Crossing the plains had taken the better part of Rainbow Dash’s waking hours. The already long trek was made to seem longer in the darkness beneath the clouded sky. The rain persisted and had long since soaked the two of them completely, while the wind was no kinder and had picked up once they’d entered the open plain, chilling them to the bone.

The best that could be said of their crossing was that it was uneventful. Between the cold, the rain, and the effort required to keep moving forward, neither of them had spent much of the journey across the plains talking.

Every so often they would pause as there was a cry somewhere off in the distance. Twilight would have them wait until she decided it safe to continue, possibly altering the direction of their path depending on where the sound came from.

The fields of wheatgrass eventually shortened and thinned as they gave way to rockier ground. The earth became riddled with boulders, and the boulders stacked with the dirt to form hills, valleys, and cliffs.

“This is it,” Rainbow Dash said, viewing the rocks. She suddenly backtracked on her words. “I mean—this looks a lot like it could be it. It’s muddier than I remember, but these stones are like the ones I remember.”

“It probably is,” Twilight said, allowing her horn to burn a little brighter.

Rainbow Dash grimaced. The ground looked treacherous. The last thing either of them needed out in the wilderness, far from any help or resources, was a sprained hoof.

Twilight hummed. “We’re not far now, but we have no idea whether your squad stuck around.”

Rainbow Dash took a deep breath and let it out slowly, her jaw shivering. “If they made it out uninjured, then they’ll probably be coming back here every so often to check for me.” She nodded to herself. “At least that’s what I picture Spitfire would do.”

“Checking back at the place where you got split up would be the logical thing to do if they were still trying to find you,” Twilight said. “And from the way you speak of her, I don’t think Spitfire would have given up on you.”

“There’s no way she would,” Rainbow Dash said, shaking her head. “I mean, Spitfire took me through training, but it was also more than that. Our parents knew each other, so me and her spent a lot of time together when I was young. She was like a big sister to me. Then whenever she went, Soarin’ went, too.”

Rainbow Dash glanced up at the rain and found herself thinking about Cloudsdale. So far she had spent over a moon’s cycle on solid ground. She had to wonder whether anyone missed her. She hadn’t really known anypony besides Spitfire and Soarin. Not since her parents had passed away.

“You know, after training I thought I was going to come down here and kick butt,” Rainbow Dash said. “But this place isn’t anything like I imagined it.”

Twilight nodded, solemnly. “I made the same mistake when I set out across the Northern Mountains.”

Rainbow Dash opened her mouth, but hesitated, chewing her lip. “Have you ever had anyone close to you? Friends? Family?”

“My family was strict and formal,” Twilight said. Her eyes drifted to a far-off place as she gazed back the way they’d come, staring at the horizon. “I once had some friends I was very close to.”

A silence followed with Twilight wrapped up in her thoughts. Rainbow Dash once again saw that sorrowful, haunted look in her eyes and knew better than to push.

“We should probably start looking,” Rainbow Dash said, her words seeming to do the trick of snapping Twilight out of her thoughts.

Twilight gave a stiff nod in agreement as she glanced at their surroundings. “Do you recognize where we are?”

Rainbow Dash looked around again, studying the terrain. “I can’t recognize anything in this rain, but we might as well start searching. When we flew down, these hills had only looked like they covered a couple dozen or so acres. It’s small enough that I bet we could search the entire place on hoof.”

“Let’s start with the low ground and look for caves like the ones by the manticore’s den. We should be safe. With this downpour, the creature is likely staying out of the rain. Once we find the cave, either we’ll find something there, or we’ll try tracking the path you took back to where the three of you became separated."

Rainbow Dash nodded.

Frigid water dripping from their coats, they crossed the hill and headed down into a valley on the other side. The mud, its grass too thin to hold together in the rain, soon covered their hooves up to their fetlocks. Slippery, uneven terrain forced them to move slowly until well within the valley, where the ground grew flat and the soil more compact.

As they searched for caves in the niches and crevasses of the outcrop, the downpour served to hide them as it had across the plains. Rainbow Dash shivered. The temperature had steadily dropped over the past phase. The water that struck her coat felt close to freezing. But it wasn’t time to stop. Not when she was so close to seeing Spitfire again.

A voice which wasn’t either of their own split through the rain. Following it to its source, they came across only a single darkened. It was a pitiful earth pony who sat hunched in the valley with his back against a large stone jutting out of the ground. He had managed to wander far from any home.

Rainbow Dash lowered her spear and approached with caution, following Twilight.

As they drew close it became clear that it posed no danger. It sat on the ground with its mouth open and twitching, sobbing. Its eyes were white as all darkened’s were, but also reddened from crying. Its sobs carried with them no tears, however. From the looks of it, they had long since been spent.

As they stopped right before it, Rainbow Dash stared. It looked pathetic. It looked like it was in agony. She raised her spear and let it rest against her shoulder. “What the heck’s wrong with it? Why is it gasping like that?”

Wordlessly, Twilight approached the weeping darkened with her horn glowing. A thin blade of flame sparked to life in front of her and she plunged it into the darkened’s chest. The blade hissed as it sank into the darkened’s dried flesh, then was dispelled, leaving a gaping hole through its heart. It all happened in an instant.

The darkened wheezed and trembled. It reached out its hoof towards something, somewhere towards the distance in front of it. Then its quiet sobbing stopped. It grew still.

Twilight turned away from it, her lips marred by a grimace. “When the darkness seeps into a pony’s mind, sometimes it takes hold by their anger, sometimes it takes hold by their fear, and sometimes it takes hold by their sorrow.” She walked away from the corpse, distancing herself from it. “Usually it’s a combination of negative emotions, but sometimes when a pony slips and it takes hold, one emotion is much stronger than the others. Most of the time it’s their anger, but sometimes...”

“So then he was depressed when the darkness took hold of him?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“And he’s been suffering it ever since,” Twilight said, staring over her shoulder at the corpse. “Darkened without hatred pose no real threat. Even so, it’s only merciful to give them a quick and painless death.”

Rainbow Dash stared at the slain darkened and faintly shuddered. “Its eyes are so much worse than the angry ones that the other darkened so far have had.”

“They are,” Twilight agreed.

Rainbow Dash walked up to the darkened. Reaching down, she closed its eyes, its wrinkled black lids hiding the look of pain that had been there.

Having reached the end of the valley, they started up a steep slope leading out of it. It was slick with mud, but they slowly made their way up it, searching the mud for stones to use as purchase. As they neared the top, the rest of the outcrop and the other valleys came into view.

Rainbow Dash paused as they reached the top, looking back down at the darkened they had left in the valley.

Twilight paused as well, following her gaze. “You did that before,” she said, pushing on just a little further to flat ground.

Rainbow Dash stood on the slope, blinking. “Huh? Did what?”

“Close their eyes. You’ve done it quite a few times, actually.”

Rainbow Dash gave a half-hearted shrug. “It’s just something Spitfire taught me to do. She told me to do it because most ponies see too much in this life.” Rainbow Dash hesitated. What she said was true, but she felt there was another reason. “I guess it’s because it makes it look like they’ve finally gotten a chance to rest.” She glanced at Twilight. “Why? Do earth ponies and unicorns not do that?”

“No, we do, just usually not for darkened.”

“I guess because I still haven’t stopped seeing them as ponies. They might be messed up beyond anything resembling the pony they once were, but at one point...” Rainbow Dash shook her head. “Yeah, I know. It’s something I probably shouldn’t think about. But darkened don’t sleep, right? I figure the least I can do is close their eyes and so they can finally rest—”

As soon as Rainbow Dash finished speaking, Twilight threw herself against the pegasus’ side and knocked them both into the mud. Rainbow Dash immediately started scrambling to get up, ready to give the unicorn who bowled her over a piece of her mind, but a hoof between her shoulders pushed her down into the mud and kept her from standing.

“What the heck are you—?”

“Shh,” Twilight hissed.

Rainbow Dash looked at her to see she wore a grim expression.

Twilight slowly removed her hoof. Calmly, she told Rainbow, “There’s a pony up ahead.”

Rainbow Dash froze. With a minimum amount of movement, she scanned around them. Seeing nothing, she turned back to Twilight to throw her a confused look.

Twilight motioned in the direction of a rock slab beside them. Crawling through the mud on their bellies, they both made it to the slab and pressed their backs flush against it.

“I’ll take a look,” Rainbow Dash said, rising.

Twilight paused her with a touch on her foreleg. “They might not be alone.”

Rainbow Dash swallowed and nodded.

Ears flat and pointed back, she peeked around the boulder. The pony in the clearing below seemed unaware of their presence as she paced along a cliff wall, scrutinizing it. Her coat was an unreasonably clean shade of white for being where she was with mud all around her, and though her mane had flattened with the rain, it showed signs of having once been well-groomed. She stopped, thinking to herself for a moment, then shook her head. As she did so, Rainbow Dash spotted a horn atop her head.

Rainbow Dash turned to Twilight. “She’s a unicorn,” she whispered. “What should—”

A crystalline spike erupted from the boulder between their snouts with a crack like thunder, cutting Rainbow Dash off. They both sat in shock for a moment, staring at the razor-sharp spike, thick as a leg, that had burst forth inches from their snouts.

Twilight was the first to act. Dashing out from behind the boulder, horn glowing, she looked to the unicorn in the clearing, who was staring straight at her. In less than a second, she conjured and loosed a ball of flame, but in another thunderous crack the instant after, a wall of crystal spikes jutted out of the ground in front of the unicorn, and it broke harmlessly against them.

More spikes erupted from the ground around Twilight in a crisscross fashion, grazing her limbs and chest and forming a prison around her. She squirmed. Every part of her body was locked in place, right down to the movement of her head, crystals pressing against her cheeks keeping her looking straight ahead.

Half a second after seeing Twilight become trapped, Rainbow Dash stayed hidden against the boulder, trying to come up with a plan. But before she could set anything in motion, the ground beneath her cracked, and another cage-like pattern of crystals erupted around her and hoisted her off the ground and turned her around, holding her above the rock to look at their attacker.

The pegasus gritted her teeth and immediately tried to struggle against her bondage. The crystal entrapment quickly settled. Its shape locked her limbs in place, leaving no room to move, and her struggles didn’t seem to budge a thing.

Down below, the ground rumbled. A crystal as thick around as a wagon extended slowly out of the ground at an angle towards the cliff Twilight and Rainbow Dash lay trapped upon. The white unicorn stepped onto the crystal, its growth carrying her towards the top of the cliff.

“It’s not terribly polite to spy on somepony, you know,” she said as the crystal bridged with the cliff. As she stepped off, she frowned at Twilight. “Tsk. Pyromancy. How boorish. I do wish the Royal University would acquire better taste in magic.”

Twilight visibly stiffened as the unicorn circled around her crystalline cage.

The white unicorn paused, sparing Rainbow Dash a brief glance before turning her attention back to Twilight. The crystals trapping Twilight’s head dissolved to dust, falling down her neck to the ground.

Her head and neck free to move, Twilight looked behind her at the unicorn, who was staring at her with one eyebrow arched.

“You are from the Royal University, are you not?”

Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”

The unicorn huffed. “Answering a question with a question,” she muttered. She cleared her throat and straightened her neck. “Very well, I suppose proper introductions are in order. My name is Rarity. I’m what you might call a gem enthusiast.”

The bonds holding Rainbow Dash and Twilight dissolved completely, turning into a pale sand and running down around their coats.

Rarity gestured to the two of them with a hoof. “And yourselves?”

Rainbow Dash and Twilight glanced at one another. Rainbow shrugged. “The name’s Rainbow Dash. I’m a Cloudsdale Scout looking for the other members of my squad.”

“Twilight,” Twilight said. “Graduate of the University, and I’ve never seen nor heard of magic like yours before.”

“I wouldn’t believe you if you said you had. I’m the only pony who knows how to cast it,” Rarity said, her gaze drifting towards Rainbow Dash as she spoke. Walking over to the pegasus, she gestured to her spear. “Such an ugly thing… May I?”

Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. “May you what?”

Sliding the spear out of its holster, Rarity examined its rusted point. She paused for a moment and sat. The spear lay level as she weighed it in her hooves. Wordlessly, she took the bladed end and placed it against the ground.

Pale yellow crystals grew from its tip and spread across the rusted steel in a fractal pattern, covering it completely. Once the blade had been covered, the crystals shattered to a fine sand and dissolved off the blade. What remained was gleaming steel. The fractals left by the crystals etched in a beautiful pattern along the flat of the blade.

She handed the spear back to Rainbow Dash, who took it with wide eyes.

“Wow…” Rainbow Dash said, examining the renewed blade. Its edge looked sharper than any she had ever seen. “Uh, I mean, thanks, but why?”

“It was distractingly hideous,” Rarity said with a wave of her hoof. “I hope you don’t mind my saying—a downright eyesore for anypony to look upon.”

“That’s it?”

Rarity wrinkled her nose. “Is that not reason enough?” She shook her head before Rainbow Dash could respond, then looked to each of them, smiling. “Well then. Lovely meeting you two. I can’t say it’s every moon’s phase that I get to speak with somepony intelligible and civilized, let alone two ponies both at once, but there is something yet I must search for, and so I suppose this is a quick, but fond, farewell.”

With that, she began to leave.

“Wait,” Rainbow Dash said, causing her to pause. “I’m looking for my friends. We believe they might be around here. Have you seen a pegasus mare with a short orange mane and bright yellow coat or a pegasus stallion with a dark blue mane and lighter blue coat? We got separated when a manticore near here attacked us.”

Rarity spun to face her, one of her delicate eyebrows raised. “A manticore, you say?”

Rainbow Dash leaned forward, feeling an eagerness at her reaction. “Yeah, a darkened one. You know where he is?”

Rarity nodded, pointing in a direction beyond the other side of the clearing. “There was the body of such a creature not far off that way when I passed through just hours ago.”

“Body?” Rainbow Dash repeated, her ears perking up.

“Yes, that’s right.” Rarity grimaced. “A bit of a gruesome sight, too, if I do say so. It appeared absolutely riddled with wounds—must have taken quite the effort to finally bring the beast down.”

Rainbow Dash glanced at Twilight, the corners of her mouth twitching from her barely suppressed grin.

Rarity cleared her throat. “Well, I’d best be off for real this time. I do have an order of business here of my own. I would enjoy if we were to meet again. It’s been so long since I’ve spoken to somepony.” She shook her head, smiling. “Then again, I suppose this land doesn’t look kindly upon such reunions, does it?”

She turned to walk away, but she did not leave without bidding them one last farewell. “May the moonlight shine well upon your travels.”

Twilight and Rainbow Dash watched as she left. The giant crystal embedded in the cliff gradually broke down to dust in her absence. Once she was a mere silhouette in the rain, Rainbow Dash turned to Twilight, a grin spreading across her face.

“Did you hear that? Spitfire and Soarin killed the manticore. That means they’re still out there!”

Twilight nodded slowly, still staring after where the white unicorn went. “If what she said is true, we should go see the body. There may be signs of where your squad went.”

Finding a steep path down into the clearing, they descended and traveled in the direction Rarity had pointed.

It was only a short way before they came across the manticore’s body. Perforations speckled its chest and front legs. Thin trails of dried blood ran from the holes, though most of the blood stemming from the wounds looked to have been washed away by the rain.

“Was it recent?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“It’s difficult to say. It appears as though it had been a darkened for at least a couple hundred years. Its body is heavily mummified, preserved so the darkness can keep it alive. It looks recent, but recent in this case could mean anytime in the past couple months.”

“So who knows when they were actually here.” Rainbow Dash gave a half-lidded look around and sighed.

As she continued to glance at their surroundings, her brow knotted. “These were some of the ones we searched for mushrooms,” she said, pointing at the cave nearest them. Her gaze moved to the further of the two caves, and her hoof lowered.

“That’s the one I found the manticore in.”

The entrance of the it stood twice as tall and nearly twice as wide as that of the other, its black gaping maw large enough to have fit the dead beast. Leaving the manticore’s body, they crossed over to the cave’s entrance and halted in front of it. Rainbow Dash peered into the darkness, her ears faced forward and twitching.

There came a murmur from inside.

“Do you hear that?” Rainbow Dash asked, her ears stiff and listening for more.

Twilight turned her ears to listen as well. The sound came again, and it sounded like—

“It sounds like a pony,” Twilight said, echoing Rainbow’s thoughts.

Those were the only words Rainbow Dash needed to hear. Heedless of the dark, she walked into into the cave.

“Hey, wait a moment!” Twilight cried behind her, but she ignored her and continued inside, the blackness swallowing her. She needed to find that sound.

As soon as the blackness had swallowed her, it suddenly retreated from a light pink glow. Twilight caught up to her, scowling.

Rain leaking through the soil drizzled from the cave roof above. It left trails across the uneven floor in the places where it fell. Its dripping echoed and filled the cave, along with the croaked moaning of what Rainbow was searching for inside.

Rainbow Dash listened to the noise with her ears alert. She could hear its direction, and she pointed to it. “It sounds like it’s coming from over there,” she said.

She took a few steps, then paused when she realized Twilight wasn’t following. Looking back, she saw Twilight looking back towards the light of the entrance, a frown as she appeared to be contemplating.

The sound came again.

“Coming?” Rainbow Dash asked impatiently.

Twilight nodded, though it seemed reluctant. Rainbow Dash ignored her behavior, huffing as she continued deeper into the cavern.

The dull roar of rain outside the cave faded, the trickling of water and the inconsistent moans filling its absence. As one faded to the other two, the sounds of whoever—or whatever—it was that lay at the back of the cave became clear, and with it, quiet sobs.

They stood before it now. At the edge of Twilight’s light a figure sat hunched over, something on the ground in front of it.

Rainbow Dash glanced down at her hooves. Faint, washed-away trails of blood sat caked upon the stone before them, stemming from where the stranger sat, still in darkness.

Beside her, Twilight sucked in a deep breath. Slowly, she grew the light from her horn.

The watery blood painted a wide path to the object on the ground, the body of a light and dark blue pegasus.

Rainbow Dash’s breath hitched in her throat. Her eyes widened. She felt her heart begin to race, and her voice cracked as a single, terrifying whisper escaped her lips, spoken by a voice she didn’t even recognize as her own.

“Soarin?”

Dark red marred the blue pegasus’ still chest. The figure sat hunched over his wound, skin black and cracked while the faded remnants of a mane draped about its head. A darkened. Its front hooves rested among the red of Soarin’s coat, prodding at his wound.

Rainbow Dash felt her legs shut down and go numb, unresponsive. She stared at Soarin’s body. She stared at his corpse. She stared at the blood, and she stared at the gaping wound running from his hip to his shoulder, and she knew him to be dead. She wanted to shut her eyes, to pretend what she was seeing wasn’t real, but she had seen, and she knew.

The darkened hunched over him stuck its hoof inside his wound, a throaty rasping noise coming from it.

Rainbow Dash blinked. The spell shattered. She stared at the darkened, the black form hunched over his body, touching it, playing with it. A deep rage filled the pit of her stomach. She primed her ears back and clenched her teeth. Her shoulders shook with fury. The darkened was touching Soarin. He was dead, but it didn’t care. Its cracked hooves were red with his blood.

“You leave him alone!” Rainbow Dash shouted, drawing her spear. She sprinted across the cave to Soarin’s body and upon reaching it, stood on her hind legs, towering over the darkened. She held her spear in both hooves, its tip pointed hovering above the darkened’s neck.

“Back away from him,” Rainbow Dash growled. When the darkened didn’t move or even look up, she repeated herself, the point of her weapon touching its neck. “Get. Off. Now.”

The darkened halted as the steel touched its charred skin. It turned, slowly, to look up at her. Its eyes were pale and clouded, but a hint of their former color still remained. They were an unmistakable orange.

Rainbow Dash moved her spear away from the darkened’s neck. She took a second look at its mane. The ghostly white threads of what mane the darkened had left were still colored with a few orange and reddish hairs.

It looked up at Rainbow Dash, its eyes red and veined. In them, she saw what had filled her nightmares. Her anger vaporized, and she held her spear loosely.

“S-Spitfire?” she asked, choking on the word.

The darkened turned back to Soarin’s corpse, sobbing once more.

Rainbow Dash’s spear fell from her hooves and clattered against the floor as she sank to her knees. She clenched her eyes shut as tears came to them. “No no no,” she said, shaking her head. Her shoulders jerked, and her sobs joined those of the darkened’s as her tears spilled onto Soarin’s chest.

Twilight walked over and stood apart from the three of them with her head bowed.

Rainbow Dash looked up from Soarin at Spitfire. Grief had formed lines around Spitfire’s mouth and eyes, her skin ashen and cracked. Rainbow reached across Soarin’s body and embraced her.

“You were always there, looking out for me. I loved you like a sister,” she said as she sobbed into Spitfire’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

Rainbow Dash knew what needed doing, and she knew she would be the one to do it. Grabbing her spear off the ground, she thrust it through Spitfire’s heart.

A gasp came from Spitfire as the blade pierced her. Her sobs halted, then she grew still.

Rainbow Dash removed her blade, now darkened red, and gripped Spitfire’s limp form. Tears began to freely race down her cheeks, and her head snapped back as an unearthly scream tore through her throat.