//------------------------------//
// Messages 
// Story: Guardians of Equestria 
// by Silverwind Blade 
//------------------------------//

Ever since he and Twilight had moved back to Canterlot and into the Royal Palace, Spike had taken it upon himself to walk in the gardens, or at least outside, once a day. Partly it was because he enjoyed being outside, and because he knew that Twilight had been gently pushing him to make sure he got some exercise by going outside regularly, instead of tending to his duties as her advisor, or just sitting and reading comic books in his room. 
Partly it was because he could use the side gardeners door from the palace gardens to get out of the palace, and sneak around to Donut Joes’ shop easily. 
On this occasion, he’d made his way outdoors mid morning. The sun was bright on his scales, and it sent a warming glow through his body. Like Twilight, he’d developed physically in the last few years. He’d gotten taller, with longer arms and lost a lot of his more childish aspects. He’d caught up to Smoulder and Ember in height - at last - and he felt less like a child physically, having lost his somewhat… pudgy younger appearance at last. 
He felt good at that moment, and with a smile, paused a moment to turn his face upwards, letting the sun bathe his face, after waving to leafy-green, head of the palace gardeners, who waved back cheerfully. 
As the juvenile dragon opened his eyes after looking upwards, he squinted. Something caught his eye; a black speck, moving closer and growing larger. It was kind of familiar, but small. Was it a bird?  It had wings, but didn’t fit the bird shape. It looked more like a pegasus, but it was quite small. 
Straining his eyes, Spike looked harder, putting one hand to his brows to try and shield them from the glare-
With a tinny mechanical screech that grew in volume, the tiny shape grew larger in seconds. The dragon barely had a chance to even see it before it plummeted out of the sky and impacted squarely into his face with enough force to cartwheel him backward in the air, and face-plant into the ground.
Groaning with a muzzle full of dirt, Spike winced and pressed both claws to his face, feeling a distinct lump growing between his eyes where… whatever it was had hit him. 
As he blinked blearily and tried to resolve the double-vision dancing in front of his eyes, he became aware that something was standing on his head, and was jabbering away in a tiny, metallic voice. 
“What?” he said after a moment, and the voice stopped, before starting again.
*Squeak squeak* “I am the fastest pegasus alive, I am a Wonderbolt, and I have a message for Princess Twilight Sparkle. My name is Rainbow Dash, and I am the best flier in Equestria. I am the most brave and loyal of all ponies! I have a message for Princess Twilight Sparkle! I can clear this sky in ten seconds flat! I am totally the most cool and awesome pony. I am also incredibly humble. I have a message for Twilight Sparkle!-
“Argh,” muttered Spike, reaching to grab the thing and look at it, but with the same mechanical squeak of metal, it whirred into the air on little clockwork pegasus wings and circled around his head, repeating jabbering words, and that it had a message for Twilight.
“A message for Twilight, well. Guess if it shuts you up, we’d better go and see her, right? Come on, you weird little thing”.
The weird little thing, he saw as it did what looked like an aerial somersault of joy in front of his eyes, was a little tinplate clockwork toy of Rainbow Dash. As far as he was aware, despite their being plenty of Wonderbolts merchandise, clockwork replicas of his friend hadn’t been among them, and certainly not ones that could both fly, and take messages for people. Groaning as the clockwork messenger jabbered on, he started back in the direction of the castle and the throne room.

“Spike?” Twilight called out as he entered the throne room through the main doors, the little toy buzzing around his head. “What’s that you have?”
“I don’t know, Twilight,” he said as he walked up the main carpet. “I kind of… bumped into it, you could say”. He rubbed the bruise between his eyes for emphasis, and Twilight winced in sympathy. Standing, she flew down the few steps to the floor of the room and moved closer with curiosity. The mechanical whirring of the little automatons’ wings was much more audible in the indoor quiet of the throne room with only the gentle trickle of the water in the ornamental pools as a background noise, along with the clopping of her shod hooves softened by the thick red carpet. 
As soon as she came close, her ears twitched as she heard the little device chattering to itself again.
*Squeak squeak* “I am the number one Wonderbolt, and the most brave of all the Elements of Harmony. I appear on the most Hasbro merchandise! I have a message for Twilight Sparkle! I love Daring Do novels, and I am Daring Do’s biggest fan. I have a message for Twilight Sparkle! I am the biggest Buckball fan, and I have a huge crush on Appleja-”
“All right, that’s enough of that,” Twilight said firmly, and grabbed the little tin pegasus in her magic. “I’m here, what’s your message?”
The toy-like device made a few more mechanical squeaks and grinding noises, before it went limp. For a moment, Twilight worried she’d broken it, before another more familiar voice filled the air. 
“Hello Twilight”
“Discord?” Spike said in surprise, sharing a look with Twilight, both of them listening as it continued. 
“I used the last of my power to send you this message. I thought the messenger would… get your attention, well enough. I’m sorry, Twilight, but… I messed up again. I put Fluttershy, and all of you in danger, because I let my curiosity and my arrogance get the better of me. 
Something ancient, and incredibly dangerous has come to Equestria. Something so old that even I’m not sure I know what it is. But it’s hungry, Twilight. Hungry for magic, and hungry for life. It’s taking mine, because I tried to stop it without thinking. I just charged right in.
Please… don’t tell Fluttershy that I put you all in danger. Because it’s draining me, taking my power and my magic to make itself bigger, and stronger. And… it is legion, Twilight. There are thousands of these creatures, and they’re getting bigger, joining together, forming more powerful things. They’ll be coming for you, and all I can do is warn you. Warn all of you. They came through a hole in the world; somewhere far to the north. A dark, forgotten place in Equestria.
I know you’ll worry, I know you’ll panic. You always do; You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t. 
But I know you’ll also do what you always do too.
You’ll get your friends together, and you’ll win.”
His voice wasn’t like either of them had ever heard it, bar a scant few occasions. It had none of it’s usual arrogance, it’s usual smirking humour. It was calm, serious, and on the level. It was full of respect. Of love.
And with each sentence it had grown fainter, weaker, and more strained. Almost a whisper now, Twilight had found her forehooves clutching the little mechanical doll and shaking as she listened to the rasp coming from it, and Spike had stepped closer still, so that both of them were near face to face, looking down with a mix of fear and shock as the voice came out of it.
“I’m sorry I let you down again, Twilight. Let all of you down again. I only ever wanted to help, you know. To make up for all the things-
“All the things I regret. Tell them I’m sorry, Twilight. I... have to go now”.

The silence that filled the throne room was haunting. It broke only as Twilight collapsed back onto her haunches, looking with confusion and fear at the tinplate device in her hooves.
Spike finally spoke in a tiny voice. 
“What… should we do, Twilight?”
She looked at her oldest friend and shook her head slowly.
“I… don’t know, Spike”.

Bitsburgh wasn’t a big town, by Equestrian standards. It was much the same as Ponyville; a settlement that had grown from a few farming families of earth ponies near water, and had naturally gotten bigger as Equestria itself had become more peaceful, but never to the same kind of dizzying size as somewhere like Fillydelphia, Manehattan or Canterlot. It was big enough for its residents to feel comfortably rural and rustic, and simple in their lives. 
The little town only numbered a few dozen buildings at the best. The mix of thatch-roofed and shingled white-washed buildings of the town proper nestled alongside the shores of the wide and vast Haunch Lake, neat patchworks of farming fields stretching around the little town, dotted with farmhouses and barns. 
As early evening settled. Whole Grain and his wife Barley Corn rested on the porch of their farmhouse, looking out over the rural tranquility of the landscape. They’d had a productive day; Barley Corn had prepared, along with the help of their three children, sacks of harvested crops for market next week. The farm looked like it’d have another productive season. Whole Grain himself had worked the fields, and had managed to finish preparing the earth for planting for the new crop. Pleased with himself and all of the family for work well done, he’d promised them a weekend free of work - bar the barest of bare essentials - and instead a trip to the lake had been planned, and a rewarding, luxurious meal had been eaten by all. 
Now the children were in bed, and he sat in relaxed silence with his wife, their forehooves loosely draped and linked between their chairs, while he nestled a mug of cider in his opposite hoof, relishing the warmth it left glowing through his body. 
“Whole Grain,” his wife said in a soft, warm voice, and it sent a ripple of excitement up his back. That tone of voice, warm and inviting, yet low and purring, was one he’d heard a few times before. And three of those times were why they had children tucked up in bed upstairs. 
“Yes, my love?” he said back with a warm smile that turned into a grin, as he turned to see his wife giving him a look that smouldered with love and excitement; all blushing cheek and low-lidded eyes above a sultry grinning smile. 
“Why don’t we, hm, celebrate our good day indoors? And besides,” she shivered a little; the air had taken on a cold nip to it. “I’m a little cold, I could use some warming up”.
The warmth in his veins from the cider was joined by warmth of another kind as the mare spoke huskily and ran one hoof over his own. A blush rose to his face and he took another drink, before standing on his hooves and looking back out over the fields one last time as he prepared to go into the farmhouse. 
He paused, ears twitching and frowned. Something wasn’t… right.
“What is it, darling?” Barley said quietly as she slid out of the chair onto her hooves and alongside him, leaning against him affectionately. He subconsciously did the same, feeling her reassuring weight against his own. 
“I don’t know,” he said back in his own rough, weathered tones. “I looked out and something just doesn’t seem… right out there”. 
They both stood in the silence as the dusk closed over them, the creaking of the nearby wind-pump and the gentle rattle of the porches’ old screen door their only accompaniment. Then it hit him what was wrong, but Barley beat him to it speaking up, her voice a hushed, small murmur.
“Why aren’t the birds singing?”
His ears lay back, and he set the cider mug down on the porch railing, and trotted a few steps forward, down off of the raised wooden porch and onto the earth of the farmyard, peering into the dim light across the last waving strands of corn and cotton waiting to be reaped. Beyond was the edge of the woods that marked the end of their property. He was sure that in the shadows under the trees, among the bushes, something caught his eye; was it some animal, moving? A year ago, last fall, their neighbour Green Fields had had some trouble with a manticore coming out of the woods and eating his cows and sheep. Could it be something like that, some wild creature?
He moved a few more steps closer to the edge of the crops, stepping into the field itself to get a better view, the calls of his wife going unheeded as furrowed his brows, getting a better look and his curiosity rising. There was definitely something moving there. 
He walked halfway along the edge of the field of corn, stopping as he got a better view, at last. Okay, so there were the trees; elm, oak, and the rest. There were the bushes that he always saw, rhododendrons, juniper and the rest, so…
The shadows moved and flowed, and then one of them detached, rising above and moving out from the tree line. A patch of darker blackness, angular and smooth. It looked at him with eyes like smouldering embers in the grate. It opened a segmented, multi-partite muzzle and let out a howling screech, and others joined. Then it moved, flowing with impossible grace, eating up ground as it closed on him. He could feel the cold radiating from it, feeling it sapping his strength, even as he turned and galloped toward the house, bellowing to the screaming form of his wife to go inside and barricade the doors. 
Then the blackness overtook him, and he felt nothing else, saw nothing else, and heard nothing else. 

Luna awoke with a scream, hooves, legs and wings tangled in the silky-soft covers of her bed as she struggled to throw them free of her panic-ridden body. 
Despite being retired from the ruling day-to-day of Equestria along with her sister, Luna was, regardless of her title and position, still very much the Princess of the Night; it was her being not her role, and walking through the dreams of her subjects was still part of that. 
So, it was rare that anything roused her to the point of nightmares of her own. But what she had experienced in her latest bout of dream-walking. 
She shuddered again, curling in on herself, wings wrapped tightly about her and all four legs curled in close for security. It had felt like the pony whose terrors had summoned was being consumed, entire, while they yet still lived. Like their very substance and being, the less-corporeal sum of their life itself, the unalienable magic that made ponies what they were, was being systematically portioned out and devoured while they felt every surgical bite, every delicate slice taken off of their soul, like some obscene surgical procedure, or a meal of fine dining where every slice was delicately cut for the choicest of diners-
The midnight blue alicorn rolled onto her side and threw up over the side of her comfortable yet simple bed, onto the varnished wood of her bedroom floor. 
The door flew open with a crash, filled by the normally graceful and beautiful, but currently unkempt and startled form of her older sister. Her pastel mane was askew, kept up by a hair bobble as she slept, but her rose eyes were full of shock and alarm, white fur clad in a tatty night-time T-shirt. 
“Sister!” she called out in a frightened voice. “I heard your screams; they woke me from a dream,” she looked to her younger sisters’ sea-green eyes for confirmation, and the smaller, darker alicorn nodded mutely, regretfully. Celestia bared her fine white teeth in an anguished expression and stomped a forehoof against the floor as she whinnied, hanging her head and shaking it.
“It-it can’t be real,” she said, as she looked back to Luna with pleading eyes. “Surely it can’t, Lulu. Not something like that”.
Luna shimmied herself out of bed, delicately avoiding her mess on the floor, before she lit the spire of her horn with magic and disapparated the vomit, cleaning the air as she did. She kept her back to her sister as she spoke, but could feel and hear her hoofsteps as she moved into the room.
“You know it has to be, Celly. Because when else do we ever share our dreams, but when it’s something that affects either one of us so badly that it has to be something that’s real, or going to be”. 
She looked back over her shoulder at the elder alicorn, her beautifully elegant white face twisted into a mask of fear and anguish; not, she knew, for Celestia herself, nor even for her. But for the goddess-forsaken ponies that had been subjected to such vileness. 
“If it’s real then,” Celestia said, straightening her posture slowly and her voice taking on it more familiar firm, convicted tones, “then it stands that we should do what we must to put a stop to it. After all, we are citizens of Equestria, and we must do our part to help our fellow ponies”
Luna gave the slightest smile at her older sister, briefly moving to her for a hug, both of pride at her sibling, and for reassurance for the lingering dread she still felt. It surprised her little when her big sister leant down, wrapping her neck and muzzle in Luna’s own and draping one wing across her back. She felt her tremble slightly in synch, and a whisper-soft nicker ecape her lips, before they straightened back up. 
“Twilight and her friends will need our help with this, Celestia,” Luna said firmly. “And even if she thinks she doesn’t, I’ll be bucked sideways if I’m going to sit here and do nothing while ponies have these dreams of whatever is happening to them”. 
“Quite so, Luna.” Celestia agreed with a nod. “I’ll send her a letter, then we’ll prepare and pack our things - I don’t think either of us will be sleeping again tonight, after all”. 

The next day, Twilight had done the one thing that always helped her find direction when things looked like they were going wrong: got her friends together to talk about it. 
Now, they sat around a table in one of Canterlot Castles’ many conference chambers. This one, Twilight had declared was theirs specifically. When she’d made it a royal decree that she and her friends would be the Council of Friendship to help rule Equestria, she’d made sure they’d have somewhere to rule from. Now, the seven of them, six ponies and one dragon, sat around the table, the now inanimate tin clockwork version of Rainbow Dash in the middle of the table like evidence of an argument. 
“...It is a pretty cool version of me,” Rainbow Dash said in an amused voice, reaching out with one hoof to poke the inanimate metal toy, that simply slid forward on its’ front hooves to lie flat on the table. “And you said it talked and everything?”
“Constantly,” replied Spike. “And it wasn’t as good as flying as you are, that’s for sure,” he said with a grumble as he rubbed the bruise between his eyes again. The cyan blue pegasus hid her muzzle behind one hoof and coughed to cover up a laugh.
“A good replica it may be, darling,” Rarity said clearly, her fine tone carrying across the conversation. “But it does seem very much like something Discord would do. All of us know what his sense of humour is like, and the kind of things he does as pranks. This is very much his style. But if it’s a joke, then why the message? Even he knows better than to make a joke like that”.
Applejack nodded in agreement with Rarity, tipping her hat to the cream-white unicorn. “Ah gotta agree with Rarity. As much as Discord ain’t ever really rubbed me th’ right way - sorry Fluttershy - even I know he’s changed a whole lot since we first met him, and he’s come through fer us all enough times to boot. An’ like she said, even he wouldn’t have sent a message like that if he weren’t in real trouble an’ all. Ah reckon there’s gotta be something to it. Only problem is, where’s he at?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Twilight said, looking around at the face of her friends. All of them being here had finally calmed her down enough to do some thinking. “He mentioned a place with a lot of dark magic, somewhere old and forgotten - and I got to thinking, what places do we know that are like that?”
“The Everfree forest?” Fluttershy piped up quietly. “There’s all sorts of dangerous things there”.
“The Castle of the Two Sisters was always a very eerie place,” Rarity added. “And that’s in the heart of the Everfree”. 
“Yeah, but Celestia and Luna lived there, and they’re like, totally the opposite of Dark Magic!” Rainbow answered, spreading her hooves wide and putting a note of incredulity into her still-raspy voice. 
“Rainbow is right,” Twilight replied. “But there is another place-”
“Oh, I know!” Pinkie piped up, waving her hoof frantically. “If it’s somewhere dark, full of bad things, and that every creature wants to forget about, surely it’s the central tax office in the middle of Manehattan!”
Twilight laughed, as did the rest of them despite the gravity of it, but the purple alicorn shook her head. Instead, she gracefully slid out of her seat and used her magic to unroll a map of equestria hung on one wall, apparating a pointing stick into her telekinesis as she did so. 
“No Pinkie, I think that’s a dark magic that even we have no chance against. Instead, I thought of one place we know was full of dark magic, and that Equestria had always forgotten about - other than a few of us who still live here. 
Levitating the pointer to the map, she tapped a location in the far North-East, depicted on the map as a ramshackle array of buildings in the middle of a thick forest surrounded by crags.
“Hollow Shades,” Rarity said with surprise. “My goodness, that does quite fit the bill. But do you really think anypony would go there after all this time? Or that anything could be happening there. After all, between us and the pillars, we fairly much dealt with the place”.
“Yeah, Twi. I mean, sure, the place was spooky and all, but no worse than anywhere Daring Do’s been to, or some of the other places any of us have ever dealt with.”
“I don’t know, Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy said with a grimace, curling her wings around herself. “I mean, there was the Pony of Shadows there. Twilight did rescue Stygian, but he still got away. I mean, we put him into limbo but he wasn’t-” she squeaked out the next word “-dead, after all. O-or frozen in stone, or locked up in Tartarus”. 
“Y’all don’t really think it could be him, do ya?” Applejack asked, warily as she looked at the faces of her friends. “I mean, after all these years… it just don’t sound that likely. Why now of all times, what changed so that monster could come back? Especially since Stygian’s alive and-”
The Earth Pony mare was cut off as Spike made a gurgling, choking sound. He threw his head back and gave an enormously loud belch, a gout of magical green dragonflame accompanying it as a carefully tied scroll emerged in the midst of the flames gently tumbling through the air in Twilight’s direction. 
“Ugh,” Spike said with a wince and patting his belly. “It’s been a while since that’s happened; I’d forgotten how weird it feels”.
“I’d forgotten how weird it is that Twilight used to get all of her mail from Princess Celestia by you throwing it up,” Pinkie remarked, hopping over the table and yanking Spikes jaws apart to examine the inside of his mouth. “Just as well she never put the wrong address in with the mail mare. Imagine if she got some furniture sent to Twilight by mistake…”
“It is from Celestia,” Twilight said as her lilac eyes scanned the flowing horn-written script on the page, as familiar to her as her own writing. “She and Princess Luna have news too, and they’re on their way here. They should arrive this evening”.
“So what should we do, Twi?” Rainbow Dash said, hovering into the air from her seat with a few flaps of her wings. “Wait for them to get here, or go and investigate Hollow Shades?”
Twilight looked at the map in thought, before rapping it firmly at Hollow Shadows with the wooden pointer.
“We’ll wait,” she said firmly. “Rushing in won’t help anyone. If we have the Prin- er, Celestia and Luna with us, hearing what they know will give us more time to prepare properly, and make our move, rather than getting ourselves captured or in trouble.”
“But what about Discord?” Fluttershy blurted out, tears in her eyes. “He could be all alone there, and suffering! What if we wait too long-”
“He’ll be fine, darling,” Rarity said soothingly. “And it wouldn’t do him any good if we rush in and get ourselves in the same mess he’s wrapped himself up in. This way, we’ll be better prepared to save him, and ourselves”.
Twilight turned away and grimaced, hiding her face and screwing her eyes closed as she heard Rarity’s words to the yellow pegasi, and gave a silent thought of thanks that she was saying them, rather than trying to get them out of her own mouth.
When she opened her eyes and looked up, Applejack was staring right at her, with a cool expression on her face. Flushed and ruffling her wings, Twilight turned back to the others. Pinkie peered at her curiously, big blue eyes blinking slowly and her poofy cotton-candy mane bouncing as she leaned impossibly close across the width of the round table.
“Heeeey, Twilight, are you okay? You look a little… out of it”
Twilight smiled at the pink earth pony and shook her head. “I’m fine, Pinkie. Just a little tired from all this news. It’s a lot more than I expected over the last couple of days.”
“All the more reason we oughta get some rest,” Applejack said firmly, folding her hooves in front of her. “Ain’t gonna hope no pony if we run in there half-cocked, like Twi says. An’ besides, we ain’t got any reasons to suspect anything else serious is threatening any creature just yet. What’s the worst that could happen anyhow. Ain’t nothing we ain’t managed to beat before”

Bitsburgh was long behind them. It had been a feast for their hunger, filling the Hollow Things with energy and sustenance. The drained mana of ponies had given them greater form and power. Now, their ranks stood firm and strong; different strains of their horde ranging from pony-sized individuals, up to towering Hellions that stood taller than the biggest barns they’d razed to the ground, and numerous things in between. Soaring Vogels split the air in whisper-quick flight, all swept, sleek angles and gleaming-sharp edges. As they’d grown, so too had he, integrated ever-more wholly with his far-far-far-removed kin. Their bodies flickered intermittently with red hex-patterns of energy and power, the low hum of their power coursing as they moved. So too, his smoke-like form had become more defined, more encased by armour-like panels of the same smooth material that was neither metal nor flesh, and pulsed with the same intermittent hexagons that repeated all throughout their ranks. His eyes had also taken on that same smouldering orange ember-like quality. 
Now, drawn by their senses and the signs on roads they had swept down, the vast horde surged through the Equestrian countryside. They had divided, one group returning to their foothold into this world, to begin fortifying it and preparing it to bring more of their fellows through. The rest, headed by him, had moved onward in search of the one thing that never stopped driving them. The need, ever-burning, for more.
The land fell away ahead of them, a rolling set of hills where the forest they’d travelled through from Hollow Shades West to Bitsburgh and then East, thinned away at last.
In the bowl of a wide cove was something much greater than a small farming community. A city, with high-rising buildings, built of stone, glass, metal and brick. Billboards, lighting and signs thrust into the air, lined all along the chic developments of the suburbs, and topping many of the tallest buildings. 
The city virtually reeked of mana from the thousands of creatures that no doubt called it home. Spreading his wings, the Pony of Shadows bellowed with unrestrained thrill, and took to the skies. Around him, the skies buzzed and roared with black shapes, and the tide burst from the trees, crashing down the slopes toward the woefully unprepared city.