Las Pegasus - Library
Present time
Everyone turned to Cassandra and Owl when Rainbow Dash left, looking up to her with a strange sense of unease, waiting for her next move.
She had just saved one of them, she wouldn't be violent to them... Right?
Cassandra glanced at the two other guards she had caged in rock earlier, watching as they flinched back at her gaze. They were absolutely terrified, their large colorful eyes turned to pinpricks as they tried to back away.
She felt her heart grow heavy, those two were probably horrified by her, afraid for their lives.
Anemone cleared her throat and stepped forward, breaking the silence. "So, what are you going to do now?"
Cassandra felt a cynical chuckle creep up her throat, thinking back to the fact she couldn't go home. "I don't know. I just found out that I can never go home, Anemone. What am I supposed to do?"
Anemone hesitated and looked away. She didn't know how to answer. She blinked and glanced back up at Cassandra. What did she mean by that? Why couldn't she go home?
Cassandra raised her hand and lowered the yellow stone back into the floors of the library, releasing the two pegasus guards.
They shrunk back down against the floor, trembling as they awaited their fate.
It made her feel sick.
"Go," Cassandra said softly, not wanting to spook them further. "leave, I have no problem with you."
They hesitantly raised their heads and glanced at each other before booking it out of the building, running as fast as they could, forgetting they had wings entirely.
Everyone returned their attention to her, watching as she moved to also leave.
"Wait!" Obsidian yelled as he galloped to her. "Please, your power can heal my people! Since you have no place to go I beg of you, please, come with us we will help you in any way we can!"
Cassandra turned around, looking down at Obsidian with confusion. "What do you mean?"
Obsidian swallowed nervously. "I- I am a changeling. My kind do not eat to live like most creatures. We feed off emotion and recently we have suffered a severe shortage of it. Ivory and the rest of the Union are trying their best to help my hive but it's not enough to heal our starved and wounded."
He looked up at her, his eyes brightening visibly. "But you can change that! I have felt your power and it has filled me with enough strength to restore 12 of our afflicted to full health!"
Cassandra considered this, if Rapunzel was here she would immediately try to help him. Rapunzel was always a better person than her.
Owl hooted quietly to Cassandra, asking her to consider the offer. Some real food and a bed sounded nice for once.
"Fine." She agreed. "I will try to help you in any way I can."
Cassandra turned to Anemone and Harpy. "But before I do anything, I want you to tell me why you are spying on the Princesses and what this whole 'Union' thing is about."
Unlike Rapunzel, Cassandra didn't blindly trust people, she would need some answers first. For all she knew they only wanted to try to steal her power, and she knew firsthand how dangerous that could be.
Ivory stepped forward, followed by Harpy and his two ponies. "You saved my little girl, I would be honored to repay you in any way I can."
Cassandra softened her gaze at his words. She couldn't dismiss the honesty of his tone, how he reminded her of her own father...
Perhaps she could afford to at least give them the benefit of doubt.
"Sir! There appear to be signs of a dis..."
Everyone turned to the stunned armored unicorn, his voice trailing off as his eyes landed on Cassandra.
"Signs of what lieutenant?" Asked another stallion who approached the stunned unicorn.
He followed the gaze of his frozen subordinate and yelled at what he saw. "All units! converge on my positi-"
He was cut off when Cassandra summoned a wall of rock between them. Effectively keeping them out and trapping them inside.
Harpy cursed. "How did they get here so fast?!"
Cassandra shifted her feet and reached out to the stone again, preparing to rip a hole in the floor and create a path looping back up into an anyway behind the building.
"This way!" Ivory shouted while pulling a book on the shelf, causing it to slide open and reveal a secret passage. "Hurry!"
She paused, releasing her grip on the stone's magic. Perhaps a secret tunnel would be the best option.
Everyone rushed down the hall and Ivory closed the entrance behind them, locking it to prevent anyone from following.
Strange gemstones imbedded in the walls lit up the pathway, allowing Cassandra to see the numerous doors of tunnels branching off the one they were moving through.
It reminded her of the secret passages under the Castle, making her think back to all the times she had to chase Rapunzel down those dark hallways to drag her back to her boring royal duties.
Cassandra sighed at the thought, those times were long gone.
As she followed the group she thought deeply about what she knew. Apparently Obsidian ate emotions to live, and that his fellow citizens were slowly starving because nobody wanted to help them.
He was also what those guards called a 'changeling', a being capable of shapeshifting and an enemy of this country.
But why? Could Obsidian hurt someone by feeding off of them? How would that work? Were his kind frowned upon purely because of this diet?
Then why would this 'Union' help others like Obsidian if it was potentially damaging? Were the ponies of this land so incapable of kindness that they can't help out a race that's intelligent just like them? Especially when a shapeshifting population could be such an advantage to them?
Cassandra watched as Ivory moved to walk with his daughter. She knew she just had to be patient, she would get her answers soon anyway.
Whether or not their answers were true would be something she would have to figure out on her own.
Ivory paused at a door and pressed his claw against a brick next to it, never bothering to touch the handle. The stone glowed and the door swished open, allowing the group to pass.
Once through the door, Cassandra was greeted with the sight of a wide room with beautiful chandeliers filled with tables and chairs of various sizes.
They approached a table that was actually tall enough for Cassandra to sit at, making her wonder briefly just exactly what they would need such large furniture for.
"Well, -" Harpy began, glancing at her father. "I'm sure you have plenty of questions, so let's begin."
Ponyville
40 minutes later
Rainbow Dash could tell that she was close to breaking down, she couldn't get the sight of the royal guard dying out of her mind. She couldn't stop seeing those hate-filled green eyes that burned into her very soul, couldn't keep her dreadful voice out of her ears.
And yet... she couldn't forget the warmth of her voice as it healed the dead griffin, or how the others defended it with such determination. Somehow in their eyes this creature was not wrong in killing the guard, not wrong in lashing out with dark magic of all things.
No, in their eyes she was wrong for trying to stop the creature, for trying to avenge the pony, for trying to bring it to justice.
To them, justice had already been paid, and that the guard's death was merely the consequence of his own actions.
Rainbow Dash zoomed through the air and dived down towards Twilight's door. Perhaps her friend could help her sort out her emotions before she started crying, everything about this situation clashed with what she believed, made her question what she thought was right.
Rainbow dash burst through the front door. "TWILIGHT!"
Twilight yelped, dropping the book in her magical grasp. "NO!" She jumped down from her chair and picked up the book, searching for any damage. "Rainbow Dash! Look what you made me do!"
She shook her head. "It's just a book! Now I-"
"RAINBOW!" Twilight shouted. "It's not just some book, it's one of Starswirl's personal JOURNALS! And I BENT A FEW OF THE PAGES!"
"I'm SORRY!" Rainbow Dash yelled back, her voice cracking slightly, holding none of her usual confidence. "I'm sorry Twilight but right now I need your help."
Twilight hesitated, taking in her friend's unusual tone. "What do you need help with?"
Rainbow closed the door behind her and sat down, taking deep shaky breaths. "Twilight, I... I saw somepony die today."
"WHAT?!" Spike shrieked just as he entered the library, dropping the half-eaten ruby in his claws.
Twilight just stared with shock, unsure what she heard was right. "I'm sorry what?!"
Rainbow nodded. "I was hanging out with my old pal Free Fall in Las Pegasus when we heard screaming coming from inside this old building. So we go in to try to help out when we see a griffin lying dead on the ground, killed by one of the royal guards there."
Twilight and Spike gasped. That couldn't be right, royal guards were trained to only use deadly force in the most extreme situations! They didn't even kill any changelings when they attacked Canterlot!
"And then there was this white pony that just... Exploded and turned into some weird two-legged creature with glowing blue hair and green eyes..."
Dash looked up at the two. "Twilight, its eyes looked just like Sombra's, I think it was using dark magic."
"But that's impossible! Everything about dark magic was destroyed centuries ago!" Twilight exclaimed, a single hair jumped out of place in her mane.
Spike nodded. "Yeah even Celestia doesn't have any books of dark magic, you'd have to be an immortal to know any of that stuff."
"But that's the thing! It brought the dead griffin back to life with some weird golden magic!" Rainbow Dash rubbed her eyes with a hoof, trying to fight the tears pricking at her eyes "And then it killed the guard by making him... Makeing him decay while he was alive. It... I couldn't do anything..."
Rainbow dash looked up and saw Twilight frozen, her pupils were shrunken and another hair popped out of place.
Spike sputtered. "But necromancy magic was banned over millennia ago! Only the Princesses would even have an idea of how it works!"
"EXACTLY!" Twilight yelled, finally breaking out of her stupor. "The fact that you saw such magic means that this thing is probably well over 3,000 years old and could be a big threat to Equestria!"
"Spike take a letter we have to tell Celestia!"
"Already on it!" Spike replied, pulling a quill and scroll out of a nearby drawer.
"NO!" Rainbow yelled, making Twilight and Spike stop and turn to her with surprised expressions.
Rainbow Dash tried to calm her nerves and sighed. She didn't mean to yell like that. "Look I came here because I thought you needed to hear this, and because I thought you could help me understand."
"What's there to understand?" Twilight asked, already ideas of several different disasters ran through her head. "We have a monster on the loose that kills ponies with DARK MAGIC! We have to tell Celestia!"
"BUT IT SAVED SOMEPONY TOO!" Rainbow Dash yelled at the two, her emotions beginning to take their toll. "I wanted to take it down but the others there stopped me. They said that the guard wanted to kill all of them and that the creature was only defending them."
She hiccuped. "Twilight I wanted to hurt it, I wanted to bash its head in but one of the ponies asked me how that made me the better mare, how I was the good pony by attacking it and I don't know the answer. Beating up bad guys is what we always do, so why do I feel so bad now?"
Twilight considered her words, pausing her several trains of thought and focusing on her friend. "We only take down threats to Equestria. If this thing was just trying to help the griffins then you should let the authorities handle it. They would know what to do."
Rainbow looked away, feeling significantly worse. What is she messed up? What if the creature went on a rampage because of her?
"But that doesn't mean that what you did was wrong." Twilight quickly added. "It killed somepony and that's a very bad thing to do, you were right to try and take it down."
Rainbow Dash recalled how the creature reacted to her accusations, it didn't attack her, it hardly tried to defend itself.
What if it just lost control of its anger for a moment? Feeling outraged because its friend was hurt? What if it felt like how she was right now? Regretting it's action after the moment passed...
"But how do you know that?" She asked quietly, hating how she felt uncertain. "This pony was going to kill them, all of them, even another pony! Celestia, he already killed one when we got there, what if it was just trying to stop him?" She asked, her eyes becoming watery. She never believed in punishment by death, but she also believed that a pony could never do such a thing.
But Sombra was a pony just like them... Who's to say that the guard wasn't like Sombra?
Twilight glanced at Spike, seeing that he felt as conflicted as her. "I don't know Dash, this is all too complicated I think only Celestia would know what to do."
She walked over to Rainbow Dash pulled Spike along with her magic. "If you feel that what you did was wrong then maybe you can set it right. Let's write the letter together so that Celestia has all the information and can make the right decision, okay?"
Dash looked over at the paper, thinking to herself carefully. If she could help Celestia understand then maybe she would see that this creature could be misunderstood, or that maybe it was evil. Either way, she would be helping it or Equestria, and that's all she wanted to do.
Dash smiled sadly and wiped the growing tears out of her eyes, never giving them the chance to roll down her cheeks. "Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks, Twilight."
Twilight and Spike brightened at her answer, glad to help her feel better.
"Anything for a friend," Twilight said gently as she pulled over a chair. "now let's get started."
Rainbow Dash thought about the strange creature, how it brutally murdered a pony to avenge what could have been its friend. She knew that if it ever came to it and her friends were in danger, she would very well do the same, no matter how she felt about death.
Anything for a friend...
Twilight had no idea how much that was true.