The grass on the ground always looked softer in the air. But it only took Twilight a few crashes to realize it wasn’t nearly so soft when one plows into it from the sky.
“Come on, Twilight! My grandmare can fly faster than you!”
Twilight got up slowly, her hooves shaking a bit. She spit out a tuff of grass that had smeared itself into her mouth. Normally grass tasted just fine. But the dirt and rocks mixed in with it were another matter entirely.
“Rainbow, I can’t go any faster. I told you that already!” Twilight knew her voice was dangerously close to a wine, must unfitting to royalty, but she couldn’t help it. “If I go any faster, I’ll just end up crashing faster!”
Rainbow Dash landed a few feet from her, one eye brow raised. “The reason you keep crashing is because you’re flying too slow. You have to reach a certain speed to stay airborne. And trust me,” she lectured, brushing some dirt off of Twilight’s face, “if Fluttershy can manage such a casual speed, you can do it for sure.”
Twilight stretched her new wings experimentally. “But Fluttershy has had her wings her whole life! I’ve only had mine for a few weeks.”
“A few weeks is all you need to fly,” Rainbow responded with a matter-of-fact tone. At Twilight’s desperate look she exclaimed, “You flew just fine after the coronation!”
Twilight sighed and looked back at her wings wearily. “To be honest, I’m still not sure how I did that…”
“Exactly!” Rainbow flew straight up a few feet and smiled back down at her friend. “Flying is something you do. Not something you think about.”
“That sounds kinda dangerous, if you ask me.”
Twilight spun around at the familiar voice and gave the small dragon a smile. “Spike! What are you doing out here? I thought you were helping Princess Luna with the archives.”
“Yeah,” Spike murmured as Rainbow landed next to the kingdom’s newest princess, “about that…”
Twilight had to admit that her slight apprehension over Princess Celestia’s sudden call only increased upon her arrival in the throne room. All of her friends were already there, aside from Rainbow Dash who flew at her side and immediately broke the whispering conversation between Celestia and her sister, Luna.
“What’s going on?” Rainbow flew over to where Fluttershy was hovering above the others and lowered her voice a bit, “We’re not in another ‘kingdom is at stake’ deal, are we?”
“Oh,” Fluttershy murmured, nearly too quiet for Twilight to hear, “I don’t know.”
“We were all told to come here cause Spike and Princess Luna found somethin’…” Applejack paused, looking for the right word, “odd.”
As Twilight turned her confused eyes towards her, Celestia nodded and Luna stepped forward.
“Spike and I have been working on some of the archives in preparation for the research teams from Saddle Arabia, who plan to work alongside our own teams for an important excavation coming up. But during our cleaning of one back room,” Luna’s horn glowed faintly and a very old scroll floated forward, gently unrolling on the floor before Twilight, “we found this.”
Twilight stepped forward and peered down at the yellowed parchment. It was cluttered with column after column of strange characters. Some looked like shapes. Like boxes and trees and numbers, but it was made up of a combination of sharp lines and fluid curves. Twilight found it quite beautiful, but also found it impossible to read.
“This is from… the far east?” Twilight looked up at the princesses, embarrassed she was unable to detect anything else.
“Yes,” Celestia replied with a small nod. “Luna and I have been to the great nation beyond the desert before, but traveling there is difficult and takes a great deal of time. Thus our counties have rarely interacted and we have not had dealings with them for many hundreds of years.”
Twilight tried to ignore the scratching of a thought upon her mind when Celestia mentioned the hundreds of years. Her wings felt heavy enough on her back. She really didn’t want to add to that weight just yet.
“I can read… some of it,” Luna said slowly, walking up to the scroll herself and looked down at it. “But that only made this scroll’s presence even stranger.”
“Sooo, what’s it say?” Rainbow’s voice asked close to Twilight’s ear. The new alicorn started a bit from her staring match with the scroll and saw that her friends had all gathered around it as well.
Luna exchanged a glance with her sister before answering. “It mentions the return of the darklings.”
“The what now?” Applejack asked, head tilted.
“They are creatures linked with prosperity for the eastern empire,” Luna locked eyes with Twilight. “Creatures that feed off of love.”
Twilight thought she said it first but to everypony's surprise it was Fluttershy's terrified voice that broke the stunned silence.
"Changlings!" As every eye focused on her, she quickly put her hooves in front of her mouth and drifted back towards the ground.
"That is what we fear," Celestia agreed, her tone grim.
"But wait," Twilight forced out, "my brother and Cadence forced them out with their magic."
Celestia walked over towards the large windows to one side of the room. They looked out towards the seemingly endless desert separating them from the far eastern nations.
"They were forced out of this kingdom, but that does not been they were destroyed," she paused, one front hoof raised as if uncertain. Her eyes narrowed and she set her hoof down softly. Sighing she turned towards Twilight and her friends. "Normally this wouldn't be taken too seriously. However, we have had a few strange stories coming from a few small towns around the desert's borders."
Raindow flew up and punched imaginary enemies in the air with her front hooves. "Do you need us to kick some changling butt, Princess?"
Celestia gave a small smile, but it was shadowed. "No, Rainbow Dash. I'm afraid it's not that simple."
"We already sent two investigation teams when the reports first came in," Luna informed, walking over to stand by her sister. "But the earth ponies and unicorns came back with extreme exhaustion sickness. A few are still in the hospital recovering."
"But doesn't that just prove that the changlings are there?" Rarity asked, a worried look in her eyes.
Celestia shook her head, her mane swaying slightly. "The effects were quite different from that experienced when the changlings attacked us. The unicorns were the most affected. Their magic was unaccessible for some time and none of them remember exactly what happened. Although we now have some theories thanks to Discord."
"Discord?" Rainbow's voice mirrored Twilight's unease at the mention of the strange creature. Then a thought occurred to her.
"He wasn't there..."
"Who wasn't there?" Pinkie shouted out. She grabbed Fluttershy, who was till on the ground. "Oooo, was it Fluttershy?"
"Um, Pinkie? I'm a she..." Fluttershy whispered.
"What?!" Pinkie looked right into Fluttershy's eyes and then burst into a fit of laughter. "Oh, yeah. Of course you are! Silly me."
"I meant Discord," Twilight explained looking up at the princesses. "He wasn't at my coronation, was he?"
"That's because he's already at the desert's border," Celestia answered calmly. "And I'm sending you and your friends to help him," her eyes clouded, "before he becomes more ill than he's gotten already."