Courage is Magic

Chapter 10

This chapter is put into Morning Cloud's perspective

"Come on, get up!" A voice shouted from the blackness. I still couldn't move, but I started to slowly open my eyes. They shot wide open when an orange blur started to shake me, and I failed to get him away from me as my eyes focused. The pony was light orange with a brown mane and eyes. He even had a watch on his right leg and a fez on his head

"Good, you're awake," he said with worry in his eyes.

"Who are you?" I asked him.

"We don't have much time to talk about this, so just call me Raizuo for now," He said with a sense of urgency.

"What do you mean by that?" I asked him.

"John is bleeding out, if he doesn't get help soon he will die, I know of a way that can save him, but I need you to trust me," He explained. I looked at John and saw that he was very wounded and laying in a puddle of blood.

"Alright, what do I need to do?" I asked Raizuo. He randomly pulled out a wooden sled.

"Use this and get John back into the Badlands, find the changelings and mention John's name to them, they will help you in saving John," He explains while tying a rope to the sled and then helping tie me to the sled as well. He carefully moved John onto the sled with my help, and lightly tied him to the sled.

"Good luck Morning, and if you happen to see Sparx, tell him that Raiz says hi," He said with a smile.

"What-?" I started to ask, but he vanished into thin air. I shook my head and started to run. I really hoped that the strange pony knew exactly what he was doing, because I don't want to return to Ponyville for the first time in... a very long time, with John's dead body.

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I kept running as fast as I could with the wooden sled trailing behind me, trying my best to find the changelings that Raizuo talked about. I was very sore from all the running, but I wanted to get help from anything before John dies. John groaned lightly in pain and I had to slow down to try to prevent him from getting hurt by the ropes that kept him on the sled.

I turned back to check on John for a moment, and saw that blood started to coat the sled. I turned forward again to see two shadows in the distance. I decided that I had no other choice but to run towards the shadows. When I could see them, I saw that they were black bugs, changelings as they are called. They looked at me in confusion.

"A pony? Here?" One of them asks in a female voice. I remembered hearing about it from my adopted mother, Rainbow Dash.

"Please, can you help me?" I asked, dreading the fact that I have to talk to them in order to get help for John.

"You are just a pony, not a changeling like us," The other one said in a male voice. I remembered back to what Raizuo told me, “Why should we help ‘you’?”

"Please, I need help for him," I said and motioned towards the sled.

"Who is that?" The male changeling asks.

"He’s my friend, his name is John," I said. One of them widened its eyes in surprise.

"John, as in The John?" She asks me.

"Yes, John needs help right now, or he will die from how wounded he is," I said in worry. The male changeling would buzz in annoyance.

"We have to help him," The female changeling says to him.

"Why should we?" He asks.

"Because he is a good friend of the queen," She explained. The male changeling would sigh and nod. They both moved towards me and untied me from the sled, and worked together to pick it up and get it airborne with my help.

"I should come with," I told them.

"Fine, but just know that we will be watching you," The male changeling says and they began flying towards a mountain that was in the distance. I kept pace with them as they flew with John between them on the sled.

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We arrived at the mountain, and I saw more changelings flying around the base. They quickly noticed us and grew curious about why a pony would be flying with two of their own. As a result, many of them flew up to us. They also flew with us to the entrance when they noticed who was on the sled.

"Hold, we will get the queen and our healers immediately," One guard says after noticing who was on the sled. He flew into the entrance that was set into the mountain. The two changelings slowly set the sled down on the ground and waited. I paced around the sled in worry while I waited for what they called “healers” to arrive. I was very worried about John. When I saw the two guards return they had two small changelings and a very large one. The small ones moved to put John in a cocoon and I moved to stop them. The big changeling would get in my way however.

"Do not worry, we are only doing this to be able to safely transport him to an area where we can safely heal him without losing too much blood," She explains in a calm voice.

"Who are you?" I asked with confusion.

"I am called Chrysalis, I am the queen of the changelings here," She says in a mix of confidence and worry.

"Why would you help John this quickly though?" I asked in even more confusion. Normally, changelings would outright refuse to help a pony without any reasons for it. So I heard from Shining Armor when I was his Second-in-Command.

"Because John has helped us all, earning him a place as a friend of the hive," She explained as we followed John through the tunnels to a rather large area.

The two small changelings set John down on a weird looking table and removed half of the cocoon to allow John to breathe.

"How has he helped you?" I asked as the small changelings looked over my friend.

"He helped me to get the idea to arrange an alliance with Celestia, only a week after he disappeared however, and she accepted the alliance and ensured that my hive would survive from now on," She explained to me in a wistful tone.

"So, how are you going to help John?" I asked her.

"There are certain parts of what you ponies call Ooze that have healing properties that can heal and close a pony's wounds in almost half the time it would normally take, we will use this to close up his wounds," She explains like as if I were a student. I looked at her in disbelief, because I thought that she was kidding, but when they started covering John's wounds in the ooze, the smaller wounds would immediately close. The major wounds would begin to close as well to my surprise.

"I had no idea that it even had properties like this..." I said in awe.

"You are very lucky to have brought John to us, he would have bled to death from his severe wounds if we did not start closing his wounds," She told me in a calm way.

"Thank Celestia..." I softly said to myself.

“No,” said a changeling from behind me, “thank Chrysalis.”

"He will however need to rest, feel free to find a place to sleep in the hive; I need to send Celestia a letter to inform her of this event," She said and flew off. The other small changelings also flew off, their work done, leaving me alone in the room. I sighed in relief and was glad that John was going to be okay again. I walked up to him and looked over his wound, and thought back to what I did when I sacrificed myself to stop Shadow Blade.

"I see that you made it in time," A male voice says in the room. I turned to see Raizuo behind me.

"When did you-?" I started to ask him in surprise.

"Another time, right now I have one more message for John, so I need you to give it to him when he wakes up," he explains, somehow floating a note in air. He wasn't even a pegasus, much less unicorn, but I didn't question him as I took the note and put it somewhere to get it later.

"Okay? Now can you tell me how you knew about the changelings helping him?" I asked him, but he disappeared as quickly as he came.

I looked around in confusion as he couldn't have teleported. I shook my head and decided to get some sleep since I realized that I was very sore from all of the running and flying I did. I picked a spot next to where John was resting and lay down on the floor. I was uneasy for a moment, but it faded away as I closed my eyes to sleep again. John was not dead because of me, and I think I won't let him ever forget about it easily. I smiled as I drifted off to sleep in a peaceful slumber.