Perception

Starlight woke up, her head ringing.

"Where am I?" came the only pertinent thought from Starlight's mind.

As her eyes began to adjust to the light's intensity, she could see black spots appearing in her vision, under the backdrop of a blurry, grey landscape.

She made it.

It felt like it were a distant memory. Her head was effectively exhausted and empty after casting that useless spell in an attempt to break Twilight's shield. Her horn was still lukewarm, against the cool, damp surroundings of the cave she was in. A discoloured patch on the curved horn revealed the sheer intensity of the beam she emitted.

Her mouth was shivering, as she felt the dry cracked lips being in contact with each other. As she tried to pry her mouth open, she accidentally bit her own tongue. That sharp jolt of pain rocketed into her dazed head, which jogged her memories.

With her head hung low, she recalled how she had managed to build herself back up from ruin just so that she would be obliterated yet again. She remembered how much courage and drive she had to muster to look forward, rather than delve into her tragic past; how much she had to convince herself that it was normal to have setbacks early in life. This was the attitude that kept her going, alone.

Alone. Her only genuine friend left her for himself, without considering her feelings or any parting words before he left.

Tears trickled down onto the rough cave floor. And they came down faster than Starlight expected. She tried to use her front hooves to wipe the solemn state of her face, but it only helped to wash off the fine particles of gravel off her hooves. She covered her face, trying to conceal her facial expressions and sobbed, as if the spirits lurking in the maze of caverns would witness her lowest point so far.

Again, that sentiment would challenge her for the second time. It was another opportunity to showcase to herself the lessons she learnt from her early days. Unlike the past, this was on a whole different level altogether; her accomplishments were effectively demolished.

Turning her body such that her head faced the cave ceiling, she began to pick up the broken pieces of her soul and rearrange them back into order, staring at the stalactites that dominated the view of the top of the cave. Her mane was wet with the puddle of salty water by her side; a mixture of saline tears and the mineral water dripping from the tips of the stalactites above.

Of all ponies, Twilight and her friends must be the ones to knock her down once again. They forced her to abandon what she created. They forced her to destroy what she created. They forced upon her their ideals of friendship, and dismissing her thinking without considering her feelings.

Starlight fought with her fatigue. She stretched her legs and to stand tall once again with the lust for revenge raging in her eyes. Her steely resolve was reforged in the furnace of hatred.

Starlight saw the light at the end of the tunnel and she went for it, stumbling upon a picturesque view of the world ahead of her. She knew she needed to rest for her next confrontation with Twilight and her friends, and she needed a concrete plan to deal with them.

Striding out the cave's exit, Starlight knew that she had to answer one particularly crucial question.

Who exactly was Twilight Sparkle?

Starlight reached the capital city of Equestria, Canterlot for the first time.

Starlight never witnessed such a grandeur city before. The exterior view made her old town look pitiful in comparison. The infrastructure of the capital was a mixture of solid, blue crystals and pure white marble with virtually no imperfections. The cut and clarity of the gemstones on which the city is built upon was the finest Starlight had ever seen.

Stepping into the majestic entrance gates of the city, Starlight gazed at the polished marble tiles. She saw a rugged, sad-looking pony that was in no way able to match up to the royals at the upper echelons of society just a stone’s throw away. She tried to sculpt her mane to make it neater, aided by the spotless floor below.

As she continued walking, she found herself in a plaza with a intricately crafted marble fountain at its centre. Gushing, fresh, alpine water seeped out, landing into the blue surface below. Mist opportunistically escaped from the end of the stream, floating around just above the surface of pure water. Being thirsty, she gulped down the water with feverish joy, believing it to be the best she could ever taste. She then washed her grimy face with the water pouring out, revealing her true self once again.

Ahead of the plaza, she saw a huge, architectural marvel. The enormity of the construct stunned her into stillness.

Keeps covered the entire field of Starlight's vision of the palace, embellished with curved, colour-contrasting spires at their zenith. A mountain stream carried fresh, mineral water of the highest purity flowed down on the side of the mountain the palace was next to. Multitudes of waving flags and banners fluttered with the calm and cooling breeze, dyed a vibrant magenta. It was the ultimate symbol of royalty and it must be the residence of Princess Twilight Sparkle, most certainly.

A smile emerged from Starlight's face, with her ears upright, attentive to the slightest details of this intriguing landscape.

The hunt to discover the true identity of this elusive princess would now begin.

Over a hundred hours had passed since her arrival to the city with no sign of the princess she so dearly wanted to glimpse.

She had searched everywhere. She had hid behind carts of fresh vegetables from the eastern lands to observe the hustle and bustle of the street machine vendor touting their wares. She had spied on the palace gates from the tinted windows of the tallest observation tower outside of the palace walls. She had checked the famous landmarks of the awe-inspiring city: the museums, the monuments, the parks, the great library...

“Alright,” Starlight confessed to herself, while eyeing on a book of spells in the grand library of Canterlot. “I may have lied about checking the library thoroughly.”

Well, who could blame her? She was able to visit to the huge library that archived most, if not all of Equestrian knowledge. Tall bookshelves dwarfed the avid readers of the library, being stocked to the brim with a seemingly uncountable number of books and scrolls. The library's book catalogue was thicker than Starlight could picture in her imagination, boasting several volumes in itself. Solid, thick wooden tables were equipped with its own individual study lamp, and matched with an ergonomic chair for conducive study.

The sight of the library's amazing facilities made Starlight incapable to resist her urge to refresh on what she had learnt prior, distracting her from her quest to hunt Twilight. The thousands upon thousands of manuscripts allowed her to refresh and improve on some of her spells while she was there, studying with vigour.

And the time spent away from the hunt seemed to be bearing fruit. She managed to discover three spells, which, when combined could make her levitate in the air as long as her magic could sustain it. First, a spell to cut off the effects of external drag forces on her would enable stability in flight. Second, a spell to generate a pressure difference in the air directly below her to create lift. Third, a trans-configuration spell to change the level, magnitude and position of that pressure difference for mobility. The combination could be used to crush Twilight's advantage of flight when she had mastered it.

She threw herself into this new quest of self-discovery. Grabbing further volumes of the appropriate books from the aisles, she began working in an isolated and quiet table of the library.

"Moon Dancer?" a familiar voice came loudly from behind two layers of bookshelves.

"Could it be?" Starlight thought, dropping her quilt. Her heart was racing at the possibility of what she feared. Crawling as gingerly and silently as she could, she hid behind the bookshelves to observe what was happening. Her hooves touching the cool surface of the edge of the bookshelf, she tilted her head sideways to gain a vantage point of the situation.

It was Twilight Sparkle.

"SHHH!" the library's visitors were not keen in the shattering of fragile silence by Twilight Sparkle. Starlight pushed herself back to the back of the bookshelf, ensuring her distinctive head was under the cover of the many thick books on the shelf.

Shortly, swift motion was detected by Starlight's sensitive ears. Her head slowly popped out from the side of the bookshelf, but Twilight had already left.

Immediately, she marched back swiftly to her table and grabbed the key book volumes while returning the rest to the appropriate shelves. She dashed to the borrowing counter to expedite the process. While the gracious librarian was casually marking the return dates on her tattered library card, Starlight turned to check on who was the pony Twilight was talking to.

"Oh, it's her," Starlight thought to herself, as she saw a beige pony neatly attired in a comfortable, dark purple woolen jacket. "Well, if I follow that pony, she might help me learn a thing or two about Twilight."

"Sorry, can I have the next one please?" the librarian said, disapprovingly, trying to catch the attention of Starlight.

Turning slightly to a see a long line of willing borrowers, she smiled nervously at the librarian, her teeth yellow and misshapen. She left the library compound readily, not before mumbling a word of apology.

Stepping out of the library, Starlight selected a comfortable outdoor spot in a public park facing the library exit to formulate the hybrid spell, under the shade of a huge oak tree. She leaned back onto the rough surface of the tree bark, ensuring that she faced the grand, double door entrance of the great library and cracking open the volumes to begin concentrating on her work.

Starlight smiled at the brilliance of her genius.

Linking the magical aura with each of the three different, yet important spells, Starlight was able to channel her energies into the three spells simultaneously through the common magical factors involved in each.

Bending her head down in solemn thought, she clamped her eyes down to a point where her vision was pitch black. With her forehead revealing wrinkles and her uneven teeth clenched, her horn began to glow. A soft, swirling sound was audible under the hooves of Starlight. She could no longer feel the ground in contact with her four hooves.

Carefully opening her eyes, she finally witnessed what she had achieved, causing her jaw to drop out, open.

However, the sudden break in her concentration caused her to lose control over her magic. She dropped from a few feet in the air onto the hospitable, green grass.

Straightening her legs quickly, she jumped up in the air with a bright, beaming face, to the confusion of the random passers-by. With greater practice, she was certain that she could gain the control she needed to yield to allow her to manoeuvre around in the sky seamlessly.

A shaking purple blob alerted Starlight to stop behaving so strangely in the open expanse of a public park in the grand capital.

A totally oblivious Twilight Sparkle trotted out of the entrance of the grand library with her bespectacled friend by her side. They were discussing with each other and were completely engrossed in their conversation, with each looking at each other directly in the eye.

Starlight seized the books from her makeshift study corner and stuffed them into the travel bag she carried along with her. Hurling the pack onto her back, she rushed ahead to make up for lost ground.

"I think...it is time for us to go back to Ponyville, Moon Dancer," Twilight said, pausing for a moment too long.

"Thank you," the bespectacled pony whom Starlight now knew was Moon Dancer responded warmly. "Words fail to describe how grateful I am to reunite with my old friends."

Within the earshot of the two, a hidden Starlight was casually crouching in a thick, woody shrub. She covered her face with her front hooves, trying to hide the smirk from her face as the conversation continued. She now knew the residence of Twilight Sparkle and her friends, finally realising that her hypothesis that Twilight stayed at Canterlot was entirely wrong.

All she has to do now was to find out how to go about with her revenge.