I am Shadow Shard, a pegasus born to a mixed couple: Ice Shard the pegasus and Blazing Ray the unicorn. I am pure midnight black from forehead to hooftips, with no cutie mark just yet and a charcoal mane and tail with a streak of pale blue running through it.
My parents were quite interesting. You see, my father was a simple counter in the royal vault. My mother, well.....she was a hired assassin.
Ice Shard was a name feared by many gangs in the shadowy nighttime streets of Canterlot, and a respected, go-to shadowy blade for higher-ups in the chain of nobility. Some of her best customers included Fancy Pants himself as well as an elderly couple who weren't all with the times, and thus resorted to other methods of gaining power.
My mother was a light sky blue, with a navy mane and tail, much like Twilight Sparkle's but more with blue and a tad brighter. Her cutie mark was a shard of ice shrouded in a purple mist, the same color as Nightmare Moon's mane and tail. it made a sort of shield around the top, and tapered to a sharp orange point trailing behind the shard, showing her cutie mark for stealth kills. Not exactly the thing to go bragging about, but we made more than enough bits to get by, thanks to her.
Hay, one night's work for my mother resulted in enough bits to support us for two weeks with a little padding. By the time I was seven, our family vault was full to the brim with bits, so many that we had to buy a bigger vault, one inside the Canterlot Archives' vaults. Those thing are huge, believe me.
Get yourselves ready, because I'm about to tell you a fact. If you can name any important death in Canterlot in the last twenty years, and I can tell you exactly who did it and what gang they were from, or if they were solo. My mom brought home the weekly from her contact in the black hay market, covering all the biggest accomplishments. She made the front page more often than any other accomplished assassin did, a spot of pride on her part.
When I was nine, so just two years ago, my mother took on one of her more difficult missions: assassinate the famous model, Flora Flaremane. Her employer that night was an opposing model, Fleur de Lis, Fancy Pants's wife.She suited up and grabbed her gear for the mission, giving me an enchanted bow before she left, along with a kiss and a pat on the head. She'd kissed dad and left for a fashion show three blocks away, where Flaremane was debuting a new spring line made by an up-and-coming designer named Cross Stitch from Manehattan.
There she'd had a showdown with the hired blades after taking out Flora. She was only three feet from the door to the alleyway behind the theater when she killed the last one and bled out. Fancy had paid us for my mother's services, including the tip for all her services in the past. In total, he gave us three hundred thousand bits.
That night I'd been so......numb. I'd gone home and went into the attic, stashing my bow there before heading off to a tailor. I needed to get my mom's outfit replicated, so I could have a memory of her. It took twenty thousand of Fancy's reward, but I got it.
I sat and stared at the stone, reading the words magically etched there again and again. I wished her back with all my will, waiting for a warm hug and a friendly throwing knife competition. Nothing happened.
Again, I read those cursed words.
Ice Shard
901-930
A loving mother, a caring wife. A deadly assassin, feared and respected. May her daughter gain her grace and wisdom and she gain peace. Ice Shard was a ray of light in the lives of the ponies she knew.
Short, incapacitating, to the point--just like all her kills.
My father holds me as I cry, my tears blurring the lines of reality and imagination. I know she'll never come back. But I won't believe it. I never will. She's always been there for me, and she always will be....even if she's not with me anymore. I rise shakily and open my wing, dropping the black rose hidden there.
Fresh tears pour down my face as it falls, settling right below her name. Then I unfurl my other wing, and father levitates it out: a golden-edged cylinder made of glass. The yellow corona dances around it as he fits it snugly into the wire mount created for it, the enchanted shard of ice dancing in its tube as if the world is full of music.
I turn and leave, father with me. We leave behind the wire gates and trudge toward our estate, finalizing the act.
Goodbye, Mom.
I open the attic door and trudge inside, dropping my bags on the ground. My contacts spill out and I shove them back in their case, setting it aside. I dump the rest of the bags out and begin to sort them, using my mother's neat labels like she used them years ago.
It takes me most of that day, but I restock the attic and add my on things to it. A floor-length mirror, a new ponnequin plus outfit, and my contacts, along with weapons out my ears.
Just to test them, I take my contacts out and gingerly pop them in, blinking a few times at the alien feeling of the plastic disks settling against my eyes. Then I turn towards the mirror and study the pony staring back at me.
The pony with glowing blue eyes, clad in black leather.
The pony who will continue where her mother left off to support her family.
The pony who will stop at nothing until she eradicates the Black Sun gang and makes the survivors tremble at the mention of her name.
The pony......who is me, the new me. The old me has died with my mother, and I am a changed mare.
I am Shadow Shard, and I will fill my mother's feared spot.