“What do you mean?” Sunny asked, perplexed. “Don’t only ponies have sparkles?”
Izzy shrugged, apparently at a loss for the right words. “I thought so, too, but I’m the only pony in Bridlewood who can see sparkles, so I don’t know. And magic has been gone for years, so maybe that’s it?”
“But ponies didn’t have magic, and they still had sparkles,” Sunny pressed.
Izzy sighed. “Like I said, I don’t know a lot about sparkles. There’s nopony I can ask. But sparkles get brighter when you’re happy - you know that already.” Sunny nodded, her eager expression encouraging Izzy to continue. “But this castle has a sparkle. I’ve never seen a building with a sparkle before. But I think I know what a sparkle is, now.”
“Which is…?” Sunny prompted.
“Before, I thought it was just like a measure of your emotions. But I think you have a sparkle if you have magic. That’s the only possible explanation.”
“Wait. So you’re saying… this castle is magic?” Sunny blinked and massaged her temples with her hoof. “How does that work? How can a castle have magic?”
“It must have been created by magic,” Izzy mused. “Have you noticed how it seemed to be grown into this shape? Not even the most precise architects could have managed that. It must have some kind of magical properties, but then magic disappeared, and it began to turn into a regular tree.”
Sunny’s mouth hung open, and her eyes were wide. “That. Is. So. COOL!” She immediately shoved her hooves into her mouth, both her and Izzy looking around warily to see if they woke anypony up. “Sorry,” she whispered. “Do you think the Guardians of Harmony created it?”
“It’s possible,” Izzy said before stifling a large yawn. “I’m going back to sleep. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.” She crawled back into their tent, but Sunny had no intention of going back to sleep. She had just found out that there was a magical castle in the middle of the woods! How could she go to sleep at a time like this?
“I’m going to explore this place,” Sunny decided. A tiny voice nagged in the back of her head, saying, Shouldn’t you bring your friends along? But Sunny was too excited to care.
She trotted out into the hallway, picked a direction, and started going. She would just stay on the first floor. If she got lost, she would eventually reach something familiar, and be able to take it from there. As she stepped outside the library, she heard a whooshing sound, and turned back to look. But it was just one of the tent flaps moving. Must have been the wind… even though there was no wind in a castle. Sunny shook the uneasy feelings from her shoulders and continued on her quest.
Somewhere along the way, she discovered that she was subconsciously following a strange light up ahead. Now aware of it, Sunny doubled her pace, eager to see what it was. Some kind of magical message left behind from the time of the Guardians of Harmony, telling her what had happened? Okay, that was pushing it a little, but she could hope, couldn’t she?
Pushing open another green door (literally every single door in this place was green; how could the Guardians stand it?), Sunny found herself in a large chamber, and it all but took her breath away.
The ceiling was adorned by a huge chandelier, made from tree roots, polished and sanded down. “Huh,” Sunny said to herself. “Interesting design choice.” She decided not to touch it. If the village outside was any indication, everything could turn to dust at the slightest movement. Even if this had been locked away in a castle the whole time, and spared the worst, time still acted there.
Hanging from the tree roots were dozens and dozens of crystals, pink, blue, and yellow. They glimmered and gleamed in the light, and Sunny thought she could see images in them. But her attention was diverted to the other thing in the room.
A large table occupied the center of the room, made of crystal, surrounded by six - no, seven; there was a small one next to one of the big ones - crystal chairs that had a large image on the back. Sunny walked around the table and inspected them, and her heart stopped. She froze where she was and tried and failed to calm herself down. The table was the source of the strange light that Sunny had been following. It shimmered and glowed and appeared to be surrounded by sparkles.
Sparkles…
This place has a sparkle, Izzy had said.
Was Sunny seeing the table’s sparkle? If so, why this and nothing else? Or was it just so magical that the sparkle was clear for all to see? Or was she specially tied to it in some way? There was only one way to find out.
“Guys!” Sunny shoved the doors to the library open and dashed inside. “Guys, wake up! I found something amazing!”
Zipp and Hitch were the first ones out of their tents, rubbing sleep from their eyes and scanning the scene, looking for threats. When they saw Sunny beaming so brightly she seemed to light up the entire room, they looked confused, and then annoyed. Pipp and Sprout pushed past the ponies in the mouth of their tents and surveyed the scene, Pipp holding out her cellphone, the red blinking light showing that she was recording, her sleep mask dangling from one ear. Zipp reached over and pulled it off. Izzy pushed the tent flap back and exited her tent. She looked like the only one who wasn’t surprised by Sunny’s attitude.
“What is it?” Hitch asked, stifling a yawn behind his hoof. “And can it wait till morning?”
“Something amazing, and yes, I suppose it can wait till morning, but I really want to show you now!” Sunny was bouncing on her hooves, and Hitch thought that soon, she wouldn’t even need her wings to achieve liftoff. But the earth pony stopped bouncing and rushed to the door, gesturing for her friends to follow. “Come on, come on, come see! I promise it’ll be worth your time! Please?” She stuck out her bottom lip and made a puppy-eyes face. Hitch sighed.
“Fine. But after that, we are coming back here, we are going to sleep, and we will do no more exploring until after breakfast and coffee. Okay?”
Sunny nodded eagerly and dashed into the hallway. She led her sleepy, yawning, stumbling friends down the numerous hallways and to what she came to think of as the throne room. It was the closest this castle seemed to have. Her friends didn’t see what the big deal was at first, but after looking at the star on the back of one of the chairs - the star that matched exactly with the one that was on the stained glass window back in Zephyr Heights - their mouths dropped into Os.
“Oh my stars,” Zipp whispered. She walked around the table, studying the marks on all the chairs. “Is this… This is so amazing.”
Sunny beamed, her expression saying, “I told you so!” But she was too happy to say anything.
“This is cool and all,” Sprout said, looking skeptically around the room. Everypony was staring in awe at the structure, but he just didn’t get what was so great about it. “But why should we be excited?”
After reminding herself that Sprout hadn’t seen the abandoned airstation in Zephyr Heights and taking several deep breaths, Sunny said, “Sprout, this is where the Guardians of Harmony must have met to… I don’t know, do friendship stuff. This was their castle. The marks on each of these chairs, those are their cutie marks, they must be. And it’s proof that they existed, and that all pony kinds can get along! We really need that nowadays.”
Sprout looked again at the chairs surrounding the table. They did look vaguely familiar…
Pipp flapped her wings and managed to get a few feet off the ground. She circled the room, recording on her cell phone what they had found. She circled around the chandelier very gently, careful not to touch anything. She noticed what Sunny had: there seemed to be images inside the crystals hanging from the wood. Flying closer to investigate, Pipp gently tilted a pink crystal until she could see the picture inside before snapping a photo with her cell phone. She repeated this process for each crystal, then flew down to the ground and enhanced the images to get a better look.
“Hey, Sunny, look at this,” Pipp said, trotting over to the mare and showing her the pictures. “There are these pictures in the gemstones up there,” Pipp explained as Sunny scrolled through the photos. “I think they’re memories or something.”
Sunny seemed at a loss for words. Tears came to her eyes as she saw the Guardians having a party in what looked like a library, at a wedding, making cider an extremely old fashioned way, and just hanging out.
Zipp ran her hoof over the image of a red, yellow, and blue lighting bolt coming from a cloud on one of the chairs, feeling some kind of connection to it. She took a step back, and her hoof bumped into something on the floor. Looking down, she saw that it was a shard of crystal that looked like it came from the table. Zipp picked it up and looked at the table. Sure enough, there was a large gap in the crystal, something that looked like the shard in her hoof would fit into.
The pegasus princess reached to slide the shard into its slot, but as soon as it touched the crystal, the whole table lit up, startling Zipp so much that she jerked it out again. The crystal clattered to the floor in dead silence. Everypony was looking at the table and at Zipp.
“What was that?” Pipp squeaked.
Izzy came next to Zipp and picked up the crystal shard. She slowly moved it closer to the table, and as she did, the shard began to glow, as did the area around it. “It’s sparkle is getting brighter,” she commented quietly. She fit it into the slot, and the entire table lit up. Zipp helped her push the shard all the way in, and when it fell into place with a quiet shink, a blast ricocheted across the room, throwing the ponies back. When they looked up, the table was still glowing, and magic sizzled across the top, forming landscapes and cities and towns. It started on the edges and met in the middle, atop a large mountain with a castle built into the side.
“Wow,” Sunny whispered, shakily standing up and approaching the table.
“Sunny, don’t-” Hitch started, but she paid no attention to him. She traced her hoof over the solid yet transparent structure, looping over hills and through the streets of towns. She stopped on the edge of the ocean, her hoof lingering on the city in the middle of a bay shaped like a horseshoe. “It’s Maretime Bay,” she said quietly, unable to keep her voice from shaking. “No, it’s Manehatten. It looks… different.”
“Well, it has been over a thousand years,” Sprout said grumpily as he struggled to stand up from the tangled position he’d been thrown into.
“We don’t know that for sure,” Zipp said, resting her hoof on a floating city made of clouds. She traced the arching rainbows in the city and felt a chill down her spine.
“Oh my stars, Zipp! Look! It’s Zephyr Heights!” Pipp squealed excitedly, pointing at the mountain in the center of the map. “And that must be where we are now, in that little town right there! See, look, there’s the castle!” She pulled out her phone and started recording.
“Where’s Bridlewood, though?” Izzy asked, confused. She studied the map, looking for answers that she couldn’t find.
“Perhaps it’s part of this forest here,” Hitch suggested, indicating the dark mass of trees outside of Ponyville. “Maybe it expanded over here over time, and then receded until it just occupied this area. Then the unicorns made a village as far away from the magical castle as possible, since, you know, they’re afraid of magic.”
“Maybe,” Izzy said, looking sad that her city wasn’t represented. She placed her hoof gently on the edge. She didn't know why, but she felt tied to the map in some way. Apparently Pipp and Hitch felt the same way, because they did the same. Pipp even put her phone away. Sunny and Zipp already had their hooves on the map, and with contact from all five ponies, the map began to change.
Light spread out from where the ponies’ hooves touched the crystal and spread out, changing the landscape. It was as if they were watching a time lapse of how Equestria changed over the years. The city of clouds dissolved under Zipp’s hoof, and Zephyr Heights - Canterlot - began to change. It looked more like the pegasus city that they knew.
The forest began to invade at lightning speed, stretching out tendrils of vines and plants and wrapping them around Ponyville, dragging it in. The forest was completely out of control, and threatened to continue expanding, but something stopped it. A bright light came from the center of the forest, from some old catle ruins, and the forest around it was obliterated, so that it only covered Ponyville and the area around it. It made no move to continue its expansion.
Manehatten began to change as well. The towering structures collapsed and were replaced by the smaller, quaint buildings of Maretime Bay. A single lighthouse sprung forth on a cliff overlooking the ocean, and Sunny shivered. It was so strange to see her lighthouse again.
The other cities on the map, besides Canterlot - now Zephyr Heights - and Manehatten - now Maretime Bay - fell to ruin and dispair. All the pegasi seemed to be in Zephyr Heights, all the unicorns in Bridlewood, all the earth ponies in Maretime Bay. Nopony lived in the other towns anymore; they felt they had to stick together to protect themselves.
The map was mostly silent as the three cities quietly and fractionally expanded, and then Sunny’s lighthouse collapsed. Her heart ached, seeing her childhood home being destroyed, even though she had seen it before. That didn’t make repeat viewings any easier.
Afterwards, a small wave of magic swept through the map, finalizing the image on it. The chairs around the map began to glow and circle the map, and the ponies standing around it. They spun faster and faster until they became a white blurr, whipping up a strong wind before they suddenly stopped. There were no longer seven chairs, but five, arranged around the table like the tips of a five-pointed star. The cutie marks on the backs had changed, too. They were no longer the Guardians of Harmony’s cutie marks, but Sunny, Hitch, Izzy, Pipp, and Zipp’s cutie mark.
Once the initial shock had faded, Sunny just about burst into tears of happiness.
“Sweet,” Zipp said numbly, flapping her wings to carry her over to her chair and settling in it. She looked over at Pipp, who was seated next to her, of course, and who had her phone out, of course, and was snapping photos of what the palace now looked like, of course.
“That was so cool!” Sunny bounced up and down and ran over to her own chair to try it out. Izzy sat next to her and was studying the room.
“The sparkle’s changed,” she said in a politely curious voice. “I’ve never seen that happen before. It used to be a mix of different colors: purple, pink, white, blue, orange, yellow. But now it’s different. Now it’s a mix of white, pink, purple, a sort of orangish-yellow, and a sort of pinkish-
orange. It looks like… it looks like us.”
“Do you think whatever magic built this place wanted us to have it, to carry on the work that the Guardians never finished,” Zipp suggested.
Hitch ran his hoof along the armrest of his own chair and looked around, doing a brief count. “Hey, where’s Sprout’s chair?” he asked, and everypony else noticed it, too.
“Oh, no,” Sunny said, sounding guilty. She looked around for the red earth pony, saying, “Sprout, I’m really sorry-”
But he was already gone.