Rise of the Furball Chapter 24: “The Fresh Princess of Nowhere”
For some, the royal banquet hall was far and away the largest room built solely for the purpose of food consumption they’d ever been in, though normally the hall was reserved for state dinners with foreign dignitaries and was used mostly for hosting extremely large parties like the Grand Galloping Gala, not a solitary group of thirteen ponies and a phoenix. For others, it was a smorgasbord of food unlike anything they’d ever seen before, the idea that the image-sensitive higher socialites actually needed all this food went against how the majority of them desired attractively curvy, sexy frames for their bodies while at the same time often attempting to copy the long legged look of the alicorns.
But for two specific ponies, they were of viewpoints that none of the others could see through. Seated at opposite ends of the table, Raspberry Beryl and Princess Celestia were directly in front of each other. The princess, forever keeping her calming, motherly smile to mask her true emotions, was well practiced in the art of watching somepony else without making it obvious. Most of the time she wasn’t even looking directly at Razz, instead her attention seemingly directed at either side of the table, depending on who was speaking. But not once was her primary focus off of Raspberry. The whole idea of having the luncheon, against the advice of every single pony who served as advisor to her whether or not she’d actually given them the post, was to put Raspberry Beryl into a more…casual situation. The trial had been an outright disaster thanks to Blueblood, but nonetheless valuable clues to the truth about the unicorn at the other end of the table had been revealed. Not of her power, since that had been clearly demonstrated enough, but of her true character. For whatever reason, Celestia found it rather easy to draw parallels between Raspberry Beryl and Twilight Sparkle, for both had their shyness and could still be naive about things, but the determination and courage they had to stand up for what they thought was right…the similarities could not be denied.
Yet, at the same time, Celestia couldn’t quite judge Raspberry’s nature. Twilight may have been reserved most of the time, but the sun princess had always been able to read her protégé like the proverbial -and rather appropriate- book; Raspberry, however, was in comparison the proverbial black box. In this social setting, she seemed willing enough to engage in small conversation with the other ponies, but she was continuously on edge it seemed, never venturing to start a new topic of discussion, never talking out of turn. Of all the ponies, she seemed to be eating the slowest of them all, even her pet phoenix was devouring pears at a faster clip, Celestia wasn’t even sure Raspberry had even made any indication she wanted second helpings. This was a pony that was clearly uncomfortable, but whether it was her own decision to not assume her less scary disguise to hide the tell-tale traits marking her as Sombra’s descendant, the nervousness of having to face judgement from Celestia directly, or that she actually made Fluttershy look as social as Pinkie Pie in comparison.
And then there was the fact Celestia was, for the first time in centuries, unsure of how to actually handle this situation. If Raspberry Beryl truly was the descendant of King Sombra, then she was the first pony of true royal blood inside Castle Canterlot and in terms of succession was enough to make her next in line should all four alicorns become unable to rule, maybe even enough to be more of a princess than Twilight. But of more concern was the massive amount of deja-vu Celestia couldn’t shake off. Sombra had been one of the first real threats to her rulership, having challenged her at a luncheon very similar to the one she was in right now, in Castle Everfree’s royal banquet hall. She’d managed to hold her ground at the time, if only barely, but the experience of having to be at the end of his hostility had been enough to break her into tears once she was in the safety of her private chambers. Now, she had inadvertently set things up such that it was happening all over again. Everything Sombra had become now sat across from her, even thousands of years later and dodging her influence by who knows what reasons, and though back then Sombra wasn’t anywhere close to being reserved in personality, he’d been just as difficult to read. This time, however, the most important ponies in her life were now all gathered in one place, and she would gladly lay down her life for any one of them. She could only hope that this terrible, terrible mistake of hers wouldn’t yield the catastrophic results.
“Princess Celestia…” Raspberry stated evenly, “it’s kinda creepy how you’ve been staring at me with that fake smile for the past few minutes.”
“Huh? I, what, um?” Celestia couldn’t believe how off her game she was being: first the most important ponies she could possibly have gotten together at once now in possible danger, and now she’d let herself be caught in her intentions to watch Raspberry who seemed to have known the smile wasn’t genuine.
“It’s alright, I knew what you were going to do the second we sat down across from each other, and admittedly I was doing the same thing you were doing.”
“You were staring off into space like an idiot?” joked Celestia, though she wished her smile was more convincing.
“No, trying to get a feel for who you are and what you think of me. It was easy since it would appear our feelings toward each other are mutual.”
“Whpapht’s gvohin’ oahn, nhohownh?” garbled Apple Bloom, her face full of food. Everypony else had gone dead silent as they realized what was about to go down.
“The business of which we’re here in the first place, of course.” Answered Razz, “which is answering the question of what to do with somepony like me.”
“Now, darling,” interrupted Rarity, “while that is what we’re here for, that’s being too generalized. After all, isn’t the whole point of this luncheon so we all can understand what’s going on in a slightly more intimate yet casual manner?”
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Rarity, but I’m afraid it’s not going to work until the proverbial white elephant in the room has been dealt with.”
“Elephant?!” squealed Pinkie Pie, rapidly looking all over the place, “Where?!”
“My apologies, since I didn’t mean it as an insult, but…” the dark unicorn looked Celestia dead in the eyes, “Your highness, you’re scared of me, or rather my powers, aren’t you?”
"I wouldn't call it fear, exactly. More accurate to say that I have...concerns...about your abilities."
“Please, your majesty, I would prefer it if you were honest. If what you want to be happening here is for me to be as open as possible, then everypony here needs to do the same.”
Celestia let out a massive sigh she didn’t know she’d been keeping. “Alright, if you must know, what you have shown to be just a mere taste of the raw dark magic you have at your hooftips, I do feel the need to be just as cautious around you as I had been around Sombra himself before he took over the Crystal Empire, or with Luna when I was too blind to see what led to Nightmare Moon’s birth.”
A collective gasp sounded off from the ponies on the sides, with Luna’s being emphasized above the others due to how Celestia was being rather too open in the situation at hoof. “Sister! Surely you’re not serious!”
Celestia looked over sadly at her sister. “I am, Luna, as much as it pains me to admit it,” before she turned back to Raspberry. “I might as well explain why, since you’ll probably want to know that as well.”
“I already do,” Raspberry replied somberly, much to Celestia’s shock. “I can’t say I’m surprised, either. What Sombra did with dark magic was unforgivable, though not like he cared about it since it seemed all he cared about was power. Since you mentioned that I am of royal lineage if his cursed blood runs in my veins, then it’s perfectly reasonable that you would see me as a threat not only to your position as the main leadership figure of the country, but of the protection of everypony in it.”
“More than just that.” Celestia had since dropped the fake smile, her muzzle now bearing a hard line of non-emotional bearing. “You must understand, it is only because the ponies of this country have faith in me and my fellow princesses that there are not riots in the streets, though there are still those calling for your blood to be spilled. Of course, the same can be said for why I was not of the same opinion, because of the faith I have placed in Twilight and her friends from Ponyville. They lobbied on your behalf, but I still find it hard to believe you when-“
Razz suddenly groaned, exasperated at something. “Why does that damn news article keep showing up at the worst times?!”
Celestia raised an eyebrow inquisitively, “News article?”
“Yes, because if there’s anything I’ve learned about what follows me around no matter how hard I try, it’s that damn obituary.” She then rested her hooves on the table and rested her head on them, continuing despite being muffled, “you might as well let everypony know of yet another heinous crime I’ve committed.”
“Well, if you insist…” replied the tallest alicorn, wondering what the real story was going to be as she winked into her presence the piece of paper Discord had found that morning. Wordlessly, she motioned for the article to be passed around, with each successive reader expressing complete shock and/or horror at what it described.
“This…this can’t be true!” exclaimed Rarity, the last pony to see the article. “Razz, darling, did…did you actually murder him?!”
With bleary eyes, Raspberry lifted her head to look at Rarity, her face evident of the fear being felt of how this latest development would change things. “Of the ponies who were there, I would be the only one to say it wasn’t murder. But I know that, no matter how you look at it, I did commit patricide.”
“I-is…is that why…” Rarity was struggling to get the words from her brain to her mouth as she began to realize the intentional omissions from Raspberry’s earlier personal recollections, “Your father didn’t kick you out…you ran because you killed him?!”
There was no immediate answer, just everypony looking at Raspberry while the red-and-black unicorn merely looked down at the table at her mostly eaten plate of food. Heliodor had since moved from the provided bird-stand and was now trying to comfort his mistress.
“Y’know what Ah think?” suddenly spoke up Applejack, who of all the ponies there had suffered the most from murder being why her parents were not among the living, and her voice carried a decade of remorse and anger.
“No, sis!” pleaded Apple Bloom, “She saved mah life and stopped Fair Vista from ruinin’ who knows how many other pony lives by usin’ me to make ‘em into werewolves!”
“What?!” exclaimed Celestia, Luna, Shining, and Cadence all at once. They had been informed of Lightning Dust’s lycanthropy, hence why she was even in attendance due to needing constant surveillance in case she suddenly started to go feral, but everything else was new information to them.
“Land sakes, no, Apple Bloom!” answered an alarmed AJ, “Ah mean, yes, Ah’m still not happy about the fact she accidentally turned me back into a werewo-“ she then noticed the three princesses and one prince all having become several shades paler than normal in reaction to that bit of news, causing her to cringe in embarrassment, “Ah really should not have said that out loud…”
“No, but it will have to wait,” said Twilight, taking charge of the situation, “There obviously is a lot going on here that involves Raspberry, but if what you were about to say is what I think you were about to say, AJ, then before this mess gets even more complicated, we should hear Raspberry’s side of the story.”
“But how do we know she’s even telling the truth?” accused Rainbow. “No offense, Beryl, but you haven’t been exactly honest about anything as far as I know.”
“Well, um, I think that’s why it’s a good thing she has Heliodor, then…” said Fluttershy, her voice barely audible from how low she’d sunk below the table. “After Philomena’s prank, I did more research about phoenixes, and learned about the fabled green ones as well as the usual red variety. It was sort of confusing, since Philomena is red but she seemed more like a green-“
“Philomena’s mother, Verna, was in fact a green phoenix,” said Celestia, her composure coming back gradually. “But you are correct in that the fact Heliodor is green does improve things, as green phoenixes are allegedly destined to pair up with a pony they deem has a pure heart. Only…”
“Ponies with pure hearts don’t ‘murder’ their dads, do they?” skeptically asked Raspberry, now finally sitting back upright as she rubbed a hoof on the back of her bird’s head.
“Thank goodness none of this came up in the trial, Blueblood would have gone wild with it,” commented Shining, realizing how lucky that passed over bit of information had not been used.
“Yes, but I think what needs to be done is clear,” added Rarity, turning to look reassuringly at Raspberry. “As Applejack was going to say in all likelihood, much of what has occurred would have been avoided had Raspberry told us the whole story – the whole, real story, that is – and we ponies being willing to listen.”
“I believe so, too, Rarity,” nodded Celestia, “So, Raspberry, it’s time for you to come clean, too. Just who are you?”
“Who am I?” rhetorically asked Raspberry, lifting her foreleg to let Heliodor take his perch on her horn, “I am Raspberry Beryl, the inheritor of Sombra’s curse, and the only pony unlucky enough to have been born in Lonesome Dove and not be an earth pony.”
Twenty five years ago…
Torchwood stood on his porch, facing away from his homestead. It hadn’t been easy, coming to Lonesome Dove was risky no matter how anypony looked at it, but his wife, Glass Ruby, had been supportive of the decision. So, here they were, on a parcel of land that he would soon plow and plant seeds, from which crops would grow. They would prosper here, maybe even become an important family as the settlement was relatively new, a potential for him to be the patriarch of a new family lineage on the same level as the Apple Family who seventy-five years ago had founded the town of Ponyville.
And he smiled, knowing that soon he would have a strong son who would, given time, grow into a fine young stallion who would help the farm prosper and eventually take over the farm when his father’s body failed him. Yes he thought this will be a bright, new begin-
A loud wail erupted from the house, then a silence that was only interrupted by the cry of a newborn. But…something felt wrong. Very wrong. His heart sinking, Torchwood raced into the house to find all his dreams crushed in an instant.
There, in the bedroom of the small farmhouse, were three ponies waiting for him on the bed. His wife, who looked like she hadn’t slept in years, was still breathing heavily in the aftermath of labor. Paying no attention to the midwife or the bundle held in her forelegs, Torchwood raced to the side of his wife.
“It’s over!” semi-wailed the exhausted mare, “Oh, thank Celestia it’s over!”
“But what about you, my love?” asked Torch, “Are you alright?”
“I’ll live” answered Ruby, letting out a chuckle, “if only for the sake of you and our child, I’ll recover.”
“You’ll be the best mother any colt could have, my sweet gem.”
“Um…” interrupted the midwife, “it’s a filly.”
“I-I beg your pardon?” quickly asked Torch, not understanding the idea that the baby wasn’t the colt he’d been expecting. Granted, nopony, not even the doctor, had been able to reliably predict the gender, but with the hoping and the praying and the dreaming he’d done, Torch had been sure it was going to be a boy.
Yet, as the midwife brought the newborn to meet its parents, what lay inside the bundle was most certainly not the earth pony colt he’d been expecting. Instead, it was a unicorn filly, a lock of sky blue and lilac hair for her mane that stopped an inch before where her horn jutted out of her skull, her coat a rich raspberry hue and her eyes a warm maroon.
“Oh, she’s beautiful!” cooed Ruby, weakly spreading her forelegs to take the infant into them. “I don’t think we could have asked for a better child, don’t you, Torchie?”
“Uh, yeah, heh heh, of course not!” lied the stallion through a false grin, though he knew his wife would believe him. In truth, he was crushed. He had wanted –no, demanded – a colt of earth pony lineage. Furthermore, it didn’t make any sense as to how a pony of unicorn lineage could be the product of two earth ponies whose entire bloodlines were pure and untainted by the other pony types as far back as recorded history could remember.
“Pardon me for asking, but…” the midwife sheepishly commented, “I do find it curious that a unicorn would be born to two earth ponies.”
“Are you implying my wife was unfaithful?” snapped Torch, letting some of his anger at being denied the son he rightfully deserved, though he had to admit that was a possible explanation. He hoped it wasn’t though, because he loved Ruby dearly and he expected the same of her.
“No, Torchie, you’re the only colt I would ever want to be with” assuaged the new mother as she cradled the baby. “But I may know the reason for why our bundle of joy will have the gift of magic and not that of strength.”
“Why?” asked Torchwood and the midwife simultaneously.
Ruby just smiled, before recalling an old family legend. “My family’s bloodline goes back all the way to the Crystal Empire, believe it or not.”
“Impossible, that place never existed!” nickered Torch.
“Oh, but it’s true. Remember how I said the blending of the colors in my mane was a special trick with how I combed it? It’s actually completely natural, the only proof of the Crystal Pony blood in me. And looking at our filly, it seems she has it too.”
“But…but I thought the Crystal Ponies were for the most part all Earth ponies?”
“They were, but therein lies the dark truth. You see, when King Sombra was defeated and his last act was to curse the Crystal Empire, making it vanish entirely, some of his unwilling slaves managed to escape and disappear within the main population of Equestria. But before that, some of those slaves had been relegated to his own kind of personal harem. Obviously, the shame those poor mares had in being the personal sex toys of that bastard king would mean they wouldn’t ever mention him, but it was never known if one of them carried his offspring when they fled.”
“That’s…that’s horrible!” gasped the midwife.
“Indeed, but there’s no need to worry. True or not, that was a thousand years ago, and this innocent babe has nothing to do with Sombra.”
“So, what are we going to call it-er, I mean, her?” asked Torch.
“I know just the name; Raspberry Beryl.”
In present day, Raspberry Beryl sighed unhappily. “I can’t say for sure if that’s really what happened when I was born, but from what I could glean from my father’s rantings it’s the best I can theorize.”
“But…didn’t you say your mom died when you were born?” pointed out Twilight.
Raspberry nodded solemnly, “I did tell you that, but beyond bestowing my name upon me, my mother may as well have died the second the cord connecting her to me was cut. She…grew extremely ill the next day, her immune system weakened from the strain of childbirth, and despite everypony’s best efforts she died before I was even a week old.”
“I…I’m sorry…” said Cadence, already tearing up a little. “No pony should grow up without knowing their mother’s embrace.”
“While I do wish I could have known my mother, have a memory of her beyond the one photograph she’d had done and hanging in the dining room and her gravestone under one of the few trees on the far side of what was supposed to have been the farm. Only…I must be honest, I don’t think I ever really knew the pony my father had been, as while his expectations had been delayed when I was given to him instead of the son he felt owed, they’d been crushed when mom died. He’d loved her, dearly, and to lose her not only deprived him of any means to get the son he wanted, but of possibly the only pony who he truly had cared for in Lonesome Dove, the one pony who he felt deserved the fruits of his dreams more than he. To have all that taken away from him so quickly, with only me left to be nothing but a constant source of demands with no promise of being of any use to achieving the glories he wanted…I just don’t think his mentality could handle all of it.”
“Did…did he neglect you?” asked Pinkie, who had grown up in what seemed to be similar circumstances and considered her father to have been a very tough parent, too. However, unlike Raspberry, Pinkie’s father hadn’t shown any distaste for her or her sisters; Marble and Limestone, because he’d wanted a son instead.
“Worse.”
“Oh.” Collectively said all the other ponies. What was implied needed no elaboration.
“Now, hold on a second,” said Shining, “you claim to be the descendant of King Sombra, right?”
“With all due respect, your highness, that’s probably one of the stupidest questions somepony has ever asked me. I mean, after all the black crystals popping up around me, the fact I’ve got a stalagmite growing out of my forehead for a horn, and then the fact my bloodline is earth as far back as anypony cares to know aside from the most evil unicorn in history forcing himself into it, I’m kind of stumped in how else I can make myself look even more like Sombra unless I start going CRYSTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALS in a horribly strangled voice.”
“I think what my brother means, Razz,”Twilight clarified, “is that while your appearance and actions are unique for ponies who have used dark magic, the truth is conventional magic studies can’t confirm that those are truly signs that you are of Sombra’s bloodline or if they’re just the result of long-term dark magic usage.”
“To be fair, Twi,” interjected Applejack, “considerin’ you yourself admitted she knows more about dark magic than anypony here, much less in all of Equestria, if she’s sure she’s got Sombra’s powers then Ah don’t really see how we can’t trust her there. Plus, if she wasn’t part of Sombra’s kin, then how do you explain the mass-petrificatin’ thing she did, or how by her own admission she…well, you were there, Twi, when she explained what happened this mornin’ only could’ve happened ‘cause her magic is like his.”
“I don’t know what happened this morning that involved her magic and you girls, but I think I can help support her claims since I’ve been sensing magic similar to Sombra’s for some time, now, as I told my fellow princesses via the letters I sent a few weeks ago.”
“Wait, you knew the truth about me this whole time?!” a scandalized Razz exclaimed.
“Well, yes and no, Raspberry,” said Luna. “Thanks to Cadence, we’ve known of somepony or something out in the world whose magic was of the same type as Sombra’s, she of all of us would know since she had to keep that shield going during his brief resurrection, except we didn’t know who. Obviously, that who is you, so we have an answer to that question instead of having to go on a changeling hunt.”
“Yeah, that would have ended badly,” sighed Raspberry, “though certainly not as bad as when I got my cutie mark…”
Fifteen years ago…
“This better be some kind of joke, Beryl, even though I would have expected your sense of humor to be better than…than that!” threatened Torchwood. In the decade since his wife’s death, having been stuck with no child save for a whiny unicorn brat who only recently had finally been of any use on the farm, he’d turned to drink and now was almost never seen without a half-empty bottle of liquor somewhere close by.
“B-but father…it really is my cutie mark!” answered Raspberry. For a filly who had grown up under the cruel hoof of her father, denied basic education as she was forced to work the fields to make up for having replaced the son that never was, and was publicly treated as something to be embarrassed of, this was supposed to have been the best day of her life. “I told you, I can use my magic to help the farm! I can-“
“You can do nothing right!” screamed Torchwood, getting to his feet from the worn-out chair he was sitting in, “You take my wife away from me and any chance of having a son, much less a child worth anything in having, have the worst working ethic of any pony who ever lived, and now you don’t even have the decency to get a cutie mark that doesn’t serve to mock me of my failures?!” Indeed, to his horror, Raspberry Beryl’s cutie mark was of brightly colored gems, apparently linked to her magic as she was levitating a few gems in a purplish black aura.
Raspberry backed up slowly, knowing what was coming, and so didn’t try to dodge the glass bottle smashing into her face, as prior experience had taught her that no matter what, she never got out of these situations without the bottle carving itself deep into some part of her body. This time, the bottle scored the side of her face, painfully scratching the surface of her eye. “AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!” she screamed, falling to the floor and hooves clutching at her bleeding eye, doing little to stop the flow.
“That’ll teach you…huh?” said Torchwood, now angry that half a bottle of good sorrow juice had gone to waste, but for the first time in a long while was something other than perpetually disappointed in his offspring. The blood that had spilled from her wounds only stayed blood for a few seconds upon contact with the floor, before darkening and hardening into what seemed to be black crystal, then subsequently dissolving into nothing. The implications of what that could mean forced Torchwood to pause, gazing upon the thing that was the only piece of his wife left to him, as it looked back at him, her wounded eye having already healed up as if the broken bottle had not hurt her in the first place. But most damning was the gems she had been levitating right before he had struck her; in her magic grip they had been bright and shiny, but when left alone their true nature was revealed and their dark cores visible for the world to see.
“Did…did you make those gems?” half-asked, half whispered Torch.
“wh-wha?”
“DID YOU MAKE THOSE GEMS WITH YOUR MAGIC?!”
Raspberry didn’t understand, “Y-yes! I m-mean no! I used my magic to make them, but th-they could still be sold to help fund the f-farm, can’t they?”
Torchwood was silent, the bottle handle falling from his hoof to shatter on the floor. Then, in the most controlled tone of voice Raspberry ever heard from him, he spoke, “I should have known, you unicorns are all really demons…”
“We’re what?”
No response, but as if in a trance Torchwood moved to grab Raspberry by the horn, dragging her as they went to the tool shed. “I’ve been blind to the truth, so much trouble could have been avoided if I’d just paid attention!”
“Wh-what’s going on?!” wailed Razz, scared of what might happen. “D-don’t try to break my horn off again, daddy! I’m sorry! Please!”
“No, you’re not sorry, which is why there will be no mistakes…” his hoof reached for the old saw he’d used to build all of the farm’s structures. “I will correct at least one of your mistakes, at least…”
Tears now flowing freely as she was held down on the ground with her head locked by her father’s strong foreleg, she realized too late what was going on when the first tooth of the saw was felt at the base of her horn, where it connected to her skull. Then, her father pushed the saw forward-
“GAH!” gasped Raspberry, suddenly convulsing violently and shooting her head back with wide eyes, throwing Heliodor clean off her horn. It would have been comical had she not also started crying and hyperventilating.
“Raspberry, darling! Are you alright?” inquired Rarity, having rushed out of her seat to be at the other unicorn’s side. The suddenness of the dark unicorn’s behavior had everypony else on edge too, some having gotten to their feet to help if need be.
“Y-yes, I’m fine, thank you f-for your concerns, all of you…” said Raspberry, in-between sniffing. “It’s just that of all the things my father did…making the day I got my cutie mark into the worst day of my life is something I can never forgive him for doing, not when he took away my magic so painfully and traumatically…not when he ruined what was the happiest moment I’d ever had on that bucking farm.”
“I know this may sound horribly inappropriate,” cautiously started Rainbow, “but, like, you’ve mentioned that weird regenerative ability of yours where you basically can’t die, much less sustain severe injury for more than a few minutes, so I have to ask if your horn regenerated after it…well, when your father basically destroyed it.”
“No, as far as I know it’s the only part of my body I can’t regenerate near-instantly. I don’t know what my father did with my original horn, for all I know he told somebody in-town to drop it in a canyon or something. I guess you could say I was ‘lucky’ in that he hadn’t cut deep enough into my skull to kill me that way, but I was left with a plateau of bone that was nothing more than a slight ridge on my forehead. He made me wear a bandanna over it, to hide what was left of my horn and to make me look like an earth pony like him. Truth be told, I probably wouldn’t even be alive today if it wasn’t for the constant, backbreaking labor he forced me to do, since I was still somehow growing at the time and so my physical condition was well above average for a unicorn mare my age at the time.
Only…I learned a few weeks later that just because my horn had been ruined didn’t mean I couldn’t use magic anymore. See, I was alone in the fields while my father was sleeping off another hangover, when for whatever reason the sky exploded into a rainbow. It must have been seen from all across Equestria.”
“That was probably me doing my first sonic Rainboom, which caused many things to happen that day.” boasted Rainbow, “uh, unless what you’re about to say was another bad thing, in which case it wasn’t me doing my first Sonic Rainboom.”
Fluttershy uncharacteristically hit Rainbow hard enough in the side for the blue pegasus to realize she had actually been hit by her yellow counterpart. “Rainbow,” the shy one said, “take responsibility for it, since it was for my sake that you were even in that race at all.”
Raspberry, contrary to expectations, laughed slightly. “It’s alright, Fluttershy, especially since that rainbow is how I learned my magic hadn’t really left me. On the field, alone, I remember marveling at its beauty and wanting to share the experience with somepony else. Except the only pony I actually really knew was my dad, who I obviously wasn’t going to bother with, and so I really wished for somepony to be with me. Next thing I know my forehead starts shooting out magic and forms into a perfect copy of me.”
“Like that fake double trick you did back at the Everfree Ruins?” realized Apple Bloom.
“Uh-huh, I can even demonstrated it, if your majesties would allow me to, of course.” With a nod from the four princesses, Raspberry closed her eyes and lit up her horn. The bubbling mass of purple was joined when she reopened them to release misty trails of purple, her eyes having turned green and red. “For the record, my mastery of dark magic is such that I can actually control this whole eye effect thing, it actually strains my eyes a little anyway so unless I need my full concentration on something else I normally just leave it off.” She then turned to the wall and fired a beam of magic at it. The beam stopped midway, pitching down 90 degrees and slamming into the ground. Then, like a mold being filled by water, a perfect cut-and-paste copy of Raspberry Beryl formed from the ground up.
“And you can do that without your horn?” absentmindedly said Twilight, gaping at the ease with which Raspberry performed what was essentially a difficult self-duplication spell.
“I could fifteen years ago, with a horn it’s even easier, though, since it doesn’t take more than few seconds for me now. Anyway, this is my dark magic duplicate who I named ‘Truth’.”
“You named it? Does that mean it’s like a sentient familiar?” asked Luna, a disapproving frown on her muzzle.
“What? Nah, dark magic can do lots of things, but it can’t create life. No, Truth here is basically a full-size puppet that I can give basic orders to.” To demonstrate, Raspberry flicked her head as if giving a command, and Truth wordlessly began to trot in a circle around the table a few times before coming to a stop in the exact place she had been created. “When I learned I could do this without my horn, life did start improving for me a little. From that point on, Truth acted in my stead to take the blows from my dad, only I made it so her wounds wouldn’t instantly heal as they do for me, so he never caught onto the deception and I wasn’t subject to his regular physical abuse anymore. I practiced making my fake gems, partly in the hope of somehow being able to change my fortunes in life, though mostly it really was the only thing I could truly do.
“ Working on that plot of land wasn’t easy, since there was so much buried diamond there, but of the most worthless variety. What little that could grow that we didn’t need to support ourselves was sold in town by dad along with the mined diamonds, though he blew most of it on booze anyway. When the diamonds started to run low, there simply wasn’t much to do. So I practiced magic, though my feelings of anger towards my father grew. He denied me every step of the way in terms of having a chance towards being a regular pony by keeping me cooped up on his farm, by trying to mold me into something he could say was his without being embarrassed about it. Unfortunately, he ended up informing the town about it all during his many drunken stupors, which a few years later came to a head…
Nine Years Ago…
It had been one of those long days when Torchwood had gone to town to sell what little his sad imitation of a farm had produced in excess of bare necessities. Having been nothing but cause for shame and embarrassment, he still forbade Raspberry Beryl from coming to town, recently having made it clear she was not to leave the house to even work on the farm while he was away.
When he’d returned, he reeked of booze and just went straight to his lonely bed, not even berating his daughter for being a useless bitch as he usually did. Raspberry was thankful for a small mercy, since those continued to be rare. But, after eating her self-prepared dinner of carrots and oats, she quickly washed up before heading to bed herself, waiting for the next dreary day to come with its challenges she needed to overcome just to survive. For fifteen years that had been her life, the last six having been especially bad as she had to wear an annoying bandana around what had been the only real thing separating her from the other ponies in the first place. Before she tucked herself in, she removed the bandana and looked in the dusty, cracked mirror at the stump on her forehead.
“Someday, Raspberry, you’ll have a life worth living,” she mumbled, turning to sleep once more.
It would not be a long sleep, as maybe only an hour had passed before she heard a large crowd of ponies approaching the premises.
“Burn the demon! Burn the demon!” they cried, leading Raspberry to realize her father must have gone on about how he was cursed with a unicorn child that had used “dark magic” or something. From what she knew, this year had been especially bad for the community, caught in the grip of a devastating drought. Without a dedicated pegasus weather team to relieve the pressure, the massive reduction in crop production as a whole was leaving the town angry and hungry. With horror, she realized that everypony blamed her for the trouble, possibly her father as well for causing it by sawing off her horn six years prior. But she didn’t have time to even think about trying to convince the townsfolk otherwise, not when the crowd started throwing torches at the house. The house timbers, dried out from the lack of rain, instantly caught fire and soon the blaze was wrapping around the house.
Raspberry instinctively made to gather what she needed before fleeing the burning house. Which, sadly, was only a small pouch of bits she’d managed to accumulate over the years from what little her father brought back. Using the bandana normally required to hide her horn’s stump, she fashioned a small pouch hanging on the end of a stick, before having to leave her room when parts of the roof started to fall in. However, she only made it to the dining room before she was tackled by her father.
“Trying to leave, are you?!” he snarled, a combination of sleep deprivation, drunkenness mixed with the still lingering effects of his last hangover, and general insanity etched onto his face.
“The house is on fire, you idiot!” she screamed back, fighting to get free, “We need to get out of here!”
“I’m the master of the house, I’m the one calling the shots of what we do!” He then effortlessly picked up his daughter and threw her against a wall. Ignoring the house burning around him and the angry crowd outside, he watched like a taskmaster who took disturbingly sadistic pleasure in making his charges feel pain. His sadistic grin, however, faded as he saw a change pass over his daughter while she got back to her hooves.
“Not anymore…” she grunted, her self-restraint finally broken as the floodgates of her anger flew open, letting fifteen years of emotion flow freely. “For years you’ve kept me locked up on this piece of shit farm, constantly deriding me as the cause for all of your failures, for all of your broken dreams. But now…now I’m putting an end to it!” She then threw her head back and gave a cry that was inequine to the point the crowd outside stopped chanting in fear that the ‘demon’ was going to go after them now.
“Wh-what the buck are you?!” choked out Torchwood, fear quickly bringing sobriety back to him for the first time in years. Somehow, despite having removed her horn and ensured its disposal, it was obvious the dark magic within her was still readily available and at her hooftips, if not more than ever now. The effect it had on her was a kind of metamorphosis, her colors all shifted to dark hues of red and black, two razor-sharp fangs making themselves known as they gleamed in the light of the fire raging around them, but most disturbingly of all was the stump of a horn pushing its way through her skull, forming a new and much more sinister looking horn as it was encased in the signature, dark bubbly mass that was a dark magic aura.
“Your daughter!” coldly declared Raspberry, completely subsumed by her rage. Then, without realizing it, Razz charged her father with her horn lowered, headbutting him into the wall and impaling him on her horn through the heart. With an unearthly scream she poured magic into her horn, matched by the eye-bulging reactions on Torchwood’s face before they finally rolled up and his last breath escaped through his lips.
With a grunt, Raspberry dragged her father’s corpse along the wall and threw it against another one, removing him from her horn, though now his blood stained the tip of her horn. Also of note was that something else came out of Torchwood; his heart had been crystallized into being a heart-shaped black crystal similar to the Raspberry colored one on the unicorn’s flank.
“Wha…what?” gasped Raspberry, the gravity of the act she had just committed knocking sense back into her. As she looked at the reflection of herself in what had been her father’s heart, she saw the monster she had become. “Oh, Celestia, what have I done?” She had hated her father, that much had been true, but she never would have wanted to harm him, to even lay a hoof on him would have been to put her on his level. But now…now she’d committed patricide (though at the time she didn’t know there was a term for that beyond “murder”) and had sinned so greatly she had become some kind of freak.
The rising sound of the angry mob outside the still-burning house, however, made it clear that if she still had any inclination to live, she needed to flee Lonesome Dove. Quickly grabbing her satchel of bits, she paused only briefly in front of the picture of her mother; too big for her to take with her wherever she went she noted tragically. Thus, she made sure to ingrain the only image of the parent who had really loved her, for she would never have fond memories of her father. Then she disappeared through the back door as the only world she’d ever known crumbled behind her in fire.
Silence once again filled the hall, the task of breaking the somber mood not being one anypony would want.
“My father may have been a terrible parent, but if there’s anything good about what he did, it’s that he taught me to be a good pony. Even before I truly figured out my relation to King Sombra, the biggest monster I knew was my dad, and I knew I didn’t want to be anything like him. The fact I killed him in blind rage nine years ago…I feel like the only way I can ever forgive myself for that, even if it takes me my whole life, is to be as good a pony as I can possibly be. Obviously, it’s difficult with my handicap of dark magic being the only kind of magic I can use, but as easy as it would be to harm other ponies for me to keep on going, I will not go to that level, the one my dad lived on and made my life hell in the process.”
The other ponies nodded in acknowledgement, but there wasn’t really anything more to be said. At least, not until Celestia spoke up. “Raspberry Beryl, thank you for being this open for our benefit, I have just one more question for you, personally.”
“Yes, your majesty?”
Celestia took a deep breath before saying her final question. “Raspberry…if I pardoned you right now, on the spot, and let you go do whatever you wanted to do without worry about getting in trouble about your dark magic…problem…what would you do?”
“I would go straight back to Ponyville, beg Ascot and Cashmere to forgive me for not telling them about my secret, and if they are merciful I would keep living life the way I had been right before Nightmare Night. Living and working at the Traveler’s Retreat, the only difference is I’d try to find a way to prevent what happened with Spike from ever happening again, and if not I’d stop selling them altogether as they are no longer my means of supporting myself and Helee anymore.”
“But if you don’t need to sell them to survive, then why sell them at all?”
“Because…well, because then I could enjoy selling them more for what they really would be instead of fakes. I could even give them away if I wanted, as long as they made other ponies happy. That way I could do something good with my special talent.”
Celestia nodded, but said nothing for a long few minutes. Then, with no outward emotion, she reassumed that fake, motherly smile as she gave her reply. “I see. Thank you, Raspberry, that will be all for you. However, before I am willing to let you go, I believe you’re a key part as to explaining this whole werewolf business.”
Raspberry paled, not exactly keen to explain her role in the “werewolf business” at all.
Later, Celestia mulled over her choice, alone in her chambers. For all that she knew, Raspberry Beryl was just as good a pony as any other, better than some, even. She at least knew the answers to why Raspberry was absent from the census records when she was a filly. Her father had purposely tried to hide her after all. But not because of trying to hide a potential perfect assassin and usurp control of the country; instead he’d tried to hide her from the world simply because he did not want the world to know his one child was not what he’d wanted. A purely selfish reason, destroying one of the happiest times in any young pony’s life, because he had felt self-entitled. Celestia could not in good conscience condemn such a pony to a terrible fate when the majority of the aristocracy was full of ponies who deserved to be jailed more than her.
But at the same time…she could not let a pony whose self-professed special talent and heritage were those of King Sombra. Who had still killed another pony, her own father even, without immediate remorse. Who had committed the greatest chain of forgery dealings in history, even if it was only for personal survival. And who had unintentionally caused Applejack to revert back to being a werewolf after a year of everypony believing she truly had been cured. While that instance had been under extremely unique circumstances, the fact merely being touched by dark magic had caused Applejack to revert, and the potential threat Raspberry posed to the country should she lose control again was a horror words could not convey.
Raspberry Beryl, for all intents and purposes, was just as powerful and just as dangerous as Sombra, and her judgement would have to factor that in. At the same time, Raspberry was the opposite of her predecessor, a truly good pony at heart, and so in order to remain being seen as a fair ruler, Celestia would need to take that into consideration as well.
It had taken her hours, but she finally settled on a decision. Equestriani courts would forever condemn it as controversial, but in light of the “werewolf business” that would never see the light of day in public if all went well, and how fate had wronged Raspberry Beryl for twenty five years, it was the only choice that would satisfy all sides. The only choice that could save Equestria should Fair Vista manage to set into motion Sable Loam’s plan to create a new werewolf army.
Which, though Celestia with a wry smile, would only happen with the help of the very power that created the werewolf problem a thousand years ago.