Songs of Innocence

Chapter 80: Bury the Light

Fluttershy's cottage, many moons later

"Sun's story had taken so many twists and turns, it was suddenly hard to tell where it was leading. How did she get here? Surprisingly, that was a question she no longer felt the need to ask herself. Yes, she was mad over Cozy, but she quickly realized that that was just how things were, and it was futile to cry and shout out in frustration about it. She really cared about her. So did Death Drive, and she also chose to charge ahead with Sun on their way to stop this before it could throw all of Equestria into chaos. Crops wouldn't grow, the weather would be uncontrollable, the sun may have never set again... and they knew that was more important than Cozy. They could save their feelings for later. However... I couldn't."

The Dragon Lands, many moons ago

"You guys better be here because of this giant tree thing." sighed Ember, staring at the ponies from her throne. She was the fierce ruler of the dragons, and although most of her subjects easily towered over her in size and height, she made up for that in the simple fact that she was their ruler, and thus better than all of them without question. Her throne sat at the highest point in the Dragon Lands; but her once-lovely view of all the molten land was now disturbed by the massive Qliphotic tree that had inexplicably sprouted out of the ground just a few hours prior to her pony guests' arrival.

"No," Death Drive snarked in reply to the dragon queen, "we're here because all of Equestria's magic is being drained, and that tree just so happens to be where it's going, it seems."

...

"She's Rarity, right?" the dragon whispered.

The heat of the room (and the Dragon Lands in general) started to get to the heroines, and mere seconds between Ember's responses started to feel like minutes. 

"Yer Highness, ah don't mean to be rude, but we should really hurry this along, before all of Equestria's magic is gone! We don't have much time t'waste." Applejack said.

Ember stood up, and sighed, "Alright. I think I saw a weird-looking statue of a dragon in the catacombs once. There's some weird prisoner down there who's been bugging me about letting you in." She gestured to our heroines to follow her as she left the tall mountaintop on which her throne sat, and they did just that.

On the walk down the mountain, to the catacombs' entrance, Rainbow noticed that Celaeno was apparently following them. She turned to the captain, and asked, "Hey, why're you here? Shouldn't you be on the ship?"

Celaeno scowled crossly, and forcefully laughed, "No. I have a score to settle with Laguna. I'm going to help you all take 'im down."

"Huh? Wait, the stallion's Laguna? Do you have some personal stuff with him or somethin'?"

"It's a long story... Well, not really, but I just don't wanna talk about it."

Eventually, they came to a door. Well, it was a door, according to Ember, but it looked like a solid wall of obsidian. She looked at two unlit torch stands that stood beside the door, took them, and hoarsely breathed fire to light them. They both emitted bright blue flames, and Ember turned to the ponies to say with a smirk, "Watch this." She held the flames to the obsidian door, which, to everybody's surprise, melted with the heat of the flames. "And there we go." she added.

Beyond the door was a massive, open, cavernous catacomb, filled with flowing lava that made the heat nigh-unbearable. 

"This is what's below the Dragon Lands... Just in case you couldn't tell." Ember explained.

They walked along a long, long, long narrow bridge that stood tall above the lakes of lava. Because the walk was, in fact, very long, Sun decided to finally ask Twilight something she'd been wondering about since their journey started. "Hey, Twilight? I was wondering... Why'd you bring me along? I get bringing along everypony else here... maybe except for Death Drive, but I know for a fact she's just here because I'm here... But yeah, I get why you brought everypony else, but that's because you and your friends just aren't complete without each other, so... why me?"