Sapphire backed up and sat on her bed. I shut the door behind us and quietly locked the door wedging a chair under the door handle.
“What now? We have a guard?” Sapphire asked.
“More like an overseer. I don’t like this stuff with the Children of the Night. They don’t seem trustworthy.”
“Then why are you working with them?”
“They could help rebuild the castle…or be a distraction”, I brightened with the second idea.
“What are you getting at?”
“Once the group is at full strength then I could send them to fight against Celestia’s army…they could distract them and bring the mass of her guards away from Celestia; leaving her defenseless. Yes, a perfect plan!”
“Aaaaand? Where will I be during all of this?”
“Here”
“Wait what?”
“I literally said one word. Do you seriously want me to repeat myself?”
“Don’t be an ass…”
“Watch your mouth, Sapphire”
“Give me a reason not to! You give me life then hurt me; have me help you fly and hurt me; help you escape and hurt me, heck I don’t know when you’ve ever done anything but hurt me!”
“Please don’t do this, that was the past…”
“You broke my wing!”
“Then I fixed it...”
“You turned me into a walking flashlight!”
“You can also shoot spikes and turn invisible now”
“You…you…grr…”
“Everything you said always had a good outcome afterwards”
“The point is, you kept hurting me, and you kept on promising be that you wouldn’t. You lied to me every time. And now, you want me to remove shards from my coat to make a ‘suit’ for you and Rayne? Did you ever think about what I’d have to say about any of this?”
I sighed, “You’re right Sapphire, I should have asked you if you wanted to help, rather than expecting you to.”
“Maybe, you should have”
“Did I really make you that mad?”
“I bottled the anger up inside; I didn’t want you to see me get mad, but I guess that couldn’t be avoided”
“I’m sorry; nevertheless, we need to move on. Are you willing to help me?”
“Now that you asked. Give me some time to think about it. Go to sleep and I’ll get you up when I have an answer.”
“But, I…alright”
I inched into my bed, getting comfortable for the difficult mission ahead. Sapphire looked at me and said, “I’ll be back in a while”, then turned and flew out of the crater in the roof.
“Where is she going?”, I whispered to myself.
I looked up through the crater Sapphire flew through. I stared into the surface of the moon, where my mother’s face seemed to be printed, such as ink on a piece of paper. A piece of paper so far away. I watched the moon until it faded to black.
“Onyx, hey Onyx! Wake up sleepy head.” I heard Sapphire’s voice faintly. I peeked out from under my heavy eyelids. Lifting my head from the pillow. “Come on Onyx! I have a surprise for you. Get up!”
“Give me five minutes”
“No, get up now!” Sapphire ripped the covers off of me and rolled me off of my bed onto the floor. I landed on my back with a thud. I looked up at her as she stood over me smiling.
“What, Sapphire?”
“I brought you a present!”
I looked up to find, a mannequin. It shone in the slightest bit of moonlight
“What is it?”
“Look closer!”
I sat up to get a better look at it.
“Sapphire, is this the…”
“Yep!”
“I thought you….thank you Sapphire.” I looked around “Where’s the other one?”
“I only made one, for you and only you. I don’t like Rayne; therefore I don’t trust him to wear my…skin…so to say”
“When you say it like that, it sounds repugnant, call it armor, please.“
“Either way I don’t want him to have one”
“But if I’m wearing one, he’ll know…”
“Remember the invisible thing? It’s not just invisibility…as long as you wear the whole ‘suit’, you can chameleon and mimic anypony. Plus the chameleon thing hides the ‘suit’ making it seem as if you were wearing nothing.”
“Sweet! And by mimic you mean I could play as anypony I wanted to?”
“Yeah, try it out”
I hopped up to my hooves and went over to the mannequin. The torso of the outfit seemed to be made out of emerald; the legs, ruby; the hoof coverings, topaz; the helmet, sapphire; and the blast shield for the eyes looked as if they were a diamond sheet, so clear you could see through it like a brand new sheet of glass. It looked gaudy, I’m not really all for the gem look, but as they say, I’m using it for function, not fashion. I removed the jewel suit from its placeholder and put it on.
“Ehm”, I looked at myself, “This thing is amazingly comfortable, despite it squeezing my crotch like a vice!”
“Sorry, I made it with my dimensions. Use a spell to loosen it up then”
“What spell, ‘ease the squeeze’?”
“That sounds good, well not good, but...”
“I was being sarcastic; there is no spell like that”`
“Make one up then”
“You can’t just make up a spell, Sapphire.”
“Just stretch the dang thing!”
“Stretch what? Rock? How do you suppose I do that?”
“I guess you’ll just have to get used to it then”
“Errh…un…comfortable”
“You’ll be fine…until you have the urge to use the bathroom”
“Don’t remind me. Now, how do I do the mimic thing?”
“Look into my eyes and use your dark magic stuff to project me into the crystals.”
“Projection. Alright.”
I closed my eyes and focused on using the dark magic. I opened my eyes and looked into Sapphire’s eyes.
“Your eyes are beautiful…”, my mind started to drift.
“Pay attention! Become me, think like the pony you are trying to emulate.”
I looked into her eyes and tried once more.
“Sapphire I…am I talking like you?”
“Mmph, I’m good looking!”, she smiled.
“Umm…this feels weird. How can I change back?”
“Think about being you.”
“That easy huh? Do I always have to look into their eyes?”
“Only the first time; it lets you see who they really are on the inside. Better to…play…as them.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I tried it out on a guard first”
“Didn’t he think it was odd that you just transformed into him while standing in front of him?”
“No no no, I tricked him. I asked to see the Princess and was able to look into his eyes. Once he said no, I walked away and…did the thing.”
“How can you do that? You don’t have magic; you’re a Pegasus.”
“The crystal energy stuff lets me do many things you can’t.”
“Crystal energy? I wanna call bull on that.”
“You can do three things that I can now. Turn invisible and impersonate”
“Basic math shows that you said three then told me two.”
“Then two.”
“Alright well let’s get some more sleep, It’s nearly eight-o'clock and we need energy for the jailbreak and the assault.”
“We? You mean I can come along?”
“If you want to.”
“Yes! Thanks Onyx!”
“I prefer you to be by my side, instead of Rayne. I need to tell Atlas that Rayne will not be joining us”
I unblocked the door and walked to the entrance of the castle. Atlas was still standing in the same place.
“I told you to make yourself comfortable.”
“I’m fine where I stand.”
“It’s been hours.”
“My legs aren’t weak.”
“Okay, well, I need you to send a message to Rayne.”
“What do you need to tell him?”
“I’m going alone to get the prisoners, I still need the key”
“The key is right here”, Atlas tossed the key to me, “I’ll tell Rayne that he’ll be with us.”
I then walked back to the barracks with the key in my pocket.
“Sapphire, get ready to go in an hour. We’ll need to leave before midnight and we won’t be back until one a.m., as long as everything goes according to plan.”
“Alright, no sleep then, I’ll just read a book until you say something”
So time went on and we played the waiting game.