I woke up still dreaming of the stars, feeling groggy and a little light-headed, but happy nonetheless. My vision blurred a bit before quickly snapping back into focus and seeing Darksolar’s face right in front of mine. “Err...what are you doing Darksolar?” I asked them, feeling rather uncomfortable. “Trying to wake you up, Luna summoned us to talk about that tiara thing you found at least fifteen minutes ago” I shot out of my room as fast as I could, either I’d stayed up later then I’d thought listening to Flare or this summon was unusually early. I decided that it was the latter as there were very few ponies out of their small rooms and it was remarkably quiet. As we entered the meeting hall, I noted that while Flare and PH were here, Midnight was missing. Luna cleared her throat to draw our attention “I am sorry to tell you that Spike and I haven’t been able to figure out how we can use the tiara or what it does on its own. However, Spike believes that there is someone who may know how we can use it to find twilight. There is a shamanistic zebra named Zecora that lives deep inside the Everfree Forest. I myself did not know of Zecora until Spike mentioned her to me, so it is likely that Celestria hasn’t found her either. I need you four to take the tiara to her and see if she can help us” “Won’t Midnight be helping us?” PH raised the question we were all thinking “No my ponies, I’m afraid that I need Midnight to stay here, so that I may help her to work out some...issues” With that Luna gave me the lightweight bag that we had used to carry the tiara back down from Celestia’s castle. I took it upon my back but a sound of clashing metal from the bag caused me to lay it on the ground and investigate what the noise was. Inside the bag were some oddly shaped pieces of metal all in shades of a dark purple. “What are these for?” I asked with no comprehension of why she had given us these. “It’s armour, partially based off the kind I wore when I was nightmare moon, with the news you brought me yesterday of the Keln we cannot afford to go outside without some protection against them” There was actually very little of the armour, but it was not surprising considering the constant shortages on resources we had. Despite what Luna had said the armour looked almost exactly like that depicted in the pictures of the books on nightmare moon. The only noticeable difference was that the hoof pieces seemed looked quite a lot sharper and the headpiece from the headpieces sprouted a horn like Luna’s. “This should not only help to defend you against the Keln, but to be able to fight back. The horn and hoof pieces have been sharpened and enchanted so that the Keln will actually suffer from your blows. But do not think that will make fighting them easy. The Keln you encountered sounded weakened and young, others that you may find will not be so easily defeated. I hope that you four do not encounter any of them.” With that the tiara was packed into the lightweight bag and we set off for the everfree forest, equipped for the dangers ahead. We picked a passageway that lead us to an odd house on the outskirts of Ponyville, said to be where one of the six, Fluttershy, used to live. We could tell from the dust covering every inch of the place that nobody had been here for years. As we exited the house we saw that there was no road, the door opened straight into patches of wildflowers and overgrown grass. The obvious neglect of the place made us sure that no guards, nor any life other than wild animals, had been here for a long time. The everfree forest lay close to the house, right past a strangely shaped wooden hut that was most likely used to house animals, as the occasional poles of fence scattered around the area suggested. The sun was shining brightly on us and we were all glad to get out of its harsh rays as we entered the cool shade of the everfree forest. The everfree forest was admittedly a bit creepy, but it seemed to lack any actual danger aside from those obstacles the land had been created with. The main problem we faced was locating where Zecora lived, the everfree forest was surprisingly large and the trees managed to often plunge us into complete darkness. There were a great many trees and no defining path around the twisting roots that sprung up from the ground. Eventually we discovered a clearing containing a large amount of blue flowers, the sun shining down upon them revealed to us that someone had been here before. A thin line cutting through the flowers seemed to cry out that someone had passed through here frequently. The question was whether the path was made by Zecora or the guards. Deciding that we had no other way to navigate through the forest we followed the path, keeping out of the blue flowers. We did not know what they were, but in a place like the everfree forest whenever something is brightly coloured you know you want to stay away from it. While following the path we became to notice that it was getting aggravatingly leafy, ever step would took caused them to crunch under our hooves. The noise began to grate on my nerves so I decided the best way to relieve it would be to find a different noise to occupy my thoughts. Flare seemed to be getting just as annoyed but his thoughts had taken a different route to fixing it than mine. “So, what do you think Midnight’s done?” We all stopped and turned to Flare questioningly. “I mean, what do you think it is that Luna needs to work out with her? It must be pretty bad if Luna felt she needed to take her away from a mission, and what was up with her when we were coming back yesterday?” “well-” I began to answer before Darksolar cut me off “It’s something that’s Midnights, let her chose wether to tell us or not and not speculate on what might be. Often it’s better to live without an answer than to come up with your own.” Her answer immediately made me feel guilty. I had to admit to myself that I had been wondering what Midnight had done. Often ponies were only held back from attending mission when they were seriously injured...As I followed that train of thought I came up with an answer to the former of the Flare’s questions. “Maybe that creature got her” “WHAT?” Everyone said it as if I had gone insane, before I realised that not everyone else had been thinking quite what I had. “What I meant to say was do you think that she got injured by that beast, what was it called again, the Keln?” PH was fastest to reply “Maybe, but she didn’t seem particularly damaged on the way back.” He was right, the Keln hadn’t managed to get Midnight with those horrible talons, but it occurred to me that it might have cut her with those thorn-like protrusions on its arms. They had looked pretty nasty to me and might have carried some poison in them. As I thought on that I remembered how I had done nothing to help them, we had never encountered them before so there may not be an antidote to their poison. Midnight could be dying right now and here we were standing just talking about her. I voiced my worries about Midnight and we all began to gallop along the path, but before our hooves hit the earth I heard the crunching of leaves coming to the right of us. “Stop! Did you three hear that?” I spoke quietly in case we had been wrong and the path had been created by the guards, but the urgency in it was clear. The crunching of leaves continued and we heard the rustling of a bush. It was a slow and quiet noise which calmed our fears. The guards often patrolled in groups of six and there was rarely ever groups of three or less. I had never heard of a single guard doing patrols, which encouraged me to creep closer and find out just who it was. They looked like a normal pony, but there was something odd about them. Their mane was thin and stood straight up. Their body was grey but became a dark grey on her back, with the same grey almost creeping in towards their eyes and banded around their legs. They had a large number of gold rings adorned along their neck and right foreleg, with one hanging from each of their ears. They had a mark which spiralled outwards, encircled by ten black dots. We all gave a sigh of relief, both that it wasn’t a guard, and also that we had found Zecora. We hoped at least that it was Zecora, we had never seen any pony like them before, and they were in the everfree forest like we had been told, but there was still the nagging of doubt in my mind that we were wrong. Determined to make up for how useless I had been against the Keln, I revealed myself “Would you happen to be Zecora the...” my tongue struggled to remember the words “shaman” She turned to address me and it felt as if she looked at into me and saw someone else. “Yes, but it has been so long. I have not heard that same since everything went wrong.” The way she spoke seemed as if she were reciting words she had spoken long ago, but could not forget. Her phrasing of sentences seeming strange, as if she hadn’t spoken in a long time. She seemed alone out here, maybe that was what had happened. “Follow me and bring your friends too, we have little time and so much to do.” I wondered how she had known about the others, before seeing that they too had revealed themselves to her. We followed her as she led us through the forest, occasionally stopping to pick up a piece of a plant. With her guiding us we soon reached an odd house made from a carved out tree. As we entered we were surprised to see strange wooden heads and masks piled around the house, some of them looking distinctly creepy. “Do come in from that scorching day, I can tell you all have much to say” As we recounted our adventures to her and procured the tiara she gave a gasp “Is that what I believe I see, Twilight’s element of Harmony?” Her recognition of it sparked the hope that she may know what to do. “Yes, do you know how we can use it to find Twilight, or to help us against Celestia?” Zecora paced around the room before coming to a conclusion “The element calls to its owner; its glow should brighten as it nears her. Find where she is and it will know what it must do, place the element to her prison, and she will come to you” With those cryptic words we knew that was all the information we would get from her, and so we turned to leave before I remembered Midnight. “Zecora have you heard of the Keln?” A shake of the head crushed my hopes that she would be able to procure an antidote, and so we left her house on an awkward and horrible silence. The return journey to Fluttershy's house was dull and uneventful, which only amplified the worry we felt for Luna, as we left the everfree forest we found ourselves galloping towards Fluttershy’s house, both doubting what I had voiced and at the same time dreading that it was true. However there were worse things for us to worry about. As we entered the house we saw three of the queens guard searching through every crevice of the house, it appeared that they were looking for a possession that had once been here but it was most likely long gone. However with the guards there, we had no way to get back to the hideout, other than to fight our way through. Fortunately we had the element of surprise and Darksolar quickly fired off a bolt of white light at one of them before they could react, encasing them in ice. However, this alerted the other two who quickly came charging at us. PH and Flare lowered their heads and charged towards them, expecting to pierce them with the horns attached to their headpieces, but as they were about to make contact the guards twisted their heads to the side causing the blows to glance off their helmets. The momentum continued though causing PH and Flare to crash into each other, thankfully missing each other with the horns but stunning them. Just as the guards were about to kick the both the ponies to the ground Darksolar fired off a wave of magic that sent the guards flying into the wall, causing one of the old decayed shelves to fall off its hinges and fall down upon one of them shattering painfully and burying him. I saw this as my chance to make up for my cowardice against the Keln and raced towards the last of the guards. The guard had recovered and lowered his head, ready to deflect my attack. Inches away from him I stopped my charge and slashed at him with my hooves, cutting across his left eye before sweeping across his legs causing them to buckle underneath him. As the guard cried out in pain I swung my hoof into his jaw, causing blood to well up in his mouth. It was there that I released all the anger that I had felt against them, all of the years of leaving in fear or stepping outside. For those long minutes I spent there I unleashed the pain that I had felt, knowing that I would never be free, the hate I had felt at the eternal sun, and the despair that I would never see the night. What had been me attempting to redeem myself for my cowardice soon became and expulsion of my rage. I do not know how long I spent attacking them; at some point once Flare and PH had recovered they dragged me off, my hooves bloody and the guard undeniably dead. My vision began to cloud as my anger became useless as I started to cry and fell into despair. I had killed him. I knew that they had killed those ponies in the raid without a second thought back then stopped myself. Were they as heartless as I thought they were? They were doing their job; they may even have not wanted to be part of the guard. There were only two sides to this fight, for or against Celestia, with no middle ground. Could they have just been trying to avoid her wrath? A new kind of sadness welled up in me as I thought of those whom he loved, that I had taken him away from. My crying ceased in a sob as I felt myself slam into the ground. Flare was on top of me and had anger in his eyes I had never seen before. “Look Starfall, ponies die, it will always happen and no matter how much you cry about it it’s not going to make anything better. In this fight against Celestia there will always be one side that wins and another that dies. Don’t cry for those that died, be grateful that you still live.” And with that he released me and the tears had died down. As much as I hated to admit it he was right, and I would have to kill again if I wanted to live through this fight. I steeled my heart to my sadness and we went to report what Zecora had told us to Luna.
