A Time of Leaving
What more is Out There?
Sunset Shimmer made her way through the evening sunlit halls of Canterlot Castle, her hoof steps joining those of the servants as they went about decorating the castle. Some were doing simple cleaning, like sweeping and dusting, while others were setting up vases full of a variety of colorful flowers and hung banners from the archways. Each pony moved about with an excitement that was downright infectious. Why would they not be so? A new princess was going to be crowned the next day after all.
Sadly, Sunset found herself to be immune to the plague of joy and good cheer that had taken not only the castle, but all of Equestria, by storm. Instead she found that she was plagued by an altogether different disease, that of uncertainty.
Normally she would be the one directing the servants as they prepared, but this time the occasion called for the duty to be passed into the hooves of another. Not that she minded in this case. It had been unofficially planned years ahead in advance and she doubted that she could be fully engaged in planning the event no matter how hard she tried.
It was hard for her to be objectively minded right now.
No pony stopped moving, but they did part and went around Sunset as she trotted by, just as they have always done. Normally she would greet them as they passed, something that admittedly she had not always done, but she did not quite feel up to it today. Fortunately for her, they were all too giddy with euphoria to notice or care.
Eventually Sunset Shimmer found herself in the castle’s foyer, famous for where Princess Celestia would greet the guests of the Grand Galloping Gala before they were directed to the ballroom and gardens. Just like in the rest of the castle there were servants cleaning and setting up. However, this was the first room that was started on and therefore almost done with preparations. Everypony here was simply putting the finishing touches before they moved on to assist in the other rooms.
Sunset took in deep calming breath to subdue her nerves. Slowly, she looked up at the banner that hung across the entrance and held back a tear that tried to escape from her when she saw it. She could not have that. Now, in this moment, she had to remain strong. This was it. This is what everything had been leading towards for as far back as she could remember. She finally understood what Princess Celestia was trying to accomplish.
Congratulations
Our Newly Crowned
Princess Twilight Sparkle
May friendship light your way
In another time, the unicorn would have felt bitterness, anger, even jealousy, at her fellow student. She would have been absolutely seething. Truthfully, part of Sunset Shimmer did feel that way. It was a darkness that once ruled over her and nearly cost her everything that she held dear. However she had buried that long ago and, she hoped, it would remain so for a very long time.
Despite initial misgivings, Sunset Shimmer had to admit that, in the end, Princess Celestia had chosen the better mare. For all she had done for Equestria, Twilight had more than earned the title of princess. Finding the Elements of Harmony, freeing Princess Luna from Nightmare Moon, stopping Discord (and even reforming him she had heard… not that she actually believed he actually was reformed), and the event that made her into an alicorn, creating new magic (whatever that meant), just to name a few of her accomplishments. A hero of the realm many times over. A good friend as well, she had heard. From Princess Celestia.
Frequently.
Truthfully, for all of their similarities and time spent learning under the Princess, she and Twilight were not what many would call close. Mostly they tried to stay out of one another’s way, something that became much easier when Princess Celestia had assigned Twilight to study the magic of friendship in Ponyville. At their shared mentor’s insistence, Sunset had tried to befriend Twilight when the other student started her studies. She succeeded with the fillies that Twilight had been around at the time, the very same group she had so thoroughly snubbed, yet Twilight had a passive hostility to friendship, or anything else that distracted her from her studies. While she was never rude about it, quite unlike how Sunset herself had been, every attempt at friendship ended the same, bouncing right off of thick skin and skull of the lavender unicorn. Eventually Sunset Shimmer gave up in frustration.
Though she tried not to think about it, but to this day she could still see the look of disappointment Princess Celestia had when she delivered that bit of news. Should she have tried harder? Did she do something wrong?
The only ones that Twilight would open up to were her family, Spike, Princess Cadance and Princess Celestia. In the case of the lattermost it seemed Twilight practically worshipped the ground she walked on, much like Sunset Shimmer herself once had (and still did on the odd, somewhat awkward or adorable, occasion), and never took others deriding princess well, as Sunset found out the hard way during a ‘regressive’ period that to this day she was none too proud of.
The two of them still got strange, some might say borderline fearful, looks from cleaning staff because of that incident.
But despite that, Sunset knew that Twilight Sparkle was a good pony who now enjoyed many friendships and would make a great princess for Equestria. Princess Celestia would not have made her a princess if that were otherwise so. She was everything that Sunset Shimmer was not. Sunset believed she had no right to complain. She had her shot at a crown and currently considered herself fortunate that Celestia had taken her back as her student at all, given what she had done.
But, oh, what she would do to see the look on Twilight Sparkle’s face when Princess Celestia told her she was going to become an alicorn and be made royalty!
Sunset Shimmer turned around and headed back into the castle’s halls. She might not have been busy directing the servants, but she still had things to do before she left.
Sunset Shimmer decided that her time in Canterlot was at an end.
The unicorn wandered deeper into the castle, where the hallways got a little darker from the lack of light yet not dark enough to warrant lighting the chandeliers. Still quite warm too, given that it was summer and the Summer Sun Celebration itself was only a couple of weeks away. These halls were also more cluttered, as various pieces of furniture, statues and suits of armor lined up along the walls. Sunset Shimmer knew that the rooms in these halls and corridors held even more. She knew from experience.
This part of the castle was not open to the public. In fact, Sunset herself would have been in trouble from being found in this place not too long ago. But that was in the past now. Princess Celestia trusted her enough to let her in, provided that she informed the guards before doing so. Given some of the objects found when a pony went deep enough, it was as much for her own protection as it was for everypony else. Cursed amulets, dark magic tomes and the like, all gathered for the period of over a thousand years. She knew not to dwell too long.
Part of her might never leave… and, if that occurred, the part that did leave never should have.
Yet, of the all the relics this place had, only one object in particular held her interest at the moment. Interestingly, compared to some of the others, it might just be one of the more mundane ones. But it was the only one Sunset had a special connection to.
Sunset Shimmer turned a corner, passing by a large wardrobe that was locked shut by thick heavy chains. The hallway that she was now in had several tapestries. One tapestry depicted colorful bipedal beings with boxy bodies with one of them, red and blue, holding a gold orb with silver handles in the air with both arms. Another depicted a blue rectangular box exploding violently. A red tapestry showed a black triangle with one eye looking down on a field of burning ponies.
She hurried out from under its gaze. That last tapestry always creeped her out and she could swear it was watching her.
Once Sunset Shimmer found the room that she was looking for, she slowly opened the door with her magic, a sense of unease already rooted in her chest. Though she was allowed to do what she planned, the unicorn knew that Princess Celestia would not approve of it. It was pushing the line too close to reopening old wounds, of bringing back the worst and lowest point of her life. But she knew that she to do this. There was only a little time left.
And, to her at least, it felt like the right thing to do.
When she opened the door, the object she sought was immediately in view, set against the wall like it had been for so many years. It, as well as everything else in the room, had been left undisturbed. To others it would look like nothing more than a large mirror that made of crystal set in an ornate purple frame and tall enough for even Princess Celestia to reflect her whole body in it. But Sunset Shimmer knew better. Better than any other pony save for, perhaps, the Princesses or the mirror’s creator, Star Swirl the Bearded.
And why would this not be true? There was a time when the mirror was an obsession that consumed her. The promise of power. The promise of a crown. It started as an idle curiosity that became twisted by her own greed, anger and ambition.
For a moment Sunset Shimmer felt anger course through her like a bolt of lightning. This mirror, her obsession with it, had nearly ruined her life! If it was not for this mirror, she’d be a princess right now! Not Twilight Sparkle! Her! Sunset Shimmer! She wanted to smash the mirror, watch it ground into dust for what it had done to her, for how it had wronged her! Though she knew that in the end it would accomplish nothing. The damage had already been done and so, just like lightning, her anger passed.
It was wrong to blame the mirror. The mirror did not make her break into the forbidden dark magic section of the royal archives. Only she was control of her own actions and she had to bear the responsibility.
Sunset Shimmer sat at the foot of the mirror, staring into the depths of a surface that was free of both scratch and smudge. A perfect reflection of her stared back. No pony too special, just an amber coated, red and yellow maned unicorn seated in a dark room full of old things.
She was not sure if that was a good or bad thing.
The mirror had many powers. The most prominent of these was its ability to act as a portal to another world that opened for three days every thirty moons. But sometimes… There were times when the mirror seemed to have less explainable properties. Sometimes it showed ponies things. Images. Sounds. Places. There was some debate over whether these were visions of a future yet to come, reflections of what lied in the heart of the viewer or even worlds alternate to their own altogether.
It was hard to tell. Star Swirl’s notes looked like they were written like he was high on sugar and coffee. Sunset was not even sure if ponies even had coffee back then.
The last time Sunset Shimmer gazed into this mirror, she saw herself as an alicorn princess. Powerful, beautiful and majestic, just like her mentor. Somepony who could rule Equestria at Princess Celestia’s side and be adored by all. Then she saw the fire and… something else. Something dark. Princess Celestia had pulled her away before she saw more but, thinking back, she was not sure if she really wanted to. The brief time she had spent in front of it before had been enough to ignite an obsession.
After seeing herself as a princess in the mirror, she became fixated on the idea of becoming one, convinced that it was her destiny and she deserved it. Before then she had been content to put herself above others as Celestia’s personal student and be acknowledged as the best, but that was not enough anymore. Not at the time, at that point.
So she pestered the Princess about the mirror. For weeks, Sunset Shimmer had needled away at her, hoping that Princess Celestia would finally cave in and give her the answers she sought. Eventually something did break, but it was not Celestia’s resolve.
If she was not so consumed by her own ego at the time, she might have realized that she should have stopped when she brought the princess- Princess Celestia, of all ponies!- to the point of true anger.
But that fact escaped her at the time and so did little to deter her from sneaking into the forbidden section of the Royal Archives. She had learned quite a bit of knowledge that she was not supposed to, that only the Princesses should. Sunset smiled softly, thinking of how sometime in the future Twilight would be holed up in there for days to read everything she could.
If only her own time in there had ended so fortunately. Princess Celestia had found her out and Sunset Shimmer, on an impulse, tossed a book at her and demanded to be made a princess on the spot. Sighing, she wondered what she had been thinking at the time.
She tossed a book at Princess Celestia! What was that supposed to accomplish?!
Her banishment from the castle had lasted only a few weeks, thankfully, and she was lucky not to be banned from Canterlot altogether. With the promise of good behavior and making more genuine attempts to befriend others, Princess Celestia decided to let her off with a warning and take her on again as her student… though by that time she had already taken on Twilight Sparkle as her new student. The experience of having everything torn away from her and being left all alone in Canterlot had humbled and, while not having entirely sold her on ‘the magic of friendship’, showed her that it was thanks to others that her life was a good as it was. From the cooks that made her food to the maids that cleaned the halls.
For a time Sunset Shimmer actually considered leaving Canterlot and returning home to her parents or even starting over in another town. Ironically, in regards to the latter, Ponyville was at the top of the list. Nice, quiet and peaceful save for the occasional attack by some beast from the Everfree Forest, as well as generally being the crossroads of Equestria and gateway town to the capitol city of Canterlot. It would have been a perfect place for her to build a new life and find a future position of power.
Her parents on the other hand would have been devastated. While they were not as close as most families, they had been so proud when she became Princess Celestia’s student. There was no way she could have faced them with that news. To this day they were still unaware that she had even once been stripped of her position, no matter how temporarily, thanks to the fact Princess Celestia tried to keep it quiet from the newspapers. Such news would have embarrassed the Equestrian government and make life difficult for Sunset Shimmer as well.
Though that had not been her first plan. At the time, due to her mirror fixation, she was convinced that the world on the other side held the secrets to becoming an alicorn without Celestia’s help. A very bad idea in hindsight, since she did not know what the alternate world was like and none of the texts she found gave any details. The sheer possibilities of what it could be like sent a chill up her spine. For all she knew it could have been an empty void or a world without magic that was populated by hairless monkey things or a death land that had almost enough atmosphere for a living creature to survive.
Sunset was so very glad that she decided not to go with that plan.
The mirror portal was not open now, though it would be in a few days during the Princess Summit. She had wondered if she should go through it when the time came, but thankfully the more rational parts of her mind shut that line of thinking down quickly. There was no need to needlessly endanger either herself or Equestria to satisfy idle curiosities or a lust for power. She rarely left Canterlot as it was, usually to visit her parents or assist Princess Celestia in her duties. There was no need to go to a place that might have no resemblance to literally anything she knew.
She did not really know what she expected to see when she looked into the mirror. All she saw was Sunset Shimmer, a regular unicorn. There was no alicornhood, a crown or a special destiny of any kind… and no way of knowing whether that was good or bad. But Sunset Shimmer did know one thing.
This would be the last time she saw this mirror in the foreseeable future.
“I wish I never knew that you existed.” She said as she turned and left the room.
But I would hate to forget what the knowledge taught me…
Just like in any other case, the guards searched Sunset Shimmer as she left, making sure that, for whatever reason, she had not taken anything or hiding something with a spell. Thankfully it did not take long due to her lack of saddlebags and she was swiftly sent on her way.
