The sun was setting by the time they reached the dig site. Sunny led them from the air. Starlight marched at the head of their little column and tried not to focus on the pain in her hooves. It was better than teleporting, at least. She had tried to jump them to the site earlier but had only managed to knock herself out cold. It appeared there was some limit to what her powers could do, at least at the moment.

Sunny swooped over deserted tents and abandoned RVs that sat in the shadow of darkened mesas. Wind washed over the site, throwing sand into the air in great gales. Starlight narrowed her eyes. When they reached one of the RVs, she was tempted to fall inside and find a bed. Only Staten and the rest kept her going. She couldn't look weak in front of them.

"Come on, guys," Sunny yelled, "we're almost there!"

"There" appeared to be a large, metal housing in the middle of the dig site. It stood as tall as ten ponies and almost as wide. It was the single largest object around.

Starlight stared at it and bit her lip. She hesitated before walking toward it. Something felt off about it to her, and she couldn't shake the feeling no matter how hard she tried. Behind her, Staten muttered something to Midnight, so Starlight assumed she wasn't the only one creeped out.

They reached the entrance to the large building, and Sunny dropped back to the ground. Her wings were dirty and covered in dust, but there was a smile on her face. "This is it," she said. "I spent a good year of my life digging out here, and the IS took it away from me." She chuckled. "Well, they couldn't hold me for long."

She led the way inside, and Starlight felt she had no choice but to follow her. The interior of the building was little more than alcoves of darkness spiraling up toward the ceiling, all centered around a large steel platform. It had what looked like controls on one end, and she could see tracks that led into a tunnel.

"Wait, we're going down there?" Starlight asked.

"It's where all this started," Sunny said. "If there are answers to this whole thing, they've gotta be back down in the tunnel."

Staten coughed. "But I thought you said they removed the heart you found."

"They did, but there has to be more down there."

Nopony objected to that. Starlight saw Midnight start to say something, but Noctilucent shook his head and she quieted down. There was little else they could do, anyway, that wouldn't involve them getting hurt back in Sundown.

Sunny jumped on the platform and started pressing buttons and pulling levers. Sure enough, the platform lit up with lights around the edges that glowed bright red. The winged mare's smile quickly turned to a frown when she checked some gauges.

"It looks like the lights are still on down there," she said.

"Maybe somepony forgot to turn them off when they left?" Starlight suggested.

"Maybe . . ."

After a few more button presses, she waved them over, and their entire party climbed on the platform. The metal felt odd beneath Starlight's hooves, like it was humming with energy. It gave a jerk, then started to descend into the tunnel. She fought the urge to shut her eyes and curl into a ball on the floor once they were inside.

Nopony spoke the entire ride down. Sunny pursed her lips and stuck her tongue out while she looked at her controls, and the adults were huddled silently at the other end of the platform. They might as well have been singling out the two ponies with magic, for all Starlight knew.

She watched the rock of the tunnel fly by. Back in college, she had taken a few geology classes, but she struggled to remember them at the moment. Her specialty had always been the history of ponies, not the planet. Still, she knew enough to know that they were going deep, way down into sediment that hadn't seen the surface in millions of years.

The platform sped up for a while, and Starlight could feel her heart in her hooves. Just when she thought they were going too fast, however, they started to slow down, gently coming to a stop at the bottom of the chasm. When she looked back up to where they had come, she couldn't even see the top. It was at least fifteen thousand petras down, if not more.

When Starlight looked to the tunnel that lay ahead of them, she saw that, just as Sunny had said, the electricity was on. Unlike in the large chasm, however, the lights didn't glow red but rather the more natural yellow.

Sunny nodded to Starlight. "Alright, we're here. Move carefully, though . . . I don't like how this feels."

"I got it," Starlight replied.

The two of them moved forward, with Staten right on their heels. The professor seemed unusually quiet, and Starlight figured he was holding some cards close to his chest. They crept down the tunnel without a word, following the winding path of cables on the ground until at last they came to the entrance of a chamber.

This wasn't any ordinary chamber. It was positively huge, at least twice as big as the building up top, and made of solid stone. The rock itself had been polished until it was as smooth as a concrete sidewalk.

Starlight tried to get a glimpse of what lay ahead of them, but she bumped into Sunny's back. "Hey, what gives?" she muttered, but then saw what the mare's eyes were transfixed on. In the middle of the cave, on some sort of natural platform, was a giant crystal in the shape of a heart.

It pulsated with energy and shined brightly, though no light directly hit it. Sunny began to shake her head. "That's . . . that's impossible. The IS, they took it from the site and sent it to a lab in Sundown. How could it be here?"

Staten and Midnight approached it. A look of awe crossed their faces. "In all my years . . . I never thought I'd actually see it," Staten said. "Noctilucent, you remember when we were colts just out of school? All the inscriptions we found?"

Starlight turned to see her dad sitting on the ground. His jaw was open and his eyes weaved over the massive crystal. He nodded. "We found so many clues, and I knew that Sunny had found it, but . . ." He shook his head. "I never thought I'd see it, or that it'd be this big."

For a moment, it looked like Sunny forgot that the crystal heart wasn't supposed to be there. She smiled and puffed herself up from her father's compliments. Starlight rolled her eyes but said nothing. It was the other mare's moment, after all.

"We only excavated it a month ago," she said. "Nopony even touched it before I did. Though once I did . . . this whole mess got started." Her face fell again. "And now it's back where it started. How?"

"You've got us," said a voice from the far side of the cavern.

Starlight jumped, and Noctilucent growled in the direction of the voice. "Who are you? Come out and show yourself!" he barked.

What Starlight had expected were some drifter ponies, or maybe scientists like, well, everypony there but her. The last thing she expected was two IS agents dressed in full uniform. They both looked haggard, like they had crawled through mud before they got to the cavern. One of them had a pair of sunglasses with only one eyepiece remaining.

Sunny gaped at the both of them. "You're . . . you're those IS ponies from back in town!" She shook her head. "You two arrested me!"

The stallion stopped for a moment, but the mare agent just sighed. "We followed orders and we made a mistake. We let you go, though, didn't we? Or did you think nopony was coming after you because the IS just felt nice that day?"

Starlight, her father, Staten, and Midnight all looked between them in confusion. The three ponies bantered for a few moments before they noticed their audience. The two mares didn't seem to care, but the stallion stuck a hoof out.

"This must all be news to the four of you," he said. "Has Sunny, er, filled you in on the finer details of what went down here in Sundown?"

They shook their heads no, so the IS ponies started in on a story. Starlight learned their names were Agents Flower and Nightcall, and about them taking Sunny custody. She had to laugh while they told the story. Her entire journey, she'd thought the IS was one step ahead and that they knew just what was going on.

As it turned out, it seemed the IS had as little an idea of what was happening as she did. Somehow, that didn't make her feel any better.

". . . so we came here because we knew it the place where the crystal originated from, and that it might hold some answers," Agent Nightcall finished.

"Did you find anything?" Sunny asked.

He grimaced. "No, all we found were some smooth rocks and not much else." He snorted. "Oh, and the crystal here. It was already waiting for us by the time we got here. The team looking after it disappeared yesterday . . . I guess we know why."

Starlight looked up at the crystal. It didn't look very imposing. Besides its size, it could have been mistaken for cheap knock-off jewelry. It was almost funny, to her, that it had been the thing to cause all the trouble in the first place.

She could hardly even remember the night in the grocery store, when news broke about the earthquake. It had seemed so far away and strange at the time, that she had almost forgotten about it at all. Now she wasn't sure what to do about it. Part of her wanted to reach out and touch it, to feel the crystal beneath her hooves . . .

No, that was silly. She shook her head. Why would she think that?

"Uh, Starlight, what are you doing?" Staten asked.

"What do you mean?" she asked, but then she looked down. Her hoof was touching the crystal. Somehow, while she had been thinking, her body had walked her over to the crystal. That couldn't be good.

The crystal heart began to rumble. Beams of light shot out of it in all directions. One hit Starlight in the face and she staggered back. Spots swam in her vision, and she let out a cry as she fell to the ground.

When her vision returned, she watched the heart raise itself off the platform and begin to spin in the air. The beams of light coalesced into one single shaft that focused on the ground in front of the gathered ponies. There seemed to be an . . . image . . that was projecting itself onto the floor of the cavern.

Starlight's mouth hung open when she saw what was being projected. Not some picture of a warrior or a god or anything, but a pony. A pony who only stood a little taller than all of them. She was a bright pink with a long mane in a violet hue, which also dotted her wings. That was also what surprised Starlight: the mare had wings and a horn.

A picture of the crystal heart was tattooed on her flank. Starlight would have snickered had the situation been more dire. As it was, she waited until things had calmed a little before daring to step toward the image of the mare.

For what it was worth, the mare seemed as surprised to see them as they were to see her. She paced around in front of them, staring each of them in the face. When her gaze rested on Starlight, she wanted to say something, but the words caught in her throat.

It was the first one to speak. "Hello," it said in a soft voice.

No words came to Starlight, but Sunny stepped forward. "What . . . are you?" she asked, tilting her head. "You were inside the crystal this whole time?"

"I am many things," it said, "but ponies used to call me Cadance, a long time ago."

"Cadance?"

"Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, to be precise," she said. "I haven't used that name for even longer. But that doesn't matter now, does it? You all were called here, subconsciously, to wake me up because of a great need."

Starlight stared at her hooves. She had just been . . . almost forced to the crystal, like her mind had been taken over. If the whole magic thing was as real as the scans had shown, then this Cadance was a very powerful magician. She wanted to kick herself for even thinking it.

"And you used magic to put it there, right?" Starlight asked. She stared up at the ghostly visage of the pony princess. "That's is what all of this is, right? Magic?"

"Cadance" almost looked surprised. "Oh, yes, you ponies don't believe in magic, do you? It's been so long in there, I almost forgot."

"Forgot what?" Sunny asked.

"How long have you been in there?" Starlight asked.

Staten rubbed his head. "How did your crystal get all the way down here?"

Cadance held up her hooves in front of her. She shook her head. "Perhaps it would be better to just simply tell you all what you need." Her eyes flashed when she looked at Starlight and Sunny. "Especially the two of you."

The crystal spun faster, and the walls of the cavern were filled with projected light. Where there had been stone before, there now appeared to be rolling hills and mountains, and a great castle atop one of them. It reminded Starlight a little of Skyhall but much more regal.

"You are not the first pony civilization to inhabit this land," Cadance began. "Long before your cars and spinners and broadcasted programs, there were other ponies like yourselves. They lived simple lives, endowed not by science and engineering but by magic. It controlled their lives, whether they be winged pegasi, horned unicorns, or powerful earth ponies."

Starlight heard the two IS agents gasp. She turned and saw what looked like the crystals above Sundown displayed on one wall. They were all different colors and had ponies clustered around them. Cadance gazed at them and bit her lip. "The Elements of Harmony," she said. "Once, they were weapons of absolute good, used against any and all evil that threatened the magical land of Equestria."

Her gaze darkened. "However, ponykind learned a valuable lesson . . . that the Elements could not always tell friend from foe. When a great conflict arose in Equestria after a long and brutal winter, one side, led by a Princess, decided to use them in anger.

"The Elements were meant to be used against absolute evil. When used against other ponies, it could not tell which side was wrong. So . . . it decided both sides were evil, that ponies had fallen too far to use the Elements any longer. The Elements themselves went on a rampage, ripping the world apart. Millions perished under its magic."

Agent Nightcall began to cry, like the words had triggered some memory. His sobs echoed through the chamber, while Agent Flower spoke to him in soft whispers. Then, Starlight realized it wasn't the cries of a grown man . . . it was those of a foal. Cadance seemed to notice it and bowed her head.

"Not every pony perished, however," she said. "Those that were left struggled to build up their magical kingdom again, only to be struck down by the Elements when they got too powerful. This occurred one more time, until the Elements of Harmony apparently decided ponies weren't deserving of magic.

"I defended the ponies who were left and sealed myself inside this crystal to keep them safe. While the Elements upturned the entire world and buried me down here, they also ripped magic from the very earth and took it inside themselves. All but the ponies in my care and non-magical animals lived.

"When the cataclysm had finished, the world didn't even look the same. I teleported the ponies in my care far away from here and waited. Ponies took so long without magic, I was hoping that they would never awaken the Elements of Harmony. Yet, one hundred thousand years later, here all of you are."

Besides the crying foal, nopony said a word. They looked at Cadance with faces ranging from utter sadness to shock and revulsion. Starlight, despite herself, wasn't even sure what to think. There was so much to take in at once. It explained a lot . . . all the signs that scientists had found over the years of some past civilization was true. Yet, it almost made it worse . . . to know. To know that things had been better once and were destroyed by whatever was now above Sundown.

Agent Flower was the first to speak. "And now that the . . . Elements of Harmony . . . are over Sundown, what's going to happen to the city? What do they plan to do?"

"From the looks of it, the Elements have decided that not letting ponies have magic was a mistake." Cadance sighed. "They seem to be trapping ponies inside to keep them there while the rest of the world—judging from past experiences—will be torn apart. Whoever is inside the city will live and whoever is outside it . . . won't."

Now it was Agent Nightcall crying, along with the baby. Their sobs were enough to bring tears to Starlight's eyes. However, she had to shake her head. She wasn't going to think about it. "Alright, so these Elements of Harmony want to kill us all and do whatever it wants with ponies," she said. "What do we do to stop it? What can we do to keep it from destroying us all? There has to be something!"

"I have spent one hundred thousand years encased in this crystal trying to think of something to do," Cadance said. "I have come up with nothing. However . . ."

"However?"

"It seems that the Elements of Harmony has taken a very specific interest in this group. It must have sensed, as I do, that your fathers both were the ones closest to finding out the truth behind all of the lies you have been told. And thus, the Elements saw fit to grant you both some very specific gifts."

Sunny cocked her head. "Uh . . . Miss Crystal lady, plenty of other ponies have horns and wings too. We're not really special at all."

Cadance laughed. "It's not what you see on the outside, but what I can see on the inside . . ." She reached forward and pressed her ghostly hooves to Sunny and Starlight's shoulders. Neither of them felt anything from the touch but could feel their bodies start to shake.

Starlight doubled over and cried out as a feverish itching spread onto her back. She convulsed and bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. It felt like hot knives were forcing their way out of her skin. Through the pain, she saw Sunny's face contorted in the same agony she felt.

She heard her father gasp, and Staten mutter some curses. Then, just as soon as it had started, the pain ebbed and flowed out of her. When it was over, she felt like, somehow, she had two very light hooves growing out of her back.

"You have wings!" Sunny gasped at her.

Starlight turned and her eyes grew wide. "You have a horn!" she told Sunny. They both paused to examine their new appendages. Starlight had thought having the dull sense of a horn on her head was weird, but the wings felt like they were truly a part of her . . . a feathery and lightweight part of her.

"What did you do to my daughter?" Noctilucent growled, surging forward. Staten was right behind him, repeating the same question in a low tone.

Cadance blinked. "I only made them what the Elements intended for them to be," she said.

"And what is that, exactly?" Noctilucent demanded.

Starlight noticed the crystal glowing bright as Cadance spread her wings wide and lifted her horn up. "The Elements of Harmony are powerful. For years, it has played its game as I watched, using its magic to move pieces into place. Sundown provided it with a population of magic users to settle the land once all else had been destroyed . . . all it needed were leaders."

Starlight stepped back. When she did, she almost tripped as she realized that she had, somehow, grown taller. It was enough to make her dizzy. "We're supposed to be some sort of magical leaders? Why two of us?"

"The sun and the moon, of course. Or did you think having the names 'Sunny' and 'Starlight' was mere happenstance?"

Both mares slowly turned to glare at their fathers. As one, Noctilucent and Staten looked at each other and stepped back. "How were we supposed to know?" Staten asked. "It wasn't like it was planned . . . was it, uh, Cadance?"

Cadance shrugged. "I would assume so. Ponies are easily susceptible to magic, especially as you all have it locked up inside you. But that is not the issue here. What is, is that I managed to gather you all here to fight back. Sunny, Starlight, if you two combine your power with myself, we can stop the Elements of Harmony."

"I'm not entirely sure how to control my powers—" Starlight began, but was interrupted as all three of the older ponies stepped forward.

"I won't allow you to use my daughter like that," Noctilucent said.

"They're not weapons of war!" Midnight, who had been silently biding her time, added. Staten agreed with her and placed himself in front of his daughter.

Cadance opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted as the cavern began to shake. Pieces of rock and dust fell from the ceiling. The baby started crying again, which Cadance seemed to notice for the first time. She smiled.

"The good news is the child is here too," she said. "The bad news, however, is that the Elements have found us. We have no choice now. We must all fight, or the Elements will control Sunny and Starlight forever while the rest of us perish." Her eyes flashed. "We have to go, now!"

A massive boulder dislodged itself from the ceiling. It fell down straight toward the group, large enough to crush all of them.

When it hit the ground, however, nothing was left under it. The only sign anypony had ever been there was a fading light and the peculiar smell of magic.