//------------------------------// // Archived // Story: Legends Never Die: A New Age // by bookhorse125 //------------------------------// Sunny gazed around in wonder at the Zephyr Heights archives, feeling her mind go crazy about the amount of information that may be in here about- She frowned. About what? Not long after Flurry Heart had showed up, she had started to have these moments of clarity that were there and gone faster than her roller skates. It was as if she started to remember something, but as soon as she acknowledged its existence, it poof, disappeared, as Izzy would like to say. “Woah,” Flurry whispered beside her. “Zipp, this is amazing!” The pegasus grinned. “I know, right? There’s so much stuff down here that I don’t even have a tiny idea of what’s here. But now that I have help going through this, I might figure it out.” “We should have brought the others for back-up,” Sunny commented, starting forward into the long room underneath the castle. “This is going to take longer than when we went through all the old files and stuff in the sheriff’s office in Maretime Bay.” Zipp looked up hopefully. “You remember that?” Sunny opened and closed her mouth. “I…” “Nevermind,” Flurry said into the silence, putting her hoof on Zipp’s shoulder. Sunny wondered why her pegasus friend’s face looked so crestfallen. “Look for anything about Chrysalis, Tirek, or Cozy Glow. Is their escape new, or did they do it a long time ago and have just now gotten the strength to do anything? Was the statue just moved? Anything about them.” Zipp nodded. “Got it,” she said as she spread her wings and took off. Sunny felt a weird shiver down her back, as if she were expecting Zipp to suddenly scoop her up and carry her off. Magic is dangerous. Flurry lit the tip of her horn, and a bright sunny yellow light filled the immediate area. The alicorn trotted off behind some shelves and disappeared, leaving Sunny on her own. Again. But that was fine… wasn’t it? Yes. It was. She didn’t need her friends. She could do this without their help and without magic’s help. Magic should not be trusted. The archives consisted of several rooms all filled with shelves lined with books, scrolls, and precious artifacts, all beneath the palace and, Sunny was convinced, beneath the city itself. Guards patrolled the entrance and surrounding area 24/7. It made Sunny feel trapped, as if she wouldn’t be able to escape. She shook herself and focused on the mission. This was for her father. He wanted all ponies to be friends with each other, and she and her friends were going to make it happen. They would defeat every obstacle that came their way with the magic of- What magic? Sunny shook her head, but the awful voice remained in her head. You don’t have magic, it said scornfully. You’re just an earth pony that everypony else thinks is an overly optimistic misfit. These aren’t your friends - they’re just using you for their own gain. They think that since you don’t have magic that you’re weak and pathetic and that they’re better than you. “I’m not weak,” Sunny muttered to herself. “What was that, Sunny?” came a voice. Zipp trotted up next to Sunny, but when the earth pony faced her, her eyes were dull and glazed over. Her expression was blank, but her voice was angry. “I’m not weak and pathetic, Zipp, no matter what you think,” she snapped. The pegasus took a step back in shock. “And I’m not overly optimistic, either, so you can stop thinking that.” She ran off, leaving Zipp confused and hurt. As ground passed under her hooves, her mind began to clear up a little bit, the anger dissapitating and leaving guilt behind. I shouldn’t have spoken to Zipp like that… Her hoof brushed against something, and she turned to look. Just a cardboard box, nothing special. She was about to move on when her eye caught something inside shining in the tiny bit of light down there and was immediately intrigued. Sunny pulled the box out from its shelf and pushed open the flaps, looking inside to see… a mound of broken glass. Sunny groaned and was about to put it back when a random memory surfaced - a window in an abandoned station of three ponies, three crystals, and a star… The memory was gone as soon as it had come, but now Sunny was intrigued. She gently took each piece of glass out of the box and set it on the floor. Now that she was looking at it, she saw that all the pieces were different colors, and they definitely went together. Excitement growing inside her, Sunny spread them all out and began to piece together a picture of six ponies shooting magic beams at a larger pony that had wings that looked strange. Just looking at the nightmare pony was enough to give Sunny chills, but when she turned her attention to the six ponies beneath it, she forgot all about it. Something burned through her mind, pushing back the negativity and the horrible feelings that she had been having for the past day as she stared at a purple unicorn, blue pegasus, pink earth pony, yellow pegasus, white unicorn, and orange earth pony. The Guardians of Harmony. That meant that the dark pony above them was Nightmare Moon… Then she felt a tingling sensation on her head and on her back, and when she looked, there was a pair of golden wings and a glowing gold horn, though she didn’t find this unusual. In fact, it was familiar. She remembered this… and she remembered everything… Reinvigorated, Sunny turned back to the shelf and pulled down another box that also held broken glass and began to piece that picture together, and then another, and then another… “Sunny?” came a voice, and a purple unicorn poked her head around the corner. “Are you here? We’ve been looking everywhere for - Woah.” Izzy fell silent as she noticed what Sunny had found. “What - you - Sunny,” she breathed. “This is amazing!” “I know, right?” Sunny grinned at her friend. “I think these might have been windows - you know, like the one that shows the crystals. They show specific, important events in Equestrian history. There’s so much we can learn from these!” She noticed that Izzy wasn’t staring at the glass pictures anymore, but at her. “What?” “Nothing,” the unicorn said hurriedly. “It’s just… you’re acting like you again.” Her face broke into a huge smile. “I’ve missed you, Sunny.” Sunny smiled. “Wait, why are you here? I thought you were supposed to be interrogating guards or something.” Izzy’s smile faded. “Sunny… it’s the middle of the night. We’ve been looking for you for hours.” “What?” “Flurry and Zipp were absolutely frantic when they came to the airstation an hour later than they were supposed to - well, actually, it was just Zipp who came. Flurry stayed back here to look for you, and Zipp came for back-up. We’ve just about scoured the entire place looking for you. How did you not know?” Sunny shrugged. “I guess I was just so focused on this, I didn’t even notice so much time had passed. Sorry I made you all worry so. Where are the others? I want to show them this.” “They’re somewhere around here,” Izzy said vaguely. “Are these two the only ones you’ve found so far?” “Oh, goodness no,” Sunny laughed. “I’ve filled about six other aisles with these. They’re so big I can only fit about two or three in a single one, but there’s tons of windows that still need to be put together.” “I’ll tell them where we are,” declared Izzy, taking a step back and lighting up her horn. She shot a small burst of light into the air, above the shelves, where it exploded in a tiny burst of light. Magic is dangerous and cannot be trusted. Sunny looked down at the most recent picture she had finished putting together, one depicting two ponies making a heart shape with their bodies and blasting a bunch of black creatures out of sight, but it didn’t help. “Sunny? Are you-” Flurry stopped talking as soon as she saw the colored glass on the floor. “Oh.” She shakily approached the window and studied the picture upon it, looking like she was barely refraining from crying. Her hoof traced the shape of the heart that the two ponies made, and a far off look entered her blue eyes, as if she was seeing something else - not just a picture, but what really happened. “Did you find her, Izzy?” Hitch asked as he and Sprout rounded the corner, followed in close pursuit by Zipp and Pipp. He spotted Sunny and let out a sigh of relief. Sprout’s eyes wandered over to Flurry, and he walked over to see if she was alright. Zipp and Pipp stared in shock at the windows, and from their position in the air, they could probably see much more than the ponies on the ground could. “Izzy, what happened?” Pipp asked, finally noticing how Sunny had retreated against one of the many shelves, her eyes dull and clouded over, shivering slightly, as if she was having a mental argument with somepony in her head that only she could hear. “Is she… okay?” Before the unicorn could respond, Flurry spoke up. “Sunny found the stained glass windows that were used in Canterlot to record important events, such as just about everything my aunt and her friends did, but there were a few others…” She sighed and blinked hard, refusing to cry. She had to stay strong. “Like my parents.” “I did a lap around, and Sunny found about fifteen of these,” Zipp announced, hovering far above them. “How many more are there, Flurry?” “At least twenty,” the alicorn said, her voice growing more steady as she turned away from the picture of her parents. “Probably more. I know that there were enough to fill an entire wing of the palace, so what Sunny’s done so far is just the beginning. We need a big open space where we can assemble these all-” She stopped as the solution came to her. “We should take them back to the airstation,” she decided. “There should be enough space there.” “Now you’re talking!” Zipp said brightly, gesturing to her sister. “Pipp and Izzy and Hitch and Sprout and I will get the rest of the windows that haven’t been put together yet. Flurry, can you teleport all these ones?” She gestured at the ones on the floor. “Meet you guys back there.” “Just as long as we get some sleep before we put these together,” Pipp insisted, unable to stifle a yawn. “I feel like I haven’t slept in days. They aren’t going anywhere, after all.” “After we rest,” Zipp agreed before taking off. “Sunny, are you coming?” Izzy asked, a hopeful expression on her face. “Huh?” The earth pony looked up, her eyes still clouded over. “Yeah… yeah, I’m coming.” “What happened?” Hitch muttered to Izzy as they trailed behind Sunny. “I found her, and she was - she was like her old self,” Izzy said in a wistful tone as she watched Sunny duck into an aisle and pull a box off the shelf. “It was as if nothing ever changed, as if those windows snapped her out of it. But then she… she went back to… that.” “So that means…” Izzy turned to look back at Sunny as she walked away. “Our friend’s still in there somewhere.”