Cold.

Opaline Arcana laid prone on her side, trapped in a cluster of roots that made up the base of the Together Tree that she had attempted to grow in and around her home.

Cold, and hollow.

Those were the words she would describe how she felt, but not the kind of cold that shivering would even temporarily solve. The roots had glowed a brilliant green for a time, as the tree had quickly overtaken her throne room, then they had darkened as the glow faded, trapping her in near pitch black, with her only source of light coming from the intermittent glow of her cutie mark, floating somewhere on the other side of the intertwined roots that had wrapped around her.

The dark orchid alicorn had room to stand, if she wished, but little else. Even with her countless years of knowledge, she was not aware of what powers were at work here; she had not felt hungry, or tired, since becoming imprisoned, and she was fairly certain she should have by now… It had to have been days now, or perhaps even weeks…

It dawned on the alicorn that without natural bodily signals, keeping track of time within this dark prison of tree roots was quite impossible.

Another possibility that settled into her mind was that this imprisonment was not life, but perhaps limbo.

Over fifteen hundred years of waiting, of planning... Only to have her birthright ripped away once again.

It was unfair. It was abhorrent. She was an Alicorn of Skyros. It was her destiny to rule.

‘You can take my Cutie Mark, but you can’t take what makes me… Me. Hope. Hope for a better future. For all ponies to make their mark. That’s why you and I are never going to be the same, Opaline. Because I have hope, and I have friendship.’

Even that had been denied to her. By Skyros. By Celestia and her younger sister Luna. By the dragons, and by Misty. By all accounts, it was this overwhelming, all-powerful, unstoppable force of unity, and she had not known it, and not given the opportunity to know it.

Opaline slowly turned her head to gaze at the floating indigo sphere, containing her faded and blackened cutie mark of a horn and flaming wings.

‘My mark! My power! Come back!’

Giving chase when it had been whisked away was what got her locked behind the Together Tree’s roots. She had lost count of how many times she had attempted to reach it. No matter how much she stretched or strained, it remained tortuously just out of reach of her hooves, and the roots had been unrelenting against what little physical strength she had.

Was this to be her eternal fate? Trapped within this magical tree, forever taunted by her power and identity stripped from her?

She took a deep breath before sitting back in resignation.

So cold. Empty.

Her ears twitched when she thought she heard… Music? Yes… The very dull, repetitive thumping of deep, bass-filled dance music.

Part of her wanted to be annoyed, but that part was very quickly overruled by the fact that it was something new, not maddening silence, or only the sound her own breathing to keep her company.

After several minutes of the repetitive beat, however, she began to wonder if it was just another method of this tree torturing her, making her go mad. As she resorted to trying to breathe steadily to the beat, all of a sudden, she felt the roots underneath her begin to vibrate…

...And then begin to loosen.

All in the next moment, her entire body weight shifted, her hooves left the roots she was standing on, and she felt herself go into a freefall. Her next breaths were very hard to come by as she could do nothing more than squeeze her eyes shut and wait for the falling sensation to stop...

She held her eyes shut tightly for as long as the falling sensation lasted. When it faded, she risked breathing again, and then slowly opened her eyes.

She still saw the roots, but the ambient lighting was brighter. Barely, but noticeable, and curiously, the increased light was not coming from the glowing sphere containing her mark. She reached over, and upon the tip of her hoof coming into contact with the closest two roots, she found that they parted quite easily. She withdrew her leg for a moment, just enough time to get to her hooves. Taking another breath, she reached forward again with both of her front hooves, and parted the thick roots enough to poke her head through, and look at her surroundings.

There were broken pieces of her castle and the Together Tree everywhere, all the way down to the beach. The whole structure had collapsed and fallen down the edge of the cliff.

Opaline pushed harder, and the roots gave way, allowing her to squeeze her barrel and back half through, and her hooves came into contact with dirt for the first time since her imprisonment.

She had a moment of panic for barely a moment when she didn’t see it at first due to the setting sun, but there it was; her cutie mark, still floating in the imprisoned sphere just a few feet away. But when she stepped forward toward it, reaching out, it floated away, keeping itself just as far away from her as it always had.

Quickly growing desperate, Opaline lunged after it, spreading her wings and flapping once, but immediately found out she had lost the magical power of flight as she unceremoniously somersaulted once, colliding with a chunk of what used to be part of her castle wall. She scrambled to her hooves again and took to hopping over snapped tree roots and climbing over the piles of rubble, following her floating, encapsulated cutie mark out into the open as the dirt and rocks gave way to the white sands of the beach.

Finally pausing when her hooves were on the sand, she wondered how long she dared take her eyes off of her cutie mark to gaze up at where her castle used to be.

The only part of the entire structure that was still standing was half of the cobblestone arched bridge that had extended out from the hill; the rest had joined the rest of the ruins down at the bottom of the cliff. The fact that she had survived the fall with little more than a few scrapes was nothing short of miraculous.

She turned back to her cutie mark as it floated at the water’s edge. Not wanting to risk seeing how far it would go out into the ocean, she merely stood and stared at it from her spot in the sand.

No magic, and it was acting as if it and her body were opposite ends of a magnet.

“Ugh, how do I get it back?!” She asked frustratingly, pounding the sand with her right hoof as she sat down.

She noticed the floating mark flicker for a moment, before it started to float to the right, following the coast to the north. As it slowly got farther from the sitting alicorn, the cold sensation seemed to intensify, and this immediately got Opaline to her hooves, following it as the dusk continued to give way to night. Doing so seemed to stop the sharp stinging chill, and returned it to the dull, muted cold.

“Alright,” she muttered in a resigned, slightly irked tone. “Lead the way.”

Author's Note

And we're off. My first new story in over a year.

This one came at me in a creative wildfire, and I don't have it all figured out yet.

I've never been the best at fluff, and I think I'm going to have to take a good whack at it, otherwise this premise that came to me may collapse.

Still, wanted to get the opening written up and posted to gauge interest. So thanks for reading, and I hope you come along with me on this new and interesting ride!