The Bond

by GhostWriter

Chapter Seven - Newcomer

- Chapter Seven -

Newcomer

There once existed an underground order of ponies, gryphons, and some dragons whose interests lay in making Equestria a land that belonged to its citizens, not ruled over by one princess. They had no qualms against Celestia, especially since it was she who saved them all from the wrath of Nightmare Moon, but they felt that having a chosen citizen to lead for a number of years would be a better idea. And so they peacefully petitioned, bargained, tried to seek their goal, but to no success. Members became discouraged; some grew angry, some began to lose hope. And some, whose intentions were as dark as their hearts, saw an opportunity for control.

In life, there are those who fret about the small problems and those who see the bigger picture and fret about the large-scale issues instead. Also in life are exceptions, and Dawn Chaser, Sunrise’s younger brother. is an exception to both kinds of pony presented.

The matters of being on the run or Night Wisp's strange powers had flown over the young colt's head, and small problems such as having paid for a trip they had now abandoned didn't come to his thoughts. Dawn didn't tend to think about these kinds of problems. His only worries were for that of his sister, Sunrise, when she wasn't around, or the safety of his small plushie. Granted, when Night passed out behind them, he had become quite upset, clinging to his older sister and asking repeatedly if the mare would be okay. He had taken a liking to the strange pegasus, not really associating the scary black arms with the pony itself. But his worries went up in smoke when Sunrise told him things would be okay, just as they always did. After all, his sister's word had never been wrong.

That night, it seemed almost impossible for Dawn to sleep. The accommodations weren’t the best, with him nestled against Sunrise on the grass using her wing as a blanket, but the colt wasn’t complaining. There was still a gentle breeze that rolled over the fields, being the only thing to break the night’s peaceful silence. It was really nice—far nicer than nights spent back in their old house, even—but even as he lay under the warmth of his sister’s wing, he just couldn’t fall asleep.

The colt had begun to count pegasi flying overhead, a trick his sister once taught him, when light hoofsteps from close by distracted him. Glancing over Sunrise’s body, he could see the red unicorn approach Night Wisp’s sleeping figure, which lay only a few steps away from Dawn and Sunrise. The unicorn sat down beside her, his back to Dawn, muttering to himself in one tone, then another, almost like having a conversation with himself. This continued for a few minutes before the unicorn stood, lifting a small blanket from his bag that he placed over the grey pegasus. This done, he turned and quietly walked away from the group, disappearing from view over one of the many rolling hills. Time slowly passed as Dawn sat there, waiting to see if the unicorn would return, but something about waiting made the colt’s eyelids grow heavy. It was not long before they closed, at which he laid back down and finally drifted to sleep.

The next morning was unusual for Dawn, if things could become any more unusual than sleeping out in the middle of nowhere after the events of the train. He first woke to find his sister still fast asleep, something he had never seen before since she was usually up early and getting ready for work. However, this was quickly forgotten about when the colt then noticed that there was a new pony among them. The first notable feature was the armor the pony wore, an unusual dark purple that Dawn had never seen before. The second feature was the pony’s unusual wings, dark and leathery in appearance. The pony sat in about the same place as the red unicorn had sat the night before, its back to Sunrise and Dawn, and hunched over as it seemed to search through a bag.

Suddenly, the pony stopped moving and lifted its head, showing two ears with odd tufts of fur on the tips. Before Dawn could react, the pony turned a full 180 degrees and looked right at the colt with yellow, cat-like eyes. Its coat was a dark greyish-purple except for the roundish muzzle, which faded to white, and its mane was dark blue with lighter streaks, brushed back over its head.

Time seemed to come to a standstill, and Dawn’s legs became lead. He couldn’t even nudge Sunrise to wake up. His little heart was racing now, but in a brief second of clarity he managed to open his mouth, and from the colt came the dire question running through his little head.

“A-Are you g-gonna eat me?”

There was another second of silence. The strange pony blinked, then made on odd sound from its chest. Dawn flinched, ready to duck behind his big sister, until the pony’s sound became clearer. It was laughing. Or rather, he was laughing; the voice was a stallion’s.

“Hahahaha! Eat you? Are you serious?” he said, bursting into another fit of giggles before catching his breath again. “No, I’m not gonna..hee hee..oh Luna, that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard! Can’t wait to tell the guys about that line...”

This reaction came as a surprise to Dawn, who had been so sure that he was going to be gobbled up whole. Instead, the strange pony had gone into a small laughing fit. The colt had never read about laughing monsters or ghosts, or anything scary that laughed. To him, anything scary or bad shouldn’t be capable of laughter. But still the stallion laughed, and it was this laughter that led to near chaos.

First, the laughing woke Sunrise, who first assumed it was Chrome. Upon discovering it wasn’t, she took ahold of Dawn and started yelling for Chrome, until the other stallion leapt on her and covered her mouth. Dawn reacted poorly to this, as he would anypony who might hurt his big sister, and bit the stallion’s hoof. With a yelp of surprise and pain, the stallion flared his wings, which appeared very much like a bat’s. Sunrise took this opportunity to tackle the pony to the ground, with little Dawn tackling and holding onto one of his legs.

“Argh! What in hell are you-- Hey, let go of my leg! You kids-- Ow! I’m trying to help, dammit!” With an incredible burst of strength, the stallion managed to shake both ponies off of him, retreating from the two with a very confused look. “I already said I’m not eating anypony!”

“Who are you,” Sunrise growled. “And what do you want?” She stood herself in front of her younger brother, her first priority always being Dawn’s safety. The stallion looked at her, then smiled as if amused.

“How old are you? Maybe...fifteen? Sixteen? Somewhere close to that?” he asked, then waved his hoof dismissively before the mare could respond. “Fah, rhetorical question. Point is, I don’t think that you’re in any position to ask me questions, unless you have something more intimidating than that nasty glare you’re giving me.” The stallion looked over to where Night Wisp lay on the grass, then reached into his bag and pulled out a small green vial before glancing back at Sunrise. “Look, I was sent to track down this pegasus and make sure she is safely brought back to Canterlot. The rest is classified. What’s important right now, though, is that I can help her.”

Both stood still for about a minute, Sunrise and the stallion having a kind of one-sided standoff. Finally the white pegasus gave in with a defeated nod, at which the stallion nodded his head in return and moved towards Night Wisp’s sleeping form. Keeping their distance, Sunrise and Dawn watched as the stallion carefully rolled the pegasus onto her back and tilted her head upwards.

“You w-won’t hurt her, will you?” piped Dawn, who was still trying to decide if this pony was something to be scared of or not. The stallion shook his head as response, picking up out small vial. "No worries, I know what I'm doing." He uncorked it and slowly waved the vial around Night’s nose, which scrunched up before the mare awoke with a few coughs.

Sunrise gave a sigh of relief, only to hold her breath again. She didn’t know how she hadn’t noticed, but Chrome was just a few steps to her side, slowly approaching the mysterious stallion as his horn started to glow.

For Myst, there was a very vague and faded line between a good day and a bad day. The line was so faded, the unicorn usually didn’t care enough to even stop and evaluate what kind of day it had been. Today, however, was one of those rare days where the situation was entirely opposite, where he did not even need to consider what side of the line he stood on. Today was, most certainly, a bad day.

He quietly made his way through one of the hidden entrances of the Alliance base, where only a day before he had received his orders from Frostbite. A simple public scare was all that was supposed to happen; hijack a train, kill a pony or two, then vanish. Instead, they meet a Shadowmancer who goes and botches the entire thing. At least escaping from the civilians after he woke up was a simple task. Some days just couldn’t be easy ones...and now he’d need new muscle. That was going to be a pain in the flank.

After being directed to the lower dungeon, he was met by a pair of guards, beyond whom stood Frostbite, overlooking a small ledge. A deep growl from something below echoed through the halls, but all there remained unphased. A nod from the white unicorn made the guards step aside, allowing the pink unicorn to pass between them.

“I’ve heard that the little outing I sent you on caused quite a bit of chaos,” Frostbite spoke, turning away from the ledge. “But I’ve also heard that you have returned alone. Where are Stormcloud and Maelstrom?”

“Dead,” Myst replied bluntly. “We ran into a problem.”

“Is that so?” Frostbite turned, giving Myst a cold look. “I hope your excuse is a good one, Myst, because you currently have the deaths of two of my best soldiers riding on it. Don’t think that being as high an officer as you are will save you--”

“It was a Shadowmancer.”

Silence. The cool walls echoed with it for at least a minute. It was not like him to interrupt Frostbite, but Myst knew that a this was a serious matter for the unicorn.

“Alright Myst, fate seems to be in your favor,” the white unicorn finally spoke. “Not only have you gotten off the hook, but now you’ve gained a great deal of my interest. What do you know of this Shadowmancer?”

The unicorn shrugged, which was not something he would have done with any other officer of his rank or beneath. One could say that he and Frostbite held somewhat casual terms with each other, at best. “Nothing, aside from a description. A young pegasus mare, grey coat, blue mane. Very reckless and unstable. She took both Stormcloud and Maelstrom at the same time with almost no effort, but didn’t seem either aware or in control of herself.” Myst’s horn glowed, the murky green aura of his magic lifting a broken grey feather from the small bag he had at his side. “I managed to grab this earlier this morning, after escaping. Perhaps we can trace her aura--”

“And lose more of our soldiers to a Shadowmancer?” Frostbite cut in, his tone calm despite his sarcasm. “It would be a waste of resources, Myst, a waste that I don’t want to allow. Our Alliance is small as it is. Even as we grow each day, we cannot afford to lose more soldiers. But this Shadowmancer...perhaps she is a stroke of luck. A pony who can take on two strong soldiers without even breaking a sweat; ah, now that would be an asset to have on our side! The only problem is, how to get her...”

Silence fell again, Frostbite mulling over this problem while Myst stood patiently next to him. Another growl, louder this time, reverberated off the walls. Myst began to wonder why they’d decided to keep the damn thing inside; the growling was sure to give him a headache if he stayed there any longer.

“Myst,” his leader called, pulling the pink stallion from his thoughts. “I want you to take that feather to the mages and have them extract what essence they can from it, then put that into a gem. When you are done, bring it to me.”

“As you wish, Frostbite,” Myst responds, turning away from the ledge to head back into the halls, though he paused briefly. “If I may ask...what good will an essence gem do us if we don’t want our soldiers to go looking for this Shadowmancer?”

He heard a chuckle, one with an icy tone that only a stallion like Frostbite could make. “The stone will not be given to a search party of soldiers, Myst,” said the unicorn, pausing to look down over the edge as yet another growl shook the walls. “I have a much better idea.”

“He wants to what?!”

Night stopped in her tracks and turned to face Sunrise with a look of shock. The other pony sighed and nodded.

“‘Tie him up and leave him’, those were Chrome’s exact words. I think the old coot is being way too paranoid, personally, but nothing I said changed his mind.” Sunrise stopped and sat with a huff. “Having personally met a few mules, Chrome is the first I’ve met who might be more stubborn than one.”

A couple of hours had passed since Night had come to, and Celestia’s sun had risen high above them. In the last few hours, there had been a great deal of confusion for the pegasus. First she woke to see a strange looking pony standing over her, only to then have a magical blast from Chrome knock the strange pony unconscious on top of her. This was followed by Sunrise and Chrome arguing about whether or not this action was really necessary, which apparently came to no agreement. Chrome had then dragged the unconscious pony some hundred steps off, ‘for questioning’, and Sunrise had taken the moment to bring Night up to speed on her and Dawn’s earlier encounter with the mysterious stallion.

“Well I don’t care what his reasoning is, we aren’t tying up some royal guard and leaving him in the middle of nowhere.” Night turned, looking off in the direction that Chrome had gone with the guard. “C’mon Sunrise. We’d better go make sure Chrome isn’t doing something we’ll all regret later.”

As the two headed in search of the unicorn, Night found herself thinking about the unknown stranger. While she’d only gotten a brief look at him, the stallion’s leathery wings clearly indicated that he was a batpony. They were not common to see in Ponyville except for the occasional visit from Princess Luna, though even then they were always with her. By this, and by what he had told Sunrise, it was safe to assume that this guard was one of Luna’s.

Why one of Luna’s guards, and not Celestia’s? Her mind went back to her conversation with Princess Celestia, recalling that the princess didn’t seem to know much about shadowmancing. Meanwhile, it was no secret that Princess Luna had once been under the influence of some kind of dark magic. After 1000 years as Nightmare Moon, I guess Princess Luna would have better insight...if Princess Celestia asked for her help, that would make perfect sense. Even so, this didn’t explain why either princess would send one of the few batpony guards rather than one of the many royal guards. Something seemed amiss, but she could only speculate so much.

“Over there,” Sunrise spoke, pointing ahead. Sure enough, there stood Chromatic and the tied-up guard...and Dawn, sitting behind the unicorn with his plush. This came as a surprise to both the mares, as they’d last seen him sitting at their impromptu campsite. Before any words could be said, Sunrise was already running over to her brother, catching his and Chrome’s attention.

“Dawn Chaser, what in the wide world of Equestria are you doing down here? I told you to stay at the camp!” The pegasus sat and crossed her forelegs over her chest, then turned to Chrome. “And you! I don’t see you being very helpful either! Why are you letting my little brother go running off to watch you do Luna-knows-what to this creeper?”

“Hey, I’m sitting right here y’know...” grumbled the batpony.

“Get a grip, Sunrise,” Chrome retorted as he faced her, the rag over his eyes wrinkling in what could be assumed as a glare. “I’m not his babysitter, so it’s not my job to watch over him. Besides that, I’m only talking to our ‘friend’ here. I’m not so uncivilized.” Turning away, Night heard him mutter under his breath, “At least not in front of stupid kids...”

Thankfully either Sunrise didn’t hear this comment or ignored it, as she pulled her brother off to the side where she could be heard quietly scolding him. Meanwhile Night, who had made it there mid-argument, decided to use this point of calm to insert herself into things. “So um...Chrome, who is this? I was guessing a guard?”

The unicorn just huffed and turned away, heading towards their camp. “Ask him yourself. We’ll be moving soon, so make it quick. Spent too much time here as it is.”

Night stood there for a few seconds in awkward silence, unsure why she was just blown off. The batpony on the ground chuckled, “He must be really fun at parties, that guy. Lemme guess, you have him along for his optimism? Or does he tell jokes?”

The mare sighed, just shaking her head. “If only,” she muttered, looking over at the bound pony. “Look, I’m really sorry about him. Um, sir. You are a royal guard, right?”

“Hey, none of that ‘sir’ calling, I’m not one of those pretty featherheads that struts the streets.” The batpony shifted against the rope that bound his legs and wings. “Corporal Lasirius Nightsong, member of the Night Guard and tracking expert. And you are a miss Night Wisp, a runaway, and a special one at that if the princesses had me come after you. You’re not secretly some enemy of the state, are you?”

Night opened her mouth to reply, but found herself at a loss for words. This batpony didn’t really come across to her as a trained guard, at least not what she’d come to expect of one. Definitely more talkative. After a few seconds of her silence, Lasirius sighed. “By the look on your face, I can already see the answer is a ‘no’. Fine by me; that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about, at least. Now, about me being tied up..?”

“You all about done down there, Night?” Chrome suddenly called from over the hill. “I hope you got the answers you needed from that guard, ‘cause we need to move now if we want to reach the forest!”

The pegasus looked towards the hill, back at Sunrise and Dawn, then at Lasirius. “Gimme a minute!” she called back, then lowered her voice. “Look, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Chrome is happy enough to leave you tied up here. I’m not, but...I can’t just go back to Canterlot, at least not right now. I can’t leave the others out here in the middle of nowhere. And since I can’t exactly fly at the moment,” she paused and motioned to her bandaged wing, “here’s my idea: I untie you, and you come with us. When we reach the next town, I’ll go back with you. Yes or no?”

The stallion didn’t appear to like the idea, but remained quiet as if he were thinking. He looked down at his bound legs, wriggling against the rope, but it seemed that Chrome had done a good job on tying him up.

“Minute’s up! Don’t think I can’t leave you all out here!” Chrome called again.

“I don’t want to rush you, Night, but I think he could be serious,” Sunrise commented, coming over to Night’s side while glancing up at the hill. This seemed to be a enough incentive for the batpony.

“Okay okay, fine, I’ll come with you to the next town, just get me loose already,” he grumbled. “There’s a knife in my saddlebag, left side.” Night nodded, looking at Sunrise and motioning for her to go on ahead. Flipping open the stallion’s saddlebag and removing the knife, she bent down and started cutting away at the rope. It was thankfully not thick, and thanks to a couple of lessons Elmwood had given her, the rope fell away in a few seconds. In a few seconds more, the stallion was standing in front of her, surprisingly not much taller than she was.

“Thank you for that,” he said, brushing off bits of grass from his armor before looking at the pegasus. “So miss Wisp, I hope you’ve got another idea on how to keep your friend from tying me back up?”

“I’ll talk to him, but we’d better get going before he really does leave all of us,” she replied, offering a smile before turning to head up the hill after Sunrise and Dawn. “Chrome might be crotchety, but I’m sure he’s not unreasonable.”