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A Mad Dash Through Time and Space

Chapter Five - The God Gambit

A commission for an anonymous brony

As written by Joseph Raszagal

~ ~ ~

"Did you ever want to take bad advice?

Did you ever want to go and take it twice?

Do you remember when the world began,

To put up its thorny fence?

Right you are my friend,

So what's wrong with them?

There go the wrong way kids"

• "Wrong Way Kids" by Bad Religion

~ ~ ~

A swarm of stars circled Rainbow Dash's vision, quickly joined by a pounding pain in her head. It felt as though there was a team of pegasi creating a miniature thunderstorm inside of her skull. What had happened, why did her head hurt so much? She remembered... something, but the memory was vague and incomplete, as if a thick mental fog had surrounded it and blurred it beyond the point of recognition.

A word rested on the tip of Rainbow's tongue, but precisely what that word was and its exact significance continued to elude her. Oddly, there was something a bit less metaphorical on her tongue as well. Even through the haze of dizziness and confusion, the pegasus easily recognized the luridly metallic flavor that tainted her taste buds.

"Blood," muttered her inner voice.

Immediately, Rainbow Dash felt the cogs and gears within her head begin to turn. Along with the identification of the offending pollutant saturating her mouth, a great deal of which had left a crimson streak running through her coat as it dribbled down her chin and chest, yet more information surfaced. The word that she had been struggling and searching for came back to her in a blast of enlightenment.

"Twilight!"

Twilight had been badly injured!

No, no, it was decidedly worse than that... wasn't it? Things were still too fuzzy for Rainbow to really piece them together properly, but the word "injury" just felt wrong somehow. Breathing heavily, the blue weathermare gritted her teeth and focused. In spite of the pain, the jigsaw puzzle of images in her head continued to come together, its many scattered fragments gradually reforming into a single, solid whole.

Rainbow Dash's eyes widened as the large, shadowy silhouette of an alicorn fell over her.

"Oh, Celestia, no," she cried aloud, "Twilight, you can't be dead!"

She remembered.

Raszagal had fled from their fight up in the sky and instead appeared before Twilight in a flash of magic. Even from high altitude, with claws of wind raking at her eyes as she rapidly descended, Rainbow blinked through the tears and bore witness to the awful event taking place amongst the trees down below. In much the same fashion as the purple mare had done once before, with certain death staring her in the face in the form of Nightmare Moon, Twilight bravely stood her ground. The courageous act only made what came next that much harder for Rainbow Dash to bare. In a blur of movement, the Eternal lunged forward, skewering her lavender friend on his horn.

And it was then that the pegasus lost control.

Every color turned red. Every thought turned to hate. Like a falling meteorite, burning white-hot with rage, she plummeted down towards the ground, prepared to use her entire body as a projectile and embed both herself and Raszagal at the bottom of a molten crater.

The scant smattering of seconds that followed this, however, was still a complete blur to her. Anything that happened between then and the moment that she reopened her eyes, sprawled in pain across the Everfree dirt, was a mystery.

"Twilight," muttered Dash again.

"Worry not, child," mused Raszagal, his ever-present grin somehow even more menacing. "Very soon now you shall join her."

Battered and beaten, Rainbow Dash bit down on her tongue and forced herself up off of the ground. Her legs were shaky, her wings were aflame and ripe with pain, but her determination was greater than the sum of all of her aches combined.

She looked up and locked eyes with her executioner.

Fighting back her tears, Dash silently vowed, "If this has to happen, if there's nothing else that I can do, then I'm gonna go down the way _ she _ did. Fearlessly."

Shivers shot up and down her spine as she gulped, steeling herself for what was to come.

"The least I can do for her..."

Dash's lower lip begged her for permission to quiver, but each request fell upon deaf ears.

"...is pay my respects by following her example and dying with a bit of dignity."

Her stomach's contents attempted to rise into her throat. She denied them permission.

"That's... that's loyalty... isn't it?"

Raszagal's horn began to glow, almost as if in response to Rainbow's unspoken question. But what followed this unnerving glimmer of magic, however, was not what the pegasus had been anticipating.

"Was it worth it?" he inquired.

Confused, the blue mare hesitantly asked, "W-what?"

"Was it worth it, all of this? The yellow one's fall from the sky, the hole punched through the purple one's chest, and now your imminent demise. Was. It. All. Worth. It?"

"Of... of course!"

"Oh? You do not sound so certain."

"I..."

He was toying with her.

Rainbow Dash wasn't exactly the cleverest pony in the kingdom, however, she didn't need to be a brain surgeon in order to glean that much from the situation. Pinkie had been kidnapped, three of her friends had been hospitalized, and a portion of her town had been destroyed. Even a pacifist would have retaliated with a call-to-arms after all of that! Still, for a moment no longer than the span of a single heartbeat, time seemed to stop as the prismatic pegasus surveyed her surroundings to see the full extent of the damage that had been done following their retaliation.

Off to the side, Spitfire was somehow standing again and had a wing wrapped around Twilight's shivering, bleeding form, sheltering the unicorn as best she could. The flame-colored mare's other wing hung limply at her side, no longer simply barren of most of its feathers but also mangled and twisted in a variety of stomach-churning angles. Squinting through a sheet of blood that oozed from a long gash across her forehead, Spitfire periodically nuzzled into Twilight's violet mane, struggling to keep the unicorn conscious. A sizable stream of desperate tears added to the stream blood as it poured down her face.

Directly across from them, sporting what must have been the fiercest expression Rainbow had ever seen, was the Doctor. Like Dash and Spitfire, the Time Stallion had forced himself up into a standing position, though one of his front legs was clearly injured as it seemed to refuse to carry his weight. His wings, while peppered with cuts and nicks, looked to be largely unharmed and still usable, though the idea of taking off into the sky for another round of aerial combat was preposterous. Rainbow Dash couldn't remember when during their battle the Doctor had sustained these injuries, but after taking notice of the painfully long skid mark in the dirt that lead from where she stood over to him, she could guess.

"He tried to protect me."

The answer to Raszagal's question, while obvious before, suddenly became even more so.

"Yes, it was worth it," stated Dash firmly, her head held high. "Fighting for the sake of your family, friends, and home is always worth it, no matter how stacked the odds are against you. I'd rather die here, with them, than live knowing that they'd died alone and without me."

Once again, Raszagal's smile was replaced by a frown.

Lowering his head to aim his glowing horn at the defiant mare, he growled, "The sentimentality of a fool. Your bravery will do little to help your kin and townsmen a I flay them alive."

The alicorn's horn grew brighter and brighter, but still, Rainbow refused to back down or even shield her eyes. Instead, she puffed out her chest and stamped at the ground with one hoof, prepared to be smote where she stood.

"Raszagal!" shouted the Doctor.

The Eternal's smile immediately returned, sickly enough to warrant a medical study in an effort to find a cure all its own.

"Yes?" inquired Raszagal, turning his head.

He had been expecting the Doctor to intervene. Or, to be more accurate, he had been looking forward to it.

"Leave her be, Raszagal," stated the Time Stallion, doing his best to look intimidating despite his injuries, "Your fight is with me."

"My fight has always been with you, dear Doctor," retorted the Eternal, rolling his eyes. "You simply brought an entourage this time. Considering the battle that we were only moments ago engaged in, would killing your little soldiers really be so out of the question? The fault is yours for bringing them, after all."

"I won't deny that. I can't deny that," muttered the brown pegasus, shaking his head. "Just... please... let her go."

Please.

Few things brought the power-hungry Eternal more pleasure than pleading, especially when those pleas came from someone that he deemed intelligent or a legitimate threat.

Flicking his tail and flashing a malevolent grin, Raszagal mused, "Do tell, Doctor, what do I stand to gain by allowing her to escape?"

The Doctor opened his mouth to reply, but a sudden sense of suffocation stopped his answer dead.

"Come now, the midnight oil is burning dry," chuckled Raszagal darkly. "What was that old Earth saying? Ah, yes... I'm all ears."

"Nothing," sneered the Stallion Lord at last, the word seemingly caustic to his tongue.

"Precisely!" exclaimed the Eternal, "I would gain nothing, nothing at all!"

A few seconds of silence reigned supreme as Raszagal staged a debate in his head. Should he simply slay his defeated foes outright and be done with them, or should he indulge himself in one final game?

The Doctor bit his lip and hoped against hope that he had hedged his bet well.

"That massive ego, all of that pride," whispered a voice in the back of the Time Pony's mind, "surely they can't let you resist this one last chance to prove to us just how _ superior _ you are. C'mon, you arrogant bastard, you don't have a choice!"

As a wise woman once said, perhaps more than once actually, "the Doctor lies".

During the big meeting back at Twilight's library, he had been asked if Raszagal possessed any weaknesses that could be easily exploited. He had told them that aside from the Eternal's transformation into a pony and his lack of creative and imaginative thought, no, he did not.

But the Doctor had lied.

While not a weakness inherent to all Eternals, a vast majority of those that the Stallion Lord had encountered and crossed swords with during his travels did indeed seem to suffer from a certain fault. However, given that they were immortal, quasi-deities, this fault was not a physical one. It was, instead, mental. If presented with a challenge, big or small, an Eternal would accept it. Sometimes hesitantly, sometimes without question, but regardless, the outcome would always be the same. They would always take the challenge. To the best of the Doctor's knowledge, the root of this mental imperfection was a strange psychological need to be seen and viewed by the party challenging them as superior. They needed to be better than their challenger. They needed to be victorious. It was as necessary to them as oxygen was to a flame.

And Raszagal was no different. In fact, if anything, he was the very definition of this weakness.

Pride incarnate.

"However," began the alicorn Eternal.

The Doctor suppressed his own urge to grin as Raszagal spoke up. Instinctively, the Time Stallion knew that Raszagal had taken the bait and unknowingly allowed his train of thought to follow the direction that the Doctor had very carefully, very subtly nudged it towards.

"I would be remiss if I let a challenge, no matter how thin the ice my opponent currently stands upon, go by unanswered," continued Raszagal, his tone haughty and smug. "So, if you will excuse the pun, enlighten me. What do you propose?"

With a gulp, the Doctor pressed forward with his plan and answered, "A battle of wits. We take turns asking each other riddles. The first to fail to answer correctly or take too long while answering loses."

"Interesting," mused the Eternal alicorn, thoughtfully rubbing at his chin with one hoof. "And the maximum amount of time allotted for answering each riddle?"

"15 seconds."

"Very well, though that still leaves the small matter of the victor's winnings. While I have much to offer, you have nothing to offer me. What motivation should I have to play a game in which there is no prize?"

Again, silence befell the castle ruins.

His grin widening, Raszagal chortled, continuing, "Which is why I propose we make the winnings a separate game altogether. To the victor... go no spoils! Instead, seeing as how I cannot technically lose, your only real victory in this game shall be in prolonging it. The longer we play, the more time the rainbow one will have to run. Every riddle answered correctly, every minute we spend matching wits, will translate out to that many more seconds her little heart has left to beat. The moment you lose, the very moment your mind muddles over and fails to grant you an answer, I will take flight in pursuit. Upon finding her, I will kill her and I will take my time in doing so, dragging her death out for as many excruciating minutes as our little game has been."

Almost immediately, the Doctor felt his plan falling apart as he reeled and shouted, "No, I can't agree to that!"

"Really?" smirked Raszagal. "Because this is the only option that I'm giving you. If you would like to play this game, then that is how we are going to play it, otherwise I'll simply kill the whole lot of you right now and call it a day."

Before the Doctor could muster up another protest, a small voice several yards to the right of them answered, "Alright."

Both the Time Stallion and the alicorn turned to see Rainbow Dash standing there, her battle-scarred wings flared and ready to vault her skyward.

"Rainbow, no!" yelled the Doctor, glaring daggers at Raszagal. "He knows that we need to stall for time, whether it be to prolong the inevitable or for reinforcements of some kind to arrive! Don't play into his game, that's exactly what he wants; there has to be a better way than this!"

"There isn't," stated both the Eternal and Rainbow Dash simultaneously.

The blue pegasus shuddered as she realized that she had just thought the same thing as Raszagal. The mere idea of having anything in common with the evil alicorn, no matter how miniscule, sent a nauseating chill rippling throughout her body.

"There isn't," repeated Rainbow Dash, her tone louder this time so as to better distinguish herself from her enemy. "The way I see things, I'm pretty much bucked either way. I can either die right now... or die in a last-ditch effort to save our skins. It might not end up panning out, but hey, at least that's something."

"Rainbo~

Dash ignored the Time Pony's protests and continued, "I don't know who exactly I'll look for or where I'm gonna look for 'em, but I'll try. Maybe... just maybe... I'll get lucky?"

The Doctor shook his head in defeat. Fueled by a potent mixture of determination, stubbornness, and loyalty, Rainbow Dash could not be dissuaded.

"I was... I was ready to die a few seconds ago, totally ready," said the blue pegasus, her words as hard as tempered steel. "But not anymore. Any chance at turning these tides around is more than enough to put the fight back in me. Besides, I can break the promise that I just made in favor of a better one. I mean, hey, why vow to die as honorably as somepony you love when you've still got a one-in-a-million shot at saving 'em?"

One-in-a-million.

Twilight coughed, a spout of blood spraying across the ground in front of her.

One-in-a-million.

Were such astronomically impossible odds ever supposed to sound so uplifting?

Licking her likewise bloody lips, Rainbow glanced over at her fellow Element Barer and continued, "I could either honor Twi's memory or I could take a wild stab in the dark at ensuring that she'll be alive tomorrow to make plenty more memories. I'm only going on a hunch here, but I can guess which of the two she'd appreciate more."

Raszagal smiled sinisterly. Hope was always such a fun fuel to throw onto the flames.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," spat Rainbow Dash as she turned to face the Eternal again. "Yeah, I'll take part in your challenge. If we lose, you can go ahead and do whatever the buck you want to me; carve out all my insides and turn me into a sock puppet or whatever, I don't care. Just don't cheat. You can play games like 'Drain the Blood' and 'Scream Louder' with me all you want, but only if Doc over here loses. No sooner, alright?"

"If he loses?"

"Yeah, if he loses."

"Bold words, girl, bold words."

"If I were a bike, bold would be my only gear. Now, what do you say?"

Bemused by Dash's brashness, the alicorn stated evenly, "I am not widely known as a man of my word, but the rules of engagement and the rules of sportsmanship are two entirely different matters altogether. Worry not, I shan't cheat."

Rainbow Dash's expression was that of a pony whom wholeheartedly believed she was being lied to.

"Aside from the obvious 'try not to bring back anypony less capable than ourselves', got any suggestions for me?" asked Rainbow, still glaring at Raszagal even as she addressed the Doctor. "I really meant it when I said that I didn't have any idea where I should start looking or who I should be looking for."

Seeing his last chance to offer the blue mare a clue as to what their one and only secret weapon was, the Doctor cryptically replied, "Any_thing_."

The Stallion Lord hoped against hope that he had stressed the second part of the word just enough that Rainbow Dash had been able to glean what she needed from it while at the same time Raszagal somehow wasn't.

Apparently oblivious, the blue mare nonetheless nodded her head and said, "I'll try."

Left with no words that she felt were worth voicing, Rainbow Dash sucked in a burning lungful of air, flapped her tattered wings, launched herself skyward, and set the game into motion.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"I can't say I envy your current position, Doctor," mused Raszagal as Rainbow's fleeing form steadily faded from view into the blending oranges and reds of the distant sunset. "The ice that you're standing on is as razor-thin as ever and I have only just begun to turn up the heat. It will melt, you will fall, and I will watch as you drown in the freezing depths. It will be... spectacular."

Calmly, the Doctor shook his head and said, "She'll succeed."

"In her condition it will be a miracle if she manages to make it as far as the tiny town that we arrived in, much less any further."

"I've said it before. The universe is big. It's vast and complicated and ridiculous and sometimes, very rarely, improbable things just happen... and we call them miracles."

"Then you freely admit that you are depending entirely on a miracle?" laughed Raszagal uncontrollably.

"Proudly," growled the Doctor, his jaw set stubbornly, "Now, we've put this off for long enough. Who goes first?"

"Considering what you stand to not only gain, but also lose, I suppose that it would only be fair to concede that right to you, Time Lord," chuckled the alicorn darkly.

"Very well," replied the Doctor, narrowing his eyes as he sorted through his thoughts to find a good question to start things off with. "Consider counting upwards from one to ten~

"Standard Earth Roman?" interrupted Raszagal.

Looking somewhat annoyed, the Time Stallion rolled his eyes and retorted, "I was getting to that, yes. Now, with that in mind, what number should come next in the following sequence: One, two, three, two, one, two, three, four, two?"

"One," answered the Eternal instantaneously, a serpentine smile stretched across his muzzle. "I was under the impression that you wanted to stall for time, but if all you've brought to the table are the archaic mathematics of a fallen civilization, perhaps I was mistaken."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Pain lanced from muscle to muscle as Rainbow's wings struggled to hold her aloft.

"Keep going."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Four brothers are born," began Raszagal, still smiling. "The first runs but never wearies. The second eats but can never be sated. The third drinks but is forever parched. The fourth sings a song that shall never end. Who are they?"

Displaying the same problem-solving speed shown by his opponent, the Doctor took a step forward and replied, "Water, fire, earth, and wind."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The weathermare bit her tongue to hold back a series of curses, her wings' normally spry and flexible joints stiffening with every additional movement. If they locked up on her while still in mid-flight, she would drop out of the sky like a stone.

"Keep going."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"What is it that breaks the moment that you name it?" questioned the Time Pony.

"Silence," answered Raszagal, "but for once it seems that they are neither here nor there."

Both stallions scoffed, aggravating encounters with equally aggravating foes flashing briefly through their minds.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Dammit, dammit, dammit!" yelled Rainbow Dash, her held curses set free as stress cramps tore through her overexerted muscles.

Attempting even the most pedestrian of flight maneuvers taxed her as fiercely as though she were slogging chest-deep through a muddy swamp.

"Keep going!"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"What," asked the alicorn, "is placed on a table, cut, but never eaten?"

Having gambled with much more than mere chips in the past, the Doctor confidently retorted, "A deck of cards."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The effort required to remain airborne was becoming too great. Gravity was beginning to reclaim the prismatic pegasus.

"Keep going! Keep going!"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"So long as it remains unknown, it is something, but once it is known it becomes nothing."

"A riddle."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ragged breaths escaped burning lungs as Rainbow gradually dropped in altitude, her impressive aerial endurance finally spent.

"NO, KEEP GOING!"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Place your fingers in my eye sockets and I will open my jaws. Linen cloth, quills, or paper, my greedy lust devours them all."

"Scissors."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

With a wince of pain the blue-coated pegasus hit the ground, tumbling end over end like a thrown rag doll skidding across a child's bedroom floor.

"DAMMIT, DAMMIT, DAMMIT! I! WILL! KEEP! GOING!"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Those who possess it do not speak of it, those who take it do not know of it, and those who know of it do not want it."

"Counterfeited currency."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Struggling back up to her hooves, Dash gritted her teeth until her gums bled and took off in a limping gallop down the overgrowth-infested forest trail she had crash-landed into.

"CELESTIA DAMN ME TO THE CENTER OF THE SUN, I WILL KEEP GOING! WINGS OR NO WINGS, I AM NOT FINISHED YET!"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"You are of course aware that there exists no riddle that I am incapable of answering," smirked Raszagal, the glee in his expression almost childlike in nature.

Angrily, the Time Stallion huffed, "You're interrupting my turn again."

"Honestly, I could care less," Raszagal replied. "The entire purpose of this game is to stall for time, remember? I see no reason why I cannot assist you in stalling so long as it serves the double purpose of keeping me entertained."

"How courteous of you."

"How sarcastic of you."

A moment of tense silence settled in between the two foes.

But only for a moment.

"What is my name?" questioned the Doctor.

Another moment of silence settled in.

His eyes widening, Raszagal replied, "What?"

"My name," repeated the Doctor, a smile curving upwards around his bloodied muzzle, "what is it?"