//------------------------------// // The Others // Story: Legends Never Die // by bookhorse125 //------------------------------// Sprout shoved open the doors to the castle and stumbled outside. Warring emotions inside him made him dizzy and uncertain, so he collapsed at the top of the steps that led to the door. Seeing the magic that had created the castle give Sunny, Zipp, Pipp, Izzy, and Hitch magic thrones, and the map reacting to their touch, but just ignoring him, only reminded him of how he would always be an outcast because of his past and his mistakes. Tears welled up in his eyes and splashed onto the stairs. “Sprout? Are you out here?” came a voice, and Sprout hurriedly wiped the salty water away and tried to look indifferent. Hitch poked his head outside, and his eyes landed on the earth pony sitting dejectedly on the front stairs. “Oh, hey, um… Are you okay?” “Huh? Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” Sprout lied, trying not to look at the sheriff as he sat down next to him and studied the red pony’s face with concern. “You don’t look okay… Hey, are you crying?” “No!” Sprout dragged his hoof across his eyes and sniffed. “What kind of question is that?” “Sorry,” Hitch apologized quickly. “I just thought that… you know, after what happened in there… I just wanted to let you know that…” “That what? I’m still part of the group? Yeah, right,” Sprout snapped angrily, taking Hitch aback. “Face it, I’ve made too many mistakes. I’ll never be one of you. Even the magic agrees. I’m just the guy everypony feels sorry for because I’ll never amount to anything.” His anger and humiliation came pouring out. All his life, he’d been overshadowed. First by his mother, who was the founder of Canterlogic; everypony expected him to be as successful as Phyllis when he couldn’t even hold a job at a pizza place. Then by Hitch, who had become sheriff despite that being Sprout’s dream; he never got to do much except offer Hitch with moral support, which he really didn’t need. Now by all the ponies he thought could possibly be his friends, who were the new Guardians of Harmony, apparently. “Just go, okay? Just go.” Hitch was silent as his friend lost control over his emotions. After a brief silence, he said, “Hey, um, I bet the Guardians of Harmony had loads of other friends besides just themselves.” Sprout sniffed, indicating that he was still upset, but he didn’t yell at Hitch to leave him alone. “And there were only six thrones in there. I bet they were friends with just about everypony, but they couldn’t all have thrones. But they probably did awesome things, too. I mean, the Guardians couldn’t have won every time, right? I bet their friends had to rescue them from a few pickles.” “You think so?” Sprout asked, turning to look at the other earth pony. His eyes were red (which you could hardly tell with his coat) and puffy, but he seemed more at peace. “Yeah! And I bet they made a ton of friends with ponies who made really big mistakes.” “Probably none as bad as mine,” Sprout grumbled dejectedly. “...That’s debatable,” Hitch stuttered after a quick pause, now unsure what to say. “Perhaps there’s some stories in Sunny’s old journal. We can ask her.” “Yeah… AH! Spider!” Sprout shrieked, his voice going up several octaves. He dove behind Hitch and trembled in fear as the sheriff looked at the creature sitting on the banister, studying the ponies with what looked like great curiosity, if spiders could have feelings. It was a pretty big spider, and it had a strange marking on its abdomen. “Sprout, look at this,” Hitch said, trotting forward and pointing to the bright blue star, standing out against the shiny black. The former deputy shrieked again and cowered in fear as two more spiders joined the first, all with a blue star marking. “That’s interesting…” “Uh, Hitch?” Sprout stuttered, unable to keep his voice from shaking. “What is that?” A dark shape was moving through the trees, with tall horns and thick, muscled arms and piercing yellow eyes. It stopped just beyond the castle steps, the trees still concealing its full appearance. Sprout slid behind Hitch and peeked around his tail. Hitch rolled his eyes. “You there! Show yourself,” he commanded, his voice authoritative and carrying. The figure tilted its head and appeared to decide that they were not a threat, because it stepped into the dim moonlight that managed to find its way through the dense overhead canopy. Sprout gasped and Hitch forced himself to remain calm. The creature walked on two legs and looked like a cross between a bull and a heavily-muscled monkey of some sort. It had two skinny legs with hooves, a small waist, broad shoulders, long arms with weird things at the ends that looked extremely dangerous, a long snout with a iron ring pierced into its nose, and black horns protruding from the creature’s head. The whole creature was a strange shade of bluish-gray. “Who are you?” Hitch demanded, taking a step forward and bracing himself for a potential fight. He wanted to make the monster think twice about attacking. “What are you?” Sprout peeped, still hiding behind Hitch and clinging to his tail like a foal. Hitch sighed and flicked his tail, freeing it, and Sprout bolted back to the safety of the castle, hiding behind one of the doors. “I promise I mean no harm,” the creature said in a gruff voice, holding up his huge arms to show that he was defenseless. “My name is Iron Bill.” “And what are you doing here?” Hitch continued, assessing Iron Bill to see if he could be a threat. “I was going to ask you that,” Iron Bill said, frowning and lowering his arms. “You ponies are trespassing in our territory. Everyone else wants to know who you are and what you’re doing in the Everfree Forest.” “Everfree Forest?” Hitch murmured to himself. “Okay, look, we’re not here to harm anypony,” he said to Iron Bill. “My friends and I are going on some sort of quest to-” “Hitch? Hitch, where are you?” came Sunny’s voice from inside the castle. “We didn’t find Sprout, but-” She stopped as she poked her head outside, momentarily speechless. “Oh,” she said quietly. “Um… who’s this?” “He says his name’s Iron Bill,” Hitch explained as Sunny, Izzy, Zipp, and Pipp all filed out, Pipp pulling out her phone to start recording. “He says we’re trespassing on his territory.” Sunny mouthed the name Iron Bill to herself and tilted her head at the creature in front of her. “Your name sounds familiar… Nevermind. We’re sorry if we were trespassing. We didn’t know. We’re kind of new to the area, so…” “Your friend here says you were going on a quest,” Iron Bill pressed, folding his arms across his bare chest. “What was it a quest for?” “For this.” Sunny waved her hoof behind her to indicate the castle. “Well, not this exactly, but we were looking for Ponyville, and I think we might’ve found it, isn’t that what the village back there? Anyways, we found this castle, and I think it might’ve belonged to Princess Twilight Sparkle, do you know who that is? But we were just looking for more proof that all three pony kinds once did live together in harmony, because we could really use it right now.” Iron Bill studied them for a moment before turning towards the forest again. “Come with me,” he said, gesturing to them. Sunny and Hitch exchanged a glance before following, everypony else close behind, though Sprout somewhat reluctantly. Iron Bill led them back to Ponyville and to the town hall, where he gently eased open the door, which amazingly did not collapse into itself. Inside was empty and dark, just a large room. The open door provided them with a little bit of light. Iron Bill stood in the center of the room and called out, “I think they are okay.” Pipp double checked to make sure her phone was recording. “Who do you think he’s talking to?” she asked her sister, who shrugged. A shadow peeled itself away from the darkness and turned into a lion… with a scorpion’s tail. A large reptile appeared next to it, looking somewhat like a crocodile, but built in a very interesting way. Tiny bugs shaped perfectly round with giant, adorable eyes clustered together along with what looked like miniature ponies with giant, gauzy wings and delicate antenne. A giant bear that looked like it was part of the night sky poked its head out of the shadows and hesitantly sniffed the air. Dozens and dozens of other creatures detached themselves from the darkness and studied the newcomers with interest. Finally, one of the creatures - a purple sea dragon with elaborate orange hair sitting in a tub of water - spoke: “So, can we kill them now?” “That doesn’t sound good,” Izzy whispered to Sunny, her worry clear in her wavering voice. “No, Stephen Magnet, we are not going to kill them,” Iron Bill growled. “We decided that killing newcomers would be bad. Right, every creature?” He looked around, and there were scattered responses of agreement among the assembled creatures. “But we also decided that ponies are bad,” Stephen Magnet continued, as if speaking to a very young foal. “After all, they’re the whole reason we’re stuck in the forest with absolutely no representation in literally all of pony society. So we would not allow ponies into our territory to take what little we have for themselves… again.” “These ponies won’t do that if they’re who I think they are,” said another creature, stepping forward from the crowd. Surprisingly, this was a pegasus with an orange coat and purple mane who looked familiar… “I know you!” Pipp suddenly exclaimed, startling the other creatures in the room. “You’re one of our guards!” “Wait, how did you get down here?” Zipp asked suspiciously, taking a step forward. “I live here,” the pegasus said simply. “Appearances can be deceiving.” Pipp and Zipp exchanged a glance. “What exactly do you mean by that?” Zipp asked slowly. The pegasus smiled, and a column of light suddenly appeared, encircling the pegasus. Pipp squeaked (again, yes, I get it, ha, ha, moving on) and ducked behind Zipp. When the light cleared, the pegasus was gone. In his place was a strange creature that looked like a cross between a pony and an oversized bug… “W-what are you?” Sunny stammered, taking a step back, shocked by the display. “I’m a changeling. We can change form,” the creature explained simply. “My name’s Midge.” “That. Is. So. COOL!” Izzy exclaimed. “What else can you turn into? Anything? Or does it have to be living, or can you turn into regular objects, and OH, if you turn into a unicorn, do you have unicorn powers? Is that a power? Did it disappear when magic did?” she babbled before Sunny put her hoof in front of her mouth to keep her from continuing, but she was secretly curious, too. “Um…” Midge mentally rewound the conversation to figure out what Izzy had said. “From what I can tell, I can only turn into living things, I do have said thing’s powers, yes, it is a power, no, it did not disappear when magic disappeared. I don’t know why.” “Are there… more of you?” Sunny asked, wondering how many ponies she knew could possibly be changelings in disguise. Midge shook his head. “The rest of my tribe is not here. They are in their own kingdom, living in fear of others… I think you know what that is like by now. I live here because I want to try and help fix things. I’m tired of being afraid. I want to do something.” “So, you’ve been… what, spying on us for the past few years?” Zipp asked, still not sure what to make of it. The changeling bowed. “My apologies, Your Majesty, but we are not accepted in modern society, so we wanted some sort of spy to see what was going on. We also wanted to try and bring the tribes back together so that we could rejoin society, but we never knew when to start. Then you and your friends did all the work for us, and we were about to come back when relationships began to deteriorate again. Now, we’re trapped here, and ponies are all to blame for it.” “Okay, so, I’m a little confused on why ponies are at fault here,” Hitch spoke up. “I mean, how is it our fault if we didn’t even know you guys were here? Maybe if you hadn’t been hiding the whole time, we could have given you a chance.” Midge raised an eyebrow. “Do you not think we’ve tried it? Think, what was the reaction to when you showed up in Zephyr Heights? Everypony was frightened, and the queen threw you in jail just because you were different and they blamed you for something you didn’t do. Every time we try to reintroduce ourselves, ponies turn away from us and push us back to where we started.” “This is why we do not tolerate ponies in our territory,” Stephen Magnet spoke up, “if we are not tolerated in theirs.” “That’s not entirely true,” said one of the tiny pony-bugs. His voice was high-pitched and squeaky. “What about those three little ponies? We let them stay.” Sprout, who had been quiet for the entire exchange, suddenly snapped his head up. “What three little ponies?” he asked, looking interested. Iron Bill and Stephen Magnet exchanged a glance. “Three foals who wandered in here about a week ago,” Bill explained. “One from each pony tribe. They said they were running away to stick together, that they didn’t want to have to separate again. We offered them sanctuary because they were so young, and we hoped that we could use them to help our cause.” “Take us to them, now.” Sprout commanded.