Ryan had spent the next week just wandering around the forest and making some more notes in the guide, since it seemed that Zecora was far too busy with something to teach him at the moment. He wondered what had set her off like that since she barely reacted to him doing something stupid, although that silver mare might have played a part in it. He didn't skip on his training and he practiced what she had shown him, though that only helped a bit.
'I can't believe though just how boring it is without that zebra kicking me around,' he thought to himself as he rested against the wall of his room, looking out the window at the starry sky above him. 'Maybe I should go make nice with those ponies, since according to Zecora they are all supposedly nice...no, you know better than that, you know what humans like you are capable of. You deserve to be alone for what you did.'
'Yet I was not responsible,' another part of his brain said, but he quickly shunned it before it could continue. Memories of the past began to flow to the surface of his mind, but he took up a meditative state and closed his eyes, emptying his mind until there was nothing left. He opened his eyes again sometime later and sighed, standing up to head out when he felt something weird. 'Is that a draft? But it's not coming from the door,' he thought as he held his hand out, surprised when he followed the draft back to a small, but very straight, crack in the ground. He narrowed his eyes at it before he began to try and pry it open with his fingers, his efforts rewarded when he pulled back a trap door that revealed a ladder that went down into nothingness.
"Sure, you're already in a hidden room, so why shouldn't there be a hidden room in a hidden room?" he asked himself before he grabbed his backpack and climbed down the hole, using the baton as a light. The ladder was a long one, though his biggest surprise came when he saw another source of light down below him. "Shining crystals? I should take one or two of these," he muttered when he saw strange crystals giving off light in a cavern. He grabbed a few and began to walk around, finding a stone bridge that took him over a hidden waterfall. "Okay, the hidden room within a hidden room I was fine with, but why is there a desk down here?"
He walked over to the desk as he said this, wondering who would have left a perfectly good desk like this just lying under a castle. On the top of the desk lay a single book, but before he looked at that he opened one of the drawers and found two very interesting items.
"A pistol?" he asked in confusion as he pulled out a very old looking pistol, but despite its age there was no rust on it. He pulled out the clip to see there were about five shots left. The design looked weird to him, but he wasn't going to pass it up because of that. He placed it in his bag before looking at the other item, a photograph. "A human photograph," he muttered to himself as he looked at the picture of a man with his wife and child. "And they were in Japan if the background is correct. How the hell did the ponies get this?" If there was any place he was going to get answers, it was going to be the book. He placed the picture beside it and opened it up, surprised to see that there were only a few entries.
May 20th,
The strangest and most saddening event happened today. A bipedal creature of unknown origin appeared in the center of Canterlot and began to attack ponies with an unknown weapon. The princess was able to deal with it fairly easy, the projectile weapon stopped by her shields, but then the creature did the unthinkable when it took its own life when the princesses went to capture it. They have been trying to calm the masses down while I have been placed in charge of examining the creature’s weapons.
May 24,
What strange weapons this creature has. Aside from a blade I do not recognize any of them. The long projectile weapon has shown itself to be able to punch through armor like nothing and a small sphere actually killed two of the ponies that were testing it in a massive explosion. I have decided that these weapons are far too dangerous to try and mass produce or even let the public know they exist and Celestia agrees with me. I will keep them locked away in the vault until we know what to do with them.
May 25,
The creature had a picture on it and I am saddened to say that it looks like it had a family. While it did kill at least ten ponies before it died, I cannot say that I blame it. I myself have to ask what I would do if I woke up in a strange land if I had been in the middle of a war. I should mention that, we found patches and other items indicated that this creature was part of a military. I will try to find out more about the creature.
December 30,
Humans. That is what they are called. And apparently this is not the first one to show up in Equestria. Many years before, back when Celestia and Luna were still sisters, a human in a suit of armor appeared in our land. Unlike this one however, he died when he fought a dragon that had been attacking a town of ponies. The princesses never got to meet him, but they found out that he was called a knight. Yet I have also found out that any information on humans is to be given to the princess and then it is never to be spoken of. It makes me wonder how many other incidents has she shushed up? But what can I do, now that I have been asked to do the same? All I can do is leave this in a place that the princess will not find it and return home. Maybe somepony can make more use of it than me.
Draco Heartstrings.
Ryan didn't know what to think as he looked down at the book, but after a while he closed it and placed it in his bag as well, wondering if he should give it to Lyra. He then picked up the picture and looked down at it again, now knowing what era this was from and that it belonged to a soldier that was probably MIA.
"But it doesn't matter," he said with sudden rage filling up his heart as he looked down at it, tears forming in his eyes. "Your sacrifice was for nothing. All of theirs was." It took him a few minutes to calm down after that thought, though when he did he did his best to forget that it ever happened. Ryan then stood up and walked tow the ladder, closing the trapdoor behind him when he left. He looked out at the night sky and wondered if he should risk getting this to Lyra.
"What the hell? Nighttime is probably the only time that I'm going to get to do this," he muttered before he left the castle. Just like he predicted, he reached the town with little effort although he did have to knock out a guard before he was safe. He had just reached the center of town when he realized that he had no idea where Lyra lived. He smacked his forehead for being an idiot before he turned to leave, only to see the shadows of an alicorn advancing towards him. He slipped to the shadows as fast as he could, barely making it in time to see the alicorn walk into the streets. She was a midnight blue color with a long dark mane, but what made him nervous was that she was looking around, probably for him.
"We know that you are out here human," she said to the darkness. "Do not believe that you can hide from us. We have no intention to hurt you, despite the minimal harm that you caused our subjects. Just come with me peacefully to Canterlot and I promise you will not be harmed." She waited for a moment before sighing, her horn beginning to glow as she began to illuminate the area, when a smoke pellet smacked her in the side of her face and caused her to start coughing. When she could see again, she could see the human running far off, causing Luna to smile as she spread her wings.
"Thank you human, I thought tonight was going to be boring," she said as she took to the skies, able to catch up with the human in almost no time. Ryan saw this when he looked back to see where she was and he barely had time to roll out of the way as she fired a spell at him. Despite his armband protecting him, he didn't want to push his luck.
"You cannot escape us human, we know that you are not fast enough to outrun us, the other ones were not," Luna said with a laugh as she caused the ground to raise up from under him, Ryan barely able to escape by kicking off the side of a building and rolling across a rooftop before he ran towards a balcony.
'What is with these ponies and trying to blast me or beat me senseless?' he asked himself as he spied an open window and dove into it, rolling across the floor and coming face to face with Lyra.
"Ryan?" she asked him before he reached inside his bag and pulled out the book.
"Here this is for you no time to talk running for my life bye!" he said in one breath as he threw the book at her before diving out another, leaving the confused unicorn to look at the book before looking at where he had left. Ryan sprinted down the street while Luna chased after him, laughing all the while as she fired spells around him.
"Come now human, surely you must realize that you cannot escape!" Luna said with a chuckle as she aimed her horn at him. "I am simply too fast for-" Her words were cut off as she saw a silver pony in the street, which caused her to pause as she felt the tremendous power overwhelm her. "Who are-?"
'I am sorry my friend,' the silver mare said before a flash of light went off, blinding Luna and causing her to come to a stop. When she opened her eyes again, she found that both the human and the mare were gone.
"It seems that the human has a few allies here, but I have never seen nor felt a pony like that before," Luna said with a shake of her head as she opened her wings and flew back to Canterlot. "Maybe we can set up a little trap for him at our upcoming event...when we finally get to see his home."
//; ;\\
"Thanks for the save, but why are you still here?" Ryan asked the silver mare as the two of them headed back to Zecora's hut the following day. "I mean, you said something about champions and I'm not one of them, so shouldn't you be helping them out instead of me?"
'I will need their help yes, but they cannot obtain the power they need if I am there guiding them all the time,' the silver mare responded as they reached the hut. 'But you are in such desperate need of help that I am surprised that you are not dead yet.' Ryan grumbled at what she said as he went to open the door. 'Chris was a good friend. You are lucky to have known him.'
"Yeah? Me being his friend didn't really work out for him, did it?" Ryan snarled back before he kicked open the door and walked inside, though to his shock he found that the zebra wasn't there. "Great, the one time I actually want to meet with her and she's nowhere to be found. Not mention I've got this pony to keep me company until she gets back. Some days I really hate being here."
'I do not see what you have to complain about, you are alive,' the silver mare said, but that only riled up Ryan even further.
"Yeah? Well maybe I shouldn't be. Maybe I should be like the rest of my friends!" he roared at her, but this time the mare was not surprised by his sudden mood change. "And I'm not particularly fond of you jumping around in my head and looking through my memories! Especially like the ones that I keep locked up for a reason!"
'Yet keeping those memories locked up is why you do not know that you have a horrible fear of fire,' the silver mare retorted, Ryan sneering at her with disbelief. 'What happened to you traumatized you more than you could imagine, but due to your own guilt you do not allow yourself to think about what has happened and instead you act like a jerk.'
"News for you shiny, I am a jerk!" Ryan said as he growled at her. "I constantly berate you and the ponies and in case you haven't noticed I'm not exactly the nicest of guys!"
'You are right there; I have met better than you.'
"See, even you admit it. I shouldn't be here," he said with a sigh, the rage leaving him as the sorrow returned. "I should have burned with the rest of them."
'Is that why you hide behind this false face? You pretend that you care about nothing and that you are always annoyed, yet I have seen the true you and that person is guilt ridden despite having no reason to be,' the silver mare said in an angry tone of her own, her forming shimmering as she argued back. 'You have an incredible gift of luck Ryan. Some of the things you have been through would have killed a regular pony or human yet you survived. There is a reason you are alive and that is because your friend believed that you had a reason to live!'
"And look what it cost him," Ryan said with scorn as he turned away, memories filling up his mind. "I took his dream, what he spent all those hours working towards. And it's my fault he's gone!"
'Do you think that you are the only one who has suffered loss?' the silver mare said with rage. 'I am the reason my sister is dead and I am the reason that my mother is walking down a dark path with only destruction at the end! Yet I bear my pain and try to do something about it! I blame myself but I also know that there is a reason I am still alive and that reason is to save my world!'
"Then you are a stronger person...pony than me," Ryan said with a smirk as he rested against Zecora's wall. "Because I still blame myself. Chris should be here, not me."
"And yet here you are." The two turned to see Zecora walk into the room, placing a steam cup of something on the table. "Yet with that mentality you will not get far. The time has come to advance your training, but to do so we must remove the pain you have been restraining. Drink the brew in front of you and for my final challenge I will test you." Ryan looked at her with a dumbfounded look, but he eventually grabbed the drink and, after one last glare at the sliver mare, drank the sludge. He gagged once before putting the cup back down on the table, looking at the zebra with raised eyebrows.
"So what was that supposed to do, make me vomit?" he asked her. "Because it sure doesn't seem to be doing anything-" He fell right on his face as he said this and remained silent on the floor, leaving Zecora to finish up what she was doing. The silver mare looked up at her for a moment before she was waved away by Zecora. The mare vanished into the air, leaving the zebra lone to prepare.