Change the Heart

by FatesWinds

Chapter 14: Reconnection

 
For the next several days, the friends pressed on towards the island Twilight had indicated on the map. Her assumption that their compass would be repaired soon was correct, however it seemed as though the changelings had finally realized they were being tracked. The compass was all but useless, pointing in ten different directions at once at nearly all times. They agreed that the changelings must be splitting up to try to lose them and after much discussion decided their best course of action was to continue toward their original destination and figure out what they could from there.
As concerned as they were for the safety of the Outset pegasi, Twilight and her friends were equally concerned for Heart Shield’s health. He’d refused to sleep since they started their chase, barely ate and his mood was growing darker as a result. His impatience with their lack of progress, worry for Angel Wing and the surprising amount of anger he seemed to have for these changelings were all taking a toll on himself and everyone around him. He lost his temper quite often and would push the ship to its very limits whenever they had the slightest amount of power.
Twilight was especially worried with these last few changes in her friend. While it was a relief to see him finally recognizing the changelings for the threat they were, this level of hatred he had for them was unlike Heart Shield. It was like he was a completely different pony ever since the attack on Ponyville took place. She couldn’t help but remember his vicious attack on the changeling that had posed as Chrysalis, how he had tried to put a permanent end to it. This wasn’t the kind, yet nervous pony that had first arrived in Ponyville so long ago; this new, unknown side to her friend unsettled her. It was almost as if his anger was eating away at what remained of the friend she’d had before this whole fiasco with Chrysalis began.
Just one more thing that despicable mare has taken from me, Twilight thought. Anything touched by her gets tainted by her evil. I can’t understand what ever made him think she could be good.
There was also the matter of his recklessness with the ship. She and Rarity were refueling the crystal more often than they were able to have a moment to themselves. Any more of this and she doubted she’d be able to even lift a quill with her magic. Not only that, but the engines were taking a serious beating from the constant strain Heart Shield was putting on them. Yes, time was of the utmost essence, but if they kept going at this same pace then Twilight feared their ship wouldn’t last. It needed rest, they needed rest, Heart Shield needed rest, or else none of them would survive this voyage. There were plenty of times when she considered casting a sleep spell on her friend, just to make him get some much needed slumber, but she feared doing something like that after the last time she’d forced her magic on him. With the volatile state he was in now, she doubted he’d ever forgive her for doing that again even if it was out of good intentions.
Twilight suspected an underlying factor to her friend’s reckless abandon was that mare, Angel Wing. It’d taken her by complete surprise when they stumbled upon the pegasus. She looked so much like Heart Shield that for a moment Twilight had thought she’d been seeing double. Perhaps there was a grain of truth to Gale Bolt’s assumptions about where Heart Shield truly came from. Whatever there was between Angel Wing and Heart Shield, he’d seemed to feel as though he were personally responsible for her abduction. He’d taken to pouring over the maps on the ship with a fervor she’d never seen from him before. It was as though his own life depended on them finding the mare. Twilight wasn’t certain what exactly there was between the two ponies, Heart Shield hadn’t told them all that much about Angel Wing before the attack, and afterwards he clearly wasn’t in a mindset where he could calmly answer her questions. Still, the resemblance between the two was enough that even Rainbow Dash had picked up on it. Certainly this Angel Wing being a relative of Heart Shield’s might explain his recklessness in trying to get her back; his need to have something to connect him to the family he’d never known would make sense, even if it didn’t excuse his inability to take care of himself since the attack.
Whatever the case may be, Twilight didn’t like what was happening to her friend. He’d changed so much since his encounter with Chrysalis, and certainly not for the better in Twilight’s opinion. That reckless abandon with which he was pushing himself and the ship was going to be dangerous if nothing was done to stop it. Tensions were high, all of them were exhausted and scared; sooner or later, something was going to give.
Given how hard the ship was being pushed in their chase, it should have come as no surprise when the engines failed once more. Fate’s Winds dropped through the air like a stone as the jets came to a sudden halt and landed in the ocean hard enough to completely flood the deck solely with the spray from impact. Twilight was thrown from the console and hit the back of her head against the crystal, causing her to see stars for several seconds. The ship rocked from side to side in the water as it slowly settled down. Twilight got to her hooves and rubbed her head as her vision returned to normal. A moment later her friends burst into the cabin.
“Twi, are y’all okay?” asked Applejack as she hurried over to her friend.
“What on earth happened?” a soaked Rarity asked.
“I-I don’t know,” the purple mare replied shakily as she did her best to take stock of everything while her head cleared. “Can someone check below deck? Maybe we hit something…?”
“I don’t think that’s the case,” Heart Shield said, pushing himself up off the floor. “Look.”
He pointed behind her and Twilight turned around to see what he meant.

Heart Shield shook his head as so many senses suddenly assaulted him all at once, as if he’d just been hit by a sudden migraine. His head was pounding worse than when Dash had challenged him to a cider drinking contest. His vision swam so badly that he immediately squeezed his eyes shut just to stop himself from vomiting.
Ugh, what’s going on… What happened? he thought as he tried to force his stomach to settle and the headache to vanish. It took an effort for him to get reoriented. When he was finally able to bring himself to look around without losing the contents of his stomach his eyes went wide with shock at his surroundings. There’s no way…
He was back in Ponyville. The townsfolk were cheerfully talking with each other as they walked past, several stopped and waved to him in greeting.
“I’m… back?”
This made no sense. How could he be back home? He struggled to think back, to clear the fog in his head and figure out how he’d gotten here…
The last thing he could remember was Fate’s Wind losing power all of a sudden. The crystal had gone dark and try as Twilight and Rarity might, they weren’t able to restore its magic. Twilight had no explanation for what happened or why they couldn’t get the ship started again. The ocean was as quiet as the ship; no wind blew, the water completely still. With no waves, power or wind, they had to eventually resort to taxiing their ship to a nearby island Rainbow had spotted. The process was long and exhausting, taking them the better part of the day to get the massive vessel close to the shoreline–.
“Heart Shield!” came a voice from behind him, snapping the pegasus out of his thoughts and back to the present.
He turned to see who had called him and saw Derpy waving to him as the grey mare flew down to her friend.
“How are you?” Derpy asked with a bright smile, taking a few steps to steady herself as her hooves hit the dirt. “Did your trip with Twilight and the others go well?”
“Trip?” Heart Shield asked, still trying to clear the fog in his head.
“Yeah! You guys were gone for a few weeks exploring the edges of Equestria,” she replied, not picking up on his confusion. “Something about looking for a rare cocoon?”
“Chrysalis!”
His eyes went wide as he suddenly shot up straight, her words lighting a spark in his memories. Right! They had been on the ocean trying to track down Chrysalis and the changelings when the boat suddenly died on them near an island. No, not died… It was as if all the systems had suddenly gone to sleep; according to Twilight after she’d gotten a look at things, everything was running properly, just not responding to anything. Rainbow Dash wanted to check out the island but Twilight said she needed to look over the charts first to make sure they weren’t about to step onto another place with killer ghosts. And then–.
“Oh yeah that’s the one,” Derpy said, cutting through his thoughts again. “So, did you guys find what you were looking for?”
“Derpy, hang on a second,” he mumbled, rubbing a hoof to his temple as he fought to hold onto the thoughts before they vanished again, there was something important that he needed to remember.
“Oh, sorry. You must have just gotten back. Maybe you should rest up at home?” the mare said with some concern for her friend.
“No, it’s not-,” Heart Shield started to say as he lowered his hoof to look at her, but stopped.
He swore they had just been standing in the middle of town, but suddenly they were in front of the barn at Sweet Apple Acres. This made no sense, how did they wind up here? When did they get here? The world swam a little before him, stopping the moment Derpy put a hoof on his shoulder and he snapped his head over to her. Her wobbly golden eyes were focused on him, a look of concern on her face.
“You look kinda pale, Heart Shield,” she said. “Did something happen? Was it too long of a trip?”
“No, yes, I don’t-,” he struggled to say, shaking his head as the fog settled in his head once more. “Derpy, has everything been okay here?”
“Hm? What do you mean?”
“I’m not… I’m not sure,” he admitted reluctantly. “There hasn’t been anything off lately? I remember help was supposed to reach Equestria.”
“What are you talking about? What kind of help? Was there something with that chrysalis that needed studying?”
Once again that word cut through the fog in his head like a laser through paper, though the fog clouded his thoughts again quickly. Not quickly enough as he grabbed onto something important related to that word.
“The dragons,” he said with a start, almost making Derpy jump with his tone. “Dragons were meant to arrive in Equestria by now to help with the changelings. Have there been any sightings? Has anypony seen Chrysalis o-or the changelings?”
Heart Shield latched onto the thought of Chrysalis almost desperately as if it were a life preserver thrown to keep him from drowning. He struggled to recall everything, but it was like the foggy feeling in his head was fighting back. He almost didn’t notice that he was someplace else until the lack of familiar sounds from the farm hit him like a wild carriage. They were no longer in front of the barn, instead they now stood in a clearing deep in a forest, where the trees stretched overhead and blotted out most of the sky, making it almost seem like night time. The same clearing where he’d met her.
“What the-,” the pegasus took a step back in shock, looking wildly from one direction to the next. “How did we get-. But we were just at the farm!”
“The realm of dreams can change with but a single thought at the speed of one as well,” came a voice from the darkness surrounding the clearing.
Heart Shield whirled around, his wings spread out to their full length at either side as he tried to shield Derpy from the interloper as his heart pounded in his ears. He was on full alert, taking a position ready to pounce on the speaker even as his knees shook, betraying his panic. Things weren’t making any sense. One minute he’s on the Fate’s Winds trying to warn his friends about… something, and the next he’s teleporting around Ponyville and the Everfree Forest like a unicorn.
“Be calm, young pony,” the unknown speaker said, her voice coming from his right now.
He jumped and took up the same stance in front of Derpy as he faced the now growing darkness around the clearing as an oppressive silence overpowered the natural sounds of the forest.
“We said calm thyself. Panic and fear will distort this plane just as easily as stray thoughts change the landscape,” the voice said firmly, sounding closer now.
Yeah, easy for you to say, Heart Shield thought, his breathing sped up as his eyes shot around to try to keep a line of sight on every edge of the looming darkness.
“We said,” came the voice as it grew into a booming volume that rattled his thoughts completely, “BE STILL!”
Princess Luna emerged from the shadows, her dark, flowing mane of starlight flaring up as her horn and eyes flashed brightly. Suddenly, the forest was gone, and Heart Shield found himself in a white void with the princess before him. At the same time, he felt the fog retreat, albeit slowly, as if chased off by the mere presence of the lunar alicorn, bringing with it many questions, though the one that begged to be asked was–.
“What the Tartarus is going on, Lady Luna?” Heart Shield almost demanded of the princess who stood calmly before him as if this were but a regular occurrence. “Why is everything jumping around? Where are we? Where are the others!”
“As we said,” she replied as calmly as she could, her horn emitting another soft glow that accompanied a wave of calm rushing over the young pegasus, “you must calm thyself. We- I understand that you are likely highly disoriented. I know I was when I felt the presence of you and all who set sail with you all of a sudden as I went about my duties.”
“Your duties? What are you-.”
“You and your friends have wandered into my realm, the land of dreams if you would, a place where I walk amongst the sleeping and make sure no pony is suffering from any ill dreams that do not allow them to grow and learn,” a second Luna explained, circling the pegasus as she spoke. “I am tasked with watching over all who sleep, though it can be hard to monitor everypony at once. As long as the moon shines over Equestria, I can feel when anypony enters the realm of dreamscapes.”
“Since you seven have left Equestria’s protection, I have kept an eye on you from afar whenever any of you dream,” a third continued as Heart Shield was left speechless. “Though, I have never felt the surge of power I did tonight when you all entered your dreams nearly all at once. And so I came to investigate the cause, though I am ashamed to admit it was not without its share of difficulty. I found thee first thanks to the spikes in power of your dream jumping all over the place through the dense fog that surrounds you. Now, do you care to tell me what you can recall?”
As she finished speaking, all three Lunas merged into a singular princess, who conjured a cloud of deep purple to sit on and a similar cloud beneath the confused Heart Shield. The young stallion lowered his wings and slowly looked around as he sat cautiously on the cloud. Derpy was nowhere to be seen, though the moment he thought of her, the void of white around them suddenly transformed into the outside of a building that he could just barely recall as where she was often found alongside the rather odd, yet highly intelligent, tan stallion she had become friends with in Ponyville, though his name eluded Heart Shield. Luna cleared her throat to get his attention as the landscape changed once more to an ornate room that was completely unfamiliar to him. Heart Shield wasn’t sure what the room was exactly, but he recognized the Canterlot Castle architecture, as well as the familiar night sky of his old hometown.
“I believe that if I were the one to pull locations from one’s own memories, we might be able to have a discussion without you growing distracted by sudden changes,” Luna explained, answering his unspoken question. “Now, I need you to think hard and explain everything that you can recall as precisely as possible. I do not wish to alarm you, but I fear that you and your friends may be in danger, and I have things of my own that I must share with you all. Thus, the sooner we are able to understand what is going on and locate the others, the better.”
Heart Shield nodded slowly and closed his eyes, doing his best to gather all the scattered thoughts in his head and piece them together in a way that made sense.

“I don’t think that’s the case,” Heart Shield said, pushing himself up off the floor. “Look.”
He pointed behind her and Twilight turned around to see what he meant. Outside the cabin, the sails had fallen limp and beyond them the water surrounding the Fate’s Winds was so still that she almost mistook it as solid ground.
“That is not normal,” the unicorn said and grabbed several books and charts off the walls with her magic, opening them in the air in front of her as she poured over the contents, looking from them to the outside and to the control panel as her brow furrowed.
“Ah’ll say,” Applejack commented dryly and looked over her other friends to take a headcount. “At least it seems like nopony fell overboard.”
“No, but I might as well have!” responded a distraught Rarity who was trying to use her magic to dry her soaked body. “Honestly Heart Shield, there’s no need to put the brakes on without warning us like that.”
“I didn’t do anything, little Miss Fancypants!” Heart Shield shot back. “Everything just stopped working!”
“That apology was as bad as your driving,” snapped Rarity.
“Maybe because it wasn’t one!” he shouted at her, stamping a hoof on the floorboards as he took a frustrated step towards her. “I’m not apologizing for soaking your oh-so-precious fur, especially when we’re supposed to be chasing after those-.”
Rainbow Dash hurried between the two ponies, pushing her fellow pegasus back with a hoof on his chest as Fluttershy gently pulled Rarity away.
“Alright, I know I’m the wrong one to say this, but maybe we should all cool down a tick?” the cyan mare said to the two of them, though her gaze was locked on his and her words were clearly not a question. “How about Large-Wing and I go outside to take a look around while somepony helps Rarity get dry and somepony helps Twi look over things in here?”
“That sounds like a mighty fine suggestion,” said Applejack. “C’mon Rarity, ah’ll help ya find some towels, we can check the hull when yer done and see if we’ve got any water leakin’ into the ship. Fluttershy, you stay here and help Twilight as best as ya can. Pinkie, ah need you to go out on deck an’ see if anything important fell overboard.”
“Okily-dokily!” Pinkie Pie said with a salute and zoomed out of the cabin as Rainbow Dash pulled a fuming Heart Shield with her.
The pegasi took to the air and flew around the giant ship in silence, looking over every inch of the outside as they could to see if there was any external damage to it before Pinkie grabbed their attention from the crow’s nest. She pointed to the distance off their port bow with the spyglass and said she saw someplace that looked neat before zooming down to the deck without another explanation. Rainbow Dash could tell that Heart Shield was still too focused on being angry with the ship to make a proper decision and suggested that they grab the rope on either side of their ship and ferry it towards the island Pinkie had found, as it was a better idea than just floating aimlessly in the water. Heart Shield didn’t have any way to argue against this and merely huffed in frustration and agreed. Together, joined by Fluttershy once she saw what they were doing, the pegasi slowly pulled Fate’s Winds across the silent ocean towards the unknown island shore. It was grueling work and took nearly forty-five minutes before they finally were able to beach the ship, at which point heads had become relatively cooled between the seven ponies and Heart Shield was too exhausted to try to pick a fight with anyone that he thought was questioning his decisions or accusing him.
Night was falling fast, but everyone was too preoccupied with trying to figure out what happened to fall asleep. The deck had long since dried by the time Twilight told them that she couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the ship’s systems. As far as she’d been able to tell, everything was working, but nothing was responding to any inputs, not even the anchor. She had a rough estimate of where they might be given the direction they’d been heading, but until the stars came out for her to compare to the star charts, she couldn’t be certain of their exact location. Applejack and Rarity confirmed that there was no damage inside of the ship, and Rainbow Dash said the same went for the outside
“Maybe we should look around the island a bit,” Rainbow Dash suggested, bored with waiting for the stars to pop out. “You know, to make sure everything is okay and get supplies!”
“That might not be the best idea,” Twilight replied. “If this ends up like Clover’s ghost island, I’d rather be on the ship in case everything starts responding again so we can get out fast in an emergency.”
“Oh come on!” Dash protested. “What are the odds that we’d run into two ghost islands on the same trip? Besides, if we do, we just need to have Heart Shield pull the same contest trick as last time, right?”
“Rainbow Dash, the dragons told us that several islands were not ones we should be staying on. Do you want to take the chance that this is one of them?” Twilight countered, to which even Rainbow Dash faltered.
“Well how long do you think it’ll take for things to respond? Would we be better off with a full system reboot?” Heart Shield asked, stifling a yawn.
“If I knew that, I’d have told you already,” said Twilight, barely keeping her exasperation out of her voice as she glared at her friend with bags under her eyes from her own battle with stress and exhaustion. “I don’t want to risk rebooting the system while things are like this. What’s the plan if the equipment doesn’t turn back on?”
“So what, we just don’t try anything to troubleshoot the issue?”
“That’s not how you use that word.”
“Whatever, I thought that trying alternative solutions was part of the scientific process or something.”
“You do realize that the ship probably went into some kind of emergency safemode because you were pushing it to the point where it would break?” Twilight snapped. “If you didn’t keep everything at full power this whole time-.”
“And risk losing the changelings? We barely kept up with their signal at top speed! Following them is our best bet to find Chrysalis and save the Outset pegasi!” Heart Shield retorted.
He growled under his breath and pushed his tired body up and out of the cabin, hoping the cool air would calm him down and shake off the exhaustion creeping into him. He could hear Fluttershy and Applejack playing peacekeeper and pointing out to Twilight that he was as worried as the rest of them about the pegasi and that everyone was letting their exhaustion get the better of themselves. Then the door shut and he was left with the silence of the night to quiet his thoughts. He walked to the masthead and kicked the back of the prow in frustration. He was trying to get them to where they were supposed to go! He wasn’t the one that volunteered to be the leader of the group, but the moment he started focusing on their pursuit like he was supposed to, suddenly everyone was getting on his case about it. What was their problem?
Ironically it was the same deafening silence that made his thoughts echo in his head that alerted him to the alarm bells his senses were sending out. Though it was night, he could see a field not too far from the shore, and a forest not much past that. In the middle of the summer, there should have been some noise from the wildlife on the island. Cicadas or crickets chirping, nocturnal animals communicating with each other, even the wind running through the grass. On top of that, the ocean was perfectly still after they’d gotten the ship ashore. Not a single wave washed onto the land, no sound of the water slapping against the ship’s sides, the ship wasn’t even rocking in the slightest. It was as if the entire world had fallen into a deep sleep around him.
Heart Shield felt more fatigued than ever the moment that thought crept into his head, more so than he’d ever felt before. Something wasn’t right. He struggled to force his body to turn and command his legs to carry him back to the cabin as fast as he could. He felt numb and sluggish, like trying to run in the water with all his limbs asleep. As he reached the cabin door he heard several thumps and muffled, slurred voices. The world swam before him as he yanked the door open in time to watch Pinkie fall to the ground, joining Rarity, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. Applejack wasn’t too far behind, managing to look toward him as her eyes rolled up and her body slumped forward to meet her friends’. Twilight met his gaze and in that split second, as his knees buckled, he knew she had pieced together the same danger he had. Her horn glowed faintly, sending a single flash of purple before the two ponies both collapsed, joining their friends. The last thing that went through Heart Shield’s mind was the warning Æundrïl had given them.
“Before you leave, I want to give you some words of warning. These islands you will be visiting, there are some that are dangerous for any who would land. Should you end up on them, stay only long enough to gather supplies, then leave.”
Then, everything went black.

Luna had been silent with her eyes closed as the pegasus told her what events he could remember. When he finally finished, she mulled over the information for a little longer before opening her eyes.
“It sounds as though you landed on Hypnos,” she said slowly as she stood with determination. “An island that we remember our mother telling us of once in a story. We do not remember all of the story, but it is indeed a dangerous place –a land of eternal slumber that affects all around it, and deadly to any foolish enough to step hoof on its shores. It feeds off of the life energy of anypony that touches the land, that is how the flora and the land itself continue to live despite there being no wildlife to maintain their growth. You could think of it as a living creature, in a sense. Twilight Sparkle was indeed correct to stop any of you from leaving the ship.”
Heart Shield had noticed that Lady Luna had a habit of going back to the royal “we” when she was carefully considering things other than her words.
“So that’s it? We sleep on the island until we die?” he said, his voice hoarse as he struggled with the idea that his friends were about to die because of him.
“Nay, we did not say that,” she corrected, motioning for him to get to his hooves as well. “We- I believe that I can rouse your group and allow you to be free from the island, but I require you all to be present for it to work.”
There was something grave in her voice, but Heart Shield held back from trying to get answers from her for now. Right now, the most important thing was making sure everyone was safe. He stood and gave her a short nod.
“Alright, so how do we do that?”
Luna smiled mischievously at him and her horn lit up in response.
“You will have to make sure to thank Twilight Sparkle for her quick thinking, young Heart Shield,” she said cryptically.
Before he could ask what she meant, a faint purple thread shot out of his chest and straight ahead of him. When he looked at the princess, she merely raised an eyebrow and waved for him to lead her on with a flourish of her wing. Heart Shield was hesitant to step off the cloud and out to the open balcony the thread led to, but with another glance at the princess, he swallowed his nerves and took a step forward. In an instant, the space around them warped and his hoof came down not on cold tile but soft earth as they once more appeared in the Everfree clearing. This time, however, the forest was not as oppressive as when Luna approached him. Instead, it was the familiar late afternoon clearing that he’d grown to know after playing that one day over and over in his head for months. In fact, Heart Shield wasn’t surprised when he looked to the southern edge of the clearing and saw the black pony that had changed his life, right where she always had been.
“Twilight Sparkle is indeed worthy of her title as my sister’s most talented pupil. A bit hastily constructed, but she managed to grasp the theory behind the spell Canterlot’s greatest unicorns constructed for Nero and Tool to turn into the compass you all used to chase after Queen Chrysalis,” Luna explained from beside him as she looked at the black mare as well. “Not a bad attempt for such fast thinking in a crisis. This thread appears to connect you all through your memories, as such we should be able to locate your friends as we go through your memories to reach their dreams. A handy spell, one that I should be able to amplify as we go so that I can locate them despite the fog of Hypnos trying to envelop you all.”
Heart Shield said nothing, his voice was caught in his throat as he looked upon Chrysalis’s body from the day they first met. Had Lady Luna not told him this was a mere memory, he would have run to the changeling queen in a heartbeat. Luna was not so unobservant that she did not notice the flash of emotions that ran across her companion’s face. She had to admit, she did not have the same negative emotions towards the changeling as her sister or his friends did, not having been present in Canterlot when the events of the royal wedding occurred. She had also wondered often about Chrysalis’s true personality after hearing Heart Shield’s tales of her, as well as the words he passed on from her. While part of her wanted to use her magic to blast Queen Chrysalis into the depths of Tartarus for her actions, she could not help but share in the pegasus’s concern for the injured mare as the memory played out with a second Heart Shield running over to her fallen body.
“You have a very large and very kind heart,” she said to the true Heart Shield beside her, nodding to his attempts to calm Queen Chrysalis down so that he could tend to her wounds. “Not many would have acted as you did in this situation.”
“I doubt many would have bothered to get to know the real her, what with everypony else not believing second chances matter in her case,” he replied softly, but bitterly. He attempted to move past this memory, only to be stopped by Lady Luna putting a wing to his chest to halt him.
“Perhaps that is the case, but you did a kindness to her that she will hopefully never forget. Do not focus on what others would have done, but be glad at your valiant actions. Such care, as well as your courage to stand up for her and the resolve to stick to your beliefs is something that my sister and I strive to instill into our guards. When all is resolved, should you wish it so, you have a place in either of our guards. I know my sister could certainly use a guard who is not shy about speaking their mind to her, and I am touched by your fierce loyalty, for lack of a better term, for your Chrysalis.”
The scene of him taking care of Chrysalis sped up as he took in the princess’s words. Heart Shield tore his eyes from the black mare as the memory turned to the morning and gently, but resolutely, pushed Lady Luna’s wing away with one of his and continued forward wordlessly to the next memory. It was an odd sensation, knowing that the princess was seeing the same things as him. Telling the princesses and his friends the events of those weeks had been one thing, but this was another experience entirely. He could tell that his friends never fully believed his side of things, nor Lady Celestia no matter how unbiased she tried to make herself. Sure, they believed he took care of Chrysalis, and that she had healed him after Twilight was forced to reveal that as well, but they always seemed to side with Twilight’s belief that Chrysalis was merely using him as a way to regain enough strength to try to take Equestria again.
But there was a vast difference to imagining events that you heard from someone and seeing them as the one that told the events experienced them. The fact that Lady Luna was able to see everything that took place from his perspective as if this was a movie playing for her was intimate in a way he was not comfortable with. While he was glad that someone would finally get to see the side of Chrysalis that he was so invested in protecting, not only were some of the innocent memories things that someone else might misconstrue as more intimate than they actually were, but he also felt oddly jealous of having someone else share these experiences regardless of them being the greatest pieces of evidence he had to her being more than the monster everyone else believed her to be.
To Luna’s credit, she did not linger on the memories as she had the first one. She could sense Heart Shield was not fully comfortable with allowing someone to see these events with the exact clarity that he had, and she could understand that. If someone were to enter her memories of her past before the Elements healed her, she would surely be as guarded as he was. Not that he disliked the memories as she disliked hers, but rather that the memories were precious to him and the changeling queen. Indeed, Luna did get to see a side of the queen that was very dissimilar to the side that she had come to know from tales of her, and she was not sure herself what to do with these conflicting bits of information. The memories, especially those of his desperation to track her down while his friends would depart to later encounter Sombra, did at least show her that this was not as simple as Chrysalis’s magic affecting his mind. Luna could not say what his feelings towards the changeling queen were, but she clearly held a vast importance to the stallion and he would go to the ends of the earth if it meant her safety. Which made the news she needed to share weigh heavier on her heart with each progressive memory.
Soon enough, the two found themselves reaching the end of memory lane, with the letter summoning him and his friends to Canterlot in order to show them the finished ship instead opening up into a doorway that the purple thread continued through. Luna nodded to Heart Shield as she turned her focus back to fixing the spell that had brought them this far. Heart Shield pushed the door open and fell forward as he realized too late that the doorway opened into the sky. Luna followed him, her horn aglow as she readied herself to catch him with her magic only to see him struggling to finish pulling himself onto what she could only describe as a cloud made out of cotton candy.
“If I had to hazard a guess,” Heart Shield said once he was on solid… candy, “this must be Pinkie’s dream.”
“Hiya Heart Shield! So nice of you to drop by!” Pinkie said, bursting up out of the cloud in a spit in the face to all forms of physics, nearly sending him toppling off once again. “Oh, you brought a guest! Hi Princess Luna!”
Luna waved a little nervously at the pink mare; Pinkie’s energy had always been something that kept her on her horseshoes.
“I was expecting you to show up soon, but I thought it would have been a few minutes earlier. Oh well, that just means that the cookies have cooled off by now,” the bubbly pony continued with a smile on her face. She pushed a hole open in the candy cloud, which both Heart Shield and Luna noticed showed a kitchen through the hole rather than the endless sky that should have been seen. “Come on, everypony else is waiting already!”
“Everypony else?” Heart Shield asked, though knowing Pinkie he wasn’t too shocked by her answer.
“Yepperoonie! I found myself in this giant candy cave and at first I was suuuuuuper happy because that’s, like, the most candytastic thing ever, but then I realized that it was way, way, waaaaaaaay too much candy for me to have by myself so I thought to myself that I should try to find everypony to share it with. It took a while because everypony wasn’t in the candy landy lands, but I eventually found everypony because this nifty purple string showed up so I just followed it around and around and it led me to Rarity and Rainbow Dash and Twilight and Fluttershy and Applejack but we couldn’t find where you were with it so I just brought everypony to this super stocked kitchen and started making cookies because who doesn’t like cookies, and I figured that you’d be able to find us by the smell if the mean string wasn’t going to tell us where to find you. Twilight wanted to keep trying to find you, but I told her that you’d be along soon because that’s what the outline said was going to happen, though it doesn’t look like the author is doing a good job at following the outline and took six years to actually find a way to write things in a way they were happy with, though hopefully the readers will enjoy things now that this is finally back in progress. By the way, you will never buh-leave where AJ was when we found her!”

“And that’s when you two showed up and I started telling you everything that happened before the scene transition!” Pinkie finished, shoving a plate of cookies in front of Heart Shield and Princess Luna, who looked at the stallion with a mixture of alarm and confusion, as if they’d suddenly appeared in the comfortable dining lounge with the other ponies in a way that did not follow any form of dream logic.
Heart Shield shrugged at Lady Luna and said, “You get used to it. I stopped questioning how Pinkie works a long time ago.”
“Trust me, Princess Luna, there is no possible way for anypony to understand how anything regarding Pinkie functions,” agreed Twilight, her eyes carrying the haunting look of someone who tried to stare into an abyss to learn about it only to find it staring back but with Pinkie’s face.
“Well, you’re all clearly you,” the princess mumbled in disappointment at not getting to try a fancy spell that even her sister hadn’t tried yet. She’d been looking forward to getting to brag to her older sibling. “That at least saves us the trouble of finding everypony.”
Luna asked the mares to explain what they could remember before waking up in their respective dreams as Heart Shield did, and their stories all lined up with what she’d been told already. She explained to them what she had told their friend about the island and her plan to get them all free from the island’s hold. The hopeful looks in their eyes almost broke her heart as she opened her mouth to continue with the news.
“That is the first reason why I went looking through the dreamscape to find you all. But that is not the main reason,” she began, suddenly finding it hard to put everything into words. “Not too long ago, we stopped receiving communication from Twilight Sparkle about your whereabouts. Any attempt to establish communications by reversing the spell used to reach Canterlot, we can only assume, either failed or were only one-way. After today’s events, I proposed to my sister that I could attempt to use my dominion over the realm of dreams to communicate that way, so I am grateful for the island’s power in that sense.”
“What are ya talkin’ about?” asked Applejack. “Ah mean, we knew that no letters were gettin’ over to y’all and all that flapdoodle, but what was so important about today that has yer feathers ruffled worse than an owl in a hurricane?”
Heart Shield felt his heart sink as Luna looked his way for a fraction of a second before looking elsewhere.
“Equestria has been attacked again,” Luna said gravely. “This attack was much like the first, but in the aftermath it felt more like the changelings were testing to see how many weaknesses we had since they have already determined their forces were greater than either Canterlot’s or the Crystal Kingdom’s. As if they were merely toying with us with this attack rather than simply trying to wipe us out.”
Heart Shield’s chest grew cold and heavy at this news, knowing immediately what this meant for Chrysalis. Lady Luna turned to him and gave him an expression that told him how much she truly wished that he did not have to have this news delivered to him.
“Heart Shield,” she said, her voice soft and firm at the same time, “I am filled with grave sorrow to say this, but circumstances have unfortunately changed. I hope you remember your promise to my sister before you set sail, because as of this moment, Equestria is preparing for war.”
Heart shield pushed himself up from the table, mouth open to protest, to say that he needs more time, that he knew he can prove Chrysalis is innocent. However, the words caught in his throat and he could only hang his head and nod as he sank back into his chair, defeated.
“I understand, Lady Luna, and I will not go back on my word. As promised, this is no longer a search for answers,” he said, his voice hollow. “We… will find Chrysalis and… and bring her to justice.”
If he was capable of feeling anything other than the growing hollow weight in his chest, he might have laughed at the look of surprise and shock on everyone’s face. Twilight, especially, had been expecting him to put up a fight, to argue, to have to be coaxed into agreeing like this. Him giving up like this, especially after how he’d been acting the past few days, was beyond unexpected. Luna could tell that he meant what he said and started to construct the spell that would awaken the group as Applejack got up and moved around the table to place a comforting hoof on his shoulder.
Then the world shifted without warning. The eight ponies found themselves deposited unceremoniously into the dirt of a clearing in a forest that Heart Shield and now Luna recognized. Luna was alarmed, their location should have no longer shifted like this now that she had been around these ponies to anchor them in one location. She almost considered that this was somehow Heart Shield’s emotions warping the dream in his inner turmoil over the decision, but the world had a look to it that was not present before. The colors around the various ponies were more vibrant, details more pronounced on the foliage than in his memories, and everything appeared to have some sort of aura, like a small flame, surrounding them. It all pointed towards this being someone else’s memories or dream, and she wasn’t sure if she liked the implications of this. Before she could say anything, a weak voice could be heard in each pony’s ears as if from their own lips, a voice that immediately jerked the young stallion into awareness.
“Help me, Heart Shield. Somepony, please,” came Queen Chrysalis’s voice sounding weak and cracked, as if she hadn’t had anything to drink in ages. “Please, help me…”
“Chrysalis!” Heart Shield cried out, looking around wildly for the mare. “I’m here! Where are you?!”
The world went dark. He could still see his friends, still see Lady Luna, but other than them he might as well be standing in a black void. Chrysalis’s voice echoed around the void, so that no one was able to locate the source. Her voice began switching back and forth as she spoke, as if each sentence was a different Chrysalis speaking. At times she sounded like Heart Shield was familiar with, only to suddenly sound confident, dark and cruel as Twilight remembered from the royal wedding, then sounding as if she was in pain, again and again almost like these were different personalities talking.
“The world needs to be redone from the ground up!” said the cruel voice. “We will drain everypony of their love until they are nothing but shriveled up husks!”
“No! Please, that’s enough!” came a sobbing voice, sounding as though she were pleading with someone about to beat her. “Please, just stop! I won’t anymore, please, please, please no more!”
“Things were much simpler in the past, were they not? Do you remember exploring the caves~?” asked a dreamy voice.
“No you can’t… You can’t do that!” screamed a frightened voice. “What you’re doing is unnatural! …That doesn’t matter! It’s not our way!”
More and more Chrysalis voices echoed around the voice, bombarding the ponies that could only look around in a panic as they tried to figure out what was going on. Fluttershy had her hooves over her ears, trying to block out the sound as she cried in a curled up ball, overwhelmed and unable to help the various disembodied voices. Pinkie’s hair had deflated and her pink coat became desaturated as she found no way to have fun with the situation. Rainbow Dash was looking less confident than she’d ever been. Rarity had used her magic to wrap herself in her “I’m stressed and need my Me Time NOW” blanket with a pillow covering her head to stifle the sounds. Applejack’s hat had fallen to cover her eyes and her knees shook more with each new voice. Twilight was so alarmed that the magic she tried to cast merely turned into fizzles with the sound of a raspberry being blown each time she tried to use magic. Luna had her eyes shut tight as if each voice pained her. Heart Shield, who was still frantically looking from side to side in desperation to find Chrysalis, was the first to notice the source as it emerged from the ground. A large, emerald green crystal with a bright green light in the center rose from the ground as if a timelapsed video of a tree growing, and in the crystal was Chrysalis. Each time another voice echoed through the void, she took a different position, jerking as if seizing up or as if the dream was glitching with each different tone, but something in his very being told him that this was no nightmare like the others seemed to be believing. No it was her. It was Chrysalis.
He wasn’t even aware of his body moving, barely registering the blur of his friends as he ran towards the crystal. His hooves slammed against the crystal’s edge as hard as he could, wincing as the hard surface sent a jolt of pain up his legs to his shoulders, but he wouldn’t be deterred. It was her, she was here! He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t try to break the crystal prison that held her captive. A change came over Chrysalis as the jerking and rapid changes to her voice stopped. She turned to the sound of his hooves impacting the crystal, wearing a hollow expression at first until a faint spark of life grew in her dual colored eyes. Recognition lit up her face, along with a mixture of relief and wariness, as if not trusting her own eyes as Chrysalis placed her hooves on the inside edge of the crystal facing him.
“Heart Shield?” she said, a hint of fear that this wasn’t real in her voice.
Her voice was such a relief to hear, not like the echoed, scattered thoughts that had filled the void moments before. Heart Shield felt almost rejuvenated by her voice and slammed his hooves on the crystal with all his strength, cursing the stone as the edge wasn’t even marred by the impacts.
“Chrysalis!” he replied, bringing his hooves down on the crystal again. He heard his friends join him at the edge of the crystal and saw Applejack’s orange hooves slam into the crystal as she took the initiative to help him without hesitation.
“Is… is it really you?”
“Of course it’s me,” he said softly, and placed his hooves on the outer edge of the crystal directly over where hers were on the inside. “I’m here.”
“How…? I- No, this isn't one of his tricks, it doesn't feel like him,” Chrysalis muttered to herself before she sighed in relief and smiled at him, continuing in a whisper as if talking to herself. “It's you, it's really you. I don't care how this happened, you're here with me.”
“Of course I am. Did you think I'd sit by idling away after Twilight sent you away?” Heart Shield laughed quietly. “I haven’t stopped trying to find you even once this whole time.”
“Princess Luna, what’s going on?” Twilight asked as she watched the two of them talk. “Is that really her, or is this another dream?”
“Dream though it may be, Twilight Sparkle, even I can tell this must be Queen Chrysalis,” Luna replied slowly as she pondered everything that had been happening, noting several injuries that covered the changeling queen’s body. “As to what is occurring or how this happened, I can only offer a hazard guess. Perhaps your spell that allowed all of you to find each other also allowed her slumbering form to make contact. It is possible that she is in a state of duress, to the point that her mind needed to send her into an unconscious state to protect her, as this does not feel like natural sleep nor does it have the same vile fog of Hypnos.”
“A state of duress? You mean she’s dissociating?”
“Yes, or some similar form of protecting her mind from what is happening. It would explain the rapid changes to her dialogue, how it jumped around erratically like that…”
Twilight wasn’t sure what to do with this information or how to feel about it. Part of her still believed that Queen Chrysalis was trying to trick them. She had seen how good of an actress and manipulator the queen had been firsthand. However, she couldn’t fight the feeling that this was no act, that Queen Chrysalis was genuinely in some form of danger or that her relief at seeing Heart Shield was real. And she did not like the implications of that if that were the case.
“I cannot believe-. I didn’t think I’d get to see you again,” Chrysalis murmured and put her forehead to the crystal above Heart Shield’s, though she still seemed to have trouble putting her words into coherent thought. “I was certain that he’d-... That you’d be in peril if he knew…”
“Where are you?” Heart Shield asked, trying to get what answers he could. “I’ve been trying everything I could to find you. We even left Equestria to search for you. Who are you talking about, what's going on?”
Before Chrysalis could reply, several loud cracking sounds caught everyone’s attention. Cracks started to form at the top and bottom of the crystal, and to Heart Shield’s horror those cracks were mirrored on Chrysalis’s own body, though she didn’t seem to be in pain.
“The connection is breaking,” Luna said in alarm. “Whatever is allowing her to be in this state where she is able to communicate like this appears to be failing!”
Clarity washed over Chrysalis’s face and she locked her gaze with Heart Shield, speaking with urgency to the pegasus.
“There’s no time to explain it all. You're in danger, everypony's in danger. An army's coming-.”
“We know,” Twilight interrupted, taking a step towards the crystal as she gave the changeling queen a glare of suspicion. “They already attacked Equestria and several other countries and islands. They coltnapped some pegasi not too long ago, we were already chasing them when we wound up here.”
“Those were just scouts, grunts, a test force,” Chrysalis replied, shaking her head. “The real army is almost complete. I can't stop him, and my changelings are no longer under my command. Every second that passes, his horde gets stronger and he keeps trying to turn me as he did my changelings. What he’s doing, it’s unnatural. I thought after all this time that he’d- that maybe things would have changed, but I was wrong.”
“Who? Chrysalis please give me a name, a location, something I can do to help you!” Heart Shield pleaded as the cracks had spiderwebbed out to engulf the entire crystal and Chrysalis.
“The last of the preparations will be complete in fourteen days, maybe even sooner, I can’t be certain.”
The crystal was too damaged to remain intact any longer and began to shatter from the top down. Chrysalis turned her attention from the crystal back to the ponies, specifically the pegasus that had shown her such kindness.
“I'm at my homeland," she said hurriedly. “I’m in Breyta Mitos. The entire force of the changelings is there too, you need to be careful.”
Her voice faltered and she wore a pained, regretful expression as she spoke directly to the pegasus.
“Heart Shield, I'm sorry. I tried to get him to see what you showed me, that we don’t need to fight, that things can be different after all this time, but that just made him put his plans into action. Everything that’s about to happen, it’s all my fault.”
The fracturing had reached her horn by now, leaving the emerald crystal nearly white with the breakage forming around it, but her eyes, full of regret and the weight of the world, still shone bright in the darkness of the void.
“Who?!” Heart Shield demanded again. “Who is doing this to you!”
“There’s no more time!” warned Luna as Twilight used her magic to pull her friend away from the crystal as a large shard split from the top and landed right where he’d stood.
Heart Shield cursed under his breath before looking Chrysalis in the eyes.
“I'm coming to find you! I'll save you!” he promised her.
Chrysalis returned his look and gave him a small smile, murmuring, “I’ll be waiting.”
With that, the crystal shattered completely, cutting off the connection to the changeling queen. The shards exploded out from the crystal, flying at the ponies with such force that even Luna’s quickly constructed shield of stardust visibly buckled under the impact as she stood in front of the other seven ponies to protect them from harm. Where the crystal had stood moments before, now erupted green flames that began to fill the area with a heat so intense that it became a struggle for everyone to take in air without feeling like their throats were burning up. Luna cursed inwardly as the fire flooded the void, attempting to snake around and over her barrier to get to herself and the ponies she protected. Her horn lit up brighter as she wound her stardust around the young ponies, leaving her free to fire her magic at the almost living flames.
“Princess!” Twilight shouted, her own horn glowing as she began to try to cast a spell to assist the lunar princess, only to be cut off by Luna’s harsh command to cease.
“We appreciate your concern, Twilight Sparkle,” she said in a strained voice as she blasted another bolt of magic at some tendrils of flame that tried to encircle her, “but we can handle something as simple as this ourself! Afterall, the realm of dreams is our domain!”
The wisps of stardust surrounding the friends whirled around them in a blur as each pony began to feel the ground slipping away from beneath them. At the same time, the emerald flames wrapped together into the shape of a dragon that moved to devour Luna in the raging inferno of its maw. Luna’s body glowed deep blue before she transformed into an avatar of herself made entirely of stardust and flowed around the flaming creature as its jaws clamped down where she had been moments before. Her horn lit up as she appeared above the creature and she fired several rounds of magic into its body, blasting holes into it that soon filled back in with more flames as it let out a loud roar of fury. As she battled the entity, her voice resonated in each of the friends’ heads.
“Do not worry about me, young ponies. I have faced worse creatures than this in my dominion. I am going to break Hypnos’s spell and send you all back to the waking world so that I can give this unwelcome guest my full attention,” she said, her voice carrying no room to argue from any of them. “Twilight Sparkle, I will use up a little of my power to give you a small form of this spell so that you can restart your ship and flee, but you must be quick! It is up to you now, you must find the land of Breyta Mitos before it is too late!”
The swirling stardust swallowed each of the ponies as Luna dodged another attack from the fire. The lights from the stars faded into darkness as each of the friends began to rouse from their magical slumber. The last thing they each heard was a faint, “Good luck,” from the princess before their eyes opened up. From the looks on each other’s faces, they didn’t need to ask aloud if all that really happened. Without a word, Twilight ran to the controls, her horn glowing as she worked to use the spell from Luna before the dream risked fading from her memories, joined by Rarity to aid her with what she could to power the crystal. Rainbow Dash, Heart Shield and Fluttershy flew outside to tug the ship in reverse away from the island. Applejack took to the helm, gripping the wheel so that she could angle the rudder to assist the pegasi in pulling the ship from the shore, while Pinkie hovered by the big red button for the jets with her eyes wide and gaze locked on Twilight in anticipation. The moment the ship was facing away from the island, the pegasi returned to the cabin just in time for the control panels to light up as the system roared back to life. Twilight gave Pinkie a nod and the pink mare slammed her hoof down on the button without any hesitation. The ship shook as the jets charged up before firing Fate’s Winds into the air and away from the island in a rush.
The friends flew through the air in silence until Heart Shield volunteered to make sure the ocean below was moving normally to mark their exit from Hypnos’s influence. When he returned with the news that they were safe, Twilight powered the jets down and landed the ship safely back in the water, to the protests of Rainbow Dash and Pinkie.
Heart Shield turned to Twilight and gave her a slight glower as he asked, “Well? Is that enough proof for you about her? Or do we need to run into that army before you’ll accept that she’s innocent.”
There was no need to ask who he was talking about.
Twilight averted her eyes from him and mumbled out, “I must admit that I… might have been wrong about Chrysalis. I’m sorry.”
“Putting aside who’s right and who’s wrong,” Fluttershy spoke up, “what do we do now?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” said Rainbow Dash as she punched her hooves together. “We keep going forward and kick some changeling butt like always! That’s what heroes do!”
“But is that really the best option?” Fluttershy asked. “If the changelings are already attacking Equestria with more on the way, shouldn’t we go back? The princesses might need our help and the Elements of Harmony could potentially stop the changelings without there needing to be much of a fight.”
“Ah dunno ‘bout that, Sugarcube,” Applejack interjected. “Chrysalis said that there army of theirs would be ready in fourteen days, right? Well last ah checked, we’re a lot farther than two weeks from home. Ah doubt we’d make it back even if we made the boat fly the whole time.”
“I agree,” Rarity nodded. “At this point, as much as I detest the thought of getting near whatever disgusting brute that she claimed to be behind all this, I feel like the only way we can be sure to put a stop to this war is to push forward and find wherever this Breyta Mitos is.”
“Besides,” Pinkie said, “even if we don’t find their home in time, Twilight can always zap us back lickety-split to Canterlot and we can deal with the changelings in two weeks. It’s like Hide-And-Seek, but for keepsies!”
“Pinkie, there’s a limit to how far I can teleport myself, let alone all seven of us,” Twilight chided her.
“You’re all more than welcome to run back to Equestria if you want to, but I’m not going to abandon Chrysalis,” Heart Shield snapped. “I made her a promise, and I’m going to keep it.”
Applejack put a hoof on his shoulder to calm him down and made him look her in the eyes.
“Easy there, pardner,” she said. “Ain’t nopony here gonna abandon somepony in need. An’ from what we all saw, ah think we c’n all agree that Chrysalis is in need of our help. Don’t you worry yer head, we’ll find her.”
Twilight nodded at him and chimed in.
“I don’t think we need to worry about Equestria for now. The princesses can use the Elements well enough in our stead if it comes down to it. For now, I agree that finding Chrysalis and whoever it is that is making this army of changelings is our best bet at putting a stop to things.”
Heart Shield took a steady breath and looked to his friends. Each of them, even the timid Fluttershy, had a look of determination in their eyes to see this through with him.
“Okay then,” he said, moving to take the helm. “Let’s get going.”
“Um, about that,” Twilight spoke up, stopping him. “Given how the tracker works with pointing us in the direction of different places that the changelings have been, we might not find their homeland in time if we keep following it the way we’ve been.”
Heart Shield gave her a look, but held back from saying anything.
“It wouldn’t be too farfetched to assume that the ones we’ve been chasing intentionally led us towards Hypnos to try to stop us,” she continued. “If that’s the case, then relying only on the tracker would risk us falling into similar traps. Instead we should try to find where Breyta Mitos is without the tracker and only use it to make sure we’re heading in the right direction.”
“And how do you propose we do that,” her friend asked as he did his best to keep his voice steady, though his eye clearly twitched in frustration at another delay.
“Simple. We head here.”
Twilight slapped her hoof down on the map Æundrïl had provided to them, indicating a singular large island. Astros Arcadia.