Ponies of Fayra — Legend of Harmony

Flare finished loading the food she had gathered from the gardens onto the sailboat, then turned to Amber, who was studying a map she had found hidden in the wall after following clues from another journal she had found.

“I think we’re ready to cast off.” Announced Flare.

Amber groaned in annoyance.

“Unless you’d like to stay longer… again.”

“No, we need to get going. It just annoys me that after all that I’ve come up empty-hoofed. The artifact was taken, my mother’s lockbox was looted, none of these journals say anything meaningful about what these earth ponies actually wanted to do with the pegasi. I feel like all I did was waste our time. We should have just left as soon as we found the first journal.”

“Isn’t it useful that we figured out that the artifact was recently taken? We wouldn’t have found that out if we had left at that point.”

“Maybe, but what does it really tell us? It just adds more mystery to this whole thing. Maybe the princess didn’t agree with the prince and saw Zeph as an opportunity to return home? Her journal did seem pretty critical of him towards the end of it.”

Rolling up the map, Amber got up and started to walk away. As she did, the wind caught the map and blew it into the water. Rushing over to save the map, Flare snatched it out from the water and placed it on the deck where she could see new markings start to appear.

“Amber, I think you need to see this!” Exclaimed Flare as she studied the new markings on the map.

Coming back over, Amber studied the map for quite some time before folding it up and looking back to Flare. “Okay, maybe just a little longer. The destination on this one is nearby. You want to come along?”

“May as well.”

With that, Flare followed Amber down the beach until the pair came to a pile of mossy boulders. Pushing through the boulders, Amber cleared a path just wide enough for Flare to squeeze through. Flare waded through the water for a few moments before the floor seemed to vanish from beneath her hooves, causing her to have to swim after Amber until they reached a staircase that went up a short distance to a small room with a wax-sealed stone box in it.

“Now, here’s a fun dragon trick.” Amber said as she lowered her face down until her lips were just barely in front of the wax. A moment later, as she breathed slowly, the wax began melting. After she circled around the box, the wax had melted to the bottom, allowing Amber to easily pick up the lid. Inside the box, a gold crown covered in blue jewels, along with a wax-sealed letter.

Picking up the letter, Amber broke the seal and began reading. “Good work! You have proven to me that you are as relentless in the search for truth as I am. I promised your mother I wouldn’t tell you the truth about our family unless I came back from my voyage to find the pegasi. Unfortunately, since you’re reading this, it means I never returned. Either that or we’re reading this together because an old fool left a priceless family heirloom in a seaside cave. Hopefully, the latter.”

“I feel kind of weird hearing this,” Remarked Flare.

“I can read it silently if you’d prefer.”

“I would prefer that.”

“Alright, I’ll give you a summary in a minute.”

Flare watched as Amber’s expressions changed as she read through the letter. Reaching the halfway point of the letter, Amber’s eyes went wide for a moment before narrowing as she grit her teeth. Reading further, she huffed, causing a puff of smoke to rise out of her nostrils. “The scum!” Amber barked as she lowered the letter and took a deep breath.

“Uhm, are you alright? You didn’t even finish the letter.”

“I need to calm my mind a bit, so I don’t accidentally burn the darn letter.”

“What did you read that got you so fired up?”

“The royal family was tasked with bringing magic back to ponykind, but they chose not to because they wanted to keep their status as the most powerful race with the goal of eventually ruling over the entirety of Equitoria.”

“How could they return magic?” Flare said calmly, as she wasn’t entirely convinced that ponies ever even had magic to begin with, and even if they did, pegasi were happy without it, so she was unsure if it really mattered.

“The prince didn’t know. However, he knew the symbol of the royal family, the artifact we were looking for earlier, was a piece of the puzzle. The only thing he knew for certain was that it needed to be combined with another artifact like it that was stolen by a dragon. A dragon that he believes is the same one that helped the pegasi vanish from Equitoria.”

“So they weren’t really looking for the pegasi, they were actually looking for your mother?”

“Seems so.”

“You think maybe the son and mother gave the royal artifact to Zeph so she could bring it back to the Lost Isles when she returned, but just wanted to go home themselves?”

“That would be dumb. If that would have been the case, they would have left it here and had her pick it up on the way home. I mean, I suppose, you can never rule out poor decision-making, but I doubt that’s the case. I still find it strange that there were no hoof prints in that cellar, and the dust and webs had been disturbed in the strangest ways… My guess is one of the earth ponies has another magical artifact they used. Which means we’ll need to be extra careful when approaching Zeph. We should assume any earth pony with her has fairly powerful magic.”

“As I know nothing about magic, I’m just going to let you deal with that.”

“Right. Anyway, let me try and read more.”

Watching Amber finish reading the letter, Flare was relieved to see that her expression stayed relatively emotionless.

“I hate royals. Normal earth ponies are often overly serious, but at the end of the day, they seem like good ponies, but their leaders… I never liked them from a distance, and getting a glimpse into their inner workings makes me despise them even more than I thought I did.”

“I’ve been wondering. When you talk about earth ponies and unicorns, it’s like you literally lived amongst them, but with pegasi, you don’t? What’s up with that?”

“Let’s head back to the boat. I’ll answer that there.”

“Uhm, okay.”

Once back at the boat, Flare watched as Amber dug through a lockbox for a moment until she pulled out a pitch-black cloak.

“As you know, I try not to use much magic, as it could have unwanted side effects. So I don’t enjoy using this much anymore, especially as I got rather addicted to it in my youth.”

A moment after Amber donned the cloak, she appeared to morph into a green earth pony with a yellow mane.

“It lets you change your shape!?”

“No. It’s an illusion. So I have to be careful how I interact with things, but once you get used to that, it’s pretty easy to blend in.”

“Can I try?”

“Sure.”

Flare stood still as Amber worked the cloak around her.

“So, when’s it going to start working?”

“It’s already working. Again, it’s an illusion. You can look at yourself in the water, but that’s about it.”

Flare walked over to the side of the boat and played with her reflection for a bit.

“It’s just like a funhouse mirror.”

“Pretty much. That said, for safety’s sake, I’m going to start wearing it from here on out.”

Flare stood still while Amber took the cloak off her.

“Do you think your mother knew how to return magic too, given that she supposedly stole one of the pieces?”

“Wouldn’t put it past her. Maybe she took it to keep the royals from ever changing their minds and restoring magic. Which would ruin her own rule.”