“Spike!” Twilight shouted, shooting out of her bed. The sun was just sending its early morning rays through the library windows, but that wasn’t what had Twilight worried. She had just awoken from a dream where she had seen Nathan, trapped in a black, shining cage. Something in her heart told her that the dream was real, at least in the sense that Nathan was trapped somewhere…

Shaking her head, she dashed into her kitchen, where her assistant was dutifully cooking a mixture of eggs and potatoes in a frying pan. “Spike!” she shouted again, startling the baby dragon.

“Twilight? What’s wrong?” Spike asked, looking away from the stove in concern.

“It’s Nathan!” Twilight said, grabbing a saddlebag and tossing in a few seemingly random items. “He’s in serious trouble, and he needs our help-”

“Nathan? You’re still going to help him after what he did to you?” Spike scoffed, crossing his arms angrily. He aimed a pointed glare at Twilight, and added, “He broke your heart. I heard everything he said from upstairs! So why would you want to help him?”

Twilight’s ears pressed down against her head, and she stared at a small speck of dust on the floor. “Because…” she said, closing her eyes.

“Because what?”

Suddenly, she shouted at the top of her lungs, “I love him! And he needs our help!” At Spike’s shocked expression, she continued, saying, “And he needs our help! I don’t care what he said that day, it doesn’t change anything about the way I feel about him!”

“But he’s probably on another world by now,” he pointed out. “And even if he isn’t, how are you going to find him?”

“I don’t know,” Twilight admitted. Her eyes then lit up in fierce determination, similar to whenever Rainbow Dash would train to join the Wonderbolts, and she said confidently, “But there’s got to be a way! There just has to be!”

Four hours later, and Twilight and Spike had searched the entire library for some sort of spell that would help them find Omnius. So far, they had found several tracking spells that would have done the trick…the only problem was, they needed something personal of his to make it work.

“No, we can’t give up now!” Twilight said, reaching for another book with her magic.

Spike knocked it out of her grasp, and half-shouted, “Twilight, it’s useless! We have nothing of his that can work, and his house has that weird security system of his! Unless you know how to get in there, then we’ve got no hopes of finding him.

Twilight glared at Spike, tears brimming in her eyes, and he stepped back a little in fear. He had never seen her look this desperate and angry. He swallowed nervously, and added, “B-but maybe we can look for him the old fashioned way?”

She nodded, wiping at her face a little. “You’re right, Spike, we can do that. Gather the rest of the girls, and let them know what’s going on.”

“What about you?” He asked, as he ran outside of the library.

“I’m going to start looking. I know he’s out there somewhere, I can feel it!” She called out over her shoulder, as she ran towards the forest.

Twilight’s mind was in turmoil. She didn’t know why she still loved him, even though he had told her, as simply as he could, that he couldn’t love her, and how it would never work out between them. So why was she running into a monster filled forest, on a hunch that had barely any basis in fact? Why was she going to possibly risk her own life to save him?

“Nathan!” she cried out, scanning the woods in front of her. “Nathan!”

While she was busy searching the forest, Spike had been running his scaly tail off, and he told the others what Twilight was doing. Reluctantly, they had agreed to help, if only to let Twilight know that it was pointless.

Well, almost all of them thought it was pointless. As they split into teams, Fluttershy pulled Pinkie aside, and asked her, “Pinkie…are you still mad at Omnius?”

She frowned, and said, “Nope! I actually feel pretty sorry for him!”

“You do?” Fluttershy asked, more than a little surprised.

“Well sure! Look at him! He goes around, helping others so much, that he’s seen a lot of people and ponies get hurt!” She said, poking her head into a tree, in an attempt to see if Omnius was hiding in there. “And there’s that big meanie Torrentican! Look at all the stuff he puts Omni through!”

“Oh, good, I’m not the only one who thought about that,” Fluttershy said, sighing in relief. “I only thought about those last night…I don’t think Applejack and Rainbow Dash have gotten over it yet though. I hope they aren’t too mad.”

“Ooh, I hope he’s not hurt,” Dash said, scanning the skies while Applejack ran beneath her.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want anything getting to him before I do!” She snarled, punching her hooves together. “When I find him, I’m gonna pulverize him!”

“Well, don’ get too excited. I wanna teach him a thing or too ‘bout hurtin’ mah friends,” Applejack agreed, bucking a tree next to her for emphasis. “Now then, where’d you last see ‘im?”

Rainbow Dash scowled, and scanned the trees around her, trying to recall the night he had fled…

“Let’s see…it was right about here!” She said, pointing a hoof to the ground where Omnius had crashed to avoid her. “I would’ve caught him, if, uh, there hadn’t been an Owl stuck in a tree!” She said, blushing profusely, not wanting to let her friends know that he had accidentally outmaneuvered her.

“An Owl? Dash, you know those tend to live in trees, right?” AJ deadpanned, not being fooled for a second.

Dash rolled her eyes, and said, “Uh, yeah, I knew that! But its talons were stuck in the branch! Anyways, I go and help it in ten seconds flat, but when I get back, he disappears. “

“Hmm…alright, Dash, sure,” Applejack said, choosing not to wound Rainbow’s pride. “But where do you suppose he is?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care! I just want to find him, and beat him into next Tuesday!”

XHXHXHXHXHXHXHX

Twilight raced through the Everfree forest, calling out Nathan’s name repeatedly. Finally, she had to stop running, and give her voice a rest. She had been searching for what must have been hours, screaming for her…friend?

“Are we friends?” Twilight whispered to herself, as she sat down by a small river. She stared at the reflection in the water, and rubbed her eyes tiredly. For an instant, instead of her reflection, she could see Nathan’s, his dark brown eyes hiding something that had intrigued her since the first day they had met…

His eyes held something to them, something that everyone could notice to varying degrees. In his eyes, you could see laughter, joy, and happiness on the surface of them…but if you looked deeper, you would find the wisdom only gained from an extremely long life, and experiences that would amaze even the most intrepid of explorers and adventurers. Twilight saw something else though…something that no one else had seen in them.

Fear.

She looked into his eyes, and saw that he was afraid. Not just for his friends either. Even though a large part of that was his fear of something happening to them, there was another type of fear…

Fear for himself.

He was afraid of becoming too powerful, and too ambitious. He didn’t want to become a God, even though he fully knew that he held the potential to become one, if he so desired. Every waking moment of his life, he had to worry about being too powerful, and worry about what would happen if he snapped, and started using that power for all the wrong reasons.

He needed an anchor…he needed something to hold him in place, so that his memories, along with the lessons he’s learned, wouldn’t be swept away…

Twilight bowed her head, and whispered softly, “Um…Gods and Goddesses of Good? I know that Nathan is the one who prays to you all, but…Please, if you can hear me, help me find him…”

A tear rolled down her cheek, and fell into the water, before being swept away by the current. She sniffed, and turned to move on…

A glimmer of light on the surface of the river caught Twilight’s attention, and she trotted over to it to investigate. Her eyes widened in amazement, as she used her magic to gingerly raise a pair of thick, black rimmed glasses out of the water. The frame was slightly scratched, and the left side had a long crack running along the edge of it…but they were unmistakably-

“Nathan’s glasses,” Twilight whispered. She looked up the river, where the flow was coming from, hope lighting up her face.

Shoving them into her saddlebags, she galloped up the river, following the opposite direction the water was coming from. She ran up the hill, her bags gently thudding into her sides, and she frantically searched the area around her. A small part of her recognized the place as the cliff where she had nearly plummeted to her doom, before AJ and the others had saved her.

She felt her eyes drawn to a small rockslide that must have happened a few days ago. Then, she saw…him.

She saw Nathan lying in the river, his wings and part of his lower legs covered in boulders.

“Nathan!”

Preview of Chapter 7:
Heart to Heart

[Right now, I’d suggest you listen to, “Sora’s Sacrifice” ~ Kingdom Hearts]

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