The Last Princess

by bookhorse125

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony: A New Generation, Adventure, Crossover, Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Sad, Sunny Starscout
Length: 12289

Amidst the chaos and confusion that caused Equestria to fall apart, one pony in the midst of it all knows what they could have been… and what has been taken away from her.

Amidst the chaos and confusion that caused Equestria to fall apart, one pony in the midst of it all knows what they could have been… and what has been taken away from her because of the choices that ponykind has made. All alone now, in a world that is vastly changing, without any of the comfort that her old mentor once had, and without any knowledge on what to do next, she keeps to herself, trying to isolate herself from the world and the pain it has brought, until nothing remains of one of the most powerful ponies in Equestrian history except for guilt and anger… until the last princess finds her.

Published 2022-08-26 17:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2022-10-07 22:57:29 UTC

Hope Cuts Deep

Twilight Sparkle hated hope.

For something that had gotten her so far, through so many tough situations, led her to so much victory, kept her friends coming back again and again… it sure hurt.

Because when one has hope, one clings to that hope like it’s the last thing in the world that they have. And, perhaps, in some cases, it is. But when that hope gets dashed… when that belief that things will be okay finally withers away, dispersed into the wind… when you are left with nothing but your pain and suffering that hope once kept at bay… you wish you had never hoped in the first place.

It was something so essential, yet so horrible.

Twilight Sparkle could never have gotten as far as she had without hope.

But now, because of it, she was going nowhere.

Every day was the same: nothing but her, and her thoughts, and her books… though the stories that she remembered reading as a foal, that had once filled the void that her friends had, did little to numb the pain. She searched through the best and the oldest and the newest spellbooks in the land, searching for something - anything - to fix this… but came up empty hooved.

Which led to desperate measures.

The last remnants of her friends, and what they had once stood for, were shattered into dozens of pieces in a locked box that she looked at every day, wondering if it would help renew her old energy. But it never did.

All she had was the knowledge that the world was crumbling around her… that magic had been lost… and that her friends were forever gone.

And there was no way to get them back.

At least… not that she knew.

It was a day like any other when all that hope came rushing back… and when it would prove to be more painful than all of the trials she’d endured over the years put together.

The cave was one she’d found in the very farthest reaches of Equestria - where it was guaranteed that none of the evil could follow her there. She had her books, she had what little she could find of her friends, and she had just one reminder of what she’d lost: a small picture hanging on the wall over her bookshelf, which was always empty, with the books spread out all over. The picture showed six ponies together, grinning like this was the only place in the world that they wanted to be.

She would give anything to go back to those days.

Like every day for the past year (or had it been several years? She had lost count. Centuries could have passed, and she would never have known), Twilight began by reading a book. One book in particular. A deep purple volume, one that the years had not been kind to, with a picture of a six pointed star surrounded by five other gems in a horseshoe formation.

She thought she was prepared.

She was always wrong.

Even the sight of the hoofwriting - the lessons recorded long before the journal existed, painstakingly copied into the purple book so that everything her friends had ever learned was in there - was enough to make her eyes fill with tears. She tried to be careful to not let the tears spill onto the precious book’s pages, but on many of the pages, there were blurs where the drops of water had fallen, making some of the words hard to read.

Twilight Sparkle didn’t care. She had already memorized all of the lessons long ago, and now the journal was merely a reminder of what she and her friends had accomplished together.

Some days she got further than others before she inevitably closed the book, curled up into a ball, and sobbed. She had never yet made it to the end. The pain and the grief was too much to bear… but every time she put the book away, the small spark of hope inside her heart grew stronger.

There had to be a way… there had to be.

A way to bring them back, to make everything the way that it was before. She couldn’t do this on her own, she couldn’t fix the world she had sworn to protect, but if she could find a way to bring them back…

Then everything would be fine.

They had defeated worse before.

On this particular day, Twilight wiped her eyes after reading the journal and shakily stood up, folding back her wings and blowing her bangs out of her eyes. She carefully stepped around the books scattered on the floor, lacking the energy - or the care - to clean them up, until she arrived at the only exit in the entire cave: a large opening in the side of the mountain with a long walkway of stone sloping steeply upwards, concealing the opening from view. She climbed to the top, letting the breeze push her long mane out of her face and blow through her wings, pushing away all of her cares and worries along with it.

Without all the grief flooding her mind, she had a spare minute or two to think about the wrongness in the world.

Perhaps it was just an old instinct from when she was the Princess of Friendship, but ever since magic had disappeared, there was a feeling of wrong in the air, like something was out of place, and it was driving Twilight crazy not knowing what it was. But today, it felt… stronger, but also weaker. She didn’t know.

It had been a long time since she’d felt something like this. The last time was when she was standing with her friends, a beam of light hurtling straight towards them-

She jolted out of the memory, tears beginning to fill her eyes. Don’t think about it, she mentally commanded herself. Don’t go back. You’ll never return if you do. It’s up to you to fix this. You are Equestria’s guardian - you can’t just give up! You can’t fail them!

And yet, she knew that she had already failed them. She had let this happen. This was all her fault.

And there were only five other ponies that she knew of who could fix it.

But they were gone.

Twilight took a deep, shuddering breath and forced the thoughts from her mind. Focus on getting through the day.

She just had to hold onto hope that magic could return - that her plan could work. Then everything would be fine again. Equestria would be just like it was in the old days, and she wouldn’t be alone anymore.

Twilight didn’t know how long she stood there, looking out over the barren landscape, thinking about Equestria, until the sun was setting and the feeling of wrongness had reached its peak. It was so strong that Twilight eventually turned around and dashed inside her cave again, standing in front of her messy bookshelf, staring at the picture above it. Six ponies. Best friends. It had been so long ago… yet it felt like it was yesterday… she missed those days… where had they gone? She should have enjoyed them more when she had them.

She would give anything to be in those days again.

She wrapped her wings around herself. Everything’s going wrong. My friends are gone. I’ll never get them back. Magic is gone, and it’ll never come back-

Then, suddenly, there was a huge blast across the sky, and Twilight’s cave, usually dark and bland, was filled with more light and color than she had ever seen since her reign. She gasped as she was filled with a feeling long absent, and her horn lit up a dazzling magenta color, and she turned and ran to the mouth of the cave and all the way up until she could see what was going on-

The sky was full of lights. Rainbow auroras sparkled in the night sky, the stars twinkling faintly in their splendor, and everything was as bright as day.

Magic was back.

Which meant that it might be able to work now.

It had to work. She wouldn’t be able to imagine what might happen if it failed.

She turned around and ran back into the cave, her hooves slipping, sending books scattering into every corner of the cave, but she didn’t care. Because there were things more important than books. If anything, she secretly resented her studies for getting in the way of her having friends. Perhaps, if she had spent less time with her nose in a book, she could have had more time with her friends.

But deep down inside, she added that to another long list of things that were her fault - things that she now had to fix.

Sitting in the corner was a blue chest decorated with gems, covered in a thin layer of dust and tears. Inside were the shattered remains of what she once thought were the most important things in the world. She used her magic to grab it and turned around, using her wings to propel herself forward, faster, faster, faster…

She didn’t know how long magic would remain. It might disappear in a few minutes. She had to act now.

Her horn glowed brighter as she stood there, the chest open in front of her, the shards of the gemstones levitating out of the chest, encased in a magenta light. She recited the spell in her mind, over and over again, like she had for the past few decades.

Bit by bit, the different pieces of the gems gravitated towards each other, until they formed six different shapes: a star, a diamond, a butterfly, a lightning bolt, an apple, a balloon. Once they slid into place, the now-complete gems glowed brighter and brighter. Twilight’s magic strained, trying to keep the gems together, trying to cast the spell. She was a bit rusty on magic due to its sudden absence for at least a century.

The Elements of Harmony were surrounded by a rainbow sheen, and, as Twilight grit her teeth, sweat pouring down her face, reciting the words of the spell in her mind, over and over, forcing herself to believe in this, the glowing forms of five ponies and a baby dragon began to appear in front of her, tracing the outlines in glowing rainbow light.

Twilight pictured the photograph that hung on the wall in her cave in her mind, remembering her friends, remembering what they had done together, remembering everything…

The memories poured in, painful yet wonderful, and the magic strengthened. The shapeless forms of ponies began to gain color, depth, life…

Twilight gasped as she laid eyes on her friends for the first time in… why, it felt like a lifetime. Perhaps several lifetimes.

But the when she could finally see their faces… when she was so close… her friends looked at her, their eyes full of sadness, and shook their heads.

The Elements of Harmony burst, and the entire cave was filled with light.

When Twilight opened her eyes, her friends were not there. Everything in the cave had been pushed against the walls, and the Elements… the Elements were burst into dust, in a pile in front of her, and she knew that no magic could put them back together.

No magic could bring them back.

Twilight’s eyes filled with tears, and her hope shattered into tiny shards that cut into her heart. She was filled with an inexplicable rage, and she lashed out at the pile of dust, scattering it to the wind, until it was gone - her last chance of finding her friends was gone.

More sadness poured in, manifesting itself in more rage, and Twilight whirled around, shooting a blast of magic at the picture on the wall, the last reminder she had of her friends, and it burst, the glass and the frame shattering as the picture drifted slowly to the floor, the edges slightly singed in the blast.

She seemed to finally realize what she had done. “No…” she gasped, stepping forward, gently picking the picture up. “No…”

Tears poured down her cheeks, and she curled up around the picture, crying until nothing else remained except for pain, guilt, and anger.

Author's Note

This is a story I've been thinking about for a couple months, and here it is! I'll get working on finishing my other stories soon, I just need a bit more time...

Constructive criticism is appreciated. Thank you for reading!

Mysterious Ways

Sunny Starscout stopped for a moment, gasping for air, her hoof holding a stitch in her side. She sat down on the rocky ground, just wanting to catch her breath. The mysterious orb she had been following for days hovered in front of her, pulsing impatiently.

“I know, I know,” Sunny said miserably. “Geez, what do you have to show me all the way out here?”

She was in a part of Equestria she had never seen before, further south than most maps went. There was nothing around her but rocks and jagged spires and dust, but apparently the glowing ball of light that had appeared three days ago was intent on bringing her here.

Sunny had been returning to her lighthouse after a long day traveling back home from Zephyr Heights, the pegasus city, where Queen Haven had been holding a celebration to mark one whole month since magic had returned, and insisted that Sunny and her friends be present for the event and parade that followed. Sunny had been up on the balcony, like she was every night, mouthing the words to her father’s story while looking up at the stars. It was one of the times she felt closest to him. She had no sooner finished her story when the three unity crystals that had brought magic back began to glow. The glow soon shaped itself into an orb, which had tugged Sunny along for three days out into the middle of nowhere. And Sunny had no idea why. But she had a feeling she was about to find out.

She stood up and continued to follow the glowing light as it led her around another rocky spire… and started to drift upwards.

Sunny stopped. “Up there?” she asked uncertainly.

The orb paused, and she could imagine it retorting, “Yes, obviously, now just stop asking questions and just follow me!”

She sighed and reached down inside herself so that her golden wings and horn appeared, shining a golden light on the surrounding landscape. She spread her wings and flapped hard to catch up with the glowing orb, which was getting further and further away. She swooped around as it suddenly dove into a space between a slab of stone and the side of a small mountain, disappearing into the yawning opening of a cave.

“Woah.” Sunny gently touched down on the cold stone floor, looking around. The cave was scattered with books, shoved into every nook and corner, as if somepony had raced through here and was in too big of a rush to care about the tomes skidding across the floor as their hooves pushed them out of the way. Over in the corner was a stone bookshelf, practically empty, with a spot on the rocky wall above it that was perfectly square and about twenty shades paler than the stone around it. On the floor in front of the bookshelf were scattered shards of broken glass and splintered wood, the paint long faded over time.

Clearly, somepony lived in this cave - or did live in this cave. It seemed quite empty now.

“Why did you bring me here?” Sunny asked the orb, turning around to find it, but it was gone. She turned around in a complete circle looking for it, but it was nowhere to be seen.

A voice suddenly rang out across the empty cave: “What are you doing here?”

Sunny barely had time to turn her head before she got hit by a massive magical blast that sent her flying backwards. She slammed into the stone wall and slid to the floor, groaning. Her alicorn form flickered as she struggled to maintain consciousness. She saw the blurry form of a tall unicorn standing some distance away, a massive pink blob at the tip of her horn seeming to snap Sunny out of her trance. She staggered to her hooves and threw up a golden shield from her own horn just in time to shield the blast, but it still sent her hooves skidding across the floor.

Gasping, Sunny looked up, sweat pouring down her face from the stress of keeping the shield up. There wasn’t anypony this powerful in all of Equestria! At least, not that she knew of…

The blast suddenly cut off, but Sunny kept her shield up. She blinked back the blurriness in her eyes and tried to study her attacker through the golden shield as the unicorn stepped forward into the light leaking from the cave opening combined with Sunny’s shield.

The mare was tall, taller than anypony Sunny had ever seen, with a purple coat and matching horn, which was strange because most unicorn horns were a pearly white, like a geode, instead of matching their coats. Even though she wasn’t firing any magic at Sunny, a glowing magenta aura surrounded the pony’s horn. She had purple eyes that looked red from crying and underlined with dark circles from exhaustion, though they glittered with a kind of anger-fueled hatred that Sunny had only ever seen once. Her mane was long and waving, a dark indigo with a streak of lighter purple and pink in her mane and bangs, as well as her tail, and if Sunny didn’t know any better, she would say that it glittered.

Under any normal circumstances, Sunny would have thought that the unicorn mare looked familiar, but her brain was throbbing too painfully to work out who she was seeing. But then the unicorn spread her wings - huge, swooping purple wings that stretched longer from tip to tip than the room at the top of Sunny’s old lighthouse - and Sunny could see the mare’s cutie mark: a pink six-pointed star surrounded by five smaller white stars.

Sunny felt like she was going to faint. Her eyes went wide and her jaw dropped, and she swore her heart stopped beating. Her shield flickered and disappeared from her shock.

Because that mark was so familiar to her that it might as well have been her own cutie mark. It was the same mark that hung around her father’s neck, it was the same mark that was posted on a flag in her old house, it was the same mark that belonged to a legendary pony, one she had always wanted to meet… but never thought she would be like this.

“Y-you’re Twilight Sparkle?”

The purple alicorn snarled, her eyes flashing. “And what is it to you? After all, everypony’s forgotten about me, haven't they? Nopony cares anymore!”

She shot a blast straight at Sunny, and she stumbled to the side as it shattered the rocks behind where she had been standing just moments ago.

“N-no, you don’t understand!” Sunny stammered. “I - we - my friends and I - we didn’t-”

With a yelp, she leaped out of the way as Twilight Sparkle launched herself at Sunny, rebounding off the wall and landing on her hooves. Sunny ran to the other side of the cave and hid behind the bookshelf, trying to calm her pounding heart.

“Okay, Sunny, just calm down,” she whispered to herself, taking a deep breath. “The pony you’ve idolized most in the world turns up in a cave in the most desolate part of Equestria and is apparently very angry. Just think! You can figure this out! How do you get her to calm down without zapping you to bits?”

Sunny sneaked a peak around the bookshelf to see where Twilight was, only to find her inches from her own muzzle, horn blazing. “Yeep!”

She spread her wings and tried to leap away, but Twilight Sparkle slammed her hoof on Sunny’s tail, pinning her to the ground and preventing her from escaping. Flipping the smaller alicorn around so that the two ponies were staring at each other, Twilight snarled at her, baring her teeth. Sunny gulped and kept her eyes on the alicorn’s horn, which was showing no signs of dying down, the pink light reflected in her eyes.

“Tell me,” Twilight Sparkle growled, her voice low and dangerous, “what’s going on out there.”

Sunny swallowed. “Well-”

Twilight’s scowl deepened, her horn sparked and hissed dangerously, arches of energy crackling haphazardly from one end to the other, and Sunny decided that it would be best to do what she said.

“E-everypony’s been divided,” she thought would be a good place to start. “Ever since - well, ever since you disappeared, ponykind has separated and divided, and told each other lies about each other. Nopony remembers the old days anymore - not like it was when you were in charge. And because they didn’t trust each other - because they weren’t friends - magic disappeared, and nopony knew where it went. But recently, I-I made some friends, friends with other ponies, from other tribes, and we’ve brought magic back, and everypony’s started to become friends again-” She stopped, because Twilight was staring over her head, her eyes wide with shock and something that looked like guilt and shame. Sunny glanced behind her to see what the older alicorn might be staring at, but there was nothing, but when she quickly looked back, Twilight’s eyes were welling with tears.

“It’s all my fault,” she whispered, in a voice almost too soft to even hear. “I failed them all. It’s all… none of it mattered… I have to fix it…” Her face contorted with anger, and the ancient lines in her face might as well have been etched into stone with the certainty that she said, “No. They brought this upon themselves… they destroyed everything… this is their fault… let them… no… I was supposed to protect them… I failed them… this is my fault… this is their fault…” Her horn grew brighter with each thought, her anxiety mounting.

“It’s better now!” Sunny tried to say, stepping back nervously as Twilight, unsure of what to think, decided that the one thing she did know was that she was angry - very, very angry, and somepony deserved to pay. She whirled around to glare at the younger alicorn, very slowly backing away from her. “Please, we’ve tried to fix it-”

“Only I can fix it!” Twilight suddenly screamed, a stray beam shattering a part of the roof of the cave. Rocks rained down, cracks splintered across the ceiling, and Sunny looked up fearfully, but Twilight apparently didn’t care. The dust surrounding her made her look all the more dangerous and menacing. “I was supposed to keep this from happening… that was my job… and I failed at it…” She narrowed her eyes at Sunny. “But you did this. You… you did this. You destroyed everything!”

The tip of her horn glowed brighter than ever, and she sent a blinding beam straight at Sunny, who countered it with a golden beam of her own. She dug her hooves into the ground and struggled to keep it going. Twilight Sparkle’s eyes narrowed as her pink magic beam crept closer and closer to the tip of Sunny’s horn, until she could feel it, white-hot against the gold. Twilight stepped closer, rising to her full intimidating height. Sunny opened her eyes and, for just a moment, looked into those of Twilight Sparkles, and she gasped.

All of a sudden, Sunny was yanked back into a memory - one she had long visited whenever she felt lonely. She was standing on the balcony ringing her lighthouse, watching a tiny lantern drifting away into the night, its precious cargo safely secured, slowly fading away into one of many lights in the starry night sky. She smiled contentedly as she watched, and she leaned against the pony next to her, feeling how real he was and how safe she felt when she was with him, because he kept saying that everything would be okay, because his stories gave her hope for a brighter future, one that she wanted to see someday…

Sunny now stared into Twilight Sparkle’s eyes, not daring to blink, not daring to break the connection.

Because she knew those eyes - and she had never expected to see them again.

“D-dad?”

Sunny’s beam faltered as she lost concentration. Twilight Sparkle roared, and everything went black.

Author's Note

The queen is dead. I feel like that hits a little too close to this story. History is being made, and we are living through it... It's crazy when you think about it.

Art by me!

Constructive criticism is appreciated. Thank you for reading!

Tale of a Princess

Sunny moaned as she blinked her eyes open. Gritting her teeth, she eased herself into a sitting position, wincing as her muscles screamed out in protest. Ouch. Everything hurt…

Sunny looked around, blinking the grogginess and the fatigue from her eyes. Her hooves gently tapped the… metal floor? Sunny looked closer. Yes, she was sitting on a circle of metal, which meant that she - was she in a cage?

Ignoring her throbbing headache, Sunny leapt to her hooves, her heart racing, as she tried to piece together what was going on… and then she remembered. She remembered everything.

“Oh my stars,” she whispered to herself. “It was real - I’m not dreaming. I’m not going crazy. This is real.”

She shook her head and remembered how she had been led here by some weird glowing orb all the way out here to the literal edge of the world to a strange cave, which turned out to be the home of one of her childhood heroes, and the pony she looked up to more than anypony in the world besides her father. Said pony then proceeded to have complicated feelings (Sunny could only guess from what), and a massive fight had ensued. Sunny got distracted because she thought she saw her late father’s eyes as the same as the enraged pony trying to kill her, and she had blacked out, and then reawakened in a cage.

Sunny blinked and shook her head again. “Come on, Sunny. You can do this.” She bit her lip and closed her eyes, reaching for that alicorn magic that she had found so easily earlier that day - or was it several days ago? How much time had passed? A few hours? A day? A week? A month? Were her friends going crazy with worry by now? Sunny had hurriedly left a note, saying that they should only come find her if she was gone for more than a week… Who knew how long it would be until they started tearing up Equestria looking for her?

Focus, she told herself. You have to get out of here.

But as hard as she tried, her golden wings and horn stayed dormant, not even creating so much as a glimmer of golden light. Defeated, Sunny plopped onto the floor of the cage, trying desperately to find some other string of hope she could cling to.

“There has to be a way out of here,” she whispered to herself. “There has to be. I have to get back to my friends - I can’t lose hope-”

“Hoping is pointless,” snarled another voice, and Sunny gasped, whirling around to look at the speaker as she realized that she was not alone.

Twilight Sparkle was standing with her back facing Sunny, her head bent as she stared at something on the ground between her hooves. Now that she wasn’t in a blinding rage and trying to zap Sunny with lasers (she was beginning to understand where those earth pony stereotypes of unicorns had come from), Sunny was sensing a lot less anger and a lot more… sad.

“What did you say?” Sunny said slowly, standing up and cautiously approaching the bars of the cage, intrigued and excited by the older alicorn’s presence, but apprehensive because of their earlier fight.

Twilight winced as if Sunny’s voice reminded her of something and shook her head. “I said that hoping is pointless,”she said, her voice carrying a hard edge, like somepony who had gone to hell, never really came back, and was now being told to look on the bright side. “It just hurts you in the end.”

Sunny opened her mouth to contradict, then remembered her own feelings of hopelessness when she and her friends had gone on their first quest to find the pegasus and unicorn crystals, which she thought, when reunited with each other, would bring back magic and unity between the three pony tribes, only to find that the two crystals did nothing on their own, and her own hometown had been stirred up into a miniature army, intent on destroying the ponies she had just made friends with, and how alone she had felt in that moment… But then her friends had come, and by working together, they had worked things out in the end.

“Hope doesn’t hurt you,” Sunny whispered, “it keeps you going-”

“And then it shatters when it doesn’t come true, leaving you with nothing left!” Twilight stomped one of her hooves in an agitated manner and flicked her tail angrily.

Sunny thought for a moment before saying tentatively, “But that’s what your friends are for. Even when hope doesn’t get you all the way, your friends do-”

“Believe me, I know that,” Twilight said, her voice breaking before it hardened with anger. “But what do you do when they’re gone? You hope. And you either keep hoping forever, or your hopes get dashed and leave you with nothing. And then what do you do?”

“What are you talking about?” Sunny asked, frantically repeating the story her father had told her over and over again in her head. “My dad told me about you - you have friends - you, of anypony, should know-”

“I know more than more than ponies give me credit for,” Twilight interrupted. “Of course, ponies don’t give me any credit at all anymore. But I know that friendship, powerful as it is, doesn’t last forever - something always happens that tears everything apart! Even when that friendship is the most important thing in the world to you - even after everything you’ve done - it still doesn’t save you! It still doesn’t save what you did! Everything just goes back to how it was before - it’s like nothing had ever happened!”

Twilight took a deep breath. “I had everything. I had friends. I was a princess, I had more magic than just about anypony in Equestria, the whole land was truly at peace for the first time in Celestia only knows how many centuries, and everything was perfect.

“Then…” Her eyes narrowed, her face contorted into a snarl. “Then everything fell apart. My friends… I love them so much…” Her eyes filled with tears, and so did Sunny’s at seeing her so sad. One of Sunny’s best traits (or biggest flaws, depending on who you asked) was her ability to be empathetic towards others, including ponies who tried to zap her with horn lasers. She couldn’t help it! Her quest had taught her that there was a pony behind every face - that deep down inside, everypony had feelings, had things they cared about, had reasons for what they did. So where some of her other friends might be getting increasingly angry at Twilight, Sunny only felt pity… and a whole lot of empathy.

“They were gone. I… it was too fast… before I knew it I was alone…” Twilight swallowed, forcing the tears away. “I couldn’t do it on my own. I needed my friends, I needed the hope that they gave me, but there was none anymore… I hoped that Equestria might remember them and all that they had done, but it seemed like they were moving on, forgetting about them, and so I… I couldn’t take it anymore… I left.” She looked around the cave sadly. “I came here, with a tiny spark of hope, but it was all I had, so I clung to it, hung onto it, tried to find a solution, a fix, a way to undo everything that they had done, things that I needed to fix…

“I shouldn’t have left. Equestria was my responsibility, I needed to care for them, I needed to make sure they remembered me and my friends and what we did, I needed to make sure they remembered friendship. And I failed.

“I felt like… if I just had my friends back, then everything… everything would be okay. They would help me… help me fix this. So I tried… I tried to find a way to bring them back, but I… I failed them, too. I’m just a failure. I failed Equestria, I failed my friends, I failed to keep what I stood for alive…” She wiped at her eyes, seeming to forget that Sunny was there.

“I know what it feels like to lose somepony you love,” Sunny said in a quiet voice. “It feels like… you can’t keep going… because they’re what made you want to keep going. So sometimes you stay… stuck.”

Twilight said nothing, but Sunny could sense that the alicorn agreed with her.

“But maybe you have to keep going,” Sunny continued. “Because you know that they wouldn’t want you to stay like that, trapped in the past, mourning over something that can never be fixed. They would want you to keep going, to find your destiny, to achieve their dreams, to make sure their legacy lives on in somepony…” Twilight was still silent, so Sunny tried her final argument. “Maybe you could come out into the world, help us fix what we broke, bring everything back-”

“I can’t go out into the world again!” Twilight suddenly snapped, whirling around to glare at Sunny. “Can’t you see what they’ve done? They’ve taken me - they’ve taken my friends and all they had done, and forgotten about it! Made it like it never happened! How can I help them after they’ve done all of that? The world doesn’t deserve friendship anymore - they don’t deserve magic anymore! Maybe that’s why I got rid of it in the first place!”

Sunny gasped. “You… what? You got rid of magic? That was you?”

Twilight worked her jaw and grumbled, “Yes. That was me.”

“B-but how could you?” Sunny spluttered. “Magic is amazing - sure, we used to think that it was evil, but it’s not, it can do wonderous things - surely you know that - why would you get rid of it-”

“I was trying to get them to remember friendship!” Twilight’s voice broke and quieted to a whisper. “So many times, my friends and I fought villains with no magic of our own other than the magic of friendship, and that was always enough. It was the forces of evil that took magic away, but it was the magic of friendship that always brought it back. I thought… I thought that if magic disappeared, then everypony would remember that only by working together could they bring it back, and fix everything… but it didn’t work like that.” Twilight took a deep breath. “I would have brought it back, tried something else, but I put the magic in three crystals, and I only knew where the pegasus crystal was - I needed all of them. And even without magic, things were just getting worse and worse and worse… I needed magic back so I could try and… bring my friends back… I just had to hope that, one day, it would return…”

“And it did!” Sunny said spiritedly. “We brought it back! We united ponykind again! And now you can come back and tell everypony your story again, so we can remember it-”

“The world did this to me! It reduced me to what I am - you expect me to help them? They deserve all of this! They took everything!”

“There are good ponies, though, too,” Sunny whispered, “who just didn’t know what to fight for-”

“There’s nothing left to fight for!” Twilight approached the cage, her eyes flashing. “And I won’t help them! They don’t deserve it! Not after everything they took from me, after everything that I gave them!”

She slammed her hooves against the bars of the cage, and Sunny’s teary eyes widened. For a moment they stood like that, alicorn and earth pony, tears streaming down Sunny’s cheeks, Twilight’s chest heaving with anger.

“You’re nothing like I imagined,” Sunny whispered.

Author's Note

Sorry this one got out late! I was rewatching all the Tell Your Tale episodes yesterday and completely forgot... But it's here now!

Art by me!

Constructive criticism is appreciated. Thank you for reading!

Tale of an Earth Pony

Would recommend listening to this while you read: Open Up Your Eyes - Lyrics

Twilight glowered at Sunny and stepped back. “Well. Sorry to disappoint you.”

Twilight:

It’s time you learned a lesson

It’s time you understand

Don’t ever count on anybody else

In this or any other land

I once hoped for friendship

To find a place among my kind

But those were the childish wishes

Of someone who was blind

Open up your eyes

See the world from where I stand

Me among the mighty

You caged at my command

Open up your eyes

Give up your sweet fantasy land

It’s time to grow up and get wise

Come now, little one

Open up your eyes

Sunny blinked as she was suddenly transported into the middle of a massive throne room with two thrones - a larger one and a smaller one, both with velvet cushions, sitting atop a ramp with two waterfalls cascading down the sides into small rivers that ran the length of the throne room. Twilight was standing in the center of the carpet, surrounded by a dragon and six ponies - five of which Sunny recognized as Twilight’s friends. Twilight looked so much happier here - this was the pony that Sunny always thought of when her father told her stories about the Guardians of Harmony.

(Twilight)

We all start out the same

With simple naive trust

Shielded from the many ways

That life’s not fair or just

But then there comes a moment

With simple truth that you must face

If you depend on others

You’ll never find your place

Sunny watched as Twilight stood in front of a massive stone monument with a statue of the six friends and stone carvings of the Elements of Harmony for each pony that they represented. The rest of the surroundings were obscured by fog, but Sunny knew exactly what had happened. Twilight from the past turned around and slowly began walking in the opposite direction of her friends, leaving behind everything that she had known.

And as you take that first step

Upon a path that’s all your own

You see it all so clearly

The best way to survive is all alone

Open up your eyes

See the world from where I stand

Me among the mighty

You caged at my command

Open up your eyes

And behold the faded light

It’s time to grow up and get wise

Come now, little one

Open up your eyes

Open up your eyes!

As the song came to a close, Twilight gave no indication of giving Sunny any more attention, but she wasn’t about to give up just yet. Tears swimming in her eyes, she called out, “You’re not the only pony who’s lost somepony they love, you know.”

The alicorn stopped, but didn’t turn around.

“I lost my dad,” Sunny continued. “He was the best pony in the world - the only pony who believed in friendship and magic and unity anymore. Despite all the lies we were told, all the things we were taught, all the hardships that we had to go through… he never gave up hope that, one day, things could be alright again, that things could change. He inspired me to believe in it myself, to hope for it myself, but I wasn’t just going to sit there and do nothing about it. I was going to go out there and be the change in the world, instead of just waiting for it to happen.”

“I was the change in the world,” Twilight said in a quiet voice. “But it wasn’t enough. Not everypony appreciates change.”

“I know,” Sunny replied, thinking about Sprout and Maretime Bay while she and her friends were off chasing after crystals. “They think that the way things are is better than what they could be - but that’s not true. No matter how perfect things might seem, they can always be better, because we can always accomplish more together than apart. It’s our differences that get us so far, not our similarities.”

Twilight gave a humorless laugh. “That’s what I always said. But it wasn’t enough.”

“Is anything enough for you?” Sunny asked exasperatedly. “You and your friends accomplished so much together… you saved Equestria on multiple occasions… I looked up to you more than anypony in the world other than my dad!” She quieted down and said, “He believed in you, too. He died believing that you would do anything for Equestria. I guess you let him down, too.”

If she expected this to impact Twilight at all, she was disappointed. The elder pony simply shrugged and made no sound.

“He told me all about you,” Sunny said, sitting down as the weight of her memories came crashing down. Before, she had always resisted the pain that came with remembering her father and how he had gone just a few years before his dream was realized - but now, looking at Twilight in her depressed state, this pony who had succumb to the weight, let the grief consume her until she couldn’t remember what she stood for at all - until she had lost herself completely - Sunny knew that she couldn’t let that happen. She refused to let that happen.

No matter how many bad things happened, to her or to anypony else, there were good things, too, and they can outnumber the bad things if you let them. And all those good things were worth fighting for.

“Every night…” Sunny took a deep breath as she recalled the memory. “He would tell me the same story. And no matter how many times I heard it, over and over again, I kept asking him to tell it to me, because it gave me hope that what he believed in could, someday, become a reality.” She closed her eyes as she began to tell the story, and therefore didn’t see Twilight Sparkle turn around and stare at her wonderingly.

“Once upon a time, many many moons ago in Ancient Equestria, there lived a very special unicorn. The unicorn was very bright - as bright as the sun. One day the princess summoned her to the castle for an important assignment - to learn about friendship. She soon made lots of new friends - earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns. Together they showed everypony the magic of friendship, and how to live in harmony.”

Twilight very slowly approached the cage and sat down in front of it, her eyes wide and filled with wonder.

“He told me that everytime I asked, and I never grew tired of hearing it. The feeling that it gave me - it was so strong, so powerful, that it was what empowered me to go out into the world to make his dream a reality. In fact, it was losing him that made me realize how powerful a dream and a hope can be. It can be something that you live working for, trying to make it come true, it can be something that you naively believe in just so that you can have it there, or it can be something you let destroy you. I wasn’t going to sit there and just hope that all three ponykinds would unite without me - and I most certainly wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life just missing him and feeling sorry for myself and blaming other ponies for something that was out of their control - for something that wasn’t their fault.”

The words hit Twilight right in the heart, and she lowered her head shamefully.

“Sure, I could choose to be mad at the ponies who didn’t believe in him - when magic returned, I could have rubbed it in their noses that they were wrong, or made them pay for making me secretly doubt myself all those years.”

A feeling was growing in Sunny’s chest - a kind of tingling sensation that she knew from experience always preceded her alicorn transformation, but she didn’t bother with it now.

“But my dad’s dream - his hope - was that ponies could unite and get along together, not get angry at each other and try to prove that they were better, or more right, or more perfect or believing than anypony else. And it wasn’t necessarily their fault. I couldn’t bring myself to get angry at them. They’re my friends. And I think true friendship is when you care about other ponies no matter what they do - that you always have their back.” Sunny opened her eyes and looked straight into Twilight’s, unafraid. “I don’t think your friends left you. I think you felt that they were gone and left them. You had so much riding on you, and instead of helping Equestria, you came out here to spend your life feeling sorry for yourself when you could have tried harder, when you could have fixed everything.”

The guilt in Twilight’s eyes, the pain that she was feeling, the obvious internal conflict that she was struggling with, trying to justify her own actions while also knowing that Sunny was right, almost made Sunny want to shut her mouth, stop talking, stop hurting her. But she also knew that this ‘real world’ that Twilight thought existed did exist, just not quite in the way that she was saying it did. She needed to realize her own mistakes were her own - that it wasn’t anypony else’s fault - and that there was still hope that she could fix everything.

“You can still fix this.”

Twilight took a deep breath and closed her eyes, imagining each of her friends individually. There was energetic Pinkie Pie, spreading joy and laughter to other ponies to the end, only doing what it took to get a smile. Bold and daring Rainbow Dash, always ready to push the limits but never faltering in her loyalty to her friends. Honest and hard-working Applejack, the level-headed one, learning to step outside of her own comfort zone. Creative Rarity, who knew just how to make a pony look fabulous and was always giving more than expected. Timid and gentle Fluttershy, giving kindness and care to whoever needed it. Spike the dragon, her brave assistant from the moment she had hatched him from an egg, who had always, always been there, even when her friends hadn’t been.

And dozens of other friends she had lost besides: Starlight Glimmer. Celestia. Luna. Sunset Shimmer. Starswirl the Bearded and the Pillars of Equestria. Cadance, Shining Armor, Flurry Heart. Moondancer. Fizzlepop Berry Twist. Her counterpart friends in the mirror world. The unicorns. The pegasi. The earth ponies. The changelings. The dragons. The griffons. The hippogriffs. The yaks, the buffalo, the breezies, the kirin, the dozens upon dozens upon hundreds of other creatures she had met on her travels and had befriended.

All of them were gone.

But were they really?

A single tear slipped out of Twilight’s closed eye and splashed onto the floor. “This is all my fault,” she whispered. “I let this happen. And I didn’t fix it. It’s all because of me…”

Sunny wrapped her hooves around herself and closed her eyes as she was sucked into her own memories - memories of her father, and even of her friends. But she didn’t feel like they were far away from her at all - she didn’t feel a crushing sadness, an empty void that only love from her friends and family could fill. They were closer to her now than ever before - because she knew that they had never left her, and she wasn’t going to leave them, either.

She opened her eyes and gasped - the cage had melted away into nothing, and Twilight stood in front of her now, staring down at her with a strange blank expression, like she wasn’t sure what to think.

Sunny scrambled to her hooves. “P-Princess, I’m so sorry-”

“That cage was impervious to magic,” Twilight interrupted, and Sunny saw, to her great relief, no anger in her eyes anymore. There was a light curiosity, a whole lot of guilt, and a tiny spark of something that looked like… “None but the most powerful of magic could have broken it.”

“Oh.” Sunny swallowed. “Well… sorry about that.”

Twilight surprised Sunny by smiling, but her eyes were still sad. “I used to be a lot like you. Before… all this.” She looked around the cave, not as if it was a sanctuary, a place she could hide and wait out all the bad things until she had her friends back, so that they could defeat them together, but as a prison, one that had kept her here, while the world fell apart around her, and she let it happen. The worst part was knowing that she could have prevented all of it… that all of this could have been undone… maybe she could have been a better pony, the pony her friends knew.

As if she could tell what she was thinking, Sunny stepped forward and put her hoof on Twilight’s, and the other alicorn looked up, surprised.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Sunny said quietly. “You’re thinking that, if you could have done things better, if you were better… then they would still be here. Things could be better. All the hardships and trials and bad things could have been avoided, and that would be the Equestria that you would want to rule.”

Twilight looked sideways at Sunny, and she knew that she was right.

“But,” she continued, “sometimes that’s not always the way to get the world we want to live in. Sometimes, those bad things that we wish we could avoid, they’re the things that brought us the most joy and happiness in the long run. I remember when my dad… died… I felt like I had to do everything I could to make his dream a reality… I owed it to him. If he hadn’t gone, then I never would have gone with Izzy on a quest to Zephyr Heights and discovered that magic had disappeared, or gone to find the crystals to bring it back. I never would have met Zipp or Pipp, all of Maretime Bay would still believe all those lies about unicorns and pegasi, and the same in Zephyr Heights and Bridlewood. The world would still be divided. Even if I could go back… I wouldn’t change a thing. Because the present I have is only because of the past as it is, not as I wish it was. For every bad thing that happens… good things happen, too.”

Author's Note

Yeesh, this one got long. But happy Friday! My school's celebrating homecoming this week, and it's been fun.

Constructive criticism is appreciated. Thank you for reading!

What We've Lost

Sunny took a deep breath and waited for Twilight to react… but the elder pony remained silent and motionless. She finally looked away, her eyes brimming with silent tears, and Sunny felt another wave of sorrow for this pony wash over her.

She gingerly took a step towards the princess. “I know what it’s like to lose somepony you love,” she said again. “But trust me when I say that they’re still here. And this…” She waved her hoof around at the cave. “This is not what they would want you to do.”

Twilight shook her head. “I’ve made too many mistakes. I could have changed things, but I chose not to. I got so caught up in my feelings that I lost sight of everything else.” She turned away from Sunny, knowing she was the one to blame all along, giving her strange relief and crushing guilt simultaneously. “I was not the pony I wanted to be. I was not the pony I was expected to be.” She sat down and curled her tail around her.

Sunny sat down next to her. “What happened?” she asked in a quiet voice. “I just want to know what happened.”

Twilight took a deep breath and carefully allowed the memories to come rushing in. “Back before I became ruler of Equestria, my friends and I fought these three villains who were able to almost defeat us by spreading lies amongst ponies and other creatures that they needed to stay with ponies just like them. When we defeated them, we managed to convince almost everypony that unity and friendship were better than division and mistrust. But I guess some of them didn’t believe us, and as time went on, those ponies got louder. I could have stopped it if I wanted to. But I didn’t. It was selfish of me, but I was tired of having to save the world so much, having all the responsibility come down to me and my friends… Besides, ponies had always fought in Equestria’s history, and everything had always turned out okay. I had hoped that this would be one of those times.

“But it wasn’t. And before I could realize that… my friends started disappearing.” She swallowed the tears forming in her eyes and forced herself to keep going. “I was there for each of them until the end, but it felt like they had abandoned me in this big world all alone, when I needed them. I couldn’t deal with this by myself - I needed them, and they left me. So I looked at all the chaos and confusion and disharmony around me, and I tried to think of a way to convince them to reunite and become friends again.

“I never got the chance. Because of all the disharmony in the world, the Windigos returned - creatures of ice and snow that fed off of mistrust, turning the land as cold as our hearts wherever hatred dwelled. Ponies were starting to freeze, and still they refused to come together. I realized that the Windigos only existed because of an imbalance in magic - something was missing, and that imbalance had allowed the Windigos to exist. I didn’t know how to bring that magic back, so I thought that, if I got rid of all magic, balance would be restored, and the Windigos would vanish forever, so that ponykind would never have to live under their freezing threat again. So I summoned all my strength into creating crystals that would house all the unicorn and pegasus magic, but I think the spell went wrong. Instead of just two crystals, there were three, and I don’t even know what it was for. But before I could figure it out, ponies caught wind of the fact that there was no magic, and that it was stored in those crystals. They stormed the palace and stole them, forever separating so that they could live by themselves.

“But it did work. The Windigos vanished… and I hoped that, one day, ponykind might unite and bring magic back. I hoped that they might see that, if they united, they could bring magic back, bring friendship back. But every day, it felt like more and more was falling apart, and there was less and less I could do. I knew that taking away magic wasn’t working - ponies were getting hurt, and the pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies had already established their own separate cities, alone and away from each other. Even the other creatures outside of Equestria’s borders weren’t doing anything to help, instead only caring for their tribe instead of the good of us all.” For a brief moment, Twilight’s face turned angry, but the small spark of anger there quickly vanished, and she fell back into the sadness again. “I would have brought magic back if I could, but the pegasus crystal was under the highest security in all of Zephyr Heights, and I had no idea where the unicorn crystal went. I searched and searched for it, but I couldn’t find it. The only one I could find was the third crystal, but by that point, I was so tired, so… alone… I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. Not without my friends.”

Tears splashed on the ground as Twilight’s feelings overwhelmed her and she began to weep. “I came here, trying to find a solution, a way to free them, bring them back, but I had to wait for magic to return before I could do anything. When it finally did, I took the last part of them that I had left - the Elements of Harmony, and tried to bring them back… but I failed. I failed all of Equestria, I failed them…” She broke off as a sob built up in her throat.

Suddenly, she was aware of a golden glow that had filled the cave, and turned to see Sunny, in her full alicorn form, her wing gently spread over Twilight’s back. Twilight took a deep breath and wiped the tears from her eyes.

“After everything that happened… all that I didn’t do… how would I even begin to fix it?” she asked. “As long as I’m still here, Equestria is my responsibility. I know I haven’t been the best pony - in fact, I’ve been downright awful… But I want to fix this.” She looked at Sunny with watery eyes. “I’ve told so many ponies how to undo the harm they’ve done. Helped lost ponies find their way back to the light. But… how would I even begin to start?”

Sunny lit up her horn and gently levitated over a small scrap of paper, the edges torn and ripped, the image faded from age, but the picture still legible. Twilight took the picture in her hooves and stared down at her five friends, the best ponies in the world, who meant the world to her. More than that. Everything.

“Right where you started.” Twilight looked up to see Sunny standing in front of her, holding a worn purple leather bound book with her magic. “By making some friends.” The alicorn let it drop, and it landed with a thud at Twilight’s hooves, sending up clouds of dust.

Twilight stared down at the friendship journal with apprehension and even fear, but at an encouraging nod from Sunny, she carefully opened the worn book and took a deep breath. Her eyes scanning the first page, she read in a careful voice, “Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria…”

It had been several hours since Twilight had begun reading the journal, and Sunny had kept her talking with questions of her own - not necessarily because it would help the elder pony to talk about what she had lost, but also because Sunny had only heard vague stories about this legendary pony and what she had done, and she longed for something more that she could spread to the world around her, just like her dad had done to her.

When Sunny ran out of questions and fell silent, Twilight studied the alicorn in front of her and asked, “So, how did you become an alicorn?”

“Logistically?” Sunny shrugged. “I have no idea how it works. But it first happened just before the three crystals were brought back together and magic returned-”

“You mean it worked?” Twilight’s eyes suddenly filled with hope. “You brought magic back and reunited all of ponykind?” Hearing that some of the mistakes she had made were being corrected gave her hope that not all was lost. “Where were they? What did the third crystal have to do with anything?”

Sunny sat up eagerly, excited for it to be her turn to tell the exciting tales. “Well, it actually began when I was a filly,” she said. “My dad used to tell me all about you, and one night, I decided to send a message to any unicorns and pegasi out there, saying that they had friends in Maretime Bay - where I’m from. So we sent it out by lantern, and I honestly completely forgot about it. But then, several years later, a unicorn named Izzy came to Maretime Bay and started a panic. She had found my note when she was a filly and had finally decided to try and find the earth ponies. My earth pony friend Hitch tried to arrest her - in fact, the whole town was in chaos, but we both escaped and decided to go to Zephyr Heights to see if we could find any clues about where magic went and bring it back. But we learned that the pegasi couldn’t fly, either, and then me and Izzy got thrown in jail! But Zipp - she was a pegasus princess - rescued us and brought us to this abandoned airstation, where there was a window of your cutie mark and the pegasus and unicorn crystals. We figured out that they belonged together, and after stealing the pegasus crystal in Zipp’s mom’s crown and dragging Zipp’s younger sister Pipp and Hitch into it, we set off for Bridlewood to search for the unicorn crystal. Izzy helped us disguise as unicorns so that nopony would suspect anything, and I won the crystal in a dancing competition - don’t ask. We tried joining the crystals together, but it didn’t work. Feeling like I had failed, I went back to Maretime Bay, where I found the third crystal in the lantern my dad had made for me and figured out that there were three crystals to represent all ponykind.”

With the explanation of what the third crystal meant, Twilight’s eyes lit up, but as she thought about it, it made complete sense. Alicorns were a combination of all three ponies, not just unicorns and pegasi, so it would make sense that, to bring magic back, all three ponykinds had to reunite.

“But while we were gone, a pony named Sprout was whipping Maretime Bay up into a miniature army to destroy the unicorns and pegasi to keep the earth ponies safe, and when my friends and the ponies chasing them showed up, it caused a massive fight against this giant machine that Sprout had made. He destroyed my lighthouse just as we managed to get all the crystals together, but at first, it didn’t work. Magic didn’t come back.”

“But it had to have,” Twilight interrupted, her expression confused. “That’s how I designed them - ponykind unites, crystals unite, magic comes back.”

Sunny nodded. “We just hadn’t done the first step. Ponykind hadn’t really united yet. But amidst all the destruction that Sprout had caused, all ponies saw that we were really better together - that friendship is better. Alone, we just tear each other apart until there’s nothing left but dust and rubble. But when we unite… the crystals lit up and circled around me and lifted me into the air, giving me these…” She gestured to her wings and horn. “Then they fit together and caused a massive explosion that brought magic back-”

“Ow!” came a voice from the entrance to the cave, and both Twilight and Sunny gasped, turning to see who the voice was coming from. “That was my hoof, Izzy!”

“Sorry,” replied another voice.

Sunny gasped and stood up, stepping towards the cave entrance. “Izzy?”

A unicorn’s head popped into view, and her eyes lit up when they landed on the golden alicorn.

“Sunny!”

Author's Note

Sorry this got so late, I didn't get much time to work on this until just now! Tell me what you think!

Constructive criticism is appreciated. Thank you for reading!

The Magic of Friendship

Izzy leaped into the cave and dashed towards Sunny as she ran towards her unicorn friend. The two met in the middle and pulled each other into a hug.

Over by the entrance, three more pony heads poked into the opening, which belonged to Zipp Storm, Pipp Petals, and Hitch Trailblazer. Pipp flew over to Sunny immediately, while Zipp, hovering just above the ground, helped Hitch into the cave.

“Sunny!”

“What are you guys doing here?” Sunny asked, letting go of Izzy to embrace her other friends.

“Did you seriously think that we would let you just disappear like that?” Pipp asked, holding up Sunny’s note that she had left in the Crystal Brighthouse. “Zipp did some investigating and used her spy gear to find some kind of magical energy leftover from whatever took you, and Izzy cast some kind of finder spell, and we’ve been following you ever since.” She looked around, as if noticing where they were for the first time. “Um… where exactly are we?”

“And who is that?” Zipp asked, pointing behind Sunny to where Twilight Sparkle was standing, looking at the group of friends with a forlorn look on her face, like she remembered having something like this but had it taken away from her.

Hitch tilted his head at the alicorn. “Is it just me, or does she look kind of familiar…”

“Oh!” Sunny shook her head, and her wings and horn disappeared in small bursts of golden light. “Guys, this is Twilight Sparkle. She’s the pony my dad told me about, who saved Equestria with her friends and created the crystals. She lost her friends and was so sad that she basically forgot who she was, but I think she’s okay now. We’ve been talking for a while.” She grinned bashfully. “Twilight, these are my friends that I told you about: Hitch, Izzy, Zipp, and Pipp. If it weren’t for them, magic never would have been brought back, and ponies would still be divided, and I wouldn’t be an alicorn.”

“And…” Twilight’s emotions flashed across her face, and she firmly held them back. “They followed you all the way out here? Because they care about you?”

“Yeah!” Hitch said at the same time Pipp said, “Of course,” Zipp said, “Totally,” and Izzy said, “Abso-tooty-lootly! Sunny’s our friend!”

Twilight looked from each of their shining faces to the look in Sunny’s eyes that hadn’t been there when she first met the earth pony, but had begun to show when she was talking about her friends, and now her face was practically glowing with love and affection for these four ponies. It reminded Twilight so much of how she and her friends used to be that she almost sank into the nothingness again, the loneliness again, but she held herself back. Her friends were still with her, even if she couldn’t see them. They loved her too much and she loved them too much for that to ever happen.

Izzy leaped towards the cave exit again. “Come on, Sunny, everypony’s been wondering where you’ve been! And it’s going to be Maretime Bay Day in, like, two weeks, and we have to be getting back!”

“Oh.” Sunny hesitated as the rest of her friends joined Izzy by the exit. She turned her head around to look at Twilight, who was staring at the ground, her eyes filled with emotion. When she didn’t move, her friends turned around to stare at her, their faces identical expressions of confusion.

“Sunny?” Hitch took a step towards her. “Sunny, what’s going on?”

She took a deep breath, but didn’t move her gaze from the Princess of Friendship, who had now turned away and wasn’t facing Sunny at all anymore. She looked just like the sad, dejected, hopeless pony who Sunny had met that she felt her heart begin to beat faster in panic. But she knew that she was different now. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to leave the other alicorn, all alone like this.

“M-maybe we could stay a little longer?” Sunny stepped towards Twilight as the other pony turned her head to look at her, her purple eyes sad.

“No, Sunny,” she said quietly. “You have to leave. Equestria belongs to you now. Protect it.”

“What?” The words didn’t register in Sunny’s mind. She wasn’t a princess, or a queen, and she was barely an alicorn. How could she protect Equestria? “B-but you’re a princess - you can still fix your mistakes! Are you just going to sit here in this cave forever and mope?” The words came out harsher than she meant, but she was getting frustrated. She thought this pony had changed, that she was beyond this!

Nevertheless, Twilight just gave her a sad smile. “No, I had my time. I did with it what I did with it, and I won’t say that it was everything I had hoped it would be. But you know my mistakes, and you are smarter than that. You see ways to fix, truly fix things. I failed Equestria, Sunny. But you didn’t. You did everything I ever wanted to do and so much more, and you’re just beginning.”

Sunny’s eyes filled with tears. “B-but I don’t know how-”

“You know more than you think you do,” Twilight said. “Look at how you brought ponies together, how strong your hope is, when all you had to go off of was some stories that you weren’t even sure were true! You are going to change the world, Sunny.”

Twilight lit up her horn and picked up the wrinkled and aged picture of her friends and slid it inside the cover of the Journal of Friendship. Then she picked up the worn purple book and levitated it over to Sunny and set it in her outstretched hoof.

“Tell them the story,” Twilight told her. “Make sure… they never forget…”

Her eyes got a far-off look in them, and she stared off into space. “My friends…” She gently closed her eyes, and a contented look settled across her face as she began to fade.

“Wait…” Sunny dropped the book and ran towards her as fast as she could, but the alicorn was fading quickly. “No! Come back!” But by the time Sunny arrived, she had dissolved into purple mist that passed right through Sunny’s hoof as she tried to grab onto the last pieces of the pony she had always held as her hero.

Sunny’s tears filled her eyes and blurred her vision before sliding down her cheeks and splashing onto the ground as she let her emotions come pouring out. She hated losing ponies, hated it more than anything. And here was another pony she had lost that she could have saved.

How could she rule Equestria? She was a failure. She couldn’t save anypony…

Stop that, came a voice inside her heart that sounded familiar. Sunny gasped and looked up, hoping to see Twilight Sparkle standing in front of her again, but the purple alicorn was nowhere in sight.

Yet, Sunny could feel her, could hear her…

You did everything I ever wanted to and so much more, the voice reminded her. You are incredible and extraordinary and different in the best ways possible. It’s up to you now to lead Equestria, to protect them and keep them safe. Don’t let them forget, like I did. Don’t let them lose hope, like I did. Show them how to sparkle just like you do.

A magenta glow filled the corner of Sunny’s vision, and she turned to see the six pointed star on the cover of the friendship journal glowing the same color as Twilight Sparkle’s cutie mark. One by one, the gems surrounding it also began to glow, blue and red and purple and pink and orange, until they created a beautiful rainbow that shone and danced across the cave. Sunny could feel her heart swelling with friendship and hope, and her horn and wings returned, the colors in her mane beginning to glow with magic.

“Sunny?” Zipp asked. “Woah.”

Sunny walked towards the book and looked at it.

“I will, Princess,” she whispered. “I promise to tell them. I promise.”

She touched her hoof to the cover of the book, over the pink star, and all the light was sucked into her hoof. Sunny lifted her hoof to place it over her heart, and the magic flowed into her so that, for a moment, she closed her eyes and saw six ponies, young again, laughing and running together, truly happy for the first time in centuries.

“Hoof to heart.”

Author's Note

Here's the finale. Sorry it's a bit shorter than the others. But here it is. Thank you guys so much for all of your support and patience - you really are the best. So this chapter is dedicated to all of you. :twilightsmile:

Constructive criticism is appreciated. Thank you for reading!