//------------------------------// // In the Gardens // Story: Legends Never Die: A New Age // by bookhorse125 //------------------------------// “Well, this is just great,” Sunny muttered to herself. “Not only do we have a shapeshifter on the loose, but creatures are losing their magic, and now two of our biggest enemies have escaped and are probably planning their revenge right about now.” She gave a long, insufferable sigh. “Cheer up, Sunny!” Izzy said brightly. “We’ve always gotten through things together.” “Honestly, it isn’t like you to think negative,” Hitch added. “Are you sure you’re feeling-” “I’m fine,” Sunny said a little too quickly, speeding up. “Let’s just try to find whatever it is Flurry wants to find in here and be on our way. I want to find them before they wreck too much havoc.” “Fair,” Zipp admitted. She was soaring overhead and now landed beside her sister and Flurry, who were at the front of the party. “What exactly is it that you’re looking for, Flurry? How do we know it’ll even still be there?” The alicorn sighed. “We don’t,” she confessed. “I’m just hoping that they are, or that they at least aren’t… free.” “You sound like you’re talking about actual ponies,” Pipp said as she pushed open a door. “Or creatures of some kind. I’ve been in the gardens many times, but the only ponies I’ve ever encountered have been the gardeners, and they have most certainly not been around since  your time.” Flurry was silent. “You’ll see. That is, if they’re there. If not, then… I’ll try to explain, but I sense I won’t be very successful.” “Right, okay,” Pipp agreed. “But can you at least tell us what to look for? Maybe I’ve seen it.” “It’s a statue,” Flurry said after hesitating. “Of three… creatures. One of them’s a little pegasus filly, I know that for sure, though I’m not sure how to describe the other two if you’ve never seen them before. And they all look… angry.” “Angry statues, got it,” Zipp muttered. “Uh, we’re here, guys!” Pipp called out, gesturing to a tall archway before them. “The palace gardens.” Flurry squinted in the sudden bright sunlight, but as her eyes adjusted, she stared around in wonder. “It hasn’t changed much,” she commented, spreading her wings and taking to the skies, surveying the scene below her. “That’s good, I suppose.” “All right, everypony, spread out,” Zipp commanded, joining Flurry in the air. “If you find anything that you think could be it, just… give a yell.” She flapped her wings and zoomed off to a corner of the garden. Pipp also spread her wings and soared over the flora, her eyes scanning for anything that could be a statue that matched Flurry’s description. Down below, Sunny and Izzy went one way while Hitch and Sprout went another. Flurry started by going the route that should take her to where the statue she was looking for should be located, but that alcove was taken by a fountain. Feeling slightly discouraged, she looked around for the hedge maze that her aunts had gone into in an attempt to defeat Discord, but it was gone. The gardens had shrunk a good deal since her aunt’s day, which meant that some things must have been removed to make room for other things. Whether or not the statue was one of those things, and where it would have turned up, she had no idea, and it was making her nervous. “Uh, Flurry?” She whirled around to see Pipp hovering in the air behind her, looking worried. “Um, I remember seeing a statue that might have been the one you were talking about, but… now it’s gone.” Gone. Flurry took a deep breath. It might not mean that, she tried to console herself. “I want to see,” she told the pink pegasus, who nodded and flew off into a far corner of the garden, where it was slightly more unkempt. Weeds poked out of the flowerbeds, and the stone path was cracked in some places. Pipp pointed at a corner that two tall hedges made, where a large, almost white stone pedestal stood. Flurry walked around to the back, where a few words were carved into the stone: Here stand Tirek, Chrysalis, and Cozy Glow, as a warning to all who try to overpower the magic of friendship. “Should I go… get everypony?” Pipp asked as Flurry exhaled a shuddering breath. “Because based on your expression, this is not good.” “Yeah… yeah, I think you should,” Flurry said absentmindedly, her gaze turning to the pedestal. There were a few paler spots on the stone like somepony had stood there for several years… and if this was empty, then that could only mean one thing. “What’s going on?” Sunny’s voice jolted her out of her trance. Flurry turned to see all six ponies galloping toward her, the earth pony mare in the lead. She skidded to a stop in front of the pedestal. “Did you find something?” “Yes, and it’s not good,” Flurry admitted, her wings aiding her in leaping over the pedestal and landing in front of the other ponies. She pointed to the stone. “This used to be a statue of three creatures - a changeling queen, a centaur, and a pegasus. They had tried and failed to take over Equestria, but my aunt and her friends always defeated them. Finally, they were brought together in an attempt to boost my aunt’s confidence as she became ruler of Equestria - long story. Anyways, they almost succeeded - they stole almost all of the most powerful ponies’ magic and nearly divided everycreature. But my aunt and all her friends that she had made over the years defeated them and turned them to stone as punishment. Now… it appears that they’re free, and believe me when I say that just because the Guardians of Harmony are gone doesn’t mean that they’ll stop their plans. They won’t stop until Equestria is theirs.” “Okay,” Hitch said to himself. “No problem. We’ve done stuff like this before. No problem. We got this.” He took a deep breath. “What exactly can they do?” Flurry winced, as if she knew this was coming but had been hoping to avoid it. “Chrysalis is the changeling queen. She was exiled from her throne and swore revenge. She tried to take over Equestria at least three times - once at my parent’s wedding, once when she kidnapped nearly everypony who could have stopped her, and once with the other two - though we think there was one more. As queen of the changelings, it was her job to find food for her subjects - love. A changeling originally took the form of somepony you loved and gained power by feeding off their love for them. But on her second attempt, the changelings eventually realized that sharing love was better than taking it for themselves, and they reformed, but Chrysalis refused. She can take the form of any pony and any creature in existence. “Tirek is a centaur who can steal your magic. The more magic he gets, the bigger and stronger he is. He tried to take over Equestria once over a thousand years ago with his brother, who grew to like the ways of ponies and turned his brother in, sending him to Tartarus… I wonder what’s become of Tartarus.” “Tartarus?” Pipp squeaked, stepping towards her sister. “A nearly inescapable prison where the worst monsters usually go,” Flurry said airily, waving her hoof. “We’ll have to worry about that later. But Tirek escaped a thousand years later and stole every ounce of magic that he could - except, of course, for the magic of friendship, which my aunts used to defeat him, sending him back to Tartarus, where he acquired a penpal named Cozy Glow. “Cozy Glow was a young pegasus filly enrolled at my aunt Twilight’s school of friendship, but she secretly had dark intentions. Tirek helped her figure out a way to suck all of the magic out of Equestria over the course of three days, when it would then be transported to another realm. She has a manipulative mind and convinced my aunt and her friends that Tirek might be behind the disappearance in magic, so they got trapped in Tartarus without magic to get out. She rallied the school to let her be the temporary headmare of the school and that six creatures trying to fix everything were the ones behind it all. The Tree of Harmony luckily stepped in and helped save the day through those creatures, and Cozy was sent to Tartarus with Tirek.” Flurry began to pace as the full weight of the situation began to weigh on her mind. “With all of them putting their skills together, the fact that nopony knows who they are anymore or what they can do, and the fact that all of the other creatures are isolated in their own kingdoms, we’re basically sitting ducks for them.” She could feel her breath coming out in shorter pants, and Zipp eventually came up and gently put her hoof on Flurry’s shoulder. “We’ve got you,” she said simply. “You’re like our secret weapon. If these guys are expecting us to all just lie down and let them take over our land, they’ve got another thing coming. Right, guys?” “Yeah! There’s no way they’re getting past us!” Izzy said excitedly. “We’ll just blast them with magic rainbows as soon as we see them, right, Sunny?” “Yeah… I don’t think it’s going to be quite that easy,” Sprout commented, and Izzy frowned. Sunny approached the back of the pedestal and ran her hoof over the inscription carved into it. Something flashed in her eyes, and her hoof hovered over the words magic of friendship. “I know these names,” she said instead. “Chrysalis, Tirek, Cozy Glow… I don’t know how, but I know them.” She shook her head. “That’s weird…” “They do sound kind of familiar,” Izzy offered, tapping her chin with her hoof as she tried to remember. “Weren’t they in that journal that you found, Sunny?” Sunny looked confused. “Journal?” she asked. “You mean my dad’s?” “No, the other one, the one you found here,” Zipp said slowly, taking a step toward Sunny, worry creasing her forehead. “The one that the Guardians of Harmony wrote. You found it when we were stuck in the airstation while Zephyr Heights was in open rebellion.” Now she was really confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I think I would remember something like that,” she said, looking back at the stone. The small spark that had appeared in her eyes was gone now, replaced with a kind of dullness. “This is strange, that’s all.” Hitch, Sprout, Zipp, Pipp, and Izzy all gave each other a look that told Flurry that they would be discussing this later. “Maybe we can find out more about this statue,” Sprout finally said. “Like, are there any guards here? They might have seen something or heard something suspicious.” “I’ll ask,” Pipp volunteered. “Anypony want to come with?” “Hitch should go,” Sprout said. “He’s great at interrogating. My greatest fear is that I’ll end up on the wrong side of his questions,” he added jokingly. “Ha, no,” Hitch said, playfully shoving his former deputy, “you’re also pretty good. We’ll both go.” “I’ll come, too!” Izzy grinned as she bounded over to Pipp. “I’m amazing at spotting clues - we once did this scavenger hunt in Bridlewood, and I finished it in, like, five minutes. Turned out everything was in Alphabittle’s collection of prizes - who knew?” “I’ll take Sunny and Flurry to the archives,” Zipp announced, flying overhead. “There might be something there that can help us.” “Meet you back in the airstation at sunset?” Hitch asked, and everypony agreed before parting to go their separate ways. Flurry fell into step beside Sunny while Zipp flew ahead. “So, Sunny… Uh, what do you remember?” Flurry asked, wincing at how obvious it was. “I mean, like, about your friends, and what you’ve uncovered about Ancient Equestria, and - and all that.” The earth pony gave her a strange look but didn’t press it. “I remember… I remember that my dad wanted ponykind to unite, so… I went on a quest to do that. I made friends with Izzy, Zipp, and Pipp, and back home, Sprout was turning all the earth ponies into an army while building a giant war machine, and then he wrecked my lighthouse, but I… I can’t remember exactly forgiving him. I mean, he destroyed my home and tried to go to war with everypony - does he really deserve it? But it all worked out in the end - all three pony tribes began to get along again, and then… magic came back as well, but then somepony else came with a… a memory stone. Yeah, that was it. And me and my friends had to stop them before they undid everything.” She rubbed her forehead with her hoof. “That whole battle’s kind of blurry…” “What do you remember about me?” Flurry pressed, feeling herself sinking into despair with every word that Sunny said. She remembered most of the events, just not why she did it. It was as if somepony stripped Sunny Starscout of her personality. “You’re Flurry Heart,” she answered simply. “You come from the Crystal… City.” “Empire,” Flurry corrected her. “Yes, I was going to say that,” Sunny agreed hurriedly. She looked back at the place where the statue was, though it was long out of sight. “That statue gave me the creeps,” she admitted. “It was like something was supposed to be there, but it wasn’t, something I was supposed to know…” She shook herself. “Whatever it is, I’m sure we’ll find the answer.” “Yeah,” Flurry said absentmindedly. “I’m sure we will.” She watched Sunny quicken her step to go talk to Zipp and felt a growing sense of fear in her heart. Something - or somepony -  had messed with Sunny’s mind, and Flurry had a sickening feeling that she knew who it was.