//------------------------------// // Chapter 2 - The Answer // Story: My Little Pony: Love is Everything - Episodes 1-2 (The Beginning) // by robbieierubino //------------------------------// It was around 9 o’clock in the morning when Twilight Sparkle was sat, taking her morning coffee, and waiting for her two children to emerge from their rooms. She’d prepared their favorite breakfast of pancakes, syrup, and fruit, and was now casually eating her own food whilst reading over the day’s work. And, goodness, there were a lot of work. In fact, that was the reason Twilight was eagerly awaiting her daughters; the Summer Sun Celebration was that day, and the two sisters were to be given a very important job. Finally, hoofsteps could be heard outside, and Twilight perked up, grinning when Stardust and Dream entered the room, but expression sagging a little when she saw the look on their faces; something was wrong. “Good morning, girls!” she said, trying to lighten their clearly less-than-stellar mood. “I’ve made your favorite!” “Ooh!” Dream Mist’s eyes lit up. “Thank you so much, Mom; I bet it’s as delicious as always!” Stardust nodded along to her sister’s response as they both took a seat at the table. Twilight smiled at her children as they dug into their food, although Stardust did so with less enthusiasm than normal. Twilight cleared her throat, then lit up her horn to summon a scroll of parchment, which she then presented to the sisters. “This is all you need to do for the celebration,” she told them. “It’s a step-by-step list-” Dream smiled and rolled her eyes. “-reflecting the way I did this job when I first came to Ponyville!” Twilight beamed at them both. “Isn’t that great?! Oh, I’m so happy you’re finally old enough to do this! I’ve been waiting 18 years for this moment; my little girls, all grown up. Now, I know I haven’t officially asked you to do this so… will you take the job?” “Mom,” Dream said seriously, “we will be the best supervisors in all of Equestria, and beyond.” She turned to her sister. “Right, Stardust?” Stardust nodded again, but she didn’t look up from her food. “Star, is everything okay?” Twilight asked, sensing there was something wrong with her eldest daughter. The two mares nodded, but the alicorn wasn’t convinced; Stardust hadn’t spoken all morning and had barely touched her food, and Dream, though she’d been more upbeat than her sister, was still a little subdued. “Are you sure?” she asked again. “Is there nothing the matter?” There was silence for a few seconds as the sisters glanced at each other. It was as Dream looked at Stardust that she remembered that they were yet to tell Twilight of the nightmare that the pegasus had had. “Stardust,” Dream prompted. “Didn’t you have something to tell Mom?” The elder sister nodded, eyes still fixed on the table in front of her. She took a deep breath, and let it out, then looked up at her mother and began recounting her tale. “Mom,” she began, “I had a dream last night; I was floating in space, and I saw all of your adventures, all the villains you faced. I saw you and my Aunties helping each other with friendship from the day you met, right up until the last villain you reformed, every event flashing before me almost too quick to register! And then space turned into darkness, and a huge pair of glowing, red eyes appeared and stared at us, at you and me. I was trying to tell you to run, but you wouldn’t! It was terrifying!” “Oh, Stardust, sweetheart,” Twilight reached out a hoof calmingly, “it was just a dream. There’s nothing to worry-” “No, Mom,” Dream interrupted. “It’s not just a dream; Star isn’t the only to have had it. Almost everypony else has had the same nightmare as well!” “What?!” Twilight was in shock. “I think this is a sign that something big is going to happen,” Dream continued. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that everypony’s had the same nightmare, and I don’t think it’s a good thing.” Twilight paused for a moment to think. If what Dream was saying was true… but, was it? Art by RainelaThePegasus00 “Are you sure, Misty?” she asked. “I… haven’t had this nightmare.” “WHAT?!” “You haven't?” The sisters were perplexed. Why was Twilight the only one to have slept soundly? Maybe some other ponies had missed out on the dream, too? There was silence in the room again as they all processed this revelation. After a few moments, Twilight came to a decision. “This is serious,” she told her daughters, fixing her eyes on both of them. “I’ll do some research with your Momma Tempest, hopefully, we can find something that will help us figure out what’s going on, but, in the meantime, the Summer Sun Celebration needs to carry on as normal. You two need to stick to your tasks and make sure everything runs smoothly. DO you think you can do that for me?” “Yes, ma’am!” the sisters responded in unison. “Good,” Twilight nodded. “Now, I need to find your mother; we’ve got a lot of studying ahead of us.” She turned and left the room, but paused in the doorway before she did so. “Have a beautiful day, girls. I love you.” “Thanks, Mom!” Dream shouted. “And good luck with the books!” “And we love you, too!” Stardust chimed in. “I really hope that my dream really was just a dream,” Stardust thought to herself as she watched her mother leave the room. “For all our sakes.” Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Castle of Friendship, in a room full of wooden tables, shelves, and books of every shape, size, and language, a deep-red pony, with a horn made of sparkling blue crystal, was reclined in an armchair. She had her nose buried in a large, thick book, so she didn’t notice Twilight enter the library. “Reading another ‘Magistic Game of Time’ book, Tempest?” the alicorn asked. At the sound of her wife’s voice, Tempest looked up and craned her neck around the chair so she could see the doorway. She smiled when her eyes met Twilight’s. “Yeah, this one’s called ‘Paradox Theories’. You should give it a read, I think you’d enjoy it.” “Thanks, Tempest,” Twilight said. “It’s so sweet of you to think of me, but I’ll have to read it later; there’s something I need your help with.” “Oh?” Tempest set the book aside. “And what would that be?” “Stardust had a dream,” Twilight began. “She … saw something in it, something bad, I think. Dream said that everypony else in Equestria had that same dream too, but I haven’t.” She took a seat next to her wife. “Stardust says she saw someone else in the dream with her, that whoever or whatever it was had red, glowing eyes that stared right into her! It sounded terrifying. Did… you have that dream, too?” Twilight looked curiously at Tempest, who sighed and sat up properly. Tempest sighed, eyes downcast. “Actually, Twily,” she said, “I have.” Twilight gasped with a mixture of fear and curiosity. “Were you surrounded by darkness, too?” she pressed. “Did you see the eyes? Were they as red as our girls say? Did they look right into you? Are you okay? Did-” “Okay!” Tempest cut her wife off. “Twilight, calm down.” She smiled. “One thing at a time.” “Oh,” Twilight mumbled sheepishly. She took a moment to breathe and to organize her thought before turning back the unicorn beside her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just - I don’t know. I wanted to make sure you were alright; it can’t have been a pleasant dream to have, and, between this and the Summer Sun Celebration, I guess I’m more on edge than usual.” “It’s alright, sweetie,” Tempest reassured her. “We’ll figure this out. I would have told you earlier about the eyes, but I thought it was nothing more than a dream, and I didn’t want to bother you with it, especially with all the preparations for the celebration that you need to oversee.” She placed a comforting hoof over her wife’s. “Now, let’s go find what our daughters have described.” Twilight examined their linked hooves for a moment, before looking into Tempest’s eyes, a fierce look of determination on her face. “Right,” she agreed. Tempest nodded back, and the pair of them split up to begin the search, Twilight flying up to the higher shelves to begin there, using her magic to pull books off the shelf almost at random, as usual, and Tempest taking those more at ground level, removing few from the shelves but examining the spines of all for titles that looked promising. In a surprisingly short amount of time, Tempest cracked open a book and found what she was looking for. “Hey, Twilight!” she called. “I think you should come look at this.” “Huh?” Twilight spoke without taking her eyes off the books that she had floating around her. “What is it?” “I’ve found something that exactly matches what I saw last night,” came the reply. Twilight gasped and flew down to her wife, books still swirling through the air around her, but they all dropped to the floor as Twilight took the book Tempest offered her. The image on the left side of the page the book was opened to was a mass of darkness. Two piercing red eyes sat in the middle of the page, and, though you couldn’t see the rest of the face of the creature, you could feel it’s glare, even in the small image. Twilight shuddered to think of what it must have been like to encounter this nightmare in real life. Below the eyes, also enshrouded in darkness, was the figure of a bell. This piqued Twilight’s interest; neither Stardust nor Tempest had mentioned anything like that, so she refocused her attention on the text that accompanied the images. “Fromir?” she asked, reading the title out loud. “Twilight,” Tempest said, “this is it. This is the monster Stardust and I have witnessed, I’m sure of it.” She took the book back in her magical aura and skimmed through the next few pages. “It’s all here,” she said. “Everything. ‘Dreams and Visions: Interactive Things of Imagination’,” she read off the cover. “We need to study this.” “Great work, Tempest!” Twilight said, proudly. “Let’s take it over to the table.” As the pair quickly trotted over to one of the many library tables, Twilight used her magic to close the doors so they wouldn’t be disturbed. Tempest gently laid out the book and hopped up onto a chair. It was after the glow of the magical aura had faded that Tempest realized her horn was slightly burning. “Oh, bother,” said Tempest irritably, glancing up at the red glowing tip of the blue crystal. “It’s overheated again. Guess I’ll have to take it off and let it rest.” Carefully, the unicorn reached up with her hooves and took off the prosthetic, revealing the broken stump of horn underneath. She placed the specialized piece of crystal on the tabletop, right next to the open book. Twilight settled next to her wife and peered over at the book. “If you have experienced darkness appearing suddenly surrounding you in your dreamscape, that is your subconscious informing you that a necromancer has interfered with your dreams. A monster with eyes the color of blood may appear before you and stare into your subconscious self, sometimes seeming to paralyze you. Fromir is a beast with the power of sorcery dark enough to create fear and hatred in the heart of his victim, both inside of dreams, and in reality. There is no known way to defeat him, as the Pillars of Equestria were the only ones to best him, but they vanished before they could share the specifics of their victory. But, rumor has it that Fromir is the long lost brother of...” "GROGAR?" the couple said in unison. Twilight broke off reading and, moments later, Tempest came to the conclusion that had caused the alicorn to pause. Art by RachelClaraArt “Twilight?” asked the unicorn, “could this… could this mean that Fromir had returned for revenge?” “Possibly,” Twilight said slowly. “Maybe it’s revenge, maybe it’s something else, but I believe that the history from this book could be a warning of what’s to come. If Grogar really is the monster behind all this, we need to warn eveypony, and fast.” “I think it’s time to summon your friends, Twilight,” Tempest suggested. “I think not.” Both Twilight and Tempest jumped at the mysterious voice that came from behind them. As one, they slowly turned, coming to face a shadowy figure with blood red eyes, and a large bell around its neck. It stood in front of the library doors, blocking their only way out. Twilight gasped. “It that-” she bean. “Yes, Twilight,” Tempest whispered. “That’s him.” “I prefer the term ‘it,’ if you please, Tempest,” the monster said, casually. “And I know all about you, and your wife,” he smiled, “and her little friends.” “Then why are you here, Fromir?” Tempest demanded. “I’m here for my return,” Fromir answered. “Or should I perhaps say my ‘reveal’? Time flies when you’re defeated by the Pillars, it’s hard to tell how long one’s been gone for. Either way, that’s only part of why I’ve come here; you see, what I’m really after...” he paused and smiled, white teeth coming into stark contrast with the shadows that surrounded him, “is you.” “Well, if you’re coming after Tempest, you're going to have to go through me!” Twilight declared, lighting her horn and placing herself between her wife and Fromir, wings flared and ready to fight. “Oh, Princess,” Grogar smiled. “I’m not going to fight you to steal you wife.” he chuckled. “I’m here for both of you, and your little friends, too.” He chuckle grew louder and more sinister as the air around him became thick with power. Suddenly, the shadows around him burst, spreading darkness throughout the room, enveloping Twilight and Tempest. They screamed as everything around them turned to darkness, everything they tried to do to escape failing as the inky shadows wrapped around them like tentacles. After a moment, the screaming stopped, and the shadows cleared to reveal the library, now empty but for Fromir. Everything was untouched; not a page was out of place as the monster stood precisely as he has been moments before. “Good night, little ponies,” Fromir snarled, and then he, too, was gone, melting into the shadows.