Five years. We had been exiled from our home, hell our dimension, for five years. But it was going to change that night at the Battle of the Bands. My sisters and I would finally get back to Equestria. Of course, that’s what we thought. The universe, on the other hand, decided to label us the bad guys.
The entire student body was there, as far as I could tell. Most seemed calm if a bit annoyed, others were about ready to kill each other. They pushed and shoved to find seats as close to the stage as they could, nearly starting several fights in the process. Thankfully, nothing violent happened. Yet. This, of course, was all the unfortunate result of the spells we were casting on the students and staff to gain magical energy. It’s not like we really had a choice in the matter. The only spells my sisters and I know are the ones to collect the energy, and they all have a side effect that it drains people of positive emotions. Of course, those spells are also the reason we got into this mess in the first place.
Seven people were noticeably absent though, I didn’t know if it was a good thing or not, but I wasn’t about to complain. The seven had already given us enough headaches to last a lifetime. Though, as I said before, we were the “bad guys” and the seven were the “good guys.” It’s our fault though, we should have known a princess of Equestria would probably beat us, but we were desperate. Desperate to get home. We were going to get home, no matter what.
That’s what it felt like as we went on stage for our performance at least. We were high on the magical energy emanating from the crowd. We simply believed nothing was going to stop us. Even when they started to play a counter spell on top of the hill across from us, we didn’t think much of it. Though better safe than sorry, as they always say.
We summoned a magical projection of giant sea ponies. They’re not the prettiest things, but it adds to the theatrics of it all. We’ve used the projections several times before, enough that people, er, ponies often think they’re our true forms. But even in our world, we’re beautiful. My sisters looked to me for confirmation to move ahead with our attack, which I simply nodded back.
It wasn’t really much of an attack. It was simply us trying to scare them off. We weren’t even expecting them to fight back. Well, color us surprised when all of a sudden we were getting bombarded with counter magic. Thankfully, it didn’t hurt at all, but it was like being shoved constantly, though from what Aria told me, having diamonds shot at your projection still hurts. Even then though, they’re counter-magic wasn’t anything special.
That’s when she joined their group, Sunset Shimmer. I know it's really not her fault, what happened. But that doesn’t mean I don’t hate her for it. She starts casting the counter spell with her friends and started to push us back, but that wasn’t even the worst part.
I was focused on the little group, trying to figure out what to do, when Sonata taped my shoulder, calling ‘Dagi,’ her little nick name for me. I glanced at her, a bit mad as she was making me lose concentration, but any venom I had quickly drained when I saw the look on her face. Pure Terror. I hadn’t seen that look on her face since we were being exiled. I hated seeing that look. She was looking to the sky, wide eyed. I followed her gaze and my eyes went as wide if not wider than hers. In the sky was forming a giant, magical alicorn. The thing was easily one hundred, maybe two hundred feet tall, completely dwarfing our projections. It was horrifying.
To make it worse, it’s horn started to glow; it was charging up a spell. All I could do is stare at this thing, I had no idea how they managed to pull that off when they were barely able to scratch us before. I didn’t get to think about it long before Sonata called me again, asking what we should do. Well… what could we do?
Well, there was one thing I could do at least. As I watched the alicorn rear up, about to cast the spell, I grabbed my sisters and held them close, hoping to take the brunt of whatever it was casting. There was a moment of silence before a bright light impacted us and the pain started. It was…nothing like I’ve ever felt before; like hundreds of thousands of burning needles piercing every pore and every inch of flesh on my body. It was unbearable. I think I recall hearing someone screaming, though it might have only been me, it was hard to tell. It felt like it lasted for hours before it finally let up.
We felt… drained I guess is the best way to put it, like something a part of us was missing, though we soon found out why. After a moment of catching my breath, I opened my eyes to make sure my sisters were fine. It seemed that they got hit, though I got the brunt of the pain like I had hoped. Aria actually asked me if I was ok, I wasn’t, but I also have never cared about myself when my sister’s safety is involved, so I just nodded. Sonata seemed to take a little longer than me to recover, but she was always the “little sister.” We usually made sure no pain came to her; we failed this time.
It took until then to notice our necklaces shattered. I can’t even begin to say how soul shattering it was. See, these necklaces were the source of our magic yes, but they were something much more important to us. They were the only thing we had left from our parents, our home. Those necklaces were coming of age presents, our parents telling us they trusted us to go out beyond our little town. A trust that was probably shattered because of our exile.
The necklaces were our one memory of and our only hope of getting back to our parents on our own volition… and they shattered.
I’m surprised I didn’t cry there, hell, I’m surprised Sonata didn’t either. No, we ran away first, booed off stage and being pelted with everything the crowd could throw at us. We’re just the “villains” there anyway, I shouldn’t have expected any different.
It took a few days for all of it to sink in, all of us, even Aria, spent hours crying. We didn’t leave our apartment at all, why would we? We had no hope of getting home. We just sat, cried, comforted each other.
Through all that though, there was a lot of time to think. And because of that, we got hope, hope that maybe we could still get home. Well, I came up with the idea, none of us liked it, but it seemed like the best bet. That’s what brought me here to Principal Celestia’s office. Our last hope of getting home.