Rainbow followed the villagers inside the temple, licking her lips of the crumbs from her fritter to settle her stomach from complaining. They were all gathered around the stairs leading further inside, hearing murmers from the crowd as they seemed to worry about something. She made her way past the crowd, spotting Applejack closer to the stairs.

"Applejack, what's happening?" she asked.

"The summoner hasn't come out yet," she said. "...Well, more like apprentice summoner. See, summoners have to go through a Cloister of Trials in each temple, and beyond those rooms is where they pray."

"And they get the aeon in the temple too?" Rainbow asked.

"Eyup. But it's been a whole day." The pegasus looked at Applejack in shock. "It's forbidden to go in there unless you're a summoner or a guardian."

"What!?" Rainbow ran up the stairs, turning back to face the captain while the villagers stared at her in shock. "And you're all gonna stand there and do nothing!? What if the summoner dies!?"

"Get away from there!" the monk shouted. "The precepts must be obeyed!"

"Like I give a flying feather!" Everyone gasped in horror as they watched the pegasus run inside the Cloister of Trials.

Applejack shook her head as she rubbed her forehead. "That darn pegasus is gonna get it big time..."

"I can't believe these ponies," Rainbow mumbled to herself as she descended the stairs. "How stupid are they!? You help somepony important if they're in danger!"

At the start of the Cloister of Trials, Rainbow paused as she was looking at nothing but a dead end. All there was was a glyph on the wall on the opposite side, and some strange glowing letters she couldn't decipher on the right. Confused, she approached the wall with the glyph, the arrows on it glowing clockwise, starting with the one pointing up.

"They hay is this?" Curious, she reached out a hoof and touched the wall, the glyph began glowing along with the wall with the glowing characters. The words disappeared and were replaced with the same shaped glyph like on the wall. She touched this glyph, making it glow and move part of the wall up, revealing another pathway. "Oh. Cool. It's like a mysterious dungeon...except it looks like I have to solve puzzles...Yay."

Rainbow trudged down the new pathway and was greeted by a pedestal that had a glowing green sphere resting on it. There was an image of the glyph shown above the sphere, the pegasus groaning as she was right about the puzzle solving. Taking the sphere in her mouth, she continued heading down until she was met with a door. Luckily, there was an indent in the center, a perfect fit for the sphere to fit in.

After placing it in its new home, the door opened the way to a new hallway. She walked down the "U" shaped hall, seeing another indent in the wall on the left in the first section, more of the strange characters on the right along with an empty pedistal on the left in the second section, and nothing but a dead end in the last section. Walking back to the middle, she touched the words and made another glyph appear, opening the wall to reveal a room with a different colored sphere that was glowing blue. The indent it was inside made a lot of blue lines glow all along the room, which was kind of cool looking to the pegasus.

Rainbow took this sphere out, the lights disappearing without its source. Turning around to the pedestal, she placed it in its new home, making the wall disappear and freeing it. Now that it was free, she was able to move the pedestal, spotting a shining glyph in an square imprint on the floor, the perfect size to fit the mobile pedestal. After pushing it over it, the pedestal sank into the floor.

"Have ya lost your mind?" Rainbow nearly leapt out of her fur as she heard Applejack behind her. She stood next to the pegasus, though the mare wasn't mad at her. "Don't worry about it. Only summoners and their guardians can enter here."

"...So, you're a guardian?" Applejack nodded.

As the pedestal shrank into the ground, the floor turned into an elevator, its sudden movement surprising Rainbow Dash. "Along with summoners, their guardians are allowed entrance, since some of the temples can be dangerous. Summoners go through here and pray to the Chamber of the Fayth, where they'll receive the aeon of the temple. A guardian's job is to protect their summoner from any danger. Two of them are already down there." Applejack began to worry as they got closer to where the rest of the guardians were. "One of them, Ah got no clue what he's thinkin'. And the other...Ya'll do NOT wanna tick her off, especially when it comes to rules."

They reached their destination, both mares entering the room that lead to the chamber, where it rested up the stairs. The hymn this time was sung by a mare only, making it almost ominous, even though the song was kind of soothing. The guardians that were currently waiting was a purple scaled dragon with a green underbelly and spines on its back, and a lavender unicorn mare wearing a dark purple dress, holding a hoof-made stuffed donkey wearing blue and white polka dot pants. On the back of the dragon, Rainbow could see what looked like stubs, either where his wings are growing in or where they were ripped off.

The purple dragon saw them, growling angrily, catching the unicorn's attention. "You cannot be serious, Applejack." As she stood up from where she sat on the stairs, the one thing that surprised Rainbow Dash was the doll she had in her hooves move on its own, rushing at the earth pony and leering at her with its mismatched button eyes. "Did you really think we couldn't handle waiting for this long?"

"N-No. It's not that, Twi..." The unicorn stood in front of them, her doll climbing up on her back and stood on her head. "Told ya she gets mad," Applejack whispered to Rainbow Dash.

"And who in Spira is this?" Both she and the doll pointed at Rainbow Dash. "She's not a guardian! Do you have any idea how many precepts she's already broken just for being here!? Several, Applejack! Se-ver-al!"

"Hey, if you wanna blame somepony, blame me!" Rainbow said, smacking the unicorn's hoof away. "I'm the one who ran in here because I was doing something you and scaly over there aren't doing, which happens to be saving your summoner!"

"Excuse me!?" The mare glared daggers at Rainbow as steam began to rise from her mane.

Before they were going to fight against each other, the door to the Chamber of the Fayth began to open, averting their attention. Coming out from the chamber, a yellow pegasus mare with a long pink mane that covered most of her face staggered out, her face matted with sweat and on the verge of fainting. She wore a white and purple dress, a special design of clothing showing she was a summoner, though it wasn't as large as the one that was depicted on the statue of Kindred Heart. It was a shock for Rainbow to seeing a mare around her age was the summoner everypony was worried about, thinking that all of them were supposed to be stallions.

The mare began to step down the stairs, only to lose her footing as she fell. The others panicked, but the dragon quickly caught her before she tumbled down and hurt herself further. She mumbled something to him, probably thanking the not as terrifying dragon as she leaned against him for support, shakily getting back on her hooves. She brushed away some strands of her mane out of her face, opening her eyes to reveal a strange pair of eyes, making Rainbow's jaw drop. One eye was blue while the other was green, a strangely unique pair of eyes she had ever seen.

"I did it," the young summoner said exhaustively. "I'm a summoner now."

The group made their way out of the Cloister of Trials and back out to the main lobby of the temple. Everypony in Besaid breathed sighs of relief as they saw the summoner finally exit with her guardians. They soon surrounded her as she got down the stairs, crowding around her as they had worried for the mare after praying for a whole day. As soon as Rainbow Dash was seen after following the others, many of them gave the brash pegasus dirty looks, her entering the Cloister without the status of guardian or summoner definitely putting her on the list of untrustworthy heathens to allow in the temple.

Everypony began to head outside the temple and to the center of the village, with the pegasus summoner standing before everypony in the middle of the square. Rainbow made her way over to the crowd, staying far in the back since the whole village hates her. She was about to turn back and hide in the temple for a little, only for somepony to bite on her tail and be dragged through the crowd.

"Ahh!" She couldn't even pull herself away, fearing a beating from the entire crowd.

As soon as she was pulled up to the front of the audience, Applejack helped her back up, being the culprit for dragging the pegasus by her tail. "You're gonna want to see this up close, Rainbow. Ready, Fluttershy!?"

Fluttershy turned her head toward Applejack, nodding her head, though feeling really nervous with everypony watching her. She had a staff in her hooves, standing on her hind legs with perfect balance, even without using her wings.

"Uhh, what's she doing?" Rainbow asked.

"Ya'll are gonna see a summonin' with your own eyes." Everypony fell silent as they watched Fluttershy.

She took in a deep breath to calm her nerves, not only with the several ponies watching, but this was going to be her first summon. After taking the time to calm down, she stepped back and held her staff behind her, wings flaring out as she cast her magic. A glyph began to appear underneath her, shooting out four orbs of light up into the sky. They soared up high until they ran into each other, creating a shockwave of light, and appearing from that light was a giant avian, something that Rainbow had never seen before in her life.

The creature unfurled its massive wings and dived down, soaring over everypony until it flapped its wings, halting its decent as it hovered gently until it landed. It stood before Fluttershy, giving out light, monstrous sounding squawks as it looked at the pegasus as if judging her. It didn't seem hostile, at least to Rainbow Dash's knowledge, despite it looking like one of the fiends she had encountered in the past. Fluttershy, however, wasn't all that scared of it, slowly approaching it as the avian's head bent lower to her.

She held out her hoof, allowing her to pet it. "Wow," Rainbow said as the rest of the village applauded for Fluttershy's success at her first summoning. "What is that thing?"

"An aeon," answered Applejack. "That's Valefor. She's the first aeon many summoners get first before their pilgrimage begins."

"That thing's a girl?" Rainbow looked at the aeon a lot closely, unable to tell what gender it was.

Applejack and the unicorn approached Fluttershy and praised her for her rise from an apprentice to a full-fledged summoner. Valefor soon took off and flew up into the sky, disappearing from sight as it was dismissed. Rainbow watched it disappear, having just watched the coolest thing she had ever seen in her entire life. Next Chapter: Chapter 7: Celebration to Adventure Estimated time remaining: 12 Hours, 2 Minutes