//------------------------------// // Puzzle Pieces // Story: Legends Never Die: A New Age // by bookhorse125 //------------------------------// The next morning dawned with chilly breezes and a cloudy sky threatening to drizzle, which pretty much matched Flurry’s mood perfectly. After a quick breakfast, which had been served in bed, of course, she stumbled downstairs and into the airstation, where she found Izzy already hard at work putting glass pieces together. “Good morning,” the purple unicorn said cheerfully when Flurry landed on the floor and folded her wings. Flurry tried to return the greeting, but it just came out as a massive yawn. “Yeah, I slept terribly, too,” Izzy said, grinning like she slept a full eight hours. “I was up practically all night thinking about these windows and how amazing they are, and I was wondering what kind of pictures there might be. Look, this one’s of a dragon!” She pointed a hoof at the window she was working on, where a small purple and green dragon was surrounded by a bright blue light. Despite her personal ties to the image, Flurry couldn’t help but smile. “That’s the window that was made for Spike the Brave and Glorious after he helped save the Crystal Empire,” she explained to the unicorn. “There’s a massive statue of him still up there.” “Wow,” Izzy whispered, her voice full of wonder. “Just imagine the stories behind these! I mean, you probably know them, but could you please tell me about that one?” She nodded at another one, assembled on the floor. “I’ve been trying for ages to guess what it is, but none of the things I come up with seem to be right.” The window she was referring to was a picture of a strange creature made up of parts from all different animals controlling a unicorn, earth pony, and pegasus like puppets. “That’s Discord,” Flurry said, pointing to the draconequus. “He’s a creature of chaos, and he used to want to turn Equestria into his playground. But then Fluttershy showed him the power of friendship and kindness, and he decided he valued friendship more. He did betray everypony when Tirek came to power, though, and then he brought back Triek, Chrysalis, Cozy Glow, and…” “And who?” Izzy pressed. Flurry swallowed and shook her head. “Nopony. He disguised himself as Grogar, but he didn’t bring him back.” She gave the unicorn a sheepish smile. “Sorry, my brain’s a little fuzzy on some of the details.” It was a terrible lie, and Flurry knew it, but Izzy either didn’t seem to notice or sensed that, whatever Flurry had been about to say, she didn’t want to say it, and let it go. “Have either of you seen Pipp?” Zipp asked as she flew into the station, circling Flurry and Izzy before coming down for a landing. Her hooves pranced and her wings fluttered nervously. “I haven’t seen her at all today, and nopony else has seen her. I’m starting to worry that something happened to her.” “Don’t worry, I’m sure she’s around,” Izzy said comfortingly. “She’s probably just sleeping in. We were up kind of late last night. Zipp, you want to help us put these together?” The pegasus nodded, though she still looked antsy. They put together another two windows before they heard the sound of the pulley on the elevator that meant that somepony was coming down. Zipp turned around hopefully, thinking that it was Pipp, but it was just Hitch, Sprout, and Sunny, who was once again looking dull and somewhat depressed. “Is Pipp with you?” Zipp demanded as soon as the three earth ponies stepped off the lift. Hitch frowned. “No, I thought she was down here.” He looked to Flurry and Izzy for confirmation, but they just shrugged and went back to working. Sunny slowly walked over and began to help. “I think she left,” Sprout suggested. “Not on her own,” he added hastily when Zipp’s expression broke into full panic. “I mean that a couple of guards are gone, too, so she probably took them with her…” “I’m just worried about her,” the royal stressed. “I feel like, if I’m not there to protect her, something terrible’s gonna happen.” “That does fit with our current experiences,” Sunny added unhelpfully. She looked up and saw everypony except for Zipp glaring at her. “What? I’m just telling the truth,” she muttered to herself. “Not that you care.” Most of the other ponies were far enough away that they didn’t hear the last bit, but Flurry was, and unless she was going crazy, Sunny’s voice seemed to change just a smidge, but enough to make her scared. She looked fearfully at the earth pony, but she looked the same as ever, albeit with a much more blank expression. “How many of these are there?” Hitch asked, walking around the room to see the windows that were already put together. “And what are we going to do with them now?” “Flurry said that they used to be put up in the castle,” said Izzy. “Maybe we could do that again? Put them back where they go?” “But these are priceless pieces of history,” Sunny argued. “They should be in a museum or something. I vote we set them up here and leave them.” Her blank gaze shifted to one of the completed windows, and something flickered in her eyes, as if she remembered something important, but then it was gone. “Let’s put them together first,” Zipp opted, joining Izzy and sliding another piece together. So that was how they spent the rest of the day - putting together broken windows like giant jigsaw puzzles. Occasionally, Zipp or Flurry would take to the air and look down at the windows from above, reporting to the ponies down below when something looked right, or if one of the pieces looked a little off. Flurry found it getting harder and harder to keep going when she saw the finished pictures or caught a glimpse of somepony she recognized. She opened a new box and pulled out a couple pieces, which she then set gently on the floor. Before she could turn back to pull out more, she froze, staring down at the pieces resting on the floor. Her hoof shaking, she moved them until they fit together to form a face - the face of a pink alicorn with a curly mane colored pink, purple, and yellow. “Hey, Flurry, can you-” Sprout stopped mid sentence once he saw her face. “Um… are you alright?” She nodded, her throat closed up, unable to tear her eyes from the picture. “Okay,” Sprout said hesitantly, “but you don’t look so good.” He came up next to her and studied the picture on the floor, then looked at her, then looked back at the glass, finally making the connection. “Is that your…” “My mom, yeah,” Flurry whispered. She took a deep breath. “She was awesome.” “You want me to help you put it together?” the stallion ventured, pawing at the floor with his hoof. Flurry smiled at him and nodded, using her magic to lift more pieces of glass out of the box and set them down. After working for an entire day, the six ponies finally stopped right around sundown, every window now assembled and laid out so that there was hardly any room left on the floor. “Wow,” Sunny whispered in awe, stepping carefully among the glass images and studying each one carefully. There was a kind of light in her eyes that Flurry recognized - it was the kind of look Sunny got every time she discovered something amazing, though the look was rare nowadays. “I can’t believe these were in your basement the whole time.” A thought seemed to occur to her, and her face clouded over. She walked over to the side of the room and sat down. Hitch stepped around a window and sat next to her. “Flurry, look!” Izzy pointed excitedly at a picture. “I think it’s you!” The alicorn spread her wings and flew over to the unicorn. “That’s the window I got when I was coronated,” she explained, smiling at the memory. “The Crystal Heart sent out a wave of magic so strong that it made everypony crystalize for months afterward… Of course, not long after that, they began to leave for the south.” “I can’t wait to go up there.” Izzy sighed wistfully. “It must be amazing to live in an entire city made of crystals.” “Yeah, it’s pretty great,” Flurry agreed. The elevator began to creak, and everypony turned to see who was coming down. Zipp stepped forward, hoping to see her younger sister, but instead it was Thunder and Zoom who appeared. “What’s going on?” Sunny asked, leaping to her hooves. “Her Majesty Queen Haven requests your presence in the throne room,” Zoom said stiffly. “Princess Pipp has returned and brought some… items of interest.” Zipp was out of the room before any of them could blink, but everypony boarded the elevator and was raised out of the room. The last thing Flurry saw before she left was the light shining through her aunt’s cutie mark landing directly on her own stained glass window. Inside the throne room, Pipp and Zipp were having a mild argument, while Haven spoke with her guards. She looked up as the rest of the ponies entered and nodded her head in greeting, but the royal sisters barely acknowledged them. Behind Pipp was an updated map of Equestria on a sort of moveable board, along with some thumbtacks stuck in certain places - just inside Bridlewood, around the remains of Princess Twilight’s castle, and one in Zephyr Heights. “What were you thinking?” Zipp was demanding when they walked in. “You can’t just go prancing off to random places without at least telling me or Mom!” “I was fine,” the younger pegasus insisted. “I brought, like, three guards with me.” “That’s not an excuse!” she contradicted. “What if something terrible happened to you and I wasn’t there to help protect you? What if somepony tried to kidnap you and we never saw you again?” She paused to take a deep breath. “You had me scared to death, Pipp.” Pipp looked guilty, so she opened her wing and drew her older sister into a hug. “I didn’t mean to, honestly,” she said quietly. “There was something I had to do.” She saw everypony else and let Zipp go. “Okay, first things first - we’ve got a problem on our hooves. Some mysterious creatures are appearing, and some of our worst enemies have escaped. We need to find them before they do anything terrible, so…” She gestured to the map. “I’m thinking we should try to make sense on where they’re appearing, so then we can catch them.” Zipp stopped. “That’s… actually pretty smart,” she admitted. “So what do we know?” The youngest royal pointed to the thumbtack in Bridlewood. “Izzy’s friends say that they saw that shape-shifting creature about here,” she explained. “Midge said that some of his creatures lost their magic around this area here, and Mom was just talking to the guards, and we think somepony must have been here to help Sour Lavender and Permafrost escape.” Haven nodded, turning to the guards behind her for confirmation. “They say that they never left their post, but as soon as they came back, they were just… gone.” “It was like magic,” one of them said. “The door wasn’t even open,” another added. Sunny frowned. “Did somepony see anypony that seemed suspicious yesterday or the day before that?” she asked before turning to Flurry. “You said that one of the villains that was released from stone was a pegasus. It’s been years, so she could very easily blend in, right?” Flurry nodded. “One of many downsides to them coming back several years later.” “What does this filly look like?” Haven demanded, waving one of her wings slightly. A guard stepped forward from the door and produced a piece of paper and pencil. “She’s got a curly blue mane and a coral pink coat,” Sunny jumped in, “but you can really know if it’s her if she’s got a cutie mark on each side of her flank, which I think is some sort of Ancient Equestrian dealio, since Flurry’s the only pony I’ve seen with them.” “How do you know that?’ Hitch asked, tilting his head. The earth pony mare shrugged. “They were on one of those windows downstairs, being blasted with magic rainbows or something.” “Fair enough,” Flurry agreed. “And what she says is true,” she added to Haven. “Cozy Glow’s a manipulative little thing, so she could get anypony on her side without them realizing it. Being released in a new world with ponies who’ve never seen her before and don’t remember a thing about her will give her a whole new playground to make her own.” “That doesn’t sound particularly comforting,” Haven said nervously, turning to the guard with the paper. “Did you get all of that?” He nodded. “Then you know what to do.” With a bow, the pegasus slipped out of the room. “Now what’s this about windows downstairs?” Haven demanded, turning to her daughters with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t tell me this has something to do with going on dangerous quests to save friendship or magic again.” “We found a bunch of broken windows in the archives from Flurry’s time,” Zipp explained. “We think that they made a new one every time a notable event happened in Equestria.” “They look amazing,” Izzy added. “And that reminds me,” Pipp interrupted, “I went to the Everfree Forest to talk to Midge, and afterwards, I went back into the castle with him to see if there was any more information on these three villains, which I didn’t find, but…” She reached behind the board with the map on it and slid yet another cardboard box into their midst. “I found this.”