2 // The Ruins of Friendship
"Alright, Alphabittle...I'm ready for your test."
Alphabittle grinned widely at the spunky attitude in Sunny's voice and didn't waste any time firing back. "My test for you is this: journey into the heart of the forest, bring me back a piece of a very special crystal. I've heard rumors for a while now that there's a towering, jagged formation hidden in the deepest reaches, and I want you two to find out if that rumor is true. If it is - I want you to bring me back a piece of it. Shouldn't be any problem for two heroines of Equestria, hmm?"
"But...how will you know we didn't just chip a bit off of the first crystal we saw?" Sunny asked, muzzle scrunching in confusion at the strangeness of the request.
Alpha's eyes narrowed, making Sunny gulp. "Oh, trust me. I'll know." Eyeing both mares for a moment, he gave her a lopsided grin, "Besides, we both know you're not stupid enough to try tricking me again. Not when she," he inclined his head towards Izzy, "Is on the line, anyway."
Scuffing her hoof against the hardwood floor, Sunny had to concede that point. Maybe lying for the good of Equestria was alright before, but she had little to gain and an awful lot to lose by doing so here.
"Ooh, ooh, we can use these fancy phones that Pipp gave us to take photos and videos as proof!" Izzy realized, pulling her phone out of her mane as she held it up for Alpha and Sunny to observe, "They can't reach the Zephyr Heights network while we're here, what with all these crystals and trees around, but the basic functions still work as long as it's charged."
"Good thinking, Izz. Alphabittle, is there anywhere we can stock up on supplies? Cargo saddlebags, food, water...?" Sunny prompted expectantly.
"I'll grab you two some things from the storeroom. Should be plenty I can spare. Follow me," Alpha replied, gesturing for the two mares to follow.
Freshly outfitted with twin saddlebags and enough supplies to last a day's excursion, the two mares set out into the deepest parts of the woods. Pointedly ignoring the signs with such welcoming messages as "TURN BACK!" and "[skull and crossbones]" and "SERIOUSLY, DON'T GO IN HERE!", Sunny followed behind Izzy with no small amount of trepidation as the unicorn levitated her phone in front of her with her magic, the compass app obediently pointing them towards the rough direction Alpha had said to investigate.
For a period of time that seemed to drag on forever, the trek passed without much incident; although, as the underbrush began to thicken and the ambient light grew dimmer with the dense tree cover, both ponies felt as if they could feel the fur on the back of their necks standing on end.
"Wow, Sunny, can you feel that? My horn gets tinglier the deeper in we go...there's a lot of ambient magic here." Izzy observed, shivering in trepidation for reasons she couldn't quite fathom, but could certainly feel.
"I...yeah, I can feel it, actually. Mostly in my hooves, but there's this...phantom sensation, at my forehead and on my sides...it feels like static," Sunny muttered, reaching a hoof up to grasp at the space that, some time ago, had been home to an ethereal yellow horn. "Everything about this feels really wrong, but...we have to keep going, if we want to have your dad's approval." she conceded to herself, eyebrows knitting in frustration.
Izzy nodded solemnly, giving her marefriend a comforting smile as she hip-bumped her, "I don't really like this either, but we're close to something now. I can feel it. Hang in there, Sunny-bun, we're almost there!"
As if on cue, the treeline ahead of them began to break away into a clearing...and what greeted them left them speechless.
The shattered remnants of two purple stained-glass windows adorned either side of a yawning, dark entryway, its tall golden doors discarded to either side, as if they had been blown off of their hinges by some immense force from inside.
It seemed like there should have been more of the structure above, but all that was left was the jaggedly broken edge of where the second floor likely began, blackened and heat-warped - the aftermath of an explosion of tremendous, incalculable force.
"Are the crystals scattered around Bridlewood...actually chunks of whatever the hay this place used to be?" Sunny mused incredulously, snapping multiple pictures of the wrecked building with her phone camera. What they had was clearly already enough to satisfy Alphabittle's request...but what was wrong with a little curiosity? This was a massive find, after all!
"The crystals that this place is made of do look familiar," Izzy noted as she led the two of them into the haphazard, ghastly ruin. "But it must've been a pretty big place to scatter so much debris when it exploded. Imagine what it must've looked like in its prime..." she pondered with a wistful tone, eyes tracing the weathered and nondescript hallway as they neared an intersection.
A door directly ahead of them beckoned them forward, though a hallway also stretched to either side of them in a circular pattern - clearly, the room at the center was the focus of the first floor, so it was there that they'd explore first.
At Izzy's first push, the door stubbornly refused to budge, presumably frozen in place from untold years of disuse and foundational settling. As Sunny touched it, though, it swung open like it'd been freshly oiled, with nary even a squeak of its hinges. The tingling feeling on her head and sides briefly flared up again.
In a moment of wide-eyed befuddlement, Sunny stared blankly at her own hoof, then at the opened doorway, before shrugging as she stepped into the next room. What greeted her was beyond anything she could've anticipated.
An immense circular slab of crystal, one that might've been a table in past ages, rested in broken chunks in the center of the room. Of the six tall-backed thrones that encircled the huge table, only two of them remained upright - the others had fallen back and shattered against the hard crystalline floor during whatever cataclysmic event had sundered this once-glorious castle, becoming nothing more than meaningless sparkling rubble.
A noticeable layer of dust and pulverized crystal blanketed the floor, sparkling like gem dust under the light of their phone flashlights. The clatter of crystal-on-crystal greeted Sunny's hoof as she stepped forward; with a curious hum, she bent down to pick up what she'd kicked - and was befuddled to discover a nearly-intact rhombus-shaped blue gem with an incredible, unbelievable inclusion captured within it.
As she stared into the crystal, a video resolved itself. Six ponies, a group that had to be the Guardians of Harmony based on where this crystal was found, were seated together at a table along with a small purple reptile and a huge, white...alicorn with a flowing tricolor mane. The cutie mark, recognizable from notes in her father's study, gave away the alicorn's identity as Princess Celestia - a mythically powerful, ancient figure she never thought she'd see a picture of, let alone a video. The Guardians were clothed in beautiful dresses that seemed to match their individual styles perfectly; doubtlessly these were their usual outfits when walking among the populace of Equestria, as mares of such heroics deserved. They appeared to have been filmed amidst a shared bout of laughter; a scene of wonderful camaraderie that reminded her of her own group of friends, even as it made an uncomfortable ache start to build in her chest.
Sunny wiped a tear from her eye as she scooped the intact memory crystals off of the floor and into her saddlebag. "Izz, help me pick up some of these jewels. Don't drop them or chip them, they're...important. Really important."
"Sure thing, Sunny-bun! What's so special about 'em, though? They just look like normal ol' - woooah." Izzy replied cheerily, though she trailed off as she caught sight of the scene in the yellow gemstone she was levitating - the yellow-and-pink Guardian pegasus appeared to be talking to a tall...creature, composed of an indescribable mishmash of parts; it looked like the kind of thing a particularly imaginative filly or colt would dream up as a Nightmare Night costume. The creature looked surprisingly apologetic as the mare tossed away a set of ice skates and turned around in a huff. It didn't seem like a particularly pleasant scene...
Izzy quickly became so enraptured by the mysterious, context-less scene that she completely failed to respond when Sunny asked what she was doing. The earth-pony sighed as she snatched the crystal out of Izzy's magical grip and stowed it in her bag, glancing at her surroundings uneasily as she spoke, "They're...memories, from the Guardians, I think. It's strange that they're in a third-pony perspective, but...we can look at them more when we get back to my - our - father's lab. This place feels...wrong, somehow. I don't really want us to be in here any longer than we have to. I keep getting these weird tingly feelings..."
Izzy nodded hastily in agreement as she glanced warily at the shadows in the dark corners of the room, her hornlight brightening up as she fed more power into her illumination spell. An involuntary shudder ran through her. It wasn't like her to be scared of the dark, but the vibe she was getting here was profoundly uncomfortable, no matter how positive she tried to be.
With the matter of the crystals sorted, Sunny's attention turned to the tall-backed chairs that surrounded the shattered table. Of the two that remained upright, the shorter one had the vaguely familiar cutie mark of two blue balloons and one yellow balloon, beneath the untold layers of dust that muddled its appearance. It stirred something in her, the vaguest epiphany...until it came to her in a flash of recollection. The various post-its she'd seen dotted around Argyle's study held the answer to which pony this mark belonged to - Pinkie Pie, one of the Guardians! But...that would mean that the taller throne belonged to...
Sunny glanced across the table, to the throne roughly facing Pinkie Pie's, and felt her heart skip a beat before plummeting into her stomach.
Six purple points, surrounded by five white stars. The cutie mark of the last ruler of Equestria...Princess Twilight.
The very same unicorn her father had told her bedtime stories about...she was real. Really real. There was no denying it anymore. All of Argyle's efforts, the research that the ponies of today thought futile and decried as foolish ramblings, really had been onto something. Everything until now had felt like her father's most idyllic stories come true...but this confirmed it. There was so much more to it than she'd ever thought, and nopony left alive from that era to even ask about any of it. Only the lost ruins of a once-great harmonious society.
Sunny felt like she should've been jubilantly excited by the revelation; vindicated, even. And yet...her father would never know just how right he was about the past. Her orange legs began to tremble harshly beneath the weight of her realization, and with a strangled sob, she collapsed to the dusty crystalline floor, Izzy yelping in surprise next to her at the suddenness of her lover's loss of composure.
The unicorn glanced over to what had made Sunny so distraught, and muffled a stunned, disbelieving gasp behind her forehoof as her eyes locked onto the ancient symbol, recognizing it from Sunny's journal and the disused Zephyr Heights transit hub. Her ears flopped down sadly as she realized the source of her marefriend's sorrow, and she plopped down onto her haunches next to Sunny - suppressing a pained wince as bits of crystals dug into her flanks and delicate bits, quietly sweeping them away with her magic - and pulled the smaller mare into a tight hug. Trails of moisture began to stream down her own cheeks as she embraced her younger sister in her vulnerable moment of intense catharsis, their closeness leading to a contagious sadness that muddled her own thoughts with depressing memories.
"J-just when I think I'm over it, sniff, I f-find something else to make me wish Dad were still here to see it..." Sunny gasped out between choked sobs, chuckling sardonically as she felt the tears streaming down her cheeks, "I'm sorry I'm such a wreck, Izz. It's times like this that I wonder why I'm the one whose destiny it was to reunite all of Equestria...I'm just one pony, an earth pony. I don't have wings like the pegasi, or magic like you. I'm-" The breath was driven from her lungs as Izzy's hug tightened around her, forcing her to stop her self-destructive breakdown. After a few moments of that bone-crushing embrace, the unicorn's grip on her relaxed as she was held at hoof's length.
"Sunny Starscout, you stop that right now!" Izzy exclaimed firmly, the beginnings of tears welling in her own eyes, "You aren't just an earth pony. You don't need wings or magic to be special, Sunny-bun. Sure, something out there chose you to become this big hero pony, but so what?! You didn't have to campaign for pony unity when nopony ever listened to you. You didn't have to trust me the day we met. We didn't have to go all across Equestria on some crazy quest without even knowing if it would fix anything!" As Sunny's expression began to brighten with a hesitant smile, Izzy continued, emboldened, "And it wasn't just you that saved the world, y'know? Me, Hitch, Princesses Zipp and Pipp...Queen Haven...Alphabittle...Phyllis...we all believed in you, in the end. It takes a pretty extraordinary pony to bring the three races back together, Sunny, and I couldn't be happier to call you my friend. And my sister. And, well, a lot more than a friend or a sister..."
As Sunny giggled into her hoof from her marefriend's little joke, sniffing away her tears, Izzy pumped her own hoof in triumph. "That was a laugh! Haha, yes! Score one for Izzy Moonbow!"
Shrugging Izzy's hooves off of her as she stood upright, Sunny gave a long, slow inhale and exhale as she recollected herself. "Thanks, Izz. The ever-supportive unicorn saves the day again~" Sunny teased, smiling brightly at her marefriend's adorable bout of celebration before she looked around the room, "Well, it seems we've seen all there is to see in the central room. What d'you say we see what else we can find, and then head back to Bridlewood?"
"Sounds like a plan to me, Sunny!" Izzy cheered, practically tap-dancing through the building as she rode on the emotional high of her uplifting pep-talk to Sunny.
It didn't take the two of them long to find the next room of interest, and it was one that Sunny had silently been praying she might find - a library.
"Okay, woah." Sunny said breathlessly, craning her neck up to stare into the dark abyss of bookshelves that lined the walls of the room, so tall that Izzy's hornlight couldn't even reach their peaks. A thick, musty scent hung in the air as they trudged through the thick layer of dust that lined the floor - the remnants of the thousands of books that had once inhabited the library intact, but had long since disintegrated to dust with the passage of time.
Izzy held her hoof out to signal Sunny to stop, as a strong magical signature tingled her horn the moment she walked in. The thick crystal walls had blocked her from sensing it before, but... "There's something enchanted in this room, and I mean big-time enchanted. I...don't know how I know that, but I know." Much like how the pegasi who got their flight back had mysteriously also learned how to use it, Izzy had knowledge that she definitely didn't have before magic had been restored...not that she was complaining. It was already proving itself useful.
Sunny's expression brightened noticeably at the news, having dipped sharply when she'd noticed the shelves seemed bare of ancient tomes. "Really?! Do you think you can pinpoint what it is, maybe float it over?"
Closing her eyes as her brow furrowed in concentration, she felt her magic latch onto a rectangular shape on one of the shelves far above them; she had to assume it was a book, though the aura she felt from the enchantments that protected it was...powerful unlike anything she had ever experienced before, yet with a welcoming air of friendliness to it. If she had to describe its sparkle as a color, it would probably be...lavender. "I've got something! It's coming down to us now." Izzy exclaimed; even with her eyes closed, she could sense the excitement in Sunny from how she began to anxiously shuffle her hooves against the floor next to her.
A thick, hardcover book with a deep purple coloration, shimmering gold-leaf horseshoe emblem, and most strikingly, a crystalline form of Twilight's cutie mark on the cover slowly floated down to them in Izzy's twinkling magenta aura, depositing itself securely into Sunny's outstretched forehooves.
"Oh my gosh..." Sunny mouthed breathlessly. The book was impossibly pristine, despite having sat for an untold number of years in the depths of this destroyed building in the woods, though the earth mare glossed over this incongruous detail in favor of the fact that she was holding an actual, tangible relic of ancient Equestria!
Finally opening her eyes, Izzy took stock of what she'd plucked from the higher shelves, focusing her horn-light on the cover as Sunny held it in shaky, reverent hooves. "Sheesh, no wonder I was able to find that book no-problem. It's lit up with so many enchantments that it's making my horn go crazy!"
"Which means...maybe the pony who left it here wanted it to be found? Wait a second," Sunny theorized, a thoughtful look of confusion growing on her face, "If unicorns lost their magic, wouldn't that mean enchantments like the ones on this book would've disappeared and left it to crumble away like the rest? Something doesn't add up..."
While Sunny was busy monologuing to herself, Izzy's attention trailed off to a second horn-tingling enchantment on another shelf of the library. Lighting her horn as she focused on the source, a second book resolved itself in front of her - and she had to struggle not to burst out in a fit of giggles as she read the title to herself: 101 Ways to Please Your Lover. 'Well hellllooooo, ancient Equestrian sex-book...definitely gonna be reading you later~' Izzy thought mischievously, quietly slipping the lewd tome into her saddlebag.
The unicorn finished her clandestine acquisition of erotic paraphernalia the very same moment that Sunny finished talking to herself. "...But I guess we can't really investigate that right now, so it's probably best to make a note of it and move on. Sigh. Alright, Izz. We've got enough ancient artifacts to give a museum a run for their bits, and the sun's starting to get pretty low, so what d'you say we leave?" Sunny asked, carefully slipping the decorated book into one of her saddlebags as she glanced in the unicorn's direction.
"Totally! I think if we stick around here much longer, the fur on my neck is gonna stay standing on end forever!" Izzy replied cheerily, leading the way with her horn-light as the two of them left the once-grand palace, her phone floating in front of them as its compass led the way.
Sunny gave a lingering glance back to the yawning blackness of the entryway as they left, let a creeped-out shudder roll through her, and then focused on following Izzy.
By the time the two mares walked through the entry of the Crystal Tea Room for the third time that day, they were thoroughly exhausted. Hours of walking and the emotional weight of their discoveries in that dead place rested heavily in their minds, leading both of them to drag their hooves.
Alphabittle noticed both of them as soon as they entered, wordlessly waving them over to the bar with one hoof. Some ponies gave them a passing glance as they trudged by, though they made awkward attempts to look anywhere else once they were hit with the palpable aura of exhaustion that the two mares exuded. "Head on into the back. I'll debrief the two of you once I make sure my customers are taken care of." Alpha said lowly, a towel and kettle floating in his magic as he dried out the interior of the freshly-washed container. Sunny and Izzy nodded with utterances of "thanks," weaving their way past tables before passing through the doorway into Alpha's living area.
Both mares shared in a relieved sigh as they plopped down onto the loveseat beside one another, shrugging off their saddlebags onto the floor nearby as Izzy floated over a pitcher of water and some drinking glasses. Izzy levitated over the last two snack bars from her saddlebag, depositing one of them into Sunny's hooves as she began to scarf down her own.
After a few minutes, Alpha trotted into the room, taking a seat in a chair facing them as he eyed the saddlebags sitting on the floor. "So, what've you two got for me?"
Quickly swallowing the bite she'd been chewing, Izzy was the first to answer him. "Oh, you are gonna flip once you see what we found!" she said excitedly, clopping her hooves together as the memory crystals and purple book floated onto the table in her aura.
Both mares shared a knowing, ecstatic grin at the way Alphabittle's eyes lit up upon seeing the book. "You two really found this out there in the woods?" he asked incredulously, taking the book into his own magical grip as he opened the front cover to check the title page, "Well, I'll be..." he added, causing both mares to get up from their seats and take a look.
The Journal of Friendship
Princess Twilight Sparkle & Friends
"Stars above..." Sunny gasped, her eyes boggling out of her head at the discovery.
"You can say that again..." Izzy agreed, delighting in the way Sunny's eyes sparkled as they hungrily poured over every square inch of the title page. It was a look of genuine, heart-melting joy; the sort of thing that Izzy found herself wanting to see as often as possible...
The two mares were drawn out of their reverie as Alpha continued speaking. "...So! Heh, this is going to sound bad, but I didn't actually expect the two of you to find much out there. Like I said, it was just a rumor I wanted you two to investigate for me...but..." Looking down at the book once again in his magical grip, he gave a faux sigh of defeat before laughing heartily, "Hah! I should've known that two of the saviors of Equestria were too special to avoid stumbling neck-deep into another adventure!"
Thumping Sunny on the back with almost enough force to stagger her, he gave her a respectful smirk. "No doubt about it. You're definitely the right mare for my daughter--"
With a shared gasp of excitement, the two mares embraced each other with wide-eyed smiles, the larger unicorn glomping her onto the couch as the two of them fervently snuggled one another. At a loud hoofclop from Alpha, though, both of them broke apart with fierce blushes as they refocused on the stallion in the room.
"A-hem! I wasn't finished. Anything serious happens to her on your crazy adventures, you're gonna have to answer to me. Do we have an understanding?" Alpha said firmly, his gaze narrowing as he addressed Sunny, "This history you two are starting to uncover is shaping up to be quite the big discovery, and we all know how your "big discovery" ended up last time. Izzy was nearly killed more times than I can count, and all I could do was watch...I can't bear the thought of her being hurt. Or worse."
"Okay, to be fair, one of those near-death experiences was kiiinda Hitch and Zipp's fault..." Izzy muttered under her breath, though neither of them acknowledged the commentary.
"You have my word as a savior of Equestria, as your daughter's mare, and as your friend, Alphabittle. I would do anything to prevent Izzy from getting hurt." Sunny replied firmly.
"Mmmmh...although I hope it never comes to that. Alright, then. You have my blessing, Sunny," he said with finality.
...And with that, the two mares squee'd with delight as they excitedly glomped one another, sharing a quick kiss - that didn't advance any further, not with Alpha right there in front of them - as they delighted in an exploration well done, and the well-deserved reward for their efforts.
As the two of them trotted out of Alpha's cafe, leaving the warm atmosphere and excited chatter of the townsfolk behind them for the shimmering crystals and sparkling sky of a Bridlewood night, Izzy glanced over at Sunny as they cantered down the street. Hesitantly, she began to speak, "Hey, Sunny..."
Tearing her eyes away from the beautiful crystals to answer her marefriend, Sunny was struck speechless by the way the moonlight and the bright glow of the crystals seemed to make her shimmer in the night, like a gorgeous fae specter who'd come to spirit away her heart and soul, never to release them back to her. Though...she supposed that wasn't exactly untrue...
Shaking her head to clear her thoughts as a healthy blush lit her cheeks, she answered, "Y-yeah, Izz?"
"D'you wanna come back to my place?" As Sunny's eyes widened, Izzy quickly continued with a hint of embarassment, "Not for anything like that! Gosh, Sun, get your mind out of the gutter~...It's just, it's probably too late to head back to Maretime Bay tonight." Izzy noted as she nuzzled into the other mare's mane, taking in the citrusy, earthy notes of her scent as she did so.
"Mmh, you're just saying that 'cause you want me in your bed~" Sunny fired back with a rare burst of flirtatious confidence...which didn't last long as her blush intensified. 'D-did I really just say that? This mare is such a bad influence!'
"Ohoho, I think you're projecting~ And I didn't hear a no~" Izzy singsonged, booping Sunny on the snoot as she smiled impishly, much to the other mare's further embarrassment. Sunny's attempt at a rebuttal was cut off as the unicorn held up a placating hoof. "Lead the way, Sunny-bun!"
And so, grumbling and blushing to herself adorably all the while, Sunny did as asked.
The next chapter in the saga is complete! A plot is developing, a relationship is advancing...where could it all lead~?
And, this chapter's been completed not a moment too soon...
You guys are awesome. With all my heart, I thank each and every one of you. 
~RD 🦈
Pre-read by spikls and n3k1dsk1llz!
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Giggity.
You gonna continue this?
11121554
well Izzy still needs to try the things in the book, among other things
poor sunny's going through hell and back to get a gf. what a simp lol
is this foreshadowing a clopfic sequel?