He woke up the next day to find himself on a stone floor. He was sleeping by a cave he wasn’t familiar with. He had been lying by the mouth of the cave and went to stand up. Instantly his legs buckled beneath him and he crumpled to the ground.
“AHH! Damn, I can’t walk. Whatever I did yesterday must have been extreme. My legs feel like they’ve been smashed by hammers” cursed Eclipse.
In his mind he tried to remember what happened last night. He remembered looking at the stars and being overwhelmed by something. Then there was the uncontrollable, primal rage he had felt. It seemed like he had been in a trance and his body was a puppet on strings when it happened.
He shook his head, which hurt. His memory seemed fogged; no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t remember anything that had happened beyond the field. He took a look around him. The sun was up and bright sunlight was streaming through the trees, warming Eclipse where it landed on him. The air smelled fresh, like morning. The smell was cool and damp from the dew on the trees. Birds chirped and squirrels chattered above. The scene was, overall, pretty pleasant.
Eclipse decided that he would rest before trying to return to Ponyville. There was no use trying to walk if his legs would merely buckle and make him fall. He leisurely chewed on some grass and after a while laid back to look up into the trees. With the warm sunlight and peacefulness around him it didn’t take long until he dozed off.
By the time he woke up the sun was at its zenith and he had to squint to keep his eye open in his laid back position. He sat up and stretched his legs, which didn’t hurt quite as bad as they had before. He stood up and tested his weight on both of his rear legs; they held.
He tried once more to remember how he had gotten there but the memory still eluded him. He gave up on trying to remember and decided to start walking back towards Ponyville, wherever it was. His first thought was to fly up and take a look and see if he could find Ponyville from a high spot. But his plans were foiled by the tree cover. The tangle of trees above were too thick and he couldn’t fly through anywhere so he had chosen to start walking until he found a spot to fly up.
The only forest Eclipse could think of that had tree cover like this was Everfree Forest, but this definitely wasn’t the same forest. Everfree forest had a spooky aura to it and the woods here were nice. They seemed peaceful; warm sun rays coming through the trees, animals scurrying around, and birds singing up in the trees.
His legs were still quite sore, but he could walk. It was a wonder how much a small nap could do. He continued walking for maybe ten minutes and gradually the trees started to thin out and gaps were forming between the tangle of trees overhead.
Now it was time to fly. He spread his wings and leaped up, beating the air with his strokes and narrowly missing a branch as he ascended. He broke through the net of trees and picked up some altitude. He flew up a few hundred feet and landed on a cloud that was floating by.
From his vantage point he could see woods, woods, woods, and more woods. He stood on the cloud for a second looking off into the distance with a grim look on his face. If things were as they looked he was very lost. He could fly off in random direction but there was the chance that that direction would lead him away from Ponyville instead of towards it. He pondered what to do. He strained his eyes looking into the distance in each direction, slowly turning on the cloud. Hmmm….tough situation he thought.
Again he looked hard into the distance in each direction, as far as his eyes would let him see. Then he saw it, off in the distance. There was a small white pinpoint dot he could see. It was too big to be an ordinary cloud, not that he would be able to see an ordinary cloud at this distance anyways. The only thing the spec could be was Cloudsdale, which meant he could find his way back to Ponyville!
He hopped off the cloud and opened his wings to start gliding towards Cloudsdale. He flew at a leisurely pace back towards the city. After a while Eclipse flew over Cloudsdale. He could see all of the pegasus ponies below going about their day. Eclipse had never stopped to really take a good look at Cloudsdale. All of the buildings were made of clouds along with just about everything else in the city. Eclipse wondered how they managed to build the city, it didn’t look like they built by using the clouds as bricks. The whole city seemed to be made of one large, fluffy cloud. Eclipse had tried once to shape a cloud, but he had given up on doing so. The cloud he had tried to shape merely puffed back into its normal shape when he tried to mould it, and if he kicked it, it would merely vaporize. How Cloudsdale was made would have to remain a mystery, because Eclipse wanted to get back to Ponyville and figure out what had happened last night.
He flew over Cloudsdale and kept on a straight course for Ponyville. By the time he reached Ponyville the sun had started to set and it was going to be dark within the hour. That brought forth the question. Where would he sleep tonight? After a minute of thinking he got it. He would sleep in his house! Or at least he thought it was his house. It was the place he had woken up in Ponyville in anyways. He had to rack his brain to remember where it was, and when he remembered it still took him a few minutes to find it exactly.
When he got there he looked at the door and frowned. It didn’t at all look familiar to him. If it was the first place he remembered and it didn’t at all feel like his home, in fact he didn’t even feel like he belonged there. He pushed the door open and walked inside. The house looked different from any of the other houses from Ponyville. The house was somewhat poorly furnished. There were no pictures or paintings hanging from the walls, no cabinets with decorations on them or anything at all that added a homely touch. Although the house was not bare, there was nothing there that could have given Eclipse a clue as to where he was from.
He went to the bedroom and hopped onto the bed. He tucked himself under the covers and thought about how he was going to ask about what had happened the night before. I feel like I’m going to be held responsible, I know I did some damage but I was hardly in control of myself. By the time he had finished the thought he was already asleep.
He woke up at sunrise. The sun was just peaking over the horizon. Eclipse rolled out of bed and stretched his body. He went to the kitchen to find nothing there. He decided that he could go without breakfast for today, he wasn’t hungry anyways. He had to remember to get some sort of job soon.
He left his house for Rarity’s home. He thought it would be best to talk to Rarity first, seeing as how she was there when it happened. After a brisk walk he arrived at Rarity’s house and gave the door a few knocks. Rarity opened the door a few seconds later with a surprised look on her face.
“Oh my gosh where have you been?!” she exclaimed.
“I don’t really know, can we go inside so I can tell you about everything that happened?” Eclipse asked.
“But of course!” Rarity replied.
She let him inside and led him to the table. He took a seat and as soon as he did Rarity blurted out “What happened to you? I came back with Twilight and you were gone! There was a tree that looked almost like it was kicked out of the ground, but that’s impossible. Where have you been? And what happened to your hair?”
“One question at a time please, I can’t answer fifty questions at once.” Eclipse quickly responded.
“Alright, well first of all what’s with your hair?”
“My hair? Is it different? I didn’t do anything to it, why?”
“The edges of it are red”
“Red? How? I don’t understand how that’s possible. But then again I don’t remember a lot from last night”
“You don’t remember anything?”
“I remember feeling like I was being crushed. Then you ran off to get help. Then the crushing feeling went away and I remember being really angry and attacking a tree before I flew off. And after that it’s all blank”
“So you really did kick that tree down? How? Nopony can kick down a tree. In fact rarely any can even put a dent in a tree!”
“Well I’m not sure how, but I did it. I have no idea how though.”
“That sounds really strange, I think we had better head over to Twilight’s place and ask her about this.”
“Ya, that would probably be best, maybe she can explain what’s going on with me.”
The two of them took a walk to Twilight’s house and knocked on the door. She opened the door and had the same surprised look Rarity had when Eclipse showed up.
“Eclipse? Where have you been? What..” but before she could say any more Eclipse cut her off midsentence.
“Questions in a minute, let’s take a seat so I can explain what happened.”
They all took a seat and Eclipse told Twilight everything he had told Rarity.
“So you just woke up and didn’t know where you were?” asked Twilight.
“Yep. Oh! And also when it felt like I was let free, three stars went out. And for each star that went out I felt like I got angrier and angrier.”
“Three stars went out??” Twilight replied with a look of awe on her face.”That definitely sounds bad; I think that’s something we need to visit Celestia about. Spike! I need you to send a letter to Celestia!” she called out.
“Spike? Who’s Spike?” asked Eclipse.
“He’s my dragon, I got him as an egg” Twilight responded.
Spike had walked out of another room and was holding a quill and some paper. He was a small, purple dragon with green spikes.
“What? Where was he when you were frozen in stone, or anytime in the past few days?” Eclipse questioned.
“I sent him to my parent’s house to help them move, he came back a few hours ago.”
“Ahh, I see. Well when do you think I should see Celestia?”
“As soon as possible, she should reply to my letter almost as soon as she gets it. I have no doubt that this is of grave importance.”
“So what do you want me to write down?” Spike asked.
“Tell Celestia that we have a friend, Eclipse, who recently came to Ponyville. And that he had something happen to him when he looked at the stars and that three stars went out. I think that should be enough, we can explain it more when we get there.”
“…….and that three stars went out. Alright got it” said Spike as he wrote down the last of the words. Then he drew in a big breath and blew fire onto the note and it disappeared.
“Why did you set it on fire? Now you’ll have to rewrite it!” exclaimed Eclipse.
“Nope. It’s a dragon thing. We can send messages by blowing fire onto them. When we breathe fire onto a message it goes wherever we want it to.” Spike replied.
“Wow, cool! Can only dragons do it?” asked Eclipse.
“Ya, but you could send letters with magic if you wanted to”
“I can’t use magic anymore, my horn is broken.” said Eclipse as he pointed towards his horn and leaned down so Spike could see.
“Gone?! Broken? How? Doesn’t it hurt?” sputtered Spike.
“It was a bit scary at first, but no it doesn’t hurt. When I saved Twilight from the spell of the Cockatrice I unknowingly cast a spell that was too powerful for me to handle and my horn exploded. That’s also why I have these two scars running down my left eye, two shards of my horn scratched me there.”
“Twilight told me that you saved her, but I never knew you lost your horn doing it!” said Spike.
Suddenly spike burped up a smoke cloud. The cloud condensed into a letter and fell to the ground. He picked up the letter and cleared his throat; the letter read “Dear Twilight, its good of you to inform me of Eclipse. I think it would be wise for the two of you to come over to Canterlot and see me as soon as possible.” Spike finished reading and said “Canterlot? That was a sudden decision, whatever it is that’s wrong with Eclipse must be bad!”
“Jee, thanks for making me feel better about all this” Eclipse replied with a sour look on his face.
Twilight budded in “So then, should we stay here tonight and head out to Canterlot tomorrow?”
“Sounds good to me” replied Eclipse “Soo what should I do till then?”
"You could always head down to Apple Acres, its apple bucking season and I'm sure Applejack could use some help bucking apples" said Twilight.
"Sounds like a great idea. I think Applejack is the only one of the six of you I haven't really talked to yet" Eclipse said. "How do I get to Apple Acres though?"
"It's just east of Ponyville, follow the dirt path until you run into a farm" said Twilight.
"Alright, thanks" said Eclipse "I think I might head there now."
"Just be back here by tomorrow morning and well head off for Canterlot." said Twilight.
"Can do" replied Eclipse as he left Twilight's house and shut the door behind him.
He walked throughout Ponyville which, as normal, had ponies everywhere going about their daily business. Some were shopping for groceries, some were managing shops, everypony looked like they had something to do. Eclipse was glad that he didn't get a bunch of awkward or scared stares anymore, he wasn't too fond of being the center of attention and he certainly didn't like being feared.
A short while later he had passed the little shops and houses of Ponyville and a narrow dirt road snaked its way up the countryside. He set off down the road at a walking pace; after all there was no hurry.