Chapter 4
Starlight finds herself walking back towards the town of Sire's Hollow. She's just graduated from school and is preparing to set off and see the world, and hopefully find her place in it. On her back is a saddlebag full of books and scrolls, all ranging in topics, from small town economics to infrastructure planning. If one were to see the assortment of materials in the saddlebags, they'd think the lilac unicorn they belonged to was going to be a civil servant of some sort.
Moving about the houses, Starlight finds her way to her childhood home. Knocking on the door, Starlight is startled to see the door open from her gentle tapping. Becoming nervous, she pushes it open a bit more and pokes her muzzle in.
"Dad?" she calls out. "Anypony?"
Silence is the only response. A glance inside reveals the entryway, with table against one wall, hat rack on another, and photographs and paintings on either.
Ignoring a feeling of dread, Starlight steps inside, closing the door shut behind her. Moving through the hallway, she tries calling out again.
"Hello?"
Again, she gets no response. Growing a bit more fearful, she decides to head for the kitchen to grab a knife. As she steps into the kitchen, she sees a note pinned to the refrigerator with her name in big letters. Cautiously, she approaches and reads the note.
Starlight,
Stellar Flare and I decided to have a brunch together. We're at the old cafe close to the train station. You can wait here for us to get back or you can come join us for lunch. It'll be my treat, of course.
With love,
Your Dear Old Dad
Starlight breathes a sigh of relief, only to suddenly grow very anxious. She came from the train station, and she passed that cafe, but there was nopony there.
*BA-DUNK*
Starlight lets out a squeal as she turns towards the noise. She deduces quickly that it came from the basement. Grabbing a flashlight from a nearby drawer, she heads to the basement.
Opening the door, Starlight looks down the stairs at the concrete floor at the end of about twelve steps. She doesn't dare call out, lest there be an intruder that decides her presence her and now is threatening. As quietly as possible, meaning that she uses her magic to prevent the wooden stairs from creaking, Starlight heads down into the basement.
The room at the bottom of the stairs is a decent size. The basement itself is divided into two rooms: one for storage, and another for the water heater and furnace for when the winter gets rather cold. Starlight moves to the center and pulls on the cord for the overhead light.
The room lights up and reveals what the mare had seen more or less her whole life: boxes. Her father was a bit of a pack rat, and the room contained more than a few odds and ends. Old books, enchanting crystals, obsolete technology and knick knacks from various adventures over the old stallion's life.
What is different, however, is a small glass dish with four cutouts in the corners.
"Huh?" Starlight says aloud, confused by the sight before her. "Why would dad have an ashtray?"
Leaning down to inspect the glass item, Starlight's attention is called to her right, where she sees something she knows ought not be there; a hole in the wall.
It's as tall as a pony, and appears to go back for a short distance, but begins to go downwards after a point. Propped up next to the hole are two shovels, both with what appears to be fresh dirt on them.
Starlight walks over to inspect the shovels but quickly stops. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots movement inside the tunnel.
"Dad?" she calls out, trepidation in her voice.
She's answered with a sudden scurrying of hooves going further into the tunnel. Looking in, Starlight again sees movement, like a pony's head disappearing deeper into the darkness. Gulping down a breath, Starlight grabs one of the shovels in her magic and cautiously makes her way into the tunnel.
Examining it in the light from the basement, she can see the tunnel is not just dirt, but looks to be coated in something akin to epoxy. Lighting up the flashlight, she points it at the walls to take a closer look.
The epoxy isn't actually epoxy, but similar to bee's wax. The lack of buzzing tells her it isn't bee's wax, and has her curious, albeit morbidly, about what actually made the material.
She gets to the end of the tunnel where it starts to slow down and pauses. Should she really keep going? It's a strange tunnel she's never seen before and covered in a strange substance she can't identify.
"That's definitely a sign that I should turn around right now and go find help" Starlight says to herself, and does just that.
However, as she looks back towards the tunnel entrance, she suddenly finds nothing but a wall of the same wax-covered dirt facing her.
"Wh-what?!" she gasps out as her magic flickers and she drops the shovel and flashlight. Cursing herself, she picks up both and looks around again, trying to figure out if there's another way to get out.
Unfortunately for he, the solution appears to be following the tunnel further, so she reluctantly does so, keeping her eyes peeled for any signs of danger.
Putting one hoof in front of the next, Starlight keeps moving further down into the tunnel, the slope gradual and just as covered in wax as all of the walls before, except for stones that appear to have been placed in the wax to help provide traction. Cautiously making her way down, Starlight tries to come up with an answer as to what could have made a tunnel like this. She has a few ideas, but none of them are good.
What she sees after coming around a corner dispels many of those ideas, and leaves her with one that fills her with absolute terror.
The tunnel opens up into a cavern big enough to hold her father's house. There are stalactites and stalagmites scattered about, a product of a spring head somewhere above in the rocks. The room has glowing mushrooms providing a small amount of light, but Starlight's attention is called to the objects hanging from the ceiling.
She sees her father, Stellar Flare, and another pony she can't identify. All three of them are suspended in what look like butterfly cocoons. Only Starlight knows they're not butterfly cocoons.
A sudden scurrying tears her attention away from the three ponies as she looks around. She sees movement around one of the stalagmites. Gathering her determination, she brandishes the shovel defensively.
"Why Starlight?"
The voice calls out to her, and she thinks to ignore it, but two facts stop her from doing that: the voice is her father's, and it's coming from behind her.
Looking back, she's greeted with her father looking at her from inside the cocoon. He looks at her with sad eyes.
"Why did you fail everypony?" he asks her.
Starlight tries to deny what she's seeing. She knows what she's dealing with now, and knows she can't trust any of her senses.
"This isn't real" she tells herself as she continues to look around in a defensive posture.
"You couldn't help anypony" her father's voice continues. "Why did you abandon them, Starlight? Why did you abandon your village?"
Starlight fights against her feelings, knowing that giving in and reacting is exactly what is desired of her.
"Why couldn't you do great things like he did?"
It's a voice Starlight recognizes almost as quickly as her father. She turns an eye back to see a now awake Stellar Flare looking at her with pity.
"Sunny has gone on to do such great things" Stellar tells Starlight. "He's a great wizard now. Why couldn't you have turned out like he did?"
The urge not to say anything or give in to her feelings is getting harder to fight, but Starlight keeps it up, reacting to another quick flash of movement within the cave.
"You've failed everypony Starlight."
The third pony speaks, and Starlight goes cold as she turns to face it.
It was Sunny, still a foal.
"You've failed everypony" he reiterates. "You created a utopia and let it be destroyed. You allowed their minds to be twisted by those strangers, let them be convinced your idea was a mistake."
"The village is lost now. They'll bicker and argue over the best course of action, and the village will suffer for it. Their uniqueness will taint the very buildings themselves, and the town will die out."
"And it's all your fault, Starlight."
The lilac mare can't hold it back any longer.
"It wasn't my fault!" she shouts at the three ponies. "I did my best. It's those other ponies fault!"
"No, Starlight. It's yours."
A fourth voice she'd never heard before speaks directly behind her. A chill runs up her spine as she realizes exactly what it was she's heard. Despite not wanting to, she turns around and faces the new pony.
Except, it's not a pony.
Two large, blue and luminous eyes are staring back at her, with only a slightly lighter colored spot giving any indication as to where the two eyes were currently looking.
And they were looking at Starlight.
"You're the one who let that village get tainted" the voice mocks as the creature steps forward, one hole-filled hoof before the other.
"You should've had them captured and imprisoned, but you didn't" it says again, it's serpent like tongue flicking at the air.
"And more importantly," the voice says as the creature licks its fangs and smiles, "you let your guard down."
Starlight screams as the changeling in front of her pounces.
Starlight wakes up again, gasping for breath. Her heart is racing, and she's been sweating like a pony having ran a marathon. She looks around and sees nothing but tent and a small fire burning outside.
"You were having another nightmare" a voice says to her.
Starlight jumps at the sound of the voice, her dream having caused her anxiety to be much more elevated than normal. Eventually, she calms down enough to register the sound of the voice, as well as who it belongs to, and then notices a rather plain looking muffin sitting just outside of the tent. She scowls.
"No" Starlight says defiantly, and then punctuates the point by striking the muffin with her hoof, sending it towards the fire.
A pink hoof catches the muffin mid air, leaving no doubt as to which pony it was. In truth, Starlight was a little surprised that the cyan pegasus wasn't there to taunt her about waking up from a nightmare. Maybe she'd managed to get a hour or more of sleep this time around.
"Why are you so mean?" the pink mare asked.
Starlight rolls her eyes at the question. "Are you really that dumb? You took my village away from me! You took my ponies away from me! You do something like that and expect me to be all 'sunshine and rainbows' about it?"
"Those ponies weren't happy" Pinkie retorts.
Starlight scowls at the mare.
"Without their cutie marks, they were incomplete" Pinkie continues. "They lost their purpose, and they had a constant feeling that they were missing something, like a cupcake without frosting and sprinkles."
"What the hay does an unfrosted cupcake have to do with the ponies in my village?!" Starlight asks incredulously. "My ponies were happy, there were never any arguments, and we all worked together just fine."
"No, you didn't."
Starlight is caught off guard by the accusation. "Wh-what did you say?"
"Your village wasn't working" Pinkie elaborates. "Sure, ponies did their assigned tasks, but they weren't happy. There weren't any new ideas to help the village grow or be happier. A town without anypony different grows stale, and eventually nopony wants to live there."
"If any of the ponies were that unhappy, they only needed to come see me and I would've let them be on their way."
"No, you wouldn't have."
Starlight glares at the mare with fire in her eyes, and not from the small campfire just outside. "What did you just insinuate about me?!"
Pinkie now peeks her head into the tent. The sight catches Starlight off guard and the fire in her eyes dies out some. The mare looking back at her no longer has her poofy mane, but one that is straight and hanging down to the ground, the ends dragging through the loose dirt of the desert.
"I said you wouldn't let ponies leave" Pinkie continues, now moving inside the tent and towards Starlight. The lilac unicorn is suddenly fearful as she moves back away from the mare advancing on her.
"If somepony came to you and said they wanted to leave the village and demanded their cutie mark back, you wouldn't give it to them!"
Pinkie punctuates her point by jabbing at Starlight with her hoof. Starlight stumbles backwards and out the other side of the tent, a desperate attempt to get away from the clearly crazed mare coming towards her.
"No, you wouldn't give that pony their cutie mark!" Pinkie barks out, her voice having elevated in volume slightly. "You would have your goon squad gather them up and take them to that 'fun house' of yours and have them listen to that nonsensical record again and again! You'd do it until they were driven mad and broken, and then you'd have somepony keep an eye on them to make sure they didn't run off and tell somepony."
"Well, Harmony told us about your town, Starlight. We might not have known what you were doing before you came here, but we sure as sugar knew it wasn't any good, and now we've put a stop to it. Nopony will ever have to experience what you did to those other ponies, you... you meanie pants!"
The pink mare does an about face and sits back down in front of the camp fire.
Starlight doesn't say anything. In truth, she has nothing to say. Pinkie's accusations were too on the nose for her to even attempt a rebuttal.
Ponies did come to her and voice their displeasure, and said they wanted to leave.
Upon hearing that, Starlight did just what Pinkie had accused her of. She would cast a quick stunning spell on the pony before they could react, and then she would have them re-educated. Once she was sure it took, she'd have one of her other ponies stay with them to make sure they didn't have any plans to attempt sneaking off in the night.
A feeling of cloth on her back breaks the lilac unicorn from her thoughts. Looking over, she sees the white unicorn with a big purple mane looking at her. She makes to scowl but the white unicorn is faster.
"Not a word" she says sternly. "You've made my friend unhappy. If you speak one more insult, I will turn you into a ponnequin and you can spend the rest of your life being prodded with sewing needles and pins as I fashion dresses and other garments on your body, and each time I poke you, I'll gain a small amount of satisfaction that you are receiving a punishment for your horrible acts."
The unicorn turns away before adding "If I find that blanket dirtier than it already is, then I will have you wash every single piece of fabric I own, and I have more bolts of material than you could possibly imagine."
Starlight says nothing for the remainder of the night. Of the six ponies in this group of friends, she did not expect these two to act the way they had just did to her.
Stats
Page generated in 0.015 seconds
Total duration
616 users online
748,877 hits today, 1,870,739 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Um...
Rarity? Is there something you want to tell your friends? Maybe corroborate an alibi in case some ponies come looking for their loved ones who were last seen headed to your shop?
Oooh Dang! Pinkie did NOT hold back!
Also I knew Starlight wouldn't have let the ponies leave even if they voiced their unhappiness and wanted their cutie marks back
Can't wait for the next chapter
.... yep. Thats the Rarity that became my favorite.
A definite drama queen, averse to dirt, and a few other flaws. But willing to do whatever is required to right a wrong. And she has a dangerous combination of cunning, esoteric knowledge, and talent that means she will find the flaws on your plan and drive the mother of all seam rippers through them.
Starlight, I highly suggest you shut your mouth and do exactly as the white unicorn says. She isn't bluffing.
I loved pinkie pie in this. She may be bubbly, naive, and sometimes a airhead, but she’s not stupid. Everything she spat was facts. I also loved rarity, sometimes villains need threats to be put in their place and starlight is one of those villains.