Keepsakes

by Masterdramon

Rating: teen
Tags: King Sombra, Princess Celestia, Tragedy, Discord, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Princess Luna
Length: 8018

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there lived a wise and regal Princess who knew many strange and secret things, but she had nopony to pass on her knowledge to. So she chose a young and clever unicorn to be her faithful student.

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there lived a wise and regal Princess who knew many strange and secret things, but the Princess had nopony to pass on her great knowledge to. So she chose a young and clever unicorn to be her faithful student.

Four-part miniseries.

Published 2014-02-27 15:10:05 UTC
Last updated 2014-03-06 09:52:04 UTC

Part I - Enslavement

Keepsakes – Enslavement

Disclaimer: In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t own My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. All MLP-related characters, settings, etc. are the intellectual property of Lauren Faust and Hasbro.

[--------------------]

“When are you going to forget about me?”

The question had come completely unbidden, after at least an hour of total silence, and for quite a while Princess Luna felt at a loss as to how to answer it.

It was hardly uncommon for her faithful student to remain so quiet during these practice sessions – he was generally taciturn by nature, and doubly so whenever focusing on his magic. And when he did speak up during training, it tended to be a purely practical question: “Would this transmutation require the application of Starswirl’s Third Law or his Fourth?” or “When casting barrier magic, what stance is preferable for maximum strength?”

She could answer those questions easily enough; long before she’d become a Princess of Equestria she’d been an accomplished sorcerer in her own right (stronger even than Celestia in terms of raw power, and her sister wouldn’t dare dispute it), and she was glad to pass along whatever knowledge she could. That was the reason she’d taken on an apprentice in the first place, after all.

But this?

He was continuing his task for the day’s lesson as she pondered, levitating a rather impressive amount of stone and slowly reforming it into a statue of a griffin. But she could see in his eyes that at least half his concentration was diverted to awaiting an answer. Clearly, this was a question that had been brewing in his skull for a while.

Luna turned it over in her own head a few times, trying to come up with something to say in response. It was such a curious question, in more ways than one, and it had blindsided her utterly.

What he was alluding to was not hard to grasp, but why he’d chosen to ask it here and now was far less obvious. The precise wording was strange, too – not “whether” she would forget him, but “when.” As if he’d already thought it over well beforehand, and concluded it to be an inevitability.

Finally, having come up with nothing cleverer or more insightful to say, she replied, “We shall not.”

“Do not lie to me,” said the young unicorn, raising his voice slightly. “You have been my teacher for over five years now, my Princess. If nothing else…I believe I deserve a sincere answer.”

“And thou hast received one,” Luna insisted, far more firmly than she felt in her mind. “We have not the slightest idea why thou wouldst even consider such an inquiry.”

“Please, Princess. Do not pretend that our hooves stand on equal ground. It debases us both,” he responded with a snort. “You are an alicorn. Immortal, and powerful beyond measure. In a thousand years you shall be just as mighty; just as regal; just as beautiful, as you are at this moment. Whilst I shall be so much dust in the wind.”

Luna said nothing in answer to this.

“I may be your first student, Princess…but I very much doubt that I shall be your last,” continued the unicorn. “As the centuries go by, you will meet millions of other ponies – many of them no doubt grander and cleverer than I could ever hope to be. Though I may be distinct in your mind’s eye now, it is natural that eventually, memories of my face and mane shall fade. It is a matter of when, not if.”

Again, silence. The Princess was simply stunned by the sheer amount of pent-up frustrations now being vented at her.

“How long will it take, truly?” he demanded, not waiting for an answer. “A decade? A century? I doubt a millennium! When my bones lay cold and stiff, buried in the darkness of the earth…what use will it be, for you to remember some worthless, departed nopony?!”

There was a surge of magical power as the young unicorn stomped his hooves to the carpet, waves of green and purple bursting around them. This seemed to snap him back to his senses, however, and he instantly backed away, taking on a much less aggressive stance.

“I…apologize, Princess. In my zeal, I forgot myself,” he murmured, his head hung low. “I am, of course, owed no answer beyond that you have graciously chosen to offer me.”

Again, not giving her a chance to say anything in response, he turned away, using his magic to return the various tomes and talismans they had been working with to their rightful places. “I humbly request that I be allowed to cut today’s lesson short, Princess. I am not in the right state to learn from you, and for that I am truly sorry,” he said.

His tail was already disappearing up the tower steps, to the small chamber where he now lived in the castle, by the time Luna managed to find her voice.

“Sombra…” she called after him softly. Not that it did any good.

[--------------------]

She’d found him in the unlikeliest of places; an encounter that, whatever his fears, she was never going to forget.

The town had been known as Hoofwell, then. Calm, rustic, and peaceful…or at least as much as any place could be, deep into the Age of Discord.

Discord had been no ordinary tyrant – surely, he would’ve considered properly ruling as too boring a way to spend his time – preferring instead to step in and make mischief wherever the mood happened to strike him.

As such, local despots were not an uncommon sight to see spring up in his absence. True, their existence was a precarious prospect from one day to another; at any moment, after all, the Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony might pop in and transform them into a rutabaga. Just because.

But perhaps the unicorn who had dominated Hoofwell for decades on-end was simply lucky, or else its citizens were rather quite unlucky. Because from the moment that he’d come to the quiet mining town, eager to exploit its ample gem deposits and sturdy workforce, Discord had been nowhere to be seen for miles in any direction.

This unicorn, who carried the deceptively unthreatening name of Vanishing Cream, claimed that this was because he could claim descent from Princess Platinum herself, permitting ancient magic that only he could use to keep Discord away.

Both claims were spurious at best – Platinum was generally agreed by historians to have borne no foals, and Discord tended to shrug off even the most powerful of barrier spells as if they were toilet paper – but this was a unicorn nopony was ever going to say such things in the face of.

For whether his assertions regarding his lineage were true or not, there was no doubt that he wielded magic of rare might.

His special talent, as befit his name, was banishment. Most unicorns, if they were powerful enough to perform teleportation magic at all, could only cast it upon themselves, and only across short distances. But the tyrant possessed the ability to cast such spells offensively, and took full advantage of such.

Those who opposed Vanishing Cream were dealt with swiftly and mercilessly; teleported directly into harsh dungeons or, in extreme cases, off of the planet entirely. Rumors held that those ponies now lived amongst the stars themselves.

Many attempts to depose him occurred, but none succeeded. Eventually, the ponies of Hoofwell stopped trying.

And so it came to be that, by the time Sombra was born, Hoofwell was a dreary and desolate place. Everypony kept their heads down, working from sunrise to long past sundown each day extracting riches for their cruel master.

Talk of rebellion was treated with ridicule at best and violent censure at worst. The wicked unicorn was quite eager to punish entire crowds for the actions of a few, and with none nearly powerful enough to challenge his rule for more than a few seconds, nopony was willing to take that risk.

Sombra had been a gangly filly, which was something of a problem – those ponies in whom Vanishing Cream saw no potential for physical labor, tended to quite literally disappear.

His parents, desperate to prove his worth, pushed their son to the brink. From the moment he could walk, he was already being made to carry stones, larger and larger each time. Often, he’d collapse, his knobby knees giving way to the weight and sending him crashing to the ground muzzle-first.

But he would always get back up, right afterward. Even when it hurt so very much, just to stand. Because that was what his parents expected of him, and he knew he couldn’t let them down.

Sombra’s parents had both been earth ponies, so the horn had perplexed them from the moment he emerged from the womb. Initially, they had prayed – to whom, they could not say, as there was only one known deity in Equestria and he sure as hoof didn’t take beseechments – that the feature was purely cosmetic, and wouldn’t do much more than spark a bit when their boy grew excited.

For several years, that was precisely the case.

Vanishing Cream, like so many other tyrants, was possessed of overwhelming paranoia. As he could not conceive of being bested by anypony other than a more magically gifted unicorn, any sign of magic at all was punished severely.

Most of Hoofwell’s adult unicorns had been banished to various prisons years ago, never to be heard from again. Newly born unicorns were watched closely from birth, and in most cases “marked” by a spell that would alert Vanishing Cream’s forces upon each and every instance of magic.

And as for the punishments, they were as simple as they were cruel. Upon the first infraction, the foal would be beaten within an inch of their lives. Upon the second, they would be snatched away from their parents, and taken to their wicked master. What happened to them after that…nopony knew for certain.

So one could only imagine the shock and horror upon the couple’s faces when they’d returned home to find the young Sombra giggling and levitating crystals around, forming elaborate and colorful structures to surround himself.

“Look, mama! Papa!” he’d squealed in delight; his voice high-pitched and jovial, with a slight lisp. “I made some new friends!”

He hadn’t understood, of course. How could he? They’d never thought to explain – how could they warn him, after all, away from something he had absolutely no concept of? For young unicorns, magic came as naturally as breathing, even if the word “magic” had never been spoken in their presence.

So what was he to think when his parents swarmed over him in a panic, begging him to stop the spell (what in the whole wide world of Equestria was a “spell,” anyway?) while their eyes darted about their small home, as if expecting attackers any moment? The young Sombra had had no idea what’d gone wrong; what he had done to earn such expressions of anxiety and fear.

He’d tried to ask them, but the words wouldn’t come. Only hot, sticky tears, brought on by the utter pain that was emanating from Sombra’s parents like a wave.

Instead, his father had addressed him, his words chosen slowly and carefully. “What you just did, Sombra…making your horn glow, and doing…things with it…” he’d began, clearly uncertain how to broach the subject.

“You must never, ever do it again. Do you understand us, dear?” his mother had finished, trying to wipe the tears from her son’s tiny face.

“Never.”

[--------------------]

Sombra’s parents had stood vigil over him night and day for a whole week following that unfortunate day, fearful but willing to fight whoever might come to hurt their son. They were scared of what he’d done, that was true, even disappointed…but Sombra was still their foal, which meant nopony was going to lay a damn hoof on him so long as they lived.

But to their surprise, nopony did. There wasn’t even an inquiry. Vanishing Cream’s henchponies weren’t exactly known for their restraint, to put it mildly…but for whatever reason, they seemed not to have even noticed their son’s transgressions.

There was a reason for this, although neither earth pony had any possible way of knowing. The spell used to detect instances of magic in Hoofwell was a rather simple one, if extremely powerful; as such, most any sufficiently learned unicorn would be able to “mask” their energies from it, given enough time to prepare.

Sombra, however, did so completely unconsciously – signifying a level of raw power that was nearly unparalleled in the history of Equestria.

Indeed, while it’d be centuries before Professor Inkwell would develop the first standardized scale for quantitatively measuring such, Luna could only name perhaps three or four unicorns with comparable potential, ever.

All this meant absolutely nothing to Sombra himself, of course. Using what his parents called “magic” had been the greatest feeling he’d ever experienced: putting his very essence out into the world and twisting, pulling, mastering. He’d never been in a position to control anything in his life before, and the feeling was…

There were no words. None that the young unicorn knew, at least.

More than anything else, he wanted to do it again. To test the limits of this new, strange, wonderful power, and to break through them just as quick. To feel once more, even in this small, tiny corner of this small, tiny town, as if he was in control of something.

But his parents had sat him down, numerous times since that fateful day, to explain in harsh tones that were he to do magic again, bad things could happen. He could get hurt. They could get hurt. And worst of all…they could lose him forever.

Sombra didn’t truly understand – to the gangly foal, Vanishing Cream’s edicts were as strange and unknowable as the stars themselves – but he obeyed all the same.

He loved them too much not to.

It was hard, though. Once he knew he had the power, it was impossible to ignore it. It built up constantly, growing and growing in his very core until it seemed almost fit to burst. Holding the magic in gave him splitting headaches, and required nearly around-the-clock concentration.

Sombra became skilled, from a very young age, at breathing exercises and (what could charitably be called) meditation. He needed to be, because he could not afford any mistakes. The moment he slipped up sparks tended to fly from his horn, brilliant green and purple hues, and as such he grew to dread simply interacting with other ponies. One second of weakness, just one, to the wrong pony, and…

Well, he wasn’t completely sure. But for his parents’ sake, he wasn’t going to find out.

Things became even more difficult when, from the perspective of Vanishing Cream’s regime at least, Sombra became a stallion. This was the age when, in later and more enlightened times, fillies and colts would tend to be sent to their first years of school.

But in Hoofwell, it instead signified the start of a lifetime working in the mines.

Loading rocks, gems, and heavy equipment onto his back, or dragging them behind him in rusted carts, was made all the more miserable by the knowledge that he could make the work a hundred times easier, with merely a thought.

It was always on his mind, every second of every day that he labored for his pitiless master.

[--------------------]

Years passed by, Sombra’s life static and unchanging.

Each day, he would do the same exact thing. He would awaken before dawn, trudge toward the mines, and do precisely what he was told until released. A single, short break for lunch was the only respite he received. And it was quite necessary, for once his workday concluded, long past sunset, the last thing on Sombra’s mind tended to be food.

Exhausted, he would drag himself back home, managing just long enough to collapse in a heap on the floor. Only to repeat the entire process several hours later.

It was harsh, it was cruel, and it was never-ending. And Sombra hated it with all the fire a young colt could muster.

Countless hours of blood, sweat, and toil had stoked a heart full of bitterness and resentment…not to mention confusion. Soon, he knew, he would be old enough to strike out on his own, apart from his parents. He might even be free to wield his magic with abandon elsewhere.

But truthfully, where could he go? He had never known, had never even seen a glimpse of, the world beyond Hoofwell; he knew only that to venture forth would be to place himself at the mercy of all that Discord had wrought upon their land. And weak and naïve as he convinced himself he was, Sombra was certain he wouldn’t last a day.

Which left only one other conclusion: that this was all there would be to his future. He would drive pickaxes into sediment, and cart heavy packages of jewels to who-knew-where, for the rest of his natural life. After which, he would die…and not one pony would notice or care in the long run.

At most, the greatest happiness, the only happiness he could possibly hope to wish for, would be to find a similarly hard-laboring mare and start a family. One which would consign any potential children to this selfsame fate, of course.

There was one who seemed interested, or at least Sombra thought so; admittedly, he had absolutely no experience in judging these sorts of things.

He hadn’t yet bothered to learn her name. Her coat was a deep green, her mane rose-colored and cut short. From what little he’d thought to observe, she was strong and hardworking, gifted with a zeal for her duties that was almost but not quite infectious.

She seemed to make an effort to lend him a smile every time they passed in the mines, which made Sombra feel distinctly awkward. He didn’t see very many smiles in his day-to-day life, and while he tried to return them when possible, he had no idea if he was doing it right.

He did not, however, return her repeated entreaties to share a meal together. Oh, he attempted to be polite about it (well…he thought he was being polite), but each time he firmly refused. Eating together would likely mean conversation, and that was just an invitation for a slip in his control.

No…everything was safer if he did it alone. Eating, sleeping, and work itself whenever possible.

There was another reason that he wasn’t interested, however, that had little to do with caution. Sombra was still a blank flank, and just beginning to reach the age at which that was somewhat unusual. The green-coated mare, by contrast, had earned her Cutie Mark over a year ago: a minecart.

This was hardly an atypical sight around the mines. Most of Sombra’s fellow laborers bore pickaxes or heavy rocks or something else similar. But in a way, this had come to terrify the young colt.

Whatever transcendental entity or law that governed these things – Fate or Destiny or whatever one wanted to call it – had seen fit to mark these ponies with signs of stagnation. They were mineworkers, slaves to the will of another, now…and that was all they were ever destined to be. There was no escape for them.

So in a sense, Sombra found his own bare flank almost…comforting. So long as it remained unmarked, he could at least try to fool himself into believing that he might still enjoy a better future.

Therefore, he could never allow himself to be contented, even for a moment. Never spare even the slightest thought toward settling down – with the green-coated mare, or anypony else for that matter. Because somehow he knew that, the instant he accepted that this was his lot in life, and that nothing greater lay distant over the horizon…

The Mark would come, as ordinary and as decidedly final as the others. And with that, the very last shred of hope would die in his heart.

Part II - Harmony

Keepsakes – Harmony

Disclaimer: In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t own My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. All MLP-related characters, settings, etc. are the intellectual property of Lauren Faust and Hasbro.

[--------------------]

Luna had come to Hoofwell alone, which at the time was rather more unusual than it would come to be in later years.

She and her sister hadn’t been alicorns for very long, in the grand scheme of things – a mere few decades, by that point. Life was simpler then. Neither of the soon-to-be Princesses possessed anything resembling a home, or a career, wandering instead from place to place across Equestria and doing good; resembling nothing if not the “knight errant” heroines of little foal’s tales.

And with Discord around, there was never any shortage of ponies needing a helping hoof.

The sisters had been on their own for as long as Luna could remember. Their parents were, at most, a vague inkling in the back of her mind. She knew their names from Celestia’s stories, and she knew their faces from a couple of pictures. But the latter were quite scarce, with their foalhood home long since abandoned, and as for the former…her sister didn’t like to speak on the subject, much.

And Luna wasn’t exactly the type to press the issue.

It wasn’t an uncommon story. Incalculable lives had been ruined, families and friends separated, upon Discord’s ascension to the throne.

Nopony quite knew where he had come from (with theories ranging from the depths of Tartarus to outer space), but ultimately he’d proven far beyond anything the fledgling Equestrian government was capable of.

He couldn’t be bargained with. He accepted no logic or reason (indeed, he seemed openly contemptuous of both). And his magic was a hundred times more potent than even the most powerful unicorn.

He wasn’t exactly, or at least wasn’t entirely, what one could call “evil”…which in some ways made him even worse to deal with. Pure evil, at least, was predictable.

One day, he might dole out candy and flowers at a whim, the scope of his harm limited to said flowers squirting soda when squeezed. And on the very next, he might bring down mighty winds or torrential floods in a desert town, simply because he could.

There was no rhyme or reason to his reign. Only endless, unrelenting Chaos.

As a result, much of the worst damage that erupted from Discord’s usurpation had been decidedly “secondhand.” Perhaps his most terrifying power was that over the mind: twisting it, corrupting it, or swirling it around in a blender and making a fat-free smoothie, all as he saw fit.

And even those ponies whose psyches his magic could not directly touch, often seemed to feel the effects. For such forces as Discord invariably brought out the worst in some ponies, their terror morphing quickly into paranoia and misplaced rage.

Such had been the fate of their parents…according to the one instance when Celestia had been willing to share the story, at least. They’d been humble farmers in a small village on the outskirts of the Everfree Forest, cultivating the herb Toxicodendron gelotolobum (commonly termed “Poison Joke”) and largely keeping to themselves.

But while Poison Joke had a number of useful medicinal purposes if correctly brewed in a potion, its raw effects were similar enough to Discord’s magicks that the frightened townsponies had been quick to accuse the couple of inviting their destruction – some even going so far as to claim, hysterically, that their crop was the cause of the spirit’s rise.

Angry, paranoid, and irrational, a mob of ponies had descended on the farm one night…but Discord himself had noticed their misplaced crusade and, ever the trickster, decided to make the Poison Joke grow out of control as they arrived, suffocating the throng with unbreakable vines and massive leaves.

Their wild suspicions thus (apparently) confirmed, the mob – many of them now rendered small or giant, or bearing exotic colors, or otherwise disfigured – quickly turned violent. Their hatred and aggression, of course, only increased Discord’s own strength, allowing the weeds to spread farther and farther across the land…

This was where Celestia always stopped the story, but Luna could largely guess the rest. There were no records of the village they’d grown up in, after all.

Just a long stretch of land overgrown with Poison Joke, where no ponies ever dared tread.

Spared their parents’ fate by the fortunate coincidence of having been playing by the river that fateful evening, Celestia had stood tall, ignoring the tears welling up in her own eyes, and carried off her sister forever.

She’d been a filly herself at the time, of course; far, far too young to be saddled with the responsibility of raising a young foal. But she never complained, not once. Always, she was strong for Luna.

Always.

They’d wandered Equestria for years on end, just the two of them. There were no governments or social services anymore – not unless one counted local despots like Vanishing Cream – so they’d had to fend for themselves by whatever means necessary.

Celestia, then, was constantly on alert: always plotting and scheming and manipulating events to the degree that it was possible, so that they might have food and a warm place to sleep each night. Charity was a scarce commodity, and so to compensate, the shrewd political mind that would one day govern Equestria into a golden age took form.

The elder earth pony (for that is what she had been at the time) learned and exercised numerous skills to get the pair of them by, in those days. She became talented at begging, even at trickery. On the rare occasions that such a bargain could be reached, she also came to be accustomed to physical labor, in exchange for table scraps. When all else failed, she resorted to thievery.

Luna, for her part, did her best to aid where she could. She had nopony to instruct her in her burgeoning magical potential, but unlike Sombra years later she had nopony actively discouraging her either, so she practiced and honed her skills with wild abandon. She, like her eventual protégé, was an utter prodigy, and it wasn’t long before she could join her sister’s schemes as the “muscle” to Celestia’s brains.

Still, even such a prodigious pair of fillies were still only fillies, and at best one could say they were surviving by the coats of their teeth. The number of times they brushed with death were beyond counting – either because Celestia had chosen to swindle the wrong pony, or simply because the daily hazards of living in a world where the laws of physics changed by the hour finally caught up with them.

Sheer guile had eventually seen them through to marehood, if just barely…but Luna had known that it couldn’t last forever.

[--------------------]

The one constant to their meanderings across Equestria was that they’d always hewed close to the Everfree Forest. Growing up on its edge, it held at least a little less of a foreboding air for them than it did most ponies.

And in any event, autonomous weather and independent creatures didn’t seem quite as terrifying when the rest of the planet was in a state of perpetual Chaos.

Entering those gnarled woods, the first time around, had been a matter of necessity more than anything else. They’d needed food and shelter, and as night fell (with fourteen-and-a-half stars in the sky, because Discord was in a jaunty mood), they’d found themselves nowhere near any town or homestead. Luna’s magic wasn’t powerful enough in those days to conjure, and Celestia couldn’t well pull any of her usual “tricks” if there was nopony to fool…

Which left precisely one option.

Neither had been sure what they were going to find. The stories they’d heard as fillies had been many and varied, but all horrific; ancient monstrosities and wicked spells abound, seeking ponies to consume or corrupt. But they were starving and exhausted, and Celestia had made the decision that they had no choice.

What they’d found, at least initially, was…an ordinary forest. The rain came down without pegasi (or a certain draconequus) operating the clouds, and the birds they saw stayed far away as they hunted in the night, true. But beyond that, Luna hadn’t really seen what all the big fuss was about.

They’d made a fire, gathered some decent plants for dinner, and found a clearing where they could grab some shut-eye. And in the morning, they’d left without any particular issue, returning on their trek to the next town.

Ultimately, one night without particular consequence had been more-or-less enough to shatter their fears. Once it became clear that entering the Everfree Forest wasn’t an automatic death sentence, doing so had become…well, not a regular occurrence, exactly, but not an unusual one either.

They still had preferred to sleep under roofs, whenever possible, but when push came to shove the two young ponies hadn’t hesitated to return. Several times a year, at least.

And each time, they went just a little deeper. Celestia was cautious by nature and preferred they tread familiar ground whenever possible, but Luna could sense it: there was something here, faint as it was. And it was calling for them both.

When pressed, Celestia could be made to admit that she felt it too – in the way the earth shifted beneath her hooves, or the forest air flowed about her muzzle. Still, she hesitated to move too far beyond the forest’s edge.

Fortunately, Luna’s magic was improving rapidly, so she was perfectly capable of dragging her older sister along for the ride if need be.

That being said, it wasn’t as if Celestia’s reluctance was completely unfounded. Luna had lost count of the number of Timber Wolves they’d had to fight off over the years; to the point that, these days, she rather welcomed the sounds of their howls. So long as they kept their distance, combat with the animated creatures could be quite exhilarating.

Celestia tended to be slightly…less enthused by the prospect. But admittedly, it was at least an improvement on dealing with the rest of Equestria, in those days. Timber Wolves, after all, didn’t typically turn the dirt below them into soap when attacking.

And after all, even Celestia had to admit that if it wasn’t for Luna’s thirst for adventure…

They’d never have found it.

[--------------------]

“Huzzah!” Luna exclaimed, punching the air triumphantly with her front hooves. “Oh, ‘twas such an invigorating endeavor! We must hasten to repeat it!”

“That…was a cockatrice, sister,” Celestia replied, one eyebrow raised. “A rather irritable and territorial cockatrice. We just barely escaped living out the rest of our lives as garden statues!”

“Indeed! Such excitement!” the younger pony cried out jubilantly. “Mayhap we might return to its roost in the morrow? I wish most verily to practice my new Mirror Spell!”

“Luna…we can’t stay in the forest another night,” said Celestia, her voice tinged with exasperation. “We’re out of money, and very nearly out of supplies. We need to head back into town.”

Luna just snorted derisively. “Oh, thou doth worry far too much, sister!” she responded, smiling wide. “We shall be perfectly fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii…!”

This last exclamation was the result of the ground giving way below the unicorn, sending her tumbling down into the depths of the earth.

The fall had been so sudden and so dramatic as to be almost comical, but Celestia’s eyes were wide with concern as she carefully approached the newly exposed sinkhole, trying to get a sense of how deep her sister might have plunged.

“Sister?” she called out, straining her neck. “Luna…please, answer me!”

Somewhere in the dark depths, the soft blue glow of her sister’s magic abruptly came into view, and Celestia breathed a sigh of relief as the unicorn yelled back, “I am here, and uninjured!”

“Can you see anything down there?” asked Celestia.

“Neigh. ‘Tis far too dark, and the aura of my horn doth only extend so far,” she answered, the glow moving about as if Luna was sweeping the nearby area.

A few moments longer had passed before Luna suddenly spoke up again. “Hold!” she said. “What might this be, perchance…?”

“What are you talking about?” Celestia shouted, not expecting an answer. When Luna took that tone, it tended to mean that the younger pony was enraptured by whatever happened to be in front of her, and thus at best half-paying attention to everything else.

Sure enough, it took at least another full minute for Luna to exclaim, “Thou must come down and bear witness to this, sister!”

Celestia’s immediate reaction to this suggestion was to wonder whether her sister’s mind has been addled by the fall, and she stated as much out loud. In response, Luna made an exasperated noise that was more typically directed toward her, and added, “Trust me on this matter, Celestia! Make haste!”

The earth pony hardly found this entreaty particularly reassuring…but arguments with Luna were more-or-less futile by definition, and so reluctantly, she slid herself down into the fissure.

“This had better be worth it. It’s not like either of us are pegasi,” said Celestia irritably, squinting as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

By the dim glow of Luna’s magic, she thought she could see why the ground had given way so easily. They were in a truly enormous cavern, with tunnels just as wide extending in every direction. While it was hard to make out the “ceiling” from their current position, Celestia had to figure they’d fallen the height of at least twenty ponies.

Curiosity got the better of her, and the earth pony went over to one of the cavern’s walls to examine it more closely. The rocks were smooth, lacking any rough edges or angles; these tunnels weren’t natural.

“Sister, what is preoccupying thy senses?” asked Luna, slowly striding closer.

Celestia shook her head, breaking out of her brief reverie. “Right, right...” she murmured. “You had something to show me?”

“Ah, verily! Focus thy attentions here, sister!” Luna exclaimed cheerfully, gesturing at a particular point on the opposite wall with her horn.

Celestia followed her sister’s gaze, looking for something out of the ordinary in the column of stones. Nothing jumped out at her immediately, and she was just about to ask Luna for clarification when it struck her.

A small part of the wall was glowing – it was dim and distant, but it was glowing – and not merely from reflecting the light of Luna’s magic. Carefully, Celestia tapped the point with her hoof, trying to get a sense for what might be the cause.

“There’s…another tunnel behind this wall, I think,” she said, moving her front hooves over the wall a few more times to be sure. “Yes…help me move these rocks, sister. There’s definitely something on the other side.”

It took a few minutes, even with magic, to gouge out a pony-sized gap in the stones, but it paid off well. Every displaced rock exposed more and more of that strange, pale light, glowing so bright that after a while Luna no longer needed her magic aura to illuminate the cavern.

Neither of them had any clue what the source could be…but they felt compelled to press on, nevertheless. And so they did.

This new tunnel stretched on for quite a while, curving and twisting like some great serpent. More than once the sisters exchanged looks, as if to ask if perhaps they should turn back, only to wordlessly agree that they’d passed the point of no return.

Whatever was in the air now was…powerful. And they needed to see it through.

It was around half-an-hour later that the tunnel began to widen, expanding gradually like a sort of stone atrium. A new cavern, even larger than the one in which they’d landed initially, opened before them – and here, the glow was so intense that they had to shield their eyes for several moments.

But as the ponies struggled to adjust to the blinding light, a curious thing happened. The glow, while still quite radiant, dimmed just enough to keep them comfortable…almost as if it had detected their presence, and was inviting them closer.

A few more blinks as their eyes finished acclimating, and both the sisters’ jaws dropped simultaneously as they finally bore witness to…it.

The thing before them defied description. In the strictest sense, one might call it “beautiful” and be entirely correct…but only insofar as it was accurate to call Equestria large, or Discord mischievous. There was no possible way to articulate what it was like to bear witness to it, without doing a disservice bordering on travesty.

Neither Celestia nor Luna had much experience with the most positive emotions experienced by ponykind – or hadn’t had occasion to in years, at least – and yet, neither could help but feel perfectly at peace in the face of such magnificence.

It was an absolute marvel. A wonder of infinite brilliance, such that the ponies could scarcely begin to comprehend it. It was at once awing, soothing, and terrifying beyond all measure.

It was also a tree.

“What might it be, sister?” whispered Luna, her eyes not moving away from it for a second.

“I’m not sure,” murmured Celestia in return, slowly trotting forward to examine the trunk more closely. “But…these symbols at the base. They seem…”

The earth pony’s voice trailed off from there, so Luna drew closer to see exactly what she was talking about. And indeed, inscribed on the trunk of the tree, beneath the glimmering gems and crystals that adorned its branches, were two distinct symbols: a blazing sun, and a crescent moon.

“Don’t you feel…something…?” Celestia asked, enraptured. “When you look at them, I mean?”

Luna nodded slowly, for it was true. The longer that she stared into the moon-shaped carving, the more something seemed to stir deep within her.

She couldn’t exactly describe what the feeling was, though. It was strange and unfamiliar. It wasn’t precisely happiness, though that was a component; it wasn’t exactly hope, though that was closer.

It was…it was…

A sense of purpose.

The tree glowed brighter than ever.

[--------------------]

Several moments later, the two ponies were picking themselves up off the ground, nursing very strong headaches. It appeared that they’d fallen unconscious in tandem with that latest peak in the tree’s blinding radiance – probably not coincidentally, Luna presumed.

Slowly, she got up to her hooves, gingerly finding her balance. Her left wing ached all over.

Her…left wing…ached all over…

Luna’s heart skipped a beat.

“Luna…?” came her sister’s voice, very quietly. “Are those…? But…how did you…where did you…?”

Slowly, Luna’s vision unblurred, and before her…before her, stood a pony that greatly resembled her sister, but at the same time simply couldn’t be her. She was taller than Celestia, for one thing, broader and more muscular…and she, too, possessed a fresh pair of wings.

Oh, and she also had a horn.

“Might we…possibly be…?” Luna asked in an awed voice, turning her head to try and get a glimpse of her new appendages.

“Alicorns. Like the princess from the tale of the Love Poison,” answered Celestia, her eyes still wide with shock. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense. Somehow…somehow, the Tree of Harmony transformed us into alicorns…”

“The Tree of Harmony…?” repeated the younger pony. “From whence didst thou glean that name?”

Celestia was silent for a moment, as if turning this question over a few times in her own mind. Finally she said, “I’m…really not sure how I know. I just do.”

Luna considered this sentiment for a moment, before realizing – much to her own shock – that it was one she shared. She’d never learned the name of this tree, and yet…that simply was what it was supposed to be called.

And that was just the beginning.

The longer that she concentrated, the more knowledge seemed to “bubble up” from just below the surface. Spells and enchantments she had never before seen, much less cast herself; intimate knowledge of how to use her new wings, as if she’d possessed them since birth. All this and more coursed through her mind in an instant, one secret after another until her head seemed fit to burst.

Celestia seemed to be going through the same thing, judging by the way she was now doubling over, her newly acquired magical aura pulsing a bright yellow. Still, through gritted teeth, she made the effort to hold Luna close, soothing the younger pony’s own pain as the flood of information reached a breaking point.

Slowly, though, the “noise” began to subside, and Luna found herself again possessed of her full faculties as she gazed around the cavern. And in fact, more than that. Her senses seemed…sharper, now – both magical and otherwise.

Colors appeared more vivid, the smallest sounds greatly amplified; even the very air and ground carried a sort of energy which she could now feel quite intimately. Was this what it was like to be an earth pony?

Or…part-earth pony, was perhaps a more accurate term?

As Luna worked on growing more comfortable with her changed body – even flapping her wings experimentally and managing to hover for a few seconds – she took another look at her sister, who appeared to have moved on from the initial shock and was now marveling at the slender horn atop her forehead.

“Is this how it always feels for you?” she asked breathlessly, her aura enveloping a nearby stone and almost, but not quite, managing to move it toward her.

“I might inquire just the same,” replied Luna, tapping the ground with her hooves and wondering what it might be like to actually grow a plant from it. “Certainly, whatever costs might be entailed with this ‘alicorn’ status…the benefits are rather quite multitudinous.”

“But in that case…I suppose that just begs the question,” Celestia pressed on. “Why were we given this status? This power?”

Luna turned back to the Tree, pondering this query. In its presence, there was no mistaking it; this had been what’d been calling for them all those years, from the moment they’d stepped hoof into the Everfree Forest.

But for what reason?

[--------------------]

It had been about two years since that fateful day, when Luna arrived in Hoofwell.

Still searching for answers – in their own hearts, and in the knowledge the Tree had passed down to them – they’d found at least one as they unsteadily flew out of the cavern, and the now-midday light had illuminated the newly christened alicorns.

For upon their flanks had been two new Cutie Marks: precisely matching the sun and moon inscribed on the Tree of Harmony.

Luna knew that in ancient times, raising and lowering those celestial bodies had been a task for a hundred ponies at a time. Since his takeover, however, Discord had handled the duty…which, of course, meant that one “day” or “night” could in fact last ten, while the next might be over in under five minutes.

It certainly didn’t do much for Equestria’s agriculture; not to mention making it nearly impossible for ponies to keep to consistent schedules.

Which, in retrospect, was probably the point.

But now? It had taken a lot of concentration, and even more magical power – especially for Celestia, who hadn’t possessed any just a day prior – but they’d managed to do it. Celestia and Luna, two orphaned mares from some no-name backwater farming town, succeeded in singlehoofedly moving the sun and the moon.

They’d spent the intervening years practicing, off-and-on. It was difficult to get to it too often, since it was generally difficult to change day to night (or vice-versa) without somepony noticing, and they had no interest in drawing too much attention to themselves.

Particularly from a certain draconequus, for whom they were now constantly looking over their shoulders. Neither had ever seen more than a glimpse of Discord, at most, but that was when they’d still been normal, “boring” ponies.

Somehow, Luna doubted he’d just leave alone a couple of alicorns, were he to run into them these days.

And so they wandered, under cover of her own carefully crafted night whenever possible, from town to town and all across the Everfree Forest. With wings and horns both, little could impede their mobility now. But at the same time, these were such distinctive features that interacting with other ponies generally required disguises. Cloaks or armor to cover their wings, at minimum.

No sense in taking unnecessary risks.

Unfortunately, while the Tree of Harmony had taught them many things – so many that, two years later, Luna was still trying to sort it all out – it hadn’t told them anything about what they should do next.

But one thing was for certain: its name was fully indicative. All the harmonious energy of the planet came together within its roots and branches. And within them, now, as well. They could feel it with every step they took; with every breath that entered their mouths.

And what was Harmony, if not the opposite of Chaos?

They hadn’t resolved to attack the problem at the source yet – in those days, it hadn’t occurred to them that they could – but they had the power now to treat the symptoms, at least. And so they did.

To starving villages, they brought food; to towns overrun by criminals or despots, they played at heroism. All of this from the shadows…both literally, via Luna’s ever-expanding magic, and figuratively, as Celestia put her natural talent for manipulating other ponies toward helping them without their knowledge.

They made quite a team, the pair of sisters, and as such they preferred to pursue their goals together whenever possible. But it wasn’t always, of course.

That particular day, Celestia had been busy on her own quest, ascending a tall mountain in order to retrieve a phoenix egg. It was more or less a one-pony job (and Luna wasn’t overly eager to join in, anyway), so the younger alicorn had split off to complete her own mission: investigating rumors that the small mining town of Hoofwell was being tormented by a cruel unicorn.

And so that was how, one pale and misty morning, Luna came to find herself in an old quarry just outside the town, watching a young stallion move rocks about with his magic.

He was lanky, but muscular, in the manner of one naturally ill-suited for physical labor but forced to endure it anyway. His coat and mane were both a deep, rich black, though dirt and other debris matted them all over. His eyes were wide and youthful, but at the same time focused with almost frightening intensity on the task at hand.

And clearly, his focus was paying dividends. Now that he’d moved enough of the stones away to clear a space in front of him, his horn was manufacturing one crystalline structure after another, each more impressive than the last.

Spiraling towers, elaborate fractals…even a couple of crystal ponies. Each one beautiful, carefully detailed, and magnificently crafted.

“Speaketh thy name, young artisan!” she said after observing silently for several minutes, approaching slowly to indicate she meant no harm. “I must know who is responsible for this masterwork!”

Slowly, the unicorn – so very young, barely older than a colt – turned to face her. But when he did, it was with eyes overcome with pain and fright.

“I…uh…well…” he stammered, clearly horrified. “I…I wasn’t…!”

Then he took off in the opposite direction, tears streaming behind him as he galloped at full speed, leaving a stunned and bewildered Luna behind.