The Element of Friendship

by The Derpy Doctor

The light

I woke up slowly. I was in no rush. It was still dark outside. Why would I need to rush? I had gotten a good night’s sleep and school doesn’t start for about another hour after night ends. I probably had a lot of time to just lay still.
There was one thing wrong, though. I didn’t know what it was, but there was just something so different about today. What though?
I looked outside to find that it was dark. My window pended no sunlight. There was no light that could stand against the dark. There was just darkness. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. It couldn’t be that early, I don’t usually get that good of a sleep from a single night and still wake up for it to be dark. I thought, but found no logical reasoning. I called for my mom.

“Mom?!”

“Yes?” was the response in an obviously tired voice.

“What time is it?”

“It’s eleven thirty,” this was then followed by a gasp.

“Dinky?” she again called, “It’s eleven thirty!”
That’s not possible. That can’t be possible. Never has anything bothered me like this. Never has anyone ignored the weather enough for clouds to gather for complete darkness. How could one miss the stream of darkness that now rested all over Ponyville. I witnessed this as I walked outside. No Sun. No stars. No pony anywhere.

“Dinky?” I could hear my mom calling from inside.

I didn’t call back. There is only one mare I know that can have any knowledge of what was happening. That was Twilight.

Knock knock knock knock knock knock knock. I pounded relentlessly on Twilight’s door calling for almost as furious as my knocking. Twilight answered the door and brought me inside with a tired face.

“Dinky, I told you if you read the books overnight, then you are going to drain this library in a month flat. Now what book do you want, and why do you need it at this ungodly hour?”

“Ungodly hour?” I said with a skeptical look.

“Yes d…”

I interrupted her “Eleven thirty?’’

“No…It… What?”

I pointed to the alarm clock that stood behind her.

She took one look and then hit the floor. She passed out. How rude of someone to pass out when they are trying to have a conversation with you.

I dragged her limp body to a chair and tried to rehabilitate her. Five minutes felt like an hour as I fanned her and splashed shy amounts of water on her to wake her up. Five minutes was all it took. She got slowly to her hooves and crawled away no word said.

“Excuse me? Twilight? Where are you going?” After her, I asked.

“I’m going to get Spike. These may be the last moments that we may stand beside one another.” She then cringed as if someone has moved her rug out of align (OCD senses activate). That look that says: “Oh no I have to rethink my whole life.”

“Last moments?” I said sadder than I meant to say it. “Why?”

“I can’t say, Dinky. Go home to your mom and take whatever time you two have to sort things out that you don’t have strait.”

She teleported off to her room with a flash and then locked to door behind her.

I returned to my home. I never understood some things. Why did she speak to me in such riddles? She only said things like that when they were too rich for me to handle. I asked my mom when I got home.

“Do you know what is happening?”

“Dinky, where did you go? Never mind that you’re here now. Stay close, okay? This might be a false alarm, but we must stand close by each other just incase it’s not.”

“I don’t understand. What false alarm?”

“I can’t say.” She said with mild shyness.

“Mom, tell me.”

“Dinky, there are some things that fillies like you shouldn’t know about.”

“What are those, Death?”

“Don’t say that, Dinky.” There was so much more worry in her voice now. “Because if I know myself well enough, then we are not going to be in the same place as before.” A tear trailed her cheek.

The castle guards stood watch all through the night. They did not need a clock to know what time it was. The time was nearly twelve. It was time that they all crossed inside to protect the princess. If the signs were right, They would be the ones that will defend her above all else. They would have to give whatever life they have to give in order to keep Equestria from being the source of destruction.

I looked at my mom. She looked at me. I can’t see why she speaks this way. I heard a knock at the door, and rubbed softly out of my mom’s grasp to go and answer it.

“Wait!” my mom spoke “look before opening.”

I then looked through the looking glass. It was Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo.

I opened the door.

“Hi, Dinky,” they all said at once.

“Hi,” I said in a more shy voice

“Dinky, we all woke up early so that we could get to school on time, Applebloom told me more excitedly than anyone I’d heard all day by far. “We came over to your house to see if you were okay after we all found each other.”

“I’m okay,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know my sister…” Applebloom was interrupted
The earth shook.
I fell on the ground and the other crusaders gathered around me and helped me up.

“What was that?”

The earth then shook again. Not once like before, It lasted for about 25 seconds now. We all grabbed each other and held together like one band of sailors on a boat that had been tossed at sea. My mother clutched all of us. I was not myself. I screamed. Sweetie Belle screamed. I didn’t normally scream. That was the thing that scared me most. Not the darkness or the rumbling, but the lack of knowledge of what was happening and my own fear. I was afraid of the lack of fear that I had rumbling through me like a steer in a thunderstorm.

The Darkness closed in. It surrounded us. We thought that we would never see again, and then we saw only the slightest outline of one another not enough light to see clearly, but just enough to see ourselves. I tried to use magic to light the place up, but my magic was useless. I was too afraid to cast a spell.

Hopeless for help, we felt around for others. We felt for anything in the house but there was nothing. There was nothing with the exception of bars. Bars that were colder than ice and harder than Iron. Bars that hurt to touch due to their cold, and they surrounded us. We were trapped.
Sweetie Belle cried in the corner Scootaloo held her head.

“What do we do now?” Applebloom said to me, her accent putting a specific emphasis on “now”.

“I…” and then I wept. I was only in the coldest darkest room, with no knowledge of who or what was doing this, and I couldn’t use any magic to get myself out. I looked around the cage.

Was I even at my house anymore? I held back the tears so that I can see clearly. I could just make out other cages. Cages that contained other silhouettes like ours. There were other ponies here trapped in cages like ours with no one to guard us, but no one to save us. I thought for a second, maybe I could.

The darkness spoke to me as if on cue, “don’t get any ideas, Dinky, I know you, and I know that you don’t stand a chance against me.”
I could only hear him in my mind; his voice had an effect like the screeching of hooves on a chalkboard, but had the same tone as a cello. I watched as several other cages appeared, and filled quickly. I could name almost everyone in Ponyville streaming into the cages: Lyra, Bon Bon, Octavia, vinyl and even the Doctor. The doctor: the one that accepted me immediately upon meeting me; so nice he was to me, that he would be here and not protecting us drew shivers down my spine. Why would the doctor be here? He was one of the bravest ponies in Ponyville; He saved my mom from a serpent while she travelled with him once. She told me that story long ago, and I remember she told me about how out of sheer bravery he had dodged in front of the serpent, and pulled her out of the way. He was the one that met me shortly after to blush at my mom describing his bravery. He was here. Helpless just as I, he was, and now how could I expect to be saved? There was no hope for me.

All of Ponyville rolled into the monstrous darkness: darkness that seemed to roll on forever. Forever… The word seemed to echo throughout my mind. Forever it rolled onward, just the same with how far I will spend here.
Pony after pony came in, the cages stacking on top of one another, all of my friends, Twilight, Applejack, everypony I knew and more. I panicked.

“I can’t spend forever here!” Words finally came out of my mouth. I finally said what I thought. I shouted the words as if I had to.
Then Applebloom approached me. “You won’t spend forever here.” She spoke calmly.

“How do you know? Why would one put us in cages like these if he or she would ever want to eventually let us out?” My sense of doubt far outweighed my sense of reason as I spoke.

“There is always hope, Dinky. There is always light to outweigh the dark. There has and always will be a hero.” Applebloom again replied.
Somehow, I knew she was right. The voice that haunted me earlier was trying to suppress me, but she put strength in my bones, she gave me the power to ignore the doubt.

“You’re right!” I couldn’t hold myself back anymore, and neither could the voice. I can’t stand here and mope while ponies are being forced into cages and my new friends needed help. They needed me now.
I used a basic teleportation spell to get myself out of the cage, quickly turning around and using it on my friends to get them out one-by-one. I tried to use it on my mom, but she was too heavy.

“Dinky!” Sweetie Belle screamed, “The darkness hurts!”
I tried one last time to teleport my mom, before I was brought down by the voice.
My back burned with cold. I arched it in desperation, and fell sideways to meet whatever was trying to bring me there but it didn’t stop. The voice came again:

“You will never come out. You are useless, nameless. Have you ever even had friends before? You have no family or…”
It stopped. I found that my friends where already getting up to their feet right before the darkness unclenched itself from my back. I felt like it was going to break before I immediately found relief.

“Acerbus!” came a voice from far distant in the darkness. “You will never hurt these ponies!” It came more assertive than any other voice that I had heard thus far. It was a mere voice, a voice of power, grace, but it was royalty, and darkness and animal. And then I saw a light illuminating her face.

“Chrysalis?”