Vertical Vertigo
As Rainbow Dash hovered through the hallways of the Castle of Friendship, one thought filled her mind: “Twilight has way too many books.”
She said it out loud as she opened the third door in the hallway, finding a room with a small table, chairs and a bookcase against the wall. “Another study, really?” She closed the door and flew towards the next. “Twilight!” she shouted out, before swinging the door open, only to be met with a linen closet stuffed with a dozen books. She quickly shut it with a heavy slam.
“Doesn’t she have a really big library… somewhere in here?” Rainbow Dash looked back and forth, up and down the hallway. As she started flying in the direction she’d come from, something drew her attention. The slow, grinding creak of a door closing, followed by the gentle click and thud of it coming to a rest.
“Twilight?” She turned about, lifting higher into the air with a gentle flap of her wings. There was no sign of Twilight in the hallway, but something else struck her as peculiar. As she floated in the direction of the noise, she scanned the walls carefully, finding nothing different about the multi-faceted crystals they were made of. One of the chandeliers, casting bright light on the hallway, was undisturbed. Then, her vision drifted to the doors. One of them had to have closed, but she didn’t remember seeing one open.
Rainbow Dash didn’t know the hallway by memory for certain, much like the rest of the castle, but after taking in the whole corridor before her once, twice, three times, her eyes finally rested on a door in particular.
It looked like all the others, and it fit perfectly into a gap between some of the crystalline pillars in the hallway, but it had not been there before she turned around. At least, it hadn’t been there before she’d heard it close. It had to be the one that had closed.
As Rainbow Dash’s mind was filled with impossibilities, two competing reactions fought amidst the haze. One was primal, ancient: a desire to run from the unexplained and unknowable. The other, even more instinctual, was simply to confirm that it was real.
By the time she landed at the door, only one was left.
“Twilight?” she called out, before pressing her ear to the door. She heard nothing back, but as she began to pull her ear away, she heard the faintest echo of the name. A shiver ran down her spine, and she reached for the handle. It was solid, and offered no resistance as she pulled it open. Rainbow Dash steeled herself, wings spreading out as she prepared for whatever might be on the other side.
What she saw was not a room, or a closet, and it certainly didn’t contain books. Instead, it was just another hallway. It went straight for a dozen feet and then turned sharply to the left. Looking over her left shoulder, Rainbow Dash noticed that the hallway curved away from where the new corridor seemed to go. Glancing back through the doorway, she saw that the new corridor’s walls, the carpeting on the floor and even the shape and colors of the pillars that lined it matched those of the hallway in which she stood. However, it was much narrower.
“Must be some kind of… secret passage or something.” It managed to quiet her worries. Images of Daring Do books and adventures began to spring forth from her mind, and a determined grin spread across her face. “So awesome!” With a swish of her tail and a flap of her wings, she lifted off into the air and dashed through the doorway.
She sped to the turn in the hallway, taking it at a quick speed. Just as she turned to the left, she was hit with a strange bout of dizziness, spinning out of control as her wings flapped out of time. Before she knew it, she had slammed head first into the wall, and landed on her back on the floor
“What the?” she muttered, rubbing her head for a moment before getting back to her hooves. Looking in the direction she had come from, Rainbow Dash could still see the doorway, wide open. However, the hallway past the bend went much further before bending to the left once more.
She lifted off again, but flew slower and carefully. While the impact hadn’t injured her, she certainly didn’t want to go ramming into another wall. Especially with the hallway being more narrow than she expected. That had to be the reason that she’d crashed at the corner.
Just as with the first section, it looked exactly the same as the rest of the castle. “Twilight and Spike need to do some major redecorating. I don’t know how they manage not to get lost in this place.” However, halfway to the next bend, Rainbow Dash spotted a window on the right side of the hallway. She paused, glancing through it to see the sun shining down on Ponyville.
“Definitely a secret passage. What made it show up?” She looked for any kind of latch on the window keeping it closed, but there was none. She prodded it with a hoof, gently and then stronger, but it didn’t budge in the slightest.
With a hum and a roll of her eyes, Rainbow Dash continued to the next bend. With no sign of any verticality to the hallway, there was one certainty in Dash’s head. “It must lead to some room on this floor. Maybe one of the ones I already checked?” She began to think about hidden passages behind bookcases or mirrors or paintings. “Just gotta keep it from Twilight. Then Pinkie and I can cook up an awesome prank.”
As she turned the corner, that certainty became anything but.
The hallway before Rainbow Dash stretched even farther than the last section, enough that she could not even see the next bend without straining her eyes. She floated back, and felt her stomach twist for a reason she couldn’t place. Her wings flexed and folded, dropping her to the floor with a thud.
“That’s…” her mouth opened and closed a few times. She began to walk forward, scanning the walls for anything that might explain the strange sensation coursing through her legs, winding in her chest and screaming in her brain. It was all the same. The same walls. The same lights. The same floor. Turning about towards the bend in the hall, Rainbow Dash could not tear her eyes from the path before her until the last possible second.
She heard a thud, the sound of the door closing in the distance. There was no bend behind her. Instead, only a blank wall greeted her. Her forehooves roamed over it, tapping every few inches. “What’s the... Hey, where’d the hallway go?!” She began to pound on it, ear pressed to the wall. It was completely solid.
“There’s… it has to be some kinda secret button or switch, yeah? Come on, open up!” She lifted up off the ground, putting all her weight into a dive and slamming into the wall. She bounced off from the impact, spinning backwards. She felt dizzy again, hitting another wall before crashing to the floor.
She took slow breaths, in through her nose and out through her mouth. “Calm down, Dash. It’s… just the castle. Maybe the tree made it all magic-y and stuff. Yeah, that’s it.” She turned around, looking at the long expanse of the corridor before her. Lifting off, she made her way towards the next bend, looking for another window or some sign of a switch on any of the walls. “Or maybe it’s just like that old castle in the Everfree. Those trap doors went everywhere. There’s a way out, just like there.”
Every prod and tap she gave the walls was only met by the gentle clack of her hoof against the crystal. After a few feet, she stopped trying completely, but still kept moving forward. Then, a ray of sunlight glinting off of a crystalline pillar caught her eye. She picked up her pace, flying as quickly as she could manage and then landing at the window on her right.
The sun was still shining over Ponyville, and she could see ponies going about their day in the distance. She tried again to open the window, pushing as hard as she could, but it wouldn’t budge. Desperately, she began banging on it, shouting, “Hey! Hey, I’m in here! Get me out!” There was nopony close enough to hear, she knew that, but she was desperate.
She lifted off from the ground, pointed herself at the window, and got as close to the wall behind her as she could. Clenching her eyes shut, she lifted up towards the ceiling and then spun into a dive before aiming right at the window. Teeth grit, hooves tucked into her barrel, she took a deep breath.
The dizziness hit. She felt off balance, like a gust of wind had swept under her wings to throw her off course. Her eyes opened quickly and she tried to halt herself, only to go crashing into the wall.
The impact sent her bounding off and onto the floor, skidding to a stop a few feet away. As she looked up, trying to get her bearings, she found herself facing the window. Turning her head about, she saw the slight dent in the wall where she had impacted it, opposite the window and several feet down the hall. Dash felt her stomach churning with doubt once again.
She flapped her wings, lifting herself off of the ground, only to lose her balance and slide into the wall. “What the hay!” she shouted, backing away from the wall on her hooves. Staying grounded, she tested her wings, flexing and moving them in perfect timing with one another. She felt no pain, no hesitation. She lifted off, slowly. One inch, two inches, three inches. Steadily she climbed, eyes on the ground below her.
Then, she felt her head collide with the wall, and her wings went off-beat. She tumbled to the ground, gritting her teeth as she glared at the corridor around her. The words she wanted to shout stuck in her throat, and she swallowed them as bitterly as she could manage. “Fine,” she spat out, flicking her tail and turning towards the path forward. The window to her right, she trotted along.
It was less than a minute before she could easily make out the end, where the hallway bent to the left once more. She began to pick up her pace, from trot to canter to gallop, ignoring the second window that she passed and then the third. Just as she was nearly there, she tripped, tumbling head over tail until she hit the bend of the hallway with a thud.
Her vision blurred and dizzy, she righted herself and looked back at where she had come from. The carpet was smooth, perfectly so. There was no sign of a snag she might have gotten caught on in her rush, or some obstacle she neglected to notice. All there was, had been, was an empty hallway.
“What the heck is going on?!” Rainbow Dash stomped her hooves on the floor, before getting up and then turning to the new section of the hallway. The same walls. The same lights. The same carpet. The same pillars. However, this time she was utterly certain of one difference. It went on forever.
It might have seemed hyperbole, but some part of her knew. The distance she’d traversed, even with the first two sections, couldn’t account for this fourth one. She couldn’t see if there was an end. It went on, truly, forever. “Definitely magic,” she mumbled as she decided to walk forward. Even if it did go on forever, there was no turning back.
Just a few feet ahead, she spotted another window, once more on the right side of the hallway. As she looked through, she saw the sunlight shining over Ponyville. However, as Rainbow Dash looked closely at it, she noticed the slightest difference from what she’d seen before. It was a section of forest, normally hidden behind a hill in the distance. “I’m higher.”
She craned her neck, looking up at the ceiling. “When did I get higher?” As she looked at the far end, where she assumed it must be, she felt her wings start to twitch. She wanted to get there faster, to what had to be the end, but she knew it wouldn’t work. “You don’t want me to get there. Not fast at least.”
With a scowl and a huff, Rainbow Dash began to walk forward. She kept her eyes forward, ignoring the hallway about her. If there was some secret path out of the seemingly secret passage, it would have to go ignored. She wouldn’t let a hallway get the better of her.
It was some time later, an hour if Rainbow Dash had to wager a guess. Despite her focus on the path forward and her constant progress to the end of the hallway, she’d counted and catalogued her progress. Thirty two windows. Seven hundred ninety two sets of pillars. One hundred ninety eight glittering crystal chandeliers. One endless stretch of carpet.
She had taken chances along the way, slowly picking up her pace until the odd sensation of dizziness, like a grounded sort of vertigo, took over and sent her tumbling to the side and against the wall. She also tried to hover, though now found that nearly two inches off the ground was enough to send her back down to it when she was still, and any sort of movement, at any height, led to the same result.
Grounded, shackled, tied down. It was all the things she hated most. She only shouted at the hallway to quit it three times. That was as much a victory as she could claim.
Because there was still no end, no true victory, in sight.
She’d started to wonder what the hallway really was. Maybe it was some trap, meant for burglars or the like, but Rainbow Dash had come in the middle of the day, and she was only looking for Twilight. If the Tree of Harmony made the castle, it should know she was an element, one of Twilight’s friends.
Maybe it really was a secret passage. She’d seemed to have gone up a floor, and she heard the door close. It could be she just needed to wait for a new door to appear, or to think really hard about where she wanted to go. Twenty minutes of focusing on the front or Twilight’s massive library in the castle hadn’t done anything though.
In the back of her mind, she wondered if it was really real. Even if she was in it, felt it and hated it, it could have just been an illusion. It had to be magic after all. She could be walking and hovering in place back outside the door for all she knew.
Slowly, her progress came to a halt, and she turned to look at the path she’d traveled. Just as ahead of her, she couldn’t tell where the hallway ended. There was no guarantee the bend was still there, or the dent she made in the wall near the window.
“If you’re not gonna let me out…” She took a step in the direction she’d come from, and then another, picking up into a slow trot.
After a few steps, Rainbow Dash felt her balance shift backwards, as if the entire hallway were slowly tilted on an axis. The once flat ground became a ramp, and she struggled to keep traveling in the same direction the steeper it became. Thirty degrees. Forty five degrees. Sixty degrees. As she tried to take another step, its slow spin turned into a sudden jerk, and she was sent falling down the now bottomless pit.
Her wings spread out, trying to catch herself in the air. They only sent her careening into the walls, bouncing about against them and the floor and ceiling before she was tumbling back into freefall. The lights began to flicker as she passed them, and the windows were black and dark. Dash took slow, deliberate breaths as she counted down. “Three”—she flexed her wings slightly—”two”—she stuck her hind legs together, and put her forelegs out in front of her—”one!”
As she extended her wings, she opened her eyes and looked around. As soon as she felt a direction in which she was pulled, she focused her attention on it, swiveled her body about, and tucked her wings back in. Teeth bared, she latched onto the next pillar that came into her view, hooking her hooves against it as her hind legs braced her against the wall.
She could already feel her grip slipping at the moment of impact, but she strained her front legs as hard as she could to hold on, to pull herself up. Just as she did, gravity exerted normalcy once more, and Dash rammed into the ground as if she’d fallen from her house. The wind was knocked out of her, and she wheezed while rolling onto her back.
The lights of the hallway returned to normal, and Dash could hear the slight grinding of her surroundings, as if they had slid against each other into position once more.
Dash sat up, hoof on her chest as she took deep, ragged breaths. It was a minute of such before her heart calmed and the sensation of breathlessness was gone. As soon as she got back to her hooves, she kicked her back leg towards the nearest wall. “What do you want from me?!” Her hoof connected with nothing but open air.
Looking back and forth in the hallway, Dash could see one path only barely. Darkness seemed to be swallowing it up in the distance, lights blinking off past her vision. The other at least seemed clear and bright. Without an answer, she was hard-pressed to see it as anything but the path forward.
One hoof in front of the other, cautious of her pace, she continued on.
The only noises that filled Dash’s ears were the clicking of her hooves on the floor, the steady breaths she took in and the deep sighs that she left out. She had looked over her shoulders once or twice, to see the hallway behind her slowly dimming, fading to blackness far beyond where—she hoped—she was. When she would look back, it would be to find herself walking toward a wall at a slight angle. It was just enough that a minute of distraction might have sent her stumbling into one.
Then, she heard something else. Voices. She stopped, ears upright and alert. As she angled them slightly forward, she could hear the faint echo. Her pace resumed, picked up and then slowed lest she end up falling over mid-gait.
The voices became clearer, finally enough to hear the words.
“—know where she could possibly be, Spike.”
It was Twilight. She quickened her pace again, breaths becoming sharper and deeper. As she was overcome with dizziness, she pushed through it, hooves scrambling for footing until she finally toppled and rolled a few feet, coming to rest just before a window. A window on the left side of the hallway. She pulled herself upright, walking over to it and peering through.
It wasn’t glass. The image was blurry, rippling like the surface of a pond. Spike and Twilight were standing in a hallway, one that seemed like the one she had first entered the eternal corridor from. Then again, it could have been any of them. The scene only came into focus with silence, and was disturbed by the words that followed.
“Rainbow Dash said she’d be here by now. Maybe she just took too long a nap,” Spike said with a shrug.
As the image rippled, Rainbow Dash lifted her hoof slowly towards the surface. She stopped before touching it. “I’m here. Spike, Twilight!” she cried out, but the surface was left undisturbed by her voice. Neither of them reacted. Her body shaking, she brought her hoof down on the surface and felt it pass through. Whatever it was, it felt thick, like a dense storm cloud. As she pulled her hoof free, the image remained crystal clear.
“Well, let’s go check then. I’ll need to give her another lecture on proper scheduling.” As Spike climbed onto Twilight’s back, the two disappeared from view. All that was left was nothingness, black and consuming. It called to her.
Rainbow Dash pulled herself away from the windowsill, and the urge to throw herself into the emptiness. She started walking again, fighting the urge to look over her shoulder at the ever encroaching darkness.
“Do you want me to just keep going, forever?” she asked aloud. As she looked over her shoulder on instinct, she closed her eyes. Part of her didn’t expect the window to still be there, but she didn’t want to truly know.
“Just walking along, taunted by a stupid, dumb hallway that I’m stuck inside its stupid, dumb corridor, trotting on the same stupid, dumb carpet under the same stupid, dumb lights? And not even able to fly?!” She bolted up into the air, only to roll over and over until she hit the floor with a thud. “Just get this stupid thing over with! Turn into a pit again and just let me fall forever!”
She rolled over and got back to her hooves, picking up her pace just slightly. “At least that way I’d get to nowhere faster.”
The hallway before her started to darken. In the distance, Rainbow Dash could make out the lights, turning off one by one, faster and faster by the second. A glance over her shoulder showed the darkness at her back coming just as quickly.
She grinned. “At least something’s happening.” Rainbow Dash bent down, wings opening wide as she prepared for whatever was to come.
Then the grinding began, and the hallway in front and behind her seemed to fall away. She was pressed into the floor, her crouching stance leaving her splayed out from the force. Eyes darting about, she saw the walls fall away, and the ceiling shatter into pieces before vanishing into the void.
It was a minute before the force holding her down faded, and she was able to stand upright. Aside from the floor below her, a simple square of crystal and carpet, there was nothing.
A clicking reached her ears, and within the nothingness there appeared other platforms. Different floors. Different ponies. Some trembled, others whimpered, a few laughed. All were stuck in place, unwilling or unable to move.
Rainbow Dash turned about in place, eyes looking for an empty platform, but when she found none, she simply focused on the closest. She bent down, pawing the ground and spreading her wings. With a primal roar, she galloped to the edge and jumped. Passing into the void, she felt the same sensation as she had on her hoof: dense storm clouds, choking, suffocating her. Her vision was blackness, and she had to strain to keep her eyes open. When something came back into view, it was the castle floor, and she landed with a slide.
Taking a breath of air, Rainbow Dash aimed for another platform, ran and jumped once more. Again, she landed in the castle hallway. She did it again and again and again and again. She never landed anywhere else. As her chest heaved for air, and her heart raced from panic, Rainbow Dash found herself resting in the center of the platform.
“There has to be some way out,” she muttered, but her hooves would not move.