-Chapter XLIV- Equestrian Winds

-Canterlot, Equestria

-March 31st, 2012

-5:00 P.M.

-Nicholas

I attempted standing, but I lost balance before I could take a step forward, fumbling next to where Twilight laid. I forced myself up again, dazed and vision blurred, to see Stealth stumbling over to me. "Hey, buddy," I said to him, not expecting an answer from the mute baby dragon. I reached out a hoof towards him and he slowly took it with his hand, and I couldn't help but smile as he let out a peculiar purr rattling from his scaly throat. I turned my head to Twilight and Dash, thinking of whether or not I should try to befriend them at all as Sapphire had said, or to just leave them now and try to do what I could to save Celestia on my own. I let out a deep sigh as I made my decision. I waited for my mind to settle and the world around me to stop spinning before I held out a hoof to the unconscious purple alicorn. "Twilight...? Twilight, wake up," I called out to her. I only was met by silence. "Damn it, Twilight!" I exclaimed angrily. "Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Pinkie Pie!" I turned to each of the ponies as I called out their names, but with no response. My eyes widened as a thought came up from the back of my mind. "Uh...guys?" I said, concern heavy in my voice. I turned to where Stealth was, shaking Fluttershy, and shock overcame me as she began to cough, and slowly arose. I let out a lungful of air as she opened her eyes, shaking her head and wincing at me. "Oh, thank God!" I exclaimed as she stared at me in confusion.

"Oh my...what happened?" she asked softly, holding a hoof to her head. "I feel like I just got done wrestling a bear..." she sat up, and I quickly galloped to her, relief in the sight of her awake and acting normal.

"I'm sorry about that," I said quickly, "I...I guess you could say I accidentally used magic...sorta." I held out a hoof to help her back to her four hooves. "Are you all right?"

"I just have a headache..." she trailed off as she stared at me with eyes wide with surprise, "You can really use magic?"

"In a way..." I said, not knowing how to explain my situation. "Come on, we've got to help Princess Celestia, and quickly." I turned to the train car door, expecting her and Stealth to follow, but when I looked back she stood still, watching me expectantly with Stealth at her side. "What's wrong?"

"Well, we can't just leave Twilight and the others, can we?" she asked. I knew the answer she expected, but I remained silent. "I'll stay here and wake them up, you go before they wake up. If they see you, they'll go after you for sure without even giving you a chance to explain yourself."

"I guess you're right...but wait, why are you not attacking me, too?" I asked with confusion. If anything, she had been the most wrongly-treated pony of the six. "If anything, you seem to not be against me nor afraid of me."

"Well, I..." she trailed away, as if she didn't know how to respond, "I just sorta trust you, for some reason. You have the eyes of a nice pony, I guess."

I smiled as the words fumbled from behind her mane, which she hid behind more and more with every word. "Thank you, Fluttershy," I said, feeling a bit ridiculous speaking so kindly to a pony, even if she did deserve much kinder treatment.

"Go now, before they wake up!" she said as she nearly pushed me out of the train car. Stealth ran after us and as I nearly tumbled out of the car and down to the ground, Stealth simply jumped down.

"Thank you!" I called back as I galloped away from the stopped train. I kept going for as long as I felt I could before exhaustion slowly crept up on me, despite my stiff hooves and how unused I was to my pony forme still. When I at last slowed down I found myself at an intersection without knowledge of where it was that I was or where I was supposed to go. I let out a sigh of relief to be away from any immediate danger, but I was only irritated with how I was stuck in the situation that I was. I set Stealth down from my back and sat down to rest only for a moment when I had the most peculiar feeling that I was being watched. Then, I realized, there were plenty of ponies about the cobble walks of Canterlot minding their own business, heeding me no mind. I wondered if this was what life was like a thousand years ago. Was this what Sapphire had dealt with everyday of her life? Danger around every corner with her friends beside her? Or was she always alone? So many questions about my past life swirled through my life as I got up to keep moving away from where I thought the train station was. I looked around again, hoping the feeling of being watched would soon fade, but as I left and continued onward, I found that it didn't.

I continued to trot along my way, looking around and through my peripherals to watch as the ponies moving the opposite direction from me continued along their own ways, too. I watched closely for any of them that would be staring at me, but I found that none were, only increasing my own anxiety and paranoia. Are you watching me right now, Sapphire? I thought, looking to the sky as I stopped. What sort of pony were you, exactly? The questions continued to forge themselves in the depths of my mind as I asked them, almost expecting an answer from deep within my soul. It was strange, I realized, sharing a soul with a pony that had died almost, if not more than a thousand years ago who had been close to Princess Celestia. Perhaps even before she had gained rule over Equestria, or maybe when she had just became ruler. What other sort of beings had my soul taken on the forme of? Hell, for all I knew, I could've been a cat in my past life. ...nah. I thought with a silent laugh forcing a smile to make its way across my pony face.

I veered around the corner of a nearby building with hopes of averting the gaze of my watcher, only to find the feeling follow me into the dark alley where I stopped suddenly from my speedy trot, nearly knocking poor Stealth from my saddle. "Sorry," I muttered softly to him as I stood perfectly still, listening intently to my surroundings for any sort of abnormality in the quiet sounds of the Equestrian alleyway. I closed my eyes, as though expecting them to try to sneak up on me from behind if it seemed like I wasn't paying any attention. After a moment of waiting, I thought I heard a soft hoofstep from behind me towards the entrance of the alleyway where I had come from, and I quickly spun around, unsheathing my sword as I jumped up into the air with a fierce cry. I thought I saw a glimpse of a pony's tail, and that was good enough for me to begin chasing after it. I exited the thin alley and looked about the now almost empty street for my stalker to see a pony down the street fly into another building and away from my view. "Hey!" I called out, rearing up and beginning the chase again, nearly throwing Stealth back again as my whinny echoed throughout the warm spring air. I dashed onward, pushing my way into the building where my pursuer had flown into not moments before. I stopped suddenly when I realized that I had just charged head-first into a bakery, nearly empty other than the pony workers on the opposite side of the counter. "Uhh..." I said awkwardly as I felt my heartbeat racing, not knowing if it was from the short-lived chase or from the suspension and peculiarity of the situation. "I'm awfully sorry about the intrusion," I began uneasily, trying to defend my strange behavior in a city full of strangers – pony strangers, at that, "But was there a pegasus that had just flown in here like a second ago?"

An earth pony was the first to answer, her long gray curled mane clashing with her light-brown body-fur, "Yes, Cyclone Winds came in here just before you did, I think. That was Cyclone, wasn't it, Sourdough?"

"Yes, Mrs. Cream. She's around here somewhere, sir. Why? What happened?" a second earth pony asked quizzically.

"I think she was stalking me," I answered bluntly, not seeing a reason to lie to the random Equestrian ponies. "Where would she-"

"I wasn't stalking!" I heard an accusing voice say loudly from another room. I looked where I thought to be the general direction of the voice to be to see a pegasus, pink and lithe with a cutie mark of a tornado and a deep purple mane bouncing up and around as she flew into the room with an irritated look across her face. "I was merely...observing!"

"Observing my ass!" I yelled out without a thought running through my mind. Only after I had said it did I realize why Cyclone began to blush and give me a deadly glower before the ponies behind the counter began to laugh under their breaths. "Shut up! You're ponies! You're supposed to be more innocent than that!"

"Look, you're obviously not from around here," Cyclone began as she jumped into the air and fluttered around me, thankfully pushing my ill-said words to the back of her mind, "So I was just looking to see what you were doing, is all."

"Why would you care, exactly?" I asked, probably with a bit more hostility than intended.

She gave me another irritated glance. "Well if you can be quiet for longer than a few seconds, I'd be able to tell you that I just wanted to show you around."

I opened my mouth to reply, but no words came. I had forgotten that I was in completely foreign territory now, both physically and mentally, with the ponies being far more kind than I was used to anywhere in Skyrim. Here, if someone was following you, it was more likely to see what kind of a person – or pony, rather – you were to befriend you instead of planning on the best way to mug or kill you. Unused to the kindness of the pony's nature, such as what Fluttershy had shown me, I had automatically gone on the defensive to protect both my dignity and myself from any troublesome encounters. "Sorry about that, then," I managed to mutter, finding trouble to say the words despite their truth.

A smile washed over the lively pegasus' face, happiness and reassurance obviously overtaking any hostility between us. "It's all right," she said coolly, "Just make sure someone's trying to be a jerk to you before you act like a jerk to them, is all!"

My face felt hot with embarrassment as she bid farewell to the pony employees of the bakery, which I saw to be called "The Bread Basket" according to the sign hanging beside the glass doors with faded red letters. "All right, so what's to show me first?" I asked curiously, not knowing what sort of places would really be interesting in a place like Canterlot for a Nord such as myself.

"Well, first, I gotta make a pit-stop by where I usually work," she replied from the air as she did a loop-the-loop, as I believed them to be called, in the air before dashing forward, just slow enough for me to follow with a vague idea of which direction she was going, Stealth clinging desperately to the back of my mane as he bounced high into the air and heavily back down onto the hard-leather saddle.

"And where would that be, may I ask?" I called out to where I thought she was, only for her to zoom past me from behind, nearly causing me to jump out of my own fur as she continued forward, only to stop suddenly in midair as she awaited me to catch up. I panted up to her, trying hard to catch my breath through a parched mouth as she smiled again, obviously finding amusement in my exhaustion. "What?"

But she only shook her head, "Nothing," she said quickly before flipping herself upside-down and pretending to swim backwards on her back. "All right, come on, it'll only be a minute," she said as she sped past me again, flying to a building that was somewhat bigger than the others that I had noticed in Canterlot, and this had smokestacks sticking out from its black-tiled roof, each one spitting out puffs of multicoloured smoke that dissipated in the air after rising for so long. "This," she said with outstretched hooves as I finally met her, my pace slowed and heartbeat racing, "Is the Canterlot Rainbow Factory. It's not nearly as big as the one in Cloudsdale, where I used to live, but it's nice, all the same."

"There's one in Cloudsdale?" I asked, not knowing where Cloudsdale was or how far it was from Canterlot. Cyclone gave a simple nod in return, and I shook my head in confusion as I asked, "Then why bother have a second one here? Isn't that a waste of space and resources?" I examined Canterlot, seeing all of the tightly-packed buildings and remembering all the others back at the street where I had felt Cyclone watching me. I could vaguely remember seeing the train climbing a mountain when Rainbow Dash and I were fighting, and I noticed just how we must've been over sea-level due to the thinness of the air there. I could only assume Canterlot was built into the side of the mountain.

"Not if Princess Celestia is trying to conserve energy by creating a second factory here, where we wouldn't have to waste time and bits to transfer all of the energy – and rainbows, of course – across Equestria from Cloudsdale to Canterlot."

I opened my mouth to speak again, but I stopped myself as I realized that I had no idea how rainbows or clouds or whatever could be transported or anything from one place to another, and decided that I was debating on grounds that I didn't even know existed. Equestria is a strange place, that much is for sure. "All right, I see your point," I said simply, not really knowing if what I said was true or not, but deciding that dropping the subject would be in everyone's best interest.

"So anyway," the purple pegasus began again, "I just gotta pop in real to see one of my friends, Dak. It'll only be a moment." She quickly flew through the empty concrete lot, leaving me behind with Stealth, dozing off still on my back. I let out a sigh as I thought about the time being wasted here, just waiting. I looked up to the sun, already nearly done with its journey across the sky, and I couldn't help but grit my teeth irritably.

"Damn..." I whispered to myself solemnly. "How am I supposed to help these ponies? I don't even know anything about them, and I don't see what I could do, especially if there's an entire army on their way here..." I said louder to the sky, awaiting an answer from the silent dots of light that were strewn about the early-evening dome over Canterlot.

"Heya!" I heard a masculine voice call out, breaking me from my thoughts. I looked down from my gaze towards the sky to see another pegasus, one with a stronger, thicker neck than any other pony I had seen so far, and a strangely-shaped muzzle, similar to Doctor Whooves from Ponyville. He was a cobalt-blue, just a bit of a lighter shade than the sword still at my side, with a brown mane and tail with streaks of a similar blue running through them. His cutie mark was some strange symbol that I could not recognize. "So you're new around here, eh?"

"Yeah, I'm really just passing through, though," I replied coolly, trying to act a naturally as possible.

"Aw!" I heard Cyclone say irritably as she appeared from behind the stallion. "When do you have to leave?"

"Pretty soon, actually," I said, glancing up again to the sky, now laced with golden and orange hues spreading out from the sun, hidden behind a mass of clouds as it continued to set behind the horizon. "But first I must speak to Princess Celestia," I added quickly, "I just need to know where her castle is."

Dak and Cyclone exchanged amused glances, and burst into laughter without warning, causing me to jump back and Stealth to jerk awake from all of the sudden noise. "Oh my Celestia!" Cyclone said as she saw Stealth awakened by her and the stallion's noise, "I'm so sorry!" she said apologetically before bursting out into laughs again, joined once more by Dak.

"What's so funny this time!" I demanded, irritation building in my stomach at their constant amusement in my ignorance. "If you two can't tell me, then-!"

"Dude, look behind you!" Dak said between gasps for breath, pressing one of his hooves against his chest as if it ached. I rolled my eyes and followed where Cyclone pointed to see a large castle, built high as it seemed to pierce the sky itself, breaking the sun's rays from anything behind it as the white brick walls were bathed in its orange-red light. The castle loomed high over any other building in Canterlot, making its placement pronounced and obvious to anyone to visit Canterlot, even for the first time. I was in shock of how I could've missed it at all. "Princess Celestia's castle was supposedly one of the first buildings built in Equestria," Dak said from behind me, seemingly a bit more seriously, "I'm actually one of her guards, when I'm not working at the Rainbow Factory."

"Seriously though, how could you have missed it?" Cyclone said with a sense of humour. "Come on, we'll show you the quickest way to get there."