"Alex?" a mare whispered to me, her voice interrupting my sleep. "I don't mean to disturb you, but if it's no trouble, could you wake up for me?"
If it were any other voice, I probably would have ignored it. However, hearing that it was Fluttershy, I decided to give her the courtesy of opening my eyes. She hovered slightly above the ground on the side I was facing, which was good because I wasn’t in the mood to turn over. She gave me a sad look, and I saw Applejack standing behind her, rubbing one of her hooves against the back of her leg uncomfortably. “Good,” I thought. “You should be uncomfortable.”
“Oh, you look awful!” Fluttershy commented, seeming like she wanted to cry at the sight of me.
“I feel awful,” I responded simply. Then, directed towards Applejack, I asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Ah, well…”
“She wants to say she’s sorry for not believing you before,” Fluttershy explained.
“Well, I don’t want to hear it,” I said flatly, watching her wince. “She can apologize by getting me out of here. Until then, I won’t forgive her, or the rest of them either.”
“I understand,” she told me politely. “But that’s also why she and I came. We want to see if there’s anything you can tell us to get you home.”
“And she’s here to make sure I’m being honest right?” I asked. “As if I would lie?”
“She’s here because Twilight split us up into groups.”
“Oh. So it’s Twilight that doesn’t trust me,” I sighed. “Whatever. I don’t care. I’ll tell you whatever you want, even though she'd probably rather do anything else.”
“I promise,” Fluttershy assured me, “that I’ll make sure Twilight does everything she can to get you out of here. She actually gave us a bunch of questions to ask you. But only if you want to answer them, though.”
“Better late than never she helps, I guess," I mumbled. The two gave me an uncomfortable look for a silent moment, before I broke it, saying, "Ask away.”
"Well, she wanted to know if you felt or saw anything strange just before you got here."
"Nope. It looked and felt like I blinked. There was no lapse between me being at work and me being here."
"Did you do anything strange just before it happened?"
I thought for a second, trying to remember if there was anything out of the ordinary. After a few seconds, I responded, "Nothing that I can think of."
"When you got here, what happened."
"You all came in and decided it would be fun to try to kill me," I thought bitterly. I might have said it had it not been Fluttershy asking the questions. However, seeing as it was, I decided to try and be helpful.
"Twilight was there, and she called for Cadance to get Celestia and Luna."
"Okay, um, was she there before you got there, or after?"
"After…. you think it was someone else who brought me here?" I asked.
"Well, um, Twilight thinks it's a possibility. She's actually searching for spells that somepony might have used to bring you here. But, um, she also wanted to know if you felt any different so far."
I was angry and more depressed lately, but other than that…
"Not really,” I answered, and waited a few seconds to be asked something else. “Any more questions?”
“No, that was everything she told us to ask.”
“I have something to say,” Applejack spoke up.
“I already told you that I don’t want to hear it,” I told her. She opened her mouth to try and continue, but I interrupted her. “I don’t want to hear it, I don’t forgive you, you should feel bad, and I’m placing all of the blame on you specifically. If you would have said I was being honest in the first place when you knew I was, I’m pretty sure this would have all played out differently.”
The two stared silently at me, Applejack with a look of pain and shame, and Fluttershy with a slight grimace. “I don’t care if she’s hurt!” I said defensively, raising my voice before they could say anything. “I don’t care! It’s frustrating knowing that it took Celestia becoming Daybreaker for them to realize that maybe they should try and help me! And all I can do is lay around and wait for something to happen! So yes, she should feel bad!”
“Alex-”
“No! I don’t care! If you want to stop helping me because of that, fine! I don’t care! I can’t do anything for myself, and I’m not going to wait around for months for something to happen anyway! Whether you’re able to find a solution or not, I’m not going to suffer through this for more than a few weeks because I can’t stand it here!”
I was huffing by the time I finished my little rant. Fluttershy gave me an expression that was a mix of sympathy and concern, and reached her hoof out to put on my shoulder. “Don’t touch me.” I told her before she could put her hoof on me.
She stopped herself, saying, “I promise, we’ll do everything we can to get you out of here.”
“Pinkie Pie! Come quickly!” Rarity called, as she stood at a small podium reading a book. The pink mare hopped over to where she was, looking at what her white counterpart saw. “Look at this! It’s a diary that Sombra kept!”
“Cooooool! Does he talk about how he and Celestia are secretly best friends and how they're pulling the most amazing prank of all time on everypony?"
"Um, no. But he does mention having a friend in somepony named Radiant Hope, and it has me rather intrigued. It says here that he wanted her to be with him when he tried to take control of the Crystal Empire, and that she wanted him to try and run before Celestia and Luna came."
"And you think she secretly tried to resurrect him, but somehow messed up and made everything all wonky, and now she's gone because she realized that she couldn't do it and is looking for a better way to bring Sombra back so they can take over Equestria while finding true love with each other, don't you?"
"Well, not quite that exactly, darling," Rarity told her. "Although I do think that Twilight would be very interested in reading this."
“I hope you guys did better than Rainbow Dash and I are doing,” Twilight said, looking up from a book on teleportation as the group gathered in the Crystal Library. “We haven’t found anything useful yet… although somepony could be opening a book up.”
“Hey, I’m helping!” she protested. “I’ve been flying back and forth getting the books you asked for, haven't I?”
“Not really. But in any case, have you all found anything? Fluttershy? Applejack?”
“Um, well,” she stared quietly, “Alex said that when he got here, the first thing he saw was you, and that he didn’t feel or do anything strange before he got here. He also said that it was instintaneous, as if he blinked, and that you were the first pony he saw.”
“That’s good, that’s a lot to go off of.”
“He… is also frustrated, and would really, really like it if we were able to get him home as quickly as possible. He's getting, um... fed up with waiting.”
“I'll make a note of that,” Twilight said dismissively. “Rarity and Pinkie Pie?”
“Pinkie and I found a diary Sombra left before Celestia and Luna banished him,” Rarity spoke up, giving the book to the princess. “In particular, you might want to skip towards the end, when he talks about a mare named Radiant Hope, who seems to me to almost empathize with him.”
She took a minute to read through what Sombra wrote with a look of concentration on her face. “This… this is great!" the mare told Rarity excitedly. "This is really helpful! And with what Fluttershy told us, we should be able to come up with something soon!”
The yellow pegasus let out a tiny sigh at that news. “What are we going to do?”
“Well, from what you told us, it seems much more likely that… um, Alex was brought here by somepony else. And, judging by this diary, and assuming Discord is being honest about not being involved, the two best options we have are Sombra and Radiant Hope.”
“And since it will be fairly difficult for us to get in touch with Sombra at this point, you think we should look for Radiant Hope, don’t you?” Rarity finished for her.
“I’d say that’d be a great place to start, especially since she got her cutie mark after helping Sombra recover before. She’d probably know more about what to do in this kind of situation, and might be able to help us if we can find her.”:
“But if he wrote that diary before Celestia banished ‘em for a thousand years, then there’s no way she’d be around today. And if she was, she could be anywhere! It could take forever to try and find the gal.”
“Not really,” Twilight explained. “If she brought him back in the first place, then she’s probably been following us and keeping an eye on him, and is bound to be somewhere in the Crystal Empire. I don’t think she’d just run off to somewhere else. Not only that, but the heart was stolen today, and since it couldn’t have been Chrysalis, and Tirek and Cozy Glow are in Tartarus, and Som- Alex was with us, that leaves her as the only reasonable explanation. I mean, who else would steal it and then put it back? I think she was trying to help Sombra, and then realized that he might get hurt if it were missing."
“Okay, let’s say we do find her.” Applejack said. “What then?”
“I don’t know. But I think finding her would be a great first step.”