It's A Magical Life

Three days ago, Twilight Sparkle and her friends had decided to brave the cursed storm and made a stop in Canterlot to find the Princess. Helpless, yet determined, the five best friends of Applejack had their hearts set on a mission. With Twilight’s magic being of no use to her under the girth of the weather, she was unable to communicate properly with the Princess. Spike’s once green and magical fire simply became a feeble string of smoke when he attempted to blow the letter into the air. This worried Twilight greatly, for Princess Celestia was the only one she could talk appropriately to in matters like this. If their communication was cut off because of the absence of magic, all her hopes relied on her own knowledge and the assistance of her friends. Or what was left of her hopes anyway.

A desperate flight to the promising towers of Canterlot was all her and the other ponies could muster.

To the ponies’ great misfortune, however, they couldn’t visit the Princess. As Rarity put it so well, of all things that could possibly have happened, arriving in Canterlot brought them news that could only be described as the worst possible thing: the Princess was gone!

Everypony knew Princess Celestia was the busiest and most responsible pony in all of Equestria, but that still didn’t stop Twilight from shouting in the royal guards’ faces about her absence.  All the anger and stress that was simmering inside of her over the past day reached a boiling point. Why did it matter if she offended a few of the Princess’s royal cronies and got thrown out of Canterlot? She wasn’t just going to sit quietly with all the other ponies in Ponyville and wait for their impending doom while Applejack was somewhere out in the storm of the century! She was a pony of action, and one who obsessed over going the distance and doing what it took to be successful! Having that last chance of a solution denied after all this…she couldn’t stand it. She was absolutely exasperated.

The guards wouldn’t even tell the ponies where she had business—not even they knew themselves. Only the riser of the moon and stars, Princess Luna, had any notice as to where she was going. This was odd especially to Twilight, seeing as she was always on close terms with the princess. Celestia was her mentor. She revealed situations and ideas to her that were too complex for the general public to understand or handle, because Twilight was her most trusted and faithful student. She, along like everypony else knew the riser of the very sun had to have secrets, but surely Twilight could have had at least some leeway. What place could have been so important and secret that only Princess Luna was able to be trusted with the information?

This was then where Fluttershy spoke up, asking one of the guards where Luna’s current whereabouts were. Before the disgruntled guards spoke, Rainbow Dash answered her, saying she heard from some of her fellow pegasus ponies up in Cloudsdale that she was visiting all the cloud communities in Equestria and even the metropolis, Cirrus City, over the Great Mare-ier Reef. Luna was obviously searching for some cloud factory that produced the storm.

At first, this seemed to be some welcoming news, compared to the series of unfortunate events that had been occurring over the past day, but then reality struck. There was no way to contact Luna, let alone track her down and find out where Princess Celestia could have gone; Equestria was an entire country. Trying to track down the co-ruler of Equestria in the skies of Equestria was so farfetched of a mission that it was laughable.

All five of them were thinking over the thought, but nobody, not even Pinkie Pie, was laughing. It was just another dead end…another excuse to throw in the towel and crawl back into their homes and hope for a miracle.

But nopony was giving up. Even in this grim circumstance they all still had the spirit of the Elements of Harmony within them. Applejack may have been missing but there was no way she was gone forever…it just couldn’t be. They just had to put the mission in effect before it was too late…before the storm spread all over Equestria.

It was early in the morning the day the ponies arrived at Canterlot. The sun still rose beautifully just like every day, but the grayness in the sky and the burning trees from the lightning strikes stole all beauty that once graced the sky. Flying towards the white and gold shadowy towers of Canterlot castle at sunrise would have been a spectacular sight in the past. Even in an average Cloudsdale produced rainstorm, the sight still would have been awesomely chilling. Given the magnitude of the storm, the fiasco with Applejack and the absence of magic, the small joys of life were overlooked. Now that the ponies were leaving the castle just a couple hours later, the sun shone weakly behind them in the east, well up in the sky. Facing the west, they beheld the epic scale of the storm. As far as the eye could see, was a single blanket of stone gray. Pulses and twists of cursed lightning littered the sky while the clouds swirled like a tornado.

It was a tough feat for Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash to carry Twilight, Rarity and Pinkie up all the way to Canterlot. Coming back with even worse spirits than before, the trip was much harder, even though it was a steady decline. The news of Celestia’s absence drained the high hopes they had when they first left the ground at Fluttershy’s cottage. When they landed, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were exhausted.

It sure was hard without magic.

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           Three days ago, shortly after they landed from their failed search at Canterlot, the five ponies began their foggy journey to rescue Applejack from her fate.

Present day, however, matters of an even larger scale, if it seemed possible, were happening in the most secret alicorn community known to ponykind: The Magic Sanctum.

At nearly fifty miles up in the clouds over the skies of Equestria, The Sanctum made Cloudsdale look like a low-hanging cumulonimbus. Clouds this high in the sky were flat and wispy, yet at the same time created a beautiful landscape unlike anypony had ever seen. All the colors of the rainbow, along with all the shades of those colors swirled around the Magic Sanctum like a force field. In fact, these colors were very much like a force field, for they shielded the Sanctum from the rest of the world. Any normal pegasus or other creature that managed to climb to a height of 260,000 feet would see a dazzling myriad of colors and simply stare in awe. Much like a rainbow, trying to pursue the colors would be an eternal chase.

Only alicorns, pegasus unicorns, could see and enter the Sanctum. In all the rolling hills, mountains, prairies and waters of Equestria, only two alicorns were known to the alicorns in the Magic Sanctum to exist, and those very beings were responsible for the very rising of night and day: Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. All other alicorns that lived down in Equestria were unknown to the Sanctum's sheltered citizens.

The Sanctum itself was comprised of six gigantic arches many miles long that all connected in the middle to a circular, vast, thousand foot tower which were all looked like they were made of clouds themselves. The main tower was comprised of hundreds of mini towers that hung off the side, much like Canterlot castle. The tower was so huge that the entire town of Ponyville wouldn’t have even covered the size of the base. Each and every tower housed the residents of the Sanctum.

Resident alicorns had a special magic within their blood that normal unicorns and even Land-Equestrian alicorns didn’t possess. This magic allowed them to twist time, change identities and distort reality. But the magic was so unfathomably powerful that it couldn’t be used outside of the Sanctum by any means, if they dared to leave. This magic, which was rarely used within the Sanctum, was incredible, yet it could bring absolutely chaotic results if used on unpracticed hooves on the land below. The last known being to use such magic for terrible gain was none other than Discord himself.

Nopony dared to leave, because nopony dared to defy Princess Celestia, for she was the wisest alicorn in all of Equestria and knew what was the very best for all of them, or at least that was what they were told. For thousands of years the alicorns lived in harmony up in the Sanctum, going about their own businesses and activities. The Sanctum had all they wanted and needed.  Why would they ever think of leaving?

Nopony. Nopony except the only alicorn to ever disobey Celestia, who stepped beyond the magic barrier. She was one of the strongest and most intelligent alicorns in the Sanctum, and wasn’t keen on letting anypony forgetting it. She was born with the name Abby, under the first class of alicorns. As the years went on and as she grew into adulthood, she bestowed upon herself with a new name that her cynicism couldn’t deny any longer: Absissa the Almighty. Rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? With this name she longed to go beyond what anypony in the Magic Sanctum had ever done and do what no soul ever even dreamed to do: rule the land below. In her eyes Celestia and Absissa were both counterparts. She wanted nothing more than to dethrone Celestia and her sister and retain all magic in Equestria for herself.

Absissa, all her preparations in order, finally had enough and escaped from her home in the tower three nights ago, or at least, that's what Celestia had told them. She left the Sanctum for good and took all the knowledge she had accumulated with her.

Nopony wanted to believe she had left the Sanctum, but Princess Celestia was still notified at once. The Princess, who had just come from a freak lightning storm that was happening in Canterlot, was there as fast as her great wings could carry her. She wasted no time searching for Absissa when she got to the Sanctum like the other ponies and simply asked for anypony to come forth who had any information about Absissa’s reason for leaving and where she was headed. Everypony just looked worriedly at each other and dismissed any knowing of her departure. With a polite nod at Mrs. Majoris, the overseer of the Sanctum and a hurried curtsey to the other ponies, she shot down off the edge of the clouds back towards Equestria.

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Life went about as usual after a few days in the Magic Sanctum. Even though the Sanctum was a secret and protected place, it was just like any other town. Carol Majoris, the overseer, had the same duties as the mayor in Ponyville. She discussed the future plans of the town and oversaw them, attended town celebrations and helped plan new buildings to be made. All the buildings in the Sanctum, the schools, the shops, the restaurants and others, like the thousand-foot tower and the six giant arches, were made out of the crystals that formed the clouds. But the town was home to no architects or engineers; Celestia used her ancient alicorn magic to construct it all herself.

Mrs. Majoris’ other job, besides being the overseer, was also in charge of the utilization of the Great Portal, which lay in the Sanctum Hall, the town headquarters. The Great Portal, or the GP as everyone liked to call it, was a horseshoe shaped arch about the height of a two story house. Rather than a portal that teleported objects and beings, it was a screen that showed the lands of Equestria below. This was used primarily to observe changes in land formations, cloud formations and other forms of nature over the past thousand years. The image within the portal could be zoomed in all the way to the size of the tip of a blade of grass all the way up to the entire land of Equestria. With these powers, the machine was used for science in the schools in the Magic Sanctum and for scientist ponies around the area. With the great knowledge this portal brought them, they were able to find out more about Equestrian nature than most ponies down on land could learn in the schools taught by the greatest teachers. Because the image on screen could be rewound, towns and cities like Ponyville, Manehattan and Fillydelphia could be shown before the land beneath them was even broken into. The only thing the portal didn't show, however, were alicorns. As far as the city knew, Celestia and Luna were the only living alicorns outside of the Sanctum.

About twenty other alicorns helped run and maintain the portal. Among one of these was Angelica, a second class alicorn about the same age as Pinkie Pie. She was light bluish-green with a white and mint colored mane. Her tail, also the same colors, was longer than even Fluttershy’s, so she often had it ponytailed to avoid tripping over it when she walked. What was most stunning about her wasn’t the emerald anklets she wore on her back legs, which were very pretty indeed, but her bright emerald eyes. Because of this she was often harassed by other male alicorns and pursued by them as well. She enjoyed the chase, although she didn’t really care for any of them. She liked fantasizing about Princess Celestia allowing her to visit the land below and mingle with the earth ponies and unicorns.

Oh how she dreamed…