//------------------------------// // Chapter Four // Story: PonyProse II - Winds of Change // by PonyProse //------------------------------// Remarkably few ponies saw the cone of pale light beaming into the air that night, given the lateness of the hour, and those that did assumed they were seeing things. Brightsky, on the other hoof, took its existence very seriously and dutifully flapped her way over the rooftops of Canterlot towards it. Wonderwhy soon came into view, standing next to a stream with his blue hoof pointing straight up into the air. He lowered his leg when he saw Sky approaching. "How can you move your leg now?" she asked as she dropped his work clothes on his back before touching down next to him. "It pulled less and less strongly as I got closer to here; now, I can barely feel it trying to point towards the water." Sky frowned as the light from his hoof faded completely. "Huh, well now I can't feel it doing anything." Bee experimentally rotated his pastern. "But, there's nothing here," Sky observed. "Now what? And what did that spell actually do, apart from make your hoof blue and drag you across the town?" Bee sat down on the grass, almost exactly where he'd been sitting with Celestia. "Your poem mentions water that's created from sadness, and it asks the water to lead you to its mother. Obviously water doesn't actually have parents; what it means is the pony whom it came from." "Water that came from a pony? Eww!" "Oh honestly Sky, not that sort of water. Think about it: water created by sadness? From a 'mighty power'?" "Oh, does it mean a tear?" Bee mockingly clapped his hooves, prompting Sky to magically pick up his work clothes and throw them over his head. "The mighty power bit refers to alicorns," he chuckled as he yanked the clothes off his face and started putting them on. He was surprised to hear a soft rattle as he swung his cloak on. Turning around, he spotted his glasses lying in the grass. "You found them!" "They weren't that hard to find, I just had to sweep the books off your floor." "Thanks anyway." Bee nestled them on his nose and turned back to Sky. "Yes, so that spell guided my hoof here because when I was talking to Celestia, and she started crying, one of her tears fell on my hoof... but now that we're here, I'm not sure what to do." He kicked up a tuft of grass in his agitation. "Now I'm sure she wanted us to follow her, why else would she have taught you that spell just a few days ago?" He looked at his hoof again. "Maybe one tear just wasn't en- That's it!" He made Sky jump as he whipped around to face her again. "Do you think you could do the spell again, here?" "Uh, I guess so, but, why would it be any better here?" "Because when she was upset," Bee said as he fished around in a pocket, "I gave her this... um, this... aha! This hoofkerchief!" he proudly declared as he tugged it free. "She washed it off in the stream for me, so I think that maybe, just maybe, there'll be enough of her tears left close to here, in the water." Sky looked doubtful, but she did agree that Celestia must have taught her that spell for a reason. Maybe this was what would finally free her full magical ability? "Okay, I'll do it, but stand back from the water because I don't know what it will do." Bee did as he was told. Sky went and stood with her forelegs practically in the stream, believing that she would be protected from whatever might happen and that being in close proximity to the water would somehow help. She cleared her mind and built up her magic like she had in Bee's study. He watched as her little wings once again stretched out to either side of her body, while her white horn took on its customary glow: the same luminous vivid cyan that featured across roughly half of her blue-and-white coat. She closed her eyes to block out all sights except the poem, bright and clear in her mind. "Water born of deepest dread, by a mighty power shed..." Bee jumped backwards in shock when his sister spoke, for it didn't sound much like her. Well, it sort of did, but at the same time it sounded like somepony else. Several someponies else, actually. Her voice sounded way too powerful for such a small body, and it was almost like a group of ponies speaking all at once, which was impossible. "I know not why you're here with me, so let my eyes your secrets see..." Ripples travelled across the stream, radiating out from where Sky was casting her spell. They were unaffected by the stream's natural direction of flow, which actually seemed to be slowing down the more Bee looked at it. "I don't know why you fell to earth; cryptic darkness cloaks your birth..." Suddenly the ripples became small waves, and the stream's natural flow completely halted. Each multi-tonal syllable of the spell spawned a new wave, bigger than the last. As the waves began to splash over the opposite bank, Bee had a dreadful feeling that this was a terrible mistake. The spell had caused his hoof to drag him across Canterlot; what if it caused the contents of the stream to blast over the banks and sweep away the whole town? "To alleviate your mother's plight, I need the path to her in sight..." The waves were now being whipped into a frenzy, each one taller than Sky and still growing. The dark line in the grass on the opposite bank marking the extent of the waves' reach steadily crept further away from the stream. Bee was about to step in and tell Sky that it might be wise to stop, but before he could she began the final couplet, and with it came an intensifying roar from the stream. A hole opened up in the water right in front of her, and it quickly grew as the increasingly tall waves drove more and more water away from the filly. Her whole-body glow was much brighter than it had been in the study, and little white sparks were appearing at the tip of her horn. "So for her sake I ask of you..." Bee was now more than slightly scared. He clearly heard those words emanate from multiple points around him, and the waves had amalgamated into a continuously-maintained semi-circular wall of water, rising several average ponies above his sister. "A shining light..." With those words Sky opened her eyes again. Instead of simply her irises being blue, each entire eye was now just a featureless blue disc, emitting twin beams of blue light into the hole created by the waves. "To guide me true!" came the final shout, each of the multiple voices clearly audible and definitely not coming from Sky's mouth. The wall of water imploded and refilled the hole in the stream, but the beams of light from her eyes had some sort of repulsive effect on the water. She carried on staring intently at the opposite bank, but as the water fell back into the stream it never got closer than about three feet to those beams. The result was a curtain of falling water with a constant hole bored though it. Before all the water could fall back into the stream, Sky's all-body glow migrated forwards so that it only shrouded her horn, as before, but this time it spread outwards from the tip in a sustained ring of light. The ring extended into a cylinder that tunnelled perfectly through the hole in the falling water, entrapping the last remnants of the curtain within its circumference. When Sky's body and horn had stopped glowing completely, and her eyes had returned to normal, there was a tube of water hovering a few inches above the now-normal ebb of the stream. Its walls were kept in place by a thin double-ring of Sky's magic. "Did... did it work?" Sky asked in her normal voice, albeit with a wobble. Her legs didn't look too stable either. "Bee? Do you know where... the Princess is..." Bee got to her just as her legs gave out. He caught her with a hoof and a wing before she hit the grass. "Well done you, Brightlight Bluesky. Well done you," he whispered as he let her head slide gently off his wing. He stood staring down the supernatural passageway hovering above the stream. He gingerly placed a hoof inside; the double-ring of magic made the whole thing solid inside and out, despite essentially being made of liquid water. The other end of the tunnel was not blocked by the sloping ground, as Bee expected. Instead the tunnel ended in a bright blue disc with swirling white streaks slowly circling around its face. He bit his bottom lip as he struggled with the quandary: should he leave Sky here, prone on the grass, and trust that she'd be alright sleeping under the stars until and if he got back... no, that was silly, he could just carry her back to the School and put her in bed properly. Just as he decided on that course of action however, the tunnel flashed a pulse of light along its length, and the open end suddenly retreated several inches as the double-ring wall started to decay. Water fell into the stream as it was released from its role as structural support. Without another thought Bee tore off his cloak and gently wiggled Sky's free as well. He tied them together into a makeshift hammock. He held the loose corners in his mouth after rolling Sky into the middle of the material, and carried her into the tunnel. He had to crouch, which made keeping Sky suspended off the bottom of the tunnel difficult, but he was spurred on by further splashing noises behind him, indicating the tunnel's collapse was accelerating. With a deep breath, he stepped through the blindingly bright blue-and-white disc of light at the end of the tunnel, which would lead him nopony-knows-where.