//------------------------------// // Shining Sun // Story: Legends Never Die: Friendship is Magic // by bookhorse125 //------------------------------// “Um… Gusty, this is Sunny, Twilight, and Flurry,” Opaline said hurriedly into the awkward silence that had filled the house. “They’re… new?” Gusty blinked. Her eyes were wide behind her glasses, and she looked about twenty years younger as she gaped at Sunny. She shook her head and looked at Opaline, then back at Sunny, then at the other two alicorns next to her, and her eyes grew, if possible, even wider. “No, that’s not right,” she muttered. A look of confusion entered her expression, and she frowned. To Sunny she said, “You shouldn’t be here. None of you should. How did you come to Skyros?” “What are you talking about?” Twilight said slowly. “And how do you know Sunny?” Flurry asked, taking a step forward as if to put herself between Sunny and Gusty. “I saw you,” Gusty murmured, her gaze not wavering from Sunny’s face. There was a kind of ancient wisdom in her eyes that said that she saw more than other ponies, saw more than she ever told. “It was really faint, but I’m sure it was you - I had them make a tapestry of it, so that I could remember - I forget things really easily,” she went on, suddenly rummaging through the many things on her shelves and piles. “I know it’s around here somewhere…” “What are you looking for?” Opaline asked, timidly pawing through a pile of books, trying to be helpful. “I know it’s around here somewhere…” “What is?” Flurry’s voice started to get a bit demanding again. Her wings were twitching, and she glanced up at the balcony that was just barely visible between bookshelves that reached all the way up to the two-story high roof. Gusty ignored them all and bounced over to a ladder that was leaning against the wall with far more energy than a mare her age should have had. She scrambled up the ladder, muttering to herself, pushing aside books and scrolls and other artifacts as she searched. Some of them tipped off the edge of the shelves they had been placed on and tumbled towards the floor, where they would undoubtedly collide with other precarious piles and create more of a mess. Sunny, Flurry, Twilight, and Opaline all rushed to catch as many of the falling items as they could, dancing through the impassable maze of stuff on the floor. Gusty, completely oblivious, continued her search up above. “Aha!” She pulled a wooden chest off a shelf, knocking a stack of papers off as she did so, and they fluttered down, where Opaline grabbed them with her magic before they could scatter too far. She stacked them all neatly and frowned at the picture drawn on the top piece of paper. “What’s this?” Opaline asked, holding up a picture of the dragon stone. Sunny felt some of the blood drain from her face and quickly looked away. “Just random glimpses, I can never make sense of them,” Gusty explained vaguely as she climbed back down, holding the chest with her magic. “I forget everything if I don’t write or draw it, but I’m a rubbish artist - anyway! Here we are!” Gusty slammed the box down in front of them, sending up a cloud of dust that made everypony drop the objects they had caught in order to cover their mouths and cough. Gusty, grinning like a foal, spun the box around to face her, opened it, and pulled out a shimmering piece of fabric which she spread over the floor as best as she could with so much stuff in the way. Sunny rubbed her eyes to get the dust out and blinked them open, trying to see clearly though tears that blurred her vision. When she finally made out what it was, she gasped, and then immediately regretted it as she inhaled dust that sent her into another coughing fit. “Sunny…” Twilight pointed to the tapestry in front of them. “Is that… you?” It was a circular piece of fabric, seeming to shimmer with light, like the cloth itself was glowing. Depicted on it were four ponies in various locations, all circling a fifth pony in the center - a pony with golden wings and a golden horn. It wasn’t just that Sunny knew instantly that the pony in the middle was herself; it was that she had seen this tapestry before. She and her friends had found a section of it in her father’s old things, and that had sent them on a scavenger hunt to Zephyr Heights and Bridlewood to find the other two sections. Together, it made a picture of Sunny and her friends. The blanket had been a cool find, but none of them were really sure what it meant. And now it was here, in Skyros. Which meant… “How did you get this again?” Sunny wanted to know. “Oh, I was walking down the street after watching the sunrise down in Equestria,” Gusty said, waving her hoof airily. “It was a pretty normal day. But then I blinked, and I saw this.” She pointed to the tapestry. “It was really blurry and faint, but I’m sure that’s what I saw. And then I saw you…” Gusty frowned now as she tried to remember. “You were standing on the balcony of this lighthouse-looking-thing with a huge rainbow coming out of the top. The rainbow arched over into the horizon until you couldn’t see it anymore.” All four alicorns stared at her, their eyes wide and their mouths hanging open with wonder. Gusty didn’t seem to notice and shrugged. “And then I looked up and realized that I had tripped and fallen into a fountain. At least it wasn’t as bad as last time. Anyway, I ran to find some paper and get it down, but I knew that this was important, so I had some friends of mine make a tapestry for me. Why, have you seen it before?” “I…” Sunny bit her lip and glanced at Twilight and Flurry. “Yes, I have seen this before,” she said slowly, her mind racing with whether or not she should tell Gusty about the truth. They needed her help, but she didn’t know exactly how much to tell her. “I guess I was just surprised that you had it.” “Well, this is very exciting and all,” Opaline said, “but that’s not why we came.” She turned to look at Gusty. “We need your help. Grogar is coming.” Gusty blinked. For a moment, they all thought that she was too stunned to speak. Then- “Oh COME ON!” Sunny, Twilight, and Flurry all flinched at the outburst, though Opaline looked like it was perfectly normal and happened all the time. “You can never get rid of them forever, can you?” Gusty went on, agitatedly pacing back and forth in the little open spaces between piles of stuff. “No matter how hard you try or how many magic spells you cast or whatever other pointless junk you do, they always come back! Why can’t they just go back to the shadows and stay there forever? I mean, I thought the whole banishing-him-into-the-stars thing was pretty good, right? How did he manage to get out of that one?” She gasped and suddenly grabbed Opaline’s shoulder. “Don’t tell me he managed to get his bell. Please tell me that it's still hidden away safely!” “Um,” Opaline said, looking at the other alicorns with an expression that said, “Help me!” “No,” Sunny blurted out. “We don’t think he has his bell. It was… lost-” She snapped her mouth shut before she could say anything else. Gusty looked at her for a fraction of a second before she took a deep breath and composed herself. “Let me take a shot in the dark here. You’re from the future, and Grogar comes back in your time, but he needs more power or something, so he opened up a portal back in time to Skyros so that he can steal the power of all the alicorns and take over the world and be unstoppable, yaddah yah, the usual villain dominance story. And you guys came through to warn us but don’t want to completely blow up the entire existence of the world by messing with the timeline. Am I close?” “Does time travel happen every day and I just don’t realize it?” Sunny said out loud. “So far everywhere we’ve gone, no matter how long ago it was, someone is always able to guess that we’re from the future. I don’t get it.” “I have visions from the future every now and then,” Gusty said, completely nonchalant, like this wasn’t a big deal at all. “Sometimes they even prove to be useful.” She shook her head. “Other times, they’re completely useless. But beggars can’t be choosers.” She shrugged. “So. Grogar’s coming back. What kind of menacing monsters has he conjured up this time?” “Wolves,” Flurry Heart said. “Wolves made of shadows. They draw their power from some kind of host - through their pain and regret and shame - so they were kidnapping all of our friends. We don’t know how to stop them. Sunny’s the only one who was able to do anything to them. Do you think you can help us?” But Gusty’s face was suddenly pale, and her eyes were wide with fear. For the first time, she actually looked like the elderly pony that she was, and it was a very abrupt and unexpected change. “Wolves?” she whispered in a frail voice. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. She looked down at her hooves. “So. There are more of them.” “The wolves? Do you mean… you’ve seen them before?” Twilight took a step forward. “Yes,” Gusty whispered. “I have.” She cleared her throat and looked them all in the eye. “When I fought Grogar for the first time… back in the dark years… Grogar could persuade ponies to side with him. He would bribe them at first, but the moment they showed any signs of wanting to back out, he would enslave them with some kind of shadowy servant of his and bend them completely to his will. I… I saw it happen to a lot of ponies.” She looked at Sunny. “And you’re able to stop them? Sunny shifted uncomfortably on her hooves. “I… yes,” she said hesitantly. “I don’t know why, and I don’t know how, but for some reason I can free the ponies that the wolves have trapped, and once they don’t have a host anymore, then they don’t have any power and can’t hold a physical form. But… I can’t stop all of them all at once. I was barely able to stop one group of them, and that was only with my friends helping me. I can’t just walk in, blast them all with rainbow lasers, and they’re all defeated and we can go home happy.” “I wish it worked like that,” Gusty muttered to herself. “Ah, well. So. Do you have a plan?” “Uh… we were kind of hoping that you would help us make one,” Sunny admitted sheepishly. “We haven’t really had a plan until now, and it’s been working out well enough. How did you defeat Grogar last time?” “I stole his bell, stole his magic, and banished him into the stars,” Gusty said matter-of-factly, like this was something she did every other Tuesday. “But I doubt that’ll work again twice. And in any case, he doesn’t have his bell anymore, if what you’re telling me is true, and let’s hope that it is, because stealing that thing was hard enough the first time.” Flurry Heart cleared her throat. “Ahem. Plan?” “Oh, right.” Gusty grinned sheepishly with an apology. “Sorry. So, as I was saying-” There was a sudden boom that shook the floor beneath their hooves and made the whole house quake. Books and other artifacts fell off the shelves and crashed to the ground, and all five ponies looked up fearfully as dust rained from the roof. “What was that?” Opaline squeaked, taking a step closer to Gusty. Gusty’s expression turned grim, and she scrambled over to another ladder and climbed up it as yet another earth-shaking boom made them all sway on their hooves. Gusty leaped onto the balcony and glanced outside. “Well,” she said in a voice that was trying way too hard to be cheerful, “whatever plan we make, we’re going to have to make it up as we go. Shouldn’t be too hard.” “Why?” Sunny asked, approaching the foot of the ladder. “What’s happening?” Gusty grabbed a small telescope from on top of a stack of books and opened it, holding it up to her eye and peering through it. Her face turned a shade paler, and she pressed her lips together in a fine line. “Are you sure that you want to know?” she said, still peering out over the city. “It’s… pretty bad.” “What’s going on?” Flurry snapped, at the end of her patience. Gusty took a deep breath and looked down at them all. “They’re here.”