The Light of Day
“Right this way!” A stocky, pink mare cheered, guiding three young foals through the glorious city of Cloudsdale. It had been an interesting day. These foals had just finished taking their flight exams. The first exams held in many, many moons.
After years spent grounded, pegasi had begun to adapt to the climate of Zephyr Heights. This was never more apparent than it was to this pink mare as she shivered from the cold. The breeze was chilling at that altitude, yet it felt weirdly freeing.
“Miss Feathers, where are we going?” One of the students asked. A small, sheepish, orange colt. Gleaming Feathers turned her attention to the young pegasus.
“Well, you get to tour the Rainbow Factory!” She explained, a pep to her voice that many teachers of her age carried.
“Why’s that?” A raspy voice asked from the mouth of a sweet-looking purple filly.
“Why, that’s a wonderful question Lilac!” Gleaming smiled. In truth, she wasn't told much about the tour. Or the factory, for that matter. The whole city was off-limits to anyone who wasn't testing, so it wasn't so strange. “That’s something you’ll learn on the tour.” She asserted, putting her mind at ease.
“You can cut the act.” A less-than-optimistic looking young mare interjected, hissing her words out like a stray cat. Gleaming was given pause by the sudden snippy attitude of the filly. She was clearly older than the other two foals, even if it wasn’t by much. “This is supposed to be a punishment! Cut to the chase, already.” Her words showed emotional distance, her dark blue coat only serving to emphasize herself as the spitting image of a troubled teen.
“Nonsense! Don’t think of this as a punishment, Raindrop, just as a gentle push to do better!” Gleaming replied, disappointed in Raindrop’s disrespectful behavior.
“Yeah, a gentle push off the edge of the city!” She retorted, antagonizing her teacher out of boredom. Gleaming rolled her eyes at Raindrop’s remark.
Her manecut was all Gleaming needed to see to tell she’d be trouble. Long, scraggly locks covered her eyes, black dye hiding her natural mane color. It felt so glum, and lifeless.
“Look, Miss Feathers, we’re almost there!” Lilac cheered, rushing ahead towards the building.
“Now, now, Lilac, don’t get too far ahead of the group!”
The group settled around the door to the shell of a building. The only thing indicating this was the Rainbow Factory was a poorly painted sign of a rainbow. Lilac Blossom was practically pawing at the door with anticipation, chattering away with excitement. Standing next to the examiner, clearly frustrated with the lack of explanation was Raindrop. Behind them all was the colt, anxiously waiting for something to happen.
“Miss Feathers?” He asked.
“Yes, Sunrise?” Gleaming replied, ready to comfort the uneasy pegasus.
“Will you be taking us back home when we’re done?” He asked, a trusting look in his eyes. She hesitated, keeping a smile on her face only to comfort Sunrise.
“The nice ponies taking you on your tour will be taking you home. Don’t worry, they’ll take good care of you.” She assured, gently placing a hoof on his shoulder encouragingly.
Then, suddenly, the factory door opened. Two stallions walked forward, clad in featureless, black bodysuits, complete with masks to hide their faces.
“We’ll take it from here.” One of the stallions assured Gleaming. His voice was caring, in a way that comforted Sunrise. The foals waved goodbye to their teacher as they walked into the building with their guide.
Sunrise gave Gleaming one last anxious glance before the doors would be slammed shut behind him, the oppressive darkness of the building blanketing the foals entirely.
“The Cloudsdale Restoration Project.” Queen Haven spoke, looking over the city of Zephyr Heights.
“The whatsdale restoration project?” The younger of her two daughters, Pipp Petals asked.
“Cloudsdale.” Her older sister explained. “Long long ago, before we settled here in Zephyr Heights, pegasi used to live in a beautiful city in the clouds. When we lost our magic, we had to leave our home behind.” Zipp explained to her younger sister.
“City in the clouds? That could make for great photo ops!” The thought clearly excited her, but her excitement was cut short by her mother.
“Yes, dear, it would! However, both you and your sister have very important roles to play in this endeavor. Roles nopony else could possibly stand to play!” The Queen began, a slideshow beaming onto a screen beside her.
“Pipp, dear, all that clout that you’ve built up will finally be put to the test. The ponies of Cloudsdale will need someone familiar to introduce them to their new duties as weather ponies! And who better for the job than the Princess of Pop herself?” She explained, simple imagery appearing beside her to help explain these new concepts to Pipp.
“Right? But I don’t know the first thing about the weather.” Pipp replied, dismissing the idea almost instantly.
“Then we’ll hire somepony to teach you. You don’t need to know everything, just enough to coordinate the weather in Equestria!”
Pipp rolled her eyes theatrically. She may have been more popular, but she wasn't the brightest starlet. “Why don’t you just have Zipp handle this?” The pink pegasus asked, baffled that she would be put in charge of something requiring such dedicated coordination.
“Your sister will be taking care of more pressing duties.” Queen Haven clarified. “Like what?” The influencer asked.
“You call this a factory? Where are all the machines?” The dark-coated filly snipped, hoping to snark her way out of the tour. “We’ve been told practically nothing about this tour since the moment our teachers said we’d have an exam! Give us something, jeez!”
“Quiet, you worthless stain!” One of the two stallions barked, his hoof shooting into Raindrop's side so quickly and suddenly it even gave the other foals whiplash.
“Raindrop!” Lilac cried as her classmate was slammed down onto the factory's floor.
“Shut up!” The other stallion ordered, almost as aggressive as the first stallion.
“What do you want from us?” Her voice wavered, tucking her pretty purple head low to the ground.
The first stallion slammed a hoof against Lilac's head, grinding it in place to make a point. “Be a good filly! Stop asking questions, or you might not get to regret it.” He warned, his voice serious, and stern. He clearly meant business.
“Now move it!” He kicked Lilac aside, walking forward as if nothing had happened.
“Ugh, my head…” Lilac trailed off, her words slurring as her vision blurred.
Raindrop was thinking. These guys were trouble. She needed an out, and she wasn't going to leave these ponies behind. She'd just started to like them after the exam! "Hey!" She whispered to the other foals. "We need to think of a way out of here!"
“Well, what do you suggest?” Lilac asked, straining to see Raindrop in the dark of the factory.
“If we all run in different directions, they won’t be able to catch us. There’s two of them, and three of us.” Raindrop reasoned, motioning for Lilac and Sunrise to split across opposite sides of the hall they'd been traversing. Meanwhile, Raindrop fully intended to run further inside.
“But what if they catch you?” Sunrise whispered. Raindrop wouldn't acknowledge the colt’s apprehensions.
“Just go!” She said, before flying swiftly ahead of the two stallions.
“Hey!” One of the two stallions shouted, wasting no time in chasing after the troublesome foal. The other stallion was quick enough to catch a set of small clopping hooves racing against the floor behind him.
“Oh no you don’t.” He snickered, rushing the pair quicker than they’d anticipated. Raindrop was too focused on running to catch how the escape of her classmates was going. The stallion was awfully fast, but she only needed to get enough of a lead to hide.
She raced around a corner, taking cover in plain sight, hoping her dark coat and mane would help her blend in with the dark.
“What do we have here?”
Raindrop felt her heart skip a beat as she whipped her head around. The room she wound up in was massive. Sprawling, yet startlingly empty. Three makeshift tables were prepared, seemingly with haste, each with a set of sturdy restraints on them. Thick acoustic cloud-paneling lined the walls, trapping sound inside the building. There may have only been two stallions escorting them past all the unfinished wings of the building, but this room was full of similar masked ponies. Each one clad in the same perfect, masked black uniform.
The new voice stepped forward. “One of the failures, I’m guessing?” This voice was different, a mare for certain. She seemed so vaguely familiar. Raindrop definitely knew this mare, but she couldn’t quite place from where.
The two guards who had led them in entered the room, each holding one of the other fleeing foals. “Lemme go!” Lilac struggled, frantically flailing against the stallion’s grasp.
“You want to be let go? Here, I’ll put you down!” The stallion mocked. Before she could even question what was happening, Lilac was slammed against one of the fold-out tables, other ponies gathering around to help restrain the struggling filly.
“Lilac!” Raindrop called.
Zipp found herself at the door of a familiar, and recently renovated lighthouse. After the deputy of Maretime Bay had crashed his so-called war machine into the lighthouse, it was absolutely destroyed. Thankfully, the city of Maretime Bay was perfectly willing to cover costs for repairs, and with the help of her friends, Sunny was even able to get some light renovations done to the place. But right now, Zipp needed her friend’s help more than ever.
“Zipp? What brings you all the way to Maretime Bay?” Sunny was always happy to see her friends visit. It was a fun treat to see her friends from all across Equestria drop by for a chat. The pegasi were very busy as of late, making Zipp’s visit a pleasant surprise!
“Sunny! You and your dad researched ancient Equestria, right?” The question was rhetorical. It’s only thanks to Sunny’s knowledge of Equestria’s past that they were able to restore magic to Equestria together. The pegasus race owes Sunny and her late father a great deal.
“Oooh! Do you want to learn about Starswirl the Bearded? Or perhaps Princesses Celestia and Luna- I think you’d really be able to see yourself in them, or maybe…” Sunny trailed off, listing figure after figure as Zipp tried, fruitlessly, to get her attention.
“Cloudsdale!” Zipp emphasized, trying to get through to Sunny.
“Cloudsdale?” Sunny snapped out of it, a sheepish smile spread across her face as she realized she’d been on a tangent. “What about Cloudsdale? It was the home of pegasi for countless moons. You’ll need to be more specific.” She chuckled.
"It's a bit of a specific topic. Do you know anything about the Rainbow Factory?" She had doubts. It was supposedly quite secretive, even when it operated daily those many moons ago.
Sunny took a moment to gather her thoughts on the subject. “Well, it’s said that rainbow production began in Cloudsdale after Princess Luna was banished to the moon. Not much is known about the factory itself, just that it was run for a long time by the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation. But if you’re looking for information on it…” Sunny began, drawing Zipp’s attention to a large map showing the cities of Ancient Equestria. “When Cloudsdale fell, it had been stationary for a long time. It would have crashed right around here. Ponies have spent years trying to pinpoint where exactly these landmarks once stood, especially the Tree of Harmony!”
“Tree of Harmony?” Zipp asked, fully fixated on the history lesson.
“Yes! Long, long ago back when Twilight Sparkle reigned over Equestria, a certain tree stood tall over the Everfree forest.” She indicated the forest on the map. “With flowering, pink leaves, it’s said that the tree was eventually turned into a treehouse of some kind. While I’m sure the treehouse has long since rotted away, trees do tend to have quite long lifespans. On our journey to restore magic, I saw a tree that reminded me of the Tree of Harmony. At the time, I was much too busy to pay it much mind. But if you’re looking for somewhere to start?” Sunny rolled up the map, gently placing it in her friend’s hooves.
“Go to the meadows and find that tree! At least from there, you have a point of reference.”
“Are you sure I can take this? It was your father’s, wasn’t it?” Zipp asked, handling the map with care.
“You’re my friend. I trust you to bring it back in one piece. And if it means uncovering more of pony history? It’s worth it!” Sunny smiled.
With somewhere to start her search, Zipp raced off to find the Tree of Harmony. With years of parkour under her belt, and her thorough understanding of aerodynamics, she was easily one of the fastest fliers in Zephyr Heights. And while it would take some perseverance, it couldn’t be long before Zipp found the tree!
That would be a starting point, an anchor for her expedition. But days of searching the are turned to weeks across the countryside. The time away from home was liberating, at the very least. Zipp had found ruins of Cloudsdale across Equestria, even documenting their locations, sending coordinates to Sunny over her phone so she could get a look at them herself. Yet, despite her discoveries, the factory eluded her.
After over a month of nonstop searching, she finally found something resembling factory machinery laying submerged in sediment, closer to a nearby mountain than the Tree of Harmony. It must have been there a long time, as vegetation had begun growing on it, and critters had made their nests in its nooks and crannies.
Zipp could tell, even before the decline of Cloudsdale, this machine had seen better days. Reddish rust stained the inside, smelling just bad enough to elicit a gag from the normally cool princess.
Initially, Zipp questioned if this was truly from the Rainbow Factory. But two things stood out to her.
The first was a large engraving of an emblem; a storm cloud, lightning striking beneath it, with three bars rising behind the cloud, almost like factory stacks. It was all enveloped in a circle, wings protruding from either side.
The second was a series of obscured tubes. With some cleaning, Zipp was able to make out splatters of vibrant reds, blues, and greens. Surely, she figured, this had to be connected to the Rainbow Factory!
Her suspicions would be confirmed when she found a piece of paper, trapped under a rock nearby. Weathered from old age, but still legible was a page of schematics. Zipp was pretty smart for her age, so understanding the document wasn’t particularly hard for her.
The device appeared to process... something to harvest ‘spectra.’ And while most of the details were lost to time, she at least had a new lead. At the bottom of the page lay the signature of somepony involved with the schematics. Zipp appreciated the small hint she’d been given. “Thank you for this clue, Dr. Atmosphere.”
“You should have studied more, and practiced harder.” The mysterious mare chastised. “You could’ve saved yourselves from this.” Her words hang in the uncomfortably cold factory air, lingering in each of the foals’ minds.
“Whatever you’re going to do- I won’t let you!” Raindrop shouted from the dark.
“I don’t need your permission.” The mare retorted. But before she could resume her speech, Raindrop dashed across the room. She was a blur, hidden by the darkness of the factory.
“Don’t lose sight of her!” The mare ordered, her eyes fixed on the restrained filly. These foals clearly weren’t the brightest. As she predicted, the next faintly visible shuffle in the dark came from beneath the restraining table. The mare rushed the makeshift restraints, knocking them over, and pinning Raindrop down. Lilac was still helplessly affixed to the table as it fell, letting out a brief squeal of fear as the table loudly crashed against the factory floor. “You failed your exams, yet you think you could out-fly me? Or were you hoping I didn’t know how to sneak around?”
Raindrop was back on the cloud flooring, gasping for breath beneath the mare's strength, avoiding the question.
“You don’t understand! This is all for the greater good!” The mare shouted, only barely cutting herself off on the precipice of a rant. “Do you recognize my voice?” She asked Raindrop, raising her other forehoof to her hood.
“No! Why would I recognize a monster like you?”
In one motion, the mare pulled back her hood, revealing her pink and blue mane. It was in disarray- frazzled from being held back in the hood. An eye-patch was slung around her head, covering her left eye. It was no mystery why Raindrop was unable to struggle free.
“Princess Zipp…?” Sunrise's voice was little more than an awed whisper.
“But why?” Lilac wondered aloud, her restraining table carelessly tossed back on its legs by some of Zipp’s underlings.
“Why? I’m the heiress! I have a responsibility to serve the ponies who will one day be my subjects!” Zipp’s voice was growing irritated. The foals’ eyes met in a shared bout of fearful confusion.
Zipp let out a frustrated groan. “This is the Rainbow Factory,” She began, using the history lesson as an outlet for her growing sense of frustration. “Long ago, when everypony lived in harmony, the pegasi of Cloudsdale were responsible for maintaining the weather for all of Equestria.” Her eyes were locked on the troublemaker, Raindrop. There would be no more funny business. With a swift motion, Zipp’s helpers picked Raindrop up and wrestled her into a set of restraints.
“Rainbows are a commodity that ponykind adores, a symbol of hope for ponies far and wide! But unfortunately, they don’t just grow on trees.” Zipp’s voice grew heavy, and displeased. “The only way we can provide rainbows to all of Equestria is with a sacrifice. Spectra, one of the key ingredients of a rainbow, is a natural part of our bodies. It helps bring color to the world.” Zipp’s eyes focused on the last free foal. The quiet, anxiety-ridden Sunrise, who was quaking in his horseshoes. She motioned her helpers to restrain him too, Sunrise muttering “I’m sorry” all the while.
“This is how it has to be. But don’t worry, your deaths will bring about a new era of glory for the Flock.”
Zipp had locked herself up inside her makeshift lab in the abandoned wing of the castle for far longer than she had bothered counting. Initially, she’d found it hard to breathe from all the dust coating everything. But after laboring for many hours, trying to figure out what Spectra was, she had, intentionally or not, freed most of the dust through the missing pane of the stained glass prophecy. The light glittering through that prophecy was her only source of convenient daylight. Despite the isolation she felt, she was happy to be on her own, without her mother’s nagging.
From the outset, Zipp figured mundane chemistry just wouldn’t cut it for rainbow production. If the factory had disappeared with magic, there was a reason for it. As such, she focused on the magic that had been brought back to Equestria.
She tried everything she could think of, from pegasus feathers, and raw unicorn magic, to sap from the Tree of Harmony. She was running out of ideas, and with the Cloudsdale Restoration Project charging quickly ahead, she was running out of time.
She had begun to get frustrated with her checklists of endless ideas. It had initially been quite limited, but as time marched steadily forward, she’d been forced to extend the list well over tenfold. What was once a concise printed document was now well over twenty pages of repeated failure. It had gotten so long that she just rolled it along the floor, keeping the most up-to-date pages as close to her experiments as she could.
“Unicorn Tears… of course not. I can’t believe I made Izzy cry for this.” She threw her pipette down violently, in her growing frustration. She picked up her unending list of candidates a tad too carelessly, surprising her with a brief sting across her off-foreleg.
Her usually pristine, white fur was starting to show dripping red stains. Her instinct was to get to her hooves to grab a bandage, but stopped. There, on the floor in one of her loose beakers she’d caught an inky red drop of blood, some loose fur from her coat, and, presumably, dead skin cells.
She hesitated on the idea of testing with such a mundane reagent. The image of a factory using donated blood to pump out rainbows flashed in her head- streams of red going in, and orderly colors coming out. She thought about the decrepit, rusty machine she’d uncovered. She had noticed, in passing, that the rust was a little red. And, while that could be the result of exposure to a contaminate like salt, the splattering patterns made Zipp question that. She considered that blood may have been splattered in the machine, resulting in the patterns of reddish rust she had seen. It would also explain why the rust smelled so much worse than she was used to.
She grabbed the beaker with the remaining ingredients she’d pieced together through careful analysis of Dr. Atmosphere’s schematics. Hesitantly, she let a drop into the beaker containing her sample. At first the ingredients sat there, laying atop the red. She stared at the beaker, carefully watching the inky red of the blood meet the ingredients she’d provided, the components dancing like a lava lamp. Suddenly, she was surprised by tiny flecks of green, blue, and a less inky red barely visible in the mixture.
She got up and paced the room in excitement. She’d solved the mystery! She knew how to make rainbows! All she’d needed were the schematics, and the patience that came from years of studying the world around her as a filly. Who would have guessed her little surprise sample would be the winning ticket? For once, her mother was right to put her on the job!
Her thoughts started to calm down from their initial excitement, dwelling on the implications of her discovery. The sample she used was a tad grotesque, and for a moment she had dismissed that. It was either blood, fur, skin, or any combination of the three. She decided this would require further testing. Even then, Zipp had to question if she could really proceed with such troubling findings. The shape of the machine’s mouth, splattered with red, brought vicious images to Zipp’s mind.
Those thoughts would stick with her as she rounded out her checklist. If there was a better way, she would want to find it, certainly. But her list was already running thin, and she had exhausted it by day’s end.
There she sat in the castle, still alone. Her sister had come to visit her a couple of times throughout her research. Pipp had apparently struggled a bit to grasp the concepts of meteorology and climatology, but with private tutors to help it wasn’t long before she was ready to help the Flock reclaim their rightful duty of controlling the weather.
Zipp had wanted so badly to reach out to her sister. To tell her about the uncertainty plaguing her mind. To ask for confirmation that it had to be this way! Yet, she knew her sister was far too innocent. She’d be tainting poor Pipp with thoughts she’d be better off never having.
Pipp had always been eager to please; shining in the limelight, always listening to mom, and seeking the undivided attention of ponies near, and far! Zipp had always found it hard to confide in her sister. Their worlds felt so different, even though they lived in the same castle.
It was after that meeting, and nights spent restlessly meandering between thoughts about the social implications of her discovery, and the occasional bout of loneliness, that she settled on her decision. Their mother had made things quite clear. Zipp had to find a way to make rainbows. What Pipp did was none of her business. Her mother had to know that this would be the job that would take a pony made of sterner stuff.
With a renewed sense of duty, Zipp slipped from tireless research to a frantic, borderline obsessive search for knowledge. Anything that could help her go from those few spots of color she’d seen just nights ago, to a big, brilliant rainbow!
With an understanding of spectra in hoof, she spent night after restless night, determined to find a way to make more!
Ripping into her flesh, slicing across her body to harvest her own blood. It seemed rational at the time. Everything was done with careful forethought and precision, and documented in depth!
Test after test came and went with no change to the small flecks of color. Sure, higher samples of blood resulted in higher yields of spectra, but there had to make it all more efficient. As it stood, it was simply unfeasible to produce enough spectra for full-scale rainbows. It would take too much blood! That wouldn’t even be considering the unicorns, or the earth ponies. Both of whom would inevitably seek the aid of the pegasi in bringing such brilliant banners of color to their homelands.
However, after several draining nights of constant, painful, research- Zipp was finally growing exhausted. She was beginning to realize that stopping to rest might be more efficient in the long run. Unfortunately, the thought hit her moments before she tested her latest idea.
She had prepared a device designed to throw a dart at her. Her exhaustion had deluded her into believing that even just the force of her injury may influence her spectra concentration, even if only a little.
The device wound up, pulling back the slingshot-like mechanism. The lightweight motor obnoxiously beeping, grating away at Zipp’s ears. When the machine lunged forward, launching the throwing dart into the air, Zipp realized she had made a grave miscalculation. She’d stepped off-center of her intended mark by a few hoofsteps, and the dart was now inches away from contact with her left eye.
She muffled her scream as the dart hit, desperate not to alert her mother or sister to the nature of her experiments. They wouldn’t understand how important this was to her. She oafishly stumbled over to the beaker. Her failing depth perception left her clumsy, and slow on her hooves.
Blood dripped across her tear ducts before sliding down the side of her face and into the beaker. The reaction was quick this time, an audible fizz overlaying Zipp’s heavy, adrenaline-driven breaths.
Reds, blues, and greens swirled in the beaker, neatly sorted by hue thanks to differences in density. Zipp’s breathing became lighter as she saw the fruits of her extensive labor. She let out a few triumphant laughs before dropping to her floor like a rock, knocking her beaker over, unintentionally leaving blood and colorful rainbow to decorate the floor.
Zipp and her guards surrounded a struggling Raindrop, still desperate for escape. Tears now dotted her doe-like eyes.
“Kill me then! Just end me! If I’m so worthless to the flock, kill me!” She hollered. She’d been struggling for quite a while, antagonizing her captors with reckless abandon. The filly had clearly spent herself trying to struggle, and was just waiting for it all to end.
“After your little display?” One of the guards interjected. It was the stallion who had chased her throughout the facility earlier, his face contorted into a twisted smile. “Keep begging.” He ordered, bucking her side with all the might of a fully-grown, athletic stallion.
The table was held stable by the other workers, but judging by a snapping beneath the guard’s hooves, along with a shriek of anguish, it was clear that the filly was not. “Please! Just end me! All I’ve ever wanted is to be happy! I want…” The filly hesitated as her aloof persona crumpled beneath the gravity of the situation. “I want my Mommy! I want Miss Feathers! But if I can’t have them, then just end me, please!”
“Shut up!” The stallion slammed a hoof into the filly’s face, stifling her begging into repressed sniffles and tears. “You know what fillies like you get? You get to suffer! You’re worthless to the Flock, and even in your last moments you wouldn’t behave. Hell, I bet your mother will be happy to hear you’re gone! Get me some wire!” He barked.
Raindrop’s crying intensified slightly. Her mother always found her to be a hoof-full. Calling her a troublemaker, and an ungrateful brat. But deep down, she always knew she was loved. Despite that- hearing a fully grown pony, somepony who should be looking out for her, conclude her mother hated her had pushed her too far. Maybe her mother never did love her. She couldn’t tell. But she missed the warm feeling of her mom’s hugs, and the sweet sound of her voice when she wished her Raindrop goodnight.
Another one of the masked helpers handed a sharp, barbed wire off to the guard.
“You want to fly away so bad? Fly from the consequences of your failure, to the warmth of a sun you never deserved? Then fly higher, and let’s melt your little wax wings!” He spat, sawing the wire against the filly’s left wing.
“I had the decency to cut off the one I hit earlier off first! Now, say ‘thank you!’” The guard demanded, waiting a moment for a response. He received the shrieks of a filly in literally life-ending agony.
“I said, say ‘thank you!’” The guard barked, pressing hard on the wire- slowly, painfully grinding it against the filly’s tendons. Painfully ripping them centimeter by unending centimeter of agonizing length.
“I’m sorry!” The filly wailed, her voice enough to get the other two foals stirring in their restraints again.
“You all calm the fuck down right now!” The stallion yelled across the room. “You’ll get yours in a minute.”
Zipp watched, shocked by the cruel display as the filly’s once confident face was wiped of everything besides agony. Sweat and tears were running down her face, her blood pooling into the pan they’d placed beneath the table to yield as much spectra as possible. She meant for this to be quick, but she was too mesmerized by the terror of it all to stop it.
Before long, the stallion handed the wire off to the other guard who’d put up with Raindrop’s antics. Zipp’s mother had supposedly found these ponies, but she couldn’t begin to imagine where. She’d have to crack down on crime in Cloudsdale, when she became queen.
Zipp’s ears twitched, and she realized Raindrop’s screams were weakening. Her brilliant blue eyes met the suffering filly’s. “I won’t see the sky ever again. But at least your eyes are blue, too...”
With that, Raindrop was nothing more than a chopped-up corpse and a pool of blood. Zipp had grown hesitant, seeing the filly cut up like that. She took no pride in the unfathomable torture the foals were being put through. She gave one last look at what was left of Raindrop, catching a glimpse of her mane’s un-dyed roots. White, and bright blues brought about imagery of a cloudy sky. “...I hope the skies are beautiful, wherever you are now.”
Zipp awoke in the hospital, her right eye unfocused and blurry, her left entirely dark. She slowly adjusted to the intense light, noticing that her mother had been waiting beside her.
“Zipp, dear, what in Equestria happened?” They were quite possibly the most genuinely spoken words Zipp had heard from the Queen in her life. She’d been nurturing to her as a foal, of course. But as she and her sister grew up? Zipp had almost stopped seeing her as a mother, and more like some kind of coach.
She’d tell Zipp and her sister what they needed to be doing, and then made certain that they did it, and to her picture-perfect standards too! Zipp was always the one trying to keep their mother in check. She could be too demanding, and Zipp didn’t want to see Pipp under such constant stress.
Hearing the concern in her mom’s voice did give Zipp the courage to speak up. “I found out how to make rainbows.” She announced, her voice trembling. She must have lost more blood than she’d thought. Suddenly, the worry in her mother’s face vanished. Her daughter had taken quite some time with her responsibilities. Important responsibilities, which she had entrusted to Zipp for her own growth as heiress to her throne.
Zipp recounted to her mother the details of her journey across Equestria. Of days spent wandering the meadows, basking the daylight. Of countless hours spent searching for spectra by her lonesome, and of her days spent shut in the darkness of her room, experimenting to find the best ways to get it.
“And what of your eye?” The Queen asked, worry finally returning to her voice. If she wanted to show concern, it was too little too late, to Zipp.
“I decided to do a couple of tests with less ventilation. These things could always affect results, after all! But the fumes… I guess they played with my senses. I tripped, and a nearby dart that I’d used to pass the time jabbed me in the eye.”
Zipp knew this wasn’t a very airtight lie. But she said it anyways, using it to probe at her mother’s sincerity.
“You need to be more careful, dear. You could have been seriously hurt! Zephyrina, the pegasi of Cloudsdale will need a strong, rational queen to lead them. We both know that it must be you.” Her mother chided.
Zipp didn’t actually care about what she said. She could have called into question the many strange details of her little fib. But she didn’t care about her. She cared about Cloudsdale.
There was still a part of her that wasn’t willing to believe that. The Queen was still her mother. Speaking from her knowledge of biology, mothers have a hormonal attachment to their child, and their well-being. She took a deep, conflicted sigh. There was one more thing she had to confide in her mother.
“Rainbows come from a chemical, dubbed ‘spectra’ on a schematic by the late Dr. Atmosphere. I can make it, but with a devastating price.” She admitted, her eyes focusing on the ceiling as she finally worked up the courage to share her findings.
“How high of a price?” The Queen contemplated, playfully. “Two million bits? No! Three! Two-and-a-half?”
Zipp cocked an eyebrow bemusedly. Her mother was so detached from her daughter’s emotions to behave so childishly at a time like this? There was a reason Zipp found her mother to be insincere.
“Well then, Zephyrina, whatever is this price?” She asked. Zipp took a deep breath, running over every little fact she’d found; the blood and skin cells, the adrenaline pumping through her as blood dripped down her face, the machine’s size, and shape.
“You have to take the life of a pony. One who is scared enough to have an adrenaline rush before their death.” A weight lifted from her shoulders as she let the secret of her unsettling findings loose. Yet something still haunted her about the work she’d done. What lines could she draw between her work and her morals? They were blurring beneath the vision of her weakened eye.
Her mother stifled a giggle. Her ears perked up, perturbed by the response. “What’s so funny?” Her mother’s sudden shift in disposition had put her on edge.
“You said the price wasn’t small, dear! What’s a couple of lives to make everypony in Equestria happier?
Her mother’s words lingered in the air. That right there is why Zipp couldn’t stand her mother. Why she resented that it was her destiny to take her place atop a throne of lies.
“No...” She wanted to just dismiss her words, but she wouldn’t let that slide. “Every life in Equestria is precious! This is a price heftier than anything bits could buy!” Her words were sharp, argumentative, and furious.
“Zephyrina, honey. As royals, sometimes we have to do things that hurt others. You can tell yourself that things would just be better if you told everypony the truth, but you can’t let those thoughts best you. It could cost you everything.”
The image of Zipp running off as her mother was placed under arrest was still vividly burned in her mind. At the time, she was conflicted about how she should feel when she’d heard her mother was arrested. Ultimately she decided she’d help her mother, but only for Pipp. Now, though? She felt nothing but apathy towards her eccentric sociopath of a mother.
“Two weeks, Zipp. You’d best start looking for ponies who can vanish without a fuss.” Her mother advised.
“Yeah, I’d better.”
Her mother left, and Zipp was left alone to her thoughts. Her mother was right about one thing, she needed a group to target. An expendable one, who could disappear without drawing attention. She quickly began dismissing several options- political opponents? Too obvious, they’d get found out, and it would also open the gates for sabotage. The lower class? She had more integrity than that, not to mention they’d be found out very quickly. The memory of her, Sunny, and Izzy stealing the crown floated into her mind. It felt like filly’s play to her, now.
As she recovered in the hospital, she went through the process of elimination. She had settled on an unlikely group. Troubled, and disabled foals. Morally she detested the thought, but Zephyr Heights had been meaning to enact a flight exam for young fliers. So long as these tests took place above the cloud layer, the disappearances could be dismissed as unfortunate accidents during testing. While that would open a different can of political discourse, the backlash would be much easier to manage as the pegasi regained their sense of pride.
Days full of immorally political thoughts passed Zipp by. Finally, she was able to leave the hospital, an eye-patch hiding her injured eye. They said her eye would never recover without surgery. It wasn’t a big deal to her. She wondered if she even wanted it to heal. It was a reminder not only of the moment her research was perfected. But also a symbol of the burden the title of ‘heiress’ wreaked on her.
Lilac wasn’t just in shock at what she’d just seen. She was disgusted, terrified, and remorseful all at once. She never thought she’d see Raindrop break down like that. She knew her classmate had something of a troubled relationship with her family, and always figured she was hiding herself. Hearing Raindrop cry out for her mother terrified Lilac.
Warmth attacked Lilac’s cheeks as she realized she was crying. Her classmates always saw her as an airhead. She tried to stay optimistic even when times were tough. When everypony found out the royals had been feigning their magic for years, a slew of emotions overtook all of Zephyr Heights! Ponies big and small were furious that they had been lied to for so long. Lilac had smiled, and asked her classmates if they still cherished the memories of Princess Pipp’s concerts anyways. It helped them realize that even if it was fake, it was about the moments they shared.
Deep down, this optimism was a personal safety blanket. Lilac knew the world was scary. She’d seen it first-hoof when the pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies nearly found themselves at war! All she wanted was peace and prosperity for ponykind, and beyond! And judging by Raindrop’s cries for happiness, she’d guess her classmate did too.
“Now then, without your fillyfriend in the way to stop us...” The guards turned their attention towards Lilac. She could feel her heart beating out of her chest.
“Why us? We’re just kids. We just want the world to be a happy place.” She asks herself aloud. “We just want everything to turn out okay!” She closed her eyes, fear overtaking her.
“Because you’re failures!” The two guards from before reminded her.
“I for one think your friend was lucky she died so quickly.” A new voice spoke up. “But I think it’s time somepony with more than brute force stepped up to the plate. You may call me Dr. Infra Redd.” The stallion introduced himself.
“Hey! We have a policy against name-dropping!” Zipp warned.
“Oh, dear princess, I’m only trying to make our subject comfortable!” The doctor spun. “Besides! I have a plan to make this filly’s contribution to the world spectacular. You want everypony to be happy? We’ll make it so, little Lilac. Just close your eyes, and no matter what happens, remember! It will all be over soon.”
Lilac’s breath caught on Redd’s words. This was really it. She wondered what her father would do when she was gone. He had taken the loss of her mother hard, but he was always there for Lilac. They went through times good and bad, together.
He’ll think she broke a wing mid-flight, or passed out from flying too high. He won’t know that the filly he cared so much for wasn’t just a body missing somewhere in the expanse of Equestria. He might even smile at a rainbow someday, not knowing that the light behind that rainbow was robbed from his own daughter.
She’d lost track of the world around her, spotting the doctor being handed a large, sharp knife. The kind of knife your parents would only let you use for paper-crafts if they were nearby. “Come now, close your eyes. You’d best relish in your last moments of peace.” The doctor advised.
That thought scared her more than anything. These were her last pure moments. This is the last time she’d feel her body in one unscathed piece. The thought of being gone forever momentarily floated into her head. She’d never see her friends again. Her favorite shows would continue without her. She’d never get to tell her dad how much she loved him.
And as quickly as thoughts flashed through her mind, like frames across a film reel, they stopped. Interrupted by a sharp, precise, and strong cut in her wings. She screeched in response to the intense, dragging pain. Her shrieks turned to wails as her thoughts fixated on the image of her dad. “Please stop! I’m begging you, please! I just want to tell my Dad that I love him, and then you can do what you want to me! I promise!”
Her screams of protest fell upon deaf ears. The knife moved quickly, severing her wings from her tendons, before moving onto her legs. While being unable to move her wings was one thing, feeling her legs stop responding, one by one being stripped of mobility was another. She couldn’t even flail her legs anymore. She was in so much pain that she could barely process it. She’d have a brief moment where she’d think it was over, but they’d just move the knife and cut somewhere else.
Each cut stung beyond belief as-is, but to keep her alive, each cut had been torched, cauterizing them just as the pain settled. She felt sharp, stabbing pain from the cuts, burning from the torch, and her ears were ringing from her own cries and squeals.
At some point she’d heard what almost sounded like words, but she couldn’t understand what they were saying anymore. No matter how much the guards yelled at her to stop wailing, it didn’t matter. She couldn’t take her attention away from the pain enough to understand them.
Fed up, the guard who had caught her when Raindrop inspired her to flee brandished a pair of serrated knives, intended to be used when she was closer to death. He carefully pushed the other workers aside with his wings before gouging Lilac’s eyes out. Gushing blood onto the two knives were the once-golden eyes of the grotesquely disfigured filly. Her tears were mingling with the shower of her dark red blood, as she choked her wails back behind a cough. Her cries stopped as her breathing got weaker, and weaker.
Out of spite, and as one last jab at a filly who’d give him even the slightest bit of back-talk, he severed her ears. Her mouth opened, as if in shock. Then, like a toy who’d run out of batteries, her breathing and movements stopped.
The only sound left in the atrium was the sobs of the lone surviving foal.
Zipp was getting frustrated. These ponies weren’t taking her orders seriously. If she didn’t want them to suffer, she’d need the courage to take care of things herself. Zipp looked to Sunrise, the only failure left standing. She’d handle him personally, and she’d make sure he suffered as little as possible. She only needed to trigger an adrenaline rush.
“Single file line, everypony!”
It was a bright and sunny day outside. The perfect kind of day to spend outside! That’s why today, Lilac’s class was given the privilege to visit Cloudsdale before the city’s re-opening!
When pegasus fillies and colts came of age, and were set to graduate from the Equestrian education system, they would be given an exam, to test their ability to fly. For countless years, the pegasus race had lost their reputation for being the best. Once upon a time, when Equestria was under the rule of Princesses Celestia, and Luna, Cloudsdale was seen as the cream of the crop! Canterlot may have been a city for the high-brow elites, but Cloudsdale was home to the best, and most talented ponies in all of Equestria and beyond!
But as fights broke out between Equestria and its allies, friendships started to fall apart. By the end of the era, not even the three races of ponykind could look one another in the eyes without fear or disgust overtaking them. Equestria lost its magic, and the city of Cloudsdale fell, quite literally! It crashed into the Earth, debris spread far and wide. The pegasi were forced to move to the mountaintops, where they would stay for countless moons to come. Their magic, and their pride both forcefully stripped from them.
But magic had finally been restored, and the pegasus royalty sought to restore that sense of dignity to the Flock. With some hard work and coordination, pegasi could be the best of the best. Just like they were always born to be.
“...what’s that mean anyways, Hotshot?” Lilac tilted her head. Hotshot had always picked up some funny words from his parents, but their examiner, Miss Feathers, was okay with this one. She’d scolded him for saying “horsefeathers”, and “tartarus”, even more-so for words like “shit” and “fuck”- but when Hotshot said “Praise the Flock”? Miss Feathers just gave him a smile, and cheered “That’s the spirit!” It felt sinister to Lilac.
“Uh, the Flock? Like, the pegasi moving to Cloudsdale. Why? Are you staying on that dirty old prison of a mountain?” Hotshot interrogated. Lilac grit her teeth. Her dad had told her that they’d move when she graduated, so that they could pay for the move together.
“Shut up!” The class troublemaker shouted.
“Well, well, if it isn’t everyone’s favorite edgelord! Who invited you to talk, Pissdrop?” The bully shot.
“Language!” The teacher yelled. “And no name-calling! How old are you, again?!”
Gleaming Feathers found her seat aside two other judges behind their podiums to the right of the students, before beginning to deliver instructions for the exam.
“You’ll take your exam when your name is called. Your adjudicators- that’s us, are on the north side of the field. If you fly so far south that we lose sight of you, we’ll have no choice but to fail you!” She said, taking a pause to let everyone process the information they’d been given.
“I’m not done talking, cheese dust!” Raindrop whispered sharply, antagonizing Hotshot.
“Oh yeah? What do you wanna say to me?” Hotshot asked, a smug grin plastered across his face. It made Raindrop furious to see.
“Pick on someone your own size.” Raindrop growled, her words emphasized to sound like a threat.
“Come again?” Hotshot asked, the same shit-eating smirk on his dirty muzzle.
“I said to pick on someone your own size!” She was getting angry.
“One more time- I couldn’t hear you.” He mocked.
“I said…!”
“First up, Heat Wave! Clear, Fly, Fall, and Complete!” Gleaming’s voice called, prompting a filly to march forward. Hotshot laughed at Raindrop and Lilac.
“Have fun figuring the rules out by yourselves!” He cackled to himself, walking off to talk to his friends.
“That son of a-” Raindrop took a few steps across the cloudy landscape towards her aggressor, but stopped when she felt a hoof on her back.
“Raindrop! Don’t let him get to you. We can figure this out together, but we need to do it quickly!”
“...Sunrise Atmosphere! You’re next! Clear, Fly, Fall and Complete!” Lilac and Raindrop gathered around the edge of the cloud, watching their classmate with a bated breath. Sunrise seemed a tad anxious. He leapt off the edge, flapping his wings to carry him towards each carefully positioned cloud, using all his might to buck them apart. Afterwards, he flew through each hoop as fast as he could manage. His wings seemed a tad smaller than everypony else’s, buzzing quickly to keep himself airborne. He pressed on, hovering up to the required altitude before...
Suddenly, Sunrise looked like he was having trouble. His breathing was getting fast, and his wings were beating asynchronously. Then, he wasn’t hovering. He was going down, plummeting past the cloud layer.
“Hey! Isn’t somepony gonna help him?!” Raindrop yelled, trying to get the judge’s attention.
“We can’t! He has to recover on his own!” One of the judges called back, putting a hoof on Miss Feathers’ back to ease her worries.
Raindrop and Lilac continued to watch Sunrise, as his wings locked up mid-air out of panic.
“You’re all crazy! To hell with the rules!” Raindrop called back, leaping off to catch her classmate and bring him back to safety. Lilac looked on, impressed by Raindrop’s act of reckless heroism, yet scared as two of her classmates hurtled through the sky. After a brief struggle, Raindrop was able to get a leg around Sunrise. Hastily, she flew him back up to Cloudsdale.
“Raindrop Dayweather!” One of the judges called, anger in her voice. “Are you aware of what you just did?”
“Saved Sunrise’s sorry flank is what!” Raindrop shouted back, gently kicking the colt further onto the safety of Cloudsdale.
“No! Your reckless disregard for the regulations of this exam is despicable! You both will be failed because of your careless actions!” The judge hissed, motioning for them to wait on the north side with the judges.
“Raindrop...?” Lilac was distracted... What happened to Raindrop now?
“Pass that exam or I’ll kick your flank into next week!” Raindrop called back, laughing as she carried a recovering Sunrise along the edge of Cloudsdale and over to the judges.
“It’s my fault that they failed!” Sunrise finally snapped. “I would’ve died, but they could’ve passed their tests just fine if it weren’t for me!” He was shaking, his eyes wet with tears, and his face bruised from a mix of off-hoof abuse from the workers, and beating himself up, blaming himself for the death of both fillies. Zipp had done her best to keep her workers on a leash, but she could only do so much. She stepped forward, intending to help soothe Sunrise.
“You’re right to resent yourself, mule! You failed not only yourself, but brought two capable members of the Flock down with you in your plight!” The guard went to punch the colt, but was interrupted by a stern bucking by Zipp.
“I’m done asking. You psychopaths are all going to sit your pathetic fucking flanks down, and wait for me to finish my job. Any more interjections, and it’ll be your sorry asses on the chopping block! Have I made myself clear?” She barked like a drill sergeant.
Not a word in response. Zipp turned to face the shuddering pony before her. “What happened today was disappointing. For you, and the ponies who believed in you. But that doesn’t make you a failure, and it doesn’t make you a mule.” She said, unwilling to let another soul go without some sense of peace. “You got the short end of the stick. That’s just the way life is. But your death will help strengthen the Flock, and will raise spirits across Equestria too!” She tried to explain to the sniveling colt.
“Princess Zipp, what happened to you...?” The colt asked, his voice shaky, and tears still staining his fur, but with some of his fears alleviated.
“What do you mean?”
“When you united all ponykind. You were courageous, and compassionate, and you made sure nopony got hurt. Why did you stop?”
Zipp considered the colt’s words. “At first, it was curiosity. Now, it’s duty. If my subjects cherish rainbows, then I must see that they are made. For the Flock.”
The colt remained unsatisfied. “Your sister would’ve stopped you.” He lamented. “Your friends wouldn’t let you end up like this either, if they only knew... You were a hero to so many ponies, you know!” His voice raised, disappointed by Zipp.
The colt’s words stung at something in Zipp’s heart. She knew he was right. Sunny would never forgive her. Izzy wouldn’t be able to look her in the eyes ever again. Hitch would arrest her on the spot, and Pipp…
Her heart sank. “But maybe you can still stop!” Sunrise’s voice gained a bit of enthusiasm it had lacked since the first time she heard him. When she had visited their classroom weeks prior. “Maybe if you stop now, your friends will forgive you! Even if you have to kill me. I don’t want anypony to be hurt like my friends were. I don’t want an Equestria where ponies like us get abused and tortured until they can’t be abused or tortured anymore, all because we cared about one another. You can still let me go!”
Zipp’s heart froze. A passing thought drifted through her head.
Just like her mom.
All at once, she snapped.
Of course his words weren’t sincere! He was just stalling for precious moments of life. She felt her heart pang from her stirring emotions. A snarl of disdain escaped her lips. “Don’t act like it’s all so simple. Like I could walk away without consequence.” She growled.
If he had any hope of avoiding his death, it was lost now. The despair had seeped into his mind, and desperation overtook him. “Princess, please, you can kill me now!” The colt whimpered, his voice little more than a soft murmur. “You’re brave! Don’t let your fears-” Before his words could finish coming out, he felt a sharp pain dash across his tongue. He’d felt his tongue get torn- as if he’d bitten it clean off. He tried to cry for mercy, but the words wouldn’t come out anymore. He spat his tongue out of his mouth, along with a splatter of blood.
Zipp’s breath labored as she looked down at the instrument she just brandished. A large, serrated knife. She had cut his tongue off. She felt like such a monster. She wondered how much her friends would hate her. How much Pipp would hate her.
But it made him stop lying.
It made him stop mocking the importance of her tireless work.
Yet her heart still yearned to show him how she felt.
She gently held the colt’s hoof as he spat out blood and useless whimpers, unwilling to struggle out of fear. She retrieved a vice grip, and locked them along the pathetic colt’s hoof. With a pop, she kicked the pliers, ripping the wall clean off of the hoof, exposing the sensitive insides.
Her rage drove her to stab at it over and over again. And just when she ran out of places to stab, she spat on it, before ripping another hoof off. The colt couldn’t process anything besides the unbearable sensation of the nail of his hooves being uprooted, and then stabbed in places he’d never considered could be stabbed.
Zipp settled on one more act of mutilation. She lifted herself into the air, standing above the colt with her hooves resting just beyond the small, orange wings. Her eyes met Sunrise’s pleading face, and she smashed a hoof down against the malformed appendage. Bones crumpled beneath her weight. The colt’s face was in a state of terror beyond anything Zipp had seen.
She crushed the bones of the other wing for good measure. The colt’s breathing was labored, he was clearly struggling to stay conscious. But he hadn’t learnt his lesson yet.
She focused her attention on the legs of the mortified pony. Ruthlessly, she slammed her hoof down- snapping the bone so hard that it jutted through the colt’s flesh. Whenever he’d start to lose consciousness, she’d crush another limb. Leg by leg, her feelings of morality returned to her.
It wouldn’t be long before Zipp would be out of limbs to crush. She leapt off the table, turning around to observe her handiwork. If there was a pony there before, it was hard to tell now. Bones popped through flesh, blood pooled where joints once were, and Sunrise looked more like a prop from a horror movie than a real, breathing pony.
What had she done? She wanted this, but seeing the colt twitching uselessly left her remorseful, and disturbed. She still wanted him to have a sense of peace.
“I didn’t mean to be so brutal. When more foals are taken into this dark place to die? I’ll try to make it as quick as I can for them.” Sunrise’s face convulsed, a fruitless attempt to emote. Zipp raised a hoof apprehensively. The squelch of hoof against skull was met only by a pathetic, dying croak. The sun set, and silence overtook the factory.
Zipp broke the silence. “Let’s get this straight. You are all my subordinates. You will do as I say, and you will not question me, or deviate from my orders ever again.” She barked, a strength to her voice that put the workers back in their place. “You got to have your fun, but this is a factory. The parts for the device will be arriving by week’s end, and that means we need order.”
She shot them all a terrifying glare, amplified by the blood staining her face. “If any of you dare step out of line again like you did today, I will personally put you through a special kind of hell- one that would make even you deranged psychopaths quiver. That is, assuming you don’t get yourselves torn inside-out from falling into the device first.”
She let a huff escape her nose. “You’ve all made an enemy of me today. It is by my good graces that I’m even giving you a second chance. Use it, or you’ll look uglier than any of the foals we tore apart today.
Quiet, at last. The drip-pans were removed from beneath the restraining tables, the bodies removed, and, finally alone, Zipp began processing the blood by hoof. She may have lost her temper, but her final exchange with Sunrise had finally convinced her. She was nothing more than a victim of circumstance.
Behind her, the door creaked in approval.