Back in the present day, Luna, Discord and Settler followed the Dazzlings even further into the Undiscovered West. The west was one of the only few territories along with the South Luna Ocean and the Celestial Sea that had not been claimed by any of the villains, seeing as it was filled with uninhabited forests and mountains.
"So then what happened?" Settler asked the Dazzlings, hoping they would continue talking about how they survived their encounter with Cozy Glow.
"I'm not entirely sure what happened next. The crystals she was connected to grew a blindingly bright blue," Adagio replied, "The next thing we knew, we were in this cave with a unicorn, an earth pony, a hippogriff and a changeling."
"Heh, sounds like you were under Cozy's control for a little while. Though weren't you supposed to be seeing your worst fears while under the spell?"
"Not exactly," Luna answered, "The spell Sombra used is an advanced version of the Persuadere spell combined with an inverted version of the Fiducia Compelus spell. I presume Grogar gave his own variation of the spell Sombra used to Cozy Glow and Tirek."
"And why do you know all of this?" Settler arched an eyebrow.
"Star-Swirl taught me about the Fiducia Compelus spell and how it was supposed to create trust within ponies. But then ponies started abusing it to make other ponies do things they wouldn't normally do."
"Such as?"
"Murdering their families."
Settler winced when he heard that. He wasn't sure what was worse, somepony who'd murder their own family or somepony who would force another pony into murdering their family. Soon enough, everypony managed to reach a cave within one of the mountains. The inside of the cave was a dark grey, and was illuminated by bright cyan crystals within the walls. As they continued walking, they noticed other ponies standing near the end of the cave. On the right was a light blue stallion with a bulky build and a long beard that was as ginger as his braided mane and his tail. On the left was a hippogriff with a yellow coat and a blue, plumed mane, decorated into waves. And in the centre was a yellow unicorn with white hooves and a dark orange mane, beard and tail with lighter orange streaks in each of them. The unicorn was also wearing a pair of reading glasses and a dark blue cape with turquoise stars attached to it. Luna and Discord could easily recognize the unicorn and stallion as Sunburst and Rockhoof respectively, but they had no idea who the hippogriff was. As soon as he caught sight of her, Rockhoof charged at Luna and pounced on her, placing his forehooves onto her throat to choke her.
"You killed Star-Swirl, you treacherous witch!" he began to throttle her violently.
The other two, along with Settler's help, tried to pry Rockhoof off of Luna, only succeeding when the Dazzlings joined in too and restrained him. Luna got up and rubbed her forehoof across her neck, panting as she did so. Discord then raised a hand and finger.
"If it helps, she was brainwashed by King Sombra into doing that,." he said.
"Thank you," Luna said, turning her head towards Discord's direction, "Although your help would have been appreciated in getting Rockhoof off of me".
"I would but I still got these crystals stuck on me and I'm maaaaybe a bit ticked off still after hearing the whole 'you killed Fluttershy' thing."
Luna gave Discord an unamused stare before looking to Sunburst.
"Sorry about Rockhoof, Princess," Sunburst said, "He thought you had gone nightmare again during...that day."
"Apology accepted," Luna replied, "And in all fairness, I probably deserved that."
"Oh, and my name is-"
"Sunburst. You were a friend of Starlight Glimmer. I believe we have met before when we were finding out what happened to Star Swirl."
"Oh good, you remember me. I thought you wouldn't recognize me because it has been years, centuries even, since we last met."
"And who is the hippogriff?"
"Oh, me?" the hippogriff answered in a perky tone, "I'm Princess Skystar, or I was a princess, then this big bad goat guy called Grogar invaded our home and enslaved everypony into working in the mines of Seaquestria. I didn't even know we had mines."
"Ah, so you are the daughter of Queen Novo."
"Yeah," Skystar said before her cheeriness was replaced with melancholy as she looked down at the floor. Luna could tell by Skystar's expression that Novo was another casualty in Grogar's conquest of Equestria.
"My condolences," Luna said.
"Just one little question," Discord said while holding his paw up in the air again "Are you guys going to betray us? Mainly it's because the Flibbertygibbet twins sold us out to Grogar when I delivered the potions to them."
"I am so sorry about that," Sunburst said nervously, "I honestly thought that, since they liked to undermine Grogar and his accomplices as much as we do, we thought they would be interested in our cause."
"Oh, I know those guys. Trust me, the only thing they're interested in is money. The only reason I didn't see their betrayal coming was because I thought we were friends." Discord sighed as he put his palm to his face. "This is like that Tirek situation all over again. And I thought the one most likely to relapse into villainy out of the two of us would have been Luna."
Luna then glared at Discord again, to which Discord gave a shrug and a goofy grin.
"What? You got to admit, you and Celly did have quite the sibling rivalry."
"True, but you were the spirit of chaos and disharmony."
"Yes, but chaos isn't necessarily a bad thing. Besides, I never argued with Fluttershy while you still bickered with your sister."
"I'm sure you and Fluttershy had some disagreements in the past."
"Maybe, but most of them were my fault."
"Most of them?" Luna said with a smirk.
"Okay, all of them! Happy?"
Luna then turned her head towards Sunburst again.
"We're getting off-topic here. So tell me, Sunburst, how did you survive all these years?"