//------------------------------// // Something Old Something New // Story: Dawn of the Vanguard // by Mystic Song //------------------------------// In the middle of once century’s long undisturbed dark room sat Twilight who was surrounded on each side by a large pile of dusty old tomes. She rubbed the dark purple circles under her eyes as she turned the page of the newest book that she had open. The past couple of days did not pass easily for any of her friends or for her. The first thing that pressed on their minds was their first night sleeping in the hundred year old base. None of them had a full nights rest. With the nightmares of the burning screaming carcass that plagued their minds, and being constantly woken up by short sharp screams of those who were violently shaken awake by their dreams. It was needless to say that sleep did not come easily for any of them. Of course none of them talked about that night’s nightmares or the night’s after that. They all just held in their own pains, fears and doubts and went on with pretending that everything was fine. That brought her to the second reason that there was so much tension between her friends. Every book, every record, each and every one last piece of new information that they found painted a monstrous and unbearably vivid picture of how ponies lived during the time of King Conquering Wind. The lands that would one day be Equestria were solely built on slave labour, and it wasn’t just humans that were under pony control. She slightly bit her lip as she remembered the passages from one of the older tome’s she read, that stated all the species that were either bought or out right dragged from their homes for ponies to use then throw away. Griffins, Diamond Dogs, Changelings, Humans just about anything that wasn’t a pony was owned by or sold by ponies to live out hard short lives, with no hope of ever escaping. Also, according to the seemly endless research notes everypony that could afford a slave had one, which was almost all of them. This of course brought up a new and painful question to the forefront of her mind. How many families where cruelly ripped apart or outright killed by her own ancestors? She quickly wiped the moisture away from her eyes to avoid ruining the pages of the old book that was spread out before her. It wounded her to know that this was how ponies lived for hundreds if not thousands of years, and during that time not one pony stopped to look at the pain that was being inflicted around them, and asked if what they were doing was wrong. Or that if forcing their will on a magic-less species and then harming them when they didn’t work up to expectation was never and will never be the right thing to do. This train of thought brought her to the main reason that she had sleepless bags under her eyes and that the large tension bubble that surrounded her friends and her monarch was about to brutally burst open. They had found bodies. To be more direct Applejack’s team was the one to find the ancient human skeletons, which were placed in the room that was farthest room away from the entrance of the base. The rest of the group was informed by their discovery with Rarity’s scream of distress and Pinkie Pie’s frighten calls for help. Twilight didn’t know what she was expecting when the pink pony showed her the room, but she knew she wasn’t expecting a room fill to the brim with bleach white bones and notes that detailed how every injury, cut and deep abrasion led that up to or the sole cause of the decease’s death. Even the many wall shelves that twisted around the room and reached the ceiling were crammed with skeletons of humans of all sizes and ages. She stuttered at the thought of the overwhelming feeling of wrongness that room had. Every time she entered it felt as if the cold, black empty stare of every cracked ashen white skull in the room was directed at her. They smiled ceaselessly at her with warped and broken teeth or shattered hanging jaws while they watched her, judging her and the motives she had for coming into their unhallowed grave. Silently, mournfully, asking her why did she think she had the right to read and openly cringe into their causes of death? Why did she believe that she could right the wrongs of the past? Why, for even one second she believed that she was even allowed try to ease their suffering, even though her friend’s families and her family were a part of the reason that they now laid on dusty shelves only to be used as some type of gruesome research note? The empty skulls soundless unanswered questions suffocated her every time she entered their presence. Why? Why? Why!? Why!? WHY!? Needless to say, she spent as little time in that room as possible. However she wasn’t the only one to get a negative feeling from that place, and those feelings of unease warped around the only living things in the base and caused an uncomfortable tension to build around them. It was hard to sleep and eat in close proximity of a place filled with the remnants of such violent and untimely death. To be truthful, she was surprised that nopony had snapped under the pressure yet. Sighing Twilight closed the book on an indented page. She needed to take a break now or fall into, as Rainbow Dash would call it, ‘egg head mode’ again. She left the side room and entered the wooden cavern that was main room of the base. The alicorn stretched out her sore limbs as she walked, and tried to keep up a happy demeanor as she passed the lounging forms of her friends. It seemed like she had chosen to take her break at an appropriate time. “So… how is everypony doing?” She asked trying to assess her friends’ emotional stance. She only got muttered voices and a dry cough back as an answer. Purple ears flattened against an equally purple head. However, not one to give up easily she tried again. “Hey Applejack is there any thing new you discovered on your front.” The resting farm pony pushed her Stetson further on her face, “Nope.” “Not even a little something?” She pushed. “Nothing at all.” Twilight tried a different tactic to break into the apple farmer’s defense. “Applejack, how are you doing?” “…I’m good enough” “No, A.J I want to know how you feel right now.” Applejack went silent for a tense moment then replied firmly, “Now, Twi ya’ know that ‘ah only ‘ave a short break before ‘ah ‘ave ta’ go back ta’ readin’ an’ lookin’ at notes. So can ya’ give me some time ta’ relax?” Twilight slumped at Applejack’s outright avoidance of her question, she still somehow, manage to put on a somewhat happy smile. “Oh. Well then keep up the good work.” The orange pony turned away from her. The alicorn princess dutifully continued her assessment of her friends, hoping to get any thing back in response. However their reactions were bleak as the only answered back with some variation of ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Finally giving up for the moment, she took out one of the meals in her saddle bags and began to eat. ‘I hate how everypony is acting,' she turned back to the lounging ponies to find that they still haven’t moved an inch, 'I wish they would stop being so, so…’ She had to stop herself from crying as moisture began to form at her eyes. ‘Sad.’ Twilight hated seeing her friends and princess like this. The worst part of it was that she was the one to bring this on them. She was the one who wanted to go on some quest to find a lost race, she was the one that encouraged them to enter the swap to find the old base, and she was the one who told them to read as much information as they could without double checking if they could handle what they read. Now everypony was having nightmares and nopony had truly smiled or even looked like they have ever been happy in days. It was the third day since Pinkie Pie’s hair went from curly to straight, and her usually happy mood didn’t seem to be coming back anytime soon. Fluttershy hadn’t even smile once since they had found they base and still wouldn’t talk to anyone about how she was faring. Everypony knew that she was a wreck and felt terribly about not being able to save the hydra when her first nightmare induced screams had woken them all up. Every last one of her friends had suffered badly after that experience, they all had slight bags under their eyes and dull coats and the information they keep on finding is just making them more and more miserable, and it was all her fault! She painfully went through Candace’s breathing exercise with a rigidity she had never felt before. ‘No, I have to stay strong! Just what would happen if I break?’ she hastily put that disturbingly temping thought out her head, ‘I have to try again, for my friends.' She swallowed her daisy and dandelion sandwich that she had kept fresh with magic, and marched back to her friends. “Ok everypony listen up!" she bellowed instantly getting the attention of the lounging ponies, "I want all of you to get up and line up in front of me.” Her gaze was met with indecisive stares. “Now!” They quickly lined up in front of her. “Thank you.” She said smiling sweetly. Getting back into a more serious face she started to walk up and down in front of the line. “Now I know that many of you are not feeling like yourselves," here she paused slightly in front of Pinkie Pie, "that however doesn’t mean that you can lock yourselves away. For one it is almost impossible to hide away from everypony in such an open space.” She looked to Rainbow Dash who had made a habit of making clouds near the ceiling of the base and hiding out of view from everypony. What Twilight didn’t see was the rage that had been slowly building up behind the pegasus mare’s eyes, ever since the first time the young alicorn had flew up to her cloud to see what she was doing. “Secondly," here she turned and looked each of them in the eyes, her voice took on a softer faintly pained air as she spoke, "it’s not good for your health if you girls keep bottling up your emotions inside. I’m worried that you’re going to get hurt if this goes on. So please, talk to me about it. I need to know what’s wrong.” The purple alicorn smiled kindly at each and everyone of her friends, minus her princess who had to go back to Canterlot. She would find the root of all her friends problems then she would unearth a way to keep them all smiling together. All she needed was just one of them to start the healing process by talking to, not just her, but everpony about what was eating at them. It was the perfect solution to a terrible problem. She didn’t expect Rainbow Dash’s sudden explosion. “What’s wrong, what’s wrong? Twilight, what’s right?” With her ears flatten against her head and Rainbow Dash’s anguished cyan face inches from hers, Twilights only response was a shock and stunned, “I d-don’t understand.” “Of course you don’t understand! You just sit in that room reading those books and then talk to us about those things, like you don’t even care about how we feel about all this, this!” The rainbow coloured pegasus spat out. Twilight stared wide eye at the raging mare. Everything fell terribly in place like a horrific puzzle. The steady glares, the stares, the constant avoidance that she had just chalked up to as only grief. She could now clearly see why Rainbow Dash had brought herself into a panting rage with and was afraid of what the mare would say next. She tried to redirect the pegasus to a different topic. “Rainbow Dash, please just listen for a minute I know that seeing the…hydra like that was a very frightening experience but lashing out like is no way to act.” Cyan blue wings snapped out in anger, as Rainbow Dash’s emotions hit a violent crescendo. “Twilight you and I both know that the hydra is not the reason that everypony is feeling and acting like this.” She stuck a cyan hoof behind her pointing to the exhausted ponies behind her, who were desperately trying not to look either the purple alicorn or cyan pegasus in the eye. Seeing that the situation would only escalate Twilight attempted to bring the argument under control. “Rainbow Dash, that’s enough! If you would just listen for a second…” “No you listen! Do you have any idea of how it’s like for any of us to see these stupid, Tartarus dammed notes, books and…," the cyan mare faltered, eyes slightly glazing over as she remember blank, expressionless, hollow eyes staring up at her from a bleached pale skull, "How can you even ask us what’s wrong?” Her voice had ended on soft pleading note. Twilight couldn’t respond to that. How could she respond to that? She made a decision and it quickly blew up horribly in her face. Her ears flattened against her head and moisture once again lined her eyes as she stuttered out answer. “I-I-I’m sorry I was just t-trying to figure out how to m-make everpony feel better.” A soft voice spoke up out of the silence that followed. “Um, Twilight, I think I know how you can help.” The alicorn snapped her head up to look at the pale yellow mare, her wide red rimmed eyes almost vocally asking for help. Fluttershy took this as an incentive to keep talking. “It’s just all the book’s we read keep on repeating how powerless the humans were, um, are. I think we all want to know, were, are they really so magic-less and fragile? I mean could they be really be, could ponies really control them like how the books say they were? We were talking, and, could you check their magic levels with the...things we found.” ‘The bones, they want to know if I could check how vulnerable they were to magic by examining their bones.’ Twilight stared at her friends with slightly panicked eyes, not because she afraid of going back in to the ivory filled room but because she had already examined how possible it was for the humans to retained magic and she had the answer to their questions. She did not know if they were ready for the answer, maybe if she just made a little lie to keep them happy… Looking into the fearfully hopeful but accepting faces of the gathered ponies, and was overcome with disgust at herself for her pervious thought. ‘No Twilight, you know better then that. You just have to tell the truth and believe that they can handle it.’ She thought bringing confidence to herself; however that didn’t take away the fear of them breaking down. She took a steadying breath in and prepared herself for the long explanation she would give to clarify why it was utterly impossible for humans to have or gain any spark of their own magic. Alec was currently laying his back on his bed in the male barracks, because of unforeseen sporadic weather they had to shut down the training camp for the day. He would never figure out how the weather mages some how made a heavy rain, hail, blizzard, wind and lighten storm but he was glad for the little break he got as they desperately tried to make things right. The barracks had an easy calm to them as many of the men were lulled to sleep as the strange but, not entirely unpleasant song, of tennis ball size hail and pounding rain hitting against the walls and roof of the barracks, filled the inside rooms. However the even calmness of the barracks brought out one problem that was completely annoying the brown haired golden orange eyed man. Something that, if it was spread thick enough could top governments and countries like they were nothing but cheaply made sandcastles that were built near and ocean at low tide. Something that was absolutely terrible, which he feared with all of his heart because of what it could lead him blindly to do or say. No matter how hard he tried to deny it or put it off by mentally going over possible battle strategies if they where suddenly attacked from all side, Alec couldn’t put the thought out of his head. He was totally, utterly, hopelessly, bored, and there was nothing he could do about it. Zachery was sound asleep a few cots away from him, and he couldn’t wake him up without destroying the barrack as he was in one of his deep sleeps. The last time someone tried to shock him awake, the black haired man ended up basting a hole through the roof as he had lost control of his magic. “Why did Johnny thought that was a good idea, even though it is a known fact that Zachery was placed in the Wild Magic Class is beyond me.” Alec quietly mumbled to himself. He also couldn’t go visit Kim as the female barracks were on the other side of the base, and he wasn’t desperate enough yet to run out between the middle of desperate Mage Class soldiers and the raging storm that they had created. Yet. So he was stuck watching the ceiling as the people around him either read books, played cards, wrote to their family members or just sleep the day away. Dispassionately, he began to pull ribbons of his orange coloured magic through the air. The bands went into a lazy dance around his fingers and circled around his arm as he traced his hand through the sky. Detailing and leaving orange shapes behind with his fingers. A bunny, whose tail and nose twitched hungrily at a large floating carrot in front of her. A whale that swam in large circles while water came out at timed intervals through his blow hole. A flock of geese that in perfect formation high above his cot, soundlessly squawked information to each other as they flew. A dire wolf that raised his head to howl at the crescent moon that hanged tantalizingly above him. An elegant couple that, dressed in ballroom attire, elegantly bowed to each other before dancing to a melody that only they could hear. All this and more he brought to life with a steady steam of condensed magic which flowed freely from every pore on his hand and into the air above his cot. The magic based creatures continued to dance their small repeated dances of life in front of him. Some of them landed briefly on his body before jumping back into the air starting the elegant ballet over again. He watched with mild interest as his creations sometimes bumped into each over interrupting their practiced gestures and motions as they tried to sort themselves out. The bunny’s carrot had even bump in to the whale and in his shock; the whale launched the carrot into the flock of geese with a great wave of its tail, disrupting their formation. This situation was quickly righted and the creatures easily went back into their motions. As the dance stretched out, Alec began to think that it would never end, as the magic creatures showed no sign of stopping or even slowing down. Sadly like all things in life their time came to and end. Slowly the orange tinted beings began to wink out of existence as the magic that kept them alive began to fade, leaving the air above Alec’s cot barren and empty of the life that once dominated the space. He stared at the now empty sky for a few silent moments that were only interrupted by soft sound of snores, the pat-pat of cards hitting a table the scratching of pencil on paper, and the gentle sound of the pages of a new book being turned. Letting out a soft sigh, he flipped on his side in the small cot. Once again he went into the deep recesses of his mind, trying to find someway to ease his boredom. “…that’s why humans could never obtain magic, and were completely susceptible against it.” The large underground cavern was once again silent, filled with the self hate and disbelief of the ponies that inhabited the room. “That can’t be true, it just can’t. Twilight dear are you sure that true? Couldn’t you have just made a mistake?” Rarity voice was twisted with a weak hopeful air, as she tried to find some flaw with Twilight’s research. “No," Twilight’s fely her heart ache at Rarity’s painfully fallen face, “I looked at all the variables and went over the margin for error many times. My research, their research is correct.” “Sugar cube, there ‘as to be something ya’ hadn’t seen, ‘ah can’t jus’ believe dat mah great, great, great how ever many greats grand pappy and ma could jus’ do ‘da things ‘des books say that they did.” Applejack said stubbornly. To her, no apple no matter how ancient could do wickedness like that, ever. “Applejack I’m not saying that," Twilight spoke directly to her sullen friend, then with a loud voice she addressed every pony in the room, "I’m not saying that any of your ancestors did what the books say ponies of that time did. There is no way to know for sure that anypony’s family did these… horrible things.” “That’s not true Twily and you know it.” There was a brief pause of conversation as five shocked faces stared at the mass of dull cheerless pink. “Oh don’t look so surprised, you all know what I’m talking about.” “Ah Pinkie, no we don’t.” Rainbow Dash said in confusion. “Of course you do Dashy, you all just want to be silly illy pants and not think about it.” Pinkie Pie said without even the smallest bit of humour. “Pinkie dear, please just tell us. Just who do you know that had relatives that were so evil so horrendous what would purposefully do these things.” Rarity said in confusion With a dark almost joyous sneer, the pink party pony replied, “Princess Celestia.” The rest of the ponies in the room stared in blank horror as the information dawn on them. Tears of painful disbelief brim on their eyes as exactly who was their exalted princess of the day’ father, and who it was to led the ponies of millennium ago in chaining a race that blindly believed in their false friendship. In a disturbing and awful way, their reactions spurred the once bright pink pony on. “You get it now don’t you? It’s all because Princess Celestia’s father Conquering Wind was the biggest meany beany baddie pants in all of ever, that all of this happened. He is probably the reason that all the humans that lived here are all disappeared from Equestria.” She said in a low taunting voice. “Pinkie Pie we don’t know that.” Twilight said, a little sick at the revelation. “You know that’s not true Twilight, after every thing you said about the books being accurate. You should know that King Conquering Wind was way evil, why do you think that Princess Celestia left? ‘I have the utmost faith that your love and friendship can and will be used to find and restore the humans’ What a load of horse-apples!” Pinkie Pie began to breathe heavily, the toll of spending the last couple of night’s plagued with nightmares was starting to catch up to her. If Pinkie Pie was fully truthful with herself she knew that she really didn’t want to hurt her friends like this. However her Pinkie Sense had been on full blast since they had found the bone room. It told her that they were missing something, some piece to the puzzle that was in the land before Equestria’s past. And if they didn’t stop acting like foals and find that something soon, something really bad was going to happen. She just had to help no force them think straight, no matter how icky, wicky it made her feel inside. “Pinkie, the princess had to go back to her duties in Canterlot, you know that.” Twilight’s replied sternly. “Yeah well her duties just happened to come up at the same time that we found concrete evidence about Conquering Wind's past.” “She believes in our ability to piece that past together!” “No she doesn’t. How could she with all the missing pieces in the timelines of these records!” “Wait," Twilight’s wings slightly lowered as her aggression gave way to confusion, "what missing pieces?” “You know what missing pieces!” Pinkie sneered as she began to carve her hoof against the wooden floor, getting ready to make the first charge. “No, Pinkie I don’t.” Twilight said sincerely as her puzzled purple eyes locked onto Pinkies blue irritated ones. The pink pony slowed her hoof’s pace to a tentative stop. “Of course you do," she said her face a perfectly set in bewilderment, "the pieces where the boney records and the writety records don’t match up.” “What do you mean, of course the bone records and written records match up, I checked them myself.” Twilight said uncertainty. She was being to think that the pink pony had either finally gone mad or she found something that only someone as unique as she was could find. She had to know what was on Pinkies mind. “Nuh, uh! If you had checked them, then they wouldn’t be all missing and vanished and gone. They wouldn’t be miss-nish-one!” Well the purple alicorn could try. Twilight briefly rapidly shook her head to keep herself on track; she had to focus through the tangle that was Pinkies’ mind. “Pinkie what is it do you think I missed? I know I checked all the records.” “Well yeah, you checked all the records except for the missing ones, which you know are missing.” Pinkie rolled her eyes as she had said this. “Pinkie, will you please talk straight for just one moment! I don’t know anything about any missing records. So please will you tell me what exactly I missed.” “Well for starters there aren’t enough bones.” Pinkie said as if Twilight was years her junior. “What.” Twilight could only stare at the dowdy haired pony in front of her. “There should be more bones!” Pinkie said a little louder, making the faces around her turn a lighter shade of green “If the records are true there should be bones or records or something about every place in the timeline that the scientists made, right? But there isn’t so, miss-nish-one records!” Pinkie Pie looked into the disbelieving face of the ponies around her, “Well if you don’t believe me then check for your self, there’s like a huge gap in the bony timeline.” She huffed. The middle cavern was suddenly and very forcefully lit with the sudden teleportation spell that Twilight made. Before any of them could speak, Twilight came back carrying the two complete time lines that she had studied for the past few days. She rolled out the two scrolls on the ground leaving long trails of paper behind in there wake. Nodding at her work she turned to the not as energetic pony, “Ok Pinkie show me where I was wrong.” With a huff Pinkie Pie trotted a few paces down the time scrolls then pointed her hoof to a spot. “Well Pinkie," Twilight started smugly, "I don’t take happiness in pointing out your mistakes but as I can clearly show you there is no gap…” The newly minted alicorn paused at the spot on the paper, her mouth still hanging open. She blinked. She rubbed her eyes. Then she stared at the offending empty spot on both pieces of parchment. “Wha?” She ran to the other end of the scroll, and then proceeded to read it again, only stopping at the blank spot in the paper. It wasn’t even a blank part in the paper per-say, it was a skip in dates. One large skip in dates. Like a two hundred year skip in the dates. After the skip the timelines continues as if nothing was amiss and ended shortly after. The alicorn read over the notes, “This doesn’t make any sense, it’s like the records just, just….” “Miss-nish-one?” Pinkie Pie filled in. Twilight briefly looked at her pink friend before running to the start of the time line, and reading until the skip in time. When Twilight finished this action for the fifth time Rainbow Dash spoke up. “Twilight," The rainbow maned pegasus started, "what are you doing?” The stress in the cavern had given way to confusion as they watch Twilight continue to run up and down the time lines. “I don’t understand, how could I have missed this?” The alicorn questioned as she read. “What did ya’ miss?” Applejack asked as Twilight teleported her notes into the cavern. “It doesn’t make sense…” “Twilight!" Rarity shrieked gaining purple pony’s attention, "Will you just please tell us what this is all about.” The shell shocked looking pony turned her gaze to her friends, and answered in a weak voice, “Pinkie Pie’s right, there isn’t enough bones.” Seeing that she was losing them, Twilight pointed to the bone record, “Look, right here before the time skip. There’s a steady but large flow of bones found during this time period, then at the time skip nothing. It’s like all evidence of humans of that time were erased.” “Um, what does that mean?” Fluttershy asked. “I don’t know, but after the time skip the flow starts again. However, this time it’s much thinner and eventually fades away.” Twilight looked at the record quizzically. “Ok, so what does ‘dat mean?” Applejack asked. “Something had to have happened here, something really big that led to the disappearance of humans in Equestria.” Twilight looked at her friends, then around the cavern they were in. “Whatever caused this has to be record here, somewhere, these records are too perfect for the scientists to have made such large skip. It’s almost like somepony just cut out what happened in those two hundred years.” “Wait, why would somepony cut out what happened? There has to be a reason.” Rarity asked, while watching Twilights thinking form. The answer dawned onto Twilight just as Rarity asked the question, “To make sure that whoever came here after couldn’t find were the humans went.” Twilight tore her face away from the time line and looked into Pinkies brightening blue eyes, “You were right Pinkie there are some parts of that are missonish, minesonea, misnedas…" “Miss-nish-one.” Pinkie finished happily, her hair gaining some of its lost puffiness again. “Right, there is some records that are whatever it is you just said. The only way we can continue searching is if we find whatever the researchers before us didn’t want us to find.” Twilight then looked at her friends suddenly anxious faces, “If you want to continue, you don’t have to if you don’t want to.” “Well," Rarity started nervously, "It would be a shame to stop, when we are so close but…I don’t think I want to go any deeper into this dreadful place.” “That’s okay Rarity, I don’t want to force you." Twilight said. "You and anypony else that doesn’t want to search deeper can stay in the main room and rest up, while the rest of us search.” She got back nods of acceptance back, “Okay so who’s coming with me?” “Ah’ll go the sooner we find whatever information we need the faster we can get out of this place.” Applejack said while fixing her hat. “Thank you Applejack, anypony else?” “Oh what the hay! Count me in, I can find this information exceedingly faster, then any of you slow ponies can.” Rainbow Dash boasted. “So is that everypony?" A awkward but brief silence followed, "Ok then, come on Applejack, Rainbow Dash, lets start in the bone room there has to be a lead there.” With the matter resolved the small convey went back into the bone room, hoping for a quick discovery and a quicker departure.