the smiling lavender pony.
“But how did you get here? Writing linking books is a lost D’ni art passed down from generations.”
“Oh, it was easy.” Twilight waved her hoof about. “Once I understood the science behind the rift between worlds, the Star Fissure as you call it, and the way our language transcribed into books can correspond to the molecules surrounded by dark matter I only needed to calculate the position of the moon divided by the distance of the northern star and measure its rotation times three and…” Twilight stopped talking when she caught sight of Atrus blank stare of disbelief. “…But then I only counted birds, hehehe.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you to Twilight. I guess I’ll turn to you now for questions about Equestria. That is, if you are willing to visit my prison book now and then.”
“Oh, there’s no need for that Atrus. I can get you out.” Twilight said confidently. There was a country accent making her input.
“Wow Twilight, way of ruining the whole father sacrificing his freedom to save another father drama.” Apple Jack said.
“What? It’s not my fault, it’s science!” Twilight blasted. Her face then grew sad. “But unfortunately, I didn’t really ruin it Apple Jack.” Twilight looked at Atrus inside the book.
“You see, for me to get you out of there using my alicorn magic I will have to create a bond between you and my world of Equestria.”
“Which means?” Atrus asked.
“Which means that I will have to turn you into a unicorn…” Twilight closed her eyes as her horn started glowing.
It had been a difficult task for Twilight and her friends to perform the transformation of Atrus, not only because of the advanced magic involved, but even more so because of the social bounds that needed to be handled. The ponies would have to link to Serenia and look up Yeesha. There they would have to inform her of, not only her mother’s death, but also the current situation of her father.
The mane 6 had then been forced to leave Pinkie Pie in Serenia for two days and comfort the broken human girl. Yeesha’s final decision had been hard to make, but final none the less. Yeesha asked Twilight that she would allow her father to be free from his prison book and turn him into a unicorn. She had then not only accepted, but insisted that Atrus would be brought to Equestria and be allowed to socialize with other ponies. As for herself, a part of her wanted to come with her dad, and maybe one day she would, but for now she wanted to finish her studies. As for Atrus he had at first been resistant to the plan. But when he heard how happy Yeesha was that he would not be spending the rest of his life inside a prison book he had accepted Twilights offer.
That last part became clunky when Atrus wrote about this in one of his many diaries. He looked with a bent mouth at the pathetic attempt to spell the name of the princess alicorn. Indeed, Atrus was still getting used to his new life as a pony. As for the prison book Atrus had done what his father did with all his failed experiments, tossed into a furnace. It had taken him almost a week learning how to walk on four hooves. He had then been forced to take private lessons with Twilight to not only learn about Equestria and its customs but also learning how to write ponish using his mouth to hold the quill.
The second alternative was currently pointing out at the top of his head. A unicorn had the ability to carry objects through the air, but so far Atrus had no idea how to use his horn. There had been moments of excitement when things had sporadically been flung across the library, but he still had no clue how to control his magic. He remembered Twilight telling him that magic and logic wasn’t really that much different from one another, and to understand the logic of magic, along with how your emotions affected it, was the key of becoming a unicorn good at magic. Atrus thought that becoming good at being a pony in general was a good start though.
The door to the custom-made library located in a separate part of Twilights castle sent wide echoes as it opened. Atrus turned around.
“Hi Rainbow Dash.” Atrus dark voice greeted.
“Hi Atrus.” Rainbow Dash said, a smile formed on her face. There was a moment of silence. Atrus looked confounded at the unusually modest Pegasus pony.
“Was there something you needed?” He asked.
“I found this book, I just thought you could help me read it. I am still a little rusty on the reading department you know.”
At first Atrus looked bewildered at the Pegasus pony that wasn’t exactly known for her love of reading. But for some reason it didn’t feel that odd.
“Of course. Take it here and let’s have a look.”
Atrus then helped Rainbow Dash read the book that turned out to be about some of the ages he and Catherine wrote.
“Thanks, Atrus. You really are helpful.” Rainbow Dash said as they were getting ready to wrap up.
“Don’t mention it Rainbow Dash, it’s the least I could do after the help you’ve given me.”
A day then passed. Atrus was practicing his ponish when the door opened again. It was Rainbow Dash. She was holding another book.
“So, here we go again.” Atrus joked.
Rainbow Dash laughed.
“I never knew you as a reader Rainbow Dash.”
“I guess I’ve grown a liking for…” Rainbow Dash hesitated. Atrus looked at her as he expected her to answer. “…For reading.” She ended.
On two more occasions Rainbow Dash brought a book to have it read. Atrus though she had become really good at it. It was now the fifth time she walked into the library with a book. Atrus were standing behind her as she sat down by the reading table, the candles sending flashes across it while Rainbow Dash turned the pages. Atrus laughed as he watched the familiar letters turn by.
“Haven’t we read this already?”
Rainbow Dash turned around and faced him. She smiled nervously.
“Oh, I guess we have.”
Atrus laughed. Rainbow Dash looked straight into Atrus colt eyes as her smile slowly faded. The expecting eyes of the Pegasus mare didn’t look at all like they were done here, neither did her wings as they unfolded, her hooves as they wrapped around his mane, her mouth as it kissed him. Rainbow Dash flapped her strong wings and pressed Atrus decisively up against the bookshelf behind them.
———————————————————————————
The stars laid sparkling across the fabric of space inside the Star Fissure. A book went sailing down toward Earth. It’s golden title sparkled in capital letters.
