An eerie fog obscured everything and made it almost impossible to see. Tarnish peered out of the windows and could only see an impenetrable wall of thick, white mist. The snowflake gem shone bright now, it didn’t flicker at all, and it filled the wheelhouse with dazzling blue light. They had crossed into the Howling Peaks some time ago and Tarnish was eager for something to happen.

“Hey, Daring…”

“Yes, Tarnish?”

“Am I your mook?” Tarnish asked, giving voice to one of his many concerns about the relationship with his boss.

Rowdy laughter filled the wheelhouse and Daring’s whole body shook as her wings flapped against her sides. When Tarnish scowled, she laughed ever harder, then wrapped her wing over his back to reassure him.

“No, Mister Teapot, you are my hired goon. A mook is somepony that you don’t care about. You are my loyal henchpony.”

Squinting down at the laughing pegasus, Tarnish’s muzzle wrinkled while his nostrils flared. He snorted, once, twice, and then a third time, and Daring Do was having to hold herself up with the one wing over his back while wiping her eyes with the other. Eyes darting down to the pegasus beside him, Tarnish let out a breathy sigh of disgust.

At least he wasn’t a mook.

Daring Do was straining to breathe now and her eyes bulged as she continued to bellow with laughter. It was a side of her that Tarnish didn’t see often, Daring only laughed and let her mane down, so to speak, when everything was boring, calm, and safe.

“Doctor Daring Do and her loyal junior botanist henchpony,” Tarnish muttered to himself. “At least with Maud, I get to be her husband… but with you… I’m a henchpony.”

“But not a mook!” Daring Do gasped a few times as she tried to rein it in, but she failed and exploded with more laughter. After a few more attempts to hold it in, she did, but did so just long enough to say, “Rainbow Dash is the mook!” After she got this out, more laughter followed, and it spilled out from her muzzle in loud, barking whoops.

Hearing this caused Tarnish to almost choke, he coughed, then laughed, then coughed a bit more, and this continued to the point where stars swam in his vision. He leaned against Daring Do, almost wheezing, and the pair of them brayed with laughter that only they could appreciate.

When you were a henchpony, it was important to know the pecking order.

The laughter came to a sudden and abrupt halt when the instrument cluster went dead. Both reacted, Daring Do lept to the controls and Tarnish pressed in beside her. Tarnish didn’t have his pilot’s license yet, and he watched everything she did, hoping to learn. Everything was dead and unresponsive. The overhead light blinked a few times, then powered down completely.

No lights, no power, and Tarnish realised that he couldn’t hear the faint drone of the airscrews, but the steam turbine was still thrumming. The ship was still moving forwards, drifting perhaps, Tarnish could feel it. The control yoke was stiff and resistant to Daring Do shoving on it. The ship gave an odd shudder and Daring Do let out a panicked yelp.

“We’re moving faster,” Daring Do said to Tarnish as she looked up at him with wide, frightened eyes. “Somehow, we’re gaining speed with a dead ship.”

“What’s going on?” Tarnish tried not to think about how they were several miles up in the air, high above the jagged mountain peaks below. A cold, prickly sensation caused his testicles to clench and draw up into his body.

The snowflake gem went dark and both ponies just stared at it in mute terror.

The door to the wheelhouse slammed open with a bang, which almost caused both Daring Do and Tarnish to jump right out of their skins. Rainbow Dash came skidding into the room, her hooves clopping against the wooden floor, and when she couldn’t stop in time, she plowed into Tarnish.

“Everything went dark!” she cried. “And then I found I couldn’t fly!”

“What?” Daring Do’s voice was incredulous.

“I CAN’T FLY!” Rainbow Dash screamed as she disentangled herself from Tarnish and his tail. To demonstrate, Rainbow flapped her wings as hard as she could, and nothing happened. Her hooves didn’t even come an inch off of the ground. “I CAN’T FLY! I CAN’T FLY! I CAN’T—”

With a lightning quick extension of her wing, Daring Do slapped Rainbow Dash across the face. Stunned, Rainbow blinked, then began panting with panic as she rushed forwards to embrace Daring Do. The two pegasus mares stood together, and Daring tried to offer what comfort she could to the stricken Rainbow Dash.

The ship gave another lurch, almost knocking the three of them off of their hooves, and Rainbow Dash let out a piercing, ear-tearing scream of terror. Tarnish tried to look out the window, but there was only fog. White fog, thick, impenetrable, and now, horrifying. Tarnish pushed himself against the two panicking mares and thought of Vinyl. He needed to go looking for her, or, with luck, she would come to the wheelhouse.

A lump developed in Tarnish’s throat as his teacup slid along the console, sloshing tea, and then went sailing over the edge. It crashed to the floor and shattered. The ship was no longer level, which was quite unpleasant to think about. Rainbow Dash screamed again while she stared at the puddle of tea and shattered bits of teacup.

“Mister Teapot,” Daring Do began, and her words were ragged sounding as her voice cracked.

“Yes?”

“I lied, Mister Teapot… you are not my henchpony. You are my best friend and one of my most trusted confidants. I just… I just thought you should know that.”

To Tarnish’s ears, that sounded a lot like goodbye. The ship continued to list and he could hear things crashing belowdecks. The thick fog swirled in an upwards motion outside the windows and Tarnish understood all too well what it meant. He felt lighter as the ship picked up speed and there could no longer be any doubt that they were plunging to the earth.

“Stiff upper lip, Miss Dash. We’re pegasus ponies. Let us face our coming demise with some dignity.”

“But I don’t wanna,” Rainbow whined as she closed her eyes and clung to Daring’s neck. “This can’t be real… this can’t be happening… I can’t fly away from this… I can’t save my friends—”

“Tut tut, Miss Dash.” Daring Do clucked her tongue as she braced her hooves against the floor to keep from pitching over. “Show some backbone. No pegasus wants to die a chicken.”

To Tarnish, Daring Do’s actions seemed logical. There was no point screaming or crying about it. At some point, they would run out of sky and then there would only be mountains, or maybe dirt. His neck straightened and his upper lip went stiff. This wasn’t how he wanted to go, and he wasn’t too happy about it, but there was nothing he could do.

“Rainbow Dash, you have been a good friend. There is no friend more loyal.” Tarnish was shocked by how calm his own voice sounded. He thought of Maud, of Pebble, his beloved sisters, and his family. In a moment of bittersweet emotion, he thought of Princess Celestia. She was right. They shouldn’t have come. She was right all along and now she would mourn them.

It was now obvious why no one ever returned from their search for Skyreach.

“Not like this,” Rainbow begged as she clung to Daring Do for support.

As Vinyl Scratch clambered into the wheelhouse, the fog vanished, revealing quite a view. Mountain peaks were all around them, moving in a blur. The back of the ship was almost pointed down to the earth below. Bright green evergreens could be seen below out of the back window. The ground was rushing up to meet them.

Peering out the back window, Vinyl’s expression could only be described as annoyance. How dare the Endeavour crash with her aboard? She scrambled around a bit on the steep, sloping floor, managed to hook her forelegs around Tarnish’s neck, and she hauled him in for a kiss. She pressed her muzzle against the corner of his mouth and smooched him, then patted him on the neck to reassure him.

Tarnish, not quite done with Vinyl, pulled her back in and planted one very affectionate kiss right on her snoot, a dangerous place to kiss indeed, because that was Octavia’s special smooching spot. Vinyl gave him a good natured cuff across the muzzle with her hoof for his troubles, but he didn’t mind.

The ground was getting closer and Rainbow’s whimpers were growing louder.

Stunned, Tarnish squinted through his tears, which froze on his face. It was cold, freezing, and he didn’t know what was going on. There had been a flash of light, a tug on his body, and now this. The ground was below him, just the ground, and no floor. It was both confusing and disorientating.

There was another flash of light and when Tarnish could see again, it felt as though his descent was a little slower. The cold slashed through his body like the icy touch of Grogar’s shadow. Rainbow Dash was screaming at the top of her lungs now as she plummeted in freefall. Below them, the evergreens grew larger as they drew closer.

More flashes, several rapid fire bursts, and Tarnish felt nauseous from the quick jolts of teleportation. Just as he was about to barf, there were a whole string of rapid bursts of teleportation, and Tarnish found himself teleported away from his own cloud of vomit. He spewed out hot, steaming chunks, some of which froze to his muzzle right away, forming a gruesome, spiky mask shaped by the wind.

Teleportation had its own physics. Things like momentum and velocity were preserved. If a unicorn teleported just before hitting the ground, they would still splatter the moment they reappeared. Tarnish understood this from reading his magical primers, but had never paid much attention because he was utterly incapable of winking, or teleporting as most unicorns now called it.

It dawned on him that Vinyl was challenging physics, trying to slow their velocity, attempting to arrest their momentum, trying to save them. It could be done, but only the most skilled, most capable unicorns could do it. Beside him, Daring Do was flapping her wings as hard as she could, but to no avail. She couldn’t fly and it didn’t slow her down.

Not far away from them, the Endeavour went streaking down, no longer buoyant. The Endeavour was their shelter from the extreme cold, it held their supplies, their gear, their comfort, the Endeavour was life itself to the four companions, and she plummeted towards her end.

More rapid fire blinks took place, causing Tarnish to go dizzy. He could longer tell which way was up or down at this point and burning hot vomit shot out of his nose. He shuddered and kicked in the air, his nostrils and sinuses burning with stomach bile, and some of his own puke went into his eyes, blinding him.

Tarnish had no memory of hitting the ground. He couldn’t breathe, his nostrils were full of puke and the wind had been knocked out of his lungs. His legs kicked and flailed in the snow. Bright purple-blue starbursts exploded in his vision and bells rang in his ears. Things inside of his barrel felt bent, if not broken. There was searing, explosive pain in legs that he became aware of as more of his mind recovered.

There was no air—try as he might, Tarnish just couldn’t seem to gulp in that first breath of air needed to jumpstart his lungs. He panicked and began to thrash around, suffocating, and his vision went dim as the colour drained away. His hearing went next and Tarnish could hear nothing as his oxygen starved brain began shutting down various vital functions.

Something grabbed him and he was being kissed. In his current dreadful state, with frozen vomit crusted all over his muzzle, and quite a bit of blood as well, he was being kissed. It was warm and pleasant, he found that he rather liked it. As he began to drift off from oxygen starvation, he relaxed a bit and quit thrashing around. He felt sleepy and the kiss made him feel warm.

But then the kiss turned awful. Somepony punched him right in his barrel, causing him to make a strange ‘GURK!’ sound that he was incapable of hearing. There was a terrible crushing pressure on his barrel, up and down it went, it was rhythmic and weird, but it also felt good in an odd way. Then, he was being kissed again, and this kiss was so great that Tarnish could hear the blood roaring in his ears. He gasped and was quite surprised to find that he could breathe. He coughed, sputtered, and then, without warning, he barfed again, right into the mouth of whomever was kissing him.

Coughing, gagging, Tarnish discovered that he could see in colour again, and something blue was spluttering beside him. There was a whoop, a gag, and then the sound of chunky liquid spattering against the snow. The wind was almost knocked out of him again when Rainbow Dash pitched over and landed on top of his barrel.

“You son of a bitch!” Rainbow Dash gasped. “You threw up in my mouth!”

Author's Notes:

Some of you have questions. Feel free to ask.