Disclaimer: Hello to all, I would just like to say that I do not own any characters within the story; they all belong to Hasbro and Lauren Faust.
Dawn waved his hands if front of the Dislaimer’s nonexistent face, “Hey what about me?”
Oh right, all OC’s including Dawn Pie are owned by the author.
“That’s better.”
It was hard!
I know I said that it would be glorious; well that was before I fully realized what the plan entailed. The first part of the plan involves me going into a several millennia old dungeon to find a set of millennium old artifacts known as the Elements of Harmony; whatever they are. I didn’t have enough time to ask her about what they looked like or anything. All I know is that they are going to be the power force for our little plan.
I did have time to find out a little bit more about why Luna had been in the dungeon, even if it didn’t make that much sense.
“So Luna, why are you here?”
“Well a couple billion years ago my parents decided that they wanted to have a second child… ” I should have known, never give Luna a lead.
“You know what I mean Luna,” I could hear my exasperation leaking into my voice, “Why are you here in this dungeon.” I punctuated my point by pounding my hoof against the floor.
She sighed, “I just know that I’m going to be getting a lecture for this,” It feels good to know that I can frighten millennia old beings, “to tell the truth it’s all part of the prank. When I first returned to Equestria, I was planning to reintroduce myself into the community starting with a small town called Ponyville. It appeared to be small enough for me to use it as a test run to see how larger places would react to me. Strangely, my sister had decided to come to the same town and we got into an argument.” Luna actually looked a little hurt when she said that, like she couldn’t believe it had happened; well that was another tick against Celestia.
“What were you arguing about Luna?” I was curious; I hadn’t seen them arguing before, generally they hid it fairly well.
“She was telling me that I should still be on the moon; that my exile wasn’t over yet. I didn’t think that I should have been up there in the first place. We couldn’t reach an agreement and she left in a huff.” Luna seemed sad that it had to go that way, Celestia really was trying me. Even a thousand years later she couldn’t be nice to Luna.
“However, during our argument she let slip that she had promised a ‘Royal Presence’ in the town of Ponyville for Summer Solstice and since I’m the only other Royal around I believed it was my duty to take over the position for my sister.” She looked proud of her decision, not that I could really understand why, “However, upon my appearance a purple Unicorn stood out from the crowd and screamed that I was ‘Nightmare Moon’” She paused for a breath; it was interesting that the only purple Unicorn I knew was Twilight and that she had been in Ponyville; well it wasn’t conclusive evidence yet.
“You remember the tale of ‘Nightmare Moon’ don’t you?” Of course I remembered that tale; it was one of my favorite from when I was a foal. The book was actually titled the Mare in the Moon. It was the story about a mystical pony that was sent to the moon for a thousand years because she wanted to bring about some vague evil plan; many ponies believed she wanted to bring about eternal night. She later returned to Equestria to try again a thousand years later; where she is defeated by a set of six magical artifacts. It was also complete hogwash; Luna had written the thing in her spare time and I was the one who came up with the name of ‘Nightmare Moon’ for the rewrite. What kind of name did you expect out of a foal?
“Yes I remember the tale quite well.”
“That makes this easier; that story has seemingly become something of a myth rather than the foal’s tale it used to be. Since I’m a prankster at heart and my greeting had already gone down the toilet, what with everypony running around in a panic, I decided to go along with the story.” That was one of the least intelligent things I can remember my teacher ever doing and she’s had some doozies.
I must have displayed my feeling on my face because Luna decided to roll her eyes and continue.
“Unfortunately, it seems that some people can’t take a joke; they followed me into the forest. I tried dissuading them with a few harmless pranks, but they just ignored them and kept following me. Since I couldn’t get rid of them, I added them to my plan; it is in fact one hundred percent more interesting now.”
This whole thing sounded like the comedy of errors that usually only happened to me. I had to wonder why people always jump to the oddest conclusions.
Right after that she had informed me that I needed to go and retrieve the Elements of Harmony while she distracted what seemed to be Twilight’s group. She was purple Unicorn and I had already seen her in the forest; it just seemed logical. I felt pretty bad about this, but my need for revenge against Celestia overrode my other feelings.
The first thing I’d need to make on my little trip was to reach a stairwell that Luna had informed me about. If Luna’s knowledge of this place was correct, the Elements should be located in a safe at the bottom of the stairs.
I didn’t have whole lot of time; no matter how good a distraction Luna made, I doubted she’d be able to keep that determined a group busy for too long without keeping them from this place permanently; determination is often the perfect way to overcome magic. I was going to have to hurry, but already I had reached my first obstacle.
It was just a simple metal door, but being that I couldn’t be sure that whoever had put these Elements down there hadn’t put a spell on it, I felt it was better to be safe than sorry. I shaped my magic into the form of a bar and tried to force the door open; the door however, remained unmoved.
I forced more power into the spell, trying to brute force my way past whatever spell was on the door. Strangely though I couldn’t see a lick of magic on the door; the one who had cast the spell must have been a master at hiding it. The door still refused to be moved; it seemed to be stuck.
Since I couldn’t see the spell to simply pull it apart, I kept pushing more power into until my spell until I fell over from exhaustion. I couldn’t believe that the spell was that powerful; I may not be a power Unicorn, but I can generally force a door open.
I closed my eyes to give myself a chance to regain my energy, it wouldn’t take too long. A creaking noise caused me to open my eyes in surprise. The first thing I saw was the door swung open, outwards; that was not funny. I could feel my eye twitching up a storm and I felt like breaking something. I didn’t have time for though, so I just gathered the few shreds of my shattered dignity that I had left and proceeded to trot towards the open door.
My last thought before crossing the threshold was that when I build a house, I’m going to make sure all the door swing both ways.
The first thing that I felt when I entered the room was overwhelmed. The sheer power radiating below me was ridiculous. I almost fell over in shock and needed a moment to regain my bearings.
Soon though, I noticed the power was actually coming in two distinct flavors; one like a holy shining light and the other like something spawned from a pit of Tarterous, which most ponies simply call Hell or the bad place.
The majority of the power felt holy, which I could only hope meant that it wasn’t evil. With my luck the holy energy was actually evil and keeping the good evil energy hostage. Well, I wouldn’t have to deal with that power for a little bit, but hopefully I’ll have a plan once I know a little bit more about it.
Now that I wasn’t distracted by the sheer overwhelming power hitting me straight in the face, I could take in my surrounding. Honestly, it was in pretty bad shape; the walls were cracked and covered in spider webs; the floor was damp and musty. The only thing that gave the room any feeling of class were the candelabras that covered the walls.
The stairs were in the worst shape of all; they looked like they were about to fall apart. Several of the steps were even missing, large gaps were located frequently between the steps. There was absolutely no way I was going to try putting my entire weight on that thing, but unless I did there was no way I was going to be getting down there. This was the only pathway down there, who ever heard of creating a safe room with more than one entrance; it would just be bad architectural decision. So against my better judgment, I was going to have to figure out a way down that stairwell.
I took a closer look at the stairwell; now that I was actually looking closer, the gaps appeared much smaller than I had first thought; they appeared crossable if one was very careful. It would be better if I could just fly down, but even if I knew how the lack of lighting from my spell would have made it impossible to see where I was going.
I came to the realization that there was one thing I needed to know before I put any more thought into this idea; I needed to see if the steps could even support my weight. I raised my hoof off the ground and put a little bit of my weight onto the first step.
I felt the step give way to air and nearly fell forward into the new opening in surprise. I scrambled backwards with my hind less, trying to pull most of weight back onto the platform. I could feel myself falling forward; I was getting closer and closer to the edge, until my tail decided to help out. It grabbed something that I couldn’t see and pulled me back onto the platform.
I don’t want to see any abyss that closely again, it was the second time in one day. I was going to learn how to fly after this, there was no if ands or buts about it; it honestly seemed that it would be a necessity considering how often I seem to be falling into holes.
Well simply climbing down the steps was clearly out, there was no way that I could possibly survive the trip. It was time for me to move onto the next option in my arsenal, magic.
I had already thrown out my idea of turning myself into a Pegasus, I simply couldn’t fly; I could use my magic to create a stairwell, but I doubt that I would be able to hold it long enough to actually reach the bottom floor and falling again didn’t seem like the greatest idea. Maybe short term platforms would work instead? No, that would take even more power to create and dispel each one. Teleporting of course wouldn’t work because the anti-teleportation barrier was still up. I couldn’t think of anything else I knew that would fit this situation; meaning that my magic was useless for this task.
Since I wasn’t able to come up with any great ideas, I took another look at the stairwell. This time I was looking a little harder for anything that I could use to get down there, something that most ponies would just ignore. There wasn’t much there; only a pair of candelabras on the walls every few feet.
Actually, I could work with that; it gave me an idea; an utterly stupid, insane, dangerous, and nearly suicidal one, but an idea. I could utilize the candelabra as hoofholds and use myself as a fulcrum; by building up enough momentum I could ‘jump’ between the candelabra and move all the way down. There was a high likelihood that I would fall, but it was the only option I seemed to have; I know that I just said that I didn’t want to see another abyss, but I didn’t have many other options.
I had seen someone do this before, even if I had never done it myself; she had been one crazy mare.
I had been very excited; Luna told me the day before that Diamond and I were going to see something that would be truly exciting. We were going to meet the famous explorer Daring Doo. Personally I always was more of a fan of her Diamond Dog companion Scooby Doo, but you couldn’t have everything; maybe I’d get to meet him some other time.
Now we were waiting in one of the deepest rooms of the castle, which was often seen as some of the most dangerous places to be; what with all the traps that proliferated it. Apparently, the princesses felt that we should learn how to escape incredibly dangerous traps; I really have no idea what goes through their heads some times.
It wasn’t long before Daring Doo herself entered the room. She was a tan Pegasus mare; her flank marking of a compass rose always seemed rather common, but so many ponies used it differently; I’d once seen a painter use it to paint gardens perfectly. She was dressed in her famous green vest and white fedora. Honestly, she looked like she had just stepped off a book cover.
“Welcome class to Traps 101!” Diamond and I had huge smiles on our faces, how many foals got to meet a living legend, “Today I will be showing you how to escape some of the most dastardly traps ever devised.” I had no idea when I would use such knowledge, but she sounded so enthused that I couldn’t help but feel my own excitement rise.
“The first trap that I’m going to show you is the basic pit trap,” She pointed at a bit of floor, how that was a pit I don’t know, “these traps are often cleverly disguised by a variety of different materials. When ponies have to make them quickly they most often utilize materials like leaves and twigs to cover it up. When ponies have more time available, they will often utilize magic or stone to hide them instead.”
We must have looked like we were fading out, not that we were, because she gave a small smile and slammed her hoof against the ground. The sound of rocks falling several meters to the ground shocked us out of any stupor she had thought us to be in.
She turned towards us and continued as if nothing had happened, “Now that you’ve seen how the trap works; you did see that right?” We both nodded our heads, “Good, now that you’ve seen it go off, it’s time I showed you how to escape it.” She faced away from us towards the long, but fairly narrow hole in the ground.
“There is no way she’s going to be able to make that.” I whispered to Diamond. I simply couldn’t believe that anyone would be willing to do something this dangerous.
“Oh really? Ten bits says she makes it.” Diamond was smiling at me; whether I won or lost that was worth ten bits.
“You’re on.” We bumped our hooves and turned to watch Daring.
She jumped into the air, grabbing the two candelabras that lined the walls and swung herself like a fulcrum, using her momentum to swing onto the next one. She did this again and again. I wasn’t ashamed to say that I was flabbergasted by the sight, Diamond just continued to smile. I’d known that she was a famous for her explorations, but I hadn’t realized that this was part of her portfolio.
When Daring had landed on the other side of the gap she turned towards us.
“Now it’s your turn!” I fell over onto my side.
Diamond turned to look at me. “You owe me ten bits.” I still thought that it was a great deal.
That was one of my better memories, but I can’t stay in the past for too long. It was time to do run with this idea before my brain decided it would overwhelm my gut.
I jumped off the ground with as much force as I could muster, pushing both of my fore hooves out sideways to grab hold of the two candelabra. For a second I felt like I had missed them before I felt the sudden impact; it was a lot stronger than I thought it was going to be. It almost felt like my shoulder had been dragged out of alignment, but I needed to continue.
I pushed my back-hooves forward and backwards, setting myself to swinging. Once I felt that I had enough momentum I pushed down and back, forcing my body to fly forward to the next one. The force was again incredibly jarring; I’d be in a lot of pain tomorrow. It was almost enough to make me want to head back, but even if I had wanted to I couldn’t do that; the only reason I was still going forward at this point was my determination to reach the bottom.
Well that and the fact that the stairwell only went down.
I swung myself through three more jumps. I was about to start my fourth jump when I heard the sound of metal straining…that was not good.
The candelabrum holding up my left hoof was starting pull away from the wall; I felt fear grip my heart. I simply didn’t have enough time to make my next jump. After a thousand years in stone, and several near death experiences, I was going to die because I was collecting an artifact for a prank.
I tried to force the candelabra back into place with my hoof, but it didn’t have any noticeable effect. I tried my magic, but I couldn’t make it wrap around it; my fear was making it hard to concentrate.
I heard a final crack and could only watch as it began its descent.
I had less than a second to try and save myself. I focused all my attention on my horn, trying to force the candelabra back into position; but it still failed. I could feel as it fell off my hoof and wait to join its descent. Strangely though, I didn’t feel any of things that I tended to associate with falling; there was no wind rushing past me or my stomach floating into my throat. In fact it didn’t feel like I was moving at all.
I released a bit of focus from my horn and tried to take in what was going on around me. I didn’t seem to be falling; in fact I seemed to be in the same position that I had been when I had first begun to fall, excepting the fact that only one of my arms was on a candelabra. This was really rather strange.
I could still feel myself sitting on top of something, so I took a quick look below me. I have to say it again, this is really strange. I was sitting on top of a floating candelabrum; I just can’t believe it, I’m sitting on top of a candelabra. This made absolutely no sense, this kind of things just… not going to say it, I know my luck; coincidences like this only work when I don’t question them. I’m not going to look this gift tree in its branches.
Well, now I just have to see if I can move forward or if it just lets me float in place. I pushed my hoof against the wall and could feel myself moving forward; this was absolutely perfect. Now I just had to ride this thing, I felt a lot safer now; even if I still had no idea how it worked. I also felt like my flank was going to hurt something awful in the morning, candelabras did not make comfortable seats.
I pushed my hoof against the wall again, moving myself forward and down a little. I did this every time I lost momentum. I only had a little control over this trip; once I had given it momentum I wasn’t able to change direction until it ran out.
A short while later, I heard a click behind me; I was still moving forward so I wasn’t able to take a look behind me just yet, but as soon as I stopped I turned my head to look behind me; I did not like what I was. The bit of wall that I had just passed had slid out and blocked any possibility of using this as the way back; not that I had ever really held it as likely that this would be the way that I escaped. It was rather disconcerting though; I didn’t even have any possible escape routes left.
I decided to ignore the thought for the moment and instead focus on simply getting to the bottom. Once I had retrieved the Elements, I could worry about how I was going to escape.
About ten minutes later, I had reached the lowest level. I was honestly glad that I finally got down here, I’m not sure my flank could have handled any more of riding on that floating disaster. I quickly dismounted my makeshift ride and watched as it fell to ground and broke apart; I was glad that hadn’t happened while I was riding it.
I really have no idea what had been holding it up, my own horn had remained almost entirely unutilized; I was only using enough power to keep my lighting spell active. Now that I was down here, both that holy power and the dark power I had felt earlier were magnified a thousand fold. It seemed that I would need to get past one or the other to reach my goal; one of them had to be the elements.
I took a look around the room that I was in; just like when I was upstairs the walls were cracked and the floor was wet. It was even worse down here; the lack of flowing air meant that the smells had been trapped down here, it smelt like rotting bodies.
Overall the room was a mess and looked fairly uniform in design. The only spot that appeared any different from the others was the door. It stood in stark contrast to the rest of the room, both because it was made of a heavy metal and because it seemed to have easily withstood the tests of time.
I could feel the dark power flowing in large waves from right behind it; the sheer amount was overwhelming me.
I needed to go in there, the holy power that I was looking for was also behind that door, but I wasn’t going in there without preparing myself first. I was determined, not a dullard.
I would be the first to admit that I’m not a combat expert; it wasn’t one of the lessons taught to me, but one doesn’t live for long in the world of the aristocrat or the princess’s student without gaining at least a few combat related spells, mainly to deal with the sheer number of assassination attempts. I’d focused on defense, mostly to give me enough time to cast those few attack spells that I knew or to sound the alarm. The one that I had spent the most time on was a rather specialized shield, it could stop most physical attacks and magical attacks for at least a few minutes, but it took a quite a while to cast and couldn't exactly be instantly cast. I usually prepared a few in the form of amulets and kept them on my person, but I hadn't had any on me when I’d been turned to stone. Luckily, I did have the time to cast it now; there was good possiblity that I would need it.
I began to cast the spell, imagining the spells shape in my mind and drawing its form around me. I tried to place as much power into it as I could spare; I would be in need of rest for a few minutes, but I’d rather that then die because it decided to disappear too early. With a large flash of light I finished the shield and held it in place, then fell to ground. It was essentially going to use the power I put into it to block attacks, I was only going to feel a minor drain on my personal power.
I rested for a few minutes to regain the power I had put into that spell, I wanted to be in the best shape I could be for what was likely to be the fight of my life. I wasn’t going to say that I wasn’t scared and that I didn’t feel stupid for doing all this for what essentially amounted to a prank, but I was going to do it anyway; I had come too far to turn back at this point and even had I wanted to turn back, the way back was still blocked.
I got up from the ground and pushed open the metal door, I was lucky that this one seemed to go inwards like I had thought. I was tense, prepared for something to come out and attack me. The dark power was flowing throughout the walls of the room; even the air felt dark.
I stood in the door way for a minute, but nothing happened. The room remained silent; the only thing in the room beside me was a wooden doorway, behind which I could feel the holy power. What was going on here? The dark power was just sitting there, doing nothing; maybe it was waiting for a trigger? Well hopefully it would remain that way.
I took a cautious step forward, preparing for something to simply pop out of the wall. Still nothing was happening, this was pulling on my nerves more than if something had happened. I took another cautious step forward, still nothing; another, still nothing.
Soon enough I realized that nothing seemed to be happening and began to trot cautiously towards the other door, soon reaching it. My nerves were as taut as a bowstring about to fire. I slowly and cautiously reached out with a hoof to open the door; I felt it prudent to keep my magic available to me. I moved my hoof closer, closer, until I touched it.
The room began to shake violently and my tail began to straining to pull me to the right. I could feel dark power building up behind me and followed the advice that my tail was providing me. I dodged to the left, my tail always pointed the wrong way when I was in danger; it let me use it like a spring to move faster in the opposing direction.
I felt something pass me by, the feeling of air passing right next to me was chilling; if I had been even a second slower… I felt my tail pulling me to the left this time, so I began jumping to my right; I didn’t make it this time and the creature ran straight into my shield.
For a couple of seconds I was disorientated, but soon I could feel myself bouncing into one of the walls only to bounce off of it into another like I was a pony-pinball. It didn’t take long for the momentum to bleed out from the attack, but it still felt like I had been put through a blender. My shield was in much worse shape; it had kept me safe, but it didn’t look like it would survive another hit; it was shining a bright red.
My tail pointed downward, I quickly jumped upward dodging whatever had been attacking me by mere centimeters. I heard a loud crack as it hit the wall and heard the common poofing sound that comes when something is dispelled. Whatever that thing had been, it wasn’t the main body; which was absolutely terrifying. Anything that could create copies of itself that could deal that much damage…I really needed time to plan.
I began rushing towards the door I had entered from, hoping that maybe I could use the heavy metal door to protect myself for a few minutes while I figured out what I could do to stop this.
I felt the darkness coalescing into a new creature; I forced myself to move faster. I could feel the creature getting closer and closer to me; I wouldn’t be able to outrun it. I thought about turning around and facing the thing head on, but my tail decided that it would be more helpful if I kept moving forward. It pulled itself far back behind me, somehow without slowing me down at all, and bounced back into me sending me flying through the doorway like a bullet.
Sadly, this still left me in the line of danger, the door was still open and the creature hadn’t stopped to admire the flowers. I turned around, planning on closing the door only to see the creature almost on top of me. Its sharp teeth in a beak like maw; all of which was on top of a black bipedal puppet creature. From each of its limbs a black string hung upwards. Right before it reached me it hit something, a glass like energy plate appeared between me and the creature; causing it to become a black cloud of dark energy. I couldn’t help but give a sigh in relief and then give the creature a raspberry.
That moment of jollity was short lived, the adrenaline wore off; I was forced to sit down. That was close; the worst part was that I recognized what those things were. They were Shadow Puppets, which meant I was up against a Shadow Master. They weren’t the worst creature you could call up from the depths, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t a huge danger to ponies. I remember learning about these creatures.
Luna had informed me that today she would be busy so Diamond and I would have a substitute teacher. Apparently that teacher was this green Earth Pony with a flank mark of a shadow creature. On the chalkboard next to him I could see a picture of the shadow puppets and something next to that looked like nothing more than an amorphous blob.
“Hello class and welcome to Dark Creature to Avoid 101. My name is Dodgem and I’ll be your substitute teacher for the day.” He grabbed a stick with his tail and pointed at the shadow puppet. “Do you know what this creature is?”
“It’s a Shadow Puppet,” Diamond always had been better than me at recognizing creatures; I’d never really found a strong interest in them. Contrary to popular belief, dark creatures liked the day just as much as any other pony.
“That’s right Diamond, they are Shadow Puppets. They are dangerous creatures that are often called up as minions by some Unicorns and should be avoided. They are imbued with tremendous physical strength, but lack any form of intelligence, requiring a master to lead them. In addition, they lack the ability of true sigh, only really seeing the magical spectrum.” He pointed towards the amorphous blob, “Do you recognize this other creature?” We both shook our heads. I still couldn’t think of it as anything more than a Rorschach test.
“Well that’s understandable; it doesn’t actually have any set shape. They are known as Shadow Masters, creatures that create the Shadow Puppets and most often they take the shape of wherever they are. Often this means that they simply permeate the room that they inhabit. Of course they are also quite rare; the amount of sheer power and control needed to bring one into existence is nearly astronomical. Controlling them is almost entirely out of the question.” Honestly I think they sound kind of cool, but I wouldn’t want to run into one without a lot of protection.
“So how do you get rid of them?” I questioned.
“Ponies have been pondering that for years now, but unfortunately it seems that normal pony magic isn’t enough to remove them; you need holy power.”
Well that explains why the entire room felt like it was suffused with dark energy; it was because it was suffused with dark energy. The memory didn’t really help me get rid of this thing though; I didn’t know any holy spells or have any useful artifacts on hoof. I’d need to think of something else.
Luckily, it seemed I’d get at least more than few minutes out here; that shield was holding back the Puppets no matter how many were sent against me. Although I can’t say that I found the poofing sound comforting.
Even if I copied my aura, I was doubtful that all of them would go chase it. I may have to chance it though; I needed to get those Elements.
Wait it couldn’t be that simple could it? The Elements seemed to be releasing holy energy; I could feel it all the way over here, but it seemed to be trapped behind that door for some reason. If I could get some of the Shadow Puppets to knock it down, maybe the energy would escape and get rid of the Shadow Master.
Well it was worth a shot anyway; I had learned an aura copying spell when Diamond and I dared each other to learn the most useless spell we could find. If this worked, I’d owe Diamond a set of designer dresses. Oh right, she was dead; that was honestly a depressing thought, maybe I’d get them for Twilight instead.
I’d have to come back to those thoughts later; they were using up my focus and I’m going to need all my focus to make this spell work. The reason why I’d chosen it as my most useless spell was because it took a lot of preparation time, even more than my shield, for an effect that was rather pointless; most creatures searched by scent and couldn’t even see magic. It was also a spell that would be more difficult for me; it was actually more a Power spell than a control spell. This was probably one of the only times in which it would be useful; well I could hope anyway.
I pushed the magic into my horn; making it glow brighter and brighter until eventually I had stored enough power into it for the spell. Holding that power was beginning to put a strain on me, but I continued regardless. I forced the spell to take the right shape and to move across the room. My vision was beginning to swim, but I still had enough control to launch the spell.
A feeling of relief spread outward from my horn to the rest of my body; the relief of releasing that spell was incredible. Like I said that spell was huge drain on my resources; I wouldn’t be able to cast high cost spell like that again until at least tomorrow. My vision slowly came back into focus and I could see that my amazingly unintelligent plan was amazingly working perfectly. At least half of the Shadow Puppets that were trying to break down the shield turned around and ran back towards the other doorway.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see the Shadow Master’s strings trying to pull it back towards me, but the physical power and interest of the mindless creature was stronger than the Shadow Master’s coercion. The closer the puppets got to the door, the more pull the Shadow Master seemed to be putting into his resistance. To my dismay he managed to stop most of them before they got anywhere close to the door. This could be a problem.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw one more of the Puppets. Bad for him and luckily for me, it seemed that one of them was still free and was running towards the doorway. Unfortunately, it seemed that the Shadow Master had also caught sight of it and had sent one of his dark strings to grab it.
The Shadow Puppet had almost reached my other aura and also the door; this was it, hopefully this would work. The Master’s string reached it at that instant and began to pull it away as hard as it could. I could only hope it wasn’t enough, I needed the Puppet to break down that door, otherwise I doubt I’d be able to survive much longer; that shield didn’t look like it was going to last forever.
Time seemed to slow down as the Puppet got closer and closer, centimeter by centimeter. The Master’s string was pulled taught. The Puppet was beginning to slow down; it was beginning to look like I was going to have to come up with another plan when I heard an audible snap; which was soon followed by the crack of the door.
Snap? Neither magic nor dark energy goes snap, but it seems that in this case it does. Maybe it was because it had been a magical string? Well that was another question to add to that long mental list I had been accumulating since I had been released. It seemed that I had won; a bright white light was coming out of the room, causing all of the Shadow Puppets to disintegrate and the Shadow Master to disappear with a terrified scream. With my luck that won’t be the last time I see that guy; if it was a guy nobody had ever told me if Shadow Masters had genders.
Unfortunately, the white light also had the side-effect of blinding me and making me see stars. Honestly, they were rather pretty; mostly being of a white and purple color. A few minutes later, my vision was again clear and the room felt empty of the dark energy that had filled it earlier. I was still slightly amazed that my plan had worked at all; it had such a low chance of success.
Even though I didn’t feel any remnants of the dark energy from earlier, I still thought it prudent to trot cautiously; whoever had put that creature in here may have been smart enough to put in another one or some other form of trap. I just felt that it was better to be safe than sorry.
I took my steps slowly, cautiously watching the ground to watch for tripwires or such; however, nothing happened. Apparently, I read too many adventure novels. Nothing else could go… not going to think it, I know that will make something go wrong. My luck will take it as a challenge; I am not going to think that nothing else will go wrong. BUCK!
Well I’d just have to deal with what was going to happen when it came. First though I needed to collect those elements, I trotted through the doorway.
This room was absolutely stunning; there was no way this thing should be in a place like this. The entire room appeared to be made from solid white marble stone that reflected the light of my spell throughout it; carved with beautiful reliefs. It had been shined so well; I could literally see my reflection in the floor. Beautiful murals were painted onto the walls, depicting scenes of pony life long past; it was an archeologist’s dream.
However, the most amazing piece of the room was in the far back; set into a small alcove on its own was a raised dais, in which indentation held seven large colorful ball-like gemstones in a circle, with one in the center. They seemed to glow with holy power; there was no questioning it, these were the Elements. Strangely, they reminded me greatly of the pictures I had seen in the mare of the moon story.
I trotted closer, I was going to take these Elements from their resting place; somehow that made me feel like a grave robber. As I got closer the colors became more distinct: orange, yellow, blue, pink, white, and purple. I quickly grabbed the six of them and put them into the saddlebag I had been carrying around to hold them. I didn’t touch the seventh one in the center yet; there was just something about it that made me want to watch it, it seemed to be changing colors. Quickly switching between a pink and blue; it was mesmerizing and I couldn’t turn away.
Luckily for me, my tail doesn’t often listen to my brain; it hit me in the flank knocking my head into the ground. That brought me back from my stupor and making sure not to look directly at it; I placed it with the others.
The second that it joined the other six, a bright rainbow light was released from within the bag; very different from the white holy energy they had released earlier. It was causing me a huge pain in my retinas, almost like it was trying to burn something into it. That pain began to spread outwards; it felt even worse than when I’d failed my teleportation. I had no idea what was going on, I was both blinded and in extreme pain.
Soon I couldn’t even feel that, I blacked out.
When I woke up I still had no idea what had happened. My lighting spell had gone out; which wasn’t a surprise, without me awake to provide it power, it must have fallen apart quickly. I was still fairly disoriented, but I took a look around the room to gain an understanding of where I was.
The first thing I noticed was that it looked very similar to the room I had just been in, but everything was made out of a slate grey stone. Pillars lined the edges of the room; apparently holding the roof up and an open door at one end of the room led out into a dark forest.
The world seemed to go out of focus again and when it came back into focus nothing about the room had been changed, but a few thing had been added. Luna was sitting on the dais at one end of the room, which didn’t make any sense whatsoever, five of the seven gemstones I believe to be the Elements of Harmony were laying a few feet away from her, right in front of…Twilight Sparkle?
What in the world was she doing here? Shouldn’t Luna still being delaying her or at least her companions should be here with her? Then again, this place didn’t exactly seem real; it felt like someone had tried to create a copy of the real world and only got semi-close. I have no idea what it was supposed to be, but before I could begin to think about it Twilight began to yell at Luna.
“I will never allow you to bring about eternal night!” Her face was displaying a look of determination. I was confused about why she hadn’t mentioned me at all, as I was standing well within their lines of sight, but I just put it down to the unreality of this scene. I mean why should the unreal see the real?
“Oh? And how do you propose to stop me? Your friends are trapped outside, and you are trapped in here; with me!” Luna was usually a good actor, but like I’d said before I could see her tells, she wasn’t acting. Why would Luna want to bring eternal night? She didn’t actually get anything out of it except lectures; specifically from me. At least she told me why Twilight was all alone; it didn’t explain much about the scene, but it was nice to know.
“I’ll use the Elements of Harmony! All it will take is a spark!” Twilight began to charge power into her horn. Luna just watched on laughing; a far lower and darker laugh than any of her usual joking imitation. There was absolutely no way that this could be my teacher, she would never act like this; not even if she had been threatened, it just went against her nature. She was a prankster, she had rules.
Twilight released the spark she had built up and hit all five of the Elements of Harmony. They flashed with a black light, worrying me. I may have only seen it release their energy twice, but it had been either white or a rainbow; seeing it dark seemed rather bad.
The beam of dark energy, littered with different shades of black, flew from the Elements towards Luna; who appeared utterly shocked by their appearance. Twilight just had a small smirk on her face; I wonder what she was thinking at that moment.
I tried to run in front of the energy headed for Luna, but it passed right through me; hitting Luna straight on. I watched as her body was gruesomely warped, flesh falling off in droves. By the end she looked more like skeletal pony than a flesh and blood one. I could see that Twilight’s smirk had shifted into a look of shock; which was understandable given what she had just seen.
It seemed that all of the energy hadn’t been expended; it bounced off of Luna and headed back towards Twilight, who had been gaping at the scene, seemingly not having expected what had happened to Luna or the energy to bounce back.
I knew it was unlikely to do anything, but I placed myself in front of her to try and stop the beam from hitting her, but it again passed right through me. I could only watch as the energy hit Twilight and changed her into a gruesome pile of flesh and blood. I couldn’t stand to look at it and closed my eyes as quickly as I could. I felt the need to heave, but couldn’t seem to actually do it.
“Wake…Dawn” I heard something say, “Wake..u..Dawn.”
“DAWN WAKE UP!” I opened my eyes wide, not really focusing on much of anything; just glad to be out of there. My heart felt like it was beating a mile a minute and I was sweating like I had just run a marathon. I wasn’t really able to think about anything, fear and horror was simply overwhelming me. No I do not have any idea who is explaining this part.
I began to hear a buzzing sound; I couldn’t really make out what the sound was supposed to be, but it brought me back into the real world. Soon I realized that I wasn’t in that horrible scene anymore and began to calm down; my heart rate and breathing began to return to normal. I soon realized that the buzzing noise I had been hearing was actually somepony speaking to me.
“Dawn are you alright?” Luna was giving me a concerned look. Now that I wasn’t locked in my own head, I could feel Luna’s hoof on me.
“I think… I think I’m alright.” I wasn’t yet completely back to normal, but I still felt a lot better than I had a few minutes ago. Still what in the world had that been. The last thing I remembered before ending up in that strange place was a blinding rainbow light hitting me.
What was that anyway? Was it a vision of the future, a possible future? Maybe it was a glimpse into a different dimension in which something had gone wrong? Or maybe it had just been a dream created by all that energy hitting me at once.
“How did I get here anyway?” I really was curious about this part, especially with the anti-teleportation barrier still being in place.
“I honestly have no idea; I’ve never seen anything like it. A stream of energy seemed to come from nowhere, and eventually you just reformed in here.” That was honestly rather worrying; she had several millennia of experience and had never seen this, which meant that I don’t know if there were any side-effects for traveling that way; maybe what I had seen had been a side effect of that. All I knew is that I never wanted to do something like that again.
“I’m just glad you’re alright, I wouldn’t have sent you to retrieve the Elements if I had thought anything like this would happen.” She looked very concerned. I felt very touched to have such a concerned teacher.
That reminded me, “Speaking of the Elements, I got them.” Utilizing my magic, I pulled the saddle-bag off my back and spilled its contents onto the floor. “That’s strange, there were seven earlier, why are there only five now?”
“Did you say seven?” Luna was giving me a rather strange look, “At most there should have only been six and generally only five.” I hadn’t known that, wonder why that was. I mean there were placed for all seven of them down there in the safe, that would mean they would need to know that there were seven right?
“Is that a problem teacher?”
“Hmm, it shouldn’t be a problem for us right now, but I’ve never heard of them having a seventh in the set.” That was not good, two times in the same conversation she hadn’t known what was going on, “Well it doesn’t matter; we have all that we need for our plan.”
I was still worried, not that I didn’t trust my teacher’s judgment, but she hadn’t seen what I had. For a moment I considered telling her about it, but somehow it felt like something that should be discussed later. It was like some little voice was telling me that this wasn’t the right time for it.
There was one last thing I did want to make sure Luna knew though.
“Just one thing, don’t let them use a magic spark on these things; I don’t think we’d like the results.” Luna looked at me quizzically, but somehow I knew that I had just changed what could have been a horrible outcome into a much more ridiculous one.
Now that we had all the parts for our little prank we were almost ready to go. Luna had spent the time while I was retrieving the Elements on putting together everything else. The first part of our master plan was to gather power from the Elements of Harmony; for which we needed to get Twilight and her companions to hit the energy redirection unit. We would than utilize that energy to fire an Entropy Cannon at Celestia.
The reason that Luna and I wouldn’t be able to provide the power by ourselves was that we were both control Unicorns, we simply didn’t have enough magical energy to cast a spell that took that much energy and still overpower Celestia; the spell simply couldn’t be designed in a way to worm its way through her shield.
I still remember the day that Luna first taught me about them; they are incredible, if hard to use, magic.
I had thought my teacher to be a little strange, but this really took the cake. Apparently tonight we were taking a break from learning about magic or athletics, in order to learn something that my teacher believed was more interesting.
We were in a cave in the Hideway Hills, just outside the Royal City, that other ponies rarely set foot in. My good night vision was serving me well; I could see all of the little holes and things that most ponies would have fallen into. However, the cave that Luna was leading me deeper into really lacked something; namely room to stand in. The passageway inside was so very narrow; Luna and I walking in a line could barely fit.
Eventually we reached the end of the cave; it was full of all kinds of stuff, from the benign to the explosive. At the time I had no idea what all of it was for or why Luna would have all this dangerous stuff around her. It seemed like it would be a huge problem.
“Student, today we will be doing something fun.” She was smiling at me; unfortunately it was one of those creepy smiles that showed way too many teeth. Ponies may be herbivores, and thus have no sharp teeth, but that doesn’t make it any less scary to see all of them.
I backed away from my teacher a little, “And what will I be learning today teacher?” I wish I could say I wasn’t whimpering a little, but I’m not the best liar; I’m not the worst either.
She leaned in closer to me, forcing me onto my hind hooves and against one of the cave walls. Why was she looking like that and invading my personal space.
I felt like she was going to be eating me, “You will be learning the art of… Pranking.” She backed off suddenly and began to laugh at me. I was in shock; apparently she had just been to show me the use of this particular skill. Although it seemed a lot more like acting than anything else. I was willing to learn anything if I didn’t end up in something stomach at the end of it.
“Pranking is more than just learning how to spring the joke; it is also learning how to hide it long enough so you can set it off. In other words, pranking is just like being a ninja; but funnier.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to learn to be a ninja than?” She just continued to smile at me.
“Why don’t I just show you instead of telling you?” She began to push power into her horn; honestly I don’t think that I have ever felt her put this much power into anything and the amount of control I could see in that spell was utterly ridiculous. I wouldn’t be able to make anything like it without the help of a power Unicorn.
The worst part though was that she was aiming directly at me. I know intellectually that my teacher wouldn’t hurt me, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t still feel the emotion of fear; the brain isn’t always as strong as the adrenal gland. She looked me in the eye, I could see a small sparkle…and then she fired. A small black line headed right towards me, surrounded me, and then disappeared. For a minute nothing happened, Luna just watched on.
I was getting bored of waiting, and still being a foal I decided to express that point.
“Well that was boring, what was it suppose….” It was at that moment that the boxes above me seemed to shift and start to fall down on me; it was only because of my tail that I didn’t have them fall on top of me. Unfortunately, as soon as I stepped aside a pebble seemed to appear in my path for me to trip on and fly right into Luna. Luckily nothing happened after that, but I knew that something had happened; there weren’t many things that could trick my tail like that.
“Still think this is boring student?” Luna was still smiling at me, so at least she wasn’t mad at me about what I had said.
“No…How did you do it?” I honestly was interested in any spell that could overcome my tail, only Diamond had been able to do that before; I still don’t know how she did it.
“What I just showed you is a spell I developed known as an Entropy Cannon.” I have no idea what that meant, “Essentially, it can create ‘bad luck’ for those it targets. It never permanently hurts anypony, but it can make their life very difficult.” Wow that sounded like the world’s best prank; I mean I know it could be dangerous, but still…
“However, it does have one problematic requirement,” I moved my attention back to my teacher, “in order to affect an individual, it needs to have more power than the one it is being used on. Still, I find it fairly fun.”
We had already locked it onto Celestia’s magical signature; it would hit her no matter where she was. It wouldn’t kill her, but it would make life more interesting for her.
That wouldn’t be until later though, at the moment we were still waiting on the power, in other words we were waiting for Twilight and company.
Unfortunately, it was likely that we would have to trick Twilight and her companions into using the Elements for us; I had mixed feelings about this. Apparently, contrary to what had happened to me earlier, one needed the power of a set of mares to activate the power of the Elements. On the one hand I really wanted to pull this prank on Celestia, but on the other hand I didn’t want to hurt Twilight. Hopefully she’ll just do it without us really having to ask; then I could take her to get those dresses I’d promised.
At the moment the only thing that we had left to do was wait. We had seated ourselves in the main entrance hall with the Elements in plain sight. It was a rather elegant room, even if it did look like it was about to fall apart; in fact it reminded me of the one from the dream.
It seemed that they were taking the scenic route; we had been waiting here for almost two hours and Luna had long ago stopped delaying them. So what was taking them so long? Maybe one of Luna’s distractions had been simply too good?
“Luna,” She looked over at me from her spot on dais, “What kind of delays did you use?”
“Apparently ones that were harder than I thought,” I glared at her, she flinched, “It wasn’t anything that bad, just some simple illusions.” Well that could be good or bad, Luna was good at illusions. She had once tricked everypony in the Royal Town into thinking that the castle had been made of a gelatinous substance; we had ponies trying to eat the thing for days. Unfortunately, she didn’t always realize that ponies didn’t have the same amount of power that she did and overdid it a bit; which is why they kept coming for days rather than hours.
“Which illusion did you use Luna?” She may be my teacher, but that didn’t mean that she was going to get away with doing something like this.
“The Lost Woods, why?” Well that was just great; she had to use that one. I remember the time she used it on the hedge maze. I hadn’t been able to get where I was going, not until Luna had finally decided to release me.
I had really wanted to take the night off, so I ditched my classes for the night, instead I was going to go on a walk in the Royal Hedge Maze. It was rather special; it contained several rare forms of plant life. Some of them would normally only grow in a desert environment. I was hoping to find some of desert flowers; I’d not yet had the chance to enjoy them.
I spent a lot time just walking around trying to find the signs that would point me towards the desert flowers, not really paying any attention to the turns that I took to get inside there. I figured that I could always find the small signs that permeated the maze.
Hours passed while I looked for the flowers and it wasn’t long before I realized I needed to leave; it was almost time for me to get to bed.
I began to try and find my way back out, but I suddenly realized that I had no idea where I was; the entire maze looked exactly the same. I began to gallop; getting worried that I wouldn’t find my way out in time; I would be tardy. There weren’t even any of the signs that I always saw that pointed you in the right direction to get out of it.
It was starting to become lighter; I had been here for far too long. I was getting worried and called out for help. However, more hours passed and eventually the spell forced me to sleep.
When I awoke again, Luna was looking me right in the face. I jumped backwards and fell over in suprise. She gave me a small smile.
“So student, did you learn your lesson?” I had no idea what she was talking about; I was supposed to learn a lesson from this? I know I skipped my classes, but this seems a bit beyond it; or maybe she had just decided to turn this into my nights lesson.
“No teacher. I wasn’t aware that there had been a lesson.” I really had no idea what she was talking about.
“Student, what is the first lesson you learned in magic?” Why was she asking something so simple, she knew that I already understood it?
“Magic can be seen from the corner of your eye.”
“That is correct, but you forgot something.” I was curious as to what she meant, “You must remain vigilant to all magical intrusions.” It was at that moment that I finally realized the lesson she was trying to teach me. She was trying to tell me that I had to watch my surrounding.
It was also at that moment that I realized why I really hadn’t been able to get out of the hedge maze.
“Teacher, did you place a spell on me?”
“Yes student, a spell known as the Lost Woods.” Then she fell over laughing at me. I was going to get back at her for this. I would use her lessons against her.
I did get back at her later; although she seemed to enjoy that pie to the face.
“Luna, why did you use that particular illusion? You know that unless you know how hard it is to break out of.” She looked rather surprised at me.
“So? Honestly, I expected that spell to last the least amount of time; I mean it never affected you after the first time.”
“I also already knew about the spell. They likely won’t be able to find their way out of there for at least a week, maybe more!” I was worried for them; I may be playing the villain, but that didn’t mean I was one. I didn’t want any harm to come to any of them, especially Twilight. I don’t know what I’d do if something had happened to her.
“Luna, you stay here; I’m going to go out and play the hero instead.” I trotted out the front entrance, wondering if Luna hadn’t left a few things on the moon; namely her common sense. I also was starting to wonder if I hadn’t left mine back in that statue.
I had already stepped outside when I realized that I could have just asked Luna to release the energy holding the spell in place. Well, I still had some dignity left and wasn’t just turn back inside and ask her; besides this would give me a chance to meet Twilight in pony.
I began to trot off to find her when I came to the realization that I had no idea how to find them. I was a little sad and about to give up on my dignity and ask Luna for her help when I remembered something special about this spell.
It was a prank spell; it was designed to not be dangerous and would keep them away from anything that could possibly hurt them. However, the important bit was that it had been designed with a way to track the spell; just because those it was cast on out of danger, didn’t mean that it kept them from being too lost to find their way back after it wore off and thus potentially be put into danger. I wonder if Luna had thought about the fact that they would still need to find their way to the keep.
I quickly cast the tracking spell and felt as my horn gave a pull; I just let it drag me onward. My tail might be better at tracking things, but it only really worked when it was important. It never wanted to help with pranks; silly pink thing. I let my mind wander a bit while I waited to reach them.
Let’s see, I need to make a plan on how I’m going to greet them. Not only will this be my first time meeting with Twilight, so I’ll need to make a good first impression, but I’ll also need to have them trust me. That’s going to be rather difficult, who would trust someone who they had just met in the middle of a forest; especially after being lost for so long. Getting them to use the Elements on Luna will probably be the easy part in comparison.
Maybe I could pretend that I had just heard them making noise and came to see how they were doing? Or I could pretend that I got lost while I was hiking and just happened to know the way to the keep because I passed it a little while earlier? The second seemed more likely than the first. The main thing that I would have to hope was that Twilight didn’t remember what I looked like as a statue; that could be rather embarrassing and make things much more difficult.
I ended my thoughts when I began to hear voices speaking nearby.
“Twilight ah think we’re a might lost.” I doused my dousing spell and hid behind a nearby bush; peeking through it to see what was happening. The speaker had been the orange mare from the cliff; from here I could see that she had a blond mane and a set of three apples for a flank marking. She looked rather tired; how much time had passed since I went down into that crypt anyway?
“I think you might be right Applejack, I can’t make heads or tails of where we are. Even the atlas isn’t helping me” I saw Twilight put the book back into her saddlebag. So the Orange pony was named Applejack, good to know.
“Hey there is no way that the amazing Rainbow Dash is lost. We just got a little turned around is all.” The blue Pegasus mare with the rainbow mane, seemingly named Rainbow Dash, crossed her arms in forehooves in front of her. She was floating in midair, seeming to dislike the ground; she remained floating in midair on her batwings.
That was a little strange; the only ponies I know with batwings were the Night Guard and they had long ago been disbanded; right after Luna had gone missing in fact. A couple of aristocrats had been talking about it as they walked through the garden. I hadn’t really understood the reason why they would be broken up at the time, but I hadn’t exactly been in a position to ask questions.
That still left the question of why a pony with batwings had shown up here, only Luna could grant the specific batwings; although she had promised to teach me the spell. I’d have to ask her about it later, but the only explanation that I could currently think up is that someone forgot to remove that genetic rewrite spell and it must have been passed on. If it had remained long enough, there probably was almost a whole new race of Pegasi. That was actually kind of cool; wonder if I could get a couple of them to let me do a study on them, maybe there were some interesting differences.
“Suger, ah don’t care what you think; we’re lost.” Applejack stated firmly, glaring at the batwinged mare. Rainbow Dash just glared right back. I think there might be unresolved tension there; not that kind of tension, get your mind out of the gutter.
“I agree with you darling; we have been in this dirty dirty forest for far too long. I don’t think I can stand it much longer.” I could see that the speaker was a white Unicorn mare with a wonderfully coiffured purple mane; she was laying back on a couch, trying to avoid the dirt. Honestly, she also seemed to be the type to abhor this kind of situation, so why in the world was she out here. Also, now that I think about it, where in the world did she get a couch from?
“Oh so even you’re against me Rarity! You’re all against me are you!? Well fine, you can all be lost; I know exactly where I am!” I watched as she flew off to the left; only to end up in the clearing again, but from the other direction; the lost woods spell at work. Of course she seemed to be surprised about this little turn of events and couldn’t stop herself from running into the final member of their little group, a yellow Pegasus mare with a pink mane. She let out the quietest scream of surprise that I’ve ever heard.
“Fluttershy are you alright!?” I heard Rainbow scream out, even if I couldn’t see her from this angle. I heard an incredibly quiet response that I wasn’t really able to make out.
The Lost Woods spell was quite the doozy; this group of five mares wouldn’t be getting out of that clearing without help. Wait, five mares? I took another look and recounted; yes there were only five ponies out there. There were six out there a minute ago, I hope that the last one hadn’t gotten lost when I wasn’t looking. I hadn’t felt a tugging in any other direction from my horn, so it was doubtful.
My tail however was trying to tug me somewhere, spinning in a way I had never seen it do before. I wondered what it was about; like I’d said many times, I don’t know what the things that my tail does mean most of the time.
“HI NEW PONY!” I jumped several feet into the air and screamed in shock. I hadn’t felt like this since the last time my sister visited me at the palace.
It was a nice quiet night at the palace, like usual most of the ponies in the castle were asleep.
I had been reading a nice book for the last couple hours, My World: How it Works. It was a rather interesting read, it explained all about why the weird things in life kept happening. I honestly feel sometimes that someone just copied my journal into and told me why those things happened.
“HI DAWN!” I jumped into the air and screamed, trying to grasp something to hold onto and somehow grabbing hold of the chandelier. I can never figure out how I get up this high when I normally the best I can jump is two feet.
“Hey Dawn what are you doing up there? I mean why don’t you come down here and join me?” I looked down at the ground to see my sister Blueberry waving at me from inside the flower pot. She was a blue Unicorn pony with a much darker blue mane and was probably the only member of my family that I felt close to. Now I know why I’m on the chandelier, my sister always makes me jump when she greets me. I still want to learn how she gets into such small places; but only the mares in our families get to know.
I dropped back to the ground; somehow without hurting myself at all, “Hello Blueberry,” I reach out to her for a hug and receive one, “It’s great to see you again. How long has it been anyway?”
“Hmm… I think it’s been nearly a month now but that is way too long we really need to see each other more often don’t you think! *Gasp* We should plan a special day where we get together and spend time together. We could call it sibling’s day and have so much cake that we burst.” Honestly, I was lucky I spent so much time around her; otherwise I don’t think I could have kept up with her.
I laughed, “Sounds good to me Blue!” I really enjoy being around my sister; she always makes me feel better, while driving everyone around us nuts. It’s honestly one of the best things to do.
How did I have enough time to have that memory before falling to the ground? I looked up; oh I had grabbed a tree branch. Looks like my reactions hadn’t been dulled from being locked in stone for so long. All the ponies in the group were looking at me now; most with surprise, but Rainbow Dash was looking at me with suspicion. I wonder why I deserved suspicion; I hadn’t even said anything yet.
“Uh hi?” I used one hoof to wave at them while holding on the branch with the other; which was a terrible idea because I fell to the ground with a thud.
While I was busy having a headache, Rainbow Dash had flown up to me and was staring me right in the eye. That was actually slightly scary.
“Who are you and what are you doing here!?” Well if that wasn’t the opening I was looking for, I don’t know what is. Hopefully I didn’t say anything too ridiculous.
“My name is Dawn Pie,” I heard a gasping noise from behind me and all the other ponies were staring at whatever was behind, although I assumed it was the pony missing from the group. Now that I think about it I still hadn’t seen what she looked like. First though I needed to finish my little speech. “And I was just hiking around here and heard you girls talking.” Why in the world did I say that, I didn’t even mention that I was lost at all; why would they possibly believe me? Strangely though most of them seemed to have a look of understanding in their eyes, well except Twilight, but none of them seemed as suspicious as they had been. Why in the world would that be?
Of course they also seemed to be moving their eyes between myself and something to the right of me. I turned my head to look in that direction …and now I know why they were less suspicious.
The Pony was bright pink with slightly lighter pink mane and seemingly seemed to be moving while remaining completely still. There was absolutely no mistaking it; she was a Pie mare. I remembered that bouncing; Pie mares couldn’t sit still if their life depended on it literally. One of my ancestors had been caught by the buffalos during a skirmish and had been sentenced to sit still or die, that seemed to be one of their strange customs for war criminals; she never stopped moving. They eventually just let her go because they also couldn’t get her to stand still long enough to be killed.
I hadn’t thought that there would be any Pie’s left; they had never visited me after all. I guess what really happened was that nopony had bothered to tell them I had turned to stone or my sister would have at least visited me. This must be her great, great, great, great, great, great, a couple more greats granddaughter. Strangely though, she also reminds me of that hallucination I had while I was locked in stone.
The pink pony opened her mouth and I prepared myself for the barrage I knew was coming; I had lived with my sister long enough to know what was going to happen.
“Hi cousin my name is Pinky Pie and I don’t think I ever met you before which is great because that means that you’re a new pony in the area and that means that I get to throw you a PARTY! It will be the best ever ‘Just Released from Stone Party’ that you’ve ever been to! Of course it will also likely be the only one you’ve ever been to. I mean how many times can one pony be released from stone anyway.” How she had known that last bit I’ll never know, but my sister was able to know things she should know; I’ll just put it up to her being a mare of the Pie family. I just hope that nopony heard that last part.
Of course now that she had made her greeting, my tail decided that it was time to do the male portion of the Pie family greeting. It shaped itself into a hoof, just in time to impact Pinkie’s hoof shaped tail; which was soon followed by an up and down motion and a circle. Pinkie’s smile seemed to grow even wider, apparently really happy to have run into another member of her family. If I hadn’t thought she was a Pie before, this confirmed it. Apparently it also brought the others out of their shock.
“How did you two just do that? Our tails are not prehensile; there is no way you should have been able to do that.” Twilight looked irritated by the impossibility she had just witnessed. If it wasn’t for the fact that I had lived with it for my entire I likely would be the same way.
“Twilight, sugar, ah suggest that you don’t question it. Ponies have been trying for years to figure out Pinkie Pie and it still don’t make no sense no how. Besides we still have to reach that castle, we ain’t got time for this.” “Well I think I might be able to help with that.” All the mares looked towards me, “I’ve come here many times and I know the way to the castle, how about I just show you the way.” With me leading the way I could force them to break the Lost Woods illusion. When something leads you through it, it can’t trick you into making a wrong turn. If you know you’re locked in it you can simply follow an ant or something; which was why I was able to escape so easily after Luna locked me in it the first time.
“Well that’s mighty kind of ya.” Most of the mares were nodding their heads in agreement; Pinkie’s head was bouncing up and down so fast I was surprised it hadn’t yet popped off. Why was this plan working?! I really wonder sometimes about the ability of ponies to overlook the most obvious detail.
“Why should we trust you?” Once again Rainbow had to be the thorn in my side and helped me regain some trust in ponykind; the rest of the mares simply accepted me at my word. However, luckily I did have an answer for this problem, sarcasm.
“Because there are more of you than there are of me? I’m related to Pinkie? You don’t seem to be going anywhere yourself? Take your choice they all seem alright to me.” I might have put the sarcasm on a little strong, because Rainbow Dash was looking at me and she was incensed.
I heard something I couldn’t make out from the Fluttershy, but I could hear Rainbow Dash’s response.
“Ok I’ll give a try for you Fluttershy, but the first time that if he tries anything; POW STRAIGHT TO THE MOON.”
“Sounds good to me, just follow behind me and I’ll lead you there.” That was way too easy, something is going to go wrong at the worst possible moment I can tell. I began my trotting towards the castle, most of them trotting along behind me; Pinkie was hopping along and Rainbow was flying.
During our little trot I realized that I still needed to have them tell me their names; I already knew them, but they had never told me. Letting them know that I had been spying on them for a few minutes, and technically Twilight for almost twenty years, would probably not be a good idea at the moment.
“Would everyone mind stopping for a minute?” Everyone ground to halt.
“Hey! What the hold up?” Take a guess who said that.
“Since the trip is going to take a little bit, I thought I should at least get all your names? I mean I already know Pinkie Pie’s, but I don’t know what to call the rest of you.”
Twilight took the initiative, “Well my name is Twilight Sparkle, my friends here are Applejack.”
“Pleasure to meet’cha” She grabbed my hoof and shook it really hard, almost hard enough to cause pain. When I felt her let go my arm continued shaking up and down. I just couldn’t stop it. Pinkie seemed to be trying to copy my arm’s movement, shaking her arm all over the place. Twilight seemed to notice my plight and grabbed my arm for me.
“Thanks Twilight.” I gave a small smile, she returned it.
“No problem.” Before that conversation could go anywhere, Rainbow decided that she should introduce herself.
“I’m Rainbow Dash! The fastest Night Pegasus in all of Equestria!” She was also one to seem to boast, but I hadn’t seen her practice so I couldn’t really say. I now know that Pegasi with batwings were called Night Pegasi.
Rarity was the next one to respond, “Well darling, I am Rarity.” She fluttered her eyelashes at me; I have no idea why she did that, but a lot of mares seem to like to do it around me. The one time I’d asked Blueberry, she had just told me she didn’t understand it either, but guys seemed to like flexing their muscles around her.
Fluttershy was the last to go, “I’m flutmphhp.”
“Sorry I couldn’t hear that, would you mind repeating yourself?”
“I’m fluttermphph”
“Flutter…?”
Rainbow decided to come to Fluttershy’s rescue, “Her name’s Fluttershy.”
“Ah, well it’s a pleasure to meet you Fluttershy.”
“It’s nice to meet you too.” She spoke very quietly, and I almost couldn’t hear her. Any tension that was left after our meeting seemed to have fled at Fluttershy’s acceptance.
“And I’m Pinkie Pie, I know that you said you already knew my name but everyone else was introducing themselves and I didn’t want to feel left out and so I’m telling you all because I felt like joining in.” Apparently Pinkie wanted to get in on the act; luckily I was already used to her manner of speech, in fact I wanted to learn a bit more about her, but first.
“All right, if we want to reach the keep early, we’re going to have to head out again.” A couple of different reactions occured, but eventually everyone got moving.
I was leading so I couldn’t slow down to talk to either Twilight or Pinkie. It seemed though that Pinkie wanted to talk to me, because she was bouncing all around me. I knew that the moment she started talking I wouldn’t be able to get a word in edgewise, so I took the initiative.
“So Pinkie, would you mind telling me about yourself? I’ve kind of been out of the loop for a while.” That was the understatement of the century.
She smiled at me, “Of course I’d be willing to tell a family member that has been locked in stone for a thousand years about what has happened to his family since he was locked away,” There are time when I really dislike how they can do that, especially since they never seem to remember actually saying those things, “Originally my family came from Canterlot, you seem to get confused sometimes and call it the Royal City why is that? I mean that name doesn’t even sound anything like Canterlot.” I just let her ramble on for a while, somehow eventually ending up talking about cupcakes, I knew she’d get back to the point eventually. It was actually rather nice to be near something that reminded me so much of home. I may only have been really close to my sister, but I still enjoyed spending time with the rest of them.
It seemed she was winding down a bit and about to finish her monologue, “And that’s how Equestria was made.” Which essentially was a Pie’s mare of asking you to remind them about the topic, but I had the perfect response to this.
“I love that story, it gets better every time it’s told. I especially loved that part where the cupcakes rained destruction down on the planet and brought about eternal peace.” She looked at me oddly, which makes me feel like I made the perfect response, “Also you were talking about how you came from Canterlot.”
“Oh right, well I originally came from Canterlot where I spent all my days until my father decided that we would move to rock farm, seriously a rock farm why in the world would anyone want to live at a boring place like that,” I had to agree with her; rock farms were not only boring, but they didn’t actually produce anything of value. We had quarries to get precious metals, so what was the point of them and how had they survived this long? “Eventually though I got my cutie mark,” What in the world is a cutie mark and why does that name fill me with dread, “and moved to Ponyville.”
I was going to ask her more questions about herself when I ran into our destination; literally. Pinkie was laughing at me and my nose hurt, wonderful.
Well in any case, we were here.