The brick-red mountains known as the Dragonforged Peaks were a hellish place for anypony to dare even think of surviving. But she was no stranger to risking her life.
It was as though a segment of Princess Celestia’s Sun had fallen from the sky to nestle itself into the mountain range. Each inhalation of air lit anew the furnace within her chest and raised it to temperatures she would have thought impossible. Whereas any other mountain that reached such elevation as did the Peaks would be capped with snow heat dispersed with height, these were entirely bare from top to bottom.
Save for the ashes, of course.
The unicorn’s throat was painfully scratchy as she coughed up another lungful of ash. The grey particles weren’t content to settle peacefully onto the mountainside—they stirred across the mountainside with the gusting wind. Sometimes they even spun up into small twisters, although they fortunately weren’t strong enough to push her around (not that they need to in order for her to quickly come to hate them).
Although her coat had been white when she started climbing, it had been dusted grey—although she imagined that it only stayed that way due to the continued reapplication of ash. Her mane and tail were, of course, immaculate.
The mountain itself was a threat too, as her latest brush with death was quick to show her. She only barely managed to dance away in time to keep from losing her hooves to the sagging edge of stone. All she had tried to do was look over the edge of the bluff, but the edge had fallen apart as soon as she put her weight on it.
It was a long, long way down.
She swallowed nervously, but forged ahead anyways.
‘Want’ was insufficient to describe what drove her up the mountain. ‘Need’ was closer, but even that failed to encapsulate her overwhelming desire for what had been promised to her at the top of the mountain.
Release.
Loneliness clawed at her heart, driving her forward even as it pulled down her mood. How long had it been since she had been able to indulge in the simple pleasure of conversation? Her chest wrenched at the thought that she had once disdained something so wonderful, but now that she was deprived of it, she had well and truly learned how important it was to trade words with somepony else.
“‘Somepony else’… heh. Am I still enough of a pony that I can say something like that?” She rasped the question to empty air; talking to oneself wasn’t a healthy habit, but she had picked up at some point over the last two years.
It hadn’t been so unbearable, once. Nopony else was able to accompany her into this exile/quest, but her little brother wasn’t bound by the same limitations as ponies.
A heavy, ash-ridden gale blew directly into her face, forcing her to hunker down against the rock to wait it out. She dearly wished that she had thought to learn a spell to filter out particulate matter, as her mouth and eyes would have greatly appreciated the protection.
Her panting breaths felt hotter against her lips than even the scalding mountain air. Spasms shot through her legs with each step she took, but she had grown used to pushing her body to its limits. The Dragonforged Peaks were far from Equestria, and she had no desire to prolong her stay beyond her homeland’s borders.
The howling of the burnt winds and the clatter of rock or hoof against stone were the only sounds to accompany her ascent. Had the weather been less foul the *crack* of teleportation would have echoed across the mountain instead; rock climbing was more difficult than she had imagined, and for all their versatility hooves were of little use here. But with that much ash swirling about she was more likely to clog her veins with the stuff than not.
Though it took her an age, she at last reached the summit of the mountain—which, to her great relief, proved to be the one she had been searching for. Though each of the volcanoes composing the Dragonforged Peaks had their calderas, only the biggest of them held this infamously large sea of lava. The one she searched for couldn’t possibly live in anything smaller, nor anything cooler.
Unfortunately, the tallest, second-tallest, and third-tallest (as well as the fourth- and fifth-tallest) mountains looked very similar from ground level. She would not have looked forwards to trying this another time.
Her objective, the stable area that surrounded the sea of molten rock, lie nearly one hundred meters below her. The heat distortion was so severe that she could barely make out the lumpy shapes bordering the lava.
Going down was much easier than going up, and the surface of the caldera wall was uneven enough that she found a number of platforms that she could jump down onto. Although she admittedly had to make some of them herself. Most unicorns wouldn’t be able to rip such large chunks of stone out of a mountain, but she wasn’t most unicorns—she could even reattach it before it melted in her magical grasp, if she was quick and careful enough.
But it was an inordinately loud method of travel. The screech of shattering stone was even louder than the endless racket of the lava. It turned out that boiling stone was much louder than boiling water. The thick, cloying reek of sulfur dioxide permeated the mountainous crater. If she hadn’t just come in from the ash storm outside, it would have made her gag. However, the heat-birthed updrafts ensured that the air didn’t stagnate and it kept most the ash out of the basin.
Still, she desperately wished that she could have a drink of water to wash away the tang in her mouth. It had long ago become impossible to carry with her, but that didn’t remove her thirst. She just no longer needed fluids to live.
She slid down the last incline to the surface below. It was disconcerting to be less than ten feet away from molten stone and feel not the slightest hint of fear. She knew the lava intimately, beyond the capacity of even her vocabulary to describe, and in so knowing was fundamentally certain it posed no threat. Not to her.
What did a mare with hair of flame have to fear of the fires that burnt in the bowels of the earth?
The lumps she had seen circling the vast pool revealed themselves as she approached. She had to weave between the stone altars when she neared the lake of fire, each adorned with ancient sacrifices.
“Oh, sweet Celestia… it’s so beautiful…”
The magic here was so thick that she could breathe it. It was needed to allow the offerings that had been left here to survive the overwhelming heat that set flickers of flame to lick the air in near the lava’s surface.
Golden statuettes and coins of a dozen by a dozen by a dozen more different cultures lay scattered along their surfaces. Vases of almost transparent ceramic lay alongside beautiful weapons gilt in gold and gemstones.
Oh, the gemstones! Agate, diamond, turquoise, amethyst, emerald, sapphire, feldspar, beryl, tiger’s eye, opal, ruby, turquoise—jewels of every type and every color, with only the disorder of their placing keeping them from forming a rainbow more magnificent than had ever graced the dreams of even the most ambitious or artistic weather pony.
Spike would regret missing such a perfect buffet.
It must have been a great sacrifice for the dragons of old to have left such great treasures behind, she imagined, but there had been little choice for them. When the element of their making had demanded tribute of them, how could beings born of Fire ever resist?
Although ‘demand’ might be unfitting a word for something that surpassed mere words or actions, that spoke to instincts beyond what the consciousness could ever be aware of.
That was why she had forced her little brother to go back. Every passing day put more pressure on his mind, and she wasn’t certain how much of himself would be left if he came with her all the way to the Peaks.
They weren’t called ‘the Dragonforged Peaks’ because dragons had made them. It was because of what they were made of.
Not in a gruesome fashion, of course! No, it was their magic, the sacrifice of their hoards and their lives, which gave rise to this great and terrible mountain range at the edge of the world, centered in a lifeless, barren plain. It had been days since the mare had seen so much as an insect. The hottest parts of the desert had been seared into glass, and in one section she had been forced to slog through a broad pool of molten sand—that, or take another two days to circle the deadly… she supposed the word ‘bog’ would serve well enough.
Fire’s influence was not confined to its volcano.
No dragon would dare approach these hallowed mountains. Her brother tried anyways, and all for her sake.
Her choked sob was covered by the noise that filled the volcano, and the hoof she brought up to wipe at her red eyes met only dry fur. Her tears must have evaporated already.
That was something she’d become used to since the change.
She was being silly. There was nothing to cry about anymore, after all. She was almost finished.
She continued her walk along the sea of lava’s edge, taking count of the objects that had been placed on the altars with detached curiosity. Carpets and tapestries brocaded with materials the unicorn didn’t even recognize; armor with traceries of adamantine and shirts of woven mythril; a chunk of purified moon-rock, embedded into an ivory diadem. All beautiful, all beyond valuable, and all completely unable to survive in the impossibly high temperatures of this, the greatest of volcanoes.
They should have burned to ash, disintegrated into dust, shriveled into mummified caricatures of themselves. They should have melted and dissolved. They should have evaporated. The remnants of those offerings that had fallen away from the preservative fields of the altars could be seen here and there in the form of small blackened mounds that fell apart at the slightest brush of her hooves.
Such beautiful craftsmareship. Such delicate spellwork. If she were any less focused in her objective, she might have stayed for days on end just to catalogue the treasure on display—both the physical and the magical ones.
A flash of brilliant green caught her eye. “What is that?”
She stared with a renewed sense of wonder as she approached what could only be called a miracle plant. It was a thin thing, with a stem as thin as a reed and with leaves that looked like needles branching away from its center. But despite its seeming frailty it proudly held aloft a large, many-layered flower, bursting into bloom with all the colors of the dawn.
And most spectacularly, it grew away from the shelter of the altars, right at the lava’s edge. In fact, if she wasn’t mistaken—yes, that was in fact a root digging into the magma itself! Her red eyes widened at the marvel before her, and she leaned down to take of whiff of what must surely have been the most durable plant in all the world.
At the touch of her muzzle it burst into flame.
A pony might have imagined that after experiencing the same shock a hundred times over, somepony would acclimate to even so violent a response to their presence. This was not the case—or at least not for her.
She leapt back with a surprised yelp (but not a fearful one—fire did not evoke fear in her), rearing back into one of the altars. Her concentration faltered, and that too burst into flames. The hippogriff-forged adamantine set atop it creaked before a flame that existed beyond flame fell upon it, setting the metal alight.
Precious gems set too close melted into scintillating puddles, and those altars unfortunate enough to be nearby collapsed under the impossible heat.
She cried out for help as she tried to flail her way out of the mire of molten stone that had formed around her, but she couldn’t focus enough to pull the fire back into her heart.
“Take our tail, mare. Youth’s carelessness frees thee from blame.”
She didn’t question the earth-shakingly deep voice and reached out with her forelegs. They wrapped around something thick and warm that pulled her up and out of her self-created trap. For an agonizingly long moment she was suspended in the air with only her legs to hold her up, before she was gently set down upon solid stone—which stayed solid, now that she had a moment to collect herself.
When she beheld the sight before her, she nearly lost herself again.
She had seen many things that she could call ‘large’ over the course of her adventures. Dragons, water serpents, and even a Star Beast… but nothing approached the sheer immensity of what now dragged itself up from the ocean of lava. The horns of its head reached beyond the opening of the caldera and was reduced to a silhouette by the storm of ash outside, but much of it—so, so much of it—was open to her gaze.
Its near-serpentine form was covered in impossibly dark scales; so black were they that it felt as though her eye created colors where there were none to keep from seeing such a terrible void. Each scale was huge and smooth, save for a sharp-looking ridge rising up the middle. Red-orange light outlined each, making it appear as though a great conflagration raged within its body.
When taken as a whole, the black scales looked like a cage for some living inferno.
If that be so, then the inferno was vast beyond comprehension, and not merely in terms of its extraordinary length. Fearful cracks and hissings sounded around its body where the molten stone evaporated into a gaseous state, only to coalesce back into liquid when it moved far enough away from the great beast’s body. Its form was wrapped in fire as the very air burned.
Great coils rose in and out of the sea of lava, making the entire surface roil with serpentine motion. If she assumed that the body below was equal in length to that above, then its extended body would stretch for two kilometers, at a bare minimum. But the tip of its tail, still waving through the air, narrowed to a strip thin enough for a pony to hold, adorned with a cross-shape of slick feathers.
"We had felt Gaea shift as Fire was reborn, yet we are surprised to see such as thee wear her." The air groaned under the pressure of the great voice that reverberated through her skull and her soul as it continued to speak… if its method of communication could be called ‘speech’ in the first place. It surpassed such misleading concepts as words. “So small and frail, yet holding the mantle of flame. How art thou worthy to be this great gift’s bearer?”
Its eyes held her in thrall as the orbs of pure flame danced in their sockets, the two small suns studying her with a palpable warmth that was unpleasant even for her. Its skull was adorned with a crown of five antlers that were twisted to point in every direction. Although its body was that of a snake, its head was unmistakably draconic.
She shuffled under the scrutiny of the entity. “I-I don’t think I am, Enkindle, Once—and, with any luck, Future—Lord of the Inferno.” Why was she stuttering? What happened to all her planning and practice? It wasn’t like she didn’t have experience speaking to beings of higher station or higher existence. But she had never before encountered one so… coldly uncaring as the one before her (as unnatural as it felt to apply the word ‘coldly’ to such as Enkindle).
It had saved her only to sate its curiosity and satisfy some ancient, inscrutable code of conduct. Something as young and small as she would be unworthy of its attention had she been anything other than what she was. She could hear the forgotten eons in its voice was easily as she could hear the snap of the flames.
He had been so powerful and so pettily cruel that it was easy to forget just how young Discord was by the standards of Incarnations.
How much younger, then, must she seem to such a great beast?
“This isn’t anything that I’ve ever wanted. Even before I discovered the magic of friendship, I could never have endured this level of isolation. I…” she paused to take a ragged breath. “I can’t take this. My studies said that only a former bearer of a mantle could take it once it has been passed on. There isn’t much I can do for you in return, but will give you everything I have if you could just take it away.”
She held her breath even as she held her bow, her horn brushing against (and partially melting through) the stone below. The lack of response sent even more trembles running down her spine and legs.
She needed this ‘gift’ gone. The idea that it might refuse her request frightened her more than anything ever had.
Its eventual response was slow, each ‘word’ paced out with exacting care. “An unusual request, child of the morn. Wherefore shun knowledge, power, and immortal life?”
“I’m not shunning them. I want to know everything. I want to be strong enough to protect everypony I meet. I want to live long enough to teach each and every pony all of the wonderful things I’ve learned about magic, life, and friendship! But I can’t do that. Not like this.”
The curious shifting of the leviathan was the roar of a burning ocean in storm. “Thou art strange of heart, foal. Tell us, what was thy name? Guess we rightly that thou art from the Sisters’ fief?”
“My name is—well, it was,” she corrected herself, “Twilight Sparkle. But it… burnt away.”
It hurt. Oh Celestia, how it hurt. And not just the pain of her name searing into ash—she couldn’t think of herself as ‘Twilight Sparkle’ anymore. She was a more-than-pony that had lived the life of Twilight Sparkle, that cared for the ponies that Twilight Sparkle had cared for, and that knew and felt all that Twilight Sparkle had known and felt… but even if she could somehow bear that name again, ‘Twilight Sparkle’ was gone.
Her cutie mark was the only part of her that even looked like she used to. The color had melted from her coat and her eyes had taken on the burning red hue of angry coals. And her mane and tail… she had to admit, she did like those. They had formed great billowing sheets of flame, that danced about and licked the air about her when her focus wavered.
She had always admired the ethereal tresses of her mentor, and that she shared some small trait with her was one of the few saving graces of this catastrophe.
“The name I have now is Incendia… but please let it lie unused and forgotten.”
She hated it. The word was awkward and presumptuous, but she didn’t have a choice in it. It was what grew from the ashes of her old name. She could ignore it, or take fake names, or legally change her name—but that wouldn’t get rid of whatever power there was in a name that had settled into some part of her being.
Her title, though… that was different. It wasn’t possible to like or dislike it. It simply was. She was Fire. She was the Lady of Flame. She was… more things than she wanted to consider. What was left of her that was still mortal might evaporate into nothingness if she dared to do so.
The hum of Enkindle’s musings over what she had brought before it vibrated through the heat—in the most literal of senses. The temperature itself shuddered and fluctuated in response to the titanic former Incarnation’s thoughts.
“Thou art new to this state, and yet wish it away?” The eye that looked upon her was larger than a house, but she could nonetheless make out the minor shifts in its dancing flames that spoke of the interest she had aroused. “What a foolish excuse for an Incarnation.”
“That’s the point! I don’t want to be one at all,” she said.
Fire raged throughout the entirety of the caldera with Enkindle’s irritation. “Thinkest thou the world’s balance as a thing of play? Waken, filly, to the demands of thy station!”
She had never thought of herself as a pony given to anger, but since her change she had felt her blood run hot in more ways than one. The stubborn refusal of this… this thing to acknowledge her made her boil over.
"Be silent!"roared the Lady of Flame. The softly waving fire of her mane burst into a furious torrent that scorched the protective magic layered around the volcano, setting dozens of stone alters alight. But they burnt without noise—before her stentatorian demand, even sound itself was reduced to ashes.
"A worm who has slept alone for eons has no right to compare anything to the value of friendship! Play? Do you think this is nothing more than a game to me? After everything I’ve gone through, after everything it took for me to finally reach this Faust-forsaken nowhere at the edge of the world—do think I’m playing!?"
The leviathan recoiled as though struck. Its shifting bulk created waves from the lava, but where it dared to splash onto her it instantly vaporized. Even the fires surrounding Enkindle burnt before her gaze. “Silence you demand, but what wouldst thou have us think? To value the hollow pleasures of mortals so, when such frail matters vanish in but an instant…”
Enkindle reared up to loom over her even more than before. “Tell us, o’ Fire, what wonders you think you know. What folly of ponies brings thee to the world’s brink? What is it that, when lost, has brought thee such despair so as to drive thee to a locale so distant? None desire to give up a treasure so rare!”
She smiled and shook her head, the fires that consumed the world around her receding as much as they were able. With careful steps she walked out onto the lava, willing herself not to sink. “You’re right. Nopony would surrender a gift as valuable as what I’ve received. But the Mantle of Fire isn’t that gift.”
The liquid stone was thick and gooey under her hooves, its immense heat a comforting warmth to her. She paused only a stone’s throw away from Enkindle’s vast form and looked up at him. “It has always been my dream to follow in Princess Celestia’s hoofsteps and teach others. I never thought that the lessons I’d be teaching would be about this.”
Flame lit in her eyes and surrounded her horn, and in a burst of fire she disappeared. Her hooves lightly touched down on the black scales atop Enkindle’s head. “The answer, of course, is friendship.”
And so she who was once Twilight Sparkle touched her horn to the head of the former Incarnation and willed Enkindle to see.
Author's Note
Not much to say about where it goes from here. She shows Enkindle friendship--not just a few isolated instances of friendly interactions, but the deep and abiding satisfaction and fulfillment that others can bring into your life, the love and self-sacrifice it engenders, the magic friendship gives birth to, and the painful loneliness she felt when that was taken away from her.
Enkindle is too far removed from mortality to understand, but accepts that she can't perform her duties as Incarnation the way she is now, and accepts the mantle. It is kind enough to drain it from her slowly enough that she can leave without instantly combusting.
Twilight goes home and is hugged borderline to death by everypony who missed her.
Sunset Shimmer was a mare of talent and class.
She did not stomp, trudge, grouse, whine, or grimace.
Therefore, her behavior, as she definitely did not grump down the halls of Canterlot Castle, could not be described as any of the above.
Not that Sunset wouldn’t have reason to complain, if she were the kind of mare who would bemoan her problems. There are some things that would upset even the calmest and most fair-hearted of ponies (amongst which Sunset Shimmer was obviously numbered).
Being replaced, for instance.
If Sunset Shimmer were grinding her teeth in frustration (which she wasn’t), her jaw would certainly be aching in echo of her frustration. Three weeks! It had been a full three weeks since her last lesson with Princess Celestia, while her princess deigned that her precious little free time be spent on that purple, pony-shaped rat.
Oh, they still met at breakfast, and she had managed to squeeze in some short conversations with Princess Celestia since the princess took in that insufferable leech. All their meetings had been pleasant, of course—how could time with the princess not be?—but each time they ended, she found her next lesson delayed even further.
All for Twilight Sparkle.
She took a deep breath as she passed the guards who stood like statues outside the entrance to the Royal Suite. A pony might have called it calming, if Sunset Shimmer had had any reason to need a calming breath in the first place. Lavish sitting pillows lay before a simple, low-set table—well, simple until a pony first noticed that the grain patterns of the still-living wood slowly migrated from one end to the other.
Despite being of one of her favorite and most comfortable study spots, Sunset Shimmer had no stomach for staying today. Not after seeing Sparkle nestled into the pillows like some sort of cat. An ugly, awkward, mulberry, tiny, book-reading cat, the kind that finds a way to somehow fill an entire bed despite being only a kitten.
Except unlike a cat, Sparkle was actually ‘supposed’ to be there, in Sunset’s princess’s pillows, reading Sunset’s princess’s books!
It would be infuriating, if Sunset Shimmer were a pony with a temper.
“Good evening,” she said with forced cheer. The unwritten laws of society demanded she make some token attempt at socializing with her.
She received no answer, but she hadn’t expected one from Sparkle.
She moved past the little annoyance, who didn’t even have the courtesy to acknowledge her presence, to return to her room. Sunset Shimmer did not glare spitefully at the door opposite her own before entering, especially not at the stupid six-fold starburst design on it (which was totally not a more magically significant array than the divided sun imprinted into her own).
She tossed her backpack onto the bed before sagging into the pillow set before her desk. Her latest short talk with the princess—and subsequent delay of their next private lesson—had given her vigor born of emotion, but it fled as she calmed in the privacy of her room. Sunset pulled out her class roster with movements that were devoid of energy, imprinting into her mind the names and faces of the ponies that had dared to laugh at her.
Her first day of school had been… difficult.
It wasn’t like she hadn’t expected it. Of course her students would be jealous of her. Sunset Shimmer, the greatest and foremost disciple of Princess Celestia—who would not be envious of her success? But even if they were her elders, she had thought that the class she had been given would at least respect her knowledge and skill.
What other pony had earned a magister’s degree from the university branch of Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns while still fourteen? What other pony had found the flaw in Starswirl’s Broken Spectrum Model of Magical Diversity? Who else had produced a three-axis model to replace it? Who else had been gifted with the secrets of solar magic? Who held enough of the princess’s trust to be permitted to read the forbidden tomes sealed in hidden vaults below the city?
Nopony, that’s who. Jealousy was only to be expected, but there was more than that at play. Sunset just didn’t know what it was.
How could anypony, when faced with the opportunity gain so much knowledge and power, be spiteful at that chance?
Sunset Shimmer didn’t understand it. She didn’t understand them.
She levitated a sappy romance novel from her bookshelf. It wasn’t because she wanted comfort reading.
__________________________________________________________________________
Sweat trailed its way down Sunset Shimmer’s face in rivulets. She dearly wanted to wipe the gross liquid away, but her attention couldn’t be spared for such things.
The radiance of her magic painted the walls of the empty room a bright aqua, and radiance it must be called; the spell upon which she worked demanded more power and skill than most unicorns could dream of. Even forming a double corona of magic around the horn was considered a sign that the unicorn was a master of magic and contender for the title of Archmage.
This spell required three.
The smallest layer, nearing white in its intensity, still reached a dagger’s length past her horn. Each stage past it grew only larger than the last, if dimmer—to such a point that most of her body was within the area of the third corona.
Not that Sunset Shimmer could see it; her gaze was fixed elsewhere, seeing only magic as she wove spellstrands together in a place beyond where eyes could reach.
Power burned through her veins and her horn, pulsing as it coursed throughout her body. Hair-raising shivers followed in its wake, but not due to the cold. It was that nameless chill that ran down one’s spine, and each wave only made the heat that followed more intense.
The magical pressure of sustaining three coronas was too great to be confined to the horn. The delicious heat spread through Sunset’s skull, her spine, her ribs, and all the way down to her rear knees. Quivers of strain ran across her flesh from the raw force she bent to her will, a physical response in dull echo of magical power.
“You have to be gentle,” a voice whispered into his ear. It was soft and serene, holding the warmth that lulled ponies to sleep on summer days. “Even the slightest shift grows into a force of destruction who handling such power. If you don’t handle the magic more carefully, the sun will tear it apart.”
Had anypony else spoken those words they would have been ruinous to Sunset’s concentration. But the voice of Princess Celestia could never do so, not to her.
It was a fragile web—small, frail, something she would expect a schoolfoal to practice. Had she not been creating it in the nuclear furnace that orbited Equus, it would have been insultingly simple. As that was exactly what she was doing, however, Sunset felt as though she were trying to balance on a greased tightrope held between two spastic pegasi.
It was a good thing that she was an excellent acrobat.
She grunted her acknowledgement and shifted her focus to an even more minute scale. Each strand she held wove into the others as she carefully, slowly, delicately forged her spell, the dancing plasma of the sun brushing against it in a deceptively soft caress that belied its immense power.
The spell’s completion strummed through her soul, telling Sunset to pull her spell construct free of the solar flames. It was a long-established fact that magic did not conduct heat, but she could not help but think the room grew hotter as she completed the casting of the sun-molded spell.
Softly panting from the exertion of casting, Sunset Shimmer lifted a hoof to wipe away the sweat on her brow, gazing down upon the product of her labors.
It was a blue plate.
“If I may?” inquired Princess Celestia as she moved up to stand alongside Sunset. At her half-bow/half-nod the princess lifted the cerulean plate, slowly revolving it as she examined each inch of it. The princess pressed tapped its center with the tip of her horn; when she removed it, the blueness slide off of the plate to hang in a formless mass.
The term is often used for objects that have a shape that is confusing or difficult to discern, but the blueness was literally without form. It was simply the concept of ‘cerulean blue’ resting atop her horn. It wasn’t as though Sunset could see it—a concept is not perceptible to mere vision, after all—but there was nonetheless an awareness that there was blue there. She averted her eyes and tried to ignore the crawling sensation it evoked.
The princess pressed this blueness against the table upon which the plate had rested. Color seeped across the surface until the entire table had become cerulean, covering a far greater surface area than existed on the plate. Princess Celestia smiled, and on any other day Sunset would have been pleased with her attention.
But not today.
“Excellently done, my most ambitious student,” came the warm praise of her teacher. “Your progress in solar magic has been impressive. I believe you are now ready to learn the simpler spells of solar magic; until now, your work has just been to familiarize yourself with using—”
“‘Impressive’?”
“… certainly,” replied Princess Celestia after a brief pause. “Amongst all the students I have taught over the millennia, I have found only three who I have trusted enough to teach the magic of the sun. Watching you develop into the mare you are has been a joy, and I look forwards to seeing you apply your passion to learning this most personal of my magics.”
Each word felt like a jab directed at her. “If that’s so, then how could you—” Embarrassment flushed over her when Sunset Shimmer choked on the angry and bitter sound of her voice. “How could you replace me?”
A pathetic whimper of betrayal trailed behind her words.
Sunset couldn’t keep her accusing gaze on Princess Celestia. She turned away until her stare hit the floor, half-hiding behind her hair. It was good that she wasn’t facing the princess; she didn’t want her, of all ponies, to see stupid tears trying to seep out of the corners of her eyes. She was almost a grown mare, for star’s sake!
The white blur at the edge of her vision grew larger, the clop of hoof on tile marking each of the slow, deliberate steps that brought it closer.
In one movement Sunset was enveloped in that whiteness. Alabaster wings wrapped around her, gently embracing her as the unicorn pushed her face into her mentor’s chest.
“Listen to me, Sunset Shimmer,” breathed the princess into her ear, “and listen well. It matters not whether you remain in this castle, delve deeper in your foray into teaching, or decide to leave Equestria altogether; the day that I would not hold you in my wings will never come.”
“So long as you seek knowledge, I will be there to teach you.” How many times had the princess taken the time from her precious few times of relaxation to help Sunset figure out how an unusual spell worked? How often had she sacrificed her all-but-nonexistent free time to satisfy Sunset’s curiosity?
“So long as you seek to further yourself, I will be there to guide you.” How many of the hated soirees of the unpleasant aristocracy had Princess Celestia endured to introduce her to yet another figure who could help her in her claim for the Archmagistry?
“So long as you seek comfort, I will be there to take you into my embrace.” Princess Celestia’s fur darkened from the tears Sunset could no longer keep back. Her breathing shuddered, every inhalation burying her deeper into the princess’s familiar scent. How often had the princess held her like this when she had been overcome by frustration at her seemingly impossible goal, or by the shame from her setbacks? “I will always be your teacher, my most ambitious student… and your friend, if you would have me.”
“But what about her?” Sunset whispered. She couldn’t keep her emotions out of the word; but then again, she wasn’t doing a good job of controlling her emotions at all at the moment. Thank the heavens Blueblood couldn’t see her like this. He would ruin her precarious standing amongst the nobility.
“Sunset Shimmer… come this next birthday, you will have grown into the fine mare I have always known you could be. I could continue to keep you on as an apprentice and continue your education as we have—but would you truly want that? You have oft spoken to me of what you dream of becoming, my most ambitious student.”
It was not easy being the student of her princess. The difficulties were numerous but surmountable, and for the most part nothing more than inconveniences. But the nobility…
For a commoner to take such an esteemed position as the student of Princess Celestia caused an outrage amongst the aristocracy. The upper crust of Canterlot objected; even when Sunset Shimmer had demonstrated her power and skill, she was disregarded in favor of those of higher birth.
Their dismissal burned more than any failed spell ever had. She had spent years forcing her way to the top despite their objections. She spread her name through schools as she advanced magical theory, forcing widespread revisions in textbooks of magic or modern history; she spread her face across petty newspapers with her record-setting early graduation from the most esteemed school in Equestria and a (very brief) job as a model; she spread her popularity with ponies as a whole via extensive—and much premeditated in both subject and timing—donations to public works and charities.
It was hard. She had sweated and bled enough liquid to fill a lake, and had cried more times than she cared to admit. She had been forced to find ways to make money outside of her stipend to keep up with her donations.
All this she did to force the Equestrian aristocracy to notice her. Even as a mere commoner, she would assume the position of Archmage. And if not now… then she would wait, and become so great that when whatever old geezer they would replace the current with finally died, it would be impossible to choose anypony else.
“No… no, I wouldn’t want that,” Sunset admitted. To stand out as her own pony, she couldn’t remain in her mentor’s shadow. She knew that, but that didn’t change how much it hurt. “But I’ve read the histories—you’ve never taken a student until decades after the previous died. I… we haven’t even officially ended my apprenticeship yet!”
“Twilight Sparkle is an unusual case. Until she gains control over her magic, she is a danger to herself and everypony around her. Her first experience with higher magic was… traumatic, and nopony else has the raw strength needed to keep her from accidentally ripping apart the walls.”
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Gravity magic was a terrible field of study, and whoever created it was a bad pony who should feel bad about themselves.
That’s what Sunset Shimmer would have thought if she were so impolite as to think something awful about another pony.
Sunset carefully set her books in neat stacks on her bed, which was a completely different act from hurling them at her wall.
Her room was large enough that she was able to pace without an inconveniently located wall disrupting her thoughts. This was a feature that Sunset had always taken liberal advantage of; she had a lot to think about, be it about planning, furthering her studies in magic, or any other of the assorted tasks she took upon herself.
Author's Note
At this point, Sunset would feel too confined in her room as she tried to puzzle out the secrets of gravity magic, and leave to wander the castle in thought. In so doing, she'd come across Twilight and Celestia, and would peek in on their lesson. It would mostly consist of Twilight apologizing about not being worthy of wasting Celestia's time and promising that she'd do better, while Celestia tries to explain that she isn't upset and just wants Twilight to try again.
Eventually she'd return to trying to do what Celestia wants her to... which floors Sunset, because it's just simple telekinesis. Except Twilight has a double corona while she's trying to pick of a freaking rock, and winds up launching it into the wall hard enough to imbed the stone into the brickwork. Sunset wanders off, immensely disturbed, while Celestia explains thought exercises to try to reduce the amount of power Twilight uses (with how she suddenly awoke to so much magical power when she got her cutie mark, her ability to control that power is almost nill).
Sunset is a little more curious about her fellow student now, and pays more attention to her, noticing that she steadfastly avoids any sort of situation that isn't with Celestia, Cadence, or one trainee Guard she goes out to watch sometimes. Sunset feels very embarrassed over confusing it for a crush when she finds out that Shining's her brother. She decides that winning over Celestia's new student would be helpful to her career, and starts to make overtures towards being nice towards her, which confuses Twilight.
Eventually they get into a conversation about magic, which is pretty much the only thing Sunset can find that manages to get Twilight to open up a bit. Sunset's surprised by Twilight's grasp of advanced (even if not as advanced as her own) magical theory, and Twilight becomes a little awestruck when she learns that Sunset's the one who disproved Starswirl's model of magical diversity, and opens up a lot more.
Sunset finds herself curiously happy about the positive attention from someone who is an intellectual equal (even if not yet her equal in knowledge), and starts to take on a mentorly role herself. The story ends with Sunset wondering if this was something like friendship. I'd guess the story would wind up being about two, maybe three chapters long.
