//------------------------------// // Witness // Story: Legends Never Die: Friendship is Magic // by bookhorse125 //------------------------------// Sunny glanced back at her friends, asleep in the moonlight that poured through the window, and she sighed, hanging her head. She stepped out into the hall and shut the door behind her, careful to not wake Thunder. She wanted to do this herself. The halls and corridors of the Zephyr Heights palace were strangely empty, the moonlight casting sharp shadows onto the walls, making everything feel like a different universe, one where Sunny was alone, walking in circles in an abandoned palace for all eternity. But all the guards must be at their positions in the city to oversee the festival, and they didn’t know that there was a need for extra security in the castle right then. Sunny paused, her ears twitching, trying to catch the sound of hoofprints that might be Zipp’s. Or maybe that sound that she heard behind her, like hoofprints, but muffled to near silence, but whenever she stopped walking, the sound ceased. And whenever she turned around, she could see no one there. She shook her head and tried to focus on her missing friend. Think, she commanded herself. Where would Zipp be right now? And then it came to her: the restricted section of the palace library. Hadn’t she said that she had looked there earlier for anything that could cause her mother to disappear like this? Perhaps she was doing more research on her own. Sunny ran as fast - and quietly; there was something about the silence that unnerved her, and she didn’t want to disturb it - as she could to the restricted section and placed her hoof on the scanner by the door. The screen buzzed and flashed red, denying her access. “Zipp?” Sunny said, knocking on the door and hoping that her friend could hear her from inside. “Zipp, are you there? It’s me, Sunny - please let me in!” She was pounding on the door now, every knock that went unanswered sending new pulses of panic through her body, until she was imagining the worst things. Maybe Zipp was already gone, and maybe the world was doomed, and it was all her fault because she left her friends to go looking for Zipp- A new idea suddenly ignited in Sunny’s head, making her gasp and stand up straight. She turned and ran down the hallway, completely forgetting to be quiet, but she doubted there would be many ponies awake then to hear her. She flew into another hallway, this one shorter than others and ending in a dead end. But on the floor was a metal grate. Sunny managed to heave it to one side, opening it up enough that she could hop through the opening and into the basket elevator beneath the opening. She pulled the grate shut above her and pushed down the lever so that the basket would lower her to the floor of the abandoned air station from the reign of Twilight Sparkle that her friends had fixed up for her so long ago as a surprise. Sunny hadn’t been down there very often anymore, but she remembered all the times she spent with her friends there: hiding from angry mobs, assembling broken stained glass windows, standing in the middle of the room with the reflection of Twilight Sparkle’s cutie mark on her face as she was reminded of who she was and where she came from. Sunny didn’t see Zipp at first, but when she arrived at the ground, she hopped out and looked toward the bookshelves that had been pushed up against the wall, where Zipp was sitting, angrily flipping through the pages of a book. When she didn’t find what she was looking for, she tossed the book frustratedly to the side and grabbed another one. “Zipp!” Sunny cried out, running toward her friend. Zipp jumped, not expecting to hear somepony shout her name. She stood up and turned around. “Sunny?” Relief washed through Sunny, but once she saw that her friend was perfectly fine, the relief drained away and was replaced with anger. She skidded to a halt in front of the pegasus and glared at her. “What were you thinking? We literally just decided that we wouldn’t go anywhere on our own! Because in case you forgot, something is out there that might want to kidnap us, and we don’t want to make it easy for them! Unless you want to go missing? How could you disappear and cause me to panic at a time like this?” Zipp winced with each remark. “Sunny, I’m sorry,” she protested. “I just… I thought that I could find answers. And you were so busy reading your letters, and everypony else was so tired that I didn’t want to wake you.” Sunny’s anger was fading away, and she was starting to understand. “But… what about Zoom? And the guards?” She shrugged. “I told Zoom that I was going back to my room to sleep, and that she could stand guard outside the door. But… I’ve been developing secret ways of sneaking out since I was a filly, and I easily got past her. And I’m really good at avoiding the guards. So I came down here, and… Sorry, Sunny. You’re right, I should have told somepony.” “So you haven’t noticed?” “Noticed what?” Zipp looked up and met her friend’s eyes, and she got the feeling that Sunny thought that something else was wrong - something much, much worse than just her mother disappearing. “Zipp… there are no guards in the palace. Except for Thunder, and he was asleep. And I’ve been… I’ve been hearing this sound behind me, like somepony’s following me, but I can’t see anything. I’m worried that… I’m worried that something magical is happening here-” Before she could finish, Zipp gasped and pointed wordlessly over Sunny’s shoulder. Sunny turned, and her eyes widened as something slipped into the airstation. It leached through the grate like liquid oil, except when it pooled on the floor, it took physical form: two wolves, identical and dark, with glowing white eyes. Their tails faded into shadowy wisps, and they didn’t have clearly defined edges, as if they weren’t really there, but were something more. They stared unblinkingly at Sunny and Zipp. In an instant, both ponies knew: this was what was taking ponies. “But this doesn’t make sense!” Sunny stuttered as she took hurried steps back, away from the wolves. “I thought this only happened to ponies who-” But Zipp had already figured it out. She gasped and looked over at Sunny, who met her gaze. “There aren’t supposed to be any witnesses,” Sunny said weakly. “We’re not witnesses, Sunny,” Zipp said. Sunny’s eyes widened as she figured it out, too. “We’re targets.” The two wolves howled and charged at them. Zipp snapped her wings open and launched herself into the air, so that the wolf pursuing her passed right over the area she had just been standing. It spun around and stared at her, its white glowing eyes unnerving her. The edges of her vision began to fade, and Zipp shut her eyes, shaking her head before flying off in the opposite direction. Whatever these wolves were, they were trying to get inside her head. Well, she wasn’t going to let them do that to her. Zipp weaved through pillars and spun in aerial maneuvers that should have won her an instant place on the Aerobats. But the wolf stayed on her tail. It seemed like it could pass instantly from one shadow to another, teleporting directly in front of her and lunging out from unsuspecting places. Zipp dodged and swerved, but she was tiring quickly. Below her, Sunny was in alicorn form, her golden light illuminating the airstation in the night and making it so that there were fewer shadowy places for the wolves to hide. She was facing off against her own wolf, who would shoot tendrils of darkness at Sunny, trying to snatch her. Sunny was just barely managing to hold them off, casting golden shields wherever the wolf would try to get under her guard. The wolf seemed to be having a harder time getting Sunny than Zipp’s was with her. But then Sunny’s wolf howled and dissolved into liquid shadow, pooling around Sunny’s hooves and slowly climbing up her legs, trapping her in one place. Sunny strained and tried to pull free, but she was trapped. One tendril of darkness latched itself onto her horn, yanking her forward and forcing Sunny into a bow of submission. “Sunny!” Zipp cried, pausing in her own flight. She felt her mind go numb as she watched her friend before something slammed into her. The wolf. Zipp was pinned against one of the arches in the airstation, the shadows keeping her there like sticky spider webs. She screamed and tried to free herself, but it did no good. The shadows were earth-shatteringly cold, and already her hooves and wings were going numb. Zipp felt her mind grow slow and hazy, her vision cloud over, and then everything went white… Zipp gasped, her eyes snapping open. She was standing in the throne room of her palace. Bright sunlight streamed through the tall arches and windows, and there was no sign of anypony else. “What’s going on?” she said to herself, spinning in a circle, looking around for an answer. “Hello? Anypony there?” Then she stopped and stared at the thrones on the dias, certain that she must be seeing things now. She must have hit her head in the airstation, and now she was hallucinating. That was the only way to explain why there were four thrones on the dias instead of three, like there had been for her whole life. “Zipp?” She spun around and saw three pegasi approaching her. One was Pipp, who wasn’t looking at her phone for once; another was Queen Haven, who was beaming as though she had never gone missing, and that everything was alright. And the third was a stallion who looked vaguely familiar… A lump lodged itself in Zipp’s throat, and she felt tears in her eyes. “Dad?” The stallion nodded and smiled at her. But this isn’t right… she thought sluggishly. Dad’s been gone for years… He can’t be here now… “Zipp!” called a voice in Zipp’s ear. It was so faint that she couldn’t tell if she was imagining it or not. She could barely recognize who was talking… Surely that didn’t mean that it was important… She felt a hoof on her shoulder, and she looked up at her mother. “Dear, it’s alright,” she said softly, spreading her wing over Zipp’s back. “Everything’s okay. We’re together now, and everything’s going to be okay.” Haven wrapped Zipp in a hug, and then she felt Pipp and her father join in. They felt so solid, so real, that Zipp wanted to believe that it was real with her whole heart. But there was some nagging feeling at the back of her mind, something that told her that something was wrong… But then she felt her father stroke her mane, and an overpowering urge to stay there, in that happy place with her family, where she could finally be happy, blocked out all other thoughts in her head. She relaxed into her mother’s embrace and let everything else fade away. “Zipp! ZIPP!” Sunny screamed until her throat was hoarse. But her friend didn’t move from where she was pinned underneath the shadows. Sunny felt her vision grow fuzzy, felt some kind of force enter her mind and try to rewrite what she was seeing, but after being put under the control of Cozy Glow and the Legion of Doom, she knew a thing or two about mind control, and, more importantly, how to beat it. She clamped iron bands around her mind and forced the darkness out. I am Sunny Starscout. And my friends need my help. I can’t… fail them… again… “ZIPP!” The shadows around Zipp were moving. They were creeping along her limp form until she was covered in darkness, and then the shadows took the form of a wolf again, only this time, it was more powerful - the cold waves of fear radiating off of it stronger and more paralyzing than before. The wolf that used to be Zipp leaped to the floor and landed in front of Sunny, who was still trapped in a sticky, shadowy web. Hot tears pricked at Sunny’s eyes, and she felt her anger burn white hot in her chest. The power suddenly raced through her veins exhilaratingly, and whatever shadowy force was trying to get inside her was abruptly pushed out. Sunny felt the shadows lose their grip on her, and her horn blazed. Every shadowy rope snapped, and she spread her wings, taking to the air, free. The golden light from her wings and horn were brighter now, and Sunny realized that her whole self was glowing, that her wing and horn were shimmering with a rainbow sheen, that her mane was rippling above her shoulder without any kind of wind. She hovered in front of the stained glass window of her ancestor’s cutie mark, the magic singing in her blood, while the two shadow wolves stared at her with their unnerving white eyes. “GET OUT!!!” Sunny roared at them, her horn glowing white with power. She screamed, and a deafening white blast erupted from her horn and spread throughout the whole area, causing her vision to go white, a strange humming sound in her ears, while she felt magic tingling around her, wiping everything else away.