“Yes, darling, that was simply marvellous.” Rarity agreed with an impressed look.
“It wasn’t…my idea first.” Twilight admitted, looking embarrassed, “Those wolves were duel monsters. Nightmare Moon must have summoned them as our first task. I just worked out how to copy her.”
“Hey if it worked it worked.” Applejack laughed, budging her with a smile. Twilight nudged back, happy when she felt a little of the pressure that had been weighing down on them lift, as if her theory was right and they had passed their first trial.
“Oh yeah, one down, four to go!” Rainbow laughed, weaving between the branches with much more ease that she had before, while Pinkie Pie looked a little more bouncy and Fluttershy actually smiled, looking a little reassured.
“Excuse me, Princess Twilight?” Fluttershy asked shyly as they continued though the forest, both Twilight and Rarity using a basic ‘candlelight’ spell to create little balls of light that hovered just over their horn tips to light the way a little better, “What’re the other Elements?”
“Yeah, if Laughter helped us get past the first trial, the others might help with the rest.” Dash agreed as she hovered above them.
“I’m not a Princess, not really.” Twilight sighed, “I don’t know why Nightmare Moon keeps calling me that. I mean I still don’t know how I managed to transform myself last time, but it must have been a spell or something…” She paused and took a deep breath and moved away from the subject, hating that she did not know something, “There’s five Elements that are known,” She settled into lecture mode, “Laughter is one of them, then we have Honesty, Loyalty, Kindness and Generosity. I’m not sure how we could weaponize any of those though, I think we’re probably going to have to just play it by ear a lot of the time.”
“Well laughing at the wolves worked, so I bet we can work it out somehow.” Pinkie Pie seemed unbothered by the uncertainty, an attitude that both bothered Twilight and made her slightly envious. She knew she generally over thought things, it was a part of who she was. She was not like a lot of other ponies who could jump into something and change the plans. She had a weekly schedule and she stuck to it like glue. This whole fiasco was ruining it but for once it was okay, purely because her plans had been to celebrate the rising of the sun with Spike, which she obviously could not do without a sun in the sky.
Sometimes though she envied the ability of most of the other ponies she knew. They could adapt and change their plans without feeling stressed or worried and act on a whim. Twilight had to plan time to do things like that into her schedule. She even had assigned ‘worrying’ times. She could not help but wonder if the mess she was in countered as one of those and if she could move one up from further in her timetable in order to reorder her week once this was over.
The woods seemed a little less scary with the knowledge that they could frighten off the creatures made from the darkness with a simple laugh and their pace picked up, especially once they made it past the canopy of trees that cut the river that trailed through the Everfree Forest off from the rest of Equestria. Rainbow Dash let out a whoop and shot skyward, enjoying the open air. She soared upwards, needing to spread her wings after being cooped up under the trees for so long.
“Aren’t you going to join her?” Twilight asked Fluttershy curiously, only for the light yellow unicorn to shake her head.
“I don’t need the sky like Dash does.” The animal loving filly replied with an embarrassed smile, “I tend to stay a lot closer to the ground. I mean I can fly, but…”
“You don’t like to?” Twilight asked softly. Fluttershy shook her head, blushing slightly and scuffing the floor with her right fore-hoof. “That’s okay, you can help us to work out how to get across the river while Rainbow’s stretching her wings.”
The river in question looked placid but that did not mean anything. It could be hiding a rapid current underneath that, could catch them as they tried to swim across. If it did it would quite easily drag them under and they would never make it to the other side, yet alone the Palace of the Two Sisters.
Rainbow swooped overhead, doing a loop-de-loop which looked very pretty with the rainbow trailing behind her, but was not helpful. Twiilght realised she was not trying to be when Applejack let out a startled exclamation and a trio of black pegasi shot past in hot pursuit, driving Rainbow further up into the clouds.
The pale blue pegasus in question was hard pressed to keep the trio off of her tail as she lost sight of her friends because of the cloud cover. She had no idea where they had come from, but they were shockingly fast, almost as quick as her and that was saying something. They were not as agile though and that was where she had the advantage.
They were dressed a lot like the Wonderbolts, except their jump suits were a dark purple, their goggles were all the same shade except for the glass which was a bright and slightly glowing purple and their head gear was black. What creeped her out a little was the cutie marks emblazoned on the flanks of their jumpsuits. A white pony skull with a wing extending from it made it quite clear that they were not fooling around.
“Found you.” One of them, the only mare of the group if she was right, crowed as she appeared from below Rainbow, “Boys, she’s over here!”
Dash did not give the other two a chance to arrive, doing a wingover and vanishing into the cotton like clouds. The mare let out a frustrated noise and followed her, calling out, “Rainbow Dash, we just want to talk...”
‘Which was why they tried to knock me out of the skies.’ Dash thought sarcastically, staying silent, ‘There’s no way they should know my name either. They have to be a trick or a summon, like those wolves...’
“Forget her.” Rainbow’s train of thoughts got derailed when she heard one of the stallions talking, “She’s long gone, probably back to the barrier out. Let’s go deal with the others, especially the Princess.”
Oh no. That was not happening. She was not allowing it to happen. Dash dove through the cloud cover and emerged the other side in time to see her friends who had been crossing the river carefully being divebombed by the trio of pegasi who had been chasing her a few moments earlier.
“Hey! Did I say you could ignore me?” Rainbow demanded before barrelling into the mare who tumbled in midair, nearly sending both of them into the deeper waters just a little further down.
“Who said we wanted to ignore you?” The mare smirked as she righted herself, “We want you on our side, Rainbow Dash, and we’ll do anything to get it.”
Rainbow did not get a chance to ask what the hell she meant before one of the stallions slammed into her, knocking her skywards, away from both the river and the mare.
“Rainbow!” She could hear Twilight’s worried call and saw Fluttershy actually take off, as if to help.
She did not react to either. Instead she smirked at the triad of dark pegasi and shot skywards, leaving behind a challenge of “If you want me, come and get me!”
The trio of pegasi followed at such a pace that Rainbow was hard pressed to stay ahead. It was exhilarating as much as it was scary and Dash caught herself letting out a genuinely delighted laugh as she narrowly dodged a sideswipe from the bigger of the two stallions.
The dark pony in question yelped and dropped a couple of foot at the sound, making Dash take in a sharp intake of breath. They were not ponies anymore than the wolves had been. The pegasi chasing her were simply a product of the darkness or something summoned by Nightmare Moon in order to stop their progress.
That revelation cost her though and she let out a pained cry and tumbled nearly twenty foot straight down as the bigger of the two stallions collided with her deliberately. Before she could right herself the second stallion had slammed into her and sent her rocketing sideways where she collided with the side of a mountain before bouncing off of the solid rock and tumbling down, stunned by the pain and dazed by the collisions.
It was, shockingly, the mare who stopped her painfully colliding with the floor. The false pegasus moved a cloud into Rainbow’s path. The pale blue filly landed on it instead of the hard, rocky ground below.
“Y...You helped me?” Rainbow stared at the mare in shock as she tried to pull herself to her feet, wincing as her muscles protested and her injuries pulled.
“I told you Rainbow Dash, we want you for our team.” The mare replied, “Which means you’re no use to us dead.”
“What team?” Dash snorted, preparing to take off again and flinching as her wings snapped open but pain flared down her right side, “You’re not real.”
“Oh we’re just as real as you are, Rainbow Dash. When Nightmare Moon told us that the best flyer in all of Equestria was passing through we just had to meet you and get you to join our team. Forget the Princess and those losers and come work with us. We could be better than the Wonderbolts and we want you as our captian.”
It was too good to be true. Which was a shame because it sounded wonderful.
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