//------------------------------// // Legacy // Story: Forgotten // by milesprower06 //------------------------------// It was a little over twenty minutes before Sunny finally pushed herself to put the gems and silk scraps down and made her way back out into the hallway, to the foyer, and out front, where Zipp, Pipp, and Izzy were gathering rocks from the river and the rock slide to make a fire ring close to the river and far enough away from the surrounding trees and bushes. Once they got the stones placed and kindling placed under the thicker branches, they had a roaring campfire and carrots on skewers ready to go. The smell of campfire smoke and fire roasted carrot dogs brought Sunny back to earlier times, mostly of school camping trips along with Hitch and Sprout when she was younger. "So how do you take yours, Sunny?" Zipp said, pulling the two carrots from the sticks and placing them in the warm, lightly toasted buns. "Onions, relish, and mustard, please. Just the right amount of crunchy and flavor." Using her wings, Zipp quickly spooned up her requested portions, and offered the plastic plate over to Sunny. "Smells delicious, thank you so much." Sunny had barely taken her first bite, when the bushes rustled behind her, followed immediately by a snapping twig caused her to nearly choke as she leaped up, and the four of them shrieked as they turned their lights towards the disturbance. "Whoa, whoa, sorry!" A familiar male voice immediately shouted over the screaming, as the amber-coated earth stallion put his front hooves to shield his eyes from the light beams. "H-Hitch?" Sunny said, gulping down her bite of carrot dog that she had nearly choked on. "You got here fast." "Yeah, I guess my texts didn't go through, I don't get a good signal out here. My service is through Trot." "Evening, Sheriff," Zipp greeted, putting another two carrots on the skewers. "Just in time for dinner. Have a seat." "Sorry again about that, guys. There's no paths around here to speak of. How'd you even find this place all the way out here?" Hitch said as he took a seat next to his childhood friend. "One of my dad's old maps. There used to be an entire town here. This forest used to be a quarter of this size." Sunny told him. "How do ya take'em, Hitch?" Zipp asked, nodding towards the roasted carrots she was removing from the skewers and placing into buns. "Just mustard for me, thanks." He said, glancing at the laminated map that Sunny had pulled from her bag. "Not exactly the most detailed topography, now is it?" He said, noting the map's rather simplistic design. But Sunny did have a point, this forest, which now reached the base of the mountain, used to be a lot smaller. "Oh, before I forget..." Hitch dug into the left satchel of his double saddlebags and came out with a new notebook, ink pen, and marker. "I had to make a quick stop up in Zephyr Heights, didn't get your text until I was already halfway here." "Thanks so much, Hitch." Sunny said, accepting the items as she finished off her first carrot dog. "So how are things going with Sprout?" "As well as they can be, I suppose. He's making a genuine effort, I will give him that. And I'll be pulling the cost of the repair to your home from his salary for the next two years. That's scheduled to begin next week, by the way." "That's awesome to hear. I hope I haven't been too much of a burden on you these last few weeks." Sunny said. "Absolutely not, and even if you were, it would be a deserved burden. I shouldn't have left Sprout in charge the way I did." When she hadn't been out in the wilds looking for ancient Equestrian sites, Sunny had been staying in Hitch's spare bedroom while he made arrangements to repair the lighthouse where she had lived nearly all of her life, which had been rendered uninhabitable by Sprout's immature and prejudice-driven rampage. Sunny quickly finished off her second carrot dog, and went to go rinse off her plate in the river, before setting it to dry on the small table Zipp had set up for toppings. "So how long will we be staying here?" Hitch asked. "As long as it takes to get everything valuable safely packed up and moved. I imagine once Pipp uploads her footage, this place might get a few more visitors." Sunny answered. "Oh, I would never disclose the precise location for a find like this. I'm no archaeologist, but I know how important it is to keep things like this protected." Pipp assured her. "Thanks, Pipp. Well, I'm going to see how many of those crystals I can catalogue and wrap up before I get too tired." With that, Sunny put the notebook, pen, and marker into her saddlebag, put the dual-LED band back on her head, tapped it on, and headed back inside to the castle foyer. Once Hitch was finished with his meal, he thanked Zipp for the food, rinsed his plate off in the river, then took off his saddlebags and set up the one-pony tent that he had packed once he had read the text messages from earlier. Once his campsite was set up next to the other two tents, he grabbed his lantern and turned to the others. "So where would I find her in there?" He asked as Zipp was starting to put away the toppings and Pipp was editing a video on her phone. "Probably the throne room. Up the stairs, first hallway on your left, another left, and it's the first door on the right." Izzy told him. Trying to keep the directions straight in his head, he turned his lantern on, stepped over the vines and roots, and headed in through the open door. He immediately gave an impressed whistle. The single pic she had shared in the group chat didn't do this place justice. He headed all the way back to the stairs, went up and to the right, and went down the first hallway on the left. The next intersecting hallway curved gradually, and he made another left, soon coming to the open door, where the first light source he had seen other than his own since coming in here. He peered in side, and there was Sunny, sitting on a tall crystal throne, currently studying a gem with a magnifying glass. After a few moments of mumbling to herself, turned her attention to the open notebook, scribbled a quick note, then carefully wrapped the gem up in a scrap of silk, then carefully wrote a number on the silk with the black marker, setting the wrapped gem in the plastic container on the smaller throne next to her, before grabbing another gem, and the process started again. "Wow..." Hitch commented, stepping into the cavernous throne room, seeing the dozens upon dozens of gems that had been arranged on the large round table. He stepped up to the table, and around the throne Sunny sat at, which had a six-pointed purple star on it, a symbol he saw all too often growing up hanging out at Sunny's house. It was quite surreal, seeing something he had always dismissed as a foal bedtime story be quite real. As he didn't want to disturb Sunny's concentration, he silently glanced at the open notebook, looking at the entries she had made so far: Purple unicorn, pink earth pony, party in a library? All six, fancy dresses, fashion show? White unicorn, yellow pegasus, red earth pony, light yellow earth pony, light blue earth pony. Singing group. Purple unicorn with wings, large white unicorn with wings (ruler?), purple dragon with green spikes (smaller throne?) Purple unicorn with exact duplicate. Twins? Time travel? Cyan pegasus and a turtle. Pet? "Quite the find you've got here, Sunny." Hitch commented as she started penning a seventh entry. "Yeah, I'll shay," Sunny answered with the pen between her teeth. "Any thoughts as to what you're going to do with all of these once you've got them all wrapped and catalogued?" "Yeah. I have been giving it some thought." Sunny replied once she dropped the pen and began to wrap the gem up. "I think I might try and open a museum devoted to this time period. Now that Equestria's becoming more united, I'm betting more and more ponies are going to be interested in what it was like back then. It's gotta be better than selling smoothies all day. I've only just started looking at all of these, and I think it might be quite tricky to discern the amount of time covered by all of these. So far, the only difference I'm seeing so far is the purple unicorn, with the star mark... She got wings at some point. What do you even call that?" "You mean like what those crystals did to you?" "To be fair, that was for barely twelve hours. This looked to be a little more permanent. It's more than the gems. My dad found art of her. It was her mark on some of the stained glass windows in Zephyr Heights." Hitch also remembered her dad had frequently worn a wooden charm with that six-star mark carved into it. "It's incredible... The drive that you inherited from your dad." Hitch told her as she finished wrapping up the crystal then wrote a '7' on the silk before setting it down in the container. "My dad was an amazing pony." Sunny said. "He made you an amazing pony, too, Sunny." Hitch told her, enough to pull her eyes away from the next gem and give him a smile. "I'm serious. The unity and togetherness that Equestria is slowly coming into is because of you." "And him. And us, too." Sunny added, before turning back to the next gem. She looked at it under a magnifying glass for just a moment before her eyes widened. "Wow..." She whispered, astounded. "What is it?" Hitch asked. Sunny carefully slid the gem over to where he was standing, and gave him the magnifying glass, making sure her LED headband was properly angled. "That's what this place used to look like..." She said. His eyes widened as well, when he saw the distant image of a pristine crystal castle, six ponies standing at the front stairs, dwarfed by the towering structure. What was more, it was not forest, but rolling meadows beyond it. "Incredible..." He said, handing the magnifying glass back to his friend, who began making the next entry in her notebook. "Well, I'm not quite tired yet, so I'll start mapping out the halls of this place. Don't stay up too late." Hitch told her, retracing his steps out of the throne room.