It was a still, silent night. The forest was dense and dark, the green foliage shadowed by thick trunks, branches, and the absence of day. A full moon shone through the trees, illuminating scattered paths through the woods, yet not penetrating them. All was quiet, not a whisper could be heard, no sound broke the silence. A clean breeze drifted past, carrying the scent of running water and lush vegetation, before lazily flowing onward. And among all this stillness and quiet, a black unicorn slept, dreaming peacefully and deeply.
Though leaves fell beside him, disturbed by a cool night wind, he moved not. The unicorn’s flanks rose and fell in strong, rhythmic pulses, mirroring his steady, even breathing. His eyes were closed, a pair of glasses slightly askew on his snout. His mane and tail rippled in the wind, mirroring the grass around him in both its motion and its bold green color. His ears twitched to the sound of branches rustling in the breeze yet did not rise in awareness. He slept; motionless and unmoving.
An indeterminate amount of time passed thus, before the unicorn began to move restlessly, stirring. He blinked sleepily, revealing sapphire blue irises in over-large eyes, and yawned expansively. As he regained consciousness, however, his expression swiftly shifted from befuddlement to shock and then to panic, quick as a blink. He shot to his feet and promptly fell over backwards, having attempted to rise on only his two hind legs.
Groaning, the unfortunate unicorn pulled himself onto all fours, staring at his limbs in confusion as he did so. Once he could concentrate on his surroundings rather than his hooves, he looked around and saw he was completely alone - not a creature to be seen among the leaves.
“Huh,” he said to himself, half closing his eyes in thought. “Where am I? What happened?”
His face wrinkled in concentration as he attempted to remember. He could recall hanging out with his sister just after dinner and then going upstairs to bed, but he couldn’t remember much else. A jolt tore through him as he realized he couldn’t even remember his sister’s name-
“Sarah!”
The word escaped from his lips before he could stop it. He paused, considering it.
Sarah. My sister is Sarah. She’s in, in….
He thought harder, eyes shutting in his attempt to remember.
In….
But the name wouldn’t come. It seemed to escape every time he attempted to stop it, and the strain of trying to remember was tiring, despite his rest. He shook his head, attempting to clear it and still his rapidly whirling thoughts. He could remember living…somewhere else, going to school, laughing with friends, being with his family. He just didn’t know where.
And how did he know that? Why could he remember what he did there but not where there was? And for that matter, where here was?
The unicorn sat down hard, breathing heavily. He shook his head in annoyance, mouth set in a thin line.
What had happened to him?
After a few more fruitless minutes spent answering that question, the unicorn gave up and instead decided to focus on his surroundings.
He was nowhere close to anything recognizable. Trees, grass, a river, vines, soft sounds and breezes, all were noticed and dismissed as unhelpful. He was no closer to getting back home, wherever that was. He fidgeted distractedly, thinking, and felt something hard and round poke him directly in the rump.
With a yelp, he leapt back to his feet and turned around, looking down at the offending undergrowth. Something glinted there, and after brushing branches and leaves aside, he found what he was searching for.
A metal pendant made of a strange golden material sat in a small hollow formed of crushed greenery, carved with strange patterns and strung on a black cord. It appeared to have been abandoned or forgotten and yet was so clean as to not have been so long. He picked it up in a green aura, and examined it closely, finding no catches or other means of entry. It was a simple ball of metal, engraved and clean, held at eye level a horn’s length away. As he watched, idly turning it so he could examine the whole object, his mind wandered, first to question the origin of the object, then its purpose, then to the magic holding it, and suddenly the pendant fell to the ground as his entire frame shook once again in shock.
Stars above! He had just used magic!
He shook his head, feeling suddenly dizzy. Magic didn’t exist. Right?
His head turned from side to side in pure bewilderment. But he just used magic!
How did he know magic didn’t exist?
Ahh-!
Collapsing to the earth, the unicorn groaned, eyes shut and forehooves rubbing his temples. His memory, spotty though it currently was, had no recollection of magic of any kind, and now he could use-no, had used it as if it were no harder than breathing! Why? And how? What?
OK, OK, get a grip- a grip…. Oh no! His head felt like it was splitting in two as he screamed.
“I don’t know my own name! Why can’t I remember!?”
But quick as his panic came, it went, and the unicorn’s face cleared into a calmer, but no less unsettled, expression, the look of one pushed past his limits. He stared at the ground, unseeing, and took stock of his current situation.
One, he had no idea where he was.
Two, he had no idea where he had just been, although he knew it wasn’t here.
Three, he could use magic, of all things.
Four, his name escaped him, although he knew his sister’s.
And five, sitting here in the middle of a strange forest wasn’t going to change anything about any of this.
OK, he thought. Now would be a good time to panic.
Breathing hard, flanks heaving, the unicorn tried to run somewhere, anywhere, before he tripped over his own limbs and fell with a crash into a nearby tree, knocking himself out cold.
******
He came to in fits and starts, a dull ache pounding on the side of his head. A light of some kind shone into his eyes, causing him to blink and squint, uncomprehending. He felt awful, like someone had use his head as a rattle. And as his vision cleared, he felt his stomach clench in apprehension.
This wasn’t the forest. He was in someone’s home.
The light was coming from a fireplace set into the nearby alcove, a large pot bubbling quietly above it. He was surrounded by plain brown walls, decorated with tribal masks and lined with shelves holding strange plants and bottles, circling the round interior of a hut. The morning sun shone through a window on the far side of the building, dappled shadows dancing on the floor. As he pushed himself up onto his forehooves, he felt a rough, homespun blanket fall off him onto the floor. And then he saw someone else standing in front of a large cauldron, face turned away from him, a few short feet away.
He froze, not daring to move. The stranger was clearly working on something, though he couldn’t make out what, and he or she didn’t appear to have noticed his movement. As he watched however, the stranger turned and, noticing his alertness, faced him.
“Ah,” she said, “Alive and well, I see. Now then, how did you come into Everfree?”
He gaped at her, momentarily stunned. She was a zebra, an honest to goodness zebra! And she was talking?
“Um, I really don’t have any idea, Zecora.” He said, a little overwhelmed. “I just woke up here not too long ago, and don’t know how I got here.”
She paused and tilted her head quizzically.
“We have never met, yet you know my name. I fear your questions lead to more of the same.”
“I… what?” He groaned and put his head into his hooves, once again stunned by his memory’s unreliability. He could remember names of complete strangers now? What’s next, a crazy lady was going to jump down his throat with weird drinks and a laugh?
He realized the zebra had returned to her task and had now completed it, bringing him a bowl of some foul-smelling concoction.
He sighed. Close enough.
She gave him the brew with a smile, which he took and placed next to him. Zecora frowned and picked it back up.
“A healing balm, this liquid is. Your health and strength revive with this. Not only will it cure your pain, but also repair your mind and brain.”
He looked at her silently for a moment, before picking up the bowl in his hoof. He contemplated it, and how he knew her name, but like every other crazy thing that had happened today, his questions led to less answers than confusion. But, for some reason, he felt like he could trust this strange, rhyming equine. It wasn’t exactly knowledge, just a gut feeling, but a strong one.
Picking her concoction up once more, the unicorn drank, gagged, and forced himself to finish for his host’s sake. Putting the now-empty bowl by his side, he attempted to stand up before falling over in surprise, having attempted to walk on two legs once again. Picking himself up, grimacing, the unicorn saw Zecora watching him with a strange look on her face.
“Um…”
She said nothing, and just helped him to his feet – all four of them. She then looked at him thoughtfully.
“Of ponykind, you are most strange. Not many take well to this sort of change. Times past are gone for now, which makes you wince and wipe your brow.”
He stared at her. She smiled and continued. “Not gone, however, your lost memories are, for with time and patience, they will return from afar. Add to that my special brew, and soon you’ll know yourself true.”
“How did you know….?”
Zecora continued smiling. “A falling star caused me to go out and roam. Imagine my surprise to hear a pony far from home.”
The unicorn grinned sheepishly at this, remembering his carelessness with his initial reaction to waking up somewhere unfamiliar. He realized Zecora must have heard him panicking about his memory loss after she went out. But still-
“Falling star?”
Zecora nodded. “Upon the sky, I’d turned my sight, when from the stars you fell at night. Going to the place you fell, I found you hurt, and out for a spell. I brought you here to heal your ills, but those of the mind I hope yet to still.”
She then raised her hoof up to show the unicorn something it held. “I found this near your sleeping form, a strange device, yet left forlorn.”
The unicorn looked up to examine it, only to see a small, spherical object, slung on a black cord.
“My pendant!” he exclaimed.
Zecora cocked an eyebrow. “Your pendant, you recall? This intricate metal ball?”
The unicorn paused, unsure. “Yeah, it’s mine,” he slowly said. “I remember it was given to me by someone I…. admired.” He shook his head in exasperation. “I just wish I knew who.”
And he did. He could remember the pendant had been gifted to him after he’d been saved from….someone. Someone back home. But he didn’t know or remember what he looked like, or what he had done to deserve it. And how on earth did he know all this at all, given he didn’t know his own name?
He clutched his temples, wishing his head could stop dredging up shards of memory and make sense for once.
Zecora handed the pendant over to him, smiling warmly, and he gratefully lowered his hooves and took it, hesitantly placing it ‘round his neck with his magic. Releasing his hold, he sighed and looked back at her.
“I need to remember what happened. Do you have anything here that could help?”
She blinked. “Do you not remember my drink? It’s something you’d not forget, I think.”
He blushed at the reminder, embarrassed at his forgetfulness.
“Oh, yeah, how can I forget that?” he said, grimacing. “But,” he paused, wondering. “You mean it should have done something already?”
Zecora nodded. “I once used a special potion to help a friend recall the past. It worked as planned, but the effects did not last. So I began to test ways to view those events myself.” She grinned. “Only to gain that brew for my shelf.” She paused then and looked him straight in the eyes. “When I drank, I could see my past clear as day. But your vision is still clouded, to my dismay. That magic is not enough, it seems, though you may yet recall fragments in your dreams.”
The unicorn felt the earlier panic begin to well up within him. “You mean, I can’t remember even with magic? What am I supposed to do now?”
“I am not sure, but the friend I mentioned might know. Into Ponyville, to Twilight’s castle you must go.”
“Twilight Sparkle?” the unicorn sat up in shock. “The Twilight Sparkle?”
Zecora once again raised an eyebrow at this, before nodding.
The unicorn stared. He was going to meet Twilight Sparkle? The Princess of Friendship herself? And her friends, most likely. How could this day get any stranger?
Only the fact that you seem to know more about this world than your own, he thought, that might do it.
He chewed on that disturbing notion for a few moments, before nodding.
“All right,” he said. “How do I get there?”
******
He looked out on a land that he had almost given up hope of seeing once again, eyes wonderingly gazing out on the nearby forest and its surrounding hills. It was fitting, somehow. To be awed by a world so un-spoilt, like he had once done so many years ago.
In a distant castle, a midnight-blue eye cracked open uneasily.
The soft sound of hoofalls on dirt and stone were the strokes of doom. He grinned as he strode toward the town at the edge of the wood, fingers eagerly twitching in anticipation.
The azure alicorn bolted upright. She raced down the halls, flying past many doors and alcoves. She ran like the fate of the world depended on her.
Yet something felt…off. It was as if his presence was still known here, despite the long years he had spent in exile. Despite the severing of every connection he’d once had to this place, something was bonded to him.
The alicorn burst into a grand chamber, running flat out to a door on the other side. She was calling out for someone, and over and over a name left her lips.
He concentrated and felt the mental link to an old friend then victim of his, freed from his grasp only a few years prior. His grin grew predatory, and he sent his observer a single thought before severing the bond between them in an instant.
The alicorn stumbled and fell heavily against a wall, before rising to her feet and grasping a nearby door in her magic, nearly tearing it off its hinges. From the royal bedchamber beyond her sister blinked up at her, sleep quickly giving way to shock at the alicorn’s panic.
“Celestia, the Devourer is back! Xarov has returned!”