Hold Your Horses: A My Little Pony Story

“Where are you going?” Ginger called as Sombra headed for the sliding door.

Sombra paused and looked back. “To the palace. We’re following Sandy. Keep up, Ginger.”

Ginger was still wary of Sandy, but she followed Sombra out of the convenience store.

“How will we even know where the palace is?” Ginger asked Sombra.

Sombra pointed into the distance. Not far outside of the city, a magnificent castle scraped the sky. It was constructed of beautiful, gleaming spires, and glistening towers. It was massive, shiny, and impossible to miss. It was the most stunning castle Ginger and Sombra had ever seen.

“I guess it won’t be that hard to find,” Ginger admitted.

Sombra and Ginger trotted and maneuvered all throughout the city, pursuing the palace outside of it. They continued to get strange looks from ponies all around them. It would seem their looks were rather ‘outdated’.

As they approached city limits, the palace came into clear view. It was every bit as magnificent as it was from afar, if not more. Ginger and Sombra followed a pristine paved road that led straight up to the palace steps. As they neared the gates, Ginger posed a question to Sombra.

“How are we supposed to get in there?” she asked. “It’s not like they’re going to let us in just because we asked.”

“Well, then it’s a good thing we’re not going to ask,” Sombra smirked.

Ginger looked at him, concerned.

“What are you getting at?” she warily asked.

“I can get us in that palace, and we won’t need to worry about any guards or any permission. Do you trust me?” Sombra replied.

Ginger gritted her teeth with nervousness. Did she trust him?

“I… I guess,” she spoke.

Sombra smiled.

“Okay, stand still. This might feel a little strange.”

Sombra planted his hooves into the road, gazing at the palace ahead of him. His horn began to glow with magic, and almost in an instant, a spell snapped around him and Ginger.

At first, Ginger had no idea what was going on. She couldn’t feel herself anymore, but she knew she was still alive. It was like she only existed as a spirit, her body completely missing.

“Sombra, what did you do!?” she cried. She knew she spoke the words, but she couldn’t hear them out loud. It was more like the idea of the words were swirling around in the air, only grasped by those who were looking for them.

She could still see, but it felt as if she were viewing the world through a peephole, her field of vision shrouded with darkness. She could see the road leading up to the palace, and she could see the palace. But she couldn’t see herself, and she couldn’t see Sombra.

“I take it you’ve never disguised yourself in shadow?” Sombra teased.

“No, Sombra, I’ve never disguised myself in shadow,” Ginger sarcastically responded. “How does this help us get into the palace?”

“Just wait and see,” Sombra instructed.

Ginger felt Sombra take hold of her hoof. Of course, her hoof wasn’t there, but she felt that sort of feeling. As Sombra grasped her shadow hoof, Ginger felt herself pulled forward in an unexplainable way. Suddenly, she and Sombra were within the palace gates. They were hidden, enshrouded in the shadows of the bushes, completely unnoticed by the guards.

“I see,” said Ginger.

Sombra pulled Ginger throughout all of the shadows in the palace, searching for Sandy. The sightseeing tour of the palace was incredible. If all of the palaces of the future were this beautiful, maybe it really wasn’t such a bad place to be. Sombra halted his shadow-jumping as they landed in the throne room.

Sandy stood in front of the throne, which seated a beautiful, dazzling princess. The throne was inscribed with her name: Princess Aurora Glow. Her sparkling, flowing mane was a beautiful teal, which nicely complimented her soft, cream-colored mane. Sandy and her conversed passionately.

“You know, if I had a coin for every time I was taken back to the past of my enemy, I’d have three coins. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened three times,” Ginger Blush commented.

Sombra side-eyed Ginger, but she couldn’t tell, because neither of them technically had eyes in their shadowy disguise. Sombra and Ginger observed the conversation between Sandy and the princess.

“Does it have to be you? Can’t they send another princess?” Sandy griped.

Aurora Glow sighed. “Sandy Swirl, I think you and I both know I was going to have to join the fight at some point. That doesn’t mean I’m not coming back. I’ll just be… away for a while.”

Sandy weakly kicked at the red carpet of the throne room.

“What if… you don’t come back?” she mumbled.

Princess Aurora Glow frowned. “Sandy, come,” she motioned towards her throne. “Sit with me.”

Sandy reluctantly trudged across the throne room and joined the princess on her throne.

“What if you lose the fight? What if Equestria really is destroyed, and I’m the last pony left alive?” Sandy worried.

The princess giggled. “When did I raise my daughter to be so worrisome?”

Daughter? Sombra and Ginger thought in unison.

“How are you not worried?” Sandy Swirl questioned. “We haven’t been able to stop it yet, what if we can’t? What if this fight doesn’t pan out the way we hope?”

Sandy’s mother brushed a hoof along her daughter’s mane.

“Then we’ll find another way, Sandy,” she reassured. “I promise we’ll be together again.”

Princess Aurora Glow pulled her daughter in for a heartfelt hug. They held on tight to each other.

“You’re not going to be the last pony left alive,” the princess joked. “Then we’d have to start calling you the ‘Final Pony’.”

“F.P. for short,” Sandy riffed.

The princess laughed. “Which kind of sounds like ‘Effie’, which is a pretty name, don’t you think? So you see, all of this isn’t so bad. Worst case scenario, you end up with a pretty name.”

Sandy smiled in the warm embrace of her mother’s arms.

Interrupting the peace, guards stormed into the throne room.

“Your highness, you’re needed immediately. It’s arrived,” one of the guards warned.

The princess kissed her daughter delicately on the head, and promptly left her on the throne.

“I’ll see you soon, Sandy,” she smiled.

She was escorted out of the throne room, and she disappeared behind the doors.

“...I think I can figure out what happens next,” Ginger somberly hypothesized.

“Yea, me too,” Sombra spoke. “And I think it’s happening soon.”

In the distance, through the stained glass windows, Sombra and Ginger could see dark, menacing clouds approaching New Hoofsfield.

Sandy was sulking in her mother’s throne, unaware of the approaching danger. A lone guard entered back into the room. He approached Sandy in her depressive state.

“I know it’s upsetting, Sandy. But, your mother has a duty to her ponies,” he sternly, but empathetically consoled.

Sandy rubbed a tear from her face.

“I know,” she sniffled. “I… just miss her. I always miss her when she leaves.”

The guard put a gentle hoof on Sandy’s back.

“She’ll be back,” he assured her.

Sandy returned to weeping quietly into her hooves. The guard let her be, turning away from her and walking towards the exit of the throne room. A ghastly sight caught his eye, just before he left. The dark clouds had approached closer, presenting a real threat.

“No,” the guard spoke in shock.

Sandy looked up from her crying.

“What?” she asked. “What is it?”

She followed the guard’s gaze to the window, and then to the clouds. She jumped off of the throne, bolting towards the window.

“Are they supposed to be that close?” Sandy desperately asked the guard.

The guard didn’t respond. He just stared in horror at the rapidly approaching clouds, unsure of what he could possibly do.

“Are they supposed to be that close?” Sandy repeated, panic evident in her voice. She still received no response. “Is this it for us? Is this it for her?”

She turned back to the window. She watched as flashes of brilliant green magic, her mother’s magic, crashed into the black clouds. Her mother was putting up a fight. The flashes became brighter and brighter, fighting the clouds back as hard as they could. They flashed brighter and brighter still, until they began to dwindle in force. The flashes became dimmer and dimmer, weaker and weaker, until Sandy could no longer see her mother’s magic in the distance.

“NO!” she screamed.

She turned back towards the guard, still standing in a petrified shock. She grabbed him by the shoulders and tried to shake him back into reality.

“TELL ME THERE’S SOMETHING WE CAN DO!” she begged. “TELL ME THIS ISN’T THE END!”

The dark clouds barrelled over the outskirts of New Hoofsfield. They brought with them monstrous fire and barren lifelessness. They were approaching, fast. Sandy looked at the guard, then back at the clouds, frantically searching for the next thing to do. Stress and panic pulled tears out of her eyes. She closed her eyes and focused every bit of energy she had into a spell. Magic pulsated out of her horn, encasing her in a green glow. She levitated off of the ground, pulled by the force of the magic. In an instant, she was gone.

Sombra pulled himself and Ginger out of the shadows, returning them to their physical state.

“What do we do?” Ginger panicked. “Are we stuck here with the rest of these ponies at the end of Equestria?”

Sombra looked outside at the clouds speeding towards their location. He looked back at Ginger and realized he was just as worried as she was. He didn’t know what to say.

“We… we run,” he suggested. “We run from the end of Equestria.”

Ginger stared at him. “We… run?”

Sombra stared back, unsure of how to defend his suggestion.

“We run,” Ginger spoke, this time as an agreement.

Ginger set off, speeding out of the throne room and down the hallway. Sombra followed her, sprinting away from the deathly clouds heading towards them. As the clouds reached the castle, the walls and floors began to crumble, succumbing to their destructive force.

Ginger and Sombra reached a dead end in a long hallway. There was nowhere else left to run. The window behind them creaked open from the force of the castle collapsing.

“We jump,” Ginger suggested.

“We jump,” Sombra acquiesced.

The ponies planted their hooves on the windowsill, hoping there was a soft place to land below. The clouds crushed and trampled the castle behind them. In unison, they launched themselves out of the palace, flying through the air. As they soared through the air, flailing, a white light began to glow around them, encasing them in an orb of blinding luminescence. In an instant, they were gone.