Despite the reputation that preceded her, of tidiness and timeliness and all things in between, Princess Twilight Sparkle was not, in fact, an early riser. She would often study long into the night, and didn't usually fall asleep on her own will; there were plenty of mornings she would find herself awakening in one of the rather uncomfortable wooden chairs of her study. Last night, however, she went to bed early, insistent on enjoying the comfortable, cloud-like embrace of her queen sized bed, so naturally, when she was violently shaken at nine o' clock in the morning by her now faithful student, Starlight Glimmer, she wasn't all too overjoyed.
"Twilight! Wake up, wake up! Twilight! Twilight!" came her voice, louder and louder as Twilight gradually regained consciousness. Twilight blinked three times rapidly, and by the third or fourth shove, quickly turned to face her student while holding her front hooves to her face in surrender.
"Okay, okay, I'm up, I'm UP! What is it? Is Equestria falling apart?" asked Twilight, a sharp edge to her voice. Her posture relaxed a little, however, when she saw Starlight's face in a clear state of panic, meaning something was actually wrong.
"No," began Starlight, shaking her head quickly, "Just the town. There's something you need to see." Quickly (but not as quickly as she would have liked, as she had just woken up), Twilight hopped out of bed and began to follow Starlight out of her room. She passed by her mirror on the way out, peering at her long, messy hair that would eventually be styled up for the day. Her immediate thought was how embarrassed she'd be if a civilian saw her like that, but based on Starlight's remark a few seconds ago, that didn't seem to be the case.
"So I was about to embark on my morning trip, right?" remarked Starlight as we exited the room and hung a left. Twilight nodded; Starlight went out to the marketplace every morning to gather supplies for breakfast, along with a few other provisions. Starlight immediately began walking up the elegant, crystalline staircase the castle famously boasted, and Twilight knew right then they were headed to the balcony.
"Well, before I went to do that, I thought I'd head up to the balcony to see what the weather was like for the day, because I heard the Pegasi were ready to bring on some rain," she said in short breaths as she ran up the stairs. Twilight had to exert a bit more force than she was used to in the morning to keep up, and the pleasant royal purple walls became a blur as they ascended the staircase. In what Twilight assumed was record time, the pair made it to the top of the staircase and headed into the buffer room that separated it from the balcony; it too, was purple colored, with a small guest bedroom and a painting by none other than the Element of Generosity, Rarity, hanging on the far wall. As the two entered the room, Twilight could see that her assistant and best friend, Spike the Dragon, was already leaning over the balcony to get a good look at something.
"When I went up to check, I found this," finished Starlight, running ahead of Twilight and gesturing her hoof to implore her to look. Twilight did a quick jog to the balcony's edge, and once she leaned over the railing and observed the scenic look of the town the balcony had always offered, her jaw immediately dropped.
Never before had the town of Ponyville had so many ponies in it. The outer areas, such as the marketplace and the woodlands, were entirely void of ponies, but the rest of the town had them packed close together; it literally looked like a massive sea of ponies. It was far more than the actual population of the town, Twilight knew, as it was very easy to tell, and this absurdly giant mass of Equestrians were clearly trying to get to one area; the Town Square. The noise of ponies clamoring so close together was deafening, and Twilight found it hard to believe that it both failed to wake her up and evaded her attention on the way up to the balcony.
"What in Tartarus..." she half-whispered, her voice trailing off to study the crowd. Twilight had yet to see anything like it, and was in that moment very glad she had been roused from her sleep.
"That's what I said," remarked Spike, mimicking Twilight's actions. "What do you think they're all here for?" Starlight ran back into the castle, presumably to go fetch something.
"I have absolutely no idea, but I'd very much like to find out," she replied before turning back to the castle as well. She took about three steps before she saw Starlight run back into the room with the very object she was about to go retrieve; her father's black telescope from his days as the Royal Astronomer. Seeing how their ideas had aligned put a smile on Twilight's face.
"You know me too well," said Twilight as she took the telescope from Starlight with her magic. Starlight nodded her head curtly in acknowledgement before following Twilight back to the edge of the balcony, where Twilight quickly unfurled the telescope and magically placed it right over her left eye, aiming it directly at the center of the Town Square.
As she moved it to the location she wished to observe, she already knew the effort would be fruitless. There were even more ponies than Twilight had previously believed there were, and of all different kinds, as she recognized sorts from Canterlot Nobles to Appleloosans. They were absolutely everywhere, and no matter where Twilight pointed the telescope, she was greeted with a sea bodies. Shaking her head, she removed the telescope from her eye and neatly folded it up via magic before levitating it back to Starlight.
"It's no use, there's just too many," she remarked, now turning back to her student. "We need to go down there and see for ourselves, and if we're going to have a remote chance of actually seeing it, it needs to be now," she said. Starlight nodded in understanding and began to descend down the stairs, but quickly turned around as Twilight started to follow her.
"Yea, okay, I agree, but you might at least want to brush your teeth first. I'd suggest styling the main as well, but we simply don't have time to fix that mess."
The group almost had to cover their ears as they approached the town. The citizens weren't packed viewing some mystical event that left them speechless, much to Twilight's dismay; they were screaming and hollering at the top of their lungs, but it didn't really seem angry; it was clear they were actually excited about something. This only served to make Twilight even more confused, but there was something else that had her puzzled as well.
Normally, when an event such as this happened (although Twilight didn't think she'd seen anything quite like this), there were pegasi soaring through the air trying to get a better look at everything; today, this wasn't quite the case. Twilight saw plenty of pegasi, but all of them were grounded, and Twilight couldn't even begin to imagine why. It was then Twilight very much wished her friend Rainbow Dash, or perhaps even Fluttershy, were available, but if they were even here, she knew it'd be impossible to find them.
"Where's the Ponyville Guard? You'd think they'd shut this down immediately," remarked Spike as the trio approached the wall of Ponies. With a chuckle, Starlight quickly pulled Twilight and Spike in towards her and began to point with her hoof.
"There...and there...right there...and over there..." Sure enough, various members of the Ponyville Guard were actually in the crowd, as opposed to making any attempts to disperse it; this revelation caused Twlight's jaw to drop even further, a feat she hadn't thought possible up on the balcony. Twilight quickly moved away from Starlight and headed straight for the crowd, causing the other two members of the trio to come running after her.
"Twilight, what are you doing?" asked Starlight as she ran up to her. Twilight's gaze didn't break from the crowd as she began her explanation.
"I'm going to push my way through and get to the bottom of this. Stay close to me," she explained as she reached the very beginning of the massive crowd.
"Twilight--" began Starlight, but she was quickly interrupted.
"Come on, let's go!" she exclaimed, and with those words, began her push into the crowd.
Twilight had always been taught to be as polite as possible by her parents. "Please" and "Thank You" were phrases that came to her automatically, and she never tried to be too brash in public situations. As such, doing what she was doing now was very much out of her comfort zone, but much more uncomfortable was the fact that the attraction these ponies had come here for was still unknown to her. The ponies she had pushed out of the way first turned to her with an angry look, but once they saw who she was, they quickly backed off to make a bit of room for the trio; thankfully, Twilight noticed, the rest of the ponies in the crowd behaved in a similar manner.
"Excuse me! Sorry! Excuse me!" chirped Twilight as she almost-gently elbowed her way through the crowd. She quickly realized that "sea" was the only way to describe it, as she currently felt like she was drifting on a raft in the middle of a vast ocean.
I'm sure there's a bit more isolation involved in that situation, thought Twilight as she continued to push. She had gotten a good twenty feet into the crowd when she heard a voice that, somehow, managed to rise way above the clamor of the massive crowd.
"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS!?"
Twilight could feel a grin spreading across her face. There was only one mare in all of Equestria who could speak with such a sound and fury, and if she was here, she'd be getting to the bottom of the situation rather shortly. In a moment Twilight would never forget, the entire crowd of what had to the most ponies Twilight had ever seen in a concentrated area stopped dead; all noise they had been making, which almost made Twilight want to cover her ears mere seconds earlier, immediately died. It was a surreal sensation, and when Twilight looked behind her to see if she could get a glimpse of the newly arrived Princess of the Night, she saw a small walkway opening up in the crowd.
A loud chant was heard from the location of the voice, followed by a clang of steel, confirming Twilight's suspicions. Luna's royal guard had put down their shields and spears, which would create a wide walkway for the Princess. Incredibly, Luna had decided to open the crowd in the direct line of sight where the trio was standing, so when the guard finally reached her area to push it to the side, she merely stepped right into the now open walkway; what greeted her surprised for what had to be the millionth time that morning.
While Twilight was correct in assuming that Luna had arrived on the premise, she could not have guessed that her sister had come with her. Celestia and Luna walked side by side, and the guard escort was actually a combination of both their personal guards pushing back the crowd; Celestia's guard on Celestia's side, and Luna's guard on Luna's side. Twilight managed to grab both Starlight and Spike before they were swallowed by the retreating mass of ponies and quickly met Celestia and Luna as they walked forward. As soon as Celestia saw who had found herself beside her, her serious demeanor quickly vanished.
"My faithful student. Do you happen to know what's happening here? We had an urgent message from Bitter Steel, the Captain of the Ponyville Guard, telling us that the city had gone out of control and for us to come at once," she remarked casually. The ponies of the crowd seemed rather fearful as they were pushed back; a look at Starlight and Spike revealed a nervousness in their faces. Twilight violently shook her head.
"I have absolutely no idea! I mean, look at this place! I don't think Ponyville has been this packed in ages..." she remarked. At that, Celestia looked down at her with confusion.
"You mean you never thought to ask one of the hundreds of ponies here why they came?" asked the Princess of the Sun. Twilight stared at nothing for a few seconds, comprehending Celestia's words, before promptly giving herself a facehoof.
"No, I didn't! I was so caught up in the strangeness of it I never bothered to ask!" she remarked. Celestia merely chuckled.
"Well, there's no point in asking now, as we'll find out in a minute. What do you think of this, Lulu? Have you seen anything like it before?" asked Celestia. Luna, too, shook her head in the negative.
"Not at all, but it certainly adds some excitement to an otherwise boring morning, no?" asked Luna, causing the group to nervously laugh. Despite being slightly introverted since her return from the moon, Luna still had the capability to light up a room, in the same way that Pinkie Pie could do it; Twilight once asked Luna if she had always had such an ability, but she had merely gotten a shrug in response.
It seemed to take an age to get to the center of Town Hall, as they had started on the outskirts of town, but eventually, they finally made it. As the guard cleared out the last of the remaining ponies gathered around, the object that had drawn such a massive crowd from all over Equestria finally revealed itself, and, as Twilight had wished wouldn't be the case but expected none the less, she had no idea what it was.
It was a sword, but clearly not just any sword. It shone so brightly in the midday sun that it almost looked as if it gave off its own light source; the pommel and grip were not fancily adorned like the swords some nobles wore in the Equestrian Court, but Twilight could tell just by looking at it that it was extremely well crafted. It seemed to be all for naught, however, as only half the sword was visible; the other half of it was clearly incased in a giant stone slab that had somehow made its way to very center of the town. The slab had an inscription, however, written very nicely on a golden plaque.
Whoso Pulleth Out the Sword of the Stone and Anvil,
is Rightwise Ruler Born of All Equestria
Twilight read the inscription several times over, and once she had the words firmly burned into her brain, she immediately broke into a fit of wild laughter.
"So this is what everypony was doing? Trying to pull this sword from the stone to be the "rightwise ruler born of all Equestria"? This is probably just one of Discord's pranks, right Celestia--"
When Twilight turned to Celestia, she had expected a smile of some sort, or maybe a countenance of confused amusement. Instead, she saw a face adorned with eyes as wide as the moon and a mouth slightly agape, broadcasting an emotion Twilight had only seen from her mentor very few times; fear. Twilight leaned over a bit to gauge Luna's reaction, and was horrified to see the exact same thing.
"Luna," remarked Celestia in a soothing voice. "Please disperse the crowd." Luna gave a hurried nod and cleared her throat.
"EVERYPONY, GO BACK TO YOUR HOMES! LEAVE THIS PLACE AT ONCE! NOW!" Once the guard had heard this command, they immediately began to push forward in all directions, causing the ponies gathered round to quickly retreat backwards; many got the message and began to hurriedly scurry out of the area.
Twilight was sure that the massive crowd breaking apart in front of her very eyes was another incredible spectacle, Twilight wasn't looking at the crowd; she was looking at the two Princesses. They still had that look on their faces, and it was immediately clear that they had seen this before, else they'd have no reason to fear it. Twilight felt as if the notion was ridiculous; a silly sword in a stone couldn't determine the chosen ruler of an entire nation...could it?
Before Twilight knew it, the entire crowd that had occupied Ponyville minutes earlier was gone, and the Town Hall now looked desolate and abandoned, and the dents in the earth created by the mass amount of hooves did nothing to increase the beauty of the scenery. She waited a little bit, to see if the Princesses would do anything, but they merely kept staring at the sword. After what felt like an eternity, Twilight finally decided to speak up.
"So...so, it's true then? This...thing determines the rightful ruler of Equestria?" asked Twilight. Celestia stood there for just a little while longer before tilting her head to the side and walking forward towards the object.
"This...this was created by Starswirl the Bearded, thousands of years ago," she began. She slowly circled the sword in the stone as if it were up for a routine inspection. "He made it so that Equestria would be pushed in the right direction, as the three tribes were currently locked in a state of war. I...I never thought I'd see it again," explained Celestia. It was Starlight who spoke up next.
"Wait, you've seen this before?" she asked. Luna, who had been carefully inspecting it from her standing position, turned to her.
"We were the only ones who were able to wrench the blade from the rock, and we were crowned the rulers of Equestria," The trio's jaws dropped at that; that was a different tale than what was told in the textbooks and historical writings across Equestria, and just being casually told the fact was rather shocking. The answer didn't satisfy Twilight, however, who walked a bit closer to Luna.
"But, then why would it resurface after all those years?" she asked. Suddenly, she heard the sound of magic being activated near the stone, and she looked up to see Celestia's famous light-gold aura encase the sword. There was visible struggle in her face, but the sword did not budge even an inch, and she let it go with a huff. Luna, in turn, attempted the same feat, grabbing the sword with her magic and pulling, but still the sword did not move. Once she withdrew her magic, Celestia gave Twilight an answer she no longer needed.
"Because we can no longer pull it," she replied, before gesturing outwards with her hoof. "But I have a feeling you can."
