Book 3 The Shadows: obscured by the shadows

Edgy blushed, he couldn’t help it. One of his better kept secrets from Star, and he blew it at the same time as just about everything else.

He turned toward Tempest as he followed Starry’s eyes, and Tempest gave him a hard look before slinging her cape back in place.

But Edgy soon went back into battle mode.

“I guess we all know who won, but what did you think of it, Star?” Edgy asked expectantly. He was like a completely different pony. Star didn’t say anything, so he continued.

“Star, I didn’t want you to find out about any of this...”

“Aw, Edgy,” she said, a little trembly before more happily adding, “Well, I can see you two need to catch up. I actually have a lot of work to do! Remember the order I have coming up in Manehattan? Those socialites, am I right?”

She got up stiffly, presumably from her time awkwardly sitting on the ground, and began hoofing her way back home.

The chill evening air had been settling on her fur, but she was shivering more from the chill inside her. There was so much she had to understand. She only passed by a few ponies heading indoors, and she was grateful for that.

She finally made it to her front door and sighed. She felt like it was painfully obvious that she wasn’t too thrilled about the revelation, but she couldn’t help that now.

She was just about to open the door when a familiar voice called out behind her.

“Em?”

She turned around.

Behind her were two of the ponies she could depend on the most.

“Bee! Postage Stamp? What are you two doing here?”

“We just wanted to hang out. We also had something to talk to you about,” Bee told her. “Can we come in?”

Starry vigorously agreed and let them in and all three managed to find their way into her living room.

Starry began straightening up a few chairs for her friends and then opening a window to let the cool air in. It had been getting later in the evening and the sun was beginning to set. Starry found her way to a seat and waited for them to settle in as well.

“You picked the perfect time to come over,” Starry said with a grimace, “I just found out something...weird...”

“Edgy has evil powers???” Postage Stamp said with a grin.

“What? No. But, well, sort of,” she began, trying her best to explain that one of her worst fears was basically confirmed, but she hesitated when thinking about the other shock. Her friends weren’t phased at all.

“Em, maybe this is a good thing,” Bee responded, “Besides, the rest of us thought it was obvious.”

Starry was a bit put off, but said nothing.

She was listening to sounds from outside the window. She could hear the night air starting to creep through the trees outside. Her pet squirrel Rochester and his wife Jane were probably tucking in their babies for the night, and she could hear them calmly chattering away.

It helped her cool down a bit before she continued.

“So what did you all want to talk about?” Starry asked.

“Well, nothing much, honestly...except it’s about Cass,” Bee said, ending her sentence more firmly than she began.

Postage nodded.

Starry looked surprised.

“What about her? Where is she?”

“She said she was going out to visit somepony important, but she wouldn’t tell us who,” Bee answered, “I’ve been worried about her, too.”

“Oh?” Starry said. She hadn’t thought much about Cass recently, and so she sat there racking her brains to try to remember if she had noticed anything unusual about Cass, but could think of nothing.

“Yeah, we’ve actually kind of been talking about this for a while...,” Postage Stamp added and resettled himself in his chair as Bee spoke again.

“She hasn’t been in the best of shape lately,” Bee continued, “and we were hoping that maybe you had seen something.”

Starry shook one of her back hooves slightly and it made a small tapping sound on the hard wooden floor.

“I don’t think so. I’m so sorry. It’s just that I’ve been so busy with all the new traveling and projects and trying to help out Edgy...”

“We figured...but it was worth a shot,” Postage Stamp said.

Starry began to tap even more.

Starry was still thinking about Edgy and Tempest, and how they were fighting and having a good time. She couldn’t remember the last time she and her friends had done anything fun together either and it just made it worse.

Starry was ready to hear just about anything, except what she actually heard.

At first she had thought that the tapping she was hearing was coming from her own nervous tapping from earlier, but she had looked down at her hooves and realized that she wasn’t tapping anymore but the sound kept going.

Feeling her body tense up, she turned toward where she thought she heard the tapping coming from and saw a hooded figure crouched in the window.

Starry was about to put up a protection spell as Postage Stamp jumped between Bee and the intruder when the intruder suddenly threw something at Starry and everything went dark.