Shimmer; or The Equestrian Prometheus

Chapters

Prelude
Chapter 1
Chapter 2

Prelude

Yakyakistan 17, 4, 998

My journey to reach the nigh mythical Furthest North has taken me to the lands of the Yaks. North of Canterlot, north even of the lands once said to be occupied by the mysterious 'Crystal Empire' of foals' tales, Yakyakistan is (not putting things lightly) a sty. It lacks most of those conveniences that an Equestrian would take for granted, and their chosen diet is a simple and plain fare. My hosts however have for the most part been gracious and have been integral to assisting me in my future successes. Despite their own thick and heavy coats they still sell warm garments and travel gear for equine visitors such as myself. That is not to say that I didn't come prepared for the frigid wastes of the north, but having one last final rest stop in which to acclimatize and stock up on necessary supplies has proven to be invaluable.

The locals have expressed little interest in assisting me in my journey, neither the promise of bits nor fame swaying them in their resolve. It is not some strange cultural or religious belief that the Yaks possess that prevents them from venturing north of their homelands, no, it seems to be some shared knowledge that there is simply nothing there that is worth exploring. It is no great loss, I have never really brought companions with me on my other adventures, still, a guide for the first leg of the journey would certainly have been useful. The Yaks have shown me no particular animosity, indeed if anything I have been met with curiosity and fascination, the locals wishing me well in my adventure and showing their desire to speak to me again when I return. I do note though that many of them speculate my quest will be a failure, that I shall return empty hooved, having never reached my destination and having gained nothing for my troubles.

For many long years I have aspired to make a name for myself, and under my chosen pseudonym I have managed to partially fulfill this dream. The truth remains though that in all my adventures I have never explored anything that might truly be considered 'new'. Whether it be rediscovering ruins in the supposedly Undiscovered West, or thwarting villains in the Forbidden Jungles, my exploits have largely been those of an adventurer as opposed to an explorer. They make for fine reading in the stories of my supposedly fictitious life, and have potentially saved Equestria from danger a dozen times over, but when I am dead and gone I would like there to be some singular achievement that stands above the rest, one momentous discovery that generations to come will remember me for, my hope is that my current venture shall put that feather in my cap. The first mare to reach the Furthest North. The idea has been floating about my head for perhaps some six years now, inspired by tales of similar expeditions that have met with disaster and failure, only to have the participants return to the praise of their peers for the audacity of their attempt. My hope is that by trying my luck with the land bridge north of Mount Everhoof I can avoid the storms and rough sailing through the channels along the edge of the Yaket Range, that have ended many of my Predecessors journeys. Traveling by hoof will certainly be slower than traveling by sea, but if the weather is kind to me then I may well be able to fly a portion of the journey.

My own observations and the records of others indicate that this will be the most favorable time of year to attempt my journey. The storms that ravage the north should be at their weakest and the ice should be relatively stable in those places where there is no land beneath it. I am thankful that as a pegasus I am naturally resistant to the cold as even here in Yakyakistan I am starting to feel the chill of the north, I can only imagine how biting the temperatures must feel to members of the other tribes. With my provisions packed and ready I plan to leave the lands of the Yaks tomorrow morning, my hope being that the journey should take me a little over a month, perhaps close to two at the most.

-Daring Do

Yakyakistan 09, 5, 998

Disaster seems to haunt my every effort! My first attempt at reaching the Furthest North has met with disgraceful failure. Despite forecasts of favorable weather and light storms I found myself constantly contending with blizzards and Whiteouts. I was forced to spend an entire week entrenched in a makeshift dwelling to avoid the increasingly bitter cold of the North. An entire week without any advancement towards my goal! If this is what the storms are like during their lightest seasons of the year then I dread to think of the danger that would present itself to an explorer in the cold seasons! I am undaunted by my initial failure though and have returned to Yakyakistan to resupply and better prepare myself for my next attempt. Sled dogs will be a necessity it seems, as I see no other way in which I could possibly hope to carry all the food I will likely need if I am to make the journey there and back. Assuming that my travel will be marred by similar obstacles as to on my first attempt, I have drastically reassessed my estimates of how much I will need to pack and how long the journey will take me.

-Daring Do

North 25, 5, 998

Over a month after my first attempt at reaching the North began, my second already appears to be meeting with much greater success. The dog sled has drastically improved the speed of my progress and the weather has been substantially better than what I experienced during my first attempt. The North has a strange beauty of its own, its frozen majesty different from anything else I have seen in Equestria, or am likely to ever see again. I am allowing myself the time to appreciate it now while my spirits are still good, I doubt after a week or so of travel I will be able to speak of it quite so fondly.

On a more somber tone it has occurred to me since the failure of my first attempt that I might not return alive. Perhaps even if I do reach The Furthest North I will not survive the return journey. This being the case I intend to record my progress within this journal for prosperity, if it should be found then at least those who came after me shall know how close I came to achieving my goal.

-Daring Do

North 01, 6, 998

As expected I have quickly grown tired of the desolate white landscape of the North. Those initial few days of clear skies and safe travel have quickly given way to storms and the harshest cold I have ever known. The dogs make for good company but are poor conversationalists. Though they display much affection for me it is quickly dawning that should I die up here it will be alone.

At present I am situated due north of Mount Everhoof, near the coastline of the northernmost edge of the Yaket Range. The following week should see me to the land bridge that will take me into the unknown and onward to The Furthest North.

-Daring Do

North 18, 6, 998

If it wasn't for the great extent of my own worldly experiences then I wouldn't have believed the events of the past day, instead disregarding them as the fever dream of my lonely mind. The physical evidence of my encounter lies warming herself by my fire though and assures me that I am no longer alone in the North.

To start at the beginning, my trek across the ice was interrupted when I saw a figure on the horizon. The mist of the day was thick, but thankfully I had not had to suffer the storms or blizzards that have plagued much of my journey. Even with a thick layer of mist though, I swore that I could see a great figure striding across the ice, a pegasus of gigantic proportions. It was too far away to call to, but retrieving my spyglass from the sled I managed to watch them for a time before they finally disappeared into the mist, northward bound. I could make out no traveling companions assisting the figure but from their silhouette I judged that it was likely a stallion due to their immense build. Beyond this, all I could really tell was that it was a pegasus, as their wings were clearly visible protruding from their sides.

This first discovery opened up strange new possibilities within my mind. Perhaps some other explorer also sought the North, in which case the journey might now be considered a race. Or perhaps there was some hitherto unknown civilization that dwelt in those untouched lands beyond the northernmost horizon? Regardless of the nature of my mysterious companion in the North, it was clear to me that I would gain no answers unless I continued on my journey. The figure had fled in the direction I had been intending to travel anyway and so it made sense to follow them.

Scarcely three hours after this sight I came across another, confounding my notion that the North was a barren wasteland devoid of life. As my sled skidded across the ice I spotted a dark shape nestled amid a crevasse in the ice and found on closer examination that it was a sled similar to my own. The dogs for this sled had expired however and I briefly considered that it had belonged to the figure that had been proceeding north on hoof, until I saw a mare strapped into it. Her mane was ragged, her coat wretched, her hooves appeared half frozen and her body was emaciated to the point of appearing starved to death. Her fetlocks were overgrown and it was only due to the slow and steady rise and fall of her barrel that I knew she was alive. She was a unicorn with an amber coat and a red and yellow mane, but all other details were obscured by the warm winter clothes that coated most of her body. As I attempted to assist her in escaping the crevasse, I was surprised to hear her speak.

"Where are you going? North or south?" There was no real emotion to the voice, no thanks or pain. The question was a simple one, said in a simple manner, with all the ease that you would ask somepony the time. I confirmed that my journey was taking me north and she simply nodded, accepting my aid in helping her escape from her predicament and then requesting a lift upon my sled, stating that she was traveling the same direction. I asked her many questions, what she was doing there? What did she hope to find in the North? What was her name? Where had she come from? She answered none of them, instead opting to remain mute and dismiss my inquiries as 'things that could wait till she had recovered her strength'. She was terse and aloof with me, and normally I would have dismissed her from my company then and there, but having not seen another pony for over a month and being unwilling to let her die from exposure I agreed to bring her with me. At present she lies by the fire I have set up for the night, sleeping beneath the blankets she salvaged from her own sledge.

-Daring Do

North 27, 5, 998

It has been two days since I saw the mysterious equine on the horizon and still I have seen neither hide nor hair of them again. My new traveling companion has however begun to open up to me about her own situation. I haven't pried too deep into her personal affairs and she has rewarded me by volunteering the information herself.

"My name is Sunset Shimmer," she started, startling my attention away from the dogs as we traveled. "Perhaps you have heard of me? I was once the personal student to Princess Celestia herself, but those days are behind me now. As for my purpose in the North, it is in relation to the horrors that plagued the city of Canterlot a few years back. I doubt you haven't heard of them?" Who hadn't? A series of grisly and unexpected crimes had come to the city, and to this day remained partially unsolved. I seemed to recall the name Sunset having been briefly mentioned in relation to those events, but never had she been accused of any involvement in the murders.

"I traveled north seeking out an equine who even now flees from justice! She is a singularly evil mare, a monster not fit to walk beneath the radiance of Celestia's Sun!" She ranted at me.

"A pegasus? I think I might have seen them the day I found you but they looked like a stallion, not a mare," as I informed Sunset of this detail her face lit up.

"It was a mare actually," she corrected, "but from her girth and height it's unsurprising that you mistook her for a stallion. Did you see where she went?"

"North, the same as us." I replied.

"Then I shall continue north with you." As before she spoke in a matter of fact manner, as though my own opinion on the matter was immaterial. I briefly debated persuading her to return south with me to seek some medical aid, but I ultimately decided it would be a fruitless endeavor. It would render the current success of my own journey void, and the mare seemed adamant in pursuing her own quarry.

-Daring Do

North 30 5, 998

The past few days I have come to appreciate the presence of my new companion. Sunset speaks little of her own past beyond what she has already divulged to me, but she makes for good conversation. We have shared stories of some of our past exploits, and though she doesn't speak of her troubled past, Sunset does mention the various places she has been to. Her own journeys are not quite so extensive as my own, but judging from some of her anecdotes it would seem as though she has traveled the length and breadth of Equestria in the span of a few short years. She is at times arrogant, but is otherwise amusing and passionate, her desire to reach the north rivaling my own. When asked why she seeks to travel north, though, she clams up, refusing to say much more than that it is in the pursuit of a villain. It would seem though that she intends to change this arrangement shortly, as during our most recent conversations she seemed to suggest a desire to speak about her own history.

"Why are you traveling northward, Daring?" she came to ask me as we traveled. As we had for the past few days, I controlled the dogs while Sunset scanned the horizon for any sight of her prey.

"Fame, I want to achieve something the likes of which nopony has ever done before. Other ponies have scaled Mount Everhoof, they've sailed to Zebrica and beyond, but never before in the history of ponykind has someone reached the Furthest North," she shook her head and laughed, a morose, pitying laugh.

"I can relate to that feeling. Once upon a time I was possessed by similar ambitions. I had the grandest desires, I thought I would make my mark upon Equestria, that nopony would ever again speak the name 'Sunset Shimmer' and not be filled with admiration! I thought I'd revolutionize medicine, that with one swing of my hoof I would rewrite a thousand years of knowledge." She turned to the sky and sighed in remorse, a sigh so heartfelt that I could only begin to imagine what troubles weighed upon her heart. "And now look at me," she whispered. "A wreck, a ruin. I'd be dead if it wasn't for you, Daring. Destiny is a powerful force," she said, glancing at her flank, "and a cruel one. We can't escape from its grasp, no matter how hard we try."

"It can't be that bad," I hazarded, but from the unparalleled grief that spread across her face I gathered she disagreed.

"I once had it all," she muttered beneath her breath. "Wealth, comfort, friendship, an opportunity for love." She sighed with remorse, as though all of Equestria was dead to her. "You're a mare of ambition aren't you, Daring? Well be careful with that ambition, don't let it swallow you up like it swallowed me. My life is over, done, finished. At the moment I can see perhaps two tasks left ahead of me. The first being to bring my enemy to justice, the second being to keep you from making the same mistakes as me. After that...after that I'm done." There was a sense of finality to her words and I began to appreciate that her own journey northward had not been one made with the intention of returning to Equestria.

"Hey now, I'm sure when all this done there will be something waiting for you back in Equestria," I barely knew the mare, but over the past two weeks I had come to enjoy her company and it hurt me to see her in such evident pain.

"No," she shook her head. "No, everything I had is ashes now, burnt up by my own pathetic ambitions," she spat the words like they were poison in her mouth. "My enemy may be a monster, but I'm not entirely guiltless myself. Call it penance, call it divine justice, call it karma, call it whatever you will, my own past is hardly clean. But if I can make sure that this...thing... is brought to justice before I die, then perhaps I will have at least partially atoned for my own transgressions." With another remorseful look towards the Sun she went silent, not speaking another word for the remainder of the day.

-Daring Do

North 31, 5, 998

This morning, before we set out on the next leg of our journey, Sunset approached me and spoke these few words.

"It's become clear to me these last few days, Daring, that you are curious about my past. I have decided that tonight I shall relate to you the exact nature of the crimes that have brought me to this place today. My health is fragile at the moment and I'm a little worried that I might not live to see my revenge completed, but perhaps if you know the truth behind my story you might be able to aid me in seeing justice done and perhaps be turned away from your own foalish little dream. Now, some of the things I'm going to tell you will defy reason, I imagine you will scarcely believe what I have to say, but I assure they are all true, every word. I won't paint myself as something I'm not, I'm no hero, Daring, but perhaps you will appreciate that much of what I did was done with the best of intentions. Thank you, for helping me, for aiding me when I might have otherwise met my end. I hope you don't think poorly of me after tonight." She paused there and hasn't spoken since.

As we begin to rest for the night and Sunset sees to setting up a fire to keep us warm, I grow increasingly curious as to the nature of what she has to tell me. It is clear that she has lived a troubled life, but from what she has told me already and the way in which she speaks it is clear that she had a rich upbringing. I cut off my current entry here, but with her permission I shall record Sunset's story within these pages for posterity, in case neither of us ever returns to Equestria alive.

-Daring Do

Chapter 1

As I have already told you, my name is Sunset Shimmer. I was born in Canterlot to a family of very little note, whose wealth was sufficient to be able to support the three of us, but not to afford any of the finer things the city had to offer. I remember very little of my parents to be honest, they cared for me and doted on me, of that I am sure, but over the years they have almost entirely faded from my memory. When I was a young filly barely four years old they were both struck down by sickness. I was too young at the time to know precisely what was happening, simply that one night I went to sleep and when I woke the next morning neither of my parents did the same. As young as I was I had no real comprehension of what death meant, and tried my best to continue with life as though nothing had happened, crudely attempting to feed myself with what was left about the house and parodying the various things my mother and father did to keep the home clean and tidy. It was after about three days of this that somepony came to check on why neither of my parents had been seen in the last few days, and they found me alone in the kitchen while the bodies of my parents lay undisturbed upstairs.

From there I was taken to an orphanage, where I went through a brief dark patch of depression and mourning. As my recent loss began to finally sink in I became despondent, refusing to speak with any of the other children and barely interacting with my new carers. Indeed it was not until one of my carers decided to have me attempt the entrance exam for magic kindergarten at Celestia's School For Gifted Unicorns that I truly came out of my shell. I passed my test with flying colors and quickly found myself under the attention of the Princess herself, who had apparently been looking for a young prodigy to take beneath her wing. The orphanage arranged a series of meetings with her and I quickly found myself taken in as her 'ward'.

I will not go into all of the details of my early life and education, the important thing you must realize is that as her ward I wasn't technically a part of the family. I was treated with the same love a mother might show for her child, I was cared for, doted upon, never left wanting, but I was not family. Honestly I didn't care, I had everything a young filly could ask for, I was practically royalty and I was going to be learning magic from the leader of all Equestria. Not being held with the same regard as her extended family of minor nobles and Princes like Blueblood was a small price to pay considering how much I was set to gain.

Those early years practically flew by, I was almost entirely engrossed in my studies and paid little attention to the goings on of the rest of the world, I loved my mentor and had no real reason to share that love with anypony else. I had no time for friends, or even for brief acquaintances, the immortal Princess was everything I wanted in my life. And so things remained for what seemed to be the longest time. My studies broadened as I aged, and I came to study not just magic but also nature, politics, history and science. In my dreams I saw myself being groomed to be the next ruler of Equestria, a mare of intellect and superior reasoning, far better suited for such a position than self-centered fools such as Blueblood. Indeed it was not until I was a young adult that I came to realize the futility of such dreams, and even then it was not my own inferiority that shattered my aspirations, it was my pedigree.

I can with perfect clarity recall the precise moment my dreams shattered, it was the arrival of the Princess' newly adopted niece Cadance. Neither myself nor any of the true nobility had heard of her name before that day, then, out of total obscurity, Celestia seemed to pluck a second alicorn, a pretty pink young mare whose body fit perfectly with that aspired form that so many unicorn mares sought. She was like a miniature Celestia, a second Sun to shine upon the fair city of Canterlot, and despite some initial doubts from a few select members of the nobility, she was quickly beloved by all. How could they not love her? She was perfect in form, radiant in appearance, polite in her manners and humble about her sudden ascension to a position of power. It was little surprise that she was quickly crowned 'The Princess of Love'. Yes, Cadance was beloved by all but myself.

I did not hate the mare, no, I never hated her, but her presence around the palace reminded me of my own shortcoming. While I was tolerated, she was loved; while I was a prized student, she was family; while I was the greatest unicorn of my generation, she was an alicorn. Jealousy is not a pretty thing and, in hindsight, I regret certain spiteful things I said towards Cadance during those initial few weeks of her coming to stay at the castle. As if to only further hammer home my own inadequacies she responded to my petty cruelties with all the grace and composure one would expect of a ruler, taking my jabs and jibes in her stride, making constant attempts to be the friend that she felt I was sorely lacking, and in general being the better mare.

It was not long after Cadance's arrival at the castle that my own stay came to an end. Not wanting to spend too much time around the newly crowned alicorn I made many excuses to keep out of her presence. The most predominant of those was that I wished to have more time for private study, an activity that saw me frequently sequestering myself amidst the stacks of the castle library. My reading was prolific and I rapidly consumed the information the library had to offer, including discredited pseudosciences and long obsolete theories. It was there, amidst dusty old books that my fascination with life was truly reignited. I had learned my fair share of medical magics while working as Celestia's student, but never really practiced them. I had read on the subject quite extensively, but it was one specific book, hidden away at the back of the library that made me consider it as a potential career (since it was now clear that 'Princess' was not in my future). The Black Book (as I came to refer to it) had no title, and its author went simply by the initial 'S'. It was a small tome, bound (distastefully) in black leather and horn written by a single individual. The author possessed an incredible knowledge of equine anatomy, postulating on functions and qualities of our anatomy that doctors had only recently come to realize. This 'S' seemed wildly ahead of his time, and the passion with which he wrote instilled me with a desire to follow his path. He wrote, for example, about the manner in which he had seen a recently deceased frog be reanimated by the careful application of lightning, its limbs moving as they had in life, despite its recent demise. Though he never seemed able to actually bring a body back to life he showed an extensive knowledge of the prerequisites each body part needed to live.

My private reading was backed by a few personal experiments. They were not common, I could hardly go out and acquire dead animals without raising a few eyebrows, but when opportunity presented itself I didn't shy away. A pigeon that had crashed into the palace windows and snapped its neck, a rat that had been struck by a cart and fallen dead into the gutter, in one sorry case a kitten that had made its way into the palace gardens only to drown in the pond; each was carefully seized and hidden away in my saddlebags to later be experimented upon in private, replicating the experiments of 'S' and giving me my first foray into the precise art of surgery. My initial attempts were clumsy, like a butcher with a slab of rotten meat, but with each new cadaver my precision became finer as I learned from my mistakes. To the great joy of my mentor I approached her about lessons in needlework, a pastime she deemed fit for a young lady like myself, never telling her the true purpose behind the skills she was helping me nurture.

So things continued until Celestia finally approached me about the matter of my future.

"Sunset," she said to me one day, at the conclusion of our magic lesson. "I cannot help but notice that you seem to have made no effort to make friends with other ponies, either about the palace, or at school," it was a strange obsession of hers, one that she constantly brought up, that I should make friends with my fellow ponies.

"Why bother? I'll likely never see them again when they leave the school, so why put the effort in? I can look for friends when I'm older and actually settled in life," at the time I genuinely had little interest in friendship, it seemed a barrier that would only slow my studies, and my superior knowledge suggested that the friends I would have wasted time making at that point of my life would only last till the end of my schooling.

"Sunset," Celestia sighed, "Friendship means a great deal more than you give it credit for, in many ways it is the bedrock of Equestrian society. I worry, Sunset, that without friends you might never be able to truly complete your studies as my student." It was laughable really, the idea that 'Friendship' might be deemed to be a part of her curriculum, perhaps if I had been pursuing social studies, maybe, but for my own interest in magic and the physical sciences? No.

"Perhaps if I knew where these lessons were meant to be taking me then I might understand," I muttered beneath my breath.

"Where do you think they are taking you?" she asked with one of the motherly smiles I had come to love her for.

"I don't know, a minor noble, an ambassador, a court magician, a teacher at your school, a doctor..." she watched me in silence as I listed off the possible futures that I had imagined she had in store for me, it was not until the last one that she showed any real emotion beyond mild curiosity.

"A doctor, Sunset?" She asked me in surprise. "Is that truly something that is of interest to you?" the question was not asked with any hint of disbelief, it was clear that she had not expected that answer but she made no sign of wishing to dismiss it.

"I guess," I replied, rubbing the back of my head. "I've been reading up on the subject and it would be nice to maybe stop other ponies having to go through what I did," the fate of my parents was not something we often spoke of, it was a touchy subject, one that was largely in the past, but I had never truly gotten over that first great tragedy in my life. Under Celestia's care I wanted for nothing, but she was never able to replace my mother and father, while they were quickly fading from my memory I could still recall their abundant familial affections, a love that Celestia had never been truly able to replicate.

"Do you truly consider this as something you would like to try?" her choice of words confused me slightly, 'try', as though she had no real expectation for me making a long term career out of the profession.

"Yes, it's a fascinating subject, and I could really help some ponies," I saw no real reason to bring up that my fascination had come from the curious little black book I had found in the library.

"Very well then," Celestia replied after an extended pause for thought. "There is a small town, not far from Canterlot, called Ponyville. The locals there are kind and amicable, but their hospital is sadly understaffed. If this is a career you are genuinely interested in pursuing, then I can arrange for you to intern there and study under their head of staff." I smiled at the suggestion, I would probably have preferred a larger, better equipped hospital to work at, but a small town had its own charms, privacy to pursue my own studies chief among them. "However," Celestia continued, "I have one small favor you must carry out for me while you are there," she leaned down and smiled playfully, perfectly playing the role of the kindly caretaker, "try to make some friends."

Chapter 2

My departure from Canterlot was not a particularly high profile affair. I was only Celestia's personal protegee, and with the relatively recent arrival of a new royal to the city most interest in me had waned. Who was I but another in a long line of success stories to emerge from her school for unicorns? Oh, once the nobles and courtiers had doted upon me as though I was somepony special, but just as I had realized the limitations of my ambition, so too had they realized my comparative insignificance in Equestria with the arrival of Cadance. So it was that there was no pomp or ceremony on my departure, Celestia even suggesting I take the train as opposed to a chariot. We exchanged a few brief words about the nature of my new placement, she wished me luck, expressed her admiration for my choice and hinted that she expected 'great things' from me.

Considering how low key my departure from Canterlot was going to be, it came as a great surprise to find myself accosted by the very pony who had set the whole chain of events into motion, before I could step one hoof outside of the castle.

"Sunset! You weren't planning on leaving without saying goodbye were you?" I paused and turned to face the speaker in surprise, I had not expected Cadance to take any particular interest in me leaving. The two of us barely spoke to one another, barely even saw each other about the castle. Despite an occasional nudging from my mentor I had never really considered the two of us to be 'friends', and yet there she stood, disappointment clearly plastered across her face.

"I won't be gone too long," I replied curtly, "it's going to be a temporary placement, I won't be far from Canterlot, it isn't some big deal."

"Not a big deal? Sunset, I know you're new to the whole friendship thing but you're meant to tell your friends when you are leaving for an extended period," it was a curious statement, one that gave me pause for for thought.

"Friends? You consider the two of us friends?" Another day I might have filled my voice with malice or petty sarcasm, but it seemed foolish to leave Canterlot on poor terms with the mare who would likely be occupying most of my mentor's time during my absence, plus I was more than a little surprised, even a mare as saccharine as Cadance surely realized that our relationship was frosty at best.

"Well, maybe not the best of friends..." she chuckled, "but aunt Celestia certainly wants the two of us to get along and-" I raised a hoof to stop her before she could continue, thinking that I knew where the conversation was heading.

"I might not be some friendship expert, Cadance, but I doubt Celestia wants the two of us hanging about out of some sense of obligation to her," she gave a barely audible sigh as though disappointed and I considered my options. Remaining within her good books could be beneficial to my future and Celestia had asked that I make some friends during my absence, perhaps there was some merit to Cadance's words after all. In a way accepting her offer of friendship would be upholding my end of the bargain with Celestia, and Cadance being in Canterlot would limit my need to spend time on being her friend. It seemed so pragmatic, so sensible, the friendship Celestia wanted me to find without it cutting into the valuable time that could be spent on studying. "That being said...I'm not adverse to the idea of us being friends."

"Really?" it was unsurprising that my sudden change of heart caught her off guard, she was quite right to be suspicious of my sincerity.

"Really." She stopped and looked me over from horn to hoof, from anpony else I might have assumed the scrutiny to be a sign of suspicion, looking to catch me out in my half truth, from her it felt more like lighthearted curiosity.

"Great! I know you've got the address for the castle memorized but I'll include it in my first letter," she embraced me in a brief winged hug, clutching me tightly to her body before quickly separating, "best of luck to you in Ponyville, and I can't wait to hear from you!" She was gone with the same suddenness as she had arrived, leaving me standing dumbfounded at what had just happened. Apparently I was now pen pals with The Princess.

It should be repeated at this point that I was a Canterlot mare, through and through. I had rarely left the confines of the capital except on the occasional field trip with an academic class or Celestia herself. I take no shame in admitting my experiences were somewhat 'lacking' and so it should come as no surprise to find that I was sorely underwhelmed upon arriving at my new home. The train ride had been a little rough, bumpy at times with hard wooden seats and my noisy fellow passengers keeping me from being able to focus upon my reading. Not the Black Book mind you, I had long since read that particular tome from cover to cover ten times over. I could gain no more insight from that manuscript without a cadaver to experiment upon and more experience at surgery. No, my current readings were all Celestia approved and important to my education as a potential doctor. Bray's Anatomy, Hors'ts the Heart, Cartz's Principles of Surgery, Horseson's Principles of Internal Medicine... I intended to excel in my new study with the same dedication and enthusiasm as I had in my past lessons. Though secretly I hoped to someday surpass the works of those I was studying, there was no harm to be had in learning from their experiences and their mistakes.

Where was I though? Ah yes, the quaint little town of Ponyville. In many ways 'town' felt a little grand for the settlement. While it was granted that Ponyville was home to many facilities that one wouldn't expect from a village (the hospital for one), its general appearance was entirely in keeping with what I expected of some unheard of backwater hamlet. Thatched rooftops, dirt roads, a truly sorry excuse for a train station... I hadn't been expecting Manehattan but I had certainly been optimistic that the 'town' would be a little grander than what I was met with as I stepped onto the platform.

"Hey there! Sunset I presume?" I turned to see a snow white mare with a pink mane pointing a hoof at me. I blinked a few times trying to work out why she would know who I was until I remembered that Celestia had mentioned arranging for somepony to meet me at the station and help me get settled.

"Redheart?" that was the name Celestia had given me before I left, and a quick glance at her cutie mark supported my thesis that it was her.

"That's me. I don't want to sound rude, but you're a lot younger than I was expecting," her eyes flicked across my frame, no doubt noting the various signs of my somewhat pampered lifestyle, though I liked to think myself better than many of the vacuous nobles I still tried to maintain the same level of appearance that was kept by many of the elite, it was important to have standards.

"I get that a lot," it was an irritating truth that most ponies expected the prized student of Celestia to be some withered old creature, long past their prime. All of my predecessors had expired in the centuries long past, yet their legacies lived on, when a pony heard 'personal apprentice to Celestia', it was those ancient scholars and wizards they thought of, not some youthful mare still undergoing her training. "So, where shall I be staying?"

My 'home' turned out to be a large tree that had been converted into a public library. It was a significant departure from the luxurious private quarters that I was used to and I have no shame in admitting that I initially found something repulsive about the notion that anypony could simply wander into my new home and browse the shelves that made up the bulk of it. I didn't resent Celestia for her decision though, it was more likely she picked the building to appeal to my love of books and study than as a means of spiting me by forcing strangers upon me. In my time there I did come to grow attached to the building, but it was never home. No, my true home away from home came to be somewhere else, but I shall get to that in due course.

Having dropped my bags off in the library the two of us had a quick tour of the town, Redheart pointing out the few buildings of any real note, her own address, and generally filling in gaps in the natural conversation with anecdotes about the townsponies. The fact that the most interesting piece of local gossip was in regards to an ongoing rivalry between the town's two resident bakers spoke volumes for how mundane life here must be. Why should I care if Mr What'shiscarrot and Miss What'shercup what constantly at each others throats? If I had found the petty intrigues of court to be a tiresome affair then the gossip of Ponyville barely seemed worth listening to. For all of the banal goings on within the town though the conversation did eventually lead into a topic that I found infinitely more interesting.

We had been talking about the weather schedule of all things (truly a sign that we were scraping the bottom of the barrel for topics) when Redheart mentioned a specific peculiarity about Ponyville. "...so in general we get the occasional spell of rain when the fields need watering but otherwise the weather is pretty good, well, unless something drifts in from the Everfree."

"The Everfree? I'd heard that was home to monsters," at the time I had no idea just how close the infamous forest was to the town. The border between the Everfree and Ponyville is poorly represented in most maps, having lived in the town I can confirm that their proximity is much closer than most would imagine it to be, the calmer more sedate edges of the forest practically spilling into the town.

"Well it is, but it's also home to wild weather, untamed storm clouds, hail storms in the winter..." Redheart trailed off and looked over towards the infamous forest, pointing it out with one hoof. It was only then that I realized the closeness of it. Sure enough I could make out heavy black clouds in the distance above those untamed trees, I imagine a pegasus could tell them apart from normal weather at a glance, but to my untrained eyes there was little difference between them and a scheduled downpour.

"Are they...common in the Everfree? Storm clouds that is," I tried to keep my interest in check, not wishing to sound unduly fascinated by the phenomenon. The truth of course was that they intrigued me, and not simply because of some passing academic curiosity. In his notes 'S' had remarked upon the curious fashion in which electricity could be used to crudely bring spasms of life back to a dead body or severed limb. In my own replications of his work I had been sorely limited in my ability to replicate this specific experiment as I had no Pegasus ally that I felt I could trust with my work, so easily could my studies be misunderstood as something nefarious. But with a readily available source of 'natural' lightning... I will admit I was practically salivating at the potential applications. It was at that moment that the first nagging thought pricked at the back of my mind; if a small jolt of energy could briefly reinvigorate a body, then what of the untapped reserves of lightning in the Everfree? This brief flight of fancy may have ended there and gone no further if it were not for what Redheart went on to say.

"Oh, very common. That's not all though, the place is crawling with Manticores, Cockatrices and perhaps worst of all, Timberwolves," she shuddered at the name. I was familiar with the others but the word 'Timberwolf' had never featured in any of my prior reading.

"Timberwolf?"

"Horribe creatures, nopony knows exactly what made them, but they're magically animated dead wood that take on the forms of wolves and hunt anything that ventures into the forest. I'd steer clear of them if I were you," oh Redheart meant well, but her every word attempting to dissuade me from venturing into the Everfree only heightened my interest in it. Dead wood given life anew, and not just life, but sentience! Even in his wildest experimentation 'S' had failed to achieve such a thing, but what if they were to be studied, Daring? What if that same magic that gave the Timberwolf life could be replicated and turned towards a constructive purpose?

"So there is nothing in the forest but bad weather and deadly monsters?" I asked the trainee nurse, hoping to pry further information from her about the unexpected gold mine that I had found upon my doorstep.

"Well, there's the Castle of the Sisters, but nopony ever ventures that far into the forest. The place is probably completely ruined through neglect by now," that was truly the icing on the cake. A large abandoned building from which I could conduct my own experiments, safe from the prying eyes of the ignorant masses? It felt like destiny, as though providence itself had laid out all the necessary components to assist me in continuing the studies that had been so easily thwarted in Canterlot. Perhaps I wasn't destined for the greatness of being a Princess, perhaps I could never hope to be an equal to Cadance or Celestia, but I could make my own mark upon the world, I could reveal to ponykind wonders of medicine the likes of which had never before been dreamt of. The name 'Sunset Shimmer' would go down in history as one of the great benefactors of Equestria, not fall into anonymity and be forgotten by time as the mysterious 'S' had been before me. My birth might have been inconsequential, but I would achieve greatness by my own hoof, and the Everfree would be the key that opened that path up to me.

Or so I thought.