> Legends Never Die
>  by bookhorse125
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Hidden in the Clutter
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you woke up one morning and you couldn't see outside, you could almost forget what had just happened in Maretime Bay only a few days ago. You could pretend that all three pony tribes were still separated, and you could think to yourself, "I wonder what kinds of new stuff Canterlogic is coming up with." Some ponies wouldn't be sure why you would want to do that, but others would love to forget recent events.

Such as Sprout, for instance. The former deputy of Maretime Bay was sitting in jail for his crimes, but Hitch was doing everything he could to shorten his sentence (however begrudgingly; some ponies wondered if Sunny was really the one behind it, what with her forgiving attitude these days), but he still had a long way to go before getting released. His mother Phyllis had gotten off easier. While she was partially blamed for Sprout's take-over of the town, she only had to pay a fee, and close down Canterlogic until she could come up with a better use for the factory. She managed to do this by designing different gadgets for the different tribes that would make their lives easier: horn polish for the unicorns, flying obstacle courses for the pegasi, etc., etc. Sprout was upset that his mom was getting off easier than he had, and, at first, kept trying to press charges against Hitch for abandoning his post as sheriff and going off on an adventure with a fugitive earth pony, two pegasi, and a unicorn, but Hitch just pointed out that, since Sprout was in jail, he wasn't in any position to press charges against anypony else.

Some of the townsponies were still skittish around the unicorns and the pegasi, but nopony ran away screaming whenever they saw a horn or a pair of wings. Sunny was delighted by the change and continued to promote the union of the three tribes by dragging Hitch along to visit Zipp and Pipp in Zephyr Heights, and Izzy in Bridlewood, although Hitch didn’t seem as reluctant to go along as Sunny had thought he would. Besides, it wasn’t like Sunny had a home of her own to stay at. Her lighthouse had been destroyed in the fight a few days earlier, and while she and her friends were making an effort to clean up the mess and build her a new home, they hadn’t made much progress beyond rescuing everything Sunny valued from the wreckage and cleaning up the rubble. For now, Sunny was staying with Izzy in Bridlewood, as she was hoping that, by staying with the unicorns, the only ponies with physical magic besides the pegasi, she may get some answers about her own magic.

Sunny’s golden wings and horn had only lasted a day, and when she’d woken up the following morning she was disappointed to find out that they were gone. She had always loved the idea of magic and flying, and once she’d finally had an opportunity to do either of those things, they had been taken away from her.

The morning on which this story begins dawned bright and sunny, without a cloud in the sky. Even as far away as Bridlewood, one could look up and see a pegasus or two swooping through the sky, enjoying the adrenaline rush that filled their veins as their wings lifted them off the ground for the first time in years. Sunny blinked open her eyes and sat up in bed, her luscious pink hair a mess, as usual. She sighed as she fumbled to braid it, tying the end, as usual, with a blue rubber band. She glanced around her room, which was full of Izzy’s “unicycling” gadgets and gizmos. The chandelier was made of glass shards tied together with string so thin it was almost invisible. Small windows near the roof allowed slants of sunlight to filter in, lighting up the multicolored shards so that they gleamed and shone, lighting up the whole room with rainbow reflections that reminded Sunny of the stained glass windows in Zephyr Heights. The flower-shaped tea table that Izzy had shown them when they’d first arrived was sitting in the middle of the room, currently set in tea party mode. A large shelf took up an entire wall, the shelves lined with colorful boxes stuffed to the brim with all kinds of trinkets Sunny didn’t even know the names of. The shelf could rotate to bring whatever box you needed to the level that you could reach. Multiple misshapen projects cluttered the room; things Izzy had gotten started on but never had a chance to finish. Now that her magic was back, however, she could complete three projects per day, when it had previously taken her at least a day and a half to do just one. Sunny’s bed was stuffed into a corner, the turquoise frame contrasting nicely with the bright yellow, pink, and green sheets with patterns of hearts on them.

Spotting her turquoise saddlebag with a star drawn out in a slightly darker shade of turquoise hanging on a chair, Sunny remembered what that day was. She gave an excited jump and proceeded to double check her bag to make sure it held everything she needed. Once she was sure it did, she slung it over her head, peeked out of her room, and tiptoed down the hall, peeking into Izzy’s room. The purple unicorn was sprawled out on her own bed, limbs tangled with her crazy mane, blankets askew, mouth open as she snored, a single thread of saliva threatening to drop onto the bed. She snorted in her sleep, twitching slightly, and turned over, flinching as a bright beam of sunlight hit her face.

“Izzy!” Sunny whisper-shouted. She didn’t want to wake her best friend, but the two of them had made plans for that day, and Sunny didn’t want to be late. “Izzy, wake up!”

“Not right now, Mommy, I’ll do it in a few hours,” Izzy mumbled sleepily. “Imma just go back to sleep…”

“Izzy!” Sunny said reproachfully, trotting into the room and nudging her friend. “Come on, Izzy, we’ve got things to do, places to be!”

“Sleep…” the unicorn moaned.

“No sleep!” Sunny insisted. “Wake up now!” She grabbed the edge of the blanket, which was so tangled with the pony that, had they been the same color, it would have been hard to tell where the blanket stopped and where the pony began. Yanking hard, Sunny tucked the blanket out from under Izzy, righting the unicorn so that she snapped to attention, eyes wide, hoof hastily raised in a salute.

“Whatever it is, I don’t know who ate the chocolate muffins!” Izzy cried, unblinking. “It wasn’t me! But I did see Alphabittle’s little critters near it, so I thought somepony ought to hide the muffins in a secure place, and there wasn’t anywhere else to put them! I - Oh, hi Sunny!” Shaking her head and blinking the sleepiness from her eyes, Izzy studied her friend. “What was the reason to wake me up at the crack of dawn?”

“Izzy, the sun’s been up for, like, an hour,” Sunny insisted. “Now come on, we’re going to Zephyr Heights today, remember? Pipp invited us to come see her performance, and I kind of think we should, you know, since we ruined her last one.”

“That wasn’t ruining! It was more like… unintentional sabotage?” Izzy tossed her head so that her mane fell over her shoulder and was out of her face, however temporarily. “Anyway, we had very good reasons for what we did, right? We had to try and get the magic back. And I thought we were going because Pipp’s our friend.”

“Well, yeah, that too,” Sunny said hurriedly, not meaning to leave the critical fact out. “Now come on, let’s grab something for breakfast and go. If we hurry, we can make it in time for the performance and have a little time to chat with Zipp and Pipp before it starts.” She grabbed Izzy’s hoof and tugged her out of her room and down the stairs. Izzy yawned on their way out and used her magic to grab a brush from the clutter that filled her room as well. The handle nearly poked her in the eye, and she yelped “Ouch!” before frustratingly grabbing it with her hoof and tugging it though her thick locks.

Sunny dashed into the kitchen and searched the cupboard for something edible that they could take on the road. “Cereal… nope. Orange juice… nope. Apples… sure, why not? Hey, Izzy, ca-”

Izzy looked up with berry juice all over her face and swallowed. “What?” she asked as Sunny struggled to contain her giggles. “Pie is a great and nourishing breakfast! It has grain, fruit, totally nutritious! And if you add some ice cream, there’s dairy as well…” Izzy started pawing at the cupboards.

“Izzy! No ice cream for breakfast!” Sunny reprimanded. “Just come on.” She stuffed an apple in her mouth and tossed one to Izzy on her way out the door. A unicorn passing by nearly fainted but didn’t, although they didn’t look much more reassured at the sight of an earth pony trying to pry an apple from their mouth. The unicorn muttered “Um…” and ran off towards the more populated part of Bridlewood.

Sunny finally pried the apple loose from her teeth and chomped down on it, devouring it in three bites. Izzy trotted out after her, the sleepiness gone from her ecstatic face. “So, how are we going to get to Zephyr Heights?” she asked innocently, her apple nowhere in sight. Sunny grumbled at the fact that Izzy had not gotten her breakfast stuck between her teeth and turned in the direction of the mountain. A purple pegasi let out a whoop as he flew back towards his home.

“We follow the pegasi,” Sunny said aloud, even though she now knew her way around Equestria like the back of her hoof. She trotted on, soon exiting the woods and passing the unicorns struggling to take down the racial signs forbidding the entrance of non-unicorns. A few waved to her, but a blue unicorn with a frosty white mane turned his back on her, making a big scene of covering his nose with his hoof and holding his head high, clearly portraying his feelings for the other tribes. He didn’t behave much better towards Izzy, who came bounding out of the forest to a much warmer welcome than Sunny. Now that all unicorns could have a much more cheerful attitude like her’s, everypony couldn’t help but like Izzy.

Sunny shot an alarmed glance at the rude unicorn, but he continued to pretend like she didn’t exist. She tried to ignore her hurt feelings and continued along the path towards Zephyr Heights. She’d expected ponies who wouldn’t embrace the change in culture as well as her friends had, but that didn’t stop the wave of internal pain she was feeling.

The day proved to be another beautiful one, with a crisp breeze lifting Sunny’s braid off her shoulder and giving her delightful chills as the scarlet and gold trees around them shed their leaves, coating the dirt path ahead of them in rich, crisp colors. She trotted happily along with Izzy, talking cheerfully about all sorts of things, like what Izzy was planning to do with that abandoned tire that was sitting in her living room, or how Sunny wanted her lighthouse to look when they rebuilt it.

“OH! You know what? I never finished my hundred forty-two questions for a unicorn,” Sunny remembered, fishing around in her saddlebag for her father’s old journal. She pulled it out and flipped to the bookmarked page, taking a deep breath, preparing to ask the remaining hundred thirty-five questions.

“Oh, boy,” Izzy mumbled, grinning at her friend as she began.

“Have you ever used your magic to levitate yourself? Well, obviously, we can skip that one, because you had no magic, but did you ever want to use your magic to levitate yourself?”

“Huh. I guess I never really thought of that,” Izzy said, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “Want to give it a go?”

“Wait, what?” Sunny jerked her head up and stared at Izzy as the unicorn lit up her horn, surrounding herself in a purple aura as she lifted off the ground, wobbling dangerously in the air, hooves searching for something to stand on. “Woah,” she cried, struggling to right herself. Finally she floated gently down to the ground, and her magic disappeared with a pop, and she sprawled out on the forest floor.

“...I’m just going to mark that as, ‘yes’,” Sunny decided, pulling out a pen and writing it down before slipping the pen back into her bag. “Wait… what’s this?” She ran her hoof over the page, feeling the uneven bumps in the paper. “It feels… thicker than usual.” Izzy scrambled to her feet and trotted over, inspecting the journal as Sunny held it out to her.

“Huh, you’re right,” Izzy decided. “I wonder…” She used her magic to lift the page so that it was standing vertically and inspected the edges. “This looks like two pages were stuck together,” Izzy said. “But look, our hooves won’t be able to do anything to get them unstuck.” She brushed her hoof against the edge of the paper, showing how it yielded no result. “I think we need to use magic. Stand back.”

Sunny dutifully took a step back, but watched her friend apprehensively. She knew that none of the unicorns had very good control over their magic yet, and her journal was very special to her, but she decided to trust Izzy as the unicorn’s horn lit up, and she carefully pried the two pages apart. A folded up note tumbled out, positioned like it was supposed to lie flat to make the page smooth, but it had been jostled out of alignment, so Sunny had felt a bump.

“Woah,” Sunny whispered, stepping forward. “What…”

“I don’t know,” Izzy admitted, “but look!” She brushed the folded piece of paper off the page. “It’s a note!”

Sunny came around next to Izzy, and her eyes widened as she recognized her late father’s hoof writing.

My dearest Sunny,

If you are reading this, then it means that all three tribes have been reunited, for you must have somehow befriended a unicorn to break the seal around this page. In all of my research, I have discovered a paste that, theoretically, only responds to magic, and I wanted to make sure that this note would find you when Equestria is a much safer place.

Dear Sunny, you know the story I tell you every night, and I am telling you that it is very much true. There was a unicorn who was as bright as the sun, and she did befriend lots of different kinds of ponies, and they did show all of Equestria the magic of friendship. But she did much more than that. I was not able to find out what, but I did find something that even I wasn’t sure what it was. But I know that there is more to this world than I have been able to record in this journal. So I am asking you to do it.

This map is possibly one of the only things left that could give us some answers of what happened back then.

Please, find out what happened to make the tribes separate. Please find out where this could lead. And don’t give up, my little pony. If you’ve gotten this far, then you can do so much more. I believe in you.

Sunny looked at Izzy, who looked curiously back at her. “So… what does your dad mean, exactly?”

“I’m not sure,” Sunny admitted, “but I bet this will help us figure it out.” She pawed at the folded piece of paper with her hoof. “My dad said this is a map,” she said, remembering what his note had said. “So…” Her voice trailed off as she unfolded the paper, and her jaw dropped. The map was old and faded, with crisp wrinkled edges and dim colors. The shape of the drawing on the map was faintly recognizable, but it didn’t look like any map of Equestria Sunny had ever seen. Except…

“We have to get back to Zephyr Heights,” Sunny decided. “Zipp offered to store all my old things until my lighthouse is rebuilt. Do you think you might be able to teleport us there?”

“Teleport?” Izzy asked, appalled. “Sunny, I can barely levitate stuff. How do you expect me to teleport two ponies halfway across the continent?”

“Please?” Sunny’s eyes widened, big and pleading. “Just try?”

Izzy sighed and lit up her horn, the look on her face one of immense concentration. Sunny stared at it with a hopeful expression. A bright light surrounded them both, before it suddenly fizzled out. Sunny looked up with a sad look on her face.

“It didn’t work-” She stopped. They were no longer in a forest. They were surrounded by pegasi.
> City in the Clouds
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“It worked!” Izzy said in awe, then jumped around in a circle, ignoring the pegasi who had fainted on the sidewalk. “It worked, it worked, it worked!”

“I can’t believe it,” Sunny said, looking around.

“I know!” Izzy said excitedly, pausing in her jumping to help a woozy pegasus to his feet. When he saw she had a horn, he looked like he might almost faint again. He spread his wings and wobbled into the sky. “I feel like I could go anywhere now!”

“No, it’s not that,” Sunny said. “I mean, yes, well done, that was amazing. But look how much this place has changed.”

Izzy glanced at their surroundings and said, “Hm, you’re right. Weren’t all the pegasi grounded before?”

“Because they couldn’t fly,” Sunny finished, trotting off towards the palace, which jutted into the sky high above Zephyr Heights. “But now they’ve got all kinds of new things. Look, that restaurant is floating.” And indeed it was. “And over there, that bakery cart is run by an earth pony, and pegasi are buying from it just as much as the others.”

Sunny glanced up at the television screens that dominated the city, larger than all the advertising boards. A pegasus was sitting behind the desk, like usual. She had a light pink coat and a short blonde mane, but her companion wasn’t another pegasi, like usual. It was a unicorn, the one who Izzy said collected crystals. His curly red mane poked out from underneath his hat, and he was listening to the pegasus ask him a question. The other news pegasus who usually sat behind the desk was squished off to the side, but still in the frame.

“A lot of mystery still surrounding those three crystals,” the first pegasus was saying. “When first combined, they did nothing, but later, they did much more than just bring back magic.”

“I know what you mean, Dazzle,” the second pegasus answered. “Such a spectacular light show those things created! And that feeling when we all got our magic back - wow! No amount of words can describe how happy I was when I got to fly for the first time.”

“But that’s not it, Skye,” Dazzle continued. “Eyewitnesses to the event, including our one and only Queen Haven and her daughters, Princesses Zipp and Pipp, say that the crystals surrounded an earth pony and lifted her into the air, giving her a horn and wings before the crystals joined together and magic was officially returned.”

Sunny’s ears perked up. She wanted to hear what other ponies thought about her temporary transformation into an alicorn, as she believed it was called. A grainy photo of Sunny with her wings and horn appeared beside Dazzle as she took the screen. The details were hazy, but the general picture was clear.

“Why would this happen to an earth pony instead of a pegasus or a unicorn?” Dazzle went on in a dramatic voice. “Why wouldn’t it happen to a royal instead of a commoner? Is this picture real, or was it all just a hoax? Why would the crystals suddenly activate then after being joined together before? Well, to answer some of those questions, we’ve brought in a genuine crystal expert from Bridlewood.” She turned to the unicorn beside her. “Why do you think the crystals behaved the way they did?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” the unicorn admitted. “I only collected crystals, but I never knew any that had magical properties. Of course, magic was gone from the world, so that might have something to do with it. But I do know that the crystals activated when all pony tribes came together, and there was one crystal for each pony tribe. And they rallied around the one pony who was mainly responsible for it. I met Sunny Starscout in Bridlewood during her quest for the unicorn crystal, and I can guarantee that what happened in Maretime Bay was no hoax, no stunt meant to promote pony unity. Magic has returned, and it is all thanks to one earth pony who never gave up.”

“What a wonderful thing, isn’t it, Dazzle?” Skye asked. “Next up, an interview with some of Queen Haven’s most trusted advisors, explaining to us how and why they faked the royals’ fabled ability to fly while the rest of us stayed grounded. Stay tuned, Zephyr Heights!”

The screen changed to an advertisement for Pipp Petals’ new perfume, and Izzy rolled her eyes. “I still can’t believe that pony has perfumes made after her…”

Sunny nodded, but her heart had been warmed by what the unicorn had said. She’d felt a stab of annoyance when Dazzle had asked if the whole magic crystal thing was a hoax, but the fact that ponies believed in her and were amazed by what she’d done was something that made her day much better. She turned towards the palace and followed Izzy as the purple unicorn bounded to the elevator, in a much better mood now.

The throne room of the palace was busy with preparations for that night’s royal celebration, with pegasi, earth ponies, and unicorns alike setting up decorations. Pegasi swooped around the ceiling, hanging streamers from the golden arches. Unicorns used their magic to carefully adorn the pillars with ribbons and sparkles, and earth ponies stood behind the drawn back curtain, showing the control panel that used to control the wires that created the idea that the royals could still fly, but now it just controlled lights and sound. The pegasi were dispatched to more aerial tasks, and the unicorns had to do special effects, which left the grounded jobs to the earth ponies.

Two pegasi stood on the dais in front of three thrones. One had a pale white coat with a short, bright pink mane with a single blue stripe and lighter pink highlights. She was flapping her multicolored wings and hovering above the other pony, who was pink with a curly purple mane and paler, fluffy wings folded gently over the hidden cell phone that Sunny always knew was there.

“Pipp! Zipp!” Izzy cried, bounding into the room with a goofy grin on her face as the two pegasi turned towards her.

“Izzy! Good to see you again,” Zipp said, swooping down and landing in front of the unicorn. “And Sunny! Long time no see! How ya been?”

“Fine, just fine,” Sunny said impatiently as Pipp trotted down to meet them and Izzy embraced both sisters. Sunny looked around anxiously, saying, “Zipp, where’s my stuff? I need to look for something, and it might be really important.”

“Well, about that,” Zipp said, giving the other ponies a sly glance that Sunny would have noticed if she hadn’t been so distracted. “I’ve been… keeping it somewhere that might take a while to get to right now, but it won’t be a problem after Pipp’s performance. Mostly because everypony will be distracted. So can we show it to you tonight?”

“Tonight?” Sunny exclaimed as Zipp’s words sank in. “But this is really important!”

“Oh, come on, Sunny, that letter in your dad’s journal has waited for years,” Izzy said, blowing a stray strand of hair out of her face. “I think it can wait a few more hours.”

“Wait, letter in your dad’s journal?” Pipp asked, looking at Sunny quizzically. “What’s that about?”

Sunny let out a frustrated breath. “In my journal there were two pages stuck together that could only be separated by magic, so my dad was making sure that I could only find his note if all three pony tribes had been reunited. He found a really old map that I think I recognize but I’m not sure and I can only be sure if I find my dad’s old things and compare it to some of the maps he has there because that’s the only place that I can think of as to where I might have seen something like this. He also asked me to please find out what happened a long time ago as to what made the pony tribes separate since he was unable to. There, now you know. Any questions?”

Pipp and Zipp stared blankly at her. “So, you found a secret letter from your father inside your journal asking you to follow some old map to find out what happened to make the three pony tribes separate?” Pipp asked, tilting her head with a confused look on her face.

“Yes, that’s exactly it! Now, can I please go find my dad’s old stuff?”

“Sunny, please, just trust me,” Zipp pleaded. “We’ll get your dad’s stuff later. Right now, I think you should go to the library and see if there’s anything that could help you. I could ask my mom if she could help, too. She’s kinda jealous of our little adventure. Now she jumps at any opportunity to have a little fun.”

Sunny sighed as Zipp spread a wing over her back and allowed herself to be led away, Izzy and Pipp chatting happily as they brought up the rear.

“So,” Zipp said conversationally as they wove their way through the palace halls, “what did this letter from your father say?”

Wordlessly, Sunny pulled out her journal and flipped to the new page. Zipp’s blue eyes scanned the note, squinting judgementally.

“Geez. Your father wasn’t exactly one for good hoofmanship,” Zipp commented, taking the book from Sunny and holding it in her wing. Izzy and Pipp appeared next to Zipp, and Pipp read the note, too.

“He was probably in a hurry,” Sunny protested. “He probably wrote it before he… before he disappeared.” She hesitated. Her father’s disappearance was a sore subject for her. Only Hitch knew about it.

“Disappearance?” Izzy asked, coming up next to Sunny and looking at her friend with concern on her face. “Sunny, what happened?”

Sunny closed her eyes, and the four of them walked in silence. “I guess I should tell you,” she said finally. “Since you’re my friends and all. Like, if I can’t trust you with this secret, I can’t trust anypony with this secret.”

“You can trust us,” Pipp said hurriedly, looking slightly hurt.

“Yeah, and you’re going to give your cell phone to me so that you won’t record this conversation and post it on your blog or MyStable page or whatever the heck it is you do on that thing,” Zipp said, holding out her hoof. “Now, Pipp.” Her sister protested, but eventually passed it over, grumbling.

“My father disappeared in the night,” Sunny began. “I don’t know how or why, but I woke up by a crashing sound in his room. I was scared, so I just lay there, unsure of what to do. Eventually I fell back asleep, but when I woke up, I went into his room and found his room a mess. The crash I’d heard was a flower vase, and there was water all over the floor. His glasses were still on the nightstand, but his necklace was lying on the floor like it had been thrown across the room. And he never takes his necklace off. Not even to sleep. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without it.”

Sunny’s throat closed up with unshed tears, and she was quiet for a moment before going on. “I filed a report to the sheriff's office, and it was probably only because Hitch was starting his sheriff's training that they sent out a search party at all. Most ponies didn’t really like my father, and his stories of all three pony kinds once living in harmony. The search team didn’t find anything, but I never really gave up hope that he might be out there somewhere, waiting…”

“Wow, Sunny,” Zipp said after a moment of silence, spreading her wing over Sunny again to comfort her friend. “I had no idea.”

“Me, neither,” Pipp said. “Now, can I have my phone back, please?” Zipp rolled her eyes but tossed it over, and Pipp immediately began doing something on it.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Izzy asked. “You seem kind of down.”

“Talking about my father always makes me feel down,” Sunny insisted, plastering a cheerful smile on her face. “Besides, I have you guys now. And a world to help fix. I don’t have time for my father if I’m going to help bring the pony tribes together again. I think that’s the best I can do for him: make his dream come true.”

“Sunny, what’s your dad’s name?” Pipp asked, distracted by something on her phone.

“Argyle Starshine. Why?”

“Argyle… Starshine. There. Now, do you have a picture of him? Or at least, a description of what he looks like? Never mind, I’ve seen that picture in your house of him. He’s blueish-grayish, right? And he has a blue mane in a ponytail, and… Uh, what’s his cutie mark?”

“Pipp! What are you doing?” Zipp asked, stepping in front of her younger sister so that she couldn’t go any further. “I told you not to post this online!”

“It’s not that! Well, it kind of is, but it’s not like you think! I’m trying to help!” She turned to Sunny. “You say that the search party didn’t find anything, but then again, most ponies didn’t like your father, right? So,” she said when Sunny nodded slowly, “I’m making a stronger search party. Is it okay if I officially report your father missing to everypony?”

“Really? You… you can do that?” Sunny was amazed.

“Well, now that all ponies are somewhat friends again, why not?” Pipp asked, tapping on her screen distractedly. “And if I say that he’s your father, somepony has to see that and think, oh, I should help with that.”

“I guess it’s okay,” Sunny said slowly. “I mean, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble and everything.”

Pipp grinned and continued to tap away on her phone.

“Is everything okay here?” Sunny asked. “I mean, with you… you know, being wanted criminals and all that? Has everypony forgiven you?”

“I would think most ponies have, and if some haven’t, then they’re keeping quiet about it,” Zipp said. “When we got our magic back and returned to Zephyr Heights, obviously some ponies weren’t too happy and demanded that we be arrested.”

“But you explained why you did it, and said you should leave the past behind you, so the majority of Zephyr Heights wanted you back on the throne,” Izzy filled in. “Queen Haven was a bit unpopular those first few days, but she’s won them over again. I think everypony’s just really excited to have their magic back, and that they don’t have to live in fear of other ponies anymore.”

“Why do you say it like you know it already?” Sunny asked, looking at Izzy quizzically. The three other ponies in her company suddenly avoided her gaze. “What? Do you ponies know something I don’t? What is it? Wait, does this have to do with my dad’s stuff?”

“Did you know Hitch is coming tonight?” Pipp said, putting her phone away and looking like she was desperate to change the conversation. “I invited him. Actually, I don’t know for sure if he’s coming tonight, because he’s been pretty busy as sheriff, what with everypony coming together and all that, and he needs to make up for lost time. But he said he would definitely try to make it.”

“Lost time?” Sunny asked, bewildered. “Guys, what is going on?”

The other three ponies just smiled mysteriously and proceeded down the hallway. Sunny stood in place for a while, staring at their retreating backs before following them. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that her friends knew something that she didn’t, and they were purposely hiding it from her.
> A Library and a Sheriff
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunny, Izzy, Zipp, and Pipp spent the rest of the day in the library, looking for the oldest textbooks and studying them for maps that might match the one Sunny’s father had left for her. Well, the first three ponies stayed for the rest of the day. Pipp left after half an hour for dress rehearsals, to which she apologized profusely before Zipp rolled her eyes and said that if Pipp didn’t go now, she would be late, and to just get out of there.

“There’s nothing in Newest Discoveries of Ancient Equestrian Civilization,” Zipp said, tossing a book aside. “But I think that book was written several decades ago, so it’s probably not the most reliable source of information. Exactly how far back are we going?”

“I don’t know,” Sunny answered, scanning through Greatest Magical Discoveries of the Age. She had a feeling that the book was only there because no one bothered to check the books for anything about magic when it had disappeared, or maybe they kept it because they wanted to have them in case their magic came back. Whatever the case, the book was useless. “My dad always started with ‘Once upon a time, many many moons ago in Ancient Equestria.’  So it could be just a couple hundred moons, or it could be in the thousands.”

“Huh. Well, maybe there’s something over here that might help. Izzy, did you find anything?”

“Hm?” Izzy looked up from the book she was pouring over with a dazed look on her face. “Oh, no thanks, I’m not hungry.”

“Izzy!” Zipp said, trotting over through stacks and piles of books littering the floor. The library hadn’t been the cleanest place when they’d found it, and their search for information had left the place practically trashed.

“What are you reading, Izzy?” Sunny asked, looking up from Evolution of Maps from Past until Present, so far not finding anything. The oldest the book dated back to was a time that must have been years after Equestria had fallen to paranoia and mistrust.

“Oh, just a spellbook I found,” Izzy said casually, like it wasn’t a big deal. “It must be from Ancient Equestrian times, because it has some spells that I’ve never heard of. Granted, I haven’t heard of many spells, just the ones in that one book Alphabittle had. But I haven’t found anything about a map, yet, Sunny.”

Her words might as well have ignited a fire in the room. Sunny and Zipp snapped to attention, flying (or, in Sunny’s case, just running really fast) to Izzy’s side and demanding to see the book.

“It’s nothing special,” Izzy protested, but that did little to stop Sunny. She grabbed the book and started flipping through the pages, scanning them as she went. Reaching the end of the book, she dropped it back in front of Izzy, feeling defeated.

“Nothing,” she said gloomily. “Not even a single mention of a map, or what Equestria looked like back then.” She slouched back to Evolution of Maps from Past until Present, but Zipp didn’t look deterred.

“Izzy, where did you find this book?” she inquired.

“Somewhere over there,” Izzy said, waving a hoof vaguely in the direction of a doorway in the wall, leading down a stone tunnel. “I was grabbing two books off the shelf that I thought both looked interesting, and the whole shelf moved away and revealed that tunnel.”

Zipp entered the tunnel, cautiously testing the floor with her hoof in case there were any hidden traps down there. The tunnel finally opened up into a room where nearly every book had been pulled from the shelves and was being packed into boxes. Zipp warily walked in, half expecting some sword-wielding pony to jump out and protect the books from the likes of her, or something like that. She reached into a box and pulled out a book.

She gasped. “Izzy, get over here.”

The unicorn looked up, then at Sunny, who was still defeatedly staring at Evolution of Maps, then back at Zipp, who jerked her head from side to side. Izzy understood and quietly tiptoed over to where the pegasus princess was standing and looked at the book title. She, too, gasped, and locked eyes with Zipp.

“Do you know what this means?” Zipp asked. “We found more proof! Boxes of it!”

“Shouldn’t we tell Sunny?” Izzy asked, shooting a concerned look at her friend, who had put down Evolution of Maps and was searching through a pile for a new book. “I mean, do you know how much this would mean to her? Almost like finding a journal from the Guardians of Harmony themselves.”

“Well, I was thinking this could be perfect for you-know-what,” Zipp said with a sly glance at the unicorn. “Do you think you can smuggle all these out without Sunny noticing?”

“Psh, it’ll be a piece of cake! I can teleport things now! And the spellbook I found is really useful, too!” Izzy’s horn lit up, and her book appeared in front of her with a bright flash.

“Alright, just try to do it as surreptitiously as possible,” Zipp warned. “I’ll bring Pipp with me so we can start organizing, but maybe one of us should stay here to distract Sunny.”

“You stay here,” Izzy decided. “I’ll tell Pipp what we’ve found, but she might not be able to get away from her rehearsal. I’ll try, though.”

Zipp laughed and trotted over to Sunny, saying, “Hey, Sunny, I think there might be something interesting over here,” leading the earth pony over to the opposite end of the library from Izzy and busying her with a book about how Zephyr Heights was founded, thinking that it would actually sound credible enough that Sunny wouldn’t be suspicious, but written during a time period and by a pony that wouldn’t give much away. Just another useless book.

Meanwhile, Izzy lit up her horn and teleported away all the boxes. She quietly left the library while Zipp distracted Sunny and left in search of Pipp.

Instead, she ran into Hitch. The sheriff of Maretime Bay was trotting around a corner, followed not all to secretly by a pegasus guard who evidently didn’t trust other types of ponies in his queen’s palace, when he crashed into Izzy, sending both ponies sprawling to the floor.

“Ack! I am so sorry, Hitch!” Izzy said hurriedly, wondering if her spellbook had a magic spell to fix awkward moments.

“No, no, I’m okay,” Hitch grumbled as he regained his footing. “Have you seen the security on this place? Believe it or not, but it’s a lot harder to enter a pegasi palace when you don’t look like a pegasus.”

“Really? I can’t imagine why,” Izzy giggled at the exasperated look on the stallion’s face. “We didn’t have as much trouble, probably because the guards on duty were Thunder and Zoom, and they were there when Sunny did her whole transformation thing and the pony tribes began to unite, so they let us in without a hitch. Um… no pun intended.”

“Don’t sweat it. So, what’re you in a rush about?”

“We found something huge!” Izzy exclaimed. “You know, for Sunny?”

Hitch’s face lit up. “Really?” he asked, excited. “What was it? An ancient map or text forgotten by pony kind? An old relic from their time?”

“Books,” Izzy said proudly.

The excited look on Hitch’s face faded away and was replaced with skepticism. “Books?” he asked. “Really? Books?”

“Tons of books! Like, a whole hidden section of the library books!” Izzy sat on her hind legs and spread her front ones to indicate how huge it was. “And we - me and Zipp, that is - think that they were all from their time! How cool is that?”

“...Does Sunny know about them?” Hitch asked after a moment. He wasn’t a big reader, but anything that could add onto their surprise for Sunny was a bonus for him.

“Actually, we decided to keep them secret,” Izzy said. “But I teleported them all to the surprise - oh, yeah, did I mention I can teleport things now? I teleported me and Sunny all the way from Bridlewood to Zephyr Heights! Anyway - and I was going to get Pipp so she could help me set them up on those shelves we found in there, and then I ran into you. Speaking of which, where were you headed in such a hurry?”

“Oh, I was just looking for Sunny,” Hitch replied like it wasn’t a big deal. “I’ve got the blueprints finalized for her new lighthouse and I wanted to show them to her.”

“Yeah, I think you should,” Izzy decided. “She’s feeling kind of down since she’s gotten nowhere in her search to find out about that map her dad left her in his journal. I think the books we found would probably help with that, but I think it would be so much cooler to give all the surprises to her at once, you know? So you should go distract her until it’s time for Pipp’s performance, and then afterward we’ll show her the surprise, and she can finally figure out about that note her dad also left her in his journal. I’ll let Sunny explain it to you,” she said at Hitch’s confused expression. “Maybe talking will get her mind off of other things.”

“Great. And she’s in the…?” He trailed off, looking at Izzy for an answer.

“Library. And could you tell Zipp to come down and help me with all those books?”

“Sure can do, Ms. Izzy Moonbow,” Hitch said, giving her a little mock bow as he trotted around the corner and out of sight. The pegasus guard who had been following him now looked back and forth between the direction that Izzy went and the direction that Hitch went, trying to decide which way he should go. He eventually decided to go after Izzy, but another guard saw him and ordered him back to his post.
> We Say, "Ta-da!" You Say, "What?"
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunny glanced around the throne room. It was crowded with pegasi, but a few unicorns stood in a group in the corner, talking excitedly, and one or two earth ponies were crammed into the crowd, so many ponies all squished together they probably either didn’t notice they didn’t have wings or knew, but they were too squashed to do anything about it. Pegasi hovered in the air, too, but airspace was restricted, as Pipp always did her concerts while flying, and she needed room to do her solos.

She didn’t see any of her friends, which worried her. Sure, Pipp would be backstage (or upstage, since there wasn’t really a stage, and she was probably in the room above the throne room), and Zipp would be with her mom, waiting to make a grand royal entrance, but Izzy wasn’t anywhere to be found.

“Do you see Izzy anywhere?” she asked Hitch, who was beside her.

“Sunny, all I see is this pony’s butt, that pony’s tail, and that pony’s wing feathers, which are all basically describing the same thing in this case,” he grumbled, looking completely unworried about the absence of their bubbly friend.

Sunny frowned.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Hitch said, finally thinking of something else to tell her that would get her mind off of Izzy, “Sprout finally got out of jail! I put him on community service for the next few moons. He’s supposed to help build your lighthouse as an apology for destroying it.”

Sunny smiled, remembering the blueprints Hitch had shown her earlier. She liked the concept drawings of what the lighthouse would look like, although she would definitely miss her old one.

The lights in the room darkened, and chatter immediately silenced as ponies glanced upwards. The lights focused on Zipp and Queen Haven, swooping down from the room above in their typical fashion. However, it was obvious that this was real flying, as Zipp’s expression was one of sheer delight like it was every time she flew, in contrast to the disgusted and bored look she usually donned before. Queen Haven was the same as ever, smiling and waving to her cheering subjects. The royals landed gently on their seats, and Cloudpuff, Queen Haven’s pet pomeranian with wings, flew around her head, yipping happily, before settling on his special seat.

Pipp’s newest song, Glowin’ Up, started playing over the speakers. Even though she’d sung this song last time, nopony had heard the whole thing, as the concert had been interrupted by Sunny, Izzy, and Zipp’s attempted thievery of Queen Haven’s crown. Cameras from ZBS trained on the shadow of the pony in the spotlight, hovering above the throne room.

The spotlight lit up, and Pipp appeared, singing, “We got the light!”

The performance was the same as the last one, just with no interruptions, except that the unicorns in Queen Haven’s production crew really outdid themselves with special effects. Harmless lasers, color-changing spotlights, bursts of glitter, confetti, and even fireworks as the song came to a close made the whole thing seem like a new experience.

Izzy slipped inside just before the concert started, saying, “What’d I miss?” to Sunny.

“Not much,” Sunny said, relieved. “Pipp hasn’t started yet.”

She trained her eyes upward, looking for Pipp. Izzy turned to Hitch and whispered something in his ear that made him smile.

As the performance came to a close, Pipp struck a pose and everypony cheered, throwing roses and hooffulls of confetti at her as she beamed. She rose with her family back into the room above, and Izzy and Hitch both gave each other a look and trotted out of the room. Sunny, realizing that they weren’t there, saw their retreating backs and hurried after them.

“Wait! Izzy! Hitch! Where’re you going?” she cried as she chased after them. They glanced behind them, saw Sunny hurrying towards them, and broke into a run, unable to keep the smiles off their faces as they did so. Sunny urged her legs to go faster, determined to find out what this was all about. She was so frustrated! Since when did her friends keep secrets from her - especially all of her friends? “Wait!” she called again, but it was no use. Izzy and Hitch dashed into a hallway, and when Sunny turned the corner, they were gone. She slowed to a walking pace, studying her surroundings for any clues as to where her friends might have gone.

Once she found it, it seemed pretty obvious. Now she knew why she distantly recognized this place - she’d been there before! Only once or twice, but enough to know where she was. Immediately figuring out where they went, Sunny pried the tile on the floor open and dropped into a hot air balloon basket. Pushing the lever, the elevator began to descend, and Sunny raced to the edge, wanting to see the hidden station from the time of the Guardians of Harmony, but all she saw was a big, blank sheet, hiding just about everything.

Sunny’s enthusiasm deflated. Had it been destroyed? Closed for remodeling? Something awful? Her ride reached the floor, and she jumped out and hurried to the curtain, touching it gently with her hoof. It fell away, sending up a cloud of dust. Sunny waved her hoof in front of her face, coughing as she tried in vain to clear it. When she finally opened her watery eyes, she forgot all about the dust in her throat.

The station had been fixed to look like new. Previous times she’d been there, there had been old curtains and rags hanging from all the furniture, and cracks and broken pieces in the stained glass windows depicting the three crystals that helped bring the pony kinds together. Dust and dirt covered everything. But now…

“SURPRISE!” her friends all said, jumping out from their hiding places and grinning. Sunny’s mouth opened and closed, speechless.

“Did you guys - I mean, did you - THIS IS AMAZING!” Sunny ran around the whole place in excited circles. “You guys fixed everything!” she said, the tears in her eyes not from dust this time. “I mean, the window - and the books - and the artifacts - is this what you’ve been doing this whole time?”

“Remember when you went to Maretime Bay to oversee the work being done on your lighthouse?” Izzy said, unable to keep still. “I came to Zephyr Heights while you were doing that and helped Zipp and Pipp set up all of your dad’s old things, and search for other artifacts that we could put here.”

“And I helped fix this place up,” Hitch said. “There are some things that magic just can’t do.”

“Yeah, he says he helped fix this place up, but he mostly just did the heavy lifting while his little critter friends did all the work,” Zipp said, smirking. Hitch shoved her, and she desperately flapped her wings to stay upright.

“I did the window!” Izzy said proudly, pointing to the completed stained glass window that allowed the last fading rays of sunlight and artificial light from the city to filter through, lighting up the room in a golden light. Sunny stepped forward and studied the window. If she looked very closely, she could see the remaining bits of glue dripping on the glass. Most of the window had been reduced to shards, but Izzy had craftily pieced them back together. Now the middle pane, which usually was empty, showed an orange earth pony with the earth pony crystal above it.

“Yes, I can see that,” Sunny said. “I can’t believe that it was broken the last time I saw it.” She looked around the room and noticed the books on the shelves. “Where did you get those?” she asked, trotting over and studying the titles. “These are all books about their time!” she said excitedly. “Look, Predictions and Prophecies! And The Elements of Harmony, a Reference Guide! And Supernaturals: Nature Remedies and Cure-alls! Oh my stars, you guys, this is amazing!”

She dropped the stack of books she was holding and dashed over to the other side of the room, where Zipp had lined ancient artifacts on tables and shelves. “Hey,” Sunny said slowly as she began to recognize the stuff on display, “this is all my dad’s stuff.” She turned to Zipp. “Is this what you were doing with it? And why I couldn’t come see it? Because it would ruin the surprise?”

Zipp nodded. “And it's not just your dad’s stuff,” she said, coming up beside Sunny. “Pipp and I scoured the castle for all the ancient pony artifacts we could find. Unfortunately, I think your dad got to most of them, but I did find this.” Zipp gestured to a large shield sitting on the table, cracked and chipped, the image on it worn and faded. Sunny brushed it with her hoof, as if hoping that would clear the image up, but it didn’t really do anything but stir the dust that was still in the air. She studied the picture hard, and finally picked out a magenta six-pointed star that stretched to the very edge of the shield. In each gap between the points was a gem, all different colors. The shield itself must have been a rich purple once, but now it was hard to imagine that it could have ever been new.

“Wait,” Sunny said, looking up at the star in the stained glass window above the three pony crystals. “They match,” she said in wonder. “Whatever this was, it has some connection to the Guardians of Harmony.” She turned to her friends. “How cool is that? I wonder what else could have a direct connection to them. Maybe they used one of these artifacts.” She waved her hoof at all the knick-knacks her dad had collected over the years.

“Hey, Sunny, didn’t you want to see something about your map?” Pipp asked, snapping a selfie of herself just because she could. She wasn’t taking any photos of the station, as she, Zipp, Hitch, and Izzy had agreed to keep it a secret, but she had to upload a new picture every hour so her fans could be happy. Zipp rolled her eyes but managed not to sigh frustratedly.

“Oh, yeah.” Sunny reached into her bag and pulled out her dad’s journal, flipping to the page where her dad’s note was. She pulled out her map and unfolded it, laying it on an empty space on the table. “I know it looks familiar, but I can’t tell where.” She picked it up and held it as she studied the map her father had of Ancient Equestria, comparing cities and landmarks on the two maps. Her face slowly lit up with the realization.

“This map is a map of Ancient Equestria,” she said softly. “I can’t believe it. This is an actual map, from the time of the Guardians of Harmony, and it shows exactly what Equestria looked like back then!” She studied her father’s map that he had drawn based on his research. “Wow, my dad actually got it pretty accurate,” she praised. “I mean, he hardly got out of Canterlot, but given that he probably only discovered this map recently before he was kidnapped, he wouldn’t have had a chance to update this one. Oh my stars, you guys, look at this!”

She dropped the old map of Equestria on the floor so that all five ponies could see it, and Sunny pointed to the mountain in the middle. “Look, it's Zephyr Heights!” she said excitedly. “I read in that book that Zipp showed me that Zephyr Heights used to be a city full of mainly unicorns, but then the pegasi used their air dominance to kick them out.” Zipp, Pipp, and Izzy gave each other uncomfortable looks. “Apparently it was called Canterlot!” Sunny finished. “Where have I heard that name before?”

“Maybe it’s in one of your books?” Izzy suggested, waving to all the books lining the walls.

“Great idea, Izzy!” Sunny exclaimed. “Okay, guys, each of you grab a book and skim through it for any mentions of Canterlot-”

She stopped, her ears twitching.

“Sunny?” Pipp asked, slipping her cell phone under her wing after trying to search Canterlot on the Internet to no avail. “What’s wrong?” Then she heard it, too. Everypony did. The piercing wail of a siren. The blue and red lights of an emergency response cruiser flashed through the window, turning the ponies depicted in them different colors.

“We have to get down there,” Zipp said, flapping her wings and lifting into the air, reaching the elevator before her friends did and hovered above it while it ascended.

The streets were pandamonium. Ponies were either running away screaming or frozen with fear, staring wide-eyed at the outside of a shopping mall as Sunny, Hitch, and Izzy pushed past them to see what the fuss was about. Zipp and Pipp disappeared, probably going to find their mom and calm everypony down, as they were the royal family. Sunny managed to get to the edge of the crowd, but what she saw made her freeze in her tracks just like everypony else.

One of the stores had been vandalized. The windows were cracked and shattered, the door was hanging by one hinge, and graffiti had been messily splattered across the brick building, saying, crazy psychic pony and wierdos with horns and go back to where you came from, and many other horrible things. A family of unicorns was huddled outside the broken building, the adults being questioned by the Zephyr Heights royal guard while tears swam in their eyes, and the two young foals wrapped their arms around each other and cried.

Sunny felt like crying, too. This wasn’t just an attack on the unicorns, this was an attack on her, and everything she stood for. She had hoped that if anypony disagreed about the pony tribes uniting would keep quiet and maybe just stew in anger if it kept other ponies safe from their cruelty. But that fantasy would not come true apparently.

Ponies around her were talking in hushed voices about who would have done it and whether or not they agreed with the vandals, but so many ponies were there that the sound was quite loud, and Sunny could barely hear herself think, not that she had any thoughts. Her mind was paralyzed with panic just like the rest of her. She realized that Hitch and Izzy were saying her name, but it sounded like they were on the other side of the world.

“EVERYPONY CALM DOWN!!!” a voice shouted, and everypony shut up at once, the loud voice snapping Sunny out of her trance. She looked up and saw Zipp, with her mother and sister hovering behind her, high above the crime scene, the searchlights illuminating her white coat and making the multicolored feathers on her wings appear to be glowing. She held herself with authority and jutted out her chin, as if she were daring anypony to disagree with her. Sunny felt herself go speechless with awe. No doubt about it, Zipp looked downright regal, and every bit the part of queen.

“Listen to me,” she continued once everypony had stopped talking. “We cannot get divided again! We don’t know who did this, but believe me, we will be doing everything we can to prevent these kinds of things from happening again! This is exactly what caused us to separate in the first place, exactly the kind of thing that caused us to lose our magic in the first place! Do you really want that to happen again?”

“Maybe you would so you can act like you have some mystical power that none of us have that immediately makes you special while the rest of us suffer!” a pegasus in the crowd snapped, his angry voice carrying over the silent crowd, and a few ponies reared up, jeering at the royals. Zipp’s cheeks flushed.

“That wasn’t my decision!” she said quickly, her anger pouring into her voice. She took a deep breath and restrained herself. “The point is,” she said, her voice a forced calm, “this is our do-over, a chance to right our wrongs. We can’t pass up that chance.”

“Easy for you to say!” a pegasus jeered.

“We were better off before!” another answered. “We didn’t have our magic, but at least we didn’t have to worry about our brains getting fried!”

“Who’s to say that the unicorns aren’t planning to take over the city?” the first one said. “This used to be an all unicorn city before we took it over and made it the glorious place it is today. Maybe they want revenge!”

“They’ll get the earth ponies to help!” a pony cried out in fear. “They’ll come to slaughter us all!”

“What? No! I - just calm down!” Zipp protested, seeing her attempts rapidly failing.

“Says the princess who was supposed to be arrested!”

“She hangs out with earth ponies and unicorns, and so does her sister and her good-for-nothing mother! Who says they’re to be trusted?”

The jeers, the insults, they spread like wildfire, and soon even the royal guards were having trouble restraining themselves from giving the unicorns a piece of their mind. Sunny looked around in horror. It was like nothing had changed. Suddenly, dark lightning rippled across the sky, rumbling so loudly that it silenced everypony. Ponies watched as the royals’ wings suddenly failed to keep them in the air, and their screams pierced the silence as they plummeted towards the ground.

The ponies erupted into pandemonium, and Sunny had trouble thinking straight. She finally turned to Izzy and cried, “Do some magic!”

“I’m trying!” Izzy cried helplessly, her horn sparking and spluttering. “It’s not working!”

Sunny wracked her scattered brain, trying to come up with a plan as Zipp, Pipp, and Queen Haven neared the ground, flapping their wings desperately to stay aloft, but nothing changed. Hitch suddenly leaped into action, jumping off the street, rebounding off the wall of the vandalized store, and catching Pipp in midair before bringing both of them safely down on the street. Sunny and Izzy tried to copy him with less heroic results, with Izzy simply jumping really high to catch Zipp and Sunny having to run into the building next door, run upstairs onto the roof, and then jump to the ground, catching Haven safely and landing hard on the cobblestone road.

The spectators backed up while they rescued the royals, but once they were on solid ground, they continued to mock them. Hitch and Izzy led the pegasus family and a stunned Sunny away from the crime scene, getting them far enough away by navigating the back streets until they were back at the palace.
> History Repeats Itself
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunny paced anxiously in front of the thrones as her friends watched. Queen Haven wasn’t present, as she was continuously dealing with angry mobs and more vandalism on non-pegasi businesses. Zipp and Pipp offered to help, but Haven had insisted that they stay safe; it would make her feel much better.

“This is bad, this is very bad!” Sunny said, her worry seeping into her voice so much that she couldn’t contain it.

“You think?” Zipp asked from her throne, glancing nervously at the tall windows that, only a day ago, were busy with pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies preparing for Pipp’s performance.

“Sunny, we know this is bad, but we’ve been in bad places before, right?” Izzy said, trying to lift everypony’s spirits. “We can get through this if we stay calm and don’t let fear divide us again. You saw what happened last night. If we do, then the magic will disappear again. We worked so hard to get it back - surely we can’t be the only ones who don’t want it gone?”

“They don’t want it gone, Izzy,” Hitch said quietly. “They want ponies who are different from them out. Despite all we’ve done, they still don’t fully trust each other.”

“So what do we do?” Sunny asked, getting frustrated. “Was it all for nothing? It’s not like there’s some more magical crystals that we can find to bring ponykind together again. If this keeps up, somepony’s going to do more lasting damage than a vandalized store. We might go to war, and magic might disappear for good.” She sank to the floor, the weight of the fear and distress that she was feeling making everything seem impossible.

“Things aren’t looking too good,” Pipp reported, scrolling through MyStable. “Oh my stars, Zipp, Mom was trying to give a speech to another angry mob to try and calm them down, but they refused to listen. Look at this. They’re still ridiculing her for pulling that fake flying thing. You would think they would let it go after a while.”

“You know, I blame Pipp for this whole thing,” Zipp said, trying for a sarcastic smile. “Every time she has a performance, something goes horribly wrong that drives ponykind further apart. Sorry, sis, guess we’ll have to end your career. I am totally not slightly thrilled by that at all.”

Pipp glared at her while Izzy said, “Let’s not point hooves at any one pony yet. We don’t know who’s responsible for the attacks, or why anypony would want everypony to seperate again when that would just mean that magic would disappear again. And there’s still that map that Sunny’s dad left her. What if they’re connected somehow? Like, we find out how the pony tribes seperated in the first place, and we could keep them together now?”

Sunny took a deep breath, trying to calm her frayed nerves. “You’re right, Izzy. We shouldn’t worry about things that haven’t happened yet. Let’s just hope that the unicorns and earth ponies don’t know about this yet, and they don’t start getting angry at each other.”

“Uh, Sunny? It’s all over social media,” Pipp said, tapping her phone. “Like, everywhere. Even on the foals’ video sites.”

“Great.” Sunny blew a frustrated breath and sat down again. “Now what?”

“How about we focus first on two things: calming everypony down, and finding out what Sunny’s dad wanted her to do with this map,” Izzy said. “Me, Hitch, and Sunny will go start researching, and Zipp and Pipp, since you’re royals, you can help with calming everyony down.”

“Um, we’re not royals anymore,” Pipp said nervously. “Something was just posted. The angry mob that my mom’s dealing with right now? It was advocating for a removal of the monarchy, or an arrest of the royals, and then all the other angry mobs showed up and showed their support. So… we’re fugitives. Again.”

“Wonderful.” Zipp rolled her eyes. “Just like old times.”

“I like the old times,” Izzy insisted. “Just the five of us, on the run, hoping to change the world… It was great!”

“Well, now things are going to be much worse,” Sunny said defeatedly. “Once word of this reaches everypony, we’ll be right back where we started.” She looked down, her eyes swimming with tears, and saw her dad’s journal sticking out of her bag. The sight of the old book reinvigorated Sunny, and she stood up, her eyes dry, her expression defiant. “And where we started was just five ponies who were trying to change the world, just like Izzy said. My father wanted a united Equestria to become a reality, and we’re going to make it one. No matter how many foes we face, we won’t stop until we can do what he always wanted to do.”

“That’s my girl,” Hitch muttered while Izzy and Zipp whooped. Pipp was still immersed in her phone, but she allowed a small smile.

“Then we might want to get out of here, because the angry mob is chasing my mom back to the palace,” she said, holding up her phone to show the image. Dozens of pegasi, some holding signs that depicted a big X over a picture of a crown or the royal family. Suddenly, Queen Haven burst into the room, her mane a mess, her eyes wild.

“Pipp, Zipp, my darlings, you have to get out of here!” she cried breathlessly as angry pegasi filled the doorway behind her. Sunny was shocked to see that there were a few royal guards had joined their side, but more stood between Haven and the mob, wings spread, prepared to protect their queen. Among them Sunny saw Zoom and Thunder, and her heart warmed as she realized that not everypony would be buying into this as easily as the crowd had.

“Hurry!” Zipp cried, jumping off her seat and flapping her wings, managing to hover in the air for a brief moment before she made a mandatory emergancy landing. “Follow me!”

Haven took one look at the mob behind her and decided where she was going to go. She scrambled after her daughters, signaling for the guards to follow them, too. “Cover us,” she hissed to Zoom under her breath. The blue pegasus nodded and relayed the orders to the rest of the guards. They locked doors and set two guards at each one, hoping to keep it that way, buying the fleeing ponies a few more moments of precious time. Zipp finally came to a stop beside a large grate in the floor and struggled slightly to move it, jumping down into the hot air balloon basket directly below it. Sunny, Izzy, Hitch, Pipp, Haven, and the only two guards who were left, Zoom and Thunder, followed her example, the later wobbling alittle bit on their descent.

Izzy, who was the closest to the lever, pushed it down just as Zipp and Pipp wrestled the grate back into place. This was risky, as it was very hard to remove the grate from underneath, but hopefully the angry citizens of Zephyr Heights wouldn’t figure out that their royals were hiding down there.

“What… what is this place?” Haven asked with wonder in her voice, gazing around the repaired station. “Zipp? Pipp? Did you know about this?”

Zipp sighed. “I found it when I was just a foal, and, I don’t know, I liked how peaceful it was down here. That I could be myself without having a million eyes on me. And it proved that we did have magic once, and it gave me hope that we could find magic again. Then when Sunny and Izzy came, I brought them down here, and we found out about the crystals.” Zipp waved her hoof at the stained glass window, which was now visible anywhere in the station. “So we wanted to bring magic back. After Sunny’s lighthouse was destroyed, she asked me to keep all her stuff in the castle, but then I had an idea that we could make some sort of memorial to the Guardians of Harmony, so we’ve all been working on it for the past few days as a surprise for Sunny.”

“Where did you get all thiis stuff, anyway?” Sunny asked as they reached the floor and disembarked the elevator. “I mean, besides my dad’s old things.”

“Remember when we were searching in the library for something about that map your dad left you?” Izzy said. “Well, we found a whole room of books from the Guardians of Harmony’s time, and I teleported them here. Oh, and do you see that crown over there? The golden one with the little pink gems? Alphabittle had that, and we thought it must have belonged to somepony back then.”

“It’s incredible,” Zoom said under her breath.

“I can’t believe I never knew about this,” Haven murmered. “There’s so much history here, it would take ages to get through it all.”

“We don’t have ages,” Sunny spoke up. “We might as well have minutes. Those ponies out there aren’t going to wait politely as we go through every single book here and figure out what my dad wanted us to do with this.” She pulled out her map and set it down on a mostly empty table. “Where should we go first? We can’t stay in Zephyr Heights, obviously, but maybe we could go to… Maretime Bay? Says here that it used to be Manehatten. Maybe there’s still something there?”

“What if we go to Bridlewood first?” Hitch suggested, studying the map.

“But I already found everything I could from the olden times,” Izzy protested. “I don’t think there’s anything left there.”

“Not to look for more clues, but to stop a war from happening,” Hitch explained. “Think about it. Besides the pegasi, unicorns are the most feared of the three pony races - no offense to present company. And if they hear that the pegasi are rebelling and probably planning to wage war with earth ponies and unicorns, they’ll want to fight back. If we convince the unicorns not to, then it might help neutralize the impending threat of war.”

“That makes sense,” Sunny said. “We’ll head out as soon as we can.”

“Wait,” Haven said, fear in her voice, turning to her two daughters. “I know you want to do this, but please try to stay out of trouble, you two. It was bad enough that you were running from the law last time, going around causing mayhem while you stole two magical crystals, but this could be war. I want you to be safe. Just promise me you’ll be safe.”

“We promise, Mom,” Pipp said hurriedly.

“Yeah, we won’t do anything remotely dangerous,” Zipp added, trying to act cheerful. “Unless we have to. Then we might.”

Haven laughed, an actual laugh, and it sounded like one. She wrapped her wings around Zipp and Pipp, pulling them close, and whispered, “That doesn’t reassure me one bit, but at least you tried.” The former-royal family hugged each other, and Sunny looked on sadly, thinking of her own father. During moments like these, where her friends or other ponies had sweet family moments like this, she felt alone and left out, with no parents left. Hitch came up beside her and nudged her.

“I’m fine,” Sunny said quickly before he could say anything. “Just… tired. And in shock, I guess. This is all happening so fast…” She was interrupted by a rattling of the grate, and dozens of pegasi guards dropped into the room, able to barely slow their fall into a slightly controlled landing.

“What’s going on?” Zoom asked, she and Thunder running over to assist some guards that had fallen over.

“We had to fall back,” one of the guards said through pants. “They refused to back down. We had to retreat, or sacrifice our lives when we could be protecting our queen.” He looked sheepishly at Queen Haven, who had done her best to look less rattled and more collected in the presence of her soldiers. “Guess we could have sacrificed our lives to protect our queen, but we felt like that wouldn’t accomplish anything. So…”

Queen Haven sighed. “It’s quite alright,” she said. “I’m very relieved that you’re here. I need two of you to go with my daughters as they try to stop this potential war from happening.”

“What?” Zipp, Pipp, Izzy, Hitch, and Sunny all said at the same time before breaking into protests. Haven closed her eyes and listened to all of them, keeping quiet until their excuses petered out.

“I know you say you won’t get into trouble,” she said, “but your definition of trouble is much different than mine. I want you to be safe, and this is the only way I can be sure of it.”

Sunny sighed. “Fine. Come on, guys. Let’s get some rest. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”
> The Journal
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

As it turned out, escaping Zephyr Heights would prove to be much more difficult than previously. The angry mob that had stormed the palace weren’t leaving until the queen and princesses were captured and killed. This only made Queen Haven more reluctant to let her daughters leave, until it got to a point where she wouldn’t allow them to go at all, out of fear for their safety.

Sunny listened to the argument as she read and shook her head. If they didn’t come to a solution, the rebels upstairs would hear them and follow their voices to their hiding spot. She sighed and looked up at Hitch and Izzy, both of whom were pouring over books, trying to find something that could have caused the three pony tribes to separate.

“Hey, Sunny? I think I might’ve found something interesting,” Hitch said slowly, sounding as though he were unsure of it, but it was good enough for Sunny. She trotted over there quickly and read over his shoulder as Izzy marked her place in her book and joined them.

“The Windigos?” Sunny asked. “What are those?”

“They’re creatures of ice and cold, and they feed off of fighting and hatred,” Hitch paraphrased, pointing to the paragraph he was reading from. “Says here that in really Ancient Equestria, all three pony tribes were separated like they were a week ago, and the Windigos came back, nearly destroying their home. So the tribe leaders came to Equestria in search of a new land, but as they ended up in the same place, they naturally started fighting again. It was only when the leaders’ number twos were able to come together that the Windigos were defeated, and harmony was restored. The Windigos came back during the Guardian of Harmony’s time, and they defeated them once more.”

“Windigos?” Zipp asked, coming up behind them. “If they feed on hatred and mistrust, why didn’t they come back when the pony tribes separated again?”

Her eyes were red and puffy, like she’d been crying, and blazing with anger, the stretched-thin layer of forced calm doing little to quell her fury. Her mother and sister were behind her, Haven looking regretful, Pipp looking shocked and hurt. She looked at Zipp, her mouth open like she wanted to ask a question, but Zipp interrupted her before she could say anything.

“Forget it, okay?” she snapped quietly. “Just forget it.”

Pipp winced and pulled out her cell phone, checking social media for any updates on the angry mobs. Whatever she saw must not have been good, because she quickly put it away. “Did you find anything interesting?” she asked with fake cheerfulness.

“A bit,” Hitch said, briefly summarizing what he’d found out about the Wendigos.

“Hm. That is strange,” Haven admitted, her eyes flitting to Zipp, who refused to look at her. Haven’s ears drooped, and she let out a quiet sigh. “I wonder why they didn’t come back. You know, given recent events.”

“Does it matter?” Zipp asked curtly, her voice tense. “It still doesn’t explain Sunny’s map.”

Haven saw where this was going and quickly left, signaling to her guards to follow and leave the five friends alone. There was a bit of awkward silence.

“Hey, uh, Sunny? I think I found a book that might be interesting,” Izzy said, desperate to break the silence. “But, uh, it’s kind of hard to read, you know, since it’s hoof written. I thought that, since your dad’s journal is also hoof written, that you might be able to, you know, read it a bit easier than I can.”

It was just an excuse to draw their attention away from the tensions between the royals, but Sunny was glad for it. She followed Izzy to where the unicorn had constructed a fort of books, complete with a water slide, but without the water. Sunny wasn’t entirely sure how that worked, but she’d learned a long time ago never to question Izzy. The purple unicorn reached into her fort and dug around for a moment before retrieving a purple book with a crest on the cover. It sort of resembled the crest on the shield that Zipp had found, but it was a little different. Instead of the other gems sitting between the points of the star, they formed a horseshoe around it. Sunny carefully picked it up, holding it delicately in her hooves, afraid to break it. She flipped to the first page, read it, and her jaw dropped.

“Izzy,” she whispered, “where did you find this?”

“Over here,” Izzy said, pointing with her horn to a box sitting off to the side. “There’s a whole bunch of them in there, so I thought it must be important, or the Ancient Equestrians wouldn’t duplicate it so much. This one seems to be more of an original copy. I never actually got started on reading it, though. What does it say?”

Sunny flipped through pages, unable to speak. Here was proof of everything she believed in, here was proof that her dad was right. “This was written by the Guardians of Harmony,” she said quietly. “Look, here are their names: Princess Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Fluttershy. I… I can’t believe I’m actually seeing this. Izzy, this is amazing!”

“So… is there anything interesting in there or not?” Hitch asked, he and Zipp and Pipp coming up next to Izzy, all looking at Sunny curiously. “If it was written by the Guardians of Harmony, it must be important, but does it help with our current situation or not?”

Sunny reached one of the last entries in the book and scanned through the passage. “Actually… yes! Look, this is about how the Windigos came back when everypony was separated! Huh, it says that it wasn’t just ponies…” She went back to the beginning and reread the page with more attention. “I don’t understand everything here, but this is a huge discovery,” she concluded. “Maybe this is what my dad wanted us to find! Something that could help us on our quest to find out what happened!”

“Wait. Sunny, flip back a few pages,” Pipp said suddenly, completely serious. “And… stop! Right there! Look, a page is torn out! Here, give me your map.” She held out her golden hoof, and Sunny passed her the paper. Pipp unfolded it and held it up triumphantly. “See, the edge is ripped! Which must mean…” She carefully inserted the paper into the book Sunny was holding, lining the torn edges up. “Look!”

“They fit?” Sunny said, her voice filled with wonder. “Oh my stars, Pipp, this is huge! H-how did my dad find this map?” She gasped. “He must have known about this journal! This is what he wanted me to find with the map! He must’ve been unable to get the whole book, so he grabbed the map, hoping that he could find the places on it, but he disappeared before he was able to! And then he wanted me to unite the pony tribes so that when I found the map, it would be safe for me to get the journal! Guys, do you know what this means?”

“That we can stop reading books now?” Hitch asked, stretching his neck.

“Now we can follow this! Find the places on the map, find out what happened to the Guardians of Harmony, and find out how to bring all three pony tribes together!”

“How did you find out about the journal and the paper?” Zipp murmured to Pipp.

“I’m a social media pop star. I pay attention to detail,” she replied, holding her head high and looking smugly at her sister, who just rolled her eyes.

Sunny slipped the journal inside her bag and ran to the hot air balloon basket, almost hit the lever, then remembered what was up there. She seemed to deflate, but her excitement remained. “We’ll leave at sunset,” she decided. “We can’t delay any further. The longer we stay here, the more danger we’re in, and the more danger the rest of Equestria is in. We have to get out of here.”

Pipp and Zipp glanced at each other, worry in Pipp’s eyes, defiance in Zipp’s. She pulled her younger sister aside and whispered something to her, something that definitely didn’t decrease Pipp’s worry. She bit her lip and ruffled her wings like she always did when she was nervous.

The rest of the ponies decided to take a quick nap before they had to leave, Sunny refusing to let go of the journal. She slept while hugging the book, careful not to drool on it. When her friends saw this, they just sighed and smiled, knowing that, given the circumstances, this could be seen as normal Sunny behavior.

When she awoke to find that it was only a few moments from sundown, she spent the rest of the day carefully studying all of her dad’s artifacts and knick-knacks, looking for clues as to where they might be beheaded. She wished they could take it all with them, in case they needed it, but that would be way too much. Thankfully her dad had drawn all of them and logged all the information about them in his journal.

The last rays of sunlight disappeared from the window as the sun sank behind the horizon, and Sunny went around, waking up her friends. She left Queen Haven be, as she knew that it would be too much for the queen, watching her only two daughters leaving. She also didn’t wake any of the guards, and instructed her friends to be as quiet as possible.

“Zipp,” she whispered, “do you know of any ways out of here? You know, besides the obvious one.” She jerked her head up at the grate in the ceiling.

The former pegasus princess nodded and wordlessly led her four friends to a pair of tall doors hidden in the corner. “I’ve never been able to get them open,” she said quietly. “They’re too heavy for me, and they’ve been shut for a long time.”

Sunny grabbed the handle in her mouth and began to tug on it. The rusty metal taste filled her mouth, and it felt like she was going to pull her teeth out, but she kept pulling. Her friends also pitched in, either pulling on the other door or helping Sunny with the first one. The doors groaned and creaked, but after a lot of slow, grinding noises, they finally swung open at the pace of a snail.

Zipp turned around when she thought she heard something, and spotted Cloudpuff sitting a little ways behind them, his head tilted to one side. He noticed what they were doing, and started barking.

“What is it with that dog always interfering with our daring escape missions?” Izzy asked sarcastically, clamping her hoofs over her ears.

“He’s going to wake up the whole palace if we don’t quiet him down!” Sunny said. “Quick, Hitch, can you do your animal magnet thing?”

Hitch groaned and started forward. “Hey, uh, little dog? Do ya mind quieting down for us? Please? We’re kind of trying to save the world, and if we get caught, it’s really going to put a damper on our plan, so… You know, just be quiet, okay?”

Cloudpuff stopped barking the instant Hitch started talking. He blinked, flapped his wings, turned around, and walked back to Queen Haven, who was blessedly still asleep.

“Phew. Let’s try to do this with as few close calls as possible,” Pipp decided. “Come on, everypony, we’d better get out of here before… before my mom wakes up.” She looked like she wanted to say something else, but a quick glance at her sister changed her mind. “We can take the route that we took last time we all needed to escape Zephyr Heights. I wish history didn’t keep repeating itself… At least I got to finish my song this time.”

The door to the station deposited them out on a back alleyway that must have once been a major street, as there were still abandoned shops alongside the dirty road. Pipp, who surprisingly knew a lot about Zephyr Heights (Zipp preferred to explore the places around Zephyr Heights), led them through the winding maze of back alleyways and sidestreets, ducking into the shadows whenever somepony was close.

The five of them finally reached the secret tunnel that Pipp had led them out of the city the first time, only now, the entrance was guarded by two pegasus rebels, with badges that said, Down With the Monarchy and a picture of a big X through Zipp, Pipp, and Queen Haven’s cutie marks.

Zipp dragged them behind a dumpster before the pegasi could see anything, wincing as she spotted the badges they wore. “Great,” she whispered, “what do we do now? How do we get past them?”

“Couldn’t one of us talk to them?” Izzy asked, and Zipp shook her head.

“Me and Pipp are wanted fugitives as far as they’re concerned,” she said, “and Sunny’s been all over ZBS since magic returned. And Izzy, you’re a unicorn. You saw what happened to that store! Pegasi hate unicorns now. And Hitch - wait, what are you doing?”

Hitch looked up from where he was digging in a box and sighed. “I cannot believe that I am about to do this,” he muttered. “Izzy, I need you to make something that looks like a pair of wings. And preferably quick. Oh, and can they look good on me? Like, not something that clashes with my mane or-”

“Hitch!” Sunny said, a little too loudly. The pegasi rebels looked around in confusion as Sunny shoved her hooves in her mouth. When the rebels finally decided that it must have been the wind or something, she kept talking, in a voice so hushed that they could barely hear it. “Hitch, what are you doing? You can’t just waltz up there and pretend you’re a pegasus! What if they figure out that it’s all a hoax and try to arrest you?”

“Pfft, they can’t arrest me, I’m the sheriff! Besides, I haven’t done anything illegal… yet. Anyways, Izzy, is it ready yet?”

“Almost,” Izzy replied, digging around in the box with a glue bottle. “I wish I had more feathers or something that looks like them, but once I made a model of the Crystal Tearoom with nothing more than a couple of pom-poms, three popsicle sticks, and a box of curly macaroni.”

“Izzy, you probably can bring all three pony kinds back together with a box of macaroni,” Zipp said as her sister smothered giggles. “Hey, maybe we should try that…”

“I’m still not entirely on board with this plan,” Sunny said hesitantly. “Hitch, it’s too dangerous. Maybe we should try talking to them or something less drastic.”

“Do you really think that’ll work in this situation?” Hitch asked, raising his eyebrows at Sunny.

“Yeah, okay, no, I knew it was never going to work, but I was just trying to come up with ideas!” Sunny protested.

“Relax, it’ll be fine. Hey, can pegasi say mayonnaise?”

All five ponies covered their mouths to smother laughs, remembering how Hitch saved them in Bridlewood by saying “mayonnaise”.

“No, you should be fine,” Zipp said once they’d calmed down a little. “Just… be careful, okay?”

Hitch nodded and grabbed the pair of folded-up wings Izzy had managed to craft, strapping them on so that, in the dim light, no one would be any wiser. He pulled out a fake stick-on mustache and slapped it on, and Sunny rolled her eyes to try and hide her amusement.

The pegasi rebels looked up and saw a strange pony approaching them, but it was obvious that he was a pegasus, so one quick look between them was enough to make them relax more.

“Hey, stranger,” the first rebel said, “which side do you support?”

“What?” the strange pony asked, tilting his head.

“Do you support the monarchy or the citizens of Zephyr Heights,” the second rebel clarified, shoving his companion. “We have orders to arrest monarch-supporters, so chose your words carefully.”

Now it was the first rebel’s turn to shove the other. “Shut up, you idiot,” he hissed.

Hitch raised an eyebrow at the two bickering pegasi. This could actually be very useful. “I’m for the rebels, of course,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Obviously. Those royals have been exercising power over us for too long. None of the other tribes have monarchs, so why should we? It sets us apart from the other tribes, makes us look stronger and more united through a strong royal figure that’s always tried to give us hope that things could get better, even if her methods were questionable. No, they’ve got to go.”

The two rebels exchanged a glance. They’d never thought of it that way. “Well, if you put it that way,” the first rebel said slowly.

“Well, of course you’re right to rebel against them,” Hitch continued with more confidence. “Absolutely horrendous, what they’ve been doing. I mean, saving the world? Bringing back magic? How awful!”

“I guess the princesses did help bring back flying,” the second rebel said to the other. “Maybe executing them for treason is a bit much, after all they’ve done for us. And I guess Queen Haven wasn’t so bad…”

“You fellows should go do something a bit more important,” Hitch urged. “Perhaps you could help guard the main entrance to Zephyr Heights, to make sure none of those pesky earth ponies show up. Or worse, those high-and-mighty unicorns. Can you imagine if they were sympathetic to the monarch’s cause? You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”

Obviously conflicted, the first rebel slipped off down the alley. The second one looked like he wanted to say something, thought better of it and followed his friend. As soon as they rounded the corner and disappeared, Sunny, Izzy, Zipp, and Pipp poked their heads out of their hiding place and trotted up to Hitch, who was pulling off his phony wings and wiping glue off his flank.

“Urg,” he muttered. “Izzy, next time, maybe tone down the glue.”

Sunny tackled him with a hug, knocking him to the ground, and he grunted. “Yeah, okay, I get it, you love me, okay, you can get off now,” he said in a strained voice. “Sunny, seriously, I can’t breathe!”

“Hey!” a voice shouted from behind them. The ponies turned around and saw the second pegasus rebel, standing at the end of the alleyway and glaring at them. “You’re under arrest!” he yelled, pawing at the ground.

Izzy stood in between them and lit up her horn, which sparked and spluttered but finally lit. “You guys go. I’ll be right behind you!”

“But, Izzy-” Sunny started as Zipp and Pipp dove into the secret passage.

“Just go!” she cried over her shoulder, her eyes focused on the pegasus, who was now cowering in fear. “Hey, buddy, if you’re not careful I’ll fry your brain! You’d better leave and get some reinforcements before I do some crazy mind-control stuff!”

Hitch pulled Sunny into the tunnel as the pegasus shrieked and ran off, and Izzy joined her friends as they raced out of the city, on the run again.
> Don't Say Mayo-
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunny resolved to not stop until they reached Bridlewood, and though the other ponies did look tired, herself included, they agreed that it would be best to get to shelter as fast as possible. They walked all through the day and well into the night before the thick forest terrain of the unicorn forest came into view.

“Come on, everypony!” Izzy said cheerfully, looking happy to see her home. “We’re almost there!”

Everypony else let out varying sounds of exhaustion and annoyance but didn’t complain. Even as tired as they all were, they couldn’t help but get a little suspicious at the slight change that seemed to occur to the forest. The signs slandering earth ponies and pegasi were abandoned, looking like they had been in the process of being taken down, like they were when Sunny and Izzy left, but forgotten as the ponies moved on to more pressing matters. The trees seemed darker and more foreboding, sending chills down Sunny’s spine, and she’d been living in Bridlewood for a while.

“Am I just crazy, or do the trees look like they’re judging us?” Zipp asked carefully, stepping away from the edge of the path.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure you’re just tired,” Sunny insisted, though even she looked antsy.

The five ponies staggered to Izzy’s house and immediately fell asleep as soon as they hit a couch or a bed or even the floor. Sunny was happy to be resting, as she felt like she could hardly take another step, but her dreams were far from peaceful. She dreamed that her father was back, and, like she always did when she dreamed about her father, she burst into tears and ran towards him.

“DAD!” Sunny cried, wrapping her arms around him.

“Hello, Sunnybunny,” he said playfully, hugging her back. “It’s so good to see you! Wait… why are you crying?”

Sunny wiped the tears from her eyes and stepped back, looking at Argyle Starshine as he regarded her with concern. “It’s just… you know how you always wanted the three pony tribes to come together? Well… we did it. Me and Hitch and Zipp and Pipp and Izzy… they’re my friends. We brought everypony together, but now they’re separating again, and I’m scared, and I just really, really miss you…” Her words dissolved into tears, and she sank into her father’s embrace once again.

“Oh, Sunny, Sunny, it can’t be that bad,” he said encouragingly. “If you brought everypony together before, you can do it again! Remember what I told you?”

Sunny sniffed and wiped her eyes. “That I should stand up for what I believe in?”

“That’s right,” Argyle said, his voice rising over the roaring noise that was slowly getting louder and louder. “Now did you…” The rest of his words were drowned out by the noise, now so loud that it was rattling the ground.

“What?” Sunny yelled. Her father’s mouth kept moving, but she couldn’t understand what he was saying. A bright green light enveloped him, and he disappeared, replaced with Sprout’s giant war machine that he had made before magic had been brought back. It rumbled forward, pushing past Sunny, up the road towards her lighthouse. Only it wasn’t her lighthouse this time. Instead, it was the large tree in the meadow outside Zephyr Heights, the one with the strangely pink leaves. The giant thing crashed into the tree, which cracked and splintered and tumbled to the ground.

“No!” Sunny yelled, running forward. The war machine disappeared into a puff of green smoke, and Sunny skidded to a halt at the edge of the cliff. Instead of the glittering blue ocean she was used to seeing, instead it was a huge meadow, with lines and lines and lines of earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns, glaring daggers at each other. With a defiant cry, they broke the somewhat calm and began attacking each other.

“No!” Sunny screamed. “NO, stop it! Everypony stop, please!” Tears welled up in her eyes and streamed down her face as she spotted Izzy, Hitch, Zipp, and even Pipp fighting each other on the battlefield. Her blurry vision picked out Alphabittle blasting innocent earth ponies with horn lasers, the poor ponies screaming as their brains melted; Queen Haven digging her sharp fangs into the neck of a unicorn; Thunder and Zoom swooping down and dragging ponies into the clouds; Sprout and Phyllis manning splatapults and wearing anti-mind-reading hats. Sunny collapsed onto the ground, sobbing uncontrollably.

“...Sunny? Sunny?” a voice called from a long way off.

Her eyes snapped open. Her friends were gathered around her, looking worried. Izzy had been the one saying her name. When she saw that she was awake, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank hoofness you’re okay!” she cried, offering Sunny a hoof to help her up. “You started crying, and we weren’t sure what was going on, and we were all so worried, and please don’t do that again!” Izzy wrapped her arms around Sunny, who laughed shakily and pushed her off.

“I’m fine. Really,” she insisted when her friends gave her suspicious looks. “Just had a nightmare. It’s been a rough couple of days.” She shook herself, desperate to change the topic. “Nevermind that. So, what do we have to do to make sure that the unicorns won’t wage war with the pegasi and earth ponies? It has to be quick; we still have to warn the earth ponies before they get too scared.”

“I was thinking we just all go around telling everypony not to,” Izzy suggested. “But that probably won’t do much coming from other ponies, will it? No offense to any of you,” she added hastily. “But maybe we could talk to Alphabittle, and he could help spread the word?”

“Great idea, Izzy!” Zipp said, already pushing open the door. “Come on, everypony. Let’s hope we can get the news out before the fear sets in.”

“Crystal Tea Room or bust!” Izzy yelled happily as she trotted through the door, her friends following. Sunny laughed, but the moment the attention was diverted away from her, her face fell. She remembered her dream, with all the pony races divided and fighting. She shivered. It was just a dream, she told herself firmly. Just a dream. There’s nothing to worry about. She took a deep breath and followed the other ponies into Bridlewood.

The Crystal Tea Room was packed, as usual, and Alphabittle was sitting behind his little counter, watching with a smug look on his face as an earth pony struggled to figure out the Rubix cube in front of him. The large gray unicorn glanced at the clock on the wall and, if possible, looked even smugger as he rang the bell.

“Time’s up! Pass it over, Cookie,” he said brightly as the avocado green pony groaned and tossed the unfinished cube to the unicorn, who solved it in five seconds.

“Winner!” Alphabittle announced cheerfully to the room, taking the earth pony’s box of freshly baked cookies. He spotted Izzy and her friends and grinned. “Well, would you look who it is!” he said, sliding the box under the counter. “What can I do for ya?”

“Hey, Alphabittle!” Izzy responded cheerfully, her smile lighting up the room. “We want to talk to you.”

“In private,” Sunny specified, looking cautiously at the gathered ponies. She was happy to see a few pegasi and earth ponies sprinkled in with the unicorns. Alphabittle glanced at the worried look on her face and quickly got the message.

“Right-o,” he said, gesturing for them to follow him into a back room stacked with boxes of tea leaves. “So,” he whispered once they were alone, lighting his horn for light, “what’s going on?”

“The pegasi are rebelling,” Zipp said before Sunny could speak, which she guessed was fair, since Zipp was a pegasus, and a princess that they were rebelling against. “Somepony vandalized a unicorn’s shop in Zephyr Heights a few days ago, and in the chaos, they managed to rile everypony up. They want the monarchy gone, and we’re worried that they might declare war on the unicorns and earth ponies.”

Alphabittle’s eyes widened. “So, you want us to arm ourselves?” he growled, his horn glowing brighter.

“No!” Pipp cried. “Innocent ponies will get hurt! We came here to ask you to help stop the three pony tribes from separating again, not to encourage it!”

Alphabittle’s horn quieted. “So… what exactly do you want me to do?”

“Make sure the unicorns don’t want war with the pegasi and earth ponies,” Hitch said, glancing at Sunny to make sure he was using the right words. “Try to maintain peace for as long as possible, and if they do want to fight, then stall them. We have to keep the three pony tribes peaceful for as long as possible while we go… um, Sunny, what exactly are we going to be doing while this is going on?”

The five ponies all looked at her questioningly. Sunny took a deep breath and let it out to calm herself. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But I think we should do what my dad wanted us to do: find out what happened to make the three pony tribes separate in the first place. Maybe we’ll find some information that could help us here.”

Izzy nodded. “Alphabittle, can we trust you to please keep it down and not raise a panic that would cause the unicorns to want to go to war?”

The large unicorn nodded. “I’ll try not to get involved in any war,” he promised. “Unless I have too. Then I might.”

“Alphabittle,” Hitch said warningly. “Don’t make me say the forbidden word.”

His eyes widened. “You wouldn’t-”

Hitch took a deep breath. “MAYO-”

Alphabittle shoved a hoof in his mouth to keep him from continuing. “All right, all right, I get it!” he said. “I won’t do it, I promise, just please don’t say the forbidden word!”

The group of five friends left the Crystal Tea Room in a slightly better mood. At least the unicorns wouldn’t get involved in the conflict yet. All that was left was to make sure the earth ponies wouldn’t be inclined to go to war. The pegasi would hopefully see that the other pony tribes didn’t want to fight and calm down a little bit.

“So,” Hitch said conversationally as they walked out of Bridlewood after a quick stop at Izzy’s house to pick up supplies. “After we go to Maretime Bay and convince Sprout not to build a giant war machine, where to we go next?”

Sunny had no idea, but she pulled out her map that her father had left her and studied it. “I think we should see if we can find what’s left of Ponyville,” she decided after a while. “Look, it says that it was just outside of Canterlot. Perhaps there’s some ruins there that hold more answers. Or maybe there’s something in here that could help.” She pulled the journal the Guardians of Harmony had written and flipped to the empty space where the map once went. “I wonder how my father got his hooves on this, but only got the map,” she wondered aloud.

“Add it to the list of things we need to find out,” Izzy said cheerfully. “Don’t worry, Sunny, we’ve been on a quest before. We’ve totally got this.” She grinned at her friend, and Sunny gave her a small smile before immersing herself in the journal as she walked. She felt drawn to it, like reading the journal would help her find the answers she needed. If the Guardians of Harmony had dealt with Wendigos like she thought, then surely they’d have some notes on what to do if all of ponydom divided and magic was at stake.

“Hey, look, guys!” Zipp called from up ahead, hovering just above the ground. Magic had gotten a bit more stable in the last day, and while she could never stay flying for long, she would take what she could get. The friends raced up the hill as the pegasus princess landed, except for Sunny, who was still reading.

Below them was a quaint town by the ocean, with a small cliff that once housed a signature landmark that was now destroyed and completely cleared out. The town was familiar to all of them.

“Maretime Bay,” Hitch said, savoring the sound of his hometown. “Home sweet home.”
> No War Machines This Time, Okay?
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunny wasn’t sure if she was just imagining it, or if it was her nerves acting up again, but Maretime Bay seemed a little tense, like it knew that the pegasi were rebelling and were ready to fight back. But it was probably just her nerves, because everypony was just going about their daily lives like nothing was wrong. It was a little unsettling.

Hitch led the way to the sheriff’s office, and as they passed, everypony greeted him and Sunny and all their friends warmly. He pushed open the doors, revealing two earth ponies. One was pink with a golden mane piled on top of her head, her glasses slipping down her muzzle as she anxiously paced. The other was bright red, with a slightly paler golden mane, and looked both worried and grouchy, which he did most of the time.

“Oh, thank hoofness you’re here,” Phyllis Cloverleaf sighed as she saw the five ponies. She pulled them inside and shut the door. Hitch and Sunny glanced nervously at each other.

Sprout waved awkwardly at the five friends, who all still remembered how he had nearly killed Sunny and Izzy by breaking Sunny’s lighthouse while they were still in there, had nearly killed Alphabittle by almost running into him with his war machine, and had just all around not been the nicest pony ever. But whatever was going on was far more pressing than feelings left over from recent events.

“Phyllis, what is going on?” Hitch asked, tilting his head at the owner of Canterlogic as she hurriedly pulled the shades down over the door, locked the door, and shoved a chair in front of it, proceeding to hurry all the ponies to the back of the room, and she still didn’t look quite satisfied. “Did something happen?”

“Actually, I was hoping you five could explain that to me,” Phyllis whispered. “None of the townsponies have any idea, but it’s only a matter of time before word gets out that the pegasi overthrew their monarchy and are planning to go to war with the other pony tribes. Please tell me it’s all an elaborate hoax?”

Sunny looked uncomfortably at her friends. “Well, actually…” she started, and Phyllis’ briefly hopeful expression collapsed. “We’re not entirely sure what’s going on either,” Sunny added hurriedly. “The pegasi seem to still harbor some hard feelings against the royals for pretending to be able to fly for all those years, but the majority of them seemed to have made peace with the other pony tribes. I don’t know why they would get all riled up like this now, all of a sudden.”

“But how did you know about that?” Zipp inquired, narrowing her eyes at Sprout. “Do you have spies or something? The unicorns had no idea, so why should we believe that you just happened to come across this announcement in your daily email.”

Phyllis sighed. “I think there’s something I need to show you,” she said, turning towards the barricaded door. “Follow me.”

She lead the ponies up to Canterlogic, smiling and waving at the townsponies as they passed, trying to act natural, but they could probably tell something was wrong. Her smile seemed too forced and her waves too enthusiastic to be normal. But they went back to their daily lives as soon as she passed. Phyllis entered her office and, just like at the sheriff’s office, she blocked the window, locked the door, and shoved a spare chair under the handle before leading them to her computer on her desk.

“Ever since the three pony tribes got back together, I’ve been trying to get in on some pegasi and unicorn websites and social media platforms so I can see what’s good for business,” she explained, tapping away at the large keyboard. “But the unicorns don’t seem to really have many, so I’ve been mostly focusing on pegasi. I was on the ZBS website about a day or two ago and saw this.”

She clicked on a video, taken from a shaky cellphone camera, of the events that happened on that terrible night the pegasi rebellion had begun. Zipp and Pipp winced as they watched their downfall again and averted their eyes.

Once the clip was done playing, Phyllis paused it. “I downloaded the video so that I could look at it later, and it’s a good thing I did, because ZBS banned me and all non-pegasi an hour later,” she said, worry seeping into her voice. “Thankfully we didn’t have many earth ponies in Zephyr Heights, and none have come back here yet, so news hasn’t spread…” She bit her lip. “And after saying that out loud, I realized that should still be of some concern to me.” She shook her head. “One problem at a time. I’m assuming you saw this?”

She backed up the video to the part just before Zipp, Pipp, and Queen Haven fell from the sky, the freeze frame perfectly timed so that it captured the dark lightning zig-zagging across the sky. It looked much more menacing now that Sunny was looking at it closely, instead of it just flashing briefly across the sky. She noticed that the royal family’s wings were glowing, too, just a brief moment before they darkened and the magic glitched.

“You have no idea how hard we had to work to quell the rumors going around after that was seen in the night sky,” Sprout whispered to Hitch, who looked slightly uncomfortable. “Mom eventually convinced them that pegasi had control over the weather in the old days, and they were just testing out their abilities.”

“It’s like a reverse of what happened when magic was brought back,” Izzy said, noticing the same thing Sunny did. “Do you think… if the pony tribes do go to war… magic will disappear again?”

“Maybe we can use that to get them back together again,” Hitch said hopefully, but Pipp shook her head.

“When the pegasi were rebelling, they were saying that, if it meant that they could be isolated from the other tribes, they were better off without magic,” she said softly, not wanting to recall anything from that night. “They won’t join forces with other tribes so that those other tribes can get an upper hoof on them. And they survived for so long without magic before… they probably figure that they can do it again.”

“So… what do we do?” Sprout asked quietly, not wanting to draw attention to himself.

Sunny sighed. “Phyllis, keep this news from reaching the public. We just got back from visiting the unicorns, and we think they’re going to be chill about the whole thing, but we need the earth ponies to not get involved in the fighting, either. We need to buy time so that we can find out what happened before to make the pony tribes divide.”

The pink earth pony nodded. “Though, before you go do… um, whatever it is that you’re going to do, there’s one more thing I want to show you.”

The five ponies waited impatiently as she clicked away on her computer, muttering to herself as she did so. “I think I’ve got it,” she announced finally, stepping back slightly as everypony crowded around. “I put the video through slow motion earlier to try and catch any hidden details, and I found this.” She hit play and stood back.

The video was just like always, only a whole heck of a lot slower. It took nearly a full minute for Zipp’s wings to flap once. But when the dark lightning flashed out across the sky (even in slow motion, it was still incredibly fast), Sunny saw what Phyllis must have been talking about.

For a brief moment, what looked like a single gemstone, a bright pink that exactly matched Zipp’s mane, was orbiting her, leaving a glowing trail in its wake. While the rest of the video was still agonizingly slow, the gem seemed to be moving at a normal pace. It was no wonder it wouldn’t be seen before. The gem made one full rotation before disappearing with a flash of light.

All eyes turned to Zipp, who flushed from all the attention.

“Maybe it’s some sort of thing that happens to the royals when magic is in jeopardy?” Sunny proposed, sounding very unsure about the idea.

“I don’t think so,” Phyllis said, rewinding the video again. “Watch Pipp and Queen Haven in the back.” Pipp, too, had a gem encircling her, this one an aquamarine color, but Queen Haven did not. Furthermore, Phyllis gestured to the bottom of the screen, where Sunny, Izzy, and Hitch were watching. The three of them also had gems; Izzy a blue one, Hitch a turquoise one, and Sunny a lavender one, the deep shade of purple unsettlingly like her toy figure of Twilight Sparkle.

Phyllis stopped the video after the gems disappeared. “I’m not entirely sure, but I think that something bigger is going on here. And it’s directly tied to you five.”

Sunny took a deep breath and let it out. “We’ll worry about that later,” she decided. “We need to find out what happened to make the three pony tribes separate. Maybe we’ll find something about that while we’re on it. Just keep the ponies calm, okay? Whatever you do, don’t let them find out about this. We have to prevent something from happening like last time. Um… no offense,” she added quickly, glancing at Sprout.

The red earth pony sighed. “None taken.”

Hitch led the way out of town, and Sunny had to say that they did a much better job of acting casual then Phyllis. Nopony gave them funny glances or looked as if they suspected something was wrong.

“So, where do we go first?” Pipp asked over pizza for lunch. She tipped her head up and gently lowered the tip of her slice into her mouth.

Sunny, who wasn’t eating, was studying the journal some more. “I want to go back to Zephyr Heights, since it seemed that it was the capital of Ancient Equestria even back then, but that seems kind of risky. So… perhaps we stay here? Maretime Bay used to be called Manehatten, and it seemed to be a pretty big city. Maybe we’ll find some old archives or something that could tell us more.”

Hitch tapped his chin, leaving a smudge of grease there. “I think I know somewhere we can start,” he said, completely oblivious to the grease.

Zipp sighed and reached across the table to rub it off, which she did kind of roughly. “As long as we get plenty of pizza, I’m good,” she said as she reached for another slice.
> Hidden in the Clutter... Again
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next morning, Izzy woke up to find Sunny sitting at the kitchen table, still reading the journal she’d taken from Zephyr Heights. The earth pony was pouring over it intently and barely looked up when Izzy said, “Good morning, Sunny!”

“Morning,” she muttered distractedly, turning a page. Izzy tilted her head at her friend.

“Um… are you okay?” she asked cautiously, taking a seat next to Sunny and nudging her. “Ever since you got that journal, you’ve been spending all your time reading. It makes me wonder if you found something disturbing in there.”

Sunny finally looked up and turned to the purple unicorn beside her, and Izzy wasn’t sure if she was all right or not. Sunny had dark circles under her eyes, indicating that she hadn’t been sleeping well (though to be fair, none of them really had), but her eyes were bright and excited. “Sorry, Izzy, it’s just… this journal is so… interesting. It talks about everything my dad knew. I mean, look at this.”

She pulled out her father’s journal and opened it to a page, pointing to it with her hoof. “This drawing of a chest. My dad didn’t know what it was. He could tell that it was magic, and he tracked the source to a big tree, but he couldn’t find any remains of it at all. But look-” she enthusiastically flipped to a page in the purple journal, “-there’s a picture of the exact same chest in here! It came from something called the Tree of Harmony, and Twilight Sparkle and her friends unlocked it with six keys, one for each of them, and it gave them rainbow power to defeat somepony named Tirek, who was stealing all the magic in Equestria! Then the chest turned into this castle, which then grew a map of Equestria that sent them on quests to solve friendship problems!”

“Wow.” Izzy looked back and forth between the two journals. “That is certainly something.”

Sunny nodded excitedly. “And look! My dad found this bell, and it’s obviously ancient, so he assumed it was from the time of the Guardians of Harmony, but it wasn’t! It was before that! Look, this page says that the bell belonged to somepony named Grogar, but then was stolen from him by Gusty the Great - she sounds pretty great - and hidden atop a mountain, where it remained for centuries before Tirek and some ponies named Chrysalis and Cozy Glow got their hooves on it and used it to nearly take over Equestria, but then the Guardians of Harmony blasted them with magic rainbows and the bell disappeared!”

Izzy opened her mouth to say something, but Sunny was on a roll, and there was no stopping her.

“And this talks about a pony named Starswirl the Bearded, and it sounds exactly like the pony that my dad had a picture of! He was around more than a thousand years before the Guardians of Harmony, but then he got trapped in limbo for all that time before Twilight Sparkle freed him! He’s the one who planted the Tree of Harmony! Izzy, I’ve been going through this journal for hours, and I still probably don’t understand a fraction of what’s in here!”

Izzy blinked, shocked that Sunny had finally stopped talking. “Uh… good for you,” she said uncertainly. “Does it talk about what you should do if all three pony tribes separate and magic disappears?”

Sunny sighed, her excitement dying down a little. “Not quite,” she says. “It says that the three pony tribes did separate before Equestria was founded, and just like Hitch found out, the Windigos appeared, nearly freezing the entire land. But the tribe leaders’ number-twos realized that, just because they look different, they’re all ponies, and came together, which was enough to defeat the Windigos. They then convinced their leaders to come together, and they founded a land where all ponies could live in harmony: Equestria. They celebrated this occasion with Hearth’s Warming Eve. Later, during the Guardians of Harmony’s time, not only the three pony tribes, but other creatures separated, and the Windigos returned. But some ponies in each of the tribes told everypony that they had to stick together, because they were stronger that way. The tribes all united and defeated the Windigos once more.” She rubbed her eyes, her exhaustion creeping up on her. “Makes me wonder why none of my super-awesome speeches ever worked.”

Izzy giggled. “I think they had all lived in fear for too long for a simple speech to win them over without any action,” she said, putting her arm around Sunny. “But hey, you did make some pretty good speeches, or so I was told.”

“Really?” Sunny looked up, her expression happier. “Who told you?”

Izzy flushed and mumbled something Sunny couldn’t make out. “Sorry?” she asked teasingly, playfully elbowing her friend. Izzy’s cheeks turned an even darker shade of red and she muttered, “Hitch.”

Sunny grinned at her. “Oh, really?” she asked playfully, seeing the flush in Izzy’s cheeks continue to rise. “And when was this?”

“After magic came back,” Izzy said so quietly, Sunny could barely hear her, her face looking like some sort of strange mutant tomato with a horn. “We were talking about you and your horn and wings and how hard you had worked to bring everypony together, and he brought up that you had been trying to get the message out ever since you were a little filly, picking up where your dad left off. And, I don’t know… I thought it was kind of sweet.”

“What was sweet?” Sunny asked teasingly, and Izzy’s face, if possible, darkened even more, but she was saved from answering when Pipp and Zipp entered the room, bickering about Pipp’s cell phone. Zipp was saying that the rebels could use it to track them, and that it wouldn’t pose much usefulness to their quest, as there would most likely not be anything about the old days on the Internet. Pipp said that it was necessary to stay in touch with what was going on outside of Maretime Bay, and so that she could record their adventure and post it online when this whole thing was over. When Hitch stumbled in, yawning, Sunny declared that they should go get donuts for breakfast, which was met with a chorus of cheers from the ponies.

After a very healthy breakfast of frosted donuts and smoothies from the smoothie cart where Sunny used to work (she quit after she had to move out of Maretime Bay), the five ponies headed over to the sheriff’s office, where, once they got inside, they found Sprout digging through files, making quite the mess.

“Sprout?” Hitch said at the same time that Sunny said, “What are you doing here?”

The former deputy flushed, which was visible despite his deep red coat. “Oh, hey guys,” he muttered. “I was just, uh… thinking that I might help you look for stuff about Ancient Equestria. Stop everypony from going to war again. Since, you know, it was kind of my fault ponies almost went to war last time…” His eyes flicked to Hitch and he blushed some more.

“Thanks, Sprout,” Sunny said warmly. “I really appreciate it.” Sprout gave her an uncertain smile before pulling something out of the heaping mess he’d made.

“There’s not much here, but I did find a mention of Manehatten,” he said, flipping through the pages of the file and stopping at one. “This must have just gotten missed when they got rid of everything else, because I can’t find anything more, but… Here, just have a look.”

Sunny and her friends crowded around Sprout’s old desk. What he had found was an old newspaper clipping about a dangerous snowstorm that was sweeping Manehattan. Ponies were freezing inside their homes and forced to look elsewhere for shelter.

“That’s interesting,” Pipp muttered.

“You can say that again,” Sunny agreed. “Sprout, do you think there might be more of these… wherever else files might be?” The earth pony nodded and led them to the back of the room, where he and Hitch pulled a ladder out of the ceiling that led to the attic. Pipp stayed behind, pulling the newspaper clipping closer as she studied the picture.

“From what I can tell, every single sheriff before me kept absolutely everything and buried it somewhere up here,” Hitch said as he climbed up the rickety ladder, Sprout behind him. “In case they need it again.”

“Cool,” Zipp admitted as she poked her head through the hole in the ceiling and looked around. “There must be as much history in here as the archives in Zephyr Heights, right, Pipp?” She looked around for her sister, but she wasn’t there.

“She’s downstairs,” Izzy reported, pulling Sunny through the trapdoor. “That picture really seems to have her stumped.”

Zipp shrugged. “Nah, it’s okay. I don’t think Pipp knew there were archives in Zephyr Heights.”

“This is going to take forever,” Sunny moaned, surveying the mess with a defeated look on her face. “I wish ancient history didn’t have to be so buried.”

Hitch put an arm around her shoulders. “Hey, now we have something to do all day,” he said brightly. “There’s got to be something up here that can help us. Come on. You take that corner with Izzy, I’ll take this one, and Sprout and Zipp can take that one. I’m sure it won’t take that long.”

“Uh, you sure you don’t want some backup, Sheriff?” Zipp asked, giving him a worried look that he quickly brushed off.

“Relax, I’ll be fine,” he insisted, pulling up a box and opening the flaps, a look of defeat briefly slipping through before he quickly replaced it with one of confidence. “I’ll be fine,” he repeated, more to convince himself than anypony else.

The day seemed to crawl by. Sunny’s back ached as she dug through box after box, file after file, case after case. They were all dated pretty recently, only within the past one hundred years, and her feeling of defeat continued to grow and grow.

At one point, Pipp poked her head through the trapdoor and said, “Sunny, can I borrow your journal that you got from Zephyr Heights?”

“Sure,” Sunny said distractedly, pulling the book out of her bag and, giving it a longing look, wishing the answers would magically reveal themselves to her, tossed it to Pipp, who immediately began to flip through pages, intent on finding something specific that she obviously didn’t care to share with the rest of them.

“You think maybe you could help a little?” Zipp asked, looking up from the drawer she was digging through to glare at her sister.

“I am helping!” Pipp said indignantly. “There’s just something I need to fact check real quick…” She disappeared down the ladder, muttering to herself. Zipp rolled her eyes and went back to work.

By noon, the exhausted ponies trudged across the street to get more smoothies before going back to work. Sprout picked up a strawberry smoothie for Pipp, and even though Zipp scoffed that her younger sister would never drink something so plain and common, when he gave it to Pipp, who was still at the sheriff’s station, flipping through Sunny’s book, she absently took a sip and murmured her thanks, not making any mention about the taste.

Sunny sighed and tossed away a file about an earth pony caught stealing from Canterlogic, so desperate to have means to protect himself, and picked up one about a young filly who had been arrested and charged for painting slogans on the pavilion in the center of town. A photo of the accusee was paperclipped inside, and Sunny blinked. She was sure that she recognized that face from somewhere. Brushing away the fine layer of dust covering the image, she made out a young colt with a bluish-gray coat, blue mane, and purple eyes. His smile looked so familiar…

Even before she read the description of the case, Sunny knew exactly who it was. Tears sprang into her eyes as she carefully straightened the picture of her late father.

“Guys!” Pipp cried, bursting into the attic, waving her phone, making everypony jump. “I think I just found something amazing!”
> Pizza Night
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Look at this!” Pipp said excitedly, pointing at the picture on the newspaper article once she’d managed to round everypony up.

Zipp sighed. “Pipp, there’s nothing there but storm clouds-”

“No!” Pipp insisted, getting frustrated. She thrust the paper at them and forcefully tapped the picture. “Look!”

Sunny glanced at Zipp rolling her eyes and decided to give Pipp the benefit of the doubt that this was something important. She leaned forward and studied the image as Pipp removed her golden hoof, looking at them expectantly and waiting for them to figure it out. Sunny squinted at the fuzzy picture. Up in the clouds… were those lights? There were three of them, circling above the city.

“What are those?” she asked Pipp, who excitedly thrust her cell phone in her face.

“I took a picture and enhanced it as much as I could,” she explained eagerly. “It’s still kind of blurry, but you can see it a whole lot better.

The lights now had slightly equine features, though the grainy picture was still very hard to make out. Zipp’s jaw dropped.

“H-how did you-” she started.

“I told you, I have an eye for detail,” she said brightly, a proud smile on her face.

“I should say you do,” Hitch admitted, studying the picture with Sunny. “I never would have noticed that on my own.” He flexed his hoof and winced. Izzy looked at him concernedly, but he flashed a handsome smile and acted like nothing was wrong.

“Yes, but what are they?” Sprout asked, looking unhappy that he hadn’t been the one to discover the magic glowing horses in the clouds.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Pipp admitted, a sour look on her face that she quickly squashed. “But that’s why I wanted your journal, Sunny,” she said, brightening again. “I thought they sounded kind of like the Windigos that Hitch found out about back in Zephyr Heights-” Hitch puffed out his chest, “-but I wasn’t sure. So I thought that, since the Guardians had fought them, they would talk about them in their journal.”

“Did they?” Izzy asked, standing next to Sunny.

“Yes! It says here that the Windigos had equine looks, but they appeared to be made of blue smoke and appeared in the clouds.” She pointed at her sister. “Back in Zephyr Heights, you asked why the Windigos didn’t come back when the three pony tribes separated. But I think they did! They did come back, but instead of uniting to defeat them, the Windigos were defeated by… something else. I don’t know what. Wait, why are you all staring at me like that?” Indeed, everyone was staring at Pipp like she was speaking in Old Ponish (which, by the way, was still a dead language that was studied).

“Sorry,” Izzy said hurriedly, breaking the awkward silence. “It’s just… it’s a lot to take in, that’s all.”

“What do you think made the Windigos disappear again?” Sprout asked, tilting his head at the former pegasus princess as she scrolled through her phone.

“I can’t find anything about the Windigos on MyStable… go figure,” she grumbled.

“That’s all right, Pipp!” Sunny said cheerfully. “This is a huge discovery! Now we know that the Windigos did come back, we just have to figure out how they disappeared again. Which shouldn’t take too long…”

“Just please tell me we don’t have to search through any more files,” Hitch said, a touch of whine in his voice, flexing his wrist again. His eyes widened, and he added, “Not that I’m complaining, or anything.”

“Hear, hear,” Zipp agreed.

“Did anypony find anything else about Ancient Equestria?” Izzy asked, stretching like a cat. “I didn’t, but my back hurts too much for me to care too much.”

“I did,” Sprout said eagerly, happy to finally contribute something. “Hitch, you do know that the oldest files are in the corner where Zipp and I were, right? That place may seem disorganized, but there is some kind of loose - very loose - system that goes on.”

“Really?” Hitch asked. “I-I mean, I knew that. I just thought, you know, that something may have slipped into another box, like that.” He pointed a hoof at the newspaper article. “That’s why I was over there. Searching for things left behind.”

Sprout raised an eyebrow at him. Sunny pulled out her dad’s journal and flipped open to a blank page. Seeing her father’s hoofwriting brought another wave of sadness as she recalled what she had found upstairs. At least her father had tried hard to spread the message, like she had. She picked up the newspaper and slipped it into the journal. Her father documented everything he found about Ancient Equestria in the notebook in case he needed it later. Sunny felt the need to carry on the tradition. She pulled out a pen and wrote what Pipp had discovered.

“This is a box of files from when Maretime Bay was called Manehatten,” Sprout said as he lugged the giant box downstairs. “Took me forever to find it, but…” He flipped open the flaps, sending clouds of dust, causing the other ponies to cough. “Sorry,” he apologized. “There’s not much here that could help us, anyways. Just a couple mentions and stuff.”

“Better than nothing,” Sunny decided, leaning over and pulling stuff out. After hours of nothing new, she was thrilled to see words like Manehatten, Fillydelphia, and Canterlot sprinkled in, even if it did, as Sprout had said, yield no results.

Izzy used her magic to lift the last few things out of the box and distribute them amongst her friends when she noticed something sticking out from underneath the flaps on the bottom of the box. Curious, she reached down with her hoof and slid it out enough that she could pick it up and see what it was. Her breath caught in her throat.

“Um, guys?”

Everypony turned to Zipp, who was holding up another newspaper article. “I found something,” she said, reading the big black headline aloud. “It’s from a newspaper called The Manehattan Times. Open revolt in Canterlot; Pegasi take over the city.” She glanced meaningfully at Pipp. “Guess that’s how we’re royals.”

“Used to be royals,” Pipp gloomily reminded her.

Sunny took it from Zipp. “I think I might start getting the newspaper delivered,” she declared. “Maybe a couple hundred years from now, ponies will be researching what happened to the crystals or something, and old newspapers hold all the answers. I didn’t know these things could be so useful.”

“I agree. I usually only get them for the comic strips,” Sprout said, nodding before noticing the strange looks everypony was giving him. “What?”

“This says that the main pegasus city, a place called Cloudsdale, dissolved, and the pegasi were forced to search for shelter on the ground,” Sunny reported. “That’s strange. It makes it sound like they couldn’t build another floating city made of clouds… or even fly. Magic must have disappeared by this point.”

“It doesn’t mention anything about the Windigos,” Hitch remarked, scanning the passage with Sunny. “Perhaps they were defeated.”

Zipp nodded. “With magic gone, it would make sense that beings made of magic would disappear, too.”

“They were defeated,” Izzy announced, taking the floor. “By the last surviving member of the Guardians of Harmony.” She slid yet another newspaper article towards Sunny, the headline visible for all to see: Last ruler of Equestria faces off against Windigos alone. “According to this, Twilight Sparkle went out to face the Windigos and defeated them by supposedly contracting her magic into a gem that blasted the creatures back to wherever they came from and setting up a protective barrier that would prevent them from ever returning. The gem then broke, and the pieces were scattered.” She gave everypony a look. “And I think we can all agree that gem must have been…”

“The one that we put back together to get magic to return?” Sunny finished, looking astonished. Izzy grinned.

“Exactly! With the Windigos gone, and ponies still divided, the lack of harmony that was required to defeat the Windigos before stuck around, and ponies lost their magic.”

“Because friendship and harmony were what kept their magic in the first place,” Sunny added, catching on to what Izzy was saying. “With ponies separated, there was no friendship or harmony between the three tribes, and since the Windigos couldn’t come back, magic vanished!”

“So to get it back, all three pony tribes had to reunite!” Izzy exclaimed.

“Just like last time! So to get it back this time, we need to reunite the three pony tribes again!” Sunny actually had to take a deep breath to calm herself from the excitement. All hope wasn’t completely lost. “Should be a piece of cake, right?”

The other ponies had been looking back and forth between Sunny, Izzy, and the newspapers on the floor as this whole conversation was taking place. “Uh, yeah, piece of cake,” Pipp said weakly. “I mean, we did just do it, so…”

“Except that this time, instead of the earth ponies wanting to go to war - uh, no offense,” Zipp hastily added, glancing at Sprout, who shrugged. “But now it’s the pegasi, which is actually a lot worse, because in their current state, the pegasi aren’t going to get cold hooves and turn tail at the sight of a unicorn.”

“At least the other tribes don’t want to go to war,” Sunny said brightly. “Count your blessings, right, guys? Now, who’s ready for pizza?”

“I get fifty percent off for being Customer of the Month,” Sprout said helpfully, which just caused everypony to give him strange looks again. “What?”
> The Castle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Are you sure you want to go with them, sweetie?” Phyllis asked nervously, secretly hoping that her son would give in and decide to stay in Maretime Bay instead of going on this crazy expedition.

Sprout nodded. “It’ll be fine,” he insisted, rolling his eyes at his mother’s worry. “We’re just going to try and find some old castle. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Phyllis sighed. “I just worry about you, is all,” she admitted. “I don’t want you making poor decisions. I mean, you did just get out of jail.”

Sprout winced as she brought it up. “I’m a big stallion, Mommy, I can take care of myself,” he said importantly, throwing out his chest. “Besides, there’s not much that scares me OH MY HOOFNESS THERE’S A SPIDER MOMMY PROTECT ME!!!” He dashed behind his mother as Zipp roared with laughter, dropping the string she was holding. As Sprout realized what was going on, his face turned the same color as his cutie mark.

“That wasn’t funny, Zipp!” He yelled indignantly at the pegasus. He attempted to leap up and grab her, but the former princess soared just out of reach, just to agonize him. Pipp and Izzy snickered and Sunny let a smile slip through. The only one who managed to hide his amusement was Hitch.

Phyllis let a quiet chuckle slip, which her son blessedly didn’t notice. She placed her arm around his shoulder and wrapped him into a hug. “Just promise me you’ll be careful, okay?” she asked, her voice smothered by Sprout’s mane. He grumbled his promise and glared at Zipp, who was hovering over her sister and talking good spiritedly with her.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Hitch asked Sunny as he packed food into a saddlebag. “Just trotting off to who knows where with a centuries old map to guide us?”

“I just know that there has to be something left,” Sunny insisted. “The Guardians had a castle somewhere near Bridlewood. Castle’s don’t just disappear completely in only a few centuries! There must be something there that can give us a hint.”

“All right. You are kind of the boss on Ancient Equestria,” Hitch conceded, now packing sleeping bags and blankets. Sunny smiled.

“Yeah… I guess I kind of am.”

The six ponies set off just after lunch in virtually high spirits. Sprout was pretty much an exception to this, as he was still really angry at Zipp for her little spider prank. They set off towards Bridlewood at a brisk pace and, before long, the dark trees of Bridlewood were in sight.

“Do you think we have time to stop at my place?” Izzy asked longingly. “I have this super awesome project that I really want to finish, any chance we can spare a few minutes?”

“Sorry, Izzy, but I don’t think it’s on our path,” Sunny said, studying the map she held. “I think we have to go… that way.” Her words caught in her throat as she realized what they would have to do. “Towards Zephyr Heights.”

Her friends exchanged worried glances. “Well… let’s just hope we don’t run into any rebels,” Pipp said, checking her phone. “I don’t think they stray out of the city, so we should be okay.”

They walked for the rest of the day and, after a brief snack break, they reached a canyon with a river, the stone bridge broken, but a large tree trunk was resting next to it, still whole. “Remember who Izzy cut that thing down with her horn?” Zipp whispered to her sister, and they smothered giggles as they remembered.

Sunny froze once she crossed the river and saw what was ahead of them. “This… I’ve been here before,” she realized. “We all have. Well, except for you-”

“I know, I know,” Sprout grumbled, “I was back home building a giant war machine.” Hitch noticed his expression and fell back to trot beside him, but his old deputy didn’t seem to be in the mood for talking.

“Isn’t that the tree that hides the secret passage to Zephyr Heights?” Zipp asked her sister, who nodded.

“I don’t suppose we’re going back there just yet,” Hitch suggested, studying the tall mountain in the distance. “Probably not safe.”

“Agreed,” Pipp said, confirming their suspicions with her cell phone.

“According to this,” Sunny announced, studying her map and the landmarks around her, “this tree used to be the ruins of a castle… Wait, that can’t be right. There used to be the ruins of a castle here, where the tree is now, but the tree couldn’t have possibly been here when the castle was. I wonder what happened to it.”

“Do you think that might be the castle we’re supposed to be looking for?” Izzy asked, studying the ground with an excited look on her face. “Because that might mean we have to do some digging…”

“Hm. I don’t think so,” Sunny concluded, turning towards the mountain and studying the forest there. “I think it’s somewhere… in there.”

“Oh.” Izzy’s cheerful demeanor dampened considerably, and she now looked more afraid than excited. She eyed the dark sea of trees warily and subconsciously took a step back, which didn’t go unnoticed among her friends.

“Uh, Izzy?” Sprout asked uncertainly, remembering what Hitch had told him about the unicorns’ superstitions. “Is there hypothetically anything wrong with that part of the forest?”

“What? Oh, uh… Actually, yes,” she admitted. “They’re supposed to house some kind of ancient magic, and as you know, unicorns used to be very superstitious about magic. And it just felt… off. Also it was the closest place to Zephyr Heights, so we thought that the pegasi might see you there and swoop down and… you know,” she concluded hastily with a quick glance at the two winged ponies. “But, I think there’s nothing to worry about, really… except for the fact that when I went there I heard and saw all kinds of scary things… but that was probably just my imagination acting up, right?”

“O…kay?” Sunny put her journal away and turned away from her friend. “As long as we keep heading west, we should be good,” she explained to the other ponies. “Just keep the mountain to your right, though it may be hard to see it, given how thick the brush looks down there…” She shook herself and started off towards the dark mass of trees. Everypony glanced worriedly at Izzy before following. The unicorn herself hesitated before taking after them, and even then her steps were subdued and nervous.

The dark trees were overgrown with vines and other plants and seemed to smother all light. They wrapped around the ponies as they pushed through the brush blindly, trying to keep going straight. Izzy eventually got enough control over her nerves to shakily light the tip of her horn, and the flickering light allowed them to see their surroundings more clearly.

Sunny jumped backwards with a yelp, and her friends froze where they stood, wondering what had frightened her. Izzy ducked behind Hitch.

Pushing some brush aside, Sunny saw what had alarmed her in more clarity. It was what looked like a building, but the features had been distorted over time. Even so, Sunny could tell it was a tall structure with a dome at the top, and a spire on top of that. Wraparound porches connected to pillars running the entire height of the circular building, and windows lined the walls. Sunny could see that, if it had been in better condition, it must have been a very important building.

“Wait,” Zipp reasoned, stepping forward, “if that building’s here, then that means…” She squinted through the dark with Sunny, and their eyes widened in unison. “Izzy,” Sunny said slowly, “come here, please?”

The unicorn shakily stepped towards them, eyeing the ruins of the building with apprehension. Grateful for the light that the purple pony’s horn offered, Zipp and Sunny peered into the darkness once again, as did the rest of their friends. Slowly they were able to pick out bits of irregular shapes that didn’t belong to the forest. Strange shapes that were clearly hoofmade instead of natural. There was an entire village hidden in the forest.

Sunny pulled out her journal and studied the map. “This must be Ponyville,” she said, awe and wonder in her voice. “Look, on the map it has a picture of a big building in the center of town that looks just like this one.”

“Isn’t Ponyville the place where the Guardians of Harmony were from?” The bright white flashes of Pipp’s phone paused as she asked the question, then resumed as she waited for a response.

“Yes,” Sunny whispered, still unable to completely wrap her head around what she was seeing. “This is… incredible. Imagine what we could find here.”

“I’m guessing a whole lot of green stuff,” Hitch said as he pulled a large vine away from a door. He reached to push the door open, and it crumbled to dust. Quickly withdrawing his hoof and glancing around, looking to see if anypony had seen him, he added hastily, “And maybe we shouldn’t touch it because it has clearly been here a while, and we aren’t exactly experts on this stuff.”

“I guess,” Sunny said sadly, looking around her with obvious disappointment written all over her face. “It just seems like a shame to discover this place and then not be able to explore it a little.”

They were silent for a while until Sprout came to a conclusion. “Hey, maybe we can just walk around,” he suggested, “clear away some of this brush, just try not to touch anything. Then we can get a better idea of what it must’ve looked like, at least.”

The hope and happiness on Sunny’s face couldn’t have been more clear if the words I AM SO HAPPY!!! had been written across her forehead in pink sparkly letters. “Yes, yes, let’s do that!” she enthusiastically agreed, reaching for a bush and pushing it out of the way of a staircase. She delicately tested it before scrambling up to peer through a window and see what Ancient Equestrian homes looked like. Apparently, a lot like hers, just with less technology.

“None of them have roofs,” Sprout commented as he walked through the town. “Maybe they rotted away?”

“This one has a roof,” Izzy supplied helpfully, gesturing to a building that looked like it was made of candy. The slight gesture sent a small breeze through the air that was enough to make the whole building shudder and crack. A look of alarm flashed across Izzy’s face. “Uh, maybe we should keep it that way.”

“This is so cool,” Pipp whispered, aiming her cell phone flashlight at a building like the one in the center of town, only this one had more blues and purples and was a bit shorter. Peering inside, she could see what looked like the remains of a fashion shop, clearly abandoned. The last owner had clearly tried to grab whatever they could, but something must have prevented them from packing up everything. The floor was littered with tipped-over carts with hangers and dresses and suits sprawled all across the floor, with bolts of fabric draped over the furniture in a way that was clearly unintentional. Despite the destruction and obvious age, Pipp could imagine what it must have looked like when it wasn’t so messy. “If I had lived in this town, I would have definitely lived here.”

“Oh, really?” Zipp asked in a teasing voice. “What about… there?”

She pointed through the dark trees at something in the distance, a dark shape that was a towering figure even though it was surrounded by brush and tall trees. There was an air of authority and magic that surrounded it and seemed to keep the worst of it at bay. The six ponies diverted their attention to it and aimed their flashlights that they had packed (Pipp continued to use her cell phone and Izzy her horn) at the dark figure.

The light caught on the grimy crystals that hadn’t seen daylight in years, and slowly the shape became clear. Wide at the bottom, then narrow, before widening and once again narrowing to a tip at a large star. A balcony stuck out from the side, and the whole place was made of crystals.

In the middle of the forest, at the head of a village completely destroyed by time and nature, there was a castle.
> Don't Judge a Book by It's Cover
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Woah.” Sunny’s voice was completely awestruck. “I think that might be what we’re looking for. Anypony up for exploring?”

“Won’t that be dangerous?” Sprout asked nervously as he bumped a mailbox, which promptly fell apart upon contact. “I mean, didn’t we literally just agree to not do that? Because this stuff’s been around for so long that literally any contact will essentially kill it?”

“Oh.” Sunny’s cheerful demeanor lessened considerably. Then it brightened again. “Well, this one seems to be made of much more durable stuff than the others. I’m sure it’s fine.” She trotted off towards the castle, holding her flashlight in her mouth and shining the beam at the castle. The exterior was very interesting. It looked as if some bark was growing over the crystals, so that, if it had kept up like this, the castle could have been mistaken for a very oddly shaped tree. The doors were hidden completely behind a wall of bark that Sunny and her friends had to pull away, bit by tiny bit, until at last, a large chunk fell away and crashed at their feet as they hurriedly backed away. This left a sizable hole in which they could see the wooden doors, painted gold with a heart in the middle.

Gingerly reaching out, Sunny pushed the door open. It creaked tremendously, but didn’t break. The sound echoed eerily in the empty building, and the light coming from the door was all that they could see by. Any windows had been concealed by the growing bark, wrapping the palace in a cocoon of wood.

Sunny stepped inside, shining her flashlight around as she went, and her friends followed. She let her heavy pack of supplies drop to the ground as she stared in wonder.

The first room had high ceilings and a dusty carpet that ran for a few meters before dividing into three more: one that went to the left, one that went to the right, and one that kept going straight, up until it met a staircase. Above the staircase was a long balcony. Identical doors made of dusty green glass and golden frames lined the walls. Crystal pillars stabilized the corners, and old tapestries and other decorations hung from the walls.

“This is…” Sunny swallowed, found her voice, and tried again. “This is the most amazing thing I have ever seen.” She took a deep breath. “Okay. We need to find a place to camp for the night. As much as I want to start exploring right away, we need some kind of home base. Everypony, keep your eye out for some kind of big room.” She picked up her pack and led the way through the hallways, studying the architecture as she went. The interior of the castle seemed to be spared from the forest’s rampage, the crystal walls holding back the plants. It all seemed very natural, like it was grown into the shape that it was instead of being created by ponies.

Hitch poked his head in a door and said, “Nope. Nothing here except a broom closet.”

“I found a bedroom,” Pipp supplied. “But it looks pretty dirty. This place needs a clean-up - a very thorough clean-up.” She wrinkled her muzzle and shut the door.

“Do you think any of the Guardians lived here?” Zipp asked Sunny nervously as they trekked further and further from the door. She began to feel like she was closed in and trapped, a feeling that she hated, even with the high ceilings and spacious corridors.

“Princess Twilight Sparkle probably did,” Sunny inferenced. “She was a princess, after all, and I doubt she wanted to live very far from her friends. But I think the rest of the Guardians of Harmony lived in Ponyville.” She was itching to pull out her journal and check this fact, but her desire to explore the castle around her was too much to resist.

Izzy opened a door and carefully poked her head inside. “Uh, guys? I think I found something,” she called to her friends’ retreating backs. They turned and hurried back as the unicorn pushed the door open, and they all stepped inside.

The room was empty, for the most part. There were a few tables and cushions, with candleholders sprinkled here and there, their occupants long gone, and a large shelf that took up an entire wall, separated in the middle by what looked like a giant crystal branch. A few books were scattered around the shelf, like somepony was trying to fill it up, but just didn’t have the materials. The whole room had a musty, papery smell to it, even after all these years.

“Woah,” Sunny whispered. “This must have been Princess Twilight’s library. Imagine the books she read in here!”

Hitch and Sprout cleared a space in the middle of the room and pulled out the tents they’d packed. Zipp moved to help them pitch said tents, Pipp moved around the room, the tiny red light on her phone telling that she was recording their newest discovery, and Izzy stayed by Sunny’s side as she recorded what they’d found in her journal, drawing a picture of what the castle looked like from the outside and the inside.

“Pretty amazing how all this has been under our muzzles the whole time,” Izzy said cheerfully, shrugging off her heavy gear. “I mean, if we had found this before, we wouldn’t have known what it was. But now we’re all friends again… for the most part,” she amended, glancing north towards the mountain she knew was there. “Now that we’re all friends again, we can work together to figure these kinds of things out.”

Once their camp was set up, Sunny began rallying instructions to her friends. “Zipp and Pipp, I need you to go upstairs and map out the upper floors. Be careful. I don’t know how solid this place is, but hopefully your wings can help if a floor gives out from under you.” The two sisters nodded, and Pipp checked to make sure that she had enough battery left on her phone. She’d charged it before they left Maretime Bay, but this castle didn’t seem to have electricity, so she wanted to save it. “Sprout and Hitch, you take the left corridor; Izzy and I will take the right.”

The ponies nodded and split up in their separate directions. Sunny and Izzy trotted down the hallway, Izzy’s horn alight, illuminating the dark corridor. Sunny pushed open a door and peered inside. “Another bedroom…” she sighed. “Nothing special.”

“How many bedrooms does this place have?” Izzy asked skeptically. “Did Princess Twilight have everypony live here?”

Sunny laughed. “No, I think they all lived in the town… Maybe she just got a lot of guests or something.” She pushed open another door and peeked inside. “Storage closet.” She shut the door again.

“This place sure has a lot of doors,” Izzy commented, and Sunny laughed.

The rest of the day passed without much new discovery. Hitch and Sprout found the dining hall, and Zipp and Pipp managed to see how many floors were in this place, along with a map of the twisting hallways on each one.

“Four levels,” Pipp exclaimed at dinner, grabbing another slice of cold pizza that Sprout had brought along. “Four! And one of them goes into the towers, but we didn’t even get up there yet.”

Zipp rolled her eyes. “You’re telling me. These hallways are all so alike we got lost about a million times! The only reason we knew we were lost is because our trail on the map kept going in circles and loop-dee-loops, and we were like, hey, that can’t be right…”

Sunny looked over at the rough map the two pegasi had drawn. It still went in plenty of circles and loop-dee-loops.

“Anyway, so we got back on the right path… we think,” Pipp said, finishing the last of her pizza. “It’ll be so much better once we can all go through on foot and mark it down in more detail, but we’ve got some sort of sketch going on here, which is better than nothing, right?”

Afterwards, the ponies decided to hit the hay, and Sunny settled into her tent that she shared with Izzy. Her friends fell asleep relatively quickly, but Sunny tossed and turned, unable to sleep. She was in the former home of some of the greatest heroes in Equestrian history - she didn’t have time to sleep! She eventually sat up and slouched outside her tent, pulling out her journal to read by the dim light leaking in through the dusty windows.

“Sunny?”

The mare jumped and spun around to see Izzy in the mouth of their tent, rubbing her eyes and yawning. “Oh, Izzy, it’s just you,” Sunny breathed, trying to calm her racing heart. “What are you doing up?”

“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” Izzy said cheerfully yet tiredly, slipping beside her friend and glancing at the journal open on the ground in front of her.

“Couldn’t sleep.” Sunny sighed and stared around their feeble campsite. “It’s just… There’s something about this place. Something… magical, I guess. Can’t you feel it?”

Izzy looked at her, startled. “Yeah, couldn’t you? I mean, can’t you see it?”

Sunny looked around once more, but didn’t see anything that the purple unicorn might be referring to. “See what?”

“Well, no, I guess you couldn’t,” Izzy said reasonably. “Sunny, this place… it has a sparkle.”
> Sparkles, 101
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“What do you mean?” Sunny asked, perplexed. “Don’t only ponies have sparkles?”

Izzy shrugged, apparently at a loss for the right words. “I thought so, too, but I’m the only pony in Bridlewood who can see sparkles, so I don’t know. And magic has been gone for years, so maybe that’s it?”

“But ponies didn’t have magic, and they still had sparkles,” Sunny pressed.

Izzy sighed. “Like I said, I don’t know a lot about sparkles. There’s nopony I can ask. But sparkles get brighter when you’re happy - you know that already.” Sunny nodded, her eager expression encouraging Izzy to continue. “But this castle has a sparkle. I’ve never seen a building with a sparkle before. But I think I know what a sparkle is, now.”

“Which is…?” Sunny prompted.

“Before, I thought it was just like a measure of your emotions. But I think you have a sparkle if you have magic. That’s the only possible explanation.”

“Wait. So you’re saying… this castle is magic?” Sunny blinked and massaged her temples with her hoof. “How does that work? How can a castle have magic?”

“It must have been created by magic,” Izzy mused. “Have you noticed how it seemed to be grown into this shape? Not even the most precise architects could have managed that. It must have some kind of magical properties, but then magic disappeared, and it began to turn into a regular tree.”

Sunny’s mouth hung open, and her eyes were wide. “That. Is. So. COOL!” She immediately shoved her hooves into her mouth, both her and Izzy looking around warily to see if they woke anypony up. “Sorry,” she whispered. “Do you think the Guardians of Harmony created it?”

“It’s possible,” Izzy said before stifling a large yawn. “I’m going back to sleep. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.” She crawled back into their tent, but Sunny had no intention of going back to sleep. She had just found out that there was a magical castle in the middle of the woods! How could she go to sleep at a time like this?

“I’m going to explore this place,” Sunny decided. A tiny voice nagged in the back of her head, saying, Shouldn’t you bring your friends along? But Sunny was too excited to care.

She trotted out into the hallway, picked a direction, and started going. She would just stay on the first floor. If she got lost, she would eventually reach something familiar, and be able to take it from there. As she stepped outside the library, she heard a whooshing sound, and turned back to look. But it was just one of the tent flaps moving. Must have been the wind… even though there was no wind in a castle. Sunny shook the uneasy feelings from her shoulders and continued on her quest.

Somewhere along the way, she discovered that she was subconsciously following a strange light up ahead. Now aware of it, Sunny doubled her pace, eager to see what it was. Some kind of magical message left behind from the time of the Guardians of Harmony, telling her what had happened? Okay, that was pushing it a little, but she could hope, couldn’t she?

Pushing open another green door (literally every single door in this place was green; how could the Guardians stand it?), Sunny found herself in a large chamber, and it all but took her breath away.

The ceiling was adorned by a huge chandelier, made from tree roots, polished and sanded down. “Huh,” Sunny said to herself. “Interesting design choice.” She decided not to touch it. If the village outside was any indication, everything could turn to dust at the slightest movement. Even if this had been locked away in a castle the whole time, and spared the worst, time still acted there.

Hanging from the tree roots were dozens and dozens of crystals, pink, blue, and yellow. They glimmered and gleamed in the light, and Sunny thought she could see images in them. But her attention was diverted to the other thing in the room.

A large table occupied the center of the room, made of crystal, surrounded by six - no, seven; there was a small one next to one of the big ones - crystal chairs that had a large image on the back. Sunny walked around the table and inspected them, and her heart stopped. She froze where she was and tried and failed to calm herself down. The table was the source of the strange light that Sunny had been following. It shimmered and glowed and appeared to be surrounded by sparkles.

Sparkles…

This place has a sparkle, Izzy had said.

Was Sunny seeing the table’s sparkle? If so, why this and nothing else? Or was it just so magical that the sparkle was clear for all to see? Or was she specially tied to it in some way? There was only one way to find out.





“Guys!” Sunny shoved the doors to the library open and dashed inside. “Guys, wake up! I found something amazing!”

Zipp and Hitch were the first ones out of their tents, rubbing sleep from their eyes and scanning the scene, looking for threats. When they saw Sunny beaming so brightly she seemed to light up the entire room, they looked confused, and then annoyed. Pipp and Sprout pushed past the ponies in the mouth of their tents and surveyed the scene, Pipp holding out her cellphone, the red blinking light showing that she was recording, her sleep mask dangling from one ear. Zipp reached over and pulled it off. Izzy pushed the tent flap back and exited her tent. She looked like the only one who wasn’t surprised by Sunny’s attitude.

“What is it?” Hitch asked, stifling a yawn behind his hoof. “And can it wait till morning?”

“Something amazing, and yes, I suppose it can wait till morning, but I really want to show you now!” Sunny was bouncing on her hooves, and Hitch thought that soon, she wouldn’t even need her wings to achieve liftoff. But the earth pony stopped bouncing and rushed to the door, gesturing for her friends to follow. “Come on, come on, come see! I promise it’ll be worth your time! Please?” She stuck out her bottom lip and made a puppy-eyes face. Hitch sighed.

“Fine. But after that, we are coming back here, we are going to sleep, and we will do no more exploring until after breakfast and coffee. Okay?”

Sunny nodded eagerly and dashed into the hallway. She led her sleepy, yawning, stumbling friends down the numerous hallways and to what she came to think of as the throne room. It was the closest this castle seemed to have. Her friends didn’t see what the big deal was at first, but after looking at the star on the back of one of the chairs - the star that matched exactly with the one that was on the stained glass window back in Zephyr Heights - their mouths dropped into Os.

“Oh my stars,” Zipp whispered. She walked around the table, studying the marks on all the chairs. “Is this… This is so amazing.”

Sunny beamed, her expression saying, “I told you so!” But she was too happy to say anything.

“This is cool and all,” Sprout said, looking skeptically around the room. Everypony was staring in awe at the structure, but he just didn’t get what was so great about it. “But why should we be excited?”

After reminding herself that Sprout hadn’t seen the abandoned airstation in Zephyr Heights and taking several deep breaths, Sunny said, “Sprout, this is where the Guardians of Harmony must have met to… I don’t know, do friendship stuff. This was their castle. The marks on each of these chairs, those are their cutie marks, they must be. And it’s proof that they existed, and that all pony kinds can get along! We really need that nowadays.”

Sprout looked again at the chairs surrounding the table. They did look vaguely familiar…

Pipp flapped her wings and managed to get a few feet off the ground. She circled the room, recording on her cell phone what they had found. She circled around the chandelier very gently, careful not to touch anything. She noticed what Sunny had: there seemed to be images inside the crystals hanging from the wood. Flying closer to investigate, Pipp gently tilted a pink crystal until she could see the picture inside before snapping a photo with her cell phone. She repeated this process for each crystal, then flew down to the ground and enhanced the images to get a better look.

“Hey, Sunny, look at this,” Pipp said, trotting over to the mare and showing her the pictures. “There are these pictures in the gemstones up there,” Pipp explained as Sunny scrolled through the photos. “I think they’re memories or something.”

Sunny seemed at a loss for words. Tears came to her eyes as she saw the Guardians having a party in what looked like a library, at a wedding, making cider an extremely old fashioned way, and just hanging out.

Zipp ran her hoof over the image of a red, yellow, and blue lighting bolt coming from a cloud on one of the chairs, feeling some kind of connection to it. She took a step back, and her hoof bumped into something on the floor. Looking down, she saw that it was a shard of crystal that looked like it came from the table. Zipp picked it up and looked at the table. Sure enough, there was a large gap in the crystal, something that looked like the shard in her hoof would fit into.

The pegasus princess reached to slide the shard into its slot, but as soon as it touched the crystal, the whole table lit up, startling Zipp so much that she jerked it out again. The crystal clattered to the floor in dead silence. Everypony was looking at the table and at Zipp.

“What was that?” Pipp squeaked.

Izzy came next to Zipp and picked up the crystal shard. She slowly moved it closer to the table, and as she did, the shard began to glow, as did the area around it. “It’s sparkle is getting brighter,” she commented quietly. She fit it into the slot, and the entire table lit up. Zipp helped her push the shard all the way in, and when it fell into place with a quiet shink, a blast ricocheted across the room, throwing the ponies back. When they looked up, the table was still glowing, and magic sizzled across the top, forming landscapes and cities and towns. It started on the edges and met in the middle, atop a large mountain with a castle built into the side.

“Wow,” Sunny whispered, shakily standing up and approaching the table.

“Sunny, don’t-” Hitch started, but she paid no attention to him. She traced her hoof over the solid yet transparent structure, looping over hills and through the streets of towns. She stopped on the edge of the ocean, her hoof lingering on the city in the middle of a bay shaped like a horseshoe. “It’s Maretime Bay,” she said quietly, unable to keep her voice from shaking. “No, it’s Manehatten. It looks… different.”

“Well, it has been over a thousand years,” Sprout said grumpily as he struggled to stand up from the tangled position he’d been thrown into.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Zipp said, resting her hoof on a floating city made of clouds. She traced the arching rainbows in the city and felt a chill down her spine.

“Oh my stars, Zipp! Look! It’s Zephyr Heights!” Pipp squealed excitedly, pointing at the mountain in the center of the map. “And that must be where we are now, in that little town right there! See, look, there’s the castle!” She pulled out her phone and started recording.

“Where’s Bridlewood, though?” Izzy asked, confused. She studied the map, looking for answers that she couldn’t find.

“Perhaps it’s part of this forest here,” Hitch suggested, indicating the dark mass of trees outside of Ponyville. “Maybe it expanded over here over time, and then receded until it just occupied this area. Then the unicorns made a village as far away from the magical castle as possible, since, you know, they’re afraid of magic.”

“Maybe,” Izzy said, looking sad that her city wasn’t represented. She placed her hoof gently on the edge. She didn't know why, but she felt tied to the map in some way. Apparently Pipp and Hitch felt the same way, because they did the same. Pipp even put her phone away. Sunny and Zipp already had their hooves on the map, and with contact from all five ponies, the map began to change.

Light spread out from where the ponies’ hooves touched the crystal and spread out, changing the landscape. It was as if they were watching a time lapse of how Equestria changed over the years. The city of clouds dissolved under Zipp’s hoof, and Zephyr Heights - Canterlot - began to change. It looked more like the pegasus city that they knew.

The forest began to invade at lightning speed, stretching out tendrils of vines and plants and wrapping them around Ponyville, dragging it in. The forest was completely out of control, and threatened to continue expanding, but something stopped it. A bright light came from the center of the forest, from some old catle ruins, and the forest around it was obliterated, so that it only covered Ponyville and the area around it. It made no move to continue its expansion.

Manehatten began to change as well. The towering structures collapsed and were replaced by the smaller, quaint buildings of Maretime Bay. A single lighthouse sprung forth on a cliff overlooking the ocean, and Sunny shivered. It was so strange to see her lighthouse again.

The other cities on the map, besides Canterlot - now Zephyr Heights - and Manehatten - now Maretime Bay - fell to ruin and dispair. All the pegasi seemed to be in Zephyr Heights, all the unicorns in Bridlewood, all the earth ponies in Maretime Bay. Nopony lived in the other towns anymore; they felt they had to stick together to protect themselves.

The map was mostly silent as the three cities quietly and fractionally expanded, and then Sunny’s lighthouse collapsed. Her heart ached, seeing her childhood home being destroyed, even though she had seen it before. That didn’t make repeat viewings any easier.

Afterwards, a small wave of magic swept through the map, finalizing the image on it. The chairs around the map began to glow and circle the map, and the ponies standing around it. They spun faster and faster until they became a white blurr, whipping up a strong wind before they suddenly stopped. There were no longer seven chairs, but five, arranged around the table like the tips of a five-pointed star. The cutie marks on the backs had changed, too. They were no longer the Guardians of Harmony’s cutie marks, but Sunny, Hitch, Izzy, Pipp, and Zipp’s cutie mark.

Once the initial shock had faded, Sunny just about burst into tears of happiness.

“Sweet,” Zipp said numbly, flapping her wings to carry her over to her chair and settling in it. She looked over at Pipp, who was seated next to her, of course, and who had her phone out, of course, and was snapping photos of what the palace now looked like, of course.

“That was so cool!” Sunny bounced up and down and ran over to her own chair to try it out. Izzy sat next to her and was studying the room.

“The sparkle’s changed,” she said in a politely curious voice. “I’ve never seen that happen before. It used to be a mix of different colors: purple, pink, white, blue, orange, yellow. But now it’s different. Now it’s a mix of white, pink, purple, a sort of orangish-yellow, and a sort of pinkish-
orange. It looks like… it looks like us.”

“Do you think whatever magic built this place wanted us to have it, to carry on the work that the Guardians never finished,” Zipp suggested.

Hitch ran his hoof along the armrest of his own chair and looked around, doing a brief count. “Hey, where’s Sprout’s chair?” he asked, and everypony else noticed it, too.

“Oh, no,” Sunny said, sounding guilty. She looked around for the red earth pony, saying, “Sprout, I’m really sorry-”

But he was already gone.
> The Others
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sprout shoved open the doors to the castle and stumbled outside. Warring emotions inside him made him dizzy and uncertain, so he collapsed at the top of the steps that led to the door.

Seeing the magic that had created the castle give Sunny, Zipp, Pipp, Izzy, and Hitch magic thrones, and the map reacting to their touch, but just ignoring him, only reminded him of how he would always be an outcast because of his past and his mistakes. Tears welled up in his eyes and splashed onto the stairs.

“Sprout? Are you out here?” came a voice, and Sprout hurriedly wiped the salty water away and tried to look indifferent. Hitch poked his head outside, and his eyes landed on the earth pony sitting dejectedly on the front stairs. “Oh, hey, um… Are you okay?”

“Huh? Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” Sprout lied, trying not to look at the sheriff as he sat down next to him and studied the red pony’s face with concern.

“You don’t look okay… Hey, are you crying?”

“No!” Sprout dragged his hoof across his eyes and sniffed. “What kind of question is that?”

“Sorry,” Hitch apologized quickly. “I just thought that… you know, after what happened in there… I just wanted to let you know that…”

“That what? I’m still part of the group? Yeah, right,” Sprout snapped angrily, taking Hitch aback. “Face it, I’ve made too many mistakes. I’ll never be one of you. Even the magic agrees. I’m just the guy everypony feels sorry for because I’ll never amount to anything.” His anger and humiliation came pouring out. All his life, he’d been overshadowed. First by his mother, who was the founder of Canterlogic; everypony expected him to be as successful as Phyllis when he couldn’t even hold a job at a pizza place. Then by Hitch, who had become sheriff despite that being Sprout’s dream; he never got to do much except offer Hitch with moral support, which he really didn’t need. Now by all the ponies he thought could possibly be his friends, who were the new Guardians of Harmony, apparently. “Just go, okay? Just go.”

Hitch was silent as his friend lost control over his emotions. After a brief silence, he said, “Hey, um, I bet the Guardians of Harmony had loads of other friends besides just themselves.”

Sprout sniffed, indicating that he was still upset, but he didn’t yell at Hitch to leave him alone.

“And there were only six thrones in there. I bet they were friends with just about everypony, but they couldn’t all have thrones. But they probably did awesome things, too. I mean, the Guardians couldn’t have won every time, right? I bet their friends had to rescue them from a few pickles.”

“You think so?” Sprout asked, turning to look at the other earth pony. His eyes were red (which you could hardly tell with his coat) and puffy, but he seemed more at peace.

“Yeah! And I bet they made a ton of friends with ponies who made really big mistakes.”

“Probably none as bad as mine,” Sprout grumbled dejectedly.

“...That’s debatable,” Hitch stuttered after a quick pause, now unsure what to say. “Perhaps there’s some stories in Sunny’s old journal. We can ask her.”

“Yeah… AH! Spider!” Sprout shrieked, his voice going up several octaves. He dove behind Hitch and trembled in fear as the sheriff looked at the creature sitting on the banister, studying the ponies with what looked like great curiosity, if spiders could have feelings. It was a pretty big spider, and it had a strange marking on its abdomen.

“Sprout, look at this,” Hitch said, trotting forward and pointing to the bright blue star, standing out against the shiny black. The former deputy shrieked again and cowered in fear as two more spiders joined the first, all with a blue star marking. “That’s interesting…”

“Uh, Hitch?” Sprout stuttered, unable to keep his voice from shaking. “What is that?”

A dark shape was moving through the trees, with tall horns and thick, muscled arms and piercing yellow eyes. It stopped just beyond the castle steps, the trees still concealing its full appearance. Sprout slid behind Hitch and peeked around his tail. Hitch rolled his eyes.

“You there! Show yourself,” he commanded, his voice authoritative and carrying. The figure tilted its head and appeared to decide that they were not a threat, because it stepped into the dim moonlight that managed to find its way through the dense overhead canopy. Sprout gasped and Hitch forced himself to remain calm. The creature walked on two legs and looked like a cross between a bull and a heavily-muscled monkey of some sort. It had two skinny legs with hooves, a small waist, broad shoulders, long arms with weird things at the ends that looked extremely dangerous, a long snout with a iron ring pierced into its nose, and black horns protruding from the creature’s head. The whole creature was a strange shade of bluish-gray.

“Who are you?” Hitch demanded, taking a step forward and bracing himself for a potential fight. He wanted to make the monster think twice about attacking.

“What are you?” Sprout peeped, still hiding behind Hitch and clinging to his tail like a foal. Hitch sighed and flicked his tail, freeing it, and Sprout bolted back to the safety of the castle, hiding behind one of the doors.

“I promise I mean no harm,” the creature said in a gruff voice, holding up his huge arms to show that he was defenseless. “My name is Iron Bill.”

“And what are you doing here?” Hitch continued, assessing Iron Bill to see if he could be a threat.

“I was going to ask you that,” Iron Bill said, frowning and lowering his arms. “You ponies are trespassing in our territory. Everyone else wants to know who you are and what you’re doing in the Everfree Forest.”

“Everfree Forest?” Hitch murmured to himself. “Okay, look, we’re not here to harm anypony,” he said to Iron Bill. “My friends and I are going on some sort of quest to-”

“Hitch? Hitch, where are you?” came Sunny’s voice from inside the castle. “We didn’t find Sprout, but-” She stopped as she poked her head outside, momentarily speechless. “Oh,” she said quietly. “Um… who’s this?”

“He says his name’s Iron Bill,” Hitch explained as Sunny, Izzy, Zipp, and Pipp all filed out, Pipp pulling out her phone to start recording. “He says we’re trespassing on his territory.”

Sunny mouthed the name Iron Bill to herself and tilted her head at the creature in front of her. “Your name sounds familiar… Nevermind. We’re sorry if we were trespassing. We didn’t know. We’re kind of new to the area, so…”

“Your friend here says you were going on a quest,” Iron Bill pressed, folding his arms across his bare chest. “What was it a quest for?”

“For this.” Sunny waved her hoof behind her to indicate the castle. “Well, not this exactly, but we were looking for Ponyville, and I think we might’ve found it, isn’t that what the village back there? Anyways, we found this castle, and I think it might’ve belonged to Princess Twilight Sparkle, do you know who that is? But we were just looking for more proof that all three pony kinds once did live together in harmony, because we could really use it right now.”

Iron Bill studied them for a moment before turning towards the forest again. “Come with me,” he said, gesturing to them.

Sunny and Hitch exchanged a glance before following, everypony else close behind, though Sprout somewhat reluctantly. Iron Bill led them back to Ponyville and to the town hall, where he gently eased open the door, which amazingly did not collapse into itself. Inside was empty and dark, just a large room. The open door provided them with a little bit of light. Iron Bill stood in the center of the room and called out, “I think they are okay.”

Pipp double checked to make sure her phone was recording. “Who do you think he’s talking to?” she asked her sister, who shrugged.

A shadow peeled itself away from the darkness and turned into a lion… with a scorpion’s tail. A large reptile appeared next to it, looking somewhat like a crocodile, but built in a very interesting way. Tiny bugs shaped perfectly round with giant, adorable eyes clustered together along with what looked like miniature ponies with giant, gauzy wings and delicate antenne. A giant bear that looked like it was part of the night sky poked its head out of the shadows and hesitantly sniffed the air. Dozens and dozens of other creatures detached themselves from the darkness and studied the newcomers with interest.

Finally, one of the creatures - a purple sea dragon with elaborate orange hair sitting in a tub of water - spoke: “So, can we kill them now?”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Izzy whispered to Sunny, her worry clear in her wavering voice.

“No, Stephen Magnet, we are not going to kill them,” Iron Bill growled. “We decided that killing newcomers would be bad. Right, every creature?” He looked around, and there were scattered responses of agreement among the assembled creatures.

“But we also decided that ponies are bad,” Stephen Magnet continued, as if speaking to a very young foal. “After all, they’re the whole reason we’re stuck in the forest with absolutely no representation in literally all of pony society. So we would not allow ponies into our territory to take what little we have for themselves… again.”

“These ponies won’t do that if they’re who I think they are,” said another creature, stepping forward from the crowd. Surprisingly, this was a pegasus with an orange coat and purple mane who looked familiar…

“I know you!” Pipp suddenly exclaimed, startling the other creatures in the room. “You’re one of our guards!”

“Wait, how did you get down here?” Zipp asked suspiciously, taking a step forward.

“I live here,” the pegasus said simply. “Appearances can be deceiving.”

Pipp and Zipp exchanged a glance. “What exactly do you mean by that?” Zipp asked slowly.

The pegasus smiled, and a column of light suddenly appeared, encircling the pegasus. Pipp squeaked (again, yes, I get it, ha, ha, moving on) and ducked behind Zipp. When the light cleared, the pegasus was gone. In his place was a strange creature that looked like a cross between a pony and an oversized bug…

“W-what are you?” Sunny stammered, taking a step back, shocked by the display.

“I’m a changeling. We can change form,” the creature explained simply. “My name’s Midge.”

“That. Is. So. COOL!” Izzy exclaimed. “What else can you turn into? Anything? Or does it have to be living, or can you turn into regular objects, and OH, if you turn into a unicorn, do you have unicorn powers? Is that a power? Did it disappear when magic did?” she babbled before Sunny put her hoof in front of her mouth to keep her from continuing, but she was secretly curious, too.

“Um…” Midge mentally rewound the conversation to figure out what Izzy had said. “From what I can tell, I can only turn into living things, I do have said thing’s powers, yes, it is a power, no, it did not disappear when magic disappeared. I don’t know why.”

“Are there… more of you?” Sunny asked, wondering how many ponies she knew could possibly be changelings in disguise.

Midge shook his head. “The rest of my tribe is not here. They are in their own kingdom, living in fear of others… I think you know what that is like by now. I live here because I want to try and help fix things. I’m tired of being afraid. I want to do something.”

“So, you’ve been… what, spying on us for the past few years?” Zipp asked, still not sure what to make of it.

The changeling bowed. “My apologies, Your Majesty, but we are not accepted in modern society, so we wanted some sort of spy to see what was going on. We also wanted to try and bring the tribes back together so that we could rejoin society, but we never knew when to start. Then you and your friends did all the work for us, and we were about to come back when relationships began to deteriorate again. Now, we’re trapped here, and ponies are all to blame for it.”

“Okay, so, I’m a little confused on why ponies are at fault here,” Hitch spoke up. “I mean, how is it our fault if we didn’t even know you guys were here? Maybe if you hadn’t been hiding the whole time, we could have given you a chance.”

Midge raised an eyebrow. “Do you not think we’ve tried it? Think, what was the reaction to when you showed up in Zephyr Heights? Everypony was frightened, and the queen threw you in jail just because you were different and they blamed you for something you didn’t do. Every time we try to reintroduce ourselves, ponies turn away from us and push us back to where we started.”

“This is why we do not tolerate ponies in our territory,” Stephen Magnet spoke up, “if we are not tolerated in theirs.”

“That’s not entirely true,” said one of the tiny pony-bugs. His voice was high-pitched and squeaky. “What about those three little ponies? We let them stay.”

Sprout, who had been quiet for the entire exchange, suddenly snapped his head up. “What three little ponies?” he asked, looking interested.

Iron Bill and Stephen Magnet exchanged a glance. “Three foals who wandered in here about a week ago,” Bill explained. “One from each pony tribe. They said they were running away to stick together, that they didn’t want to have to separate again. We offered them sanctuary because they were so young, and we hoped that we could use them to help our cause.”

“Take us to them, now.” Sprout commanded.
> The Missing
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Iron Bill led them outside and began pushing his way through the dense trees, Sprout, Sunny, Hitch, Izzy, Zipp, Pipp, and Midge following, as well as Stephen Magnet, somewhat reluctantly. He kept watching Sprout with a strange look on his face, like he expected the red earth pony to suddenly burst into song about his evil intentions (not that he would ever do that).

Hitch caught up to Sprout. “Hey. Um. Why do we care about these… mystery ponies so much?”

Sprout was silent for a few paces before speaking. “Around the time my mom found that video of magic doing… that, three foals went missing from Maretime Bay. They were friends, and they were from all the different pony tribes. The pegasus’ parents said that they were planning to move back to Zephyr Heights to be closer to family when their foal disappeared… We’ve been looking for them, but we haven’t found them yet.”

The others overheard the conversation. “Where do you think he’s taking us?” Pipp asked Zipp in a low voice, her hoof securely wrapped around her phone, holding it close to her chest.

“I don’t know,” Zipp whispered back. “But I think we’re about to find out.”

The trees were getting thinner, and there was a bit more light leaking between them. Iron Bill gave the shrubbery one last shove before stumbling out into open space. The six ponies followed, blinking in the sudden bright light. “Hey, we’re back where we started,” Izzy commented, looking confused. “See, look, there’s the tree that hides the secret tunnel to Zephyr Heights.”

Midge looked surprised. “You know about that?”

Pipp nodded. “When I was really young, I… had a lot of spare time. So I went exploring, and I found that tunnel. I went just far enough to know that it went out of the city before turning back. Why? Did… Is that how you got in and out of the city so fast?” Midge nodded.

“Did you see anything else interesting about the tree?” Iron Bill questioned sharply, folding his huge arms and glowering at the pink pegasus. “Anything… magical?”

“Besides the fact that it has pink leaves? No,” Pipp said nervously, taking a step back. She knew that Bill wouldn’t intentionally hurt them, but he still scared her a bit. But not as much as Stephen Magnet, who kept studying them like he was looking for exactly how to “get rid” of them. “Um… why?”

Iron Bill gave Pipp a strange look. “Just… follow me,” he said at last. He marched up the hill at a startling speed. Stephen Magnet took one look at the six ponies, sniffed in disgust, and pressed a button on his motorized water bowl, making it zoom after Iron Bill.

“...Race you to the top,” Zipp said after a while, spreading her wings and running up the hill. She would occasionally execute a flawless backflip or summersault, aided, of course, by her wings.

“Oh, it is on,” Sprout said, taking off after her at top speed, Hitch a breath behind him. Sunny and Izzy laughed and chased after them, leaving Pipp to gallop behind them with Midge, who could have already reached the top before any of them, but felt kind of bad for the smaller pony, after so many years of guarding her.

Iron Bill and Stephen Magnet were waiting when they all eventually arrived together, having tackled each other more than once on the way up the hill. Iron Bill’s expression looked softer, but Stephen Magnet was just as snarky as ever. He took in the panting ponies with their goofy grins plastered all over their squishy faces and snorted. These were supposedly who the Elements of Harmony had chosen to be their next bearers? Doubtful.

“So, what’s so special about this tree?” Sunny asked between gasps.

“You’ll see,” Iron Bill said.

“It’s kind of hard to explain without visuals,” Midge supplied.

Bill slipped into the tunnel underneath the tree, and everypony followed him. But instead of continuing up the tunnel to Zephyr Heights, Bill stopped right inside the entrance. He brushed aside some tangled roots and dirt, revealing a hidden door in the wall of the tunnel. But this door was made of crystal… pale sky blue and flashes of pink and unnatural colors that should not belong to any plant. It reminded Sunny of the castle in Ponyville…

“No way,” she whispered, putting two and two together in her head. Midge smiled.

“You haven’t even seen the best part.” The changeling pushed open the door, which led to a crystal staircase that wound up into the heart of the tree. The walls were crystal as well. Midge excitedly led them up the stairs, with Bill and Stephen bringing up the rear, Stephen convincing Bill to drag his fish bowl up the stairs. Bill was now looking very sorry that he did not skip this trip.

“Oh my stars,” Sunny gasped when they entered the room on the ground floor. She was the only one who could find her voice. The walls were crystals, the furniture was crystal, the everything was crystal. Different shades of blue and purple and pink were scattered throughout the room.

Pipp did the natural thing and pulled out her cell phone to start taking photos and recording footage. Zipp was too distracted to care much about her sister’s technology addiction. She and everypony else were standing stock still and staring at the structure in front of them.

“Is this like the castle?” Izzy asked when she found her voice. “Is that why it’s all crystal-y inside?”

“This is the Tree of Harmony,” Stephen sniffed, staring down his long nose at the purple unicorn in disgust. “Or what’s left of it, anyway.”

“What do you mean, what’s left of it?” Sunny asked, staring at the sea dragon, perplexed.

“There seems to be a lot here,” Hitch agreed.

Midge shook his head sadly. “Not as much as there used to be,” he mourned. He walked over to a picture hanging on the wall. It was of a crystal tree with five dominant branches. At the end of each branch was a single gemstone, of different colors: red, pink, purple, orange, and blue. In the center of the tree was a gemstone shaped like a six pointed star, a bright magenta pink. Sunny stared at it. It looked like…

“The Tree of Harmony was planted by six powerful ponies who were forced to leave the realm to protect it,” Midge explained. “They infused a seed with their magic, hoping that whatever grew from it would protect the realm in their absence. From the Tree grew six magical gems called the Elements of Harmony, some of the most powerful magical relics this world has ever known.

“The first rulers of this world, sisters Celestia and Luna, used the Elements of Harmony to defeat a creature of chaos named Discord who had turned Equestria into his playground. They turned him to stone and built their castle above the cave where the Tree of Harmony was… on this very hillside. They kept the Elements in the castle instead of returning them to the Tree, but the Tree still had enough magic to keep the Everfree Forest from invading Ponyville, and inevitably all of Equestria.

“Over time, Luna grew resentful of her older sister, feeling that nopony noticed or cared about her. She became a mare of darkness, Nightmare Moon, seeking to punish her sister and claim the throne. Celestia was forced to use the Elements to banish her to the moon for a thousand years. But one day, she would return.

Midge was an animated storyteller, and he quickly had everypony spellbound and hanging on to his every word.

“The Elements… stopped working after that. They lay in the castle, forgotten, as the castle crumbled from the fight that had ensued between the sisters. Celestia had moved to Canterlot, and she ruled the realm in peace. But, a thousand years later, Nightmare Moon returned, bringing with her eternal night.

“Six brave ponies, knowing about the legend of the Elements of Harmony and the Mare in the Moon, journeyed to the Castle of the Two Sisters, where the Elements were located, in the middle of the Everfree Forest. Nightmare Moon threw challenge after challenge their way to keep them from finding the Elements, but each of the friends’ unique abilities helped them overcome these challenges.”

“My ancestor,” Stephen Magnet interrupted, “was part of one such challenge. Like me, he was dashingly handsome, but that cursed nightmare pony ruined his beautiful mustache. If not for the generosity of one in the party, a kind young miss named Rarity, he would never have had the strength to reface the world.”

“They eventually made it to the Castle of the Two Sisters, where the leader of the group, Twilight Sparkle, attempted to create the spark among the five Elements that would cause the sixth Element to appear, but before she could succeed, Nightmare Moon took the Elements and destroyed them. But Twilight Sparkle then realized that the spirits of the Elements of Harmony could be found in her five friends, causing the Elements to be repaired. They stripped Nightmare Moon of her darkness, turning her back into Princess Luna, and she was then reunited with her older sister.

“Time went on, and the Elements of Harmony were used numerous times, but the Tree of Harmony grew weaker every day without them, until magical vines that Discord had planted over a thousand years ago, kept dormant by the Tree’s magic, sprang loose, capturing Celestia and Luna and threatening to cover all of Equestria. Twilight Sparkle and her friends found the Tree of Harmony in disarray, but by returning the Elements to it, they saved it, freeing the princesses and keeping the Everfree Forest contained once more.

Midge moved to the next picture on the wall, which was exactly the same as the first, only the five outside gems were different shapes.

“The Tree grew a magic chest, which had six locks for six keys. As time went on, each of Twilight’s friends found their key in an object given to them by a pony whose life they helped change. But before Twilight could find her key, an evil creature known as Tirek returned, stealing all of Equestria’s magic. After giving up her magic in exchange for her friends, Twilight Sparkle found her key, and when the chest was unlocked, it gave the six ponies the power they needed to defeat Tirek, and then the chest grew a magic castle in Ponyville.”

“So that’s why this place looks like the castle!” Izzy exclaimed, figuring it out.

“The castle produced a map of Equestria that would send Twilight and her friends on quests across the land to solve friendship problems, but other than that, the Tree was mostly forgotten. It was used once Twilight accidentally released a centuries old evil from his prison, but stayed mostly dormant.

“Then the Tree developed a sort of consciousness. It created a magical chamber underneath the school that Twilight and her friends built to teach friendship to all sorts of creatures, and it worked its magic through six different creatures when a pegasus filly named Cozy Glow attempted to transport all the magic to a different dimension. But then… it was destroyed.” Midge looked sad, like this part of the story was always his least favorite. “King Sombra, a pony of shadows and darkness, had returned and decided to cut off Twilight Sparkle and her friends’ powers at the source, and he shattered the Tree and the Elements.

“Don’t worry, they managed to defeat him anyway. They realized that the power of their friendship was more than enough. But that was it… the Tree was gone. Until the six creatures whom the Tree had developed a connection with realized that the Tree was not gone.”

Midge moved to the last picture on the wall. It was of a beautiful building, made entirely of crystal, with branches like those on a tree with pink crystal leaves bunched together on the ends.

“They built a small clubhouse out of the remains, but it magically grew into what you see today.”

Sunny’s mind was reeling. She had read about some of what Midge was talking about in the journal that Twilight and her friends had left, but to hear another creature tell them like he believed it with his whole heart… it just made the whole thing seem more real.

There was a sound from upstairs, and all nine creatures turned towards the noise. Three foals came trotting down the stairs, one a green unicorn with a purple mane, another a golden pegasus with a tangerine mane, and a third an earth pony with a pink coat and a lighter purple mane than the unicorn. They were laughing together, but fell silent as they saw the six other ponies in the room.

“Oh,” was all the unicorn foal said.
> Amidst the Fighting...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The young foals' names were Jinx Evergreen, Rose Blossom, and Lofty Skies. They sat side by side on one of the couches that adorned the first floor, crossing hooves with each other for comfort.

“Your parents are freaking out right now,” Sprout scolded them. “Why in Equestria would you run away like that? Everypony’s looking for you!”

“We didn’t want to lose our friendship,” Rose Blossom said quietly. “Lofty Skies was going to leave, and… we wanted to stick together. Like you guys did.”

“But you can’t just run off without telling anypony just because you want to stay friends,” Hitch added.

“You did,” Lofty Skies pointed out.

“Yes… well… the circumstances were… special,” Hitch stuttered before giving up. “Okay, yeah, they sort of do have a valid point.”

“Hitch!” Sprout reprimanded, his tone saying clearly, “We are not going to just let them off the hook like that.” “This is a different matter entirely. They’re foals, for hoofness sake, and running off into a mysterious forest to accept the help from complete strangers is definitely not the sort of actions we want from other foals. The first thing we do is get them home.”

“No!” all three foals said at once, wrapping their arms around Lofty Skies.

“My parents will think that we need to move away first thing to prevent something like this from ever happening again!” the pegasus foal exclaimed.

“Mine will want to move back to Bridlewood, and even if they don't-” Jinx Evergreen began, but Rose Blossom finished.

“-they’ll be really angry and probably ground us and we’ll never see each other again!”

The foals opened their eyes wide and stuck out their trembling lower lips. Sprout sighed frustratedly. “Foals these days,” he muttered. “All right, fine,” he snapped, and the foals’ faces lit up. “If you come back to Maretime Bay, we’ll help convince your parents to let you stay together. And, just for the record, this is not because of your adorable puppy eyes, so don’t ever try that again.”

The foals cheered. Midge, Stephen Magnet, and Iron Bill looked at each other with a strange look on their faces, as if they wanted the foals to stick around because they needed more time to ‘convince them to support their cause.’ Hitch gave them a sideways glance and opened his mouth to say something, but paused.

“Uh, guys?” he asked, tilting his head. “Do you hear that?”

The ponies and creatures stopped to listen. One by one, they became aware of the distant yapping and barking that Hitch had heard.

“What on earth-?”

Zipp was the first one outside, Hitch close behind her. A white ball of fluff suddenly flew out of nowhere and tackled Hitch right in the face, knocking him on the ground. Sunny shrieked and jumped back into Izzy, who stumbled, tripping on Stephen Magnet’s water bowl, which tipped and sloshed, showering Pipp in water, who screamed and tried to fly away, only crashing into Iron Bill, who waved his arms, trying to regain his balance, and accidentally hit Lofty Skies in the head, who threatened to fall down the stairs had Jinx Evergreen and Rose Blossom not grabbed her hooves and heaved her back up, toppling into Midge and knocking them all to the ground, which tripped Sprout so that he almost whacked one of Zipp’s wings, but just barely managed to regain his balance in time.

“Cloudpuff?” Zipp asked incredulously, oblivious to the chaos around her. “What are you doing here?”

“We need to teach this dog to not attack my face,” Hitch growled from underneath the white pomeranian, who was happily licking his face. With a groan, he pushed Cloudpuff off and sat up. Cloudpuff proceeded to flap his wings so that he could hover next to Hitch and continue to lick his face.

“Wait, if Cloudpuff’s here, then that means…” Pipp trailed off as a dozen ponies touched down in front of them. “Mom?”

“My darlings!” Haven cried, running forward to meet her daughters. “Thank hoofness you’re safe! Zephyr Heights is in panic, and we just couldn’t stay any longer, so we decided to come looking for you, and what were you thinking running away like that, anything could have happened to you, I was out of my mind, I didn’t know if you were alive or dead or kept in a dungeon somewhere…” She sighed and wrapped her wings around Zipp and Pipp. “I was so worried about you,” she whispered softly, stroking their heads.

“We’re sorry we ran away,” Pipp responded immediately.

“But we had to,” Zipp finished. “We managed to stop the unicorns and earth ponies from joining in all the madness, and then Sunny thought that we should go figure out how the three tribes separated before, and we found out about the Windigos and how the crystals were created, we think, and why magic disappeared, we think, and then Sunny said that there was a castle in the woods, so we went to go explore it, and we found them…” She turned around, but Iron Bill, Stephen Magnet, and Midge were nowhere to be seen.

“You found unicorns here?” Haven said, confused.

Everypony whirled around. Trotting in from Bridlewood were about ten unicorns, led by the large gray figure of Alphabittle. They all looked worried.

“I thought she was referring to the earth ponies,” Zoom supplied, gesturing to the small party of earth ponies coming from the direction of Maretime Bay at full speed, Phyllis Cloverleaf in the lead.

“What the…” Sunny stepped forward as the two groups arrived. “What’s going on?”

Alphabittle spoke first while Phyllis caught her breath. “The unicorns found out about the… situation in Zephyr Heights,” he said, throwing a self-conscious look at the assembled pegasi. “They… um, they got all angry and decided that they wanted to fight back against the pegasi. The most we could do was stop them from immediately charging into the city before we had to get out.”

“The same thing happened with us,” Phyllis said, taking a break from hugging Sprout and making sure her little stallion was okay. “News leaked out about… everything. They thought the whole magic-coming-back and friendship-and-unity thing was all just a front. When they found out that magic was unstable, they, um…” She trailed off, glancing quickly at her son before continuing. “They built another… Er, what was it called, dear?”

“Sprouticus Maximus,” Sprout muttered. He would have been blushing if his coat wasn’t red.

“Yes… that. They started building another one. It’s only a matter of time before it's finished, and they… you know. They decided that Izzy had brainwashed Sunny into helping her escape Maretime Bay, and then brainwashed all of you into helping her take over the world, I think.”

“Why in Equestria would Izzy want to take over the world?” Sunny asked, now in full-blown panic mode. “She’s literally the least likely pony to do that! And how did ponies figure out about everything? I thought you said that you were going to keep it disclosed!” Her mind overwhelmed from the craziness of the whole thing, Sunny sat down on the ground, failing to fully comprehend what was going on. “Okay, I’m sorry, I know this isn’t any of you guys’ fault. You did everything you could. But… we just united again. Do we really have to separate again? So… soon?”

Her traitor of a mind turned to her father’s note, his hope of a better Equestria. They had finally accomplished what he had wanted for his whole life. She was not about to lose it that easily.

“Okay. We have to get everypony to stick together. What are our options?” She looked around at her friends, hoping to see the answer on one of their faces, but they were all looking at her expectantly. “Ugh, we need more time,” she grumbled. “But time is the one thing we don’t have. So…”

What would Dad do?

The question came out of nowhere in her mind, but it immediately soothed her. What would her father do… Definitely the non-violent option. He wouldn’t form his own army and take it into war, trying to convince the ponies to stay together that way. He would most likely try the diplomatic approach.

“Phyllis, how long do you think we have before the earth ponies are finished constructing their… thing,” Sunny asked the pink earth pony, a plan formulating in her head.

“About three days,” Phyllis responded, looking worried. “It's not just the Sprouticus. They’ve also started replicating all the other things we’ve made over the years. We confiscated all the actual objects, but kept the blueprints. We were hoping to change them into items that would better suit our current society, but…” She sighed and shook her head.

“And Alphabittle, how long would you say we have until the unicorns do anything drastic?” Sunny said, turning to face the large gray unicorn.

Alphabittle shook his head. “I have no idea,” he admitted, “but it’s all pretty much chaos over there. They’ll need time to get organized and actually have a plan before they try anything, so… a couple of days?”

“And Your Majesty, I know you were stuck in the station the whole time, but how long does it look like it’ll take Zephyr Heights to organize?”

“Not long,” Haven admitted ruefully. “They started earliest, and when we escaped, they had some sort of guard chasing us. I’d say it won’t be long.”

Sunny ran through this new information in her head. “Okay, I think I have a plan,” she said, and looks of relief cascaded over everypony’s faces. “But we need to all work together. It’ll be slower, but I think ponies will listen to a larger group of all three tribes than just one. First, we go to Zephyr Heights, and convince them to calm down. I know you want to get your throne back,” she added when Haven opened her mouth, “but we’ll have to worry about that later. Next, we go to Bridlewood and tell the unicorns that the pegasi are not planning to attack, which will hopefully do the trick. Then we go to Maretime Bay and get the earth ponies to stand down. We’ll also send small teams to Bridlewood and Maretime Bay to help quell the chaos before we get there. Any questions?”

“Just one,” Pipp said, raising her hoof. “How soon do you think we’ll be able to get our throne back?”

“I have no idea,” Sunny said cheerfully. “Alphabittle, Phyllis, pick your teams.”

Alphabittle called his group of unicorns into a huddle and began discussing in hushed voices with them. Phyllis surveyed the earth ponies and decided on Toots and Sweets, two of her most trusted employees at Canterlogic. Just as they were about to leave, Sprout pulled his mother aside and said that he wanted to go, too.

“Everything that happened last time was all my fault,” he said quickly over his mother’s protests. “I’m not going to let something terrible happen again.”

The whole debate went back and forth for a while before Phyllis finally conceded, giving her son a big hug and a bunch of kisses that made his cheeks turn so red that you could see it through his coat. The respective groups of unicorns and earth ponies went back to their hometowns.

Sunny approached Zipp. “Ready to go home?” she asked.

The former princess sighed. “I guess. It’s just… I don’t know. I felt more at home with you guys in the past couple of days than I have in all my life in Zephyr Heights. So I guess I’m wondering… is it really home?” She looked over at Pipp, who was following Haven around and trying to get her attention. “But Pipp always loved it. It’s where her fans are, and you know how much she adores them.” She rolled her eyes, but Sunny saw something else in there, poorly disguised by annoyance.

“Are you sure that’s it?” she asked gently, putting her hoof on Zipp’s shoulders. The pegasus shrugged, and said, “I’m just remembering the night when… it all started. And I think… I’m scared. I’m scared that I’ll go back there,  and they’ll act like nothing ever changed. I’m afraid they won’t listen. I’m afraid magic will disappear again, and… and I’ll lose you guys.” She wiped her eyes before tears could form there and spread her wings, taking off into the sky, clearly portraying that she wanted to be alone for a little while.

Sunny sighed, then jumped as Pipp screamed, but it was quickly cut off. She spun around, crying, “Pipp?” but the pink pegasus was nowhere to be seen.

Hooves wrapped around Sunny and smothered her gasp of shock, pulling her back into darkness.
> ...There is Even More Fighting
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunny blinked open her eyes, groaning. Her head throbbed painfully as she sat up and carefully looked around.

Her surroundings were bleak and dark, but as her eyes slowly adjusted, she was able to make out three cold concrete walls and floor and roof, with one wall being made of iron floor to ceiling bars. There was no visible door.

Sunny tried to take a step forward, but her hooves didn’t want to move. She looked down and saw iron shackles around her hooves, bolted to the floor on chains barely an inch long. She couldn’t move in any direction. The cold iron bands rubbed against her skin and were clamped painfully tight.

“Hello?” she quietly called. “Anypony there?”

“Sunny?” came Izzy’s voice, and relief washed over Sunny. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Sunny replied, trying to determine where her friend’s voice was coming from through the throbbing pain in her head. “Where are we? Is everypony else there?”

“I don’t know.” Izzy’s voice was scared. “But I think we’re all here.”

“Sunny?” came Hitch’s worried voice. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine… ish. Where’s everypony else?”

“I’m right here,” Pipp said. Sunny’s headache had died down enough that she could tell that she was on her left. “And Zipp’s across from me… I don’t think she’s in the mood for talking, though.”

A violent thrashing sound came from across from Sunny, punctured by the rattling of chains. A low growl followed after the sounds had ceased. Sunny squinted and made out the form of a beaten, bruised, and disheveled pegasus in a room just like Sunny’s. A large iron band wrapped around her, pinning her wings to her side. Her blue eyes were full of fire, and she tugged at her chains with such ferocity it was a wonder they didn’t snap.

“Everypony else… Alphabittle and Haven and Phyllis… are they okay?” Sunny asked, straining her neck to catch a glimpse of her friends. She could just barely see Hitch next to Zipp and across from Izzy, in a similar predicament to Sunny’s.

“...Zipp? Pipp? Are you there? Are you okay?” Haven’s groggy and worried voice answered Sunny’s question, and she felt dread begin to settle in her gut. Wherever they were, whoever took them, they weren’t going to let anypony get away…

“We’re here, Mom,” Pipp replied nervously. “Are… are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said in a strained voice, followed by a hiss. “A little bit beat up, though.”

Zipp was obviously in view of her mother, because she growled again and continued to thrash at her chains. Her fur around the iron bands was stained crimson as the metal cut into her skin.

“Zipp, darling, please stop,” Haven whispered.

Sunny heard Alphabittle groaning, then the slight tingling sound of a unicorn horn igniting, followed by a loud bang and a cry from the large gray unicorn.

“Don’t try to use your magic,” Izzy advised quickly. There was a slight shuffling of chains as she adjusted her footing. “They put this weird clamp thing on our horns that blocks magic… I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Urgh,” Phyllis moaned. Sunny suspected that the whole blocking-unicorn-magic thing hit a little too close to home for the owner of Canterlogic.

“What about the ponies we sent ahead of us?” Sunny asked, desperate for some hope.

Zipp drew in her breath sharply and stopped struggling. She looked at Sunny with a confused look on her face. “What ponies?” she asked in a convincingly clueless voice, but Sunny could see the message in her eyes: they aren’t here, and we don’t want them to be.

“I thought we - that - Nevermind, I must have imagined it,” Sunny stuttered, playing along. “I must’ve hit my head pretty hard…”

Phyllis must have also got the message, because Sunny heard her sigh with relief.

There was a clunk of iron-on-iron, and a large door at the end of the hallway of cells swung open with much creaking, flooding the space with bright light. Sunny winced and covered her eyes, squinting to see through the blinding glare.

The silhouettes of several ponies were outlined in the light, and the door shut behind them, leaving them in blessed darkness. The only problem was that Sunny’s eyes had to readjust.

When they did, three of the ponies had appeared in front of Sunny. She naturally took a step back in surprise, but the chains almost made her trip over her own hooves. Once she regained her balance, she faced these new ponies with what she wanted to be bravery and defiance, but quickly turned to shock.

For the center pony, who was clearly the ringleader, was a unicorn, the very same unicorn that had turned up his nose at Sunny and Izzy in Bridlewood, so long ago, his blue coat and frosty white mane as cold as ever, but the ponies behind them were a pegasus and an earth pony. The pegasus had a purple coat and a pink mane; he was the pegasus who, on the night when it was revealed that the royal pegasus family was using wires to fake their flying ability, blamed the earth ponies and the unicorns for the whole thing, since they ruin everything. The earth pony had a bubble gum pink mane and a cotton candy blue coat, but Sunny didn’t recognize him from all her years selling smoothies in Maretime Bay. So where could he have come from?

Zipp apparently recognized him, because she gave a start when she saw him, and Sunny heard small rustles of chains from Izzy and Pipp, but Hitch looked as confused as Sunny felt. So where would two pegasi and a unicorn see an earth pony where two earth ponies wouldn’t?

“Sunny Starscout,” the unicorn said, seeming to savor the words as he said them. It wasn’t a question, so Sunny gave him no answer. “My, my, you’ve provided us with a lot of trouble, my little pony.”

Sunny stiffened. Her father used to call her that. “I think you’ll find I’m average height,” she retorted cooly.

Zipp allowed a small smile, and Sunny heard a faint chuckle from Alphabittle. The unicorn in front of her acted indifferent to her comment.

“I hope you don’t mind, but we’d like to have a word with you about a few of your… actions.”

“My… actions,” Sunny replied, tilting her head in confusion. “Perhaps you could elaborate.”

The earth pony and pegasus both cracked a smile, but the unicorn looked undeterred. “Perhaps a private conversation would be better suited,” he said, stamping his hoof.

Immediately, the chains binding Sunny’s shackles to the floor unclipped and rattled as they collapsed into heaps on the floor. The bars between her and the strange ponies slid into the floor, just like the prison at Zephyr Heights. Just thinking about the pegasus city made Sunny’s heart ache as she recalled how close they were to fixing everything. She wondered how long they had been here.

The unicorn turned and walked down the tunnel, and the earth pony and pegasus took a step forward, looking at Sunny expectantly. She figured out that she was supposed to follow the unicorn, and if she didn’t, those guys would be back up. So she shrugged indifferently and stepped out of her cell, wincing at the pain as the iron bands rubbed sores against her skin.

Sunny passed by Haven, and her blood boiled with anger. The former queen of Zephyr Heights had a mangled wing that was hanging limp at her side, useless. Sunny took a deep, shuddering breath and focused ahead of her, not willing to look at the damage caused to any of her other friends.

She was led outside the prison room and into a long hallway lit by bright fluorescent lights that just about made Sunny blind. She squinted to be able to see through the glare, and was just able to somewhat regain her sense of sight when the ponies behind her gave her a shove, forcing her to turn to the right, and pushed her through a set of double doors into a large chamber, which was empty as far as Sunny could see, because the only light came from a single spotlight beaming down on a single stone, resting on a pillar in the center of the room. Sunny could have sworn it was glowing.

Something clicked onto her feet, and Sunny looked down to see that new chains had latched onto her ankles and were holding her in place once more. The other ponies stood in front of her, their glares fixated on her. She shuffled her hooves nervously.

“So. What exactly did you want to talk to me about?” Sunny asked, wanting to get this over with.

“Sunny Starscout, we need you to stop,” the unicorn said stoutly.

She blinked. “I’m sorry, what?” she asked, sure that she must have misheard him. “Stop… what, exactly?”

“Stop everything you’re doing,” he elaborated, his expression not changing. “Stop trying to unite the tribes, stop trying to uncover the secrets of Ancient Equestria, stop insisting that friendship is magic and that we all need to come together and we can do that and live happily ever after and all that. Stop believing in everything your father taught you. Stop everything.”

The room was silent. Sunny fought the urge to laugh. “Uh, no,” she replied after she was able to regain a straight face. “First of all, that was a terrible argument, especially to somepony like me. Second of all, give me one good reason why I should do a single thing you say. Third of all, no.”

The other two ponies in the room glared at her, but the unicorn kept his stoic expression. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” he said. “I mean… are we really better off with magic?”

Sunny stopped and straightened. “Excuse me?”

“Perhaps things were better the way they were before,” the unicorn mused, as if Sunny hadn’t said anything. “I mean, look at the pegasi. Without their power of flight, they invented advanced technologies that rival anything this world has ever seen, other than physical magic. The earth ponies were well on their way to being close behind, and I think that, with a little more time, the unicorns could have been sent down that path as well. We were stronger divided; we were perfectly fine without the other tribes meddling in our business. All ponies are so different, so they should be with other ponies who reflect those differences. We need to stay separate.”

Sunny was silent for a while. “I’m sorry, but are you saying that, by fostering false beliefs and mistrust and paranoia between all tribes which inspires them to only worsen the situation, things were better that way?” she asked incredulously. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Friendship is a plague,” the unicorn snapped, “meant to devour us and make us reliant on others instead of realizing our own worth. It slows you down and makes you care about others when you should be worrying about yourself. It makes you abandon who you really are in favor of pleasing some random ponies you barely know. When we were separated, we went for hundreds of thousands of moons without a single hiccup, and then you came along, you and your filthy little friends, saying that we should all get together and sing Kumbaya around a campfire, and look what happened. Oh, yeah, your actions put the lives of dozens of innocent unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies in danger. Is that the kind of thing you want to happen? Do you want to have Equestria dissolve into complete chaos because you couldn’t just believe that your father was wrong and all ponies were meant to live separately?”

Sunny was silent while the unicorn ranted, but his words stuck with her, and he seemed to have a point. Nothing had gone really wrong when the tribes were separated, but as soon as she tried to get them back together, everything collapsed. She gritted her teeth in frustration. No, he was wrong. Her father was right. And if there was one thing she had learned from all her years in Maretime Bay, it was that she should stick up for what she believed in. And that was friendship.

“I’m sorry, but you must be out of your mind,” she said calmly, lightly tugging at one of her chains. “So if you could let me go now, that would be great.”

A cold, cruel smile spread across the unicorn’s face. “Oh, I don’t think so,” he said, his icy voice sending shivers down Sunny’s spine. “You see, I can’t just have you go back to whatever it is you do, and I have the utmost confidence that, if I put you back with your friends, you could find a way out of here. No, I can’t have that. So… perhaps we’ll turn back time. Act like nothing ever changed. All ponies still live in fear of one another, and you and your friends… can go back to your lives.” Sunny’s eyes widened as she realized what he was saying. “It’ll be like none of this ever happened.
> Lost Memories
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“You can’t do that!” Sunny cried desperately. “You can’t just turn back time! There’s no magic that can do that!” Or at least, I don't think there is, Sunny thought. Please let there be none.

“Oh, I’m not really going to turn back time,” the unicorn reassured her.

“That doesn’t seem really reassuring,” Sunny said cautiously.

The unicorn let out a cold, chilling laugh. “Believe me, Sunny Starscout, everything that you’re about to see… well, it’s all because of you.”

He flicked his tail, and the earth pony pulled a lever. A section of the wall rose with a grinding sound, revealing Sunny’s four best friends in the whole entire world, chained to the ground, looking around wildly, trying to figure out what was going on.

“Sunny?” Izzy asked, her voice scared. “What’s going on?”

“Go on, Sunny.” The unicorn whispered, but his voice still carried. “Tell them how you could have stopped it.”

“What’s he talking about, Sunny?” Zipp asked, uncertainty in her voice. She was too tired to struggle much.

“Tell them how you could have saved them,” the unicorn continued, his horn lighting up. The stone lit up green, outlining the craving engraved upon it: a single eye with three small triangles above it with two swirls underneath it.

“Tell them, Sunny.”

The earth pony finally unfroze. “No-”

A blast of green light shot out of the stone and enveloped the four ponies. Ribbons of light left their foreheads and the stone absorbed them. The light faded. The stone sank back into its place. Chains unlocked, and five ponies fell to the ground.

“NO!” Sunny wailed, her voice raw with hurt. Her legs grew weak under her and she collapsed, tears streaming down her cheeks. “No… no, please…” She took a deep shuddering breath, fearing what would come next.

“Unicorn!” she heard Hitch yell.

Whatever she had been expecting, just hearing that word made Sunny’s heart break, and unleashed a wave of anger and pain and sadness that she had never felt before in her life, not even when her dad vanished or her quest to bring back magic failed or Sprout destroyed her lighthouse. She opened her watery eyes and saw Zipp pushing Pipp behind her and spreading her wings defensively, Hitch pawing at the ground and snarling at Izzy, who glared angrily at the two pegasi.

“Pipp, stay back,” Zipp commanded, adjusting her stance. “Unicorns are dangerous.”

“Maybe we would be if you hadn’t stolen our magic!” Izzy replied heatedly, her voice contorted into a snarl that Sunny didn’t think the purple pony was possible of making. “On the other hoof, maybe we are as dangerous as you think, because I’m not leaving until I make you pay for what you did!”

Hitch spotted Sunny on the floor and ran over to her, standing protectively over her and glaring at the other ponies. The unicorn, earth pony, and pegasus who had brought Sunny here had disappeared, though Sunny knew they were watching, waiting to see what would happen.

“Sunny, let’s go,” Hitch decided, taking a step towards the door. “Sunny, come on! These ponies are evil and dangerous and they’re probably plotting to eat us for dinner!”

“No,” Sunny whispered. “Hitch, please, no.”

“Look, Sunny I know that you want all ponies to get along and whatnot, but it’s not going to happen,” Hitch snapped, years of dealing with his foalhood friend wearing on him. “This is reality, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner we can move on! Now, let’s get out of here before they fry our brains or kidnap us!”

He grabbed Sunny’s arm and hoisted her up, and Sunny was too much in despair to protest much. The two earth ponies stumbled into the bright hallway, though Sunny didn’t care much where they went. It took all her strength to even walk.

“In here,” Hitch said, opening a door and unceremoniously shoving Sunny inside.

“All right, I think we’re safe.” Hitch withdrew his head from the hallway and closed the door behind him, plunging them into almost complete darkness. “I - Sunny, are you okay?”

The orange mare was still weeping buckets, and was showing no sign of stopping. “Hitch, d-do you remember what I t-told you? About my f-father?” Her voice caught on the word. “H-he was here. The ponies here… they kidnapped him, a-and I think they might’ve…” She broke off, sobbing. “They’ve been working to keep ponies from reuniting.” Her voice had been reduced to a whisper; she couldn’t bring herself to speak louder than that. “Whenever a pony like my father comes along, th-they take them here a-and do something horrible. Th-they erase their memories, or - or something worse.”

“Sunny…” Hitch put a hoof around her. “Sunny, you must’ve had a crazy day. I mean, after the whole Canterlogic fiasco, but… come on, Sunny, you can’t really believe that.”

“I do!” Sunny snapped, suddenly angry. “I do believe it, and you did, too! At least, you did…” She swallowed. “Look, Hitch, I’m not crazy. I know what I’m saying. Those ponies in there… they’re our friends. We went on a quest to bring magic back, and we succeeded, and all three pony tribes became friends again. But then… everything broke, and now… now we’re here, a-and they’re going to erase everypony’s memories so that th-they don’t remember anything that happened…”

“Okay, look,” Hitch said after a while. “I don’t remember a thing that you’re saying.” Was it just Sunny, or did he hesitate when he said that? “And even if it did happen, do you have any proof? You’ve had a pretty hard day…”

“But I do!” Sunny exclaimed as a tiny flame of hope flared up inside her. If it would only work… “I do have proof, Hitch!”

She closed her eyes and concentrated. She thought of her first quest with Izzy to Zephyr Heights, how they met Zipp and Pipp, how Hitch had come after her, how her friends were willing to throw away everything just to stay friends with her. She thought about the station in Zephyr Heights, how her friends had worked so hard to make something so special for her, about the Guardians of Harmony’s castle in the middle of the forest, choosing her and her friends. She thought about Sprout, and how he had changed; Phyllis, and how she refused to let paranoia sink back in; about Alpahbittle, who had been ready to fight for Sunny; about Haven, who had lost so much because of Sunny, and yet, was still willing to side with her.

She thought about the creatures in the forest, wanting to come out of the dark, but couldn’t. She thought of the three fillies who had run away together, just to stay friends. She thought of the Tree of Harmony, and everything it stood for. She thought of everything she had accomplished. She thought of her father, and how proud she hoped he would be.

A warm tingling sensation started in her heart and slowly spread to the rest of her body. Sunny felt… not happy, but at peace for the first time in a few hours, it must be. She sighed and allowed herself a small smile.

“Sunny?” she heard Hitch ask uncertianly. “What are you doing?”

Sunny opened her eyes and saw that the little room she and Hitch were in was bathed in a golden light, and the other earth pony was staring at her in shock.

A pair of golden wings were folded neatly on Sunny’s back, a golden horn protruding from her head. The vibrant colors in her mane were brighter than ever. Sunny grinned. She had tried and failed to summon her alicorn state multiple times since magic had returned and had failed, but perhaps the magic could tell that she was desperate.

“What happened to you?” Hitch yelped, scrambling backwards, up against the door.

“Hitch, relax, it’s just something that happens occasionally,” Sunny teased, now in a much better mood. “Remember when - Nevermind, because you don’t, but when magic came back… it turned me into this. A pony with magic from all three tribes… Is that enough proof for you?”

The sheriff of Maretime Bay cautiously studied Sunny’s wing, gently prodding it with his hoof. “It would be kind of hard to forge something like that…” he cautiously conceded. “But-”

The golden light around them flickered, along with Sunny’s wings and horn. “What was that?” Hitch jumped back again, like she was radioactive. Sunny waited, though her beating heart made her want to freak out like Hitch, but her wings and horn remained solid. “Magic’s unstable,” she told Hitch. “Because the friendship between the three tribes is deteriorating, well… the magic that returned as a result of that is in danger as well.”

“I don’t know…” Hitch said slowly, uncertainty clear in his voice.

“Hitch, you have to believe me,” Sunny cried desperately. “The fate of the world could depend on it. You have to trust me. I am telling the truth. Please, just trust me this one time.”

The stallion looked into Sunny’s shaky blue-green eyes and sighed. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, “but I do know that I trust you, Sunny. Are you crazy? Yes. Have I ever been given a good reason to go along with one of your crazy schemes? No… until now. So, yes, whatever, I trust you, et cetera, et cetera, and… Woah, are you okay?”

Sunny’s eyes had filled with tears again. “You trust me…”

“Yeah, yeah, now let’s get out of here.” Hitch opened the door and poked his head out. Sunny felt something flicker inside her, fighting to stay alight before it died. The small room they were in was plunged into darkness again as her wings and horn disappeared.

“Things must be bad,” she fretted. “We’d better get going.”

“Yeah, great idea,” Hitch said, his voice fearful. “Except for…”

“What?”

“For that.”

“For what?”

Sunny joined him, lining her eye up in the crack in the doorway so she could see out. For some reason, the ponies here must have put guards in the hallways. The pink and purple pegasus was walking up and down the hallway, swinging his head from side to side. He whipped around to stare at Sunny and Hitch, and the two earth ponies ducked out of sight.

“Hitch, don’t worry,” Sunny reassured him. “The pegasi don’t eat earth ponies. That one’s just a jerk. Everything that you’ve heard about pegasi and unicorns is wrong.”

“Right.” The sheriff didn’t look very convinced. “Okay, here’s the plan. I’ll distract him. You go undo whatever horrible thing you say they did to us here. I’ll catch up with you later.”

“What?” Sunny looked at him, surprised. “Y-you’re trusting me with this?”

“And I really hope I won’t instantly regret it,” Hitch mumbled. “Here I go.”

He started to open the door, but Sunny stopped him. “Wait, Hitch. Just… just in case… you know, things don’t… work out, um… you’re my best friend. You have been since foalhood, and I never could have accomplished anything if you weren’t there. I know you don’t remember it, but when you came chasing after me and Izzy, it just felt… so good, to know that you cared about me like that. I… I love you, HItch, and I always will. You’re my very best friend.”

Sunny wrapped her friend into a hug, which Hitch returned.

“I love you, too, Sunny,” he whispered.

They stayed that way for a while, until Hitch pulled away and said, “Right. Um. I’ll… see you later?”

“Yeah,” Sunny said, trying to keep from crying. “Yeah, in a bit.”

She tried to convince herself that everything would be fine as her best friend in the whole world left the room. If there was one pony who could pull this off, it was Hitch. As soon as she heard him start talking, she poked her head out, checked to make sure that the pegasus was distracted, and slipped out of the room.

Retracing her steps back to the room with the memory-wiping stone, Sunny stopped just inside the doorway and looked back at Hitch, who was getting into an animated discussion with the pegasus. She saw his eyes flick to her with a hidden message: Go!

Sunny nodded and slipped into the room. Whatever these ponies had done, she had to find a way to undo it - before everything she had built crashed down around her.
> Many Moons Ago...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The green glowing time-reversing memory-erasing stone was resting peacefully right where Sunny had last seen it. She should have taken that as a hint. They weren’t guarding their most precious artifact? But she was so focused on getting her friends back that she didn’t care.

Izzy, Zipp, and Pipp were all gone, so Sunny was alone in the room. She cautiously approached the magic stone, fearing that it would suddenly activate and erase her memories, too. But no such feat occurred. The earth pony gently prodded the stone and felt a shock of magic. Whatever this stone was, it was powerful.

Do I destroy it? Sunny wondered. Will that release the memories, or just destroy them forever? And how would I destroy a magic artifact anyway?

She carefully slid her hooves under the stone and gently picked it up. She could feel the power thrumming through the stone and into her hooves. Taking a deep breath, Sunny lifted the stone high in the air and let it drop.

Nothing happened. The stone didn’t shatter; its green glow didn’t even flicker. Growling, Sunny picked it up again and tried throwing it across the room.

The stone remained perfectly intact, skidding across the floor and into the waiting hooves of a blue earth pony with a cotton candy pink mane.

“You!” Sunny gasped.

The earth pony smiled. “Yes, Sunny Starscout. I must say, good work getting in here, though Sour Lavender was never the best at guard duty.”

“What do you want?” Sunny snapped, taking a step forward. The earth pony tutted.

“Come now, Sunny, we shouldn’t start off on the wrong hoof like that! I’m one of you, after all. I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. My name is Candy Floss, and-”

“I don’t care what your name is,” Sunny retorted. “And you are nothing like me.”

“The world is a different place now,” Candy Floss said, seeming to enjoy Sunny’s anger. “We earth ponies have to stick together, yes?”

“All ponies have to stick together.”

“If that’s what you think.” Candy Floss sighed. “And I had such high hopes. I do hate it when ponies disappoint me, but I suppose it’s what happens when you’re a secret spy for an underground agency hoping to preserve everything that we should have had…”

Sunny was becoming rather wary of this pony. “What do you mean?”

Candy Floss gave her a sideways look. “I’m not sure you would understand…”

“Humor me.”

He laughed. Sunny glared at him. “All right, I suppose,” he said. “Once upon a time, many many moons ago in ancient Equestria, there lived a very special-”

“Unicorn,” Sunny whispered, cold dread creeping down her spine, making her shiver. Candy Floss nodded.

“You do know it… or at least, part of it. The unicorn was as bright as the sun. One day, the princess summoned her to the castle and told her to learn about friendship. The unicorn made lots of friends from all different tribes, and they showed every creature the magic of friendship. But the unicorn’s friends all left, and she was left alone in a world that was increasingly falling apart.

“See, some ponies were realizing that they might be better off separated. We should surround ourselves with others who are like us, rather than those who are different. The ideas began to spread, and ponies began to segregate. Cities were redone, and despite the unicorn’s valiant attempts to keep ponies and creatures together, it seemed that everypony wanted to be apart.

“Then the Windigos returned, and the world threatened to be plunged into a wintery apocalypse. The unicorn, fearing the worst, attempted to show that ponies should reunite and defeat the Windigos, but she was unsuccessful in her attempt. Eventually, she was forced to use her own magic to ban the Windigos into oblivion, creating three crystals in the process. The crystals were spread across the continent, but the unicorn kept one. In her last days, now a magicless earth pony, she built a lighthouse on the shore, where she hid the secrets to reuniting the crystals - and, inevitably, reuniting all of ponykind. She hoped that the light could guide ponies into harmony.” Candy Floss snorted. “So much for that.

“She recorded all her accomplishments in her last entry in the friendship journal that she and her friends wrote before she faded away, leaving her legacy to her only descendant, a pony named Nightfall Starshine. Nightfall spent her whole life searching for the crystals, and when she finally uncovered the earth pony crystal, her ancestor’s legacy crumbled completely.”

Candy Floss gave Sunny a sneaky smile. “We may have had something to do with that. You see, we knew that all ponies were meant to be separated in the first place, but we didn’t want anypony to remember what had happened, and so we discovered this.”

He gently scooped up the memory stone and set it back on its pedestal. “It can erase memories of a specific pony or ponies, and it was exactly what we were looking for. We found it hidden in the ancient archives in Zephyr Heights, probably from the reign of friendship. We used it on the world, on all of Equestria, so that they would forget everything.

“A few decades passed, and magic slowly began to fade. Some ponies, like those good-for- nothing unicorns, were so woebegotten that they never really moved on. Others, like those rough-and-tumble pegasi, developed advanced technology and tried to ignore the fact that they could not fly. It seemed as if everypony would just move on, and that losing magic may actually help keep ponies apart. Everypony was somewhat happy, at least.”

Candy Floss’ expression turned sour, and he spat, “Except for Nightfall. No, she just had to keep her mother’s journal, so that she could read about everything, and she still had the earth pony crystal, but didn’t know what to do with it, other than the fact that it would be an important instrument in bringing the tribes back together. She set down roots in the earth pony town of Maretime Bay and passed the story along to her son, Nightshade, who passed it on to his son, Argyle.

“We’ve had to keep track of your family, Sunny Starscout, because we knew that you would be able to undo all our hard work… And we couldn’t have that. But you… you defied the odds, and you actually did it. Now we have to work extra hard to undo everything. It helps, of course, when you can infiltrate modern society and inspire new feelings of paranoia… But you and your friends are a constant struggle for us.

“I met Izzy Moonbow, Zipp Storm, and Pipp Petals when they were on their little quest to reach you in Maretime Bay. I tried to convince them that things were better this way, but they wouldn’t listen. The only thing left was to make you less of a threat… but we had to wait for the right time…”

Sunny’s heart raced, and her eyes were wide. “You killed my father. You… you killed him for something he couldn’t help. You… you’re a monster.”

To her surprise and annoyance, Candy Floss threw back his head and laughed. “A monster? No, I don’t think so, my little pony. We’ve had to do some harsh things, but are we monsters? No. We are the saviors of all ponies. But then, it’s already too late. Everypony is on the verge of war… and there is nothing you can do to stop it.”

“You say that all pony kinds need to be seperated,” Sunny said desperately. “So why do you work with ponies from other tribes?”

“I do what must be done to keep Equestria safe,” Candy Floss snarled, his voice now deadly. “And you should do the same.”

“Oh, I will,” Sunny assured him. “I’m going to restore everypony’s memories, and then I’m going to get my friends back, and we’ll stop everypony from going to war. And there is nothing you can do to stop it.” She lifted her head defiantly, though her mind was still racing.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Candy Floss said lightly. “There’s no way to break the stone.”

“I’ll find a way,” Sunny said, turning to leave. “You said you found it in the archives in Zephyr Heights, right? So I’ll just head there and look for some instructions or whatever.” She had no confidence in this plan whatsoever, but she decided not to let Candy Floss know that. She could sense him opening his mouth to say something, but she shut the door before he could do so.

The hallway was empty now, which struck Sunny as a bit odd, but she didn’t want to press her luck. She snuck around until she found a door that led outside. As much as she wanted to go after her friends, a part of her said that wouldn’t be such a great idea.

With a start, Sunny realized how low the sun was in the sky compared to what it had been in the morning when she and her friends had been shown the Tree of Harmony.

How long have we been here?

Shaking herself, Sunny spun around in a circle until she located the large tree just a few meters behind her and set off towards it.

Candy Floss watched her leave. His pale eyes narrowed as he tracked the earth pony’s progress. Stupid mare… She had no idea what was out there! She didn’t see that things were better this way. Of course she wouldn’t. Her ancestor wouldn’t have, either. Candy Floss growled. The whole family was just trouble. They needed to be disposed of. Sour Lavender and Permafrost wouldn’t see it that way. But he had taken care of Argyle on his own; without memories, the old stallion had made an easy target. His… associates (and he refused to think of them as anything more) had just assumed that the monumental loss of memory had been too much on the old geezer. He could take care of this overly optimistic and very clearly stupid mare, too.

The blue earth pony ducked back inside the building, concealed in rock, but before he did so, he turned his eyes north, where he could see a wing of struggling pegasi making their way back to their city, hoping to regain control. He turned south and saw the small party of unicorns leaving as well, bound for the forest, and to the west, a group of earth ponies hoping to reach Maretime Bay before sundown.

Candy Floss smirked with satisfaction. All according to plan… his plan. The one the others didn’t know about. It may look like everything was going great for them as well, but it wouldn’t always be that way.

The hidden fortress that Candy Floss called home was built around the remains of some ancient building that had been buried underground, and had collapsed long before that. Not much remained, other than most of the masonry and a few ripped tapestries so faded that you couldn’t see what image they depicted anymore. But it was enough for their purposes.

Only a little while longer, Candy Floss told himself. Only a little while longer before the world is mine.
> Alone
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sprout forced himself to keep going. Maretime Bay was so close… And Sunny was counting on him. He had a mission to do, and he wasn’t going to let her down.

Though he would never admit it, Sprout had secretly had a crush on Sunny since they were foals. Of course he didn’t show it - his mother would be very disappointed to hear that he had a crush on Argyle Starshine’s overly optimistic daughter. But she was just so hopeful and faithful and really, truly believed that all three pony kinds could be friends, even though everypony - including Sprout - gave her such a hard time about it.

He hated his choices now more than ever. It was because of him that ponykind almost went to war only a few weeks ago, and it was because of him that they might go to war again. His actions had left that seed of mistrust and fear that Sunny was now working so hard to dislodge; Sunny and her friends. Izzy, Zipp, Pipp… and Hitch.

Sprout shook himself. He could not, would not, think about Hitch. It was much too painful.

His aching hooves finally managed to drag him to the crest of the hill, and he looked down on the quaint earth pony town with nostalgia. Seemed like only yesterday that he had been here, leaving on a quest to go find remnants of ancient Equestria… probably because it was just yesterday. Now it felt so long ago.

Behind him, Toots sighed contentedly. “I don’t know about you, but I am looking forward to taking a break from walking all over the world. Perhaps a smoothie. Anypony up for a smoothie run?”

“Sounds perfect,” Sweets agreed, frustratingly blowing her sweaty bangs out of her face. “And maybe a hoof massage. I feel like I can’t take another step.”

Sprout looked back at the two Canterlogic employees with a strange feeling inside. He remembered how he had become emperor of Maretime Bay, and it had been him ordering Toots and Sweets and everypony else around everywhere. Despite how awful he felt about it now, it had been sort of elating to have everypony listen to him, to look to him for guidance on what to do. He only wished he hadn’t led them so wrong, so that they might trust him like that again.

Focus on the mission, he told himself. Don’t let it end up like last time. He took a deep breath and started down the hill, Toots and Sweets behind him.

There was a strange feeling in the air that Sprout began to sense as he trotted by the cliff where Sunny’s lighthouse was under construction… or had been, at least. It looked abandoned, and more than that, what little was built looked vandalized with cruel messages provoking Sunny and her idiotic mission to bring ponykind together. Sprout winced at the sight. He would never forget that it was him who had destroyed the lighthouse in the first place… and that Sunny had forgiven him for it. That perhaps hurt most of all.

Once the trio got into town, Sprout finally figured out what it was: it was the same feeling that the town had gotten when he had almost taken them into battle. He had never really noticed it, but it was there. It felt different on the opposite side of the conflict, he thought.

“Where is everypony?” Toots asked nervously, taking in the empty streets and closed stores. A loud bang made them all jump, echoing from the Canterlogic factory.

“I think I have an idea,” Sweets said, no more confident than Toots. “And it doesn’t mean anything good.”

Sprout had an idea, too, and he wasn’t sure he would be able to go through with this. Taking a deep breath, he thought of Sunny, and how hard she had worked to make her dream a reality. He couldn’t let her down. So he kept going.

The factory was brimming with ponies, all working on one thing: a massive vehicle in the center, towering over all the ponies. They worked vigorously, whether it was putting the machine together or mass producing the anti-mind-reading hats and splat-a-pults and earth pony balloon escape packs (why they thought that was a good idea, Sprout wasn’t sure, but they were scared enough to do the craziest things).

“What is going on here?” he demanded, and it came out harsher than he meant it to. All the earth ponies skidded to a halt and turned to look at him. Sprout felt the heat rising in his cheeks, hoping that the others couldn’t tell.

“We’re preparing to attack the unicorns and pegasi!” an earth pony cried, and the others yelled in agreement.

“We’re going to do what we should have done long ago!” another called out.

“They’ve had it coming for years!” yet another screeched.

A pony climbed on top of the machine and said in a carrying voice, “Now that magic’s unstable, we hold the advantage! We don’t need magic to fight, yes? This is our chance!”

“We won’t have to live in fear anymore!” the earth ponies cheered. “We won’t have to worry about having our brains fried or being eaten by pegasi! We don’t need magic, so why should they get all the good stuff? We’re just as strong as they are! We’re stronger!”

With each word, the mob grew louder and louder, and Sprout winced with each accusation. It all sounded so familiar to what he’d said…

“Listen to me!” he shouted, desperate now. He scrambled on Canterlogic’s stage, Toots and Sweets behind him. “We don’t have to be scared anymore! I know things are crazy right now, but the unicorns and pegasi can be our friends. They don’t have magic because some ponies don’t believe that we can be friends and are driving us apart! But we don’t have to be like that. We can bring magic back, bring friendship back. But this… this is only going to make things worse! You don’t have to fight, you need to make peace - that’s how we fixed everything before!”

“Only because you were so bad at leading us that you allowed a group of other ponies to stop you!” a pony yelled, and Sprout winced; he’d struck a sore spot.

“Look, I admit that what I did was wrong, and there is no good reason that I can think of as to why you should forgive me, but this goes beyond just me, it goes beyond just us! If we don’t at least try to fix things, then how will they ever get better? War is not the answer, friendship is, and-”

“Aw, bravo, you sound just like Sunny,” came a voice that Sprout never thought he’d hear say those words.

“M-Mom?”

Phyllis Cloverleaf stepped out of the crowd, followed by an earth pony that Sprout had never seen before. He had a blue coat the color of taffy and fluffy pink hair that looked like cotton candy. The other earth ponies looked at Phyllis with such trust and respect that it made Sprout angry. It wasn’t like she was completely blameless either, but it didn’t matter to them. She taught them about how awful the other tribes were for years, and now that they believed it again, they looked to her.

“I never thought I’d see the day when my own son would be advocating for unity and friendship with other tribes and all that garbage that Argyle went on and on and on about,” Phyllis said conversationally, she and her companion stepping onto the stage next to Sprout. “But here we are.”

The new earth pony stepped forward, looking Sprout up and down. “Unicorn brainwashing. The effects are obvious.” He turned to the crowd. “You see? This is what will happen if you don’t fight back - you’ll end up like this fellow here!”

“Hey!” Sprout protested defensively, but Candy Floss didn’t hear him.

“It is time for us to fight, my earth pony brethren, and we will not surrender! We will not stop until we have shown the unicorns and the pegasi who really are in charge!”

The roar that rose up was almost enough to shake the building, and it was certainly enough to jar Sprout’s bones. He opened his mouth to speak again, but Candy Floss wasn’t done - not by a long shot.

“Anything you may have seen or heard of prior to this about how we can all be friends and sing together by a campfire was all fake, just a stunt to make us gullible! Ponykind never lost their magic - they were just hiding it from us, waiting for the moment to strike. They seek to make us weak, my friends. But we are not weak, are we, my fellow ponies? No, we are strong, and we deserve much more than to be the punch line of a massive joke. This is the earth pony revolution! We’ll put those other tribes in their place! Let’s see them fry our brains and swoop down on us when we take away their magic!”

Earth ponies cheered themselves hoarse and quickly moved back to their jobs. Toots and Sweets now looked torn, battling years of fear and paranoia with what they’d seen in the past few weeks, which they were now being told was all a lie.

“Guys-” Sprout started, but Phyllis interrupted.

“Toots, Sweets, what are you doing, milling around? Get back to work!” The two earth ponies gave Sprout a look that said a thousand words before scrambling away. Phyllis sighed contentedly and turned to her son.

“You see, sugarcube? We don’t need those other ponies. We have all this because we are smart, we are strong, and we have me to thank for it. Well, and Candy Floss, too, partially. I mean, he did get us back on the right track. I just hope we’ll be able to cure you of that horrid unicorn’s brainwashing.” She tossuled Sprout’s mane and kissed him on the cheek.

“Mom, where did you even find that pony?” Sprout demanded, pulling away.

“He was kind enough to rescue me from the horrid unicorns and pegasi who had kidnapped me, sugarcube! They were just trying to weaken us, see, so they captured me so that we couldn’t defend ourselves. But Candy Floss saved me and erased all doubt in my mind that all other ponies are horrid beasts who need to be destroyed.” She said the story with such ease that Sprout knew it must be fake.

“Mom, I’m sorry, but I feel like I’m not the brainwashed one - you are.” Sprout looked around quickly before pulling his mother aside. “Look, I know it’s going to sound hard to believe, but you know Sunny Starscout? Yeah, she made friends will all three pony tribes, and they brought back magic, and everypony began to get along… until something happened, and everything started collapsing, so we went on a quest to prove that all ponies could be friends, but then everything was escalating too fast and we have to stop everypony from going to war now before I… before somepony does something they’ll regret.”

Phyllis looked at him strangely. “Sugarcube, are you alright? You look a little pale… Why don’t you go back home, take the day off, get some rest. That unicorn must have done something awful to you. We’ll set out in the morning, okay? I don’t want you to miss this.”

Sprout opened his mouth to argue, then realized that this was exactly the opening he needed. “Okay, Mommy. Now that you mention it, I have been feeling a little queasy… Those darn unicorns, right?” He turned and walked out of the factory, making a big show of acting like he was going to throw up with every step.

Once he got home, he arranged some pillows under a blanket to make it look like he was lying there. Satisfied, he opened the front door, peeked out to see if anypony was watching, and snuck down the street until he was out of the town. After he was sure that nopony could possibly be watching him, he took off running. All thoughts of hoof massages and smoothies had abandoned him, replaced by a grim determination, and a new mission. He had to get to Sunny. Sunny would know what to do. She could save the day like she always did.

But some part of Sprout told him that he would have to do this alone. And that part terrified him more than anything.
> No Great Loss Without Some Small Gain
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Zephyr Heights looked so different now. The once-bright neon signs and advertisements now showed only fearsome images of earth ponies and unicorns that reminded Sunny of the ones that had plagued her hometown. The few pegasi walking on the streets looked grim and determined, but nopony was flying. They must have figured that they should conserve their magic for the fighting.

Thankfully, the alleyway in which Sunny popped out was empty, which surprised her. She remembered there being a guard here last time… Then she looked down the alleyway and froze.

A group of pegasi had set up a small table on a cardboard box and were playing a card game, laughing and cursing like sailors whenever things didn’t go their way. Sunny cautiously crept up behind them, concealed by a stack of crates. She had a feeling that their laid-back behavior wouldn’t sit too well with whoever was in charge… And sure enough, a few minutes later, a fifth pegasus appeared and slammed her hoof on the table, disrupting the game, yelling at the ‘guards’. They scrambled, and the new one chased after them, going on and on about how she would make them pay and how their boss would hear about this, et cetera.

Sunny stifled a giggle and slipped past them. She stopped to grab a large hat, which she hurriedly stuffed her mane under, and a strange cape-looking thing that she added some feathers to, so that it would look like she was just wearing it over her wings, though she had none.

Izzy could have done better with a box of macaroni, Sunny thought ruefully, then cursed herself for thinking that. Izzy wasn’t there, and it wouldn’t do any good to think about her.

Though Sunny meant to sneak into the castle and search the archives for anything about a memory-erasing stone, she found her hooves taking her to the abandoned airstation. It was empty now, but her father’s old artifacts were still there, albeit a bit dusty, just like everything else. After everything her friends had done to restore it, it made Sunny’s heart hurt to see it fall into despair again. So she found a piece of cloth and set about fixing everything up.

It was hard work. Her father had collected only about several dozen items, not including the many others that Zipp, Pipp, Izzy, and Hitch had found for her, and the shelves full of books, but it was something that Sunny found herself surprisingly enjoying. It distracted her from her current misery.

She accidentally knocked a scroll of her father’s to the ground. “Oops,” Sunny said, scurrying after it. The rolled-up piece of paper came to a stop in the middle of the room, right in the middle of the room, where sunlight shining through the stained glass window reflected its image onto the floor. Sunny reached to pick up the scroll, then froze, realizing that it had come to a halt under the reflection of a pink six-pointed star.

Taking a deep breath, Sunny said, “Hey, um… Princess? I assume you must have been a princess, and that sounds much less weird than, like, I guess you’re my great-great-grandmother something, but that sounds so wrong, so… Princess. Hi. My name’s Sunny Starscout, and, um… I could really use some help. I… I’ve never felt this defeated. Not even when the crystals didn’t work, not even when my dad disappeared… I feel like there’s nothing I can do, and it’s… it’s killing me. I don’t know what to do, I’m afraid that my friends will never be the same again, and it feels like everything I’ve worked so hard to accomplish is just… coming undone.” Tears sprang into her eyes, but her attempts to wipe them away were unsuccessful. “I just… please. If you’re really out there somewhere, if you really existed, I’m begging you, please help me. I’m completely lost on what to do, and I just… I need… I can’t do this alone. So… yeah. That’s… that’s that.” Sunny sighed. “I’m going insane. Talking to a window like it’s a pony…”

Shaking her head, she reached down to pick up the scroll and froze. She knew the scroll - every time she’d looked at it, it had been blank. She’d tried every single method of revealing hidden ink that she could think of, but it made no difference. Sunny had just assumed her dad kept it as an example of what they used to write with back in the old times, but now… in the pink light of the star, something that faintly looked like words were appearing on the ancient paper.

Intrigued, Sunny unrolled the scroll and spread it out in the magenta light, letting the paper soak it up. There were indeed words, written in a neat, organized script.

To whomever finds this letter,

I don’t know what to say. Things are spiraling out of control. Ponies and creatures alike are trying to convince themselves that they don’t need each other, the Windigos have returned, and I don’t have my friends to help me fix it all. My attempts to bring back harmony have failed. But as ruler of Equestria, it is my duty to protect the realm at all costs, even when the inhabitants of the realm don’t take the necessary measures to protect themselves.

Now, I must make the ultimate sacrifice. But I have hope for the future.

I aim to create physical objects to showcase the unity of ponykind, leaving the instrument to put them together in a place where ponies can follow the light of friendship to find. These objects will hold my magic, and ultimately, the magic of everypony, if it should unfortunately come to that.

But I hope that future generations shall hear of what me and my friends have done and choose friendship over fear.

May the magic of friendship be strong with you.

Sunny eagerly pushed the scroll so that more text appeared in the light. This hoofwriting looked a bit different, though still neat, but a bit less organized.

My friends,

The mistrust that plagues this land is an insult to everything that came before it. We used to be unified, we used to be harmonious, but no longer. Now we are divided, and any hope is slim and will soon be lost.

I myself do not remember anything of what happened before I woke up in Maretime Bay (which I had never heard of until that day), but I was left a journal by my mother, and it tells of a golden age during which all ponies and creatures lived together as friends, and the power of harmony and unity was strong. All I have now is a single crystal, and I have no idea how my mother thought this would help. Am I supposed to dazzle everypony into harmony?

Tales have begun to spread about unicorns having the ability to read minds and fry brains with a single horn zap, or that pegasi will swoop down and kidnap your foal and eat them. These are lies, and I am sure of them. I myself am an earth pony, as was my mother, though I never knew my father. But I believe my mother was once more than just an earth pony, and that we can all be more than just that as well. We can be unified, we can be together, we can be friends again.

Let the spirit of harmony guide you to friendship.

The next passage was big and pretty sloppy, but Sunny was now an expert in sloppy hoofwriting after reading the friendship journal the Guardians had written.

To whom it may concern (which is everypony).

Times are changing, too quickly for my liking. The stories that have been passed down through my family do not seem to quite match up with what we are taught in school now. I am worried for what the future brings.

More discord? More distrust? The potential loss of harmony altogether? There are too many unknowns, too much uncertainty, that it scares me.

I have recently begun to pursue research of my own, to see if the tales that I have been told are true. I hope with every fiber of my being that they are. So far I have been unable to recover much, but deep within me is a voice, telling me that so much is out there. I will not stop searching until I find it.

But with uncertain times comes more fear, which boils into anger, which detonates with violence, and I fear for the safety of both this letter and of the journal that contains so much of what is important to me. So I am hiding them both in the last place that still honors my ancestor. May the pony that discovers it be a pony willing to do whatever it takes to bring harmony back into the world.

May the light of unity guide you along your path.

Almost tearing the paper in excitement, Sunny scrolled down to the next passage… and froze. The hoofwriting was so familiar… Her throat closed up as she ran her hoof along her father’s hoofwriting, refusing to cry again.

Dear my little pony,

Things are more dangerous than they have ever been, and we need hope now more than ever. I have barely managed to escape with my life, this letter, and a single page from the journal of my ancestor, which I assumed would hold all the answers to my questions. Alas, I was unable to test this theory, since the city of Zephyr Heights is strictly a pegasi-only city, as Bridlewood is for unicorns, and Maretime Bay for earth ponies.

I only wish that the world could be better. No matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to get through to anypony. I believe that we used to be united, and can be again, but nopony else shares this belief. I hope that the many discoveries I have made in my lifetime will aid the next generation of this family to take another step towards success.

Not much remains of the stories I was told, only that a unicorn, who was as bright as the sun, made friends with all three pony tribes, and they showed everypony how to live in harmony. If they can do it, I believe that we can, too.

To whoever finds this letter, please, try your hardest to bring back peace. Try your hardest to bring back harmony. It may just be enough to convince the world.

I believe in you.

Wiping her eyes, Sunny focused on the bottom of the page, where her father had written in normal pen, the only thing she could read without the light of the window: Seek out the star, my little Starscout.

Now she knew what it meant.

Sunny took a shuddering breath and looked over at the bookshelves. The reflection of the earth pony crystal had landed on top of one of the books. Sunny walked over to investigate, the scroll snapping back into its rolled-up position as soon as the weight of her hooves left it. She pulled a book off the shelf and read the title aloud: “Magical Artifacts from Equestrian History.”

Carefully opening the ancient text, Sunny gently flipped through the brittle pages, passing mentions of alicorn amulets and magic bells until she reached a page about a memory stone. “Huh,” Sunny muttered, scanning the page. The Memory Stone is an ancient artifact that has the power to erase any memories that the user wishes. The only known way to regain the stolen memories is to destroy the stone, a nearly-impossible feat requiring the strongest of magic.

“Strongest of magic,” Sunny whispered to herself. What was more powerful than the magic of friendship and harmony? Of course, to do that, she would need her friends…

Sunny glanced at the window, at the pictures of all three pony tribes. “I have an idea.”

Turning to leave, Sunny thought of something suddenly, and turned back to the window, picking up the scroll and turning her face to the star at the top of the window.

“Hey, um, Princess?” Sunny cleared her throat. “I just wanted to say… thank you.”

Maybe she was going insane, but when she left, she felt like somepony was leaving with her… somepony she knew very well.
> The Last Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunny dragged herself out of the secret passage, absolutely exhausted. Walking to and from Zephyr Heights twice in a single day by herself was not her idea of a good time. Shaking her head and brushing dust from her mane, Sunny looked around… and froze.

The meadow around her was filled with ponies: earth ponies to the east, unicorns to the west, pegasi to the north, standing in perfect rows glaring daggers at the other tribes.

“Oh, no,” Sunny whispered, looking around wildly for her friends. Her heart stopped as she spotted Zipp and Pipp with their mother at the head of the pegasus army, Izzy next to Alphabittle and the other unicorns, Hitch standing in the earth pony ranks, looking unsure of what he was doing. The looks of hate and anger on her friends’ faces made them almost unrecognizable.

Sunny was standing between the pegasi and earth pony armies, and nopony seemed to have noticed her yet. Heart thumping, Sunny surveyed the crowd, and her blood boiled with anger as she spotted Candy Floss standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Phyllis, but looking like he was in charge. The other ponies who had helped erase her friends’ memories were with their respective tribes, looking thrilled that it had come to this, but it was the calculating look in Candy Floss’ eyes that made Sunny really nervous.

It was the pegasi who snapped first. With a wordless cry of rage, they charged at the unicorns, who, in response, lit up their horns and prepared to defend themselves, though any thoughts of defense were quickly lost as they switched to offense. Candy Floss climbed into a huge red vehicle that looked unsettlingly close to the Sprouticus Maximus that Sprout had built, shouted an order to the assembled earth ponies, and drove the machine forward.

“NO!” Sunny yelled, running forward, but there wasn’t anything she could do. Cold fear gripped her heart and sent shivers down her spine, making her hooves freeze as she looked on in horror. “No, please, no!”

She heard a cry of pain that sounded like Izzy, and new anger and determination surged through her veins. She had worked so hard to make everything her father had dreamed a reality, and she was not about to lose it. Rushing into the fray, she ducked horn blasts and splat-a-pults and found Izzy shaking a pegasus off her back with ruthless brutality. Sunny’s heart broke into splinters to see her friend in such an angry state.

“Izzy!” Sunny yelled, running up to her friend, who lit her horn. Sunny skidded to a halt, eyeing the horn warily, trying to convince herself that Izzy would never, not in a thousand years, zap her with her horn. But then, this wasn’t quite Izzy.

“Izzy, listen to me. This is not who you are! These ponies are not your enemies - they’re your friends! I know you don’t remember anything, but we brought magic back by coming together, not dividing!” Tears welled in Sunny’s eyes. “Please, you have to believe me,” she whispered, her voice almost lost in the chaos. “I can’t - I won’t lose you, too.”

The anger in Izzy’s eyes died down some, and her horn stopped glowing. Something flickered in her eyes, and she paused. “Sunny?”

Hope flared up inside Sunny so much that she might just float to the moon. “Y-you remember me?” she asked through teary eyes, not daring to believe it was real, but hoping it was just the same.

“Just bits and pieces…” Izzy murmured, shaking her head. “Didn’t… didn’t we go on a quest?”

“To bring back magic,” Sunny whispered. “You came to Maretime Bay - where I live - and we went to Zephyr Heights to see how the pegasus magic worked, and then-”

“We figured out that they couldn’t fly,” Izzy finished, excitement creeping into her voice. “Wasn’t - wasn’t there somepony named Zipp? And Pipp? And Hitch?”

“They’re… somewhere out there,” Sunny said, looking around at the chaos that surrounded them with a slightly deflated demeanor. “T-they don’t remember anything, either.”

“Neither do I,” Izzy admitted ruefully. “Just this… feeling that we’re friends, and I have other friends, and they’re different tribes, and that this…” She waved her hoof around them. “All this is wrong.” She straightened. “I may not fully remember you, but I do know that I will help you. Let’s go find our friends.”

Zipp was fighting to protect Pipp from a half dozen splat-a-pults, and was losing. Green goo was splattered all over the formerly white pegasus, sticking her wings to her body and trapping one of her hooves on the ground. The earth ponies closed in, their eyes gleaming with pleasure, until Izzy dropped out of nowhere and put up a protective shield. Sunny helped Zipp get all the goop off of her, and she was so defeated that she didn’t notice that Sunny was an earth pony and Izzy a unicorn.

“Thanks…” she muttered, blinking to clear the fatigue from her eyes. She frowned when she saw Sunny. “Do I… do I know you?”

“Unicorn,” Pipp squeaked, huddling as far away from Izzy as possible. “A-and an earth pony…”

“But…” Zipp stood up and shook out her wings, splattering Sunny with goop. “You helped us? Why?”

Sunny took a deep breath. “Okay, look, I know this is going to sound crazy, but you’re gonna have to trust me. We used to be… we are friends, only you don’t remember, because some evil ponies wiped your memories. And Izzy here. We went on a quest to bring back magic, but now that might not matter, because if we can’t stop fighting, then there’s no hope.”

The two sisters looked at each other, then back at Sunny, then back at each other. Zipp noticed Sunny’s saddlebag and froze, her eyes tracing out the image of the six-pointed star drawn on it. “Okay,” she sighed. “I believe you.”

“Really?” Sunny gasped. “Y-you mean it?”

“None of this is right,” Pipp agreed, though her voice was still an octave higher than it normally was, and she stayed well away from Izzy. “So, if you’re going to help stop it… I believe you, too.”

Relief washed over Sunny like a waterfall. “Izzy, if you wouldn’t mind… deactivating the splat-a-pults, please? Just don’t hurt anypony.”

The unicorn grinned and levitated some small rocks and sticks that were lying on the ground, jamming them into the splat-a-pults, which came to a screeching halt. The earth ponies operating them freaked out, frantically pushing buttons and trying to get them working again.

“Come on!” Sunny cried as Izzy let down her shield, and the four ponies raced off into the fray again, the two pegasi soaring overhead. Sunny scanned the fray for Hitch, and spotted the sheriff of Maretime Bay backed up against the canyon by some unicorns, all of whom had their horns lit. Zipp and Pipp landed in front of him, snarling at the unicorns until they backed away. Hitch looked very confused as to why two pegasi were helping him, but he vaguely recognized them and the unicorn who now raced up to him with Sunny.

“Sunny!” Hitch cried. “You’re okay! I - I mean, not that you wouldn’t be, because, um…” He trailed off, clearing his throat. “What’s going on?”

“We’re going to fix the world,” Sunny announced. “Care to join us?”

Hitch grinned as Zipp said, “So… what do we do now?”

“We start telling ponies to stop fighting,” Sunny said with fierce certainty in her voice. “Once the others see some pulling away, they will, too, and then we can talk to them.”

“Oh, what a nice idea,” came a voice behind them. Sunny whirled around to find Candy Floss, holding the memory stone. “I had hoped,” he said conversationally, “that you would give up once you saw all your friends in such a state… Maybe think that they were past the point of no return… but alas, you did not. So I guess I have to resort to other measures.”

He lifted the memory stone as it began to glow, the eerie green light attracting the attention of all the ponies. They turned to stare as a single blast of green headed straight for Sunny.

“SUNNY!” came a shout.

She braced herself for the impact… but it never came. Heart hammering, she opened her eyes to see a red earth pony lying on the ground in front of her, glowing ribbons being pulled out of his forehead and sucked into the stone.

“Sprout?” Sunny stuttered. The stallion staggered to his feet and turned to look at her, his green eyes suddenly full of confusion. “Sunny, I-”

The memory stone glowed brighter as the last of Sprout’s memories were absorbed, and he collapsed to the ground.

Phyllis Cloverleaf let out a cry of fear and anger as she ran forward to wrap her arms around her son. Tears welled up in the owner of Canterlogic’s eyes, and she turned to glare at Candy Floss, who in turn was glaring at Sprout. He growled and shook the memory stone, whose green light was dimming. He tried aiming it at Sunny again, but it refused to work. With an angry cry he ran off into the crowd.

Sprout groaned, and Phyllis let out a sigh of relief. He climbed to his feet, looking around in bewilderment. “Where… where am I?” He shook his head, clearing away the confusion enough to realize that two-thirds of the crowd were not earth ponies, and he looked as if he might faint again. Phyllis wrapped her arms protectively around him and drew him into a hug.

“Don’t you ever nobly risk your life again, sugarcube, do you hear me?” she said, squeezing him tight. “Never ever ever do that again, or I’ll-”

“What… are… you… talking… about?” Sprout wheezed, trying to breathe around his mother’s hooves.

Genuine fear entered Phyllis’ eyes, along with a sudden realization, like the puzzle pieces had suddenly clicked for her. “You don’t…. What’s the last thing you remember, sweetheart?”

“Something about… an angry mob?” Sprout rubbed his head and winced. “The details are fuzzy… and maybe that we’re all in danger? Because the unicorns and pegasi are going to attack and fry our brains and eat us all…”

Several of the unicorns and pegasi in the crowd made retching noises. Zipp, Pipp, and Izzy all looked a little green.

“Zipp? Pipp?” came a frantic voice as Haven pushed through the crowd. She spotted the two siblings and sighed with relief, then started screaming as she saw who they were standing next to. “What on earth are you doing with a unicorn and two earth ponies? I thought you had better sense than that! Now, come on, let’s go-”

“Izzy Moonbow, get your flank over here,” Alphabittle scolded, standing next to Haven and interrupting her, “or we’ll all end up jinxed!”

“Excuse me, but I was talking first, you cheating unicorn-” Haven began, but was once again interrupted, this time by a loud roar and the frightened shouts of ponies as they scrambled to get out of the way of a massive machine rolling towards them. At the wheel was Candy Floss, his mad and crazy eyes set straight on Sunny.

“Everypony out of the way!” Hitch commanded, leaping off to the side with Izzy right behind him. Zipp and Pipp flapped their wings and dodged the large red vehicle, landing next to their mother and helping keep ponies out of the way. Sunny turned to follow, but she was too slow, and the machine’s massive extended arm slammed into the ground in front of Sunny, which began to crack and crumble.

“Sunny!” Izzy cried, rushing forward. Candy Floss roared in anger, and he pushed the machine forward, trapping Sunny against the canyon. As soon as the heavy machine reached the cracked and broken ground, it began to sink, unable to hold it up anymore. Candy Floss grinned and gave the vehicle one last push, taking itself - and Sunny - off the edge.

“No!” Hitch screamed at the same time Izzy yelled, “Sunny!” Pipp screamed, and Zipp’s brow furrowed in anger. She tucked her wings in and dove over the side of the cliff… just as dark lightning flashed across the sky. Unicorn horns and pegasus wings lit up and then died… and magic vanished. Zipp just managed to grab the edge of the cliff before she fell over, and her mother and sister rushed over to help her back up.

“Sunny…” Izzy whispered, her voice heartbroken and sorrowful.





Sunny fell through the air, narrowly avoiding being crushed by huge chunks of earth and a giant red machine. She was too frightened to scream, so she just fell, her mind gone blank, just falling-

She stopped suddenly, hanging in midair, suspended by nothing at all. Looking down, Candy Floss’ machine crashed into the river, exploding into a huge ball of fire. Looking up, she saw dark lightning flickering across the sky… and then time seemed to freeze.

“What’s going on?” Sunny asked nervously. It now felt like she was standing on a platform of empty air, impossibly solid. The fireball beneath her exploded in slow motion, moving a mile a day. She spun around and saw a figure approaching her, thankfully in regular time. “Who are you?”

The figure came into view, and she was… not. The pony was a purple mare with an indigo mane streaked with purple and pink, and her cutie mark was a familiar pink star, but she wasn’t… real. She appeared to be made of sparkles and was slightly transparent, as if she were a projection or an illusion.

“Who are you?” Sunny asked nervously. On one hoof, if this was who she thought it was, she might just explode with happiness. On the other hoof, this wasn’t at all how she had imagined her.

The pony smiled. “I feel like you should be asking what I was. I’m afraid there is not much of me left… but I have managed to gather enough strength since magic has returned to deliver this brief message to you.”

Sunny looked up at the lightning crisscrossing across the sky. “Magic likely won’t be around for much longer,” she said ruefully, though her heart was breaking inside.

The figure nodded sadly. “I assume as much myself. But that does not mean it cannot be returned, as it once was.” She eyed Sunny. “I know that you had something to do with that…”

The earth pony mare rubbed her head. “Okay, I mean no disrespect by this, but… who are you? What do you want with me? Why do you look like my ancestor? She is my ancestor, right? Candy Floss wasn’t just lying to trick me?”

She laughed. “I am the Spirit of Harmony, Sunny Starscout, and I can take on many forms. I chose this one because I feel that it may have the most impact on you. And what I want with you… well, the world is breaking again, and the burden of fixing it unfortunately falls to you. I wish it were different, but if you don’t undo what these ponies have done… there may not be any hope for the future. I do not mean for you to do this alone, of course; you will have your friends by your side, just as your ancestor did.”

“Twilight Sparkle,” Sunny said. It wasn’t a question, but the Spirit of Harmony nodded anyway. “You knew Twilight Sparkle.” She took a deep breath. “Okay…. Calm down, Sunny, it’s no big deal, calm down…” She looked at the Spirit of Harmony, who was suppressing a smile. “I have so many questions…”

“And I wish I could answer all of them,” the Spirit said, casting a worried glance at the sky. “But I feel my strength fading. I will not be able to retain a physical form for much longer. Sunny Starscout, you are the last Sparkle. It is your duty to protect the legacy of friendship that this broken world has forgotten. Do not lose hope, for it has gotten you this far. Rely on others’ strengths to counter your weaknesses, and never give up.” The Spirit of Harmony’s image, which was becoming more transparent by the second, shifted to that of a blue-gray stallion with a purple mane tied back in a tiny ponytail. “Take care, my little pony.”

The Spirit of Harmony disappeared, and Sunny felt the surface beneath her weakening, time speeding up again. She wiped the tears from her eyes and took a deep breath. She knew what she needed to do.
> The New Guardians
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hitch gently pulled Izzy back from the edge of the cliff, and Zipp was finally hauled up, collapsing with her family into a hug. Everypony was staring at the place where Sunny Starscout had once stood in shock, not caring that unicorns and pegasi and earth ponies were standing shoulder-to-shoulder.

“She’s gone,” Izzy whispered, tears welling up in her eyes and splashing on the ground. “She’s gone and we couldn’t even do what she wanted us to do.”

“It’s okay,” Hitch said awkwardly, patting the unicorn on the back. “If she were here, she would tell us that we don’t need her to make her dream a reality. She would tell us that we’ve had it in us all along.”

“I can’t believe it,” Zipp muttered, she and Pipp coming up next to the unicorn and earth pony. “After all we did - or, I think we did-” She winced, and rubbed her forehead with her hoof. “After everything that Sunny did to bring back magic, to just get us to work together… did any of it really matter?” She sat down with a defeated sigh, and Pipp put her wing around her. “Magic’s gone, and we almost all killed each other.”

“I’m not giving up,” Pipp said defiantly, looking around at the others as if daring them to contradict her. “And Sunny wouldn’t, either.”

Her words had an inspiring effect on the assembled tribes. Earth ponies took off their anti-mind-reading hats, pegasi set down their tennis balls, and unicorns stopped pointing their horns at other ponies’ faces.

“Maybe we really can be united again,” Hitch murmured, seeing the effect Sunny’s legacy had on the ponies.

“I just wish Sunny was around to see it,” Izzy said mournfully.

It was Sprout who noticed the golden glow coming from the canyon first. “What’s that?” he asked nervously, pointing to it as everypony turned to see what he was talking about. An idea popped into Hitch’s head, and he grinned.

A gold blurr shot out of the canyon and hovered above the ponies, her wings and horn glowing brighter than ever in the light of the setting sun. Everypony gasped, and then a resounding cheer rose up, ponies screaming and stomping their hooves and making Sprout have a splitting headache. Sunny soared down, skimming above them until she came down to land next to her friends. Hitch was grinning like a dofus, Izzy was crying, Zipp was trying not to cry, and Pipp had a look of absolute awe on her face.

“Oh, I just fell off a cliff, no big deal, what’s up with you?” Sunny teased. She opened her wings, and her friends poured in for a hug.

For a moment, they were just themselves, five ponies from three different tribes, hugging, and Sunny loved it. She wished that they could stay like this forever, and not have to worry about magic or harmony or discord or anything. But of course they couldn’t.

“This really is getting tiring,” a familiar voice said. It belonged to a unicorn with a frosty blue coat and white mane, and at his side was a purple pegasus. In his hoof was a very annoying green stone, which had resumed its sinister green glow. “Please, let’s just erase this whole incident, and we can go back to our peaceful lives.”

“Peaceful lives seem to involve a lot of going to war,” Sunny snapped, pulling away from her friends and, wings spread and head lifted authoritatively, approaching Permafrost and Sour Lavender. Permafrost blanched.

“I-I swear, I had no idea what Candy Floss’ true intentions were,” he protested. “I thought he wanted what we all want - a peaceful, safe Equestria.”

“Maybe it’s just me, but that doesn’t really seem like what you’re going for here.” Sunny glared at him as her friends surrounded her. “Because I think that a peaceful Equestria is an Equestria where we can all get along and not go to war with each other. I think a safe Equestria is an Equestria where we can lean on other’s strengths to counter our weaknesses. I think a happy Equestria is an Equestria where unicorns, earth ponies, and pegasi can be friends, and not have to live in fear of one another based on petty lies that you came up with.”

“That’s what we think, too,” came a voice, this from a green unicorn filly, flanked by a pink earth pony filly and sunny pegasus foal. They had pushed through the crowd and were now facing the frosty unicorn defiantly.

“Jinx Evergreen, what are you doing?” a unicorn called out, who must have been her father.

“Get back here, Rose Blossom!” an earth pony mare called out.

“Lofty Skies, you are most definitely grounded!” two pegasi yelped in unison.

“We’re not afraid of you,” Rose Blossom told Permafrost and Sour Lavender calmly.

“Because we’ve got friends,” Lofty Skies finished, spreading her wings and wrapping her two friends into a hug.

Sour Lavender, perhaps seeing that things were going sour, growled, grabbed the memory stone from Permafrost, and aimed it right at Sunny and her friends. A blast of green light shot towards the five ponies, and this time, nopony stepped in between them. Zipp, Pipp, Izzy, and Hitch all braced themselves for the worst, but Sunny calmly closed her eyes, knowing what would happen.

The impact never came. Only this time, it was because of a magical shield, composed of a glowing rainbow light, surrounding the five ponies. Above each of their heads was a single gemstone, rotating slowly on an axis, glowing brighter than the memory stone. Hitch had a greenish teal color, Izzy a deep blue, Pipp a bright turquoise, and Zipp a shade of shocking hot pink. Floating above Sunny’s head was a large five pointed star, a gorgeous shade of lavender. Ropes of light suddenly connected the gems, and the star shot a concentrated beam straight at the memory stone, which cracked and shattered in an explosion of green light. Glowing ribbons flew to Haven, Sprout, Phyllis, Alphabittle, Hitch, Izzy, Zipp, Pipp, and a few other unicorns and earth ponies and pegasi in the crowd.

There was an explosion of white light, and when it cleared, Sunny and her friends were lying on the ground, but there was something… different about them. Each of them was wearing a golden necklace with a jewel set in it, matching each of their cutie marks. But Sunny was adorned with a shining crown atop her head with the glimmering lavender star in the middle.

“Ugh…” Zipp muttered, rubbing her head as she got to her feet.

“What happened?” Izzy asked, shaking her head and looking around with a confused look on her face.

“I’m not completely sure,” Sunny admitted. “I have an idea, but it’ll need evidence… and you know what that means?”

Hitch groaned. “Not another road trip, I don’t think my hooves could walk another step-” He froze. “Woah. Sunny. Nice bling.”

The mare blushed, the light of her golden horn making the star glitter and sparkle. “I was just going to say the same thing to you guys. I’m not sure what these are, but I think we’ll find out soon.”

“I love them,” Pipp helpfully supplied, admiring her music note shaped gem, the bright turquoise color contrasting against her pink coat.

Zipp rolled her eyes, saying, “Of course you do.” She looked at Sunny, with her glowing horn and wings, and stopped, a thought having struck her. “Wait. If magic disappeared… then how come Sunny was able to do… whatever that is?”

“I think it’s because not all magic was lost,” Sunny explained, remembering her conversation with the Spirit of Harmony. “Just physical magic, like what makes you fly and use your horn and all that. But the most important magic will always remain, if we choose to find it: the magic of friendship. And I feel like I’m supposed to represent that. Friendship and unity between the three tribes. A symbol that, no matter how broken the world is, we always have the power to fix it.”

She didn’t mean to turn it into an emotional speech, but she saw other ponies creeping in closer to listen. She saw Jinx Evergreen, Lofty Skies, and Rose Blossom beaming and hugging, despite their parents’ efforts to pull them apart and ground them for life.

“Thank you, Sunny,” Haven whispered, hugging her two daughters. “You never gave up hope that things could get better, and you have saved us all yet again from going down a path much worse than this one.” She smiled wryly. “I only wish I could have been more like you when I was younger.”

“We all make mistakes,” Alphabittle said sheepishly, helping to brush off a dazed earth pony. “The important thing is that we learn from those mistakes, so we don’t make them again.”

“So… it’s not too late to fix everything?” Sprout asked hopefully, standing next to his mother, who was fussing over him obsessively. He huffed and pushed her away, holding her at an arm’s length away from him.

“It is never too late,” Sunny said. “I refuse to accept that it ever will be.”

“But what about magic?” Jinx Evergreen asked, wriggling out of her father’s crushing hug. “How can we get magic back?”

“Magic doesn’t matter,” Izzy said, voicing Sunny’s inner thoughts. The unicorn nudged Sunny playfully. “As long as we’re together, we don’t need magic. Because we have friendship.”

“Yes, but can we at least try to get magic back, please?” Zipp asked, flapping her wings experimentally. “It was really nice to have it back… even if it was just for a while.”

Sunny nodded and smiled. “I don’t know what comes next,” she said, reaching out and pulling her friends in for a hug. “But I do know that, with you guys by my side, I can do anything. So we’re going to get magic back, no matter what.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, her crown and her friends’ necklaces began to glow, brighter and brighter, until the five ponies were completely enveloped in a white shining light that spread across the land. Ponies felt something stirring inside of them, something… magical. Horns lit up, wings began to glow, and magic returned - just a few minutes after disappearing again. The dark clouds that had gathered in the sky were pushed back as colorful lights streamed across the sky.

“Wow!” Izzy exclaimed as the magical light around the five ponies faded.

“I hope that magic isn’t actually that glitchy,” Zipp commented wyrley, glancing down at her necklace. “Because bringing it back time and time again will get very tiring very quickly.”

Sunny laughed. “I think it might be here to stay, Zipp.” As she said it, she felt a feeling of absolute certainty in her heart. There had been something final about magic’s return. “That doesn’t mean we won’t have a few hiccups along the way, though. I think there will be plenty left to figure out, and there will always be adversaries. But this time, we face them together.”

Her friends all nodded and made varying sounds of agreement. Zipp flapped her wings and lifted into the air, a look of peace and contentment on her face. With a whoop, she soared off into the sky, twirling and doing loop-de-loops.

“Wait up, sis!” Pipp cried, zooming after her sister. The two chased each other across the colorful sky, while their mother watched from below.

“Hey, Sprout,” Hitch called, stopping the former deputy in his tracks as he followed his mother to Haven and Alphabittle. “You know… there’s a lot of wreckage down there. I don’t know, maybe some of it will be salvageable. You in?”

The red earth pony looked shocked. “Y-you would trust me for something like that?”

“Ah, well, the original was your machine, wasn’t it?” Hitch said, scanning the cliffside for any potential passage to the canyon floor. “I figure that you might know some things about it that I won’t… Now we just need to get down there…”

“There,” Sprout said, pointing to what looked like the old, crumbling remains of a stone staircase that came to a halt just a few feet from the wreckage of the giant red machine.

Sunny watched the two earth ponies descend into the canyon with a few other pegasi and unicorns behind them and sighed. Izzy gently nudged her.

“Hey, what’s the long face for, Sunny?” she asked. “We did it, didn’t we?”

“Yeah,” Sunny said, turning and giving the Tree of Harmony a long, sad look. “I just wish my dad could have been around to see it.” She sighed and turned to Izzy, a look of seriousness on her face. “Izzy, there’s something I need to tell you. Back… there, I found out that… the pony who was the leader of the Guardians of Harmony, whose cutie mark was on that window in Zephyr Heights?” The purple unicorn nodded. “Well, it turns out that… she’s my ancestor, and I’m her descendant. And… I have to carry on her legacy. But what if it’s too late? Everypony’s forgotten her and all the work she did, after all. Is there really anything left for me to carry on?”

Izzy could see that this had been bugging her friend ever since she’d found it out, and she tried to think of something comforting to say. “Of course there is, Sunny. I think you just said what you needed to do without realizing it. You need to remind us of their legacy, renew their stories and tell them again, so that we don’t forget about them. And, in a way, we never really did. Because I am sure that they were made into legends, and legends never truly die.”

Sunny smiled at her friend. “I hope you’re right.”
> Legends Never Die
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunny Starscout carefully pushed open the door to her brand new lighthouse, finally completed after only a few weeks of construction. Of course, having some magical friends did help, but she had still been anxious for the building to be done. At her request, a few renovations had been made, and while it did take a little while longer, Sunny felt that they were necessary.

These changes were not inherently obvious, but Sunny knew where to look for them. The first were the picture frames just next to the doorway. The one closest to the door was the torn and ripped photograph of a young Sunny and her father. It had been damaged with her original lighthouse, but she’d put the picture in a new frame and put it back in its rightful place. The engineers had offered to make sure that the picture wouldn’t tilt to the side every time the door closed, but Sunny had become so used to fixing it that she had declined. The second picture was a recent photograph of her and her friends in Maretime Bay, the sea at their backs, just after magic had first returned. The best part was that Cloudpuff had knocked into the camera just as it snapped the photo, so it was a bit tilted, but Sunny loved it all the same.

In the area that used to be her father’s study (Sunny had decided to leave most of his research in Zephyr Heights), there was a glass case sitting atop a golden pillar, adorned with a velvet pillow that held four crystal necklaces and one golden crown. Protected by magical enchantments, Sunny had been trusted with keeping the magic gems safe until they needed to be used again, which she and her friends all hoped would not be for a long time. But every time Sunny walked beside them, she wondered what they were and where they came from. They bore a striking resemblance to the Elements of Harmony that the Guardians used, but those had been connected to the Guardians. They couldn’t be the same ones…

The third change was in her room. She used to have a window with different images of the Guardians of Harmony’s cutie marks, but now it was a miniature replica of the giant stained glass window in Zephyr Heights. Sunny could now read the scroll with all of her ancestor’s messages in her own home instead of having to trek all the way to the pegasus city. The reflected images of the earth pony, unicorn, and pegasi crystals on her floor always joined together in the light of the sunrise.

Up on the top floor, underneath the giant lightbulb that shone out to sea at night, were the three crystals themselves, joined together and inserted into the stand. Haven and Alphabittle were a bit reluctant to let Sunny keep the crystals in her own lighthouse instead of in a royal vault or something more secure, but Sunny pointed out that she had Izzy put a magical protection spell around them, and that she felt that they belonged there, so they relented. Around the crystals, Sunny had set up her toy figures of all the Guardians of Harmony, and behind that was the lamp that her father made for her. With the earth pony crystal currently occupied, Pipp had supplied her with a fake crystal to put in the top that did the job just as well as the original. Sunny kept the lantern on at night, and the images danced across the room, reminding her of her father, of her family, and of her friends. She turned it on now, sighing in happiness as the familiar golden glow lit the room. She surveyed the dancing light one last time before leaving… but something caught her eye.

One of the ponies had both wings and a horn, but her father hadn’t made the lantern to show ponies like that. As Sunny watched, the image grew brighter and bigger until it galloped to stand in front of Sunny, now a full sized pony.

“Oh my stars,” Sunny whispered. “It’s you.”

The Spirit of Harmony smiled. It had once again taken on the form of Twilight Sparkle. “I see that you and your friends have now connected with the Elements.”

“Do you mean… those gems down there? What are they? How do they work?”

“The Elements of Harmony… you know about them. And I do not know exactly how they work, only that they do for the ponies that they represent. They may only be used for good, and I have no doubt that you and your friends will use them for just that.”

The weight of this statement settled on Sunny’s shoulders, and she looked at her father’s lantern for comfort. “So… me and my friends are meant to protect Equestria? Things like this might happen all the time? Do you know how crazy the past few weeks have been? How awful I felt in the past five days? And you expect me to do it all over again?” She took a deep breath to calm herself down. “Look, I don’t know who you are, but I do know that I can’t do this without my friends, and I nearly lost them. I can’t - I won’t go through something like that again.” She swallowed, blinking tears out of her eyes. “I can’t do this alone.”

The Spirit of Harmony gently placed a hoof on Sunny’s shoulder, and when she looked at it again, it had taken on the form of her father, Argyle Starshine. “Oh, Sunnybunny, you are never alone,” he said, and just hearing the sound of his voice was enough to make Sunny start bawling again. “I will always be here for you. You know that, right?”

Sunny sniffed, nodded, and wiped her tears from her eyes. “I know… I just miss you, is all.”

Argyle shifted back into Twilight Sparkle. “Listen to me, Sparkle,” she said gently. “You and your friends have a bond of such power that I have only seen a few times before. Believe me when I say that nothing - nothing - will ever truly do away with that bond.”

Now that the Spirit wasn’t her father, Sunny wasn’t bawling her eyes out, and she could more firmly concentrate on what the Spirit was saying. “So you’re saying… I won’t have to go through that again?”

“Most likely not something just like that,” the Spirit agreed. “That doesn’t mean that you won’t have trials, though. The bearers of the Elements of Harmony have many struggles that come with the responsibility of maintaining the Elements and keeping them from falling into evil hooves. But that’s what your friends are for,” the Spirit said hurriedly, seeing Sunny’s scared expression. “So that you can work through them together. That’s how the Elements are activated.”

“You say there will be trials… I don’t suppose you would mind elaborating on those?” Sunny asked hopefully. The Spirit of Harmony shook her head and laughed.

“I’m afraid that is not my place to say, my little pony. But do not worry. This is not the last you will see of me. And the trials will start soon, much sooner than anypony would have liked. Your friends… I hope they are up to the task.”

“They are,” Sunny said with a certain voice. “I know it.”

The Spirit of Harmony smiled. “I know you do, and I know it, too. But do they know? They must be ready to risk themselves again and again, fight for friendship and harmony, but this is no easy commitment. It is something that will consume your entire life, making it your sole priority. I must be sure that they are ready to do something like this.”

Sunny sighed and nodded. “I was just wondering… Sprout. He’s just as brave as the rest of us, if not braver. He deserves to be a part of this, but… everything that’s happened seems to suggest that he isn’t. Why?”

The Spirit sighed and turned to look at the lantern, the golden light reflected in her eyes, even though she was semi-transparent. “I wish I could, Sunny Starscout,” she said heavily. “But I do not have any power over the ones that the Elements choose. I am merely here to guide them. I wish I could.”

Sunny nodded, though she was disappointed. Her friend deserved so much more than he had… “I’m not giving up on him,” she said quietly. “I don’t care what you say. I am not giving up.”

Twilight Sparkle smiled. “Good luck, Sunny Starscout. I am honored to be on this 	quest with you.” The Spirit glowed gold and galloped to join the ponies on the walls. Within seconds, the Spirit of Harmony had vanished. Sunny’s eyes followed the shape of the alicorn on the glass and noticed a red earth pony standing on the lift. From his expression, she could tell that he had heard most of the conversation.

“Sorry,” he said hastily. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

“Apology accepted,” Sunny assured him.

Sprout shuffled his hooves nervously. “So… who was that? She looked kind of familiar. And… did it turn into your-”

“My father, yes.” Sunny forced herself not to cry. “I’m not entirely sure who she is, but I have a feeling that wasn’t the last time I - we will see her again.” She walked over to the former deputy and put her hoof around him. “I meant what I said - I am never giving up on you, Sprout.”

He smiled, and his own eyes were a little misty. “Thanks, Sunny. Hey, um, I never got to say… I’m really sorry. About what I did. I don’t know what happened, but that doesn’t make what I did okay. I made fun of you and your father for believing in something amazing, I roused the whole town for something based on fake suspicions and lies and false stories, I put the lives of you and your friends in danger, I destroyed your lighthouse, I let my own ego corrupt me…” He broke off with a sob. Sunny politely looked in the other direction and pretended not to notice as he wiped away the tears that were rolling down his snout. “I’m sorry.”

“And I forgive you.” Sunny pulled him into a hug, and for a while they stayed like that, hugging and crying, until at last Sprout pulled away, looking embarrassed.

“You know what my father always said?” Sunny asked. Something in the earth pony’s eyes flickered as he tried to remember.

“We’ll do our part…”

Sunny touched Sprout’s hoof, then placed it on her chest.

“Hoof to heart.”