I told Sunny that I was the colt in her flashbacks, but I wouldn’t be the one to tell her why she was daydreaming about me. She spent ten more days in Ponyville with Starlight keeping her company. When she went back to Canterlot High, I saw her off with a smile. The rest of the month was spent with migraines and other aches. They only seemed to get worse until the end of the month. What happened at the end of the month is something I could’ve gone a long time without having happen and I would’ve been happy.
The world exists due to a perfect balance of Harmony and Chaos. Life itself is a form of Chaos which established order amongst itself. I learned all that and more that day, when Twilight went missing. I woke up after another dream/memory. I was sparring with another private at the Crystal Empire. He was bigger than I am, and he was harder to work around, but I managed to stay on my hooves. Twilight and Shining were there too. Shining said that whoever won the match would be promoted.
I made the mistake of trying to push him against the corner of the ring at the end of it, and he threw me out of the ring, making me hit a wall hard enough to make everything blurry. But there was something else there. It looked like a dog and a cat were magically mixed into one being, and there was something on the end of the tail that looked like a grapple of some sort. It was black, purple, and in some places dark blue. It was the only thing I could see clearly.
“Ahead lies something you need,” It said. “But to obtain it, you must regain what you’ve lost.” I closed my eyes and watched as my memories disappeared, one by one. At the point I should’ve woken up in the infirmary, I woke up in Twilight’s Castle with a start. It was really dark out, not even the moon or the stars were improving on it. But I could still tell were everything was, somehow. With this dark sense I navigated around the castle, eventually reaching the library, where I would find a candle or something to improve on the situation.
Eventually I did find one and a match to light it with. When I did light it the cat-dog-thing from my dream was right next to me in the room. I would say that I was cool about him being there and flinched a little, but I’m a really bad liar, so I jumped into the air and landed face first on the ground.
“I see you finally noticed me!” the monster said, enthusiastically. I backed away from it, still a little scared. I look back on it now and think ‘Pathetic’. “Come now, Flash, you have nothing to fear in me.”
“What are you!?” I whispered loudly. “What did you do to me!?”
“To answer your first question… you can think of me as one of the opposite powers to the Elements of Harmony,” that didn’t really help, and seeming to notice. “My creation was with the same intentions of protecting the balance of Harmony and Chaos, but my brothers and I are to be used in opposition to Excess Harmony. In short, I protect the balance from too much Harmony.
“In response to your second question, I took your memories from you to protect them from being tampered with by outside forces. The threat has passed and I am here to return them to you, with a request of my own.”
“Why would I help you!? You gave me-!” I was interrupted by him putting his tail-thing on my head upside-down so that the five limbs on it left holes for me to see through. Every memory that I hadn’t already gotten back started to fill my mind again. All the memories I did get back before then were less than happy. But these were the happiest parts of my life. Flying for the first time, meeting friends in the guard, birthday parties (not all my own). And the whole time I dated Twilight. “-Amnesia,” I finished.
“You wouldn’t have wanted those to be tampered with, would you?” the monster said. “Yes the memories I returned to you beforehand were not the best, but I didn’t want to give them to you and say you would’ve missed them.”
“Then why give them back at all?” I asked. He looked away with a face that showed pondering. He looked back to me with an answer.
“To put it most effectively, life is made up of memories, and who you are is based on what you went through in life. You wouldn’t be the same if I discarded those memories, and you’d always be thinking that there were parts of your past that were missing.”
I thought about it. Why would an “Element of Chaos,” as it were, want my memories to remain untampered? Then again, who was to say that he didn’t tamper with my memories? I decided to hear what he had to ask for before I would answer him. Boy would I be glad I did.
“Twilight Sparkle’s been taken. And as the Guardian of Shadow who leads them, it’s your greatest concern to help her.”I had no idea why this thing would lie to me. He helped protect my most precious memories, and I seriously doubt he knew anything about me before the memories… so why would he lie to me? Truth be told, none of this was going through my head when I heard the words “Twilight Sparkle’s been taken.” All that mattered to me as the Master Chief of her guards… no, as the colt who loved her, was that I had to find her. At first the proud side of me kept saying that I had to do this on my own, I didn’t need help from this… thing. But then again he was kind enough to tell me that Twilight was missing, and obviously he was as concerned for her as I was, if not more for something else… something greater.
“If you just told me she was missing, I would’ve looked for her myself,” I said. “But you obviously want my help in searching, not just for me to do it for you… I guess I need you.”
“You do,” He said. “My name is Tenebrae, The Element of Shadow.”