A Long Time Ago…

Opaline Arcana stood carefully in the hall of Skyros Academy, her left ear pressed up against the polished oak door of the first dormitory of the north wing.

“It’s such a relief that mom and dad aren’t taking it terribly hard,” she heard the muffled voice of Celestia, by far the Academy’s most gifted prodigy.

Her younger sister, whom she shared the room with, scoffed audibly.

“More like not hard at all, ‘Tia. They haven’t been able to stop fawning over the fact that we’re powerful enough to be chosen for this task… Especially at our age. Even if it is a one-way trip,” Luna replied. “Do you really think we’re ready?”

“The overseers have told us they’ve taught us everything they possibly can to face the threats down in Equestria,” Celestia replied.

“I’m not sure which one concerns me more,” Luna began. “The chaotic demigod, or the unicorn king with the shadow magic in the north. With everything we’ve learned already, how can this ‘Starswirl’ down there possibly help us?”

“The very fact that his achievements have reached us here should tell you everything you need to know, Luna. He’ll no doubt be familiar with how the aetherial fields differ down there. The demigod has done so much damage to the realm that Starswirl has had to recruit an entire tribe of gifted unicorns that keeps their world’s axial tilt intact, so the sun and moon keep moving. The Academy overseers claim that Starswirl has managed to create a set of extremely powerful magical items using a nexus of aetherial energy, with enough power to overcome these threats. He just needs somepony powerful enough to wield them,” Celestia told her sister.

“Hm,” Luna said, raising an eyebrow, impressed. “If he knows how to not only locate aetherial nexii, but also harness their energy without atomizing himself, perhaps he can augment our training.”

“That’s the plan, at least,” the elder sibling replied.

They heard a soft thump against their dormitory door. Turning her attention to investigate, Celestia gripped the door handle with her magic, and pulled it open, fast enough so the eavesdropper on the other side could not regain her balance, and slumped into the open doorway.

Celestia snickered.

“Oh, Arcana. Not even eavesdropping is beneath you, I see,” the white alicorn said, picking up the prone underclassmare with her magic before she could get to her hooves.

“Jealous, are we?” her younger sister sneered, and the dark orchid alicorn’s horn flared in anger. “Oh my, what are you going to do with that? Light a candle?”

“She’s just as likely to burn the entire wing down,” Celestia joked. “If you’re here for your tutoring session, Arcana, I’m afraid that being twenty minutes late is grounds for cancellation. My sister and I have preparations to make, after all. I’m sure you know.”

Of course she knew. The entire academy had been talking about it for days now.

“So I’m afraid that you’ll have to find another upperclassmare to fill your tutoring slot. My sister and I have much more important things to worry about now than under-performing freshmares,” Celestia told her as she was floated out of the doorway and back out into the hall, dropping her unceremoniously onto the hallway floor as the two sisters followed out and closed their dormitory door, locking it.

“Keep practicing, Amateur Arcana,” Luna sneered, looking down at her as she and Celestia turned to head towards the main campus. “Work hard and you might be good enough that they’ll let you light the wall sconces.”

-

Opaline sneered at the ghostly visages of the two Skyrosian Alicorns that she had not seen in over a millennium and a half.

“What is the meaning of this?” She asked angrily, her gaze lifting from the pair up to her floating cutie mark. “Did you bring me here to listen to them gloat some more? If you came back to me, I could show them what I’m capable of now!”

As her voice echoed across the otherwise empty grass field, Celestia took a single step forward.

“Opaline…” She began.

“How are you two even alive?” Opaline interrupted. “More than half of Equestria doesn’t even remember your names anymore!”

“We are not,” Luna replied. “We are echoes, memories. Try to think of us as pieces of the ponies you knew. Pieces… Left behind.”

“Left behind?” Opaline asked, trying to grasp what they were explaining.

“Regrets that never healed. Promises left unfulfilled,” Celestia replied.

“Pah!” Opaline spat. “What could you possibly regret? You turned me away, rejected me, and came down here! You defeated a jester with super powers and these peons worshiped you for it!”

“We took our monumental task seriously,” Luna began. “But nothing the Academy told or taught us could have prepared us for the suffering Equestrians we encountered when we came here. It was humbling, to say the very least.”

“We defeated Discord, that ‘jester’ you speak of, with the Elements of Harmony, after great effort. But nopony is perfect, not even the Alicorns of Skyros, as much as Equestria’s citizens wanted to paint us as such,” Celestia continued. “We banished King Sombra to the depths of the arctic ice, but could not save the Crystal Empire from the curse he had set upon it.”

Opaline had fallen silent, opting to listen silently, unsure of why they were providing this history lesson, as Luna stepped forward next to her elder sister.

“I callously dismissed your awe of my sister and I as jealousy, and yet, I was powerless against my own jealousy as I witnessed the admiration and reverence my sister received… And I conspired to set myself upon her, and take it for myself,” the dark blue alicorn told her.

“The realm we had been sent to save would have perished had I not the courage to imprison my fallen sister in the moon. Then, for the first time in my life, I found myself completely and utterly alone. In that loneliness, I remembered you, Opaline Arcana. Being unable to return to you or otherwise speak with you, I prayed you would forget the way we treated you,” Celestia told her.

The slightly taller elder sister paused, and Opaline saw the tears fall from her eyes, before she met her gaze again.

“Clearly that was not what came to pass,” Celestia continued, her voice quivering. “Our selfish dismissal and cold words were the start of your fall, the beginning of your heart becoming just as cold as we were to you, and for that, we are so very sorry.”

Opaline’s eyes widened, and her tight lips parted just slightly as she took a small step back, feeling something in her chest squeeze and twist. The sorrow in the apparition’s voice was absolutely genuine. The squeezing sensation rose to become a lump in her throat, but she forced herself to swallow it.

“You…” Opaline whispered, her voice faltering. “You think some heartfelt history lesson and an apology is enough to… To undo how you made me feel?!” Opaline asked incredulously, unable to stop her voice from breaking.

She didn’t care if they were memories, or echoes, or whatever… She wouldn’t let them see her like this. She turned and began to gallop away, but didn’t get farther than twenty feet before the sharp, freezing, stinging pain compelled her to skid to a halt, and drop to her knees, as the chilling sensation finally caused her shoulders to heave and the tears she was holding back to spill over.

She wept silently as she felt the deathly cold fade again as Celestia, Luna, and her floating cutie mark came to her left, right, and above her, respectively.

“No,” Celestia answered, kneeling down next to the dark orchid alicorn. “These pieces, these echoes, were not left behind for mere words.”

“I was trapped and alone for a thousand years, and I was able to find repentance at the end of that dark tunnel,” Luna said.

“Friendship is for everypony, Opaline, and with it, change is possible,” Celestia told her. “I have seen it with my former enemies, my proteges, and my own sister. Wherever your mark intends to take you from here, it is a journey we do not want you to make alone…”

With that, the two alicorns on either side of her extended their hooves towards her. Opaline took a deep, quivering breath, and reached forward, placing her front hooves on either of theirs. As they pulled her up, the apparitions of the two sisters faded from view, leaving just the white and blue flames at the tips of Opaline’s hooves. They snaked and swirled around her legs, and slowed on the front of her chest.

She thought they would sink into her body, but instead, an ethereal gold peytral materialized around her neck and barrel, with six empty spherical sockets, not all that dissimilar from the one that had held the cutie marks of Sunny Starscout and her friends.

The pair of flames settled on the left and right sockets, and they began to glow like lanterns that had just been lit.

Opaline took another shuddering breath as she now felt just a little warmer, like a blanket had been laid over her on a chilly night. She stared down at the peytral for another moment, before her gaze rose to meet her cutie mark, still floating out of reach, as the sun was now moments away from rising over the hills to the east.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” She asked rhetorically, still trying to keep her voice from shuddering. “A written invitation?”

She wasn’t sure if she was ever expecting the sphere to audibly respond, but sure enough, it began to float away from the center of the valley, continuing north as the morning sun began to rise over the valley.

Author's Note

I want to thank everyone for their enthusiasm and encouragement for this story's opening chapters. As G5 is in the middle of its death knell, it has been such a fun mental and creative exercise these past couple days trying to remove or correct what I personally saw as Opaline's greatest flaw; her cartoonishly evil mannerisms and characteristics, (or 'card-carrying villain').

I really hope I can do her justice.

Because when it comes to the dozens and dozens of stories I have written for this universe over the last thirteen years, I have always had the most fun going in narrative directions that Hasbro either couldn't or wouldn't.

And that is frequently the best thing about writing fanfiction.