Sunny could feel her energy giving out. She didn’t know how much longer she would be able to keep this up. She was constantly dodging the wolves and trying not to get captured, and whenever she could, freeing the poor pony trapped inside. Already over a dozen confused creatures were standing on the streets, looking around in a dazed sort of way, and Sunny had to yell at them to keep moving and get into the center of the city.

“Just follow the crowds!” she called to a pony she thought looked familiar but couldn’t remember where she’d seen him before, and her scrambled brain wasn’t going to let her remember. “You’re going to be okay! We’re going to get you to safety!”

With a yelp, the pony turned tail and ran down the cobblestone path into the larger herd just as a shadow wolf pounced on the spot where he had just been. Sunny lit up her horn and grabbed the wolf with a rope of golden light and swung it around into a building before she blasted it with her magic and pulled a changeling out from inside. It was only later that she realized that the changeling was Imara’s aunt Cercus, but she had no time to worry about that now.

Once, Sunny flew past Twilight, who was looking frantic and a bit scrambled. Her mane was frizzy and her eyes were a bit wild; her horn was sparking with sporadic magenta energy that reflected her mood.

“Everything okay?” Sunny called to her.

Twilight was panting heavily, but she managed to nod to Sunny. “Yeah. Just. Hanging. In. There.”

“Is the portal working alright? Everypony getting through?” Twilight shrugged helplessly and dashed away. Sunny took a moment to pause and scan Skyros, trying to figure out what exactly was going on in the fight. Shadow wolves were still lurking in the streets everywhere she could see, and more were still pouring in, but they didn’t seem to be getting past the first two circles of the city. A mob of ponies with a few creatures sprinkled in was clustered around the building at the very top of Skyros, slowly making their way inside and hopefully through the portal down to Equestria. The zeppelin was anchored above, swaying gently in the breeze. All of Sunny’s friends were stationed around at various gates and doorways, holding off the monsters in any way that they knew how. Sunny frantically searched them all, trying to find all her friends, and she was relieved to find all of them. But something troubled her, and then she realized that she didn’t see Opaline anywhere. She desperately hoped that the little fire alicorn was just hiding and wasn’t betraying them or anything.

Sunny swung around, preparing to go back into battle, when she noticed Grogar calmly walking up the street towards the center of the city, with an army of shadow wolves surrounding him.

Sunny swooped down and landed on the cobblestones in front of him and his entourage, her wings spread wide and her horn alight with rainbow light. Her eyes blazed with fury and power, and the wolves all halted suddenly, as if they were afraid; but Grogar only laughed.

“Well met, Sunny Starscout,” he called to her, not stopping his approach. “Indeed, you got farther than I ever thought that you would. But that will not save you or your friends. In the end, the shadows will always win. Every single one of you will be consumed by the darkness until the entire world will be nothing more than a fathomless void that not even the light of friendship will be able to penetrate.”

“Not if we stop you first,” Sunny said bravely, the light around her increasing. Her heart hammered inside her chest, and she could feel her emotions running wild. Magic sizzled inside her veins and rushed through her body, making her skin tingle and her hair stand on its end. Her mane began to lift off of her shoulder and wave about in a breeze that wasn’t there, and the colored stripes seemed to brighten in radiance until they seemed almost unreal, impossible. Her vision tunneled, and all she saw was Grogar, who was actually looking slightly afraid. She didn’t know it, but the shadow wolves around her let out mournful howls as they were vaporized just by being in her presence, and the others cowered away from her light and hid in the shadows of doorways and arches.

“You may think that you have power, little pony,” Grogar snarled, taking a step forward. “But you have nothing compared to me, the master of all shadows. I command that which you have only ever feared, and no light will be able to erase it.”

“I won’t let you do this,” Sunny said stoutly, holding her head high.

“I don’t need you to ‘let me’ do anything,” Grogar said, his expression almost amused. “I just need to crush you, and then all of Equestria will be mine forever.”

His horns lit up, the black lighting crackling in the air and making all of the shadows sharpen and grow darker. Grogar reared back and slammed his front two hooves into the ground, causing giant cracks to splinter out and rush towards Sunny, who had no time to react before the ground beneath her suddenly buckled and crumbled, and she was plunged into darkness.

Sunny coughed and sat up, looking around in the dim light, unable to make anything out. Her wings and horn were gone, and she felt so exhausted that she almost didn’t have the energy to stand up. Groaning, she pushed herself to her hooves and shook the dust out of her ears, trying to make sense of where she was.

“Hello?” she called out. “Is… is anyone there?”

“No,” said a voice out of the shadows. “There is no one who can hear you now, Sunny Starscout, and no one who can help you. You are at the mercy of the shadows now.”

Grogar stepped forth, his horns alight, and the yellow glow illuminated the massive chamber that they were in. Sunny looked around in awe and fear at the giant stone room with walls that curved up and away until she couldn’t see them anymore, and they disappeared into the shadows of the ceiling. Arches were carved into the walls, and there was a faint crack of light at the very top where daylight still shone through; but it was cold and distant and brought her no comfort.

“What is this place?” Sunny demanded, trying to sound braver than she felt. Without her golden wings and horn surrounding her, she felt colder and more afraid than she remembered being. “Why did you bring me here?”

“There are many things that ponykind has forgotten,” Grogar said calmly, not even bothering to look at Sunny, but rather gazing around at their surroundings with a strange look on his face, as if he was recalling old memories. “Many things that should not have been.”

“Believe me, I know,” Sunny said, wondering where in Equestria he was going with this. “And I’ve spent my whole life trying to find them again.”

Grogar raised his eyebrows at her. “Well,” he said, spreading his hooves to indicate the chamber, “this is the most important one of them all. This is where it all began. This is where the shadows were born.”

His horns suddenly lit up in a surge of light, and the entire chamber seemed to go back in time. Sunny’s eyes grew wide as the collapsed piles of stones and chunks of rock lifted themselves up again and placed themselves into their original sockets. A round stone table raised itself up in the center of the room. As soon as the chamber was complete, there was a burst of light, so bright that it caused Sunny to shut her eyes until it was gone. When she opened them again, she gasped in awe.

Hovering over the stone table in the center was a beautiful orb of pure radiant light, with beams of sunshine-gold shining through the rainbow sheen that cast its glorious colors on every surface. Surrounding it were three ponies and dozens of creatures. Sunny’s eyes widened as she realized that there was a single representative from each and every tribe in Equestria’s history in that chamber, some of which she recognized and some of which she didn’t. She took a step back, worrying that the creatures would see her and ask what she was doing there, but none of them seemed to notice her or Grogar, who was watching everything with narrowed eyes.

One by one, the creatures organized themselves in a circle surrounding the orb of light, which separated itself into smaller, equal-sized orbs that in their turn gently floated over to hover in front of each creature.

“I don’t understand,” Sunny whispered. For some reason she couldn’t get her voice to raise any higher. “What’s going on?”

Grogar was silent for a moment before he answered. “This was where they all woke up,” he said, his voice suddenly seeming small and weak instead of deep and ancient and powerful. “In the first days of this world, every tribe, one by one, woke up here, in this cavern, before they ventured out into the wider world to forge their own lives. But the early world was untamed and wild, and many creatures perished. But when they sent one member of each tribe to return to their place of awakening to plead to the ones that put them there, they were granted each a unique power to help control the chaos of the earth. None could use another’s power, and by this they were meant to unify and work together to establish a civilization.”

Sunny watched as each creature reached out their hoof, or whatever they had instead, and the glowing orb in front of them settled on it before vanishing, sinking into the creatures and blessing them with power. She felt a sudden sense of awe, and a chill ran down her spine.

“But wait,” she said suddenly, a thought occurring to her, “not all creatures have magic. So where did their magic go?”

“It was stolen.”

“What?”

Grogar glared at her and lit up his horns again. The many creatures vanished, replaced by one single pony: an earth pony, who stood in front of the empty stone table with a look on her face that chilled Sunny to her core.

“For some creatures the power they were granted wasn’t enough. None was more powerful than another, which made it impossible to choose a leader to guide the early survivors. One pony thought that she could claim more power, and be known as the greatest and most powerful of all creatures, and then all would bow down before her and accept her as their queen and divine ruler for eternity.”

The earth pony suddenly gave out a yell and slammed her hooves into the ground. Green light shot out from them and raced up the walls. The pony started chanting in some ancient tongue that Sunny didn’t know, and then vines burst out of the walls, causing massive chunks of rock to collapse and crumble. The vines merged into one mass around the earth pony, who was still chanting, and then sprouted massive petals that enveloped her completely. The chanting seemed to grow louder, ringing from the walls and echoing inside Sunny’s head. She gazed in wonder and horror as light began to travel down the vines and into the massive bloom, and somehow she knew that the earth pony was stealing magic from other tribes.

“Because of her greed, her tribe was punished, and their magic slept for hundreds of thousands of years. But she became a new thing, a new creature, and her kind would dominate for generations to come.”

The flower petals suddenly peeled back as the chanting stopped, and the vines withered and rotted, and then the earth pony stepped out. But she wasn’t an earth pony any longer.

She was an alicorn.

Author's Note

I am SO SORRY for the long hiatus on this one, and I promise that I'll be able to get more chapters out consistently after this.

Constructive criticism is appreciated. Thank you for reading!