Twenty One - Crash and Burn (3)
“Hey, Fluttershy? I think we lost them!” Applejack shouted.
Fluttershy continued her mad flight through the caverns for a few more frantic wingbeats before she registered what Applejack had said. Hesitantly, she set her friends on the ground. “You think so?”
Sunset gazed back the way they’d come. “I think we lost ourselves.”
“Sorry,” Fluttershy murmured. “I guess I overreacted.”
“Naw, ‘Shy. It was good thinkin’ to get us outta there quick.”
Sunset looked around them. More doors. “I walked through here with Discord when we first got here. I… think it’s this way.” Sunset trotted forward a bit and turned right.
A group of five ponies that Sunset recognized from the lounge nearly bumped into her. Sunset wheeled back in surprise, then settled a good ten feet from the mares, looking at them scrutinously.
“Oh, hi! Sunset, right? We’re a bit lost.” Golden Harvest giggled bashfully.
Sunset rolled her eyes. “Oh, give it up. You’re not fooling anyone.”
The ponies erupted in a flash of light, and Sunset suddenly found five changelings hissing at her simultaneously.
“How’d you know?” Fluttershy asked.
“Didn’t.” Sunset shrugged. “ ‘Always assume the worst’ is a saying for a reason.”
Meanwhile, Applejack pushed onto her back legs and spun her front ones in enthusiastic circles. “Yeehaw! Time to put mah new skills to the test!”
Sunset sighed. “Applejack, you’ve been a pony for, like, a day. And there’s five of them.”
Applejack either didn’t hear or didn’t care, for she charged forward like charging forward was going out of style. She leapt towards the changelings—
And slammed straight into an energy shield. Sunset neatly parried the follow-up laser with a shield of her own and levitated Applejack back towards Fluttershy, who was trying to use her mane as a blindfold, where Applejack began to cuss out the changelings with an impressive string of southern euphemisms.
Sunset surrounded her friends in a thick bubble shield (it wasn’t her specialty, but it would do) and reached out with her magic, wrapping it tightly around the five changelings. They struggled, fighting against her grip both physically and mentally, but her magic was much stronger than theirs, and their movements slowly ceased. Applejack watched in awe as Sunset’s cutie mark began to… well, she didn’t want to be cheesy, but shimmer was a pretty good word for it. It shone dully in rhythmic pulses, and Sunset herself seemed to become more vibrant, her mane flowing in a nonexistent wind. A few seconds later, the changelings collapsed to the ground, still as stones.
When Sunset dispelled the shield, her mane and tail dropped back into gravity’s domain, and her cutie mark returned to normal.
“Wha…” Applejack just stared for a second. “Was that your ‘special talent’ whatsit?”
Sunset nodded. “Fire magic. I absorbed the heat from their bodies.”
Fluttershy shuddered. “That sounds horrible, Sunset.”
“I don’t like it any more than you do, but if we leave them alive, we’re just going to have to fight them again somewhere down the line. Besides, it’s not the worst way to die. Their bodies go numb before the pain really sets in. I’d take it over being an unconscious changeling juicebox until all the love is sucked from your memories.”
Fluttershy shuddered again.
“But let’s not worry about that. Applejack, you saw what happened just now—you’re not ready to fight them. We can’t risk running into any more changelings, so I’m going to teleport you girls to where Rainbow is.”
“I mean… I’m not accusing you or anything,” Fluttershy began, “because I really doubt you’re a changeling after… that.” She gulped. “But where exactly are you sending us?”
“Princess Celestia and Princess Luna lived in a castle in the Everfree Forest before Canterlot was built. Celestia and I used to go there when we wanted to practice more… conspicuous magic. Me burning down Canterlot would’ve been bad for everypony involved. I know Twilight uses its library for research, so it should be stocked with food if Princess Twilight is anything like our Twilight and has over-twenty-four-hour study sessions. And as long as you don’t enter the forest, you should be able to avoid monster attacks.”
“Ahm not sure Ah like all those ‘if’s and ‘should’s.”
“Not like we have a better plan. Besides, Twilight and I and all the rest will catch up with you once we send over Rarity and Pinkie Pie.”
“This won’t… hurt, will it?”
“Not unless something goes horribly wrong.”
Fluttershy started to squirm. “Thanks for that.”
“Brace yourself,” Sunset said, and they were gone.
Twilight, Starlight, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie burst out of the caverns and into the frosty moonlight. Panting, they checked behind them—no changelings. Good.
But then they checked in front of them, and observed quite the opposite.
By a stroke of malignant luck, a massive cloud of changelings—Twilight assumed they were the rest of Chrysalis’s forces in Ponyville—had arrived at the same time they had. The living black blob spread out into a gridded dome of monsters, their yellow eyes assaulting the ponies from all sides.
Twilight didn’t waste a second. Her horn crackled with mana, and an opaque purple shield wove itself around them.
“We’re leaving.” Energy crawled through her body as she prepared a teleport spell powerful enough to take them out of Chrysalis's reach.
She never got a chance to cast it.
An invisible force the weight of a truck crashed onto her back, and she grunted as her legs gave out. Her body dug painfully into the stone below her, but she managed to pivot her head enough to catch a glimpse of Starlight; horn blazing, eyes menacing, mouth pulled back in grim concentration.
“Find Sunset!” Twilight shouted as the magical energy she’d built up spilled out of her horn. It wasn’t a controlled release of mana like a proper spell—her concentration had been broken at possibly the worst moment. It was only thanks to her years of experience that Twilight managed to direct the energy anywhere at all, and even then all she could do was send Pinkie and Rarity twenty yards backwards into the tunnel.
They looked back, obviously weighing helping Twilight and saving themselves.
“GO!” Twilight shouted.
They did. She thanked Celestia that neither Rainbow Dash or Applejack was there to be bullheaded.
As they disappeared into the cave, the pressure on Twilight’s back doubled, and she let out a pained gasp. With her concentration fractured, the barrier around them dissolved, revealing the rest of the changelings waiting and ready just behind it.
Starlight looked her over with a mix of contempt and boredom. “Each time I meet you, you’re incapacitated before the fight even begins. It’s a shame. Fighting a princess would serve as good practice.”
Twilight swam back through her memories. “You were Luna, then, right? Back—” She paused to cough up a bit of blood. “Back at the castle.” Slowly, she started gathering up her mana into her horn. If she were careful, it wouldn’t even start to glow until she used it.
Traxx dropped his disguise (no point to it now) and nodded. “But I don’t have time to chat.”
He charged up his horn with a nasty green color, and a drop of silk plunked to the ground from its tip, an inch from Twilight’s face. She set her teeth—this guy didn’t play around. And he was strong for a changeling. No wonder he was Chrysalis’s second in command.
But, well, Twilight had a genetic advantage.
A while back, upon her incessant nagging, Cadance had agreed to teach Twilight some alicorn-level love magic. And with Twilight’s affinity for arcane law, she was able to twist those concepts around into an original spell specifically designed for changelings.
Twilight thrust the mana she had been collecting towards Traxx fast as a whip, and in the same instant, he fired. Even as a thick coating of silk surrounded Twilight, her spell secured itself around Traxx’s horn, and a faint pink light seeped between the two conduits. The waves of light grew denser and flowed faster as time wore on, and the chrysalis crumbled, the love that tied it together steadily sucked away. As the spell finished, the ball of swirling love that had accumulated around Twilight’s horn threaded together into a pink heart, and Traxx thumped to the floor, starved to death.
The waiting changelings hovered in stunned silence long enough for Twilight to fling the heart of condensed love at one—it struck him in the chest, and he started wobbling back and forth on his wings. He drunkenly spiraled into the ground and started to mumble to himself as he drifted into a blissful unconsciousness.
That jolted the rest of them into action. They bared their fangs and dove for Twilight, who bent down to the ground. Traxx had done a number on her, and she’d used a lot of magic on that love-sucking spell, but she was far from over. With a powerful kick of her hooves and pump of her wings, she shot upwards, far above the crowd. A crackling orb of energy alighted on her horn, and with a swing of her neck, she flung it at the changelings below. They scattered, but not well enough; the ball of energy struck the ground and exploded into a flurry of lightning bolts, each one arcing from changeling to changeling and leaving a trail of electrocuted bodies in its wake.
Realizing their mistake, the changelings that remained—which was most of them, and well over a hundred—fanned out across the sky. They sent of maelstrom of lasers and silk hurtling Twilight’s way, but she quickly encircled herself with a bubble-like shield; every time a blast hit it, it pulsed, and Twilight could feel her horn absorbing the magic. When the barrage ended, she sucked her shield back in, and expelled all of the energy from the changelings’ attacks back at them with a laser large enough to engulf a small house, vaporizing the sorry changelings that weren’t quick enough to move out of its way.
Twilight followed up with a few dozen rapid-fire energy beams, and nearly every one of them hit their mark, excepting those changelings with honed enough reflexes to cast a shield spell in time (which was quite few, all things considered).
She noticed that a group of changelings were beginning to cluster up behind her. She twisted on her wings and prepared to shoot them out of the sky, but she was just a bit too slow; a fireworks of flashing green orbs shot out of the group in every direction, all of them turning towards Twilight. She tucked in her wings and nosedived, but the orbs followed her—one slammed into her side, and she was sent tumbling through the air.
She flared out her wings and caught herself, but the orbs hadn’t stopped. She cast a simple teleport without so much as thinking about it, appearing in the middle of the group of changelings. Her eyes clouded with milky-white arcana as she sent out a powerful magic pulse. The wave of purple energy hit the surrounding changelings like a train, sending them flying towards the ground, random trees, or, for the lucky ones, the horizon.
But to her dismay, the green orbs had yet to give up their pursuit. It wasn’t a spell she had ever seen before, but maybe…
She reached out with her magic, tapping into the spell matrices of the orbs. She smiled—the spell wasn’t very well cast. Just as the flashing missiles were about to collide, she drenched them in a flood of her own mana, imposing her will on the spell, and they shifted from green to purple, u-turning away.
As they found and downed their new targets, Twilight fired off another set of lasers, whittling down the changeling’s numbers to no more than fifty or so. She was going to crash like she had never crashed before after this was over, but if she pushed herself, she would have enough magic to finish the fight.
“TWILIGHT SPARKLE!” echoed a voice from behind her. It was distorted and warped, and grated against Twilight’s eardrums. She turned, and swore.
Queen Chrysalis was there, and she was pissed. Tar-like energy boiled on the surface of her horn, and her eyes were glowing black.
“DO YOU PONIES DO ANYTHING BESIDES SLAUGHTER MY CHILDREN?!”
“Hey, you brought this on yourself!” Twilight retorted.
“MY HIVE HAS NEVER FACED SUCH A MASSACRE AS YOU CAUSE, YET YOU PAINT ME THE VILLAIN?”
“Yes! If you had just wanted to be friendly, then maybe things would be—”
“DIFFERENT?!” Chrysalis screamed with animal fury. “THINGS ARE NEVER DIFFERENT WITH YOUR KIND! WHENEVER YOU SEE A CHANGELING, YOU SHOW US DEATH, NOT YOUR FALSE FRIENDSHIP! IT’S BEEN THE SAME THING FOR GENERATIONS! AND I’VE HAD IT!”
Dark wisps of energy flowed out of her horn and towards the corpses of changelings strewn about the forest. Twilight watched in revulsion as the magic entered into the broken mouths of their bodies: first, they twitched, spasmed, and convulsed; then, they shambled onto their hooves, and from there took off on their wings, zipping towards Twilight. She charged her horn as she flew backwards, trying her best not to think about what she was fighting, and fired a barrage of lasers at the oncoming swarm. Her shots collided spot-on with each of the reanimated changelings, but instead of knocking them to the ground, they disappeared altogether.
A dull pain thrummed against the back of her eyelids. Glamour. She’d been tricked. But where were the real ones?
Her question was swiftly answered by a changeling above her, who bucked her square in the back. She was sent plummeting, but managed to quickly teleport herself upright, cancelling out her downward momentum. She looked up at the sky to see the undead changelings diving towards her—they were already too close. Cursing, she tried to fire up her horn in time, but she was exhausted. The changeling in the front reached her before she could cast any spells, and whacked her sharply across the horn.
Twilight screamed and clutched at her forehead. It was like stubbing a horn, but a hundred times worse; she felt like the damned thing had been nearly ripped from her head. She didn’t get a chance to recover, however, as another changeling swooped in and bit her wing-bone. Twilight screamed again, but it was cut off when she slammed into the earth, the wind knocked from her lungs.
Twilight bit her tongue to distract from the pain in her wing. She tried to fold it, but quickly regretted doing so with an agonized grunt. She had a headache from magical exhaustion, and a second headache from the hit to her horn. Even thinking of spellcasting made her flinch; hell, thinking at all was a struggle at this point. She wanted to get up—had to get up. But she had no more tricks; what good would it do if she’d just end up back on the ground? So she simply lay there in the dirt, a tree root scratching against her stomach with each labored breath.
“Aw, look at the poor, little princess.” Chrysalis walked up to her and bent down, lifting Twilight’s chin with a hoof. They stared into each other’s eyes with mutual hatred. “No flight, no magic… so helpless.” The way she said the word made Twilight want to shudder, but she wouldn’t give Chrysalis the satisfaction.
Instead, Twilight snarled, summoned her alicorn strength, and punched Chrysalis square in the jaw. Chrysalis’s head snapped to the left, and Twilight smirked. Slowly, it turned back around, and it was redder than Big Mac’s.
“You insolent—rotten—mother-bucking—runt!”
Twilight clenched her eyes shut as Chrysalis punctuated each word with a kick. There was nothing Twilight’s body could do to stop her any longer.
“GRAH!”
A hoof dug into her side one last time, and she was sent flying. She hit something—a tree, judging by snapping of bark—and went straight through it, landing on the ground and sliding another few feet over sharp sticks and rocks that tore at her skin. A second later, she was in the all-to-familiar confines of a chrysalis, and it was over.
Back within the walls of the hideaway, the hoofbeats of Pinkie Pie and Rarity were the only noises to be heard. The sounds of Twilight’s grand battle had faded out after a minute of running, and by now the buzzes of lasers and screeches of changelings were only memories best forgotten.
“I hope she’ll be okay,” Pinkie said, far more mellow than usual.
“She is the princess of magic. I’m sure she can handle herself.” Despite her words, Rarity didn’t sound too sure. “We have to find Sunset as quickly as possible.”
“But she could be anywhere! How are we supposed to—” Pinkie’s body cut her off. First, her eye twitched; then, her front left leg started shaking, followed by a jitter of her tail and an arch of her back.
“Whoa! Freaky!”
“Oh, my. Are you okay?”
“I think so,” Pinkie said, looking quizzically at her body. “But I have this strange hunch that something really confusing is about to happen.”
Rarity shook her head. “I’m not going to try to understand what a magical body does to you, Pinkie. Though, I’m sure Twilight would have a ball examining—oh, is that Sunset?”
Sure enough, Sunset was about six doorways down, walking slowly down an intersecting tunnel.
Pinkie waved her hoof in the air. “SUNSET SHIMMER! OVER HERE!” she called.
“Watch out! She’s not the real Sunset!”
Pinkie and Rarity turned around to face another Sunset. Rarity sighed. “I’ve a feeling your prophecy’s about to come true.”
“Don’t listen to her!” shouted the first Sunset. “Pinkie, Rarity, you have to believe me! Please!”
“She’s trying to trick you!” called the second.
“Pinkie… Rarity…”
They turned yet again, and saw a third Sunset. Rarity covered her mouth in disgust; this one’s coat was spattered with both green and red blood, and a nasty gash streaked down one of her hind legs. She walked with an awkward limp.
“Let me handle this,” she muttered, her horn flaring.
Pinkie Pie and Rarity glanced at each other.
“Wait!” A fourth Sunset raced onto the scene. “You can’t trust anypony! The changelings will do anything to win!”
“Exactly!” shouted the first Sunset. “Don’t trust them!”
“She meant you, dumbass!” the injured Sunset countered.
“They’ve got us outnumbered,” Rarity whispered to Pinkie.
“But what about the real Sunset?” Pinkie whispered back. “She can take them!”
Rarity furrowed her brow. “Wouldn’t the real Sunset have attacked the fake ones by now?”
Pinkie’s eyes widened, and—
“Pinkie! Rarity! Move!”
A quartet of laser beams struck the rock where the two mares had just been. Twenty meters down the tunnel, Pinkie and Rarity tumbled out of one of the side doors.
Rarity looked around, dazed. “Where are…? Pinkie, what did you—”
Pinkie shoved a hoof in her mouth and looked in both directions. To their left, where they had been seconds before, Sunset 5 was fighting Sunsets 1–4, and thoroughly beating them. On their right, a sixth Sunset was approaching.
“Oh no you don’t,” Rarity growled, firing a laser beam at the incoming Sunset. She threw up a shield instantly, and the laser harmlessly dissolved on its surface. Rarity kept her horn ready, though.
“Wait, I’m not a changeling, I swear!”
“Yeah, right!” Pinkie accused. “That’s what they all say!”
“C’mon, Pinkie, hear me out!”
“There’s nothing to hear out,” Sunset 5 said, approaching them. “You threaten my friends, and I’ll give it to you like all the rest of them.” She gestured to the four incapacitated changelings behind her.
Sunset 6 responding by shooting a laser. Rarity leapt back as it whizzed by her head, and let out a scream of “SUNSET!” as it struck the mare in the chest. Sunset 5 groaned on the ground, and, after a twinkle of light, turned into a changeling.
Pinkie rose an eyebrow and cocked her head. “Wait. What?”
Rarity turned to her. “So… you’re the real Sunset?” Sunset 6 nodded. “Why were the changelings fighting each other?”
“I think they were trying to get you to put your guard down. You might be new to being ponies, but I doubt they wanted to risk another upset after all that’s happened. Now, let’s teleport you two somewhere safe before any more craziness happens.”
Rarity sighed in relief. “Oh, thank god. I don’t think I can take much more of this.”
Sunset’s horn ignited, and she smiled toothily. “See you soon!”
Pinkie and Rarity yelped and flailed backwards as a wall of fire burst up between them and Sunset.
“What?!” Sunset screamed, throwing a hoof up against the flames. They flared towards her, and she quickly buzzed backwards on a fresh set of membranous wings.
Pinkie and Rarity watched as the tongues of fire morphed into a fist. It reached out, grabbed the changeling around its middle, and threw it harshly against the far wall. Before it could recover, the fire-hand’s fingers twisted into sharp, lance-like cones of flame; they shot forward, reaching the changeling in a tenth of a second, and speared him through.
Sunset’s audience gaped at her as she trotted forward; the flames died down in tandem with her mane and cutie mark. She was smiling softly.
“After all those years away from Equestria, I had forgotten what a real magic surge felt like.”
“Sunset, that was…” Pinkie gulped and smiled nervously. “Scary.”
Sunset sobered and looked at the changeling’s body. “Yeah. It is. But it’s the magic I’m best at.” She glanced uneasily at her cutie mark. “I was a bad pony when I got my special talent. Fire magic, well… I always did excel at destroying things. Especially other ponies. Still do.”
Rarity looked Sunset over. “ ‘Power is neither good nor bad, it’s how you use it.’ I’m pretty sure I read that somewhere once. And you, Sunset?” Rarity smiled. “Regardless of your rocky past, I’m sure you won’t use your talents to hurt others unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
Sunset’s mouth turned back up in a sad smile. “Thanks.” She lit her horn. “Ask Applejack or Fluttershy where you are once I cast the teleport; I have to catch up with Twilight as soon as possible.”
“She should still be by the entrance,” Pinkie supplied happily. “With a bunch of changelings.”
“Gotcha. Now, brace yourselves.”
Pinkie and Rarity disappeared, carried away by Sunset’s magic. She looked down the tunnel in silence for a minute before taking off at a gallop.
A flash of light dumped Rarity and Pinkie Pie into the middle of The Castle of the Two Sisters.
Voices in another room were arguing. “Rainbow, I’ll tie ya up if I have to! I don’t care what you think, you ain’t goin’ back!”
Rarity stumbled to her hooves and clutched her head. “Well, at least that wasn’t as bad as the portal was.”
“I’m diiiizy,” Pinkie said, wobbling back and forth.
“C’mon, Applejack! I know you want to help too!”
“We just got here and they’re already fighting.” Rarity tutted. “What are we going to do with those two?”
“I want to, but I know that ah can’t, and neither can you! You ain’t goin’!”
Rarity and Pinkie entered the great hall of the castle. It was lit by a series of chandeliers that hung from the absurdly high ceiling, their light illuminating fine yet torn tapestries and fading gold-framed paintings. A decrepit stone balcony flanked a wide red carpet, on which Applejack and Rainbow Dash stood, arguing passionately.
“You don’t know that! What if we can save them?”
“We’d just get in th’ way! You haven’t seen Sunset fight; she took down six of ‘em in not three seconds, while all I did was charge in like some idiot bull and get knocked inta next week!”
“Yeah, well, who says I can’t do better than you?”
“We’re damn near useless in these bodies, Dash. Do you even know how to run properly? We’ll be lucky if we can take on a single changeling in a month!”
Rarity cleared her throat. Applejack and Rainbow turned.
“Pinkie! Rarity!” Rainbow Dash shouted, pulling them into a hug. “I’m so glad you made it!”
“Me too!” Pinkie chirped.
Rainbow released them and flapped over to Applejack. “Can you believe Applecrap over here doesn’t think we have what it takes to fight the changelings?”
Applejack rolled her eyes. “We don’t. You’re confidence’s gunna do you in someday, Dash, but not today.”
“Sorry, Rainbow, but I must concur with Applejack.”
“Aw, c’mon!”
Rarity held out her hoof. “Hear me out, dear. True, we are not able to fight the changelings in our present state. But the fact of the matter is, we can’t resign ourselves to that.”
Applejack raised an eyebrow.
“It is most certainly important to know our own strength; which, sadly, is sorely lacking. However, it is equally important to realize that in order for a happy ending of any sort, we must work towards reaching a point where we are capable of fighting back. So, Rainbow, I’m not saying that you don’t ‘have what it takes’. If we wish to have any chance, we must assume that we do—we simply must concede that we will have to train a good bit more before we reach our full potential.”
“Man,” Pinkie exclaimed, “when you talk all fancy like that, it’s really hard to not believe you.”
Rarity smiled smugly. “Why do you think I do it?”
Presently, Fluttershy entered the room, a plate of sandwiches delicately balanced on her back. She seemed relieved that the shouting battle had died down, and Rarity wondered how long she’d been hiding behind the doorframe, afraid to get involved. “Anyone want some snacks?”
Rainbow’s tongue lolled out her mouth. “Yes! Fluttershy, you’re the best!”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. They’re just cold sandwiches. The kitchen appliances here are just as destroyed as the rest of the castle.” Fluttershy laid the plate on the ground, and Rainbow leapt, only for it to be snatched up by Rarity’s magic.
“We are not eating off the floor. I may be a horse, but I refuse to act like a farm animal.”
Rainbow huffed, but followed Rarity’s aimless march through the castle. (There had to be a intact table or something somewhere, right?) Suddenly, as Rarity turned a corner, Sunset materialized before her in a blast of light. Rarity jumped, and the sandwiches were sent flying.
“Nooo!” Rainbow shouted. She propelled herself forward with her wings, reaching out and just barely catching the plate before it hit the ground. She sighed in relief.
Rarity placed a hoof over her chest. “Oh! Sunset, you scared me! Thank goodness you’re alright.”
Rainbow quietly inhaled the sandwiches while Rarity was distracted. Daisies were a lot tastier as a horse.
Sunset didn’t look very glad to see them. Her eyes were empty, her mouth pulled into a somber line.
“Uh, Sunset?” Applejack gulped. “Where’s Twilight? An’ the rest of ‘em?”
“Gone. We’re the only ones who made it out of cave.”
They waited a bit to let that sink in.
Pinkie’s smile was strained. “But… we made it, right? There’s still us! Chrysalis hasn’t won yet… Right?”
“I don’t know, Pinkie,” Sunset sighed, walking past them. “We don’t have any more tricks up our sleeve. Discord’s gone, Twilight’s gone—hell, even Starlight would be a blessing right now. But all we have is a unicorn who’s probably just going to screw everything up and a bunch of humans in bodies they can’t use.”
“Look,” Rainbow said around a sandwich, “we just had a big talk about not giving up hope and working hard in order to beat Chrysalis, so don’t get all emo on us. You’re Sunset-fucking-Shimmer! If anyone can pull this off, it’s you!”
“Plus, we don’t got the luxury of givin’ up. Even if things look hopeless, we gotta try. That’s what we’ve always done, and it’s worked out mighty well in the past.”
“ ‘At the end of the day, it is we who survive’, right?” Fluttershy said. “Whether it’s a stupid competition or saving the world, we can do it together. That’s… that’s what Twilight taught us. All of us.”
Sunset turned heavy eyes to them. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’m… not in the mood. I’ll check in with you when… when I’m feeling better.”
The five humans could only watch as Sunset retreated down the hall, her hoofbeats echoing with a hollow, mellow cadence. Halfway to the far doors, she twisted her head back and opened her mouth to say something—anything—but her tongue froze. She let her lips fall back together, and left without another word.