The filly rested her hoof on the door, gently pushing it open and wincing at the creak it made. She led the way into the lighthouse, her two companions following close behind. The largest creature of their little group remained outside, scouting the perimeter of the lighthouse. He would have been elsewhere, except that all three of them needed to be present tonight, and none of them trusted their two pony ‘allies’ to be on their own. So here they all were.
She mentally scoffed at how scared the pegasus was acting. It wasn’t like there was anything in this place that could hurt them. They had seen Flurry Heart leave just a few seconds ago, and Sunny Starscout would be fast asleep right now. They would just have to get in, do the spell, and get out again - everything else would play out from there.
Permafrost had left to go make sure that Flurry Heart wasn’t rushing back, which meant that the filly was left with Sour Lavender and her partner-in-crime, who was disguised as a unicorn. The exile looked around with a distasteful expression.
“She really doesn’t care much for messes, does she?” she scoffed, kicking the door closed behind her. It shut with a loud clack, and the filly glared at her.
“If he gets caught here, it’s game over,” the filly hissed. The exile caught up to her and lowered her head to speak to her.
“Then why did we bring him?”
“He knows his way around this place more than we do,” the filly retorted, turning to the pegasus. “Stay here and keep watch.” Without even waiting for him to agree, she and the exile left him for the lift that carried them to the second floor of the lighthouse, where Sunny Starscout slept peacefully.
Not for much longer, the filly thought with relish. She looked around the room and glared at each decoration featuring something she knew, something that brought flashes of pain and anger every time she saw one: a tapestry on the wall of Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark, another one above the bed of Celestia’s, a blue bag resting on a chair with pins displaying yet more cutie marks. The filly’s wing brushed against something - a wooden pendant of Twilight Sparkle’s mark. She slipped this under her wing and turned to the exile.
Reading the question in her eyes, a wall of green light surrounded the exile, burning away her disguise and revealing who she really was - a tall creature with the wings of a bug, gaping holes dotting her wings, mane, and body. Her green eyes narrowed at the orange earth pony sleeping soundly in her bed, and her crooked horn lit up a sickly green.
The exile shot a beam directly at Sunny Starscout, and it connected at her forehead. The earth pony twitched in her sleep but didn’t wake up. Three more beams extended from the earth pony where the first met her forehead. One beam connected to the filly’s head, another to the exile’s. The third twisted out the open window to where she knew the large creature was waiting. With one last push, the exile completed the spell, and the light dimmed and disappeared.
“There,” the exile gasped, exhausted. She caught the filly looking at her with a worried expression and straightened, glaring at the younger pony. “I hope that was worth it.”
She scolded herself for feeling for her companions. If she wasn’t careful, she would fall into friendship’s trap. The filly closed her eyes and mentally reached towards the sleeping earth pony… and felt something.
It was as if somepony had opened another channel in her brain. Instead of just sending thoughts and commands to her mind, there was another one… one she could feel, but didn’t quite have access to. The earth pony instinctively flinched as she felt somepony trying to reach into her mind, and in the filly’s head, she felt the walls and barriers around Sunny Starscout’s mind grow stronger.
Well, this pony was resilient.
But so was the filly. And while she couldn’t do anything big right now, she could work little thoughts in through the cracks. She visualized gently pushing a thought down the tunnel that connected her mind with Sunny Starscout’s: Magic is dangerous and cannot be trusted.
Her personal refrain. Unless magic was in the hooves of ponies who would change Equestria for the better, it should be disposed of. Magic created social division, and that was what the filly wanted to get rid of. She wanted an Equestria where ponies weren’t looked down upon because of their magic, or lack of it. Everypony would be treated as equal, and as for all the magic? She would hang onto that. Keep Equestria safe with it.
For now, though, having that in her head would keep Sunny Starscout from turning to magical alternatives for defeating them, and from thinking that it was a magic spell cast on herself.
“Did it work?” the exile demanded, and the filly shushed her, watching the sleeping earth pony. There was a change in her expression - instead of looking cheerful and carefree and friendly like it used to, her brow furrowed, her jaw tightened, and the filly knew she had been successful.
“It worked,” she announced, and the exile let out a sigh of relief. “At least, for me it does. I don’t know about you guys.”
“You’re the one who wanted to do this,” the exile snapped. “Why do we have to be connected, again?”
“For the same reasons I suspected,” the filly said smugly. “Just as I thought, Sunny Starscout will not be an easy pony to break. I will only be able to do so much to weaken her, but to really and truly break her, it will take all three of us. Just don’t use the mind link until I say so - she may detect that there’s something different, and that could jeopardize the whole plan.”
The exile grumbled. “Whatever. Flurry Heart could be back any minute. We should go before we get caught.”
The filly shrugged and led the way back to the lift and down to the first floor. As the exile stepped off, the filly remained, and the exile turned back to stare at her. “What are you doing?” she hissed. “If anypony sees you, we may as well turn ourselves back to stone already!”
“I’m going to scout this place out,” the filly snapped. “You know what they said about magical crystals - if these ponies have the Elements of Harmony, we need to get rid of them before they use them against us! I’m going to find where they are.” The filly thought for a moment. “We need to draw them away so we can steal them. With me altering Sunny Starscout’s mind, they’re already going to be on their guard.”
The exile let out a long, suffering sigh. “Fine. I’ll take the others, and we’ll go cause some distractions so that these ‘new Guardians’ will leave.” She paused. “Be careful. Don’t ruin the whole plan.”
As the filly rose in the lift, she grinned. “I wasn’t planning on it.”
She rose to the top of the lighthouse, and as she stepped off the lift, she had to marvel at the spectacular view that she could see from the windows. The ocean to one side and Maretime Bay to the other with the moon and stars above her - it was like flying, but without the hard work of flapping your wings.
Don’t get distracted, the filly chided herself. Focus on the mission.
In the center of the room was the light for the lighthouse, and underneath that… The filly approached, intrigued. Three crystals were joined together and inserted below the light, though these weren’t anything like the Elements of Harmony that she remembered. The filly gently touched one of the crystals and froze.
There was a magic connected to these… a very familiar magic.
It was the same kind of magic that stripped her of her power; the very same power that obliterated the Windigos. The same magic that came from one purple alicorn and her power of friendship.
“Twilight?” the filly whispered. Then she shook herself.
Twilight Sparkle was gone. Dead. This magic couldn’t be related to her. And she couldn’t let herself get pulled into the trap that this pony had set. She was stronger than that.
A lamp was sitting behind the crystals, and the filly turned it on. The light shot glowing images of earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns galloping around the room. Very pretty, but not the kind of thing that she was looking for. Surrounding the lamp, as if guarding it, were tiny figures of Twilight Sparkle and her friends. The filly winced and stumbled back to the lift. The Elements of Harmony were not up there.
A quick scan of the second floor told her that the Elements were not there, either, so that left only one place - the ground floor. The filly spotted a glass case in a corner, covering four crystal necklaces and one beautiful crown.
She smiled. Gotcha. As she turned to leave, something rubbed against her coat, and she reached under her wing to pull out the necklace that Sunny Starscout had in her room. The six pointed star seemed to burn into the filly’s soul, and she felt another rush of pain, followed by anger. The filly hurled the necklace against the wall, where it snapped in two with a sickening crack. She trotted out the door as fast as she could and took off into the night sky.
She was back again. Sunny Starscout and her friends were in the Crystal Empire, and one of her partners had acquired an important resource that Sour Lavender called a ‘cell phone’. It could store information and send messages and play moving pictures and all sorts of things. This one had belonged to one of the friends of Sunny Starscout, and they had been able to collect plenty of information about the earth pony. This ‘Pipp’ character wrote down a lot on her phone, even if she didn’t, as Sour Lavender put it, ‘post it’.
The filly had no idea what that meant, but she was deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt, only because he knew more about this new world than any of them other than Permafrost.
Once again, she pushed open the door and winced at the creaking sound, only this time, she was accompanied by Permafrost himself, and the unicorn looked no more excited about that than she did. He had been taught the necessary magic spells to undo any possible enchantments that may be protecting the Elements and had stuck with them thus far, but the filly still didn’t fully trust him.
As the two ponies neared the glass case holding the Elements of Harmony, the filly closed her eyes and opened up the link between her mind and Sunny Starscout’s. She gently nudged a thought down the tunnel and slipped it around the earth pony’s mental walls that would keep her from noticing anything. She nodded to Permafrost, and the unicorn stepped forward, lighting up his horn. For a pony who had been raised without any knowledge of how to use magic, the filly had to admit that this pony was both skilled at casting and learning new spells - and that thought unsettled her.
Permafrost’s icy blue magic beam wrapped around the glass case, pressing in tighter and closer until the glass cracked and shattered. The magic beam swirled around the Elements, and the filly had a fleeting thought that, if he wanted, he could steal the Elements right then and there. But for some reason, he went forward with the spell. The beam exploded suddenly, slightly scorching the wall behind it.
The filly stepped forward and gently scooped the Elements into her bag, holding the crown reverently in her hooves, staring down at her reflection in the lavender gem. She felt a wave of sadness that she didn’t understand and slipped it into her bag.
Even when they weren’t being wielded by their bearers, the Elements were extremely powerful.
Permafrost took a step towards the door, but the filly shook her head. She flapped her wings and leaped gracefully onto the lift, giving the unicorn a look that made him come after her.
Upstairs, the unicorn once again performed the spell, this time around the three crystals that she now knew were the reason that magic had returned the first time and the pony tribes had come together again. She took these as well, wincing at the familiar feeling of Twilight Sparkle when she touched them. Permafrost retreated to the lift, eager to get out, but the filly caught the figure of Twilight in the corner of her eye, and was suddenly filled with anger. This was a pony who believed in friendship and second chances who allowed an orphaned filly to be locked in the worst prison in Equestria and then turned to stone. She then abandoned them for Celestia knows how long before they were released into this new world - alone, confused, and scared.
The filly reared and knocked all the figures down, throwing them across the room. She kicked the lamp out of the way and knocked over the whole stand. With a wordless cry of rage, she flew down the shaft for the lift - Permafrost had already left as soon as she started her tantrum. Her eyes landed on the pictures by the door, one of them slightly tilted.
Why should these ponies get happiness and she didn’t? Why did they get everything they ever wanted and she was repeatedly abandoned?
She knocked the pictures down and stomped all over them, cracking the glass and breaking the frames. All the while, tears streamed down her face, and when she was done, the filly curled up on the floor and sobbed.
A few minutes after her tears had stopped, the filly heard hoofsteps, and she darted around a corner so that she was hidden from whoever came in the door.
It was a pink earth pony with a golden mane piled up on her head and pink cat-eye glasses. When she saw the destruction before her, the mare’s breath caught in her throat, and she turned to run back to the town. As soon as she was gone, the filly wiped her eyes and ran outside, spreading her wings and taking flight.
She had the Elements of Harmony. She had almost complete control over the only pony who could really pose a threat to her and her partners. Her dream was so close she could almost taste it…
So why did she feel so broken inside?