“So you can grant… any wish?” Rainbow Dash asks the unnerving pony that stood before her, shrouded in mist. It had appeared from a small bottle she had found wedged in the branches of an aged tree near Everfree, claiming to have been freed from its ‘prison’ by the mare when she had opened it, offering its magic as a reward.
 
“Yes, pegasus.” It responds in a gravelly, ethereal voice. “But only one.”
 
“Well…” She ponders to herself, thinking deeply. She was already the best flyer in Equestria, an Element of Harmony, destined to be in the Wonderbolts anyway, what more does she really have to wish for? “I want to be on a golden trophy!” She blurts without even thinking.
 
“So be it.” The Djinn responds before evaporating into thin air.
 
Rainbow puts a hoof to her mouth. “Horsefeathers…” She mutters, if she wasn’t so impulsive she could almost certainly have thought of something better to ask for. Still, it wouldn’t be so bad to have her likeness atop a trophy for other ponies to win.
 
The world around her starts to shimmer and sparkle, blurring to her vision as her head swims, overcome by a burst of delayed astral magic and fading to black. In a moment she blinks back into reality, eyes focusing back in as she glances around, wobbling on her hooves.
 
“Hey, what gives!” She shouts, noting her surroundings. She was in a cramped wooden box, not too much bigger than herself with a glass door on one side, edged by a rather large lock. The mare couldn’t see much through the glass by the glare of a bright light above her, only odd shapes and silhouettes beyond. She glances down, finding herself balanced atop a bizarre half-sphere of gold with a wavy shape beneath that, such that she had never seen before in all her days… must be more gold in that thing than some dragon’s hoards!
 
“I didn’t wish to be teleported you dopey genie!” She shouts, voice echoing in the box as she moves to hop off of the sphere to investigate the lock to hopefully open it. A force snags her left hindhoof in the process, sending her falling off backwards and left hanging by her hoof as if it were stuck with glue to the sphere. With a groan and a grumble she levers herself back up to the golden orb to examine the issue.
 
“What in the…” She mumbles, noting that her hoof was mysteriously shifting in colour, turning from sky blue into a shiny metallic gold, just like the object below her. “Hey! What is this!” She shouts again, but the Djinn was long gone.
 
A creeping cold sensation washes up her leg like the splash of an ocean wave in winter as the gold colour spread upward. Her muscles tensed in that leg, locking up into a slightly bent standing position when the gold reached her flank, fur now glittering in gold as her cutie mark changed hue to match.
 
“Wha… no! This isn’t…” She says to herself as she taps that solid leg with a forehoof, returning the sound of inanimate metal. A magical force lifts her right hoof off of the pedestal and pulls it out behind her, causing her balance to wobble and strain as she tilted forward a little. She glances back in time to see that hoof succumbing to a similar fate as the other, gold rushing over and up her flank, soon spreading over her hips and down her tail, petrifying her fully in metal from the waist down.
 
She bucks and squirms, wings flapping, trying desperately to move her lower limbs but succeeds only in rocking the pedestal from side to side upon the wood of the box. The Pegasus gasps as the gold marches upward, taking over her skin and forming a hard constricting shell around her chest that held her breath from being drawn in fully. A moment later it sept inward, turning her interior to solid metal and stealing both breath and voice from her. The mare’s wings were forced out, feathers splayed wide and regal as they froze firmly in place, glittering metallically beneath the light that shone down above her.
 
A pop and a crick emanates from her shoulders as the inexorable creep of metal took over them, pulling her left foreleg close to her body and stretching her right out toward the sky, forming a rather gallant and active pose. Rainbow winces with a twitch as the last of her movements fade away from her body, cool metal encasing everything below her head. With wide eyes she felt her neck turn forward and up, freezing itself with the hardness that enveloped her being and moved over her head.
 
Her jaw locks up, lips fusing together in a metal smile as her ears perked forward and stuck. In mere seconds it was only her eyes upon a totally golden statue, darting around frantically before they too turned to glistering, precious gold. She could still see, her glance solidified outward toward the glass door of the case and her body felt cool all around, still able to sense the touch of the half-sphere beneath her hoof, albeit it was a muted sensation, slightly numb all around.
 
Somewhere far below the pedestal on a plate of silver, words etch into being, marking the trophy and reading simply- “RAINBOW DASH ~ CHAMPION FLYER” for all to see, whosoever gazes into and admires the display case that held Rainbow Dash.
 
 
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Be careful what you wish for if dealing with a very literal Djinn…
 
Wanted to try something a little different shading and composition wise, which I feel came out decently enough! A friend suggested I do something in gold too, which I hadn’t yet tried. Now with story! ^^
 
Inspired by KP-ShadowSquirrel’s excellent 3D trophies.