I knew from the moment of my birth that I was destined for greatness.
Though it still came as something of a shock to be born at all, considering I had no memory of dying.
The thought that I—the great Emperor who had risen from nothing to sit upon a throne of crystal, my orders unquestioned, my rule absolute, the very fabric of magic yoked to my will—could be killed, was nearly unfathomable.
Nearly.
For as much as I can praise my own cunning skill and brilliant statesmanship, my rulership was not without its… misguided detractors. From back-stabbing advisors and ambitious rebels eager to supplant me, to the verdant nation of Equestria and the constant sabre-rattling of its pair of nigh-immortal demi-goddesses, it was only prudent to expect betrayal and disaster around every corner.
Given that my reign was tragically cut short… clearly I was in the right of it to have put contingencies in place. Even ones so remote as to utilize the ancient and lost art of Soul Magic.
A pity that the true nature of the cause of my demise has been lost. It is always a great disappointment to be denied the opportunity to seek revenge on one's enemies. Alas, with Soul Magic being so poorly documented and so esoteric in execution, something was bound to be lost in the process. Truly, it is a testament to my prodigious skill and talent that the majority of my memories survived my soul’s journey through the wheel of reincarnation. Much like tying the end of one string to the start of a new one, some amount of length is inevitably lost past the knot.
Still! Though my body was killed and shuffled off its mortal coil, my ineffable quintessence was preserved, kept intact and whole such that I might be born anew to retake my stolen throne and extract bloody vengeance against those who so wrongly thought that mere Death would be enough to put an end to me!
Though there have been some… complications to that plan.
“Here comes the airplane! Ah-bpbpbpbpbp!”
The contingency spell should have reincarnated me in some proximity to those who had been my downfall. Clearly, despite my prodigious intellect and talent, the ancient texts from which I derived the spells were lacking, as I found myself reborn not in the Crystal Empire, nor the world of ponies which I knew at all. Instead I awoke to a strange new land of “humans” and “womans”.
But no matter. I singlehoofedly conquered an Empire once before. Now, with experience on my side and wisdom beyond my apparent years, to do so a second time should be foal’s play.
Heh. An amusing bit of wordplay, given my current circumstances.
"Alright, Flurry, do you want the apple juice box or the grape one?"
I reach out and take the latter, eagerly stuffing the straw into my mouth and beginning to suck. It is a far cry from the vintage wines I once enjoyed, but there is a simple pleasure in the depths of its sweetness, far richer than any grape juice (fermented or not) I had encountered before. Its delivery is, perhaps, degrading, but necessary to maintain my cover as an ordinary foal.
I do not recall my parents from my first life; much of my youngest years is unclear to me, so I have little reference for how my new sire and dam—Shining and Cady, as they call one another—measure as caregivers. I deem them adequate. Had I foals of my own—not likely, given the tendency of heirs to try and overthrow their parents—I would have considered retaining them as minders. I want for little, save for time spent alone to focus on my own endeavors outside their attentive eyes. They are mindful, coddling, and wise in the customs of this world that I lack the context for, even if their arcane might is barely strong enough to take notice of.
For there is magic in this world. The aether is thin and I lack the familiar conduit of a horn, but it is present nonetheless. I have felt it. I have seen it. And even at my tender age I have grasped the beginning sparks of it for myself.
Unfortunately, I know little of the training of sorcerers in this world and have had to discover it myself from first principles. In my former life, unicorn colts and fillies would begin their magical education not long after their first bouts of instinctive magic. What little evidence I have found in this life seems to suggest that magic of any strength beyond the ability to turn lights on or off at a distance or charm a household to be warm in the winter and cool in the summer, is a much rarer skill, and those that possess it often do not begin their training until mid-adolescence.
What foolishness! To waste so many years that could be spent refining oneself and growing one's skills! A mistake I refuse to make. My skills may have atrophied in my rebirth, but if I plan to seize this land as my own, then I can waste no time in idleness.
...though the social expectations of children do mean that I am forced to undertake my training in secret. For now.
Their pitiful magical skills aside, what little I have gleaned of their personal lives has led me to believe they are academics of a sort. Skillful enough even in their relative youth to have ascended to administrative positions in some manner of scholarly institution.
(Not the noble peerage I would have hoped for, but respectable all the same. Their connections will afford me easy access to opportunities that I had to fight for in my first youth. Especially since now that I have been born a filly in this new life—or a girl, to use the local parlance—having a well-developed scholastic upbringing will certainly be a boon to my prospects when I reach marriageable age and will make wedding into power that much simpler. Many an ambitious mare has turned a clever mind to quietly seize control of her husband's household, and should raw conquest prove an inadvisable tactic, it should be simple enough to wed and bed my way up the rungs of politics.
For years I played the role of the dashing young bachelor, dropping it only once the guise no longer proved beneficial; it should be no harder to play the darling debutante.
But I digress.)
By happy happenstance, the nature of their duties means that they are often needed outside the household for much of the day: leaving me in the care of either hired help, or my sire’s sister when her own schedule permits (she is seemingly some manner of court mage herself. Her magic is not so easily dismissed as my dam and sire’s.)
While I imagine this would be distressing for a normal foal, I find it quite suited to my purposes. Time spent alone is time I do not have to hide my true nature behind the role of an ignorant child. While, of course, my acting is perfection itself—I may not have interacted with many foals, but their average behavior and mannerisms are easy enough to imagine—keeping up such a farce takes a mental toll like grinding myself against a particularly dull rock.
“Wow, guess you were really thirsty,” my sire in this life chuckles as he lightly tousles my hair. What arrogance! To ruin all of Mother’s hard work spent taming my curls with a comb. Not that I care, particularly, about such things but it is the principle of the matter! Were he not my sire I would have him grovel for mercy.
“You keep working on that and I’ll put on some NillaGourd for you to watch while Daddy has some grown-up talk with his friend, okay?”
I pay no heed to his words even as I wish to scowl. Sentimental fool that he is, he had to choose today of all days to deviate from his schedule and in his ignorance dash the carefully laid plans I had spent weeks preparing.
Father sets onto a lectern before me the most marvelous of arcane devices: the tablet. An underwhelming name for a piece of wizardry that would have revolutionized my former world. A slip of metal and glass-like crystal light enough for even my childish strength to heft, but which contains within it more tomes than the library of Celesandria, images of such quality that spit upon the work of the greatest court artists, and even some manner of bound spirit or djinni that answers questions and performs simple tasks on command. Truly, such magic is a wonder to behold, its applications limitless, its potential unbound! Had I such a thing before, I could have conquered the world!
…and my sire uses it to try and keep me occupied with bright colors and simple melodies in lieu of parenting himself.
As I said before, he is an adequate parent. Hardly perfect.
A familiar figure appears on the screen as Father walks away; some manner of imp or lesser demon bound and ensnared into a form not unlike a human infant, but whose guise fails to fully hide its uncanny otherness. I tune it out as it begins to sing some insipid song about the colors of the rainbow or the days of the week or some other similar infantile nonsense.
On a normal day, this would be an ideal scenario. I know full well how to banish the imp and turn the device to more productive functions: even how to keep its annoying song playing so no one suspects I have bypassed the ‘parental lock’.
However, I cannot do such things while I remain entrapped at the kitchen table with my sire and his friend conversing mere spans away!
Especially today of all days, where in less than ten minutes, the next installment of one of my favorite documentaries detailing this world’s past magical battles is scheduled to air! To miss such critical information would set back my research by days, weeks even!
Heads would have rolled for such an offence, were I at the peak of my strength! Instead, all I can do is sit and fume amid the squeaking of a false piano.
No. To merely brood is beneath one of my greatness. This is a time for planning. My sire is far from infallible; he can be tricked and manipulated as easily as any other. All it takes is a few gentle pushes, cleverly disguised as the whims of an irrational child.
So long as either he leaves the room, or I do, victory will be mine.
Easily done, for one such as I whose strategies once directed armies thousands strong.
Mentally composing a few suitable lines, I prepare myself to shout my demands, as children do.
"Father!" a slightly lisp-affected voice hollers from across the kitchen. "I demand cakes! Small cakes!"
I sigh. And just when Spearhead had finally been getting to the meat of his story.
“Not before dinner, Flurry.” Hopefully that’ll be enough to—
“Unacceptable! There will be cakes or there will be blood!”
—of course it wasn’t.
I love my daughter, I really do. She’s quiet, never fussy, and almost never throws a tantrum.
But when she does…
Flurry Heart bangs her tiny fists against the tray of her highchair and screams like a banshee. “Now! I demand it!”
“You just had a cupcake with lunch. If you have another one it’ll spoil your dinner.”
“Then let it spoil! Promise not a future that may never come!”
“Maybe just give her the cupcake,” Spearhead suggests, not at all helping the situation.
“No way,” I whisper back. “Cady will know and then I’ll be the one in the doghouse.”
I duck as a juice box nearly smacks me in the forehead. For a toddler, her aim is impeccable. When she gets old enough that I can teach her football, we are going to clean house against Canterlot High. But until that day comes I’ve got more pressing problems to deal with.
“Father! The cakes! Lest you taste my wrath!”
For a moment, I weigh the price of actually giving in. This is the first chance I’ve gotten to see Spearhead in years and if that’s all it’ll take to make her quiet down, it might be worth it. On the other hand, Cady has been saying I need to be more strict with her. Still…
“You shame Mother with your philandering, for you are courting death with these delays!”
Yeah, nevermind, she just decided it for me.
“Alright, it looks like somebody’s getting a little cranky. I think it’s about time for your nap.”
She gasps in a way that uses all her lungs and immediately turns on the waterworks. “No, Father! I beseech you! The time is not yet upon us!”
Be strong, Shining. You can do this. Just don’t give in to her puppy-dog eyes. It’s high time I started laying down the law.
It takes far too many miserable minutes to get her tucked into her bed and settled down, each one of them spent weathering her pleas for leniency. In the end, I win our little battle and head back down to the kitchen, but not without emotional damage.
Spearhead hasn’t moved, still working his way through his coffee. “She asleep?”
“Will be soon. She puts up a fuss, but she always settles down quickly once she’s tucked in.”
“Mhm.” He takes another sip and gives me a pointed look. “Quite the vocabulary she’s got.”
“Yeah, I know.” I nod as I retake my seat. My coffee’s empt- did he finish his and switch cups on me? “Twilight babysits a lot. She’s probably reading her Canterbury Tales for bedtime stories or something.”
Through the vent comes the sound of foreboding, maniacal laughter from upstairs.
Spearhead shivers. “Dude, I gotta say it: your kid is creepy.”
“Don’t call my daughter creepy. She’s just going through a phase. It's really kinda cute when you get used to it.”
He just shakes his head. I’m sure he’ll understand once he has kids of his own.
I quiet down my protestations as my sire locks the door behind him, letting only a small mirthful chuckle escape. All according to plan.
At last, I am alone and unobserved. And with barely a minute to spare.
As expected, he brought the tablet with us, placing it on the pedestal that restores its magical energy.
The one he naively believes to be far out of my reach.
More the fool he. Nothing is beyond the reach of my ambitions!
I reach my hand towards the tablet on its high shelf and concentrate. After a moment, the shadow beneath it begins to darken until it becomes like a pool of ink. The tablet slips within it, vanishing from sight. A shift of my mental focus and my own shadow darkens in turn until, like a cork bobbing to the surface, the tablet rises up into my waiting hands.
How pitiful. To see the magical might that once brought an Empire to its knees reduced to mere parlour tricks. And yet, even these cantrips are far beyond what I could have accomplished the last time I was this young. Slow progress, but progress indeed.
I activate the tablet, bypass the laughable attempt at security, and swiftly navigate to the function where I know I may find my documentary. Last week’s installment left off on a particularly intriguing complication, having just introduced a powerful new spell I am eager to study.
Ah, perfect timing. I open a note-taking application in a second window as the documentary’s introduction music winds down and it begins the recap.
“Last time on: Glissade! Mahō Shōjo no Symphony!”
“Oh no! The Demon Conductor Lord Fortissimo has captured Verdant Calliope-san and Rosé Viola-chan!”
“If we don’t stop him he’s going to drain their magic to power his dark spell, Sapphire Sforzando!”
“Azure Lyre-san, I’m… sorry. I shouldn’t have asked Ringo-kun to the school dance when I knew you wanted to. But we can’t let that distract us now! We need to combine our power! Will you Harmonize with me?”
“...Yes. But not for you, or for Calliope-san, or Viola-chan... but for Timpani. Because that’s what she would have wanted. Now!”
“Together!”
“Denouement Duet!”
I nod as I amend my notes from the last installment with corrected spell names. The reenactors have a tendency to over-exaggerate and they rarely cover the technical minutiae of spell formation, but it is good research nonetheless. Perhaps I should consider studying a way to build a spell focus of my own, like their transformation batons. I’ll make a note of it for future consideration.
Though as informative as it is, I wish they would turn less attention to the practitioners’ personal lives. Though historically relevant, I am sure, it takes away valuable runtime that could be focused on Lord Fortissimo’s vast array of spells instead.
I can admit to feeling a certain kinship with him, having likewise had an Empire stolen from me (though as a tactician he is one of the worst I have ever seen).
That is why I plan to learn from his mistakes. Him and all the other sorcerers available to me in these documentaries. When I come of an age when I can reveal my powers publicly, all these years of study and training will put me leagues ahead of any magical contemporaries.
In my first life, I started from nothing and clawed my way upwards until I ruled an Empire.
In this second life, why settle for so little?
Flurry Heart, Dark Overlord and Queen of the World has a lovely ring to it.
