Twilight awoke with a start. Her surroundings were dark and what little she could see was altogether unfamiliar. She rubbed her hooves against her temples, groaning.
‘My head hasn’t felt like this since I drank the Apple Family’s ‘Special Brew’ without realising just how ‘special’ it was...’
She cast out a soft glow from her horn, squinting slightly as she tried to get a better look at the room she was in. It was fairly large, with an exit on one side of the room. But her eyes were drawn more to the array of symbols etched into the floor.
‘Runes?’ she thought, looking at the collection of angular lines carved into the floor, ‘protection runes, channeling runes, even runes to prevent thaumic overload and arcane backflow. These are all safety runes...so...this room is used for spellcasting? And either dangerous or experimental spells, going by the level of protection...’
‘Is that what got me here? A spell of some kind? Surely there’d be somepony else around? Maybe something went wrong with the spell? I...I hope nopony was hurt! With all these precautions, it must have been quite the spell...’
She cast her eyes over herself, checking to see if there were any signs of what had happened to her. She didn’t see any injuries. Her coat, her cutie-mark, her wings, they were all intact.
‘Okay, well I seem to be okay. At least tha--’
She stopped mid-thought, as her brain caught up with her eyes.
‘Wings. I...have...WINGS?!’
She looked again, and gingerly prodded at the offending appendages with a hoof. They remained stubbornly real.
Now, Twilight was aware that she didn’t always have the greatest memory. Facts and figures were one thing, and if it was in a book or on a test, she could memorise it with a speed and accuracy that left even the brightest scholar green with envy. When it came to day to day life though, she was a little more scatter-brained. Or, as her mother liked to put it, she would forget her cutie-mark if it wasn’t stuck firmly to her rump. It was part of the reason she liked to put precise and comprehensive lists together — with a list, she could be sure to remember every detail.
Twilight was nonetheless certain that she had not previously possessed wings.
She tentatively gave the wings a small flex. It was an odd feeling, suddenly having an entirely new body part to deal with, but as she felt the slight tug on her back muscles, a memory came to her.
‘A blinding flash of light, a pulling, stretching sensation as my body changed, my limbs lengthening, the feeling of magic enveloping me, a metallic taste in my mouth, a ringing noise in my ears, and that same tugging at my back, as new appendages grew, everything is white and there’s a smell of copper and suddenly I feel the ground beneath my hooves and then —’
And then nothing. There was no more to the memory, but she was pretty sure she knew what it had been.
‘Was that what happened? Changing into this? Into...an alicorn? Was that the spell I’d been part of? I didn’t even know such a thing was possible!’
Celestia had always been very reticent about sharing information on exactly how Alicorns came about. Well, she had been reticent after a young Twilight had spent nearly a month believing her story about how she had won the wings in a race with a pegasus. Then she had met her new foalsitter Cadance, and realised that her mentor may not have been entirely honest. Yeah — immortality apparently gives you an odd sense of humour.
She strained her mind, trying to follow the thread of memory back to something useful. Unfortunately her mental efforts weren’t giving her much in the way of results. She remembered her studies, her time in Canterlot, her time in Ponyville. She remembered the library. She remembered Discord and Nightmare Moon. The Crystal Empire. She remembered her friends. There were no gaps in her memory that she could discern, it just became muddled and incoherent at the end. Flashes of events, a jumble of images and thoughts.
‘A crowd glaring at each other. Pouring rain and scorching sun in quick succession. Rainbow Dash beset by animals. Fluttershy leaving town. Sweet Apple Acres in disrepair. Carousel Boutique full of dull brown clothes, uglier than anything that had ever been seen in there before.’
Twilight gasped out loud, a degree of recollection returning to her.
“Of course! The girls, my spell! I switched their cutie marks. But what happened next? Why is it so hard to remember? Come on Twilight, think think think!” she muttered to herself.
There was a sudden scuffling noise from the other side of the room, followed by a stallion’s voice;
“Wh...who’s there? I thought this building was empty. I’m just a scavenger, I ain’t nopony important. If you’re with one of the gangs I’ll leave, I don’t want no trouble.”
What in Celestia’s name was he talking about? Gangs? Just where was she? Gangs were the purview of pulp stories and cheesy musicals, not the peaceful streets of Equestria.Her horn lit up brighter, shedding light across the room to illuminate a brown coloured earth pony standing at the entrance to the room. He was young, barely older than a colt. A dark mane fell shaggily over his back, and his hindquarters were adorned with a cutie-mark of a magnifying glass.
“Hello, my name is Twilight Sparkle,” she called out to him, trying to make her voice sound as gentle as she could “I wonder if you could tell me where I am? I’m afraid I’m a little confused right now, and I could really use your help.”
She smiled at him, hoping to put him at ease. Maybe she could get some answers, and begin figuring out where she was and why she was wherever that happened to be. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case, as the colt stared at her with wide eyes, before bolting out of the room like all the demons of Tartarus were after him. Or at least some of the scarier ones.
“Wait!” she called out. “Please, I need your help!”
She ran after him, exiting the room through the doorway he’d been standing in. She galloped down the corridor, seeing only one way for him to have gone. Reaching the end, she came to a door. It had clearly been boarded up, but some of the boards had been pried loose, leaving enough room for a smaller pony to squeeze through. It didn’t take much to deduce the colt she had seen was likely the responsible party for the minor act of vandalism.
Twilight lowered her head, squeezing herself through the gap in the hopes of catching up with the fleeing brown pony. It was as she was squeezing through that she realised she’d forgotten to account for her newfound wings. The source of this realisation was a jutting nail, which left a long gash along her left wing.
“Owwww, ow ow owwww!” Twilight whimpered, her eyes watering “Stupid Twilight, stupid!”
Waiting for the pain in her wing to die down, Twilight took a moment to take stock of her situation. She was now bleeding, her left wing was likely useless to her, she had lost track of the pony she was following, she still didn’t know where she was, and she probably had tetanus. Wonderful. This was a fine mess she had gotten herself into. Or somepony else had. She still wasn’t sure what had happened on that front.
Having enumerated the many benefits of her situation in her mind, and the stinging pain having dulled to more of a throbbing pain, Twilight finished wriggling her way out of the door, giving the protruding nail a wide berth. She stood up and glanced around, vague thoughts of finding something to wrap her wing in running through her head.
These thoughts left her mind pretty quickly once she saw where she was. She was in lower Canterlot! Any elation she might have felt at this was tempered by a few key details though; the usually busy streets were empty, the buildings were boarded up, and the usual pristine white of the city was dulled and dirty, and made all the more sinister by the red sheen that bathed it.
A red sheen? Well yes, that ties into the second unsettling detail; they were reflecting the light from the shield that hung in the sky over the city. It reminded her of the one her brother, Shining Armor, had thrown up when the Changelings had attacked the city. But instead of the gentle lilac colour of his shield, this one was a harsh scarlet colour. Whatever the cause of the unsettling new security feature, it didn’t bode well in regards to whatever might be going on. Twilight was not a conceited mare — quite the opposite — but she couldn’t help feeling that whatever had befallen her was somehow tied into whatever had befallen Canterlot.
But if the shield above the city worried her, it was nothing compared to what she saw next. A simple sign, one repeated on many of the boarded up doors she could see along the street.
This building closed by order of Queen Everbright; Eternal Light of Equestria
Trespassers will be brought before the Royal Court
Author's Note
Okay, so I originally wrote this, and the next chapter in the first person (first pony?) perspective. Partway into writing the third chapter I realised that it really was not working for this story. So I've redone it in the third person, with the second chapter to follow shortly. I think it reads a heck of a lot better now, and I hope anyone who saw it prior to this will agree. Once I get the second chapter redone, we'll be on our way with the story again, so stay tuned.
Chapter I - Coffee and Princesses
My name is Twilight Sparkle. I am the student of Princess Celestia. I am the bearer of the Element of Magic. I am the librarian in Ponyville. I have faced goddesses, manticores, hydras, changelings, and the very embodiment of chaos. I have brought down a king, and a queen.
But I did all these things with friends at my side, and I did them with some knowledge of the situation at hoof, even if I didn’t fully understand what was happening. I drew courage from my friends.
Now, I found myself in a situation I didn’t understand. In a place I knew, yet one that had changed, far more than a few days could account for. I had no friends to help me. I had little to go on but what I could see, and a name — Queen Everbright. The questions were mounting up, and all I knew is that I wouldn’t find any answers by simply standing around.Excerpt from the diary of Twilight Sparkle
Twilight squeezed her way back out of the building she had awoken in. A search of it had not managed to reveal anything interesting, nor to shed light on the how and the why of her waking up there. She had managed to find an old, and relatively clean, red curtain to wrap her wing in. She might not be as adept as Rarity when it came to fashion, but at least the colour would hide the blood.
‘Rarity. I wish she was here.’ she thought to herself, ‘I wish all the girls were. I wish Spike was here. What happened to them? It’s clear something big has happened, and I’m sure we would have gotten involved. Ever since we became the bearers of the Elements of Harmony, getting involved has been somewhat of a pattern for us. I hope they’re all okay.’
‘Still, this isn’t the time to get lost in worries. I need to figure out what’s going on here. If I can find somepony that will talk to me, perhaps I can get an idea of what happened. I’d better be careful though.’
The colt she had seen had mentioned gangs, and even though she hadn’t gotten anything more out of him, that wasn’t exactly promising. Gangs was not a word which conjured up images of helpful ponies, pleasant ponies, or indeed ponies which she would in any way want to meet.
Out in the street once again, she moved from building to building. Most were boarded up, and none of them showed signs of life. Apart from the solitary colt she’d seen upon waking up, this part of the city seemed to be utterly abandoned. Most of the buildings were stripped of anything of use, but a lucky find did net Twilight a bottle of drinking water. Unfortunately, this not only made her realise how thirsty she had been, but also brought to the forefront of her mind just how hungry she was. How very, incredibly, starvingly famished she was. She had yet to come across any food though — even the plants that had once graced the window boxes and boulevards of the city were either dead or gone.
Given her hunger, Twilight was understandably excited to see a small cafe further along the street she was on. The caution she had been affording herself, given the unknown situation, was abandoned as she rushed forward to the small building. The sign above, though missing a few letters now, proclaimed the cafe to be called Coffee and Cream.A couple of scattered chairs and tables sat on the cobblestones in front, and behind them sat a broken door and a shattered window.
Her horn aglow, Twilight carefully levitated the broken glass on the floor out of her way. The incident with her wing had made her keen to avoid further injury. One flesh wound was bad enough, she had no desire to add to it.
Having got inside, she glanced around a bit more, her heart sinking. The place seemed to have been pretty thoroughly picked over. There seemed little chance of finding anything of use. Still, she was here now, so she might as well search. Unfortunately, a search of the room found nothing but a hoof-full of bits in the register. Given the unlikelihood of her finding the time or place to indulge in a spot of shopping, she left them where they were, and moved through to the kitchen.
She wasted no time in throwing open the cupboards, levitating an assortment of pots, pans, plates, cups and baking trays out, but not finding anything to satiate her now gnawing hunger. However, just as she’d resigned herself to the fact this cafe wasn’t going to yield so much as a stale wheat cracker, she came across the stairs behind the kitchen. They led to the living quarters above, but more importantly, the door at the top seemed to be unbreached — there were scuff marks, certainly, but it was pretty sturdy, and didn’t seem to have been broken through.
Running up the stairs, she took a closer look, and confirmed her hopes. The door was locked, meaning anything behind it might be intact and unlooted!
Her excitement lasted all of a few seconds as she realised she hadn’t the slightest idea of how she was going to get through the door. She gave it a few shoves, but she was no Applejack. Bucking her way through such a sturdy door wasn’t going to be on the cards anytime soon.
Teleporting inside was likewise out, without knowing what lay on the other side, she could easily end up with a chair intersecting her spleen when she reappeared, or a lamp lodged firmly in her pancreas. It wasn’t something that would end cleanly or pleasantly.
Of course, she had some more bombastic spells which would easily allow her to breach the door. Unfortunately they all tended towards the noisy side of loud, and she was trying to keep a low profile. Blowing holes in the building was not a course of action that came anywhere near the definition of low-key. Who knew what sort of ponies might come to investigate? Given the lack of noise in the area, a loud explosion would stick out like a buffalo in Cloudsdale.
Stood in front of the offending door, Twilight racked her brain for solutions, but wasn’t able to come up with anything useful. This sort of thing always seemed so much easier in stories; the plucky heroine would pick the lock with a mane-pin, and be into the room before you could say overused plot device!
Unfortunately, not only did Twilight not have any mane-pins, but when she had tried that after reading some adventure books as a foal, the end result had been her jamming the lock on her house, and locking her parents out until the locksmith could be called. That had also marked the end of her mercifully brief ‘spy phase’.
Still, the memory, as embarrassing as it was, gave her an idea! The first thing the locksmith had done on arrival was to let her parents into the house by removing the door. If she could just get the door off of its hinges, she should be able to wiggle it free, locked or not!
She studied the edge of the door, and gave a small smile — the door opened outwards, she was in luck! Concentrating, she focused on the hinges, and carefully wrapped the pins in the glow of her magic, sliding them up and out of their resting place. They came out surprisingly easily; she had expected them to be more stubborn.
A magical tug on the side of the door resulted in it giving a little. Now she had something to work with, it didn’t take long for her to slide the door out of its frame, leaning against the wall of the hallway and giving her access to the rooms beyond.
What she saw within was a nicely furnished living room, more importantly, it was one which hadn’t yet been ransacked. The room itself didn’t have much of interest in it, though her attention was drawn to a large portrait on one wall. In it were a brown mare and a white stallion, along with a small milky brown filly. A quick look at the small nameplate on the frame told her that Coffee and Cream wasn’t just the name of the shop, the room she was in had once belonged to a family of Earth Ponies; Coffee Press, Cream Cake — she briefly had to wonder if there was any relation to the Cakes she knew — and their daughter Coffee Cake.
She poked her head into a door on the far side of the room, and found exactly what she had been hoping to see — the kitchen! A quick rummage through the cupboards didn’t turn up much, but she did find a box of Sugar Apple Bombs (A burst of apple at the core of every bite!). It wasn’t exactly fine dining, but Twilight wasn’t feeling particularly picky at this point.
She found herself a bowl and a spoon, and pretty soon she was munching on the saccharine cereal. Unfortunately, the lack of any bottles of fresh squeezed milk meant that she had to eat it dry, but she was hungry enough that this didn’t put her off.
The cereal was sweet, very sweet, and clearly designed to appeal to a foal’s palate rather than a grown mare’s. In her famished state, Twilight had hardly ever tasted anything better. She managed to finish off the entire box, leaving her happily full, albeit with a slight desire to brush her teeth.
Her primary objective now completed, she decided she may as well have a look around the rest of the rooms while she was here, just in case something useful caught her eye.
The first room she found was a disappointment. The bathroom had gotten her hopes up that she might be able to clean her wing up a bit, but a quick test showed that the water to the building was no longer running.
The next room was the master bedroom, and a quick poke around found nothing interesting within. A few personal possessions were still around, but it was clear that a fair amount had been taken —there weren’t many clothes in the closet, and several drawers were empty.
Twilight was a conscientious and law abiding mare, and she felt slightly guilty rifling through the house of some strangers, but given the circumstances she reasoned that it was probably forgivable. Still, she was careful to put everything back in its place — it just felt more respectful to keep it tidy.
The final room, after an uneventful glance into an airing cupboard, was painted a rather cheerful shade of pink — and Twilight’s mind quickly flashed to a pony who she knew would wholeheartedly approve of that colour choice — and had clearly belonged to the little filly she’d seen in the painting. Poking around a foal’s room was even more uncomfortable than poking around the parents’ room had been, so after a cursory glance around she was ready to call it good. But, turning to leave, she spotted something wedged between the bed and the wall. Levitating it out revealed it to be a small book, the cover neatly decorated with pink paper.
Curiosity getting the better of her, she flipped it open. It was a diary! It was only about a quarter full, and ignoring that little pang of guilt in favour of her curiosity, she skimmed a few entries. If she had been expecting a blow by blow account of what had happened in the city, she was disappointed. It was mostly about school and the young filly’s friends. If anything going on had bothered her, she hadn’t mentioned it here. Twilight hurriedly flipped to the last filled page, to see if that would shed any light on things;
Dear Diary
Mummy and Daddy said we are going to visit my cousins in ponyvill. Mummy is going to help me pack my things later so she knows I have the stuff I need. Im excited that Im going there. I hope there will be ponies to play with. Lots of my friends have left or stopped coming to school. Even Sprinkle Stripe went to manehatten to stay with her granny.
I dont think Mummy and Daddy are as excited though. They always look worried. I herd them talking when they thought I was asleep. They were saying the Queen is bad and Daddy said a bad word about her. I dont know why because at school they tell us the Queen is a good Queen. She used to be the Princess anyways and everyone knows Princesses are good. When I grow up I want to be a princess. I will live in a big palace and tell people what to do. Sprinkle Stripe always said I couldn’t be a Princess because the Queen said no more Princesses but I bet she’d let me and we would be friends.
We are going soon but I will put you on my bed so I dont forget you and I can tell you all about ponyvill.
Princess Coffee Cake
Twilight’s blood ran cold.
“used to be the Princess”
“the Queen said no more Princesses”
Her name was Queen Everbright. Twilight had seen for herself what had happened to Princess Luna once. Luna also used to be a Princess, then something had happened to her, and she had taken the name Nightmare Moon.
Queen Everbright.
Everbright.
She used to be a princess. Could it really be what she feared?
Twilight had to find out more. She needed to know what had happened.
Any thoughts of further investigation were interrupted though, as it was at this precise moment that she heard the voices coming from downstairs.
Author's Note
And that's chapter two rewritten. We shall now continue on with the story in the new, hopefully superior, third person style. Keep your eyes glued to this spot for further exciting chapters.
