Discovering the Past

by Astral Star and Company

Chapter 16: Preparing for Battle

Sunshine thought if this joke of a guard was ever taught how to fight with a sword. He calmly drew his own sword in turn, waiting for the right time to strike as his opponent blundered towards him. As soon as he’s within range, the Royal guard yelled a battle cry, and swung his long sword in a horizontal arc, aiming for the bat pony’s neck. Sunshine took off into the air at the last minute with incredible speed, the stallion’s strike not even touching a hair on his tail. He then landed behind his opponent, as momentum from his failed attack carried him forward. Sunshine clenched his sword between his teeth, and took a swing at the stumbling unicorn.

The swing successfully severed the straps holding the unicorn’s armour in place, causing it to fall to the ground, just before he did the same. Growling his frustration, the guard got up and charged again, throwing his sword right at the night guard. Sunshine weaved left, dodging the clumsily thrown weapon, leaving himself open to attack momentarily. Despite Sunshine’s sudden vulnerability, he recovered quickly and nimbly dodged his opponent’s right hoof. Somehow, even the guard’s punches were clumsy. Sunshine spun right, then brought hilt of his sword down on the unicorn’s back, just between the shoulder blades. The guard cried out in pain, and collapsed to the ground for the second time.

“As a matter of fact, I am a Night Guard,” Sunshine stated, examining his sword for any notches. Satisfied, he sheathed his sword, and gave his fallen adversary a mocking bow “Former Lieutenant Sunshine Smiles, at your service,”

“Former?” the guard spat, standing back up again “No wonder the Captain doesn’t need you,”

As the guard finished his sentence, a throwing knife flew right past him, mere millimetres from his now exposed neck. The guard flinched, then looked wide eyed at Sunshine Smiles, who was throwing and catching yet another knife in his hoof, a taunting smile on his face.

“Next one goes between your eyes,” he said, deftly catching and sheathing his knife “As a matter of fact, I resigned. Now, are we going to have a proper discussion? Or will I go to Canterlot frustrated, and you away from here on a stretcher?”

The guard took a nervous gulp, but took no other course of action.

“Looks like you’re going to retirement early,” Sunshine sighed. He then unsheathed his knife, twirled it twice in his hoof then flung it at the cowardly guard

Fearing the worst, as all sense drained out of him, the royal guard froze in his place, eyes screwed shut as the knife made its deadly path through the air. The knife was interrupted mid-flight with a hard *crack*. The unicorn opened one eye to see the knife’s course directed away from his forehead, instead burying itself in his helmet. A third guard, this one a Pegasus stallion, stood rigidly over Sunshine’s target. The knife skidded off the top edge of the Pegasus’ round, wooden shield, effectively saving the fallen guard.

“You’ve got a good throw, son,” he said. His voice was low and gravelly, but very strong as well. “But I’m going to have to ask you keep your knives and swords to yourself,”

He then turned to the cowering unicorn.

“And you? What’ve I told you about handling strangers? Refer them to me first!” he shouted

The unicorn whimpered apology after apology, actual tears streaking his face. The newcomer only rolled his eyes at his subordinate’s unprofessional behaviour. He then turned to the Pegasus mare, who’s been hiding behind a tree for the whole fight.

“And you! What do you think you’re doing? Abandoning your post,”

“No sir,” she stuttered. She sounded way too young to be in the guard “I was just…”

“Just what?”

“Um, never mind,” she whispered, hiding behind her mane and looking at her superior from the corner of her eye.

The newcomer sighed, then muttered something about ‘guards these days’. He finally turned to Sunshine, and gave him a proper military greeting.

“Welcome to the old castle, Second Lieutenant Smiles,” he saluted, which Sunshine promptly returned “Captain Iron Clad wrote to me about you. I’m First Lieutenant Golden Lance, but as a soldier of somewhat similar ranking, you can just call me Lance,”

“Actually, I resigned,” Sunshine pointed

“Meh, details, details,” he said, waving a dismissive hoof “I believe you’ve got some papers for me?”

Sunshine nodded, and produced a sheet of paper. Since it was handed to him, he had to put it into several boxes and containers to protect it. It was apparently, a very frail piece of parchment.

“Ah, here we are,” said Golden Lance with a sigh.

Holding the parchment with one hoof, he produced a set of reading glasses from under his breast plate, put them on and began to read.

“Mhm,” he nodded, still reading the paper “Come along, Mr Smiles, I’ll show you to the Citadel,”

Many things struck Sunshine as odd as he walked across the sturdy wooden bridge towards the Castle. For one thing, it only vaguely resembled the ruins in the Everfree from his own time line. The second, was that it was no mere castle, it was a full on city.

Well, the remains of one at least.

Most Buildings and houses were nothing but moss covered, dusty, singed pieces of rubble. The road into the Citadel was straight and boring. Nothing to either side but ruins, even the roads lacked cobblestone, most of it being strewn all over the place. The sky only got darker as they neared the Citadel. It was a large, granite rendition of the magnificent marble castle that sat in Canterlot. To get to it, they needed to cross a large crevice, this time the bridge was old and rickety. They didn’t go straight to the Citadel though, and instead veered left, into one of the stone buildings that was still left standing.

The building appeared to have been an Inn before the great battle, but it was now just an empty two storey building. Inside, it was cosy but damp. The floor was lined with wooden boards and the walls were made of smooth stone, greened over age and patched in several areas. At one side of the room, where the bar used to be, was Lance’s desk. The rest of the hall was occupied by simple wooden chairs, facing the desk as if Lance was expecting an audience.

“Welcome to my office!” he said cheerily “Sorry for the rude reception, but after things going on, the guards here tend to get edgy,”

He threw a sideways glance to the pair from the bridge. The two looked away immediately.

“Those are the only two guards I have on active duty,” Lance explained “That’s Rough House the stallion, and Potence the mare,”

Rough and Potence gave a half-hearted salute.

“Anyways, I heard you want to try reach Celestia. How do you plan to do that?”

“With this,” Sunshine hoofed him a yellow piece of parchment, it was the letter that Celestia wrote to him.

Lance took a moment to look astonished.

“Fascinating,” he said. Donning his reading glasses, he began to read.

Several seconds later, he looked back up to Sunshine with a relieved smile on his face.

“Looks like she’s not dead after all,” he chuckled “Hey Rough House! You owe me a tankard of cider!”

Rough cursed under his breath.

“We’re getting off topic here. What I’m saying is, I can’t give official clearance until we’ve cleaned up this place of any dangers,”

“Dangers?” asked Sunshine, somewhat surprised by the turn of events “What kind of dangers?”

“Meet me in half an hour. I got to write a letter down to the Captain for some troops. Go to one of the upstairs rooms, there are plenty of spares, so get yourself settled,”

Lance gave a salute, which was respectively returned by the bat pony. Sunshine gathered his things and made his way upstairs and Golden Lance began to write his letter. Potence gingerly walked up to him, not very sure about what she had to say.

“Spit it out, Potence,” Lance sighed “You’ve been in my service for a year, and you still can’t get a coherent sentence without practice,”

“It’s just that, um,” she stuttered “Are you sure we can trust him?”

Lance gave her a questioning look, which she shied away from.

“If the Captain trusts him, so do I,” he answered, finishing his letter with a flourish “Have a little faith, my dear. The worst is yet to come,”

Astral’s Estate (Present Time)

“Okay, so let me get this straight,” demanded Ditzy, somewhat frazzled after an afternoon’s worth of bombshells “So, that mare in the bubble is about to powerful alicorn ruler from thousands of years ago, and you are growing her a body, AND you have the power to shape shift into anypony?”

“Not any pony,” Astral replied, tired after explaining it to her over and over “Most ponies, yes, but with a pony as powerful as Celestia, I need something of hers. It doesn’t need to be a part of her body, just something that she’s owned or used for a reasonable amount of time,”

“Right, and the pony in the dream is…”

“Yep, Matriarch Amaryllis,”

Ditzy dissolved into stunned silence for a time, then broke into the biggest grin the Doctor has ever seen.

“This is so AWESOME!” she exclaimed, flying circles around the magical liquid orb

“But after Astral’s little blunder,” Verity scolded “We are not sure if the body would be compatible anymore,”

“Why don’t we just ask?” Honour huffed “She’s not our almighty ruler anymore, she’s our friend. Remember?”

“Oh, um, right,” Verity stuttered, a blush forming on her cheeks. She quickly regained her composure and addressed another issue “We can do that at a later date. Doctor, Ditzy, you wanted me to use my intuition on this lantern, yes?”

“That’s correct,” Doctor confirmed

“Well, I’m already done. Sunshine Smiles is currently in the old castle of the two sisters, or should I say city?” she pondered for a moment, then gave up “Anyway, he was transported almost exactly 1000 years ago. The ponies are currently evacuating the whole city and building up the city of Canterlot. Sunshine is with three other guards, looking at…”

Verity frowned in concentration, then her face became slack. Worry and fear registered on her face as she bolted to one of the many bookshelves in Astral’s library.

“Quick! I need the 'Mage's Almanac of Creatures'!” she pleaded, throwing books all over the place

“Right here,” Honour said, patting the book which sat on one of the work tables

Verity flew right to it, blowing away several sheets of paper in her haste. A violet aura glowed around the jewel in her circlet, and the book levitated before her, rapidly flipping between pages. When she found the page she was looking for, she turned towards her companions, true fear on her face. She held the book up for them to see. Astral and Honour immediately blanched, while Ditzy and the Doctor looked questioningly at it.

“There’s no time to lose!” exclaimed Verity, rushing around like a mad pony “Take this with you!”

She pelted the Almanac at the two time travellers. Ditzy caught it successfully in both hooves, despite ugly rumours about clumsiness, she was very coordinated when she tried to be. Verity scrawled a set of numbers and letters onto a piece of paper, and stuck it to the Doctors forehead with tape. The Doctor did his best to look undignified, but he was ignored as chuckles escaped Ditzy’s lips.

“Use your TARDIS to go to that location,” she instructed “There will be a two storey building in front of the castle, you’ll find him there,”

The Doctor was about to say something, but was stopped by a hoof in his mouth.

“No time to lose!” Verity cried “GO! GO! GO!”

Ditzy and Doctor belted right up the stairs, through the secret passage, across all the hallways and into Astral’s office, where the TARDIS still stood tall and proud. The Doctor fumbled with the keys, eventually unlocking it, and scrambled inside, Ditzy following close behind. As soon as he was inside the familiar transcendental room, he tore the sheet from his face, read it, then expertly flipped all the necessary switches and buttons on the TARDIS. A rough ride later, the two travellers galloped right out the door and into the land outside. What they didn’t expect however, was to land inside a freshly scorched mess. The building had been completely obliterated, a massive whole existed where the top floor and roof should’ve been. What was summed to be clothing, bed sheets or furniture smouldered in the background. There was no sign of any other life, as a dense fog began to settle over them.

“Are we too late?” Ditzy asked, her voice shivering with fear

The Doctor’s face turned grim as she met her questioning eyes

“I hope not,” he whispered, as much to himself as the mare beside him.

Much Earlier

Sunshine strode over to Golden Lance, who leaned patiently on the wall just outside the Inn’s entrance. Rough house and Potence stood on either side of the doorway, and gave a cautious salute as he walked past. It had been only been half an hour, but the sunlight seemed to dim as thick cloud blanketed the sky.

“Lieutenant Smiles,” Lance greeted with a salute “Follow me. Rough, potence, you too,”

Sunshine and the pair marched off into the distance, due East of the Inn.

Minutes later, they came upon the first statue. It was an odd, angular shape made out of a smooth white stone. It crumbled slightly at the touch, so Sunshine refrained from touching any more of it. The shape was like a tall, thick kite shield, much taller than Celestia, wide as a pony and as thick as a tree trunk in the middle. Behind it, what looked like the remains of an appendage was attached to the point where the four corners intersected if a line was drawn between them. It was also made out of white stone. Further on, more and more of these odd statues started to appear, lending an eerie atmosphere to the bleak ruins of the city.

The landscape was littered with these strange structures. Sticking up from the ground like abstract tombs in a cemetery. Al little while later, they came upon an even odder statue.

“Here we are,” Lance said finally, signalling for the ponies behind him to stop “Take a good look Sunshine, ask me any questions if you happen to have any,”

Sunshine promptly stood forward and paced around it, critically examining its structure.

The statue was of a huge, spider like creature with four shield like legs and a long, thick scorpion’s tail, ending in three sharp points. The statues from before seemed to be the legs, assuming that the rest of it had already crumbled to dust. Besides the huge legs, the rest of its body looked fragile, its exoskeleton thinned out into small scales. Its tail grew thicker near the end, and was lined with hooked barbs and large pieces of chitin jutting out the side. The three points made a triangle over the creature’s head, poised ready to strike. Its head was a diamond shape, and made out of the same material as its legs. It had three, triangle shaped eyes, cold and lifeless in its petrified state. This could’ve been a formidable creature, had it not been a statue.

“What is it?” Sunshine breathed, turning to Golden Lance

“To be honest, we don’t know,” Lance replied evenly “Weeks after Nightmare Moon’s banishment, scores of these things came out of the forest, and laid waste to what wasn’t already rubble,”

He turned his gaze to the statue as he continued to speak

“These are possibly the most dangerous creature’s we’ve encountered outside the Everfree forest. There only weakness seems to be bright light. All we have that fits it, are magnesium flares, and those things are in short supply, and don’t even kill it, rather blind it. No pony has even put a dent in these things. Sword, spears, arrows, magic, nothing. Their only fatal flaw, however, is the sun,”

He looked up to a brighter patch of the grey cloud that obscured all vision of the sky, where the sun should be.

“An hour before sunrise, these hell spawn turn and flee back to where ever they came from. These statues here are the guys that didn’t make it into shade in time. They always come here, terrorise, destroy, kill, and then vanish when the sun rises,”

He turned to Sunshine, a serious look on his face

“Here’s the deal. I’ve sent a letter to Iron Clad requesting reinforcements to secure the perimeter of this city. We need to protect the Citadel, at all costs. The four of us need to make sure that none of those creatures make it to the Citadel gates until reinforcements arrive. If we are all still alive when the sun rises on the next day, you can talk to your princess,”

“Celestia said to meet her at midday!” he protested “I can’t just keep her waiting,”

Lance considered this for a moment, eyes turned to the sky. He finally let out a sigh when he came to a conclusion.

“Fine then,” he grumbled “Go to the princess, but make sure you get your flank back here in time for the mission. Understood?”

Sunshine nodded, and gave a salute. He then took off, heading back to the Inn to grab his belongings. Lance walked his way back, flanked by Rough House and Potence, mentally preparing themselves for the night ahead.