Chapters It was early morning and I was wondering the halls of the Crystal palace. It had been a couple of months since King Sombra had been defeated. I was headed to the kitchen to get an early breakfast. I, unluckily, had gotten lost.
“Why did Sombra have to make his castle so confusing?” I mutter to myself. All the halls looked identical, despite my wife’s attempts to decorate the place. A servant bowed to me as he passed.
“Good morning Sir.” He says.
“Can you show me to the kitchen? I’m afraid I’m lost again Jenkins.” I ask him.
“Right this way Sir.” Jenkins says as he turns around and trots away. My stomach grumbling, I follow. Soon after, we arrive at the kitchens.
“The kitchens, Sir.”
“Thank you Jenkins.”
“Do you wise me to guide you to the fridge, Sir?” he asks.
“That won’t be nessisery.” I inform him. I head into the kitchen, determined not to lose my way this time. The kitchen was about the size of one and a half hoofball fields and very cluttered. You needed a masters in navigation in order to move around in here.
After a half hour, I managed to find the fridge and grab the milk. Shortly after that, I found the coco puffs. When I left the kitchen, Jenkins was still standing there.
“Do you require help to find the dining room Sir?” Jenkins asks.
“Yes, yes I do.”
After I made it to the dining room, I had to go back for a bowl and a spoon. When I finally finished my breakfast, I started to make my way back to my sleeping quarters. Unfortunately, I found myself once again, lost. I sighed. I was never going to get used to my new home.
I wandered around the palace hoping to find a landmark that I could use to find my way back to the bed chamber. After about half an hour, I found myself down what appeared to be a forgotten servant passageway. That, or I did not know where I was. I decided to head down it, seeing as I had just as good of a chance of finding my chambers as any other hallway. About halfway down I came across a door, with what sounded like crying coming from it. It wasn’t the kind of crying that you would make if you were hurt or sad, but more like that of an infant. I frowned. I had no knowledge of any foals in the palace, so I decided to open the door.
A cool blast of early morning air hit me in the face as the door swung open. I looked down at the source of the crying to see a small black foal thrashing around in a small basket. I used my magic to pick up a note that had fallen out due to the baby.
My lawyer says you get to keep one. I forgot what his/her name is. Love queen C.
A feeling of dread went through me as I reread the note. I let it fall from my magic as I lit up my horn to get a better look at the foal. As I bent down I got a good look at its eyes. My pupils’ delated, and I break out in a cold sweat. Cadence was going to kill me for this one.
Rinnng! Rinnng! Rinnng!
I reach over and punch my alarm clock across the room. Yawning, I get out of my bed and rub the sleep out of my eyes. I get out of bad as the servants rush in. they quickly comb my hair, brush my teeth, wash my carapace, and clean out the holes in my legs. Though out this process, not one of them looks at me or talks to me. Even though I was the royal child of Princess Cadence, I was more often seen as one of the changeling.
It had been 15 years since the invasion of Canterlot, and most ponys still look at me like I was going to attack them. Once the servants where done, I trotted down to join my parents in the dining room. As I went, I greeted all those that I passed. Most of the ponys that worked for my parents are crystal, but my mom had the brilliant idea to have Equestrian unicorns attend to me. She believed it would help remove some of the fear that Equestrians have for us. That was two years ago. I believe that’s its safe to say that it’s not working.one of the few Equestrians who doesn’t fear me is my friend Neon Flight.
Neon Flight is a light green Pegasus with dark and light green striped hair. He was born in Cloudsdale. His family moved hear about 1 years ago. I meet him at The Four Kings Dinner. At first, I thought he was a filly, do to his extremely long eyelashes. I didn’t believe that he was a colt until his dad told me. I apologized, and we’ve been friends ever since.
I snapped out of my daydream/flashback thingy as I arrived at the dining hall. As soon as I sat down, the chief brought me my breakfast. I was given apples, oatmeal, peaches, sugared strawberries, and a quart of crystal water.
About half way through my meal, my mom joined me.
“Good morning Esmeralda.” She greets me as she walks in.
“Morning mom.” I reply. “Can I go and hang out with Neon today?” I ask.
“I don’t see why not.” My mom answers after a moment of thought.
“Thanks mom!” I say excitedly as I ruse through my meal. I then hurry up to my room and brush my teeth before I head back down and out of the palace. After a few minutes, I was knocking on Neon’s door. Neon’s mom answered.
“Hello Miss.Flight, is Neon home?” I ask politely.
“Neon Emma’s here!” mom calls up the stairs. There was a sound of loud thumps and bangs as Neon scrambled down.
“Why don’t you come in Emma?” Miss.Flight asks.
“Thanks Miss.Flight.” I reply as I come in.
Neon lives in a two story house on the outskirts of the town. The walls are a light blue with indigo strips.
“What’s up Emma?” Neon pants as he comes to the bottom of the Stairs.
“I learned how to teleport.” I reply excitedly.
“Really? Cool! Can you show me?” he asks.
“She can show you right after breakfast.” Miss.flight cuts in.
“Yes mam.” Neon says to his mom as he heads to the kitchen to eat breakfast. Soon, the sounds of pouring cereal could be heard. After roughly five minutes, Neon was done, with his mom giving him a disapproving look.
“Neon! If you keep eating like that, you’re going to get constipated.” She scolds him.
“Yes mam. Can I go and hang out with Emma now?” Neon asks.
“Yes, but the next time that happens, you will be staying right here!” she yells after us as we head out the door.
We head over to the old crystal mine shaft and the adjoining forest. The forest is thousands of years old and filled with really cool stuff.
“Can you show me the teleporting spell now?” Neon asks once we arrived.
“Sure!” I answer. I close my eyes and concentrated on the spell matrix required. After a few seconds, there was I bright green flash as I teleported behind Neon.
“Coool!” Neon says once he blinks away the blindness left behind by the flash.
I shake my head to clear the fuzziness from my head.
“How far can you teleport?” Neon asks.
“Don’t know. But the farther I travel the more tired I get.” I reply. “It gives me a migran so I won’t be teleporting very often.”
“Ok, let’s go see if we can find anymore junk to add to our hangout.” Neon says before heading deeper into the woods. I soon follow him, keeping an eye out for anything we might have missed on previous treks through this part of the forest. We went to a part of the woods that we haven’t looked at yet. For the next few hours we looked around until we became hungry. We put a rusty pickax, some old coins, lots of chains, and a key into an old mining cart that we found. Then we dropped it all off at are hangout, a shallow cave that we found a couple of years back. After that we headed back to Neon’s for lunch.
“I think I can replace the rotten boards on the cart with some new ones.” Neon says after he swallowed his mouth full of sandwich.
“The cart is going to make moving some of the heavier stuff a lot easier.” I reply. “Too bad that it’s the only good thing we found today.
“We still have a few hours left before I have to go to bed.” Neon says as he finishes his sandwich.
“I guess so, but we really haven’t found anything good since that ax head last month.” I say frowning.
“Keep your voice down, you know how my mom doesn’t like me having sharp objects.” Neon says as he checks to see if his mom is in hearing range.
“Sorry, lets head back out to the forest.” I say as I finish my lunch. We got up and headed back out, hoping to find something good to add to our collection. When we got to the tree line, Neon decides to go and get started on the cart, leaving me with some time alone.
I head over to where we were before, except this time I decided to bring a trowel to do a little digging, because you never know when you might find a buried item. I start in a cluster of ancient sycamores, where some squirrels where playing. I start to think over some of the weird things about me.
My eyes have an iris, something that changeling’s aren’t supposed to have. Not only that, but there emerald green and not blue. And I don’t need to feed on love in order to survive. The doctors think that I’m some sort of hybrid. I also don’t know how to change form, because only changelings know how.
My thoughts are cut off as my trowel hits a hard metallic object buried in the ground. It sounded hollow. My wings buzzed in excitement. I quickly dig up the rest of the object. It’s a small metal chest. I unscrew my water bottle and pour some water over the chest to wash away the dirt.
The chest appears to be made out of a light shiny metal, with strange writing all over it. It is held closed by a lock that is so rusty you couldn’t even see the key hole. I then preform the age old method of determining the contents of a sealed box; I shake it. A muffled rattling noise emits from the chest. I frown. Some moron had lined the chest with some sort of cloth. Why do ponys do that? Don’t they know what future ponys have to go through to open these things?
Frustrated, I place the chest on a stump and use my magic to pick up a large boulder. I then proceeded to repeatedly slam said boulder into the chest. When I was done, the boulder was nothing more than a pile of rubble. At close inspection, I found that I failed to even make a scratch on the chest. I then teleported back to the cave with the chest.
“Wha- ouch!” Neon mutters as my sudden appearance makes him hit his head on a low rock self.
“What the heck? Could you give me some kind of warning when you do that?” an annoyed Neon asks as he rubs the back of his head.
“Oh stop your crying and help me open this chest.” I say with a role of my eyes.
He comes over and takes a look at the chest.
“Wow! Where did you find this? It’s made completely out of mirthrel!” He exclaims.
“Mirthrel? Who would waist mirthrel on a chest?” I ask.
“Mirthrel is indestructible, meaning that something very important or very dangerous is in it. Let’s open it!” Neon says as he pulls out a hammer and breaks the lock. The pieces fall to the cave floor. I use my magic to open the chest. Inside was a… necklace. A plane old peace of bronze attached to a string.
“A necklace? Why would someone want to protect a necklace?” I ask Neon. Neon looks closely at the symbols on the chest.
“I’ve seen these symbols in are text book. There on a bunch of old ruins that are thousands of years old.” Neon informs me.
“Who built the ruins?” I ask.
“Some long dead race of bipedal. All that’s know is that they were a very advanced race that used no known magic and was wiped out in an epic war. Nopony has been able to translate the writing, and most of the words on the ruins are illegible.” Neon answers. Neon looks at the clock that we brought so we could tell the time.
“It’s getting late. I’m going to take the chest home and see if I can’t translate it. You can have the necklace, it appears to be an amulet of some sort, and maybe your mom knows what it is.” He says as he hoofs me the necklace. I put the necklace around my neck while Neon wraps the chest in a cloth and stuffs it in his saddle bag. We then hurry over to Neon’s house where I left him before I head back to the palace.
Political news and research
I bolted up in a cold sweat, gasping. My heart was pounding.
Rrrrriiing! Rrrriiing! Rrrrriiing!
My alarm clock went off. I surrounded the clock in my magical grasp and turned it off. The servants came in and did their usual morning jobs. By the time they were done, I had forgotten most of the details about my nightmare. What I did remember made little sense. With my heart still pounding, I went down to breakfast.
I barely paid attention to what I was served. Nether did i notice when my Mom walked in.
"ESMERLDA!!!" My Mom yells. I jump. "Whats got you preoccupied this morning?" She asks me.
"Sorry Mom." I mumble in reply, keeping the details of last night's troubled sleep to myself. Before my Mom could asks any questions, my Dad walks into the dining hall.
"Morning Cadence." he says as he kisses Mom before headed to his seat.
The servants come in and sets the morning meal in front of us before heading back to the kitchen. While I ate, my thoughts drifted back to the amulet and box that Neon and I found. I wondered why somepony would keep an amulet locked in such a secure box, instead of something more important.
While I thought about the amulet, my Mom and Dad were discussing the political situation over in the Minotaur and Deer kingdoms.
Hvtke Eco, the Deer Kingdom, and Ταύρος, the minotaur kingdom where going head to head over a chain of islands discovered about a hundred miles to the southeast of the kingdoms. As it was a joint merchant fleet that discovered the islands, they couldn't decide who the land belonged to.
“Heammawihio will try to find a peaceful way to settle the dispute, its Agamemnon who might go to war.” Shining Armor says.
“With them both being allies of the crystal empire, we would have to remain neutral, but Equestria will be supporting Hvtke Eco if there is war.” Cadence replies.
“Hopefully, the situation will be resolved peacefully next week when the dignitaries arrive. At any rate, I am to help Violet Bloom prepare for the guests to arrive.” Shining Armor says before he resumes eating his breakfast.
My parents conversation distracted me from my thoughts on the amulet. I had forgotten about the upcoming conference. While i have seen minotaurs before, i have never seen a deer, due to the fact that they rarely left there vally, excluding merchants. I was hoping the matter could be resolved peacefully, as i didnt wise for bloodshed.
As soon as i finished my morning meal, i headed off to today's classes.
My first lesson was with written script, a unicorn from canterlot. He taught politics and history. After a couple hours of dreary government talk and a fascinating look at the ancient mareian culture, i had arithmancy with Sir comfence, an old scholar who had seen better days. Once I was done looking over intricate diagrams over how math was used in creating new spells, i was done with my lessons for the day. Since i was a princess, I only had studys in the morning, and with the conference, i was excused from my equitie lessons as my teacher, morning sun, was needed for dinner arrangements and flower placement.
I headed over to the library to see if i could find any mention of the necklace or the box it was found in. since most of the library was over a millennia old, and only some of the library being recently updated, there was a chance i would find some trace of the artifacts and their purpose.
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I closed the book with a sigh. While i found nothing about the amulet, i did find out a little about the civilization that Neon said made it. Apparently, they went to war over knowledge what knowledge was not known, but the war was brutal. One side, once they realized that they may not win, used there most powerful weapon. What said weapon was, is also not known. But the weapon is what ended this ancient nation.
I decided that i needed a break, so i decided to head over to Neon's house to see if he had better luck. As i was walking down the hallway to a side door that leaves the castle, a green pegasus stallion with blue highlights in his lime green hair stops me.
“Excuse me mam, but can you tell me where the recruitment office is? I'm a bit lost.” The Pegasus asks me, with while keeping his attention on a map he was holding.
“The recruitment office is down by the bakery in the south side of town.” I inform him.
“Thanks.” He says smiling, as he puts up his map. He lifts his eyes and freezes once they land on me. I groan, knowing what's about to happen.
“CH-CHANGELING!!!” He screams, running down the hallway. I shake my head. Tourists never seem to bother to learn that the princess of the Empire is half changeling, so i've mostly gotten used to ponies running away in terror.
I trot the rest of the way to Neon's house without further incident. I knock on the door and waited. Neons Mom was the one who answered.
“Hi Emma, Neons upstairs in his books again.” She greets me. After thanking her, i make my way into the house and up the stairs into Neons room.
Neons room was wall to wall bookshelves. The shelves themselves were covered in books, Hoofball Trophies, and items he brought home from the forest to study. At the moment, the books were scattered around the room in heaps.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
“It's time to get up Neon.” My Mom says as she opens my door. I groan as i raise my head up from my guide to historic crystal empire textbook I had been reading when i went to bed. Mom gives me a disapproving look as I close the textbook.
“What have I told you about staying up reading all night Neon?”
“To be in bed by eleven.” I mumble.
Satisfied by my answer, my mom heads back downstairs to make sure breakfast didn't burn. I got up from my chair to follow her, only stopping to stash the mithril box under my bed. As i headed down the stairs, i could smell the hay bacon and pancakes that was cooking in the kitchen.
I sat down and poured myself a glass of orange juice as my mom set the table. I started to eat my meal as fast as i could so as to get back to finding information on the box.
“Neon! Slow down! Can you even taste the food inhaling it like that?” My Mom scolds me. I slow down as told.
After what seemed like forever i finally finished my food. But by this time, i was feeling antsy, so I decided to head outside and worry about the box later.
As i walked down the road, I thought about what i could do till Emma got done with her lessons. As a lot of my favorite places were closed so they can prepare for the diplomatic meeting in a few days, i decided to wander around town till i found something to do.
As i flew over the the town, I saw a hoofball game being setup by some of my classmates. I grinned as I decided to see if i could join them. My classmates took notice of me as i flew in for a landing.
“Hey Neon, where one short, do you think you can join us?” Velvet Lining asks me when I touched down.
“You know i'm always up for a game of hoofball.” I reply with a grin on my face.
“Ok, you will be on Cookie Crumbles team.” She says as she points to a pale yellow crystal earth pony. “No flying, but contact is allowed.” She informs me. I nod my head in understanding before I follow my team mates to our side of the field.
“Ok mates, here's the plan, me, Tank, Gem, Adanac, Satsuma, and Dewdrop will be the linebackers. Neon, Dusty, and Zodiac will be the receivers. Dusk will be our quarterback.” Cookie says.
After we come up with a few plays, we headed to the center of the field, where Velvets team wins the bit toss. There first play gets them a first down on the 20 yard line. We manage to keep them from getting another first down, so they go for the kick, earning them 3 points. We get the ball next, but butterscotch intercepts the ball and scores a touchdown.
They manage to score another field goal before we get a touchdown and a field goal of our own. The next two plays went without either side scoring. Swift makes another touchdown before Zodiac scores another field goal.
The game stays with us trailing Velvets team for the next hour. The game ends when Zodiac has to go home for lunch. The final score was 32-38. Feeling tired, i decide to head home to continue to look into the box and the creatures that made it.
I decided to stop by Crystal Candies to pick myself up a treat before I headed home. I decided to get myself a sugared crystal plum. Just before i left Crystal Candies, I ran into Star Shower, one of the few other pegasus in the Crystal Empire. She had turquoise fur and lavender hair with silver streaks.
“Hi Neon! How has your day been?” Star asks me.
“Good so far, i just had a hoofball game over on the field.” I reply before taking a bite of my plum.
“Oh? Did you win?” She asks.
“Nah, Velvets team won, but i’ll win next time.” I reply with confidence.
“So you played against velvet? I heard she is going to try out for the hoofball team this fall.” She says.
“Really? Well it's not going to be easy to get on the team. She's going to have to do her best to make tryouts.” I reply. “I got to go, i'm supposed to be meeting Emma in a few hours.” I say to her.
“Well i won't keep you waiting, tell Emma Star said hello when you see her.” She says before telling me goodbye.
Not many ponies knew why Star came to the Empire. Those of us who star had told knew that her parents died when she was young. Some friends of her parents decided to take her in instead of having go to an orphanage.
After I finished my plum I continued my journey back home. When I arrived, my Mom was in the living room dusting.
“Dinner will be ready in a few hours.” Mom greeted me as I flew up the stairs.
I closed my bedroom door behind me before i headed to my desk. I frowned. The textbook i had left on it when went down to breakfast was gone. I looked under the desk and behind it to see if it fell, but I didn't find it. I also looked under my bed to see if i had accidentally put it with the box, but the box was the only thing under the bed.
“Mom! Do you know where my copy of a guide to historic crystal empire textbook is?” I yelled down the stairs.
“I put it on the shelf next to your snowglobe!” She yelled back. I rolled my eyes. My mom had to have been the neatest pony in the Empire. I flew up to the self where she had put the book to get it, but in the process, accidentally knocked the shelf down.
