Sunny Starscout had snuck off in the small hours of the night. It had been a cold autumn evening and the sun was only going to warm the land so much the next day so she made sure to put on something warm for the long walk.
She made it to the edge of town without any intervention. She wanted to look back before she left, to say goodbye, just in case, but she couldn’t build up her courage to see the Brighthouse as dark and unlit as the rest of Maretime Bay.
Sunny had failed. The found family she now had living in that darkened tower would tell her differently, but that’s how she saw it.
So Sunny left town without looking back. She knew where she was going, but maybe not by moonlight. She waited until she was far away from town before she pulled her lantern out of her saddlebag.
She turned the knob and, with a click, the lantern lit up. The magic “unicyled” lantern still gave off light from some unseen fuel but it wouldn’t power the Marestream anymore so she took it. She knew Izzy often borrowed the flashlight when she wandered around the house at night when she couldn’t sleep, sometimes even gardening. She couldn’t tip anypony off that she was gone until morning. She didn’t want anyone to stop her or go with her.
She wanted the truth and didn’t want anypony else to have to bear it.
It was selfish and not very friendship-like.
But she was an alicorn. She had been an alicorn. The last one, if what the crystals had done to her had ever counted. While it was true she had reunited the three tribes, it was unclear what the phantom wings and horn had truly meant: whether she was to guide or to rule or to protect. Regardless, they didn’t stay. Sunny had failed.
There were still so many mysteries left. So many answers irrevocably lost to time. It wasn’t supposed to end this way.
Sunny let herself cry. It was going to be a long walk.
By the time Sunny was near her destination, the cloudy eastern sky had turned a familiar pink and orange. The birds were singing their morning song, perched in the only tree in the entire prairie. It was an old tree, one of the oldest trees she had ever seen. It was thicker than the Together Trees of each tribe, but without being able to identify what kind of tree this one was, it was impossible to know what that meant. This tree, as far as she could tell, was one of a kind.
She walked up the hill towards it. She lowered her eyes to watch for roots. With its immense pink canopy looming over her, she felt like she was bowing before something mighty. Eventually, her eyes and her hooves reached its trunk.
It looked like a regular tree.
Then again, so did the Together Trees and the tree holding Opaline’s castle together.
Sunny sat and lifted her coat to get to her saddlebag. She pulled the strap bearing Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle’s cutie marks around her back and opened the flap.
One at a time and with reverence, she gently extracted the pegasus crystal, the unicorn crystal and the earth pony crystal from her bag. The earth pony crystal bore an immense fault line running through it. In its current state, the other crystals couldn’t work either.
“I don’t know what happened,” she explained aloud to herself and the tree. “I thought everything was going okay. We reunited pony kind. We befriended the dragons. We defeated Opaline… then one day it just… broke.”
It hadn’t been a particularly beautiful or stressful day when it had happened. Just another day. Then it happened without warning: ponies fell out of the sky, unicorn magic stopped and the impossibly bountiful harvests ended.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” she explained. “Everyone is expecting us to figure it out, my friends are expecting me to figure it out.” Sunny had already cried on the way here. She couldn’t cry anymore. “It’s been weeks. Pony magic is gone again. Rumors are already spreading that this is somehow the earth ponies’ fault because it's on our crystal.”
Maybe it was.
She didn’t know. Nopony alive knew or knew how to fix it. Or at least, that’s what she feared and hoped to prove wrong.
“I know this is a long shot but, I’m out of ideas.”
Sunny placed the crystals back together and then, holding them with both hooves, pressed them against the trunk of the tree and waited.
To her relief, something did happen. As soon as the crystals touched its bark, the birds above scattered. Sunny nearly dropped the crystals. For a brief moment she then feared as a reaction that she was pressing them too firmly against the bark. However, it wasn’t her doing. The crystals stayed on their own, as if a hole perfectly fit for the crystals had formed in the tree.
After the birds scattered, the tree continued to shake and she realized that the tree had shaken the birds and not the other way around. The crystals and the trunk were rising and it looked like the tree was growing even taller until she saw the roots beginning to be exposed: it was as if the tree was uprooting itself. The ground under her shook and trembled.
At the base of the tree, roots thicker than a pony grinded against each other until they pulled far enough away to reveal descending rows of roots spiraling deep into the earth. Stairs, not carved into the tree or in the dirt, but formed by the living tree itself. Even still, the tunnel was claustrophobically small and dark.
She looked at the broken crystals set high above in the tree and then got out her lantern again. She turned a dial on the lantern and clicked it. It flickered for a second but eventually gave off its light again.
She had to carry the lantern in her mouth and keep her head low as she stepped carefully through the roots. She pulled herself forward with all of her limbs, crawling downward into the hole at the base of this tree. After several bends and a claustrophobic distance, there was an opening in the dirt and rock around her, giving away to an almost vertical shaft of a cave. Several thick roots descended down into it.
There was no other path but further downward.
Desperate for answers and with renewed hope, she carefully climbed down the roots. Her heart was racing as she reached the bottom.
It was dark here but she thought she saw something shimmering further ahead. She climbed over and under the roots until she ran headfirst right into it. It was cold and wet and her lantern extinguished itself.
She grabbed her lantern and came back up for air, coughing in the dark.
“Water?” she realized. The roots had lead into some kind of aquifer. Which, would make sense for a tree.
She looked around for answers. It was pitch black now. She realized in her horror that the light she had seen was just the reflection coming from her lantern. She could probably find her way back in the dark. Maybe after her lantern dried it would even come back on again.
As she felt around for the way she came she felt the mud give out under her. There was also a sound now. Any sound in the pitch black, meters underground was a frightening sound. This was one was a dull roar.
Sunny felt a rush of cold water sweep her off her hooves and back into the aquifer which had turned into some kind of underground river. Sunny instinctively held her breath and tried to grab something, anything in the total darkness, but the muddy sides slipped from her grasp and she tumbled blindly into what felt like cold oblivion.
Sunny didn’t know how long she could hold her breath. There was a flash of light and a sensation of not being underwater for a moment before she felt herself crash into a warmer body of water. She opened her eyes and saw the light again: a cold blue light led outside. She was in some kind of giant chamber. The water pouring in from above barely filled the chamber before it gently rolled outside. The water was shallow and she saw a bit of rock above the water in the middle. She swam towards it, waterlogged but temporarily relieved she didn’t die.
She climbed onto the rocky center and shivered. She felt foalish for her reckless actions. She was just so desperate for answers.
“I’m sorry,” she said to nopony in particular. “I shouldn’t have come alone.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” a female voice spoke from behind her in the water.
Sunny startled to her hooves and turned around. She gasped.
Standing just before the waterfall, on the surface of the water, was a purple alicorn. It was not Opaline. Sunny knew her though. She knew her better than she knew her own mother.
She bowed. A million emotions ran through her: excitement, hope, fear, joy, confusion. She looked up at her again, then bowed again. Then did a double take to make sure she wasn’t seeing things then lowered her head yet again. Sunny wasn’t worthy.
“Rise. You don’t know who you bow to,” she spoke again.
“Princess Twilight! I do know you! I know so much about you! My dad and I were your biggest fans! My name is-
“Sunny Starscout,” she cut her off. “I know who you are. Yet you do not know me.”
Before her eyes, Twilight Sparkle’s form effortlessly shifted into a smaller, more familial form. From the blue sideburns, the glasses down to the wooden necklace, it was exactly as she remembered him, but wrapped in white like Twilight Sparkle had been. Her heart skipped a beat.
“...D-dad?” she asked, confused and almost hopeful.
The form of her dad shook its head. “I am the Tree of Harmony,” the form explained in a perfect recreation of her dad’s voice.
“The… Tree of Harmony?” she asked. She looked up, back at where she had fallen out. She saw the roots that climbed over the ceiling and down into the water below her. She looked back at the… the form in front of her more closely. It wavered with the water of the waterfall behind it. It was almost like it was a projection of light shining through it like a prism from some unseen force.
The form of her dad smiled gently and nodded. “My roots run very deep and I have seen many things. The Elements of Harmony bloomed from my branches.” Its form changed into a tall white alicorn with an ethereal mane, kind pink eyes and a motherly voice. “Those are the fruits that Princess Luna and Princess Celestia used to bring about peace in Equestria.” Its form shifted again, to a small purple unicorn that looked like a younger Twilight Sparkle. “The very same fruits which Twilight Sparkle and her friends used to bring harmony to the entire world.” The form smiled before shifting back to the tall, regal form of Princess Twilight Sparkle that Sunny Starscout was familiar with. “That was a long time ago however. You’re more familiar with my last gifts.”
Before the form of the Tree of Harmony and Sunny, a transparent mirage of the three crystals appeared before them, gently spinning, whole once again.
“Your… ‘gifts’?” she asked, trying to piece all of this together.
The form of Princess Twilight nodded as the image of the crystals disappeared.
“The crystals that gave ponies back your magic. Princess Twilight needed a place to store the last of the magic, to keep it safe from those who wanted it for themselves, so I obliged,” she agreed.
Sunny’s head hung low. “I broke them.”
“Oh, Sunny,” the form of her idol gave her a gentle smile. “It’s not your fault.”
“What do you mean?”
“'Magic is a force all around us. Always changing. It’s been growing stronger for a very long time. Under the Princess of Magic’s reign, it grew so strong that it became unstable. The harmony it was designed to bring about became impossible. If things were left unchecked, a magical cataclysm was going to end all life. So, the Princess of Magic, with her council of friends, agreed to remove as much magic from this world as was deemed safe. She bound the rest to artifacts, my crystals, in order to stabilize the magical field for as long as possible. This… was not decided lightly and not received favorably by all creatures. A pony tried to steal all the magic left in the world for herself... and almost succeeded. I did all that I could to protect it from her.”
“Opaline?” Sunny asked.
Princess Twilight’s form nodded. Hearing all of this from the form of her idol, she realized why this sounded so familiar.
“That message in the crystals… it was you!”
The form of her idol smiled and bowed gracefully.
“It was. I have no form with which to speak your words. I borrowed Princess Twilight’s”
“Where is she now?”
The Tree of Harmony softly frowned. “She has passed.”
Sunny felt her heart fall in her chest.
“She’s gone?”
“Yes. As all things do eventually.”
“But… she had the crystals? Right? Don't alicorns subsist on magic? Why did she die if she made the crystals??”
The image of the alicorn briefly smiled at her as if she said something cute.
“Princess Twilight Sparkle removed as much magic from the world as she could justify in order to leave magic stable for as long as possible. She didn’t spare her own. She grew old and passed not long after her friends.”
Even the Princess of Magic gave up her magic.
“She just… destroyed magic?”
“Most of it. Yes. She left enough for the ponies and all other kinds.”
The Tree of Harmony’s form became a creature that was half-eagle and half-lion. “Each species was given its magic in the form of a crystal.” Then it became another which was a large furry thing with great big horns. “One by one, their magic grew too strong and was lost.” It became a beautiful insect made of a thousand colors. “Many of the creatures passed with their magic or shortly after.” The Tree returned to the form of Princess Twilight Sparkle. “The ponies, however, due to suspicion and fear of each other, separated theirs. They did not work apart. Their magic continued existing separately from them. Much like the dragons who went to sleep still live among you.”
“But… it’s cracked now. We brought them back together and then one of them cracked. Does that mean… we’re going to go away?”
“Maybe. But not necessarily,” the form tried to reassure her but couldn’t lie.
“I did this,” Sunny said defeatedly. She began to cry. “I tried to bring magic back and… I ruined it?”
“It is not your fault,” The tree tried to assure her. “The crystals were made to last a long time but couldn’t last forever. As magic continued to grew stronger, they had to fail eventually, as all things must. Whether you brought them together or not.”
“Why?? Why is it growing stronger???” Sunny demanded through tear-filled eyes.
“Ssssh. Sunny, it’s just a natural cycle. Like the seasons of the year or the wheels of time, everything goes through cycles. Magic will wane then wax again. Like the moon or life and death.”
“So… there’s nothing that can be done?? You can’t fix it? You can’t fix the crystals?? We’re going to go away? Can’t we have more time???”
A root shook itself loose near Sunny’s hooves and startled her. It approached her face and became many branches ending in dozens of leaves. They gently brushed her face and found the tears on her face.
“I wish I could hug you. I don’t like seeing creatures like this,” the tree spoke. “You burn so brightly and for such short lives.”
Sunny reached out and hugged the branch and cried against it.
“Please don’t cry. Princess Twilight Sparkle didn’t want you to cry. She sacrificed everything so that as many creatures as possible could experience magic before it went away. Don’t regret your actions. You brought magic back. You would have made her proud.”
Sunny’s eyes welled up with tears. She wished she had left Maretime Bay when she was younger. She wished she met her friends and restored magic sooner. She wished her dad could see what she did. Ponies only had such a little time with magic again before it was taken from them! There was so much adventure left! So many more friends left to make!
The magic however, would be cut short.
Sunny wiped her eyes and sniffle her muzzle before addressing the tree. “I-I don’t regret it,” she said between sobs. “I don’t regret anything I did. I just- my only regret is… that I didn’t do it sooner and that I didn’t do more.”
The form of Princess Twilight Sparkle smiled proudly at her.
“There is still time, Sunny Starscout,” it revealed.
“What do you mean?”
“The secret of the crystals had been lost but it’s now been revealed to you. If you let it be known, then my final task is done. I can restore your crystal. However I must remove more magic from this world to stabilize it for a little longer. Fortunately, I am a magical being.”
“You mean…”
“Like Twilight Sparkle before me, I will pass.”
“No! You can’t do that. That’s… that’s not fair!”
“Not fair? For whom?”
“For you! You can’t give up your life just so we can have magic for a little longer. That’s not fair. We… we had our time!”
Before the shape of Twilight Sparkle could respond, she was suddenly interrupted by a loud splash followed by several more. Two unicorns, two pegasi, an earth pony and a dragon appeared from the waterfall in front of her.
“Sunny!” the bluer unicorn cheered. “We found you!”
“G-guys??” Sunny said in disbelief. She saw her friends cheer her name and approach her. None of them were mad, just relieved and worried.
“O-M-ME, Sunny, you scared us!” Pipp said as she paddled over.
“Why did you run off?” Misty asked.
“What did you find?” Zipp asked, looking around.
“Sunny, don’t leave us,” Hitch pleaded. The baby dragon on his head had tears welling up in his eyes.
Without waiting for any answers, they all climbed to ‘shore’ and began hugging her, just happy to have found their friend.
She hugged them back, feeling guilty now she abandoned them but so thankful they found her again.
“I’m sorry. I… I felt so bad for the crystals breaking. I blamed myself.”
It’s not your fault, Sunny!” Pipp assured her. “We’ll figure something out!”
“Hello there,” the reforming vision of Twilight Sparkle spoke. All of Sunny’s friends jumped and turned back to the shape from the waterfall.
“Princess Twilight!” Zipp announced.
“No, it’s not her," Sunny explained. "This is the Tree of Harmony. She made the crystals with Princess Twilight to keep magic stable. She's saying she can fix ours."
"She can??" Zipp gasped.
"No. It's not she said has to die to keep the magic of the world balanced. Otherwise, it could end the world.”
“Woah woah woah, that’s not fair,” Zipp told the tree’s form.
“The universe doesn’t ‘play fair’. Unlike you and I, it just is. Magic is fair. It creates miracles, mercy, love and friendship. That’s what attracts you ponies to it. It is in your nature to share it. And you are favored by fate because of it. You survived without magic for a little while. Maybe when the last of my crystals fail and you are cut off from magic directly, maybe you will survive long enough for it to find a way back to you in a weaker state.”
“It’s just… too strong now?” Zipp asked. Sunny saw her reach for her phone, probably to record this, but it looked like it didn’t survive the waterfall.
“The world once ran on magic. Every creature imbued and attuned with it: from the sun, to the clouds, and to the little creatures of the ground. It became too strong and too unstable. Even a little piece of that harmony threatened to throw everything into disorder.”
“So… it has to go away?” Zipp asked.
“Yes, but nature is a cycle and it will return. In a little while, lifetimes for you, it will likely manifest again in this world and be accessible again. It will be in your nature as ponies to find it when it does. Until then, you must keep the memory of the magic alive. Share what you have so others can experience it. Let others believe in what can be done. Even when the magic is just a memory, it will live on in you. Practice its virtues, speak of its miracles. Things never die fully until they’re forgotten. It’s up to you to continue the magic.”
With those words, there was another earthquake as the roots around them moved.
“No please don’t go!” Sunny cried out.
The form of her mentor smiled down at her. “I’m proud of you.” Sunny’s heart leaped.
The waterfall they fell down came to an abrupt end and the image of Twilight Sparkle disappeared forever. The roots all around began to glow. The branch that once wiped Sunny’s eyes grew in front of them and they backed up. A knot formed in the base as it grew into a tree trunk. The knot began to glow and then hollow out to reveal something within.
It was a crystal! This one wasn’t shaped like the broken Earth pony crystal. Instead it was shaped like all of them fused into one!
In the light of the crystal, the ponies saw their hooves, wings and horns glow. Sunny saw the horn and wings she once was given by the crystals returned to her.
“It’s back! The magic is back!” Misty exclaimed.
Sunny stared at the crystal in awe and reverence before she felt the earth continue to shake and give out around them. Roots that snaked across the chamber’s ceiling began to loosen and fall into the water below.
The branches of the root bearing the crystal itself began to wither and die.
“No, please! Come back!” Sunny begged. The root slumped and the crystal threatened to fall. She was scared to touch it.
“We have to get out of here!” Hitch shouted over the rocks breaking up and loosening from the walls around them. Sunny looked at her friends then back at the crystal.
All of her friends watched her to see what she would do.
They didn’t have a choice in the matter now. Twilight Sparkle gave up her immortality so that more creatures could experience the wonders and miracles of magic. That magic was almost lost, over and over, and now the Tree of Harmony was giving up its magic too. They were sharing it! Just like they were meant to too.
“Okay…” Sunny announced. She reached out with her magic and plucked the last fruit from the Tree of Harmony. “Let’s get this back to the Brighthouse so it can shine over all of Equestria.”
They escaped from the cave and found themselves at the bottom of a ravine. The light of a new dawn shined above them. There was a rainbow.
Sunny found herself crying again. Her friends hugged her.
“Sunny? Are you okay?” Misty asked.
“I am.”
They were being trusted to share the last of the magic so that more creatures could experience its miracles, mercy, love, magic, and friendship.
Even after the light of the those crystals went out, they would carry the tales and lessons and virtues long after so that it wouldn’t be forgotten. So that one day, when magic returned, they would be ready to share it again and again forever.
It was going to be a beautiful day.
