A Flicker of Despair

by Brass Polish

3 Poisoned

When Amber finished the page, she heard voices coming from the window. Pinkie Pie’s loud voice carried into the room, shifting Amber’s curiosity towards her and Twilight down below.

“It’s too bad,” Twilight said when Amber approached the window. “We were made Ponyville’s Royal Taskforce because we control the Elements of Harmony. But we couldn’t use them to fix this problem.”

“Oh, well,” Pinkie Pie smiled. “We still fixed it. And I got a new playmate.”

“You mean the tree?” asked Twilight.

“It’s so funny. It rose up from the water with fish on its branches and made everypony who passed by think they were growing on it.”

Pinkie rolled on the ground laughing, while Twilight began her journey to Sweet Apple Acres.

The wolf river tree! Amber thought. Could the Venomodo have sliced any of its apples?

She was seriously considering doing what Dystopia had done.

I could take Twilight’s place… I could go back to that Summer Sun Celebration day. I’ve BEEN in the Starswirl the Bearded Wing. I’ve SEEN the time travel spell. If I find a slashed apple, eat it and travel back in time…

Amber spent almost half an hour deciding whether or not she would take this big and possibly dangerous step. In the end, the temptation was too great for her to resist. But it might have been too late. When she got to Sweet Apple Acres, Applejack told her that Twilight and Spike were collecting the apples that fell off the wolf river tree.

She’ll never let me have one, she thought.

Applejack and Fluttershy were planting a new wolf river tree in the spot the old one jumped out of. Amber and Rarity were pulling carts while Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash loaded them up with twigs and branches strewn along the path to the pond.

“It’s a pity I can’t use my magic to pick up these branches,” Rarity sighed. “It’d save me the trouble of having to heave this dirty thing around.”

Pinkie and Rainbow just chuckled and went about their work. Amber was watching Twilight and Spike in the distance. Spike was picking up squashed and bruised apples and placing them in Twilight’s saddle bags. Amber stared hard at them as she and Rarity followed them from a distance. None of the apples Spike picked up looked like they’d been pierced by a claw.

Then she remembered something. “Hey Rainbow Dash, what did you do with that cloud you found me on?”

“Oh, me and Fluttershy brought it back to where it was,” replied Rainbow Dash. “Outside Ponyville. Schedule says today’s supposed to be sunny and clear again.”

Amber started making a plan.

From time to time, Amber and Rarity had to unload their carts to make room for more branches. Twilight had to unload her bags as well, but it was in a different spot. So Amber was trying to think of a way to get them alone together. Her chance came late that afternoon when she saw a small hole in the ground directly in her path. Pinkie Pie didn’t notice, so when they made their way to the next branch, Amber picked up speed and bounced the cart over the hole so hard, the right wheel fell off.

“Wow,” said Rainbow Dash. “I expected Rarity to try and break her cart, but not you.”

“What, do you think I did that on purpose?” asked Amber.

“I’m just kidding,” smirked Rainbow Dash, not in the least bit suspicious.

As both their carts weren’t very full, Rainbow Dash loaded the spilt branches onto Rarity’s cart. Pinkie Pie took the broken one away, and Amber went on ahead to tell Twilight about the “accident”.

“Well, there aren’t many branches left,” said Twilight. “I guess Rainbow and Rarity can manage the rest.”

“Twilight,” said Amber, “I swear my wing is healed. Can I go up to that cloud Rainbow and Fluttershy found me on?”

“What for?”

“When that Venomodo scratched me, its claw came off. It might still be wedged in the cloud.”

“Oh, that’s a good point,” conceded Twilight, looking up at the sky and spotting the cloud they were referring to. “Alright, if you really feel you’re up to it, go see if it’s there. If you run into trouble, like if your wing starts hurting you and you can’t fly, shine your horn and I’ll come and help you.”

“Got it,” said Amber.

Spike was almost done collecting all the apples on the bank, so Twilight hardly took her eyes off the cloud sitting on the skyline. She saw no sign of Amber or her light for several minutes. Then, when Spike told her they had gotten all the upset apples and they began heading toward the disposal site, Twilight saw a flash of light come from the cloud and took off at once, still wearing her saddle bags. Spike was feeling drowsy from working all day and didn’t notice her leave.

Twilight reached the cloud, but there was no sign of Amber.

“Amber?!” she called. “Are you here?!”

Something popped up out of the cloud and scraped her hoof.

“Ow!”

Amber emerged from the cloud holding a long, brown claw.

“I found it,” she sneered.

All of a sudden, Twilight began to lose all the feeling in her legs and wings.

“Amber! Did- did you… paralyze…?!”

She couldn’t finish. In a split second, she collapsed onto the cloud gasping for breath.

Amber walked up to her, reached into her saddlebags and pulled out an apple that wasn’t scratched or squashed. Then, to Twilight’s horror, she made a gash in it with her Venomodo claw and ate it.

“Whyyyy are you p-poisoning us both?” Twilight managed to ask.

“Oh, don’t worry about me,” Amber smirked. “This won’t affect me until I go back in time.”

Twilight would have gone wide-eyed, but her eyelids were getting heavy.

“Why?” she wheezed almost inaudibly.

“Because you were a lousy candidate for Princess Celestia’s new Princess,” Amber scowled. “I can understand Princess Cadance because she can spread love around, so she was the perfect choice for ruling the Crystal Empire. But you had to find everything out the hard way. Not only did you have to earn your wings, but also the right to have great friends. I was born with wings and good social skills. So I’m gonna go back in time and take your place. And I promise you, I won’t be like Dystopia. I WILL change the past. Nightmare Moon won’t have a prayer.”

Twilight suddenly remembered the book she used to make Amber’s bed, but before she could try to say anything to Amber, she stepped off of the cloud and kicked it away. As it drifted away from Ponyville carrying a fully paralysed Twilight with it, Amber began to cast the time travel spell.

Things turned blurry. Amber felt sick in a matter of seconds. She was spinning around and around in a sea of swirling multi-hued lights. She felt as if she’d made her own sonic rainboom after taking a ride on a Dizzitron. But quite soon, the spinning and the brightness stopped. Amber still felt funny. She looked at herself. She wasn’t flying. She was floating. Looking around, she could see a cart in the distance being pulled by two pegasi. And sitting onboard the cart was Twilight Sparkle and Spike.

“It worked!” exclaimed Amber.

And with that, she drifted over to the cart as it was towed towards Ponyville.

The first thing she heard when she approached the cart was Spike reading from a letter.

“…I am sending you to supervise the preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration in this year’s location, Ponyville…”

Amber couldn’t help but laugh at the look of utter disinterest on Twilight’s face, but she knew from the book she read that they wouldn’t hear her.

“And,” Spike read on, “I have an even more essential task for you to complete. Make some friends.”

Amber decided that this was the perfect time to take over Twilight’s body. She floated right up to Twilight and in an instant, she felt herself being sucked into her body like a sink drain. Things went dark for a second, and then she found herself looking down at the ground from the cart. She gave her head a little shake.

“Look on the bright side, Twilight,” said Spike. “The Princess arranged…”

“You just told me the bright side.”

Amber sounded just like Twilight. Everything was going exactly as she planned.

“I suppose I might as well try and make a few friends,” she went on, surprising Spike. “After all, I pretty much turned everypony at school away. Don’t you think?”

“Uh, well you do tend to blow everypony off,” said Spike.

Clearly, he didn’t suspect a thing.

This’ll be easy Amber thought.

Amber did her best to remember every little detail about Twilight’s first visit to Ponyville and encounter with her friends. Step one was easy; Act surprised at Pinkie Pie’s odd reaction as soon as she said “Hello”.

“Huh,” she said. “Looks like my reputation precedes me.”

“Don’t let that put you off, Twilight,” said Spike encouragingly.

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll keep trying,” said Amber. “Um, could you give me a second?”

She trotted off behind a building where no one could see her. She wanted to see if she could sprout wings. Sure enough, two ordinary sized wings popped out with just a thought.

“Hm. I guess I can’t really take these out,” she said quietly to herself. “But hey, like I told Twilight, I was born with wings so I’ll earn new ones in no time.”

Amber’s inspection of the preparations didn’t go completely different from Twilight’s. At the orchard, the Apple family liked her from the start just like Twilight said. Only when they invited her and Spike to join them for brunch, she accepted without a moment’s hesitation. Time seemed to fly past for her because her stay lasted a lot longer than Twilight’s, so she was a bit behind schedule with the next item on the list. But it didn’t matter because Rainbow Dash hadn’t gotten around to clearing the sky yet. There was no bump-into this time around, but when they visited Rarity at the boutique, she was still enchanted when Amber told her she was from Canterlot. And when it came time to inspect the music, Amber introduced Fluttershy to Spike right away.

At last, Amber, Spike and Fluttershy arrived at the library, where Twilight’s surprise party was waiting. Amber felt great to be properly introduced to Pinkie Pie, but unfortunately, Twilight didn’t tell her about the hot sauce so she spent a few minutes drinking out of the faucet before getting into the swing of the party. The night went spectacularly from the introductory chatter, to the numerous party platters, to the conga line, to the piñata, right up to pin the tail on the pony. Amber got along so well with Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Rarity, that when it was time to move on to Carousel Boutique, she was very disappointed. But before she left with her friends, she walked up to the bedroom where no one could see or hear her.

“I hope you can see this, Twilight,” she said to the empty room. “This is the way to serve Princess Celestia.”

The thought of Twilight’s ghost flying around watching her live it up with the ponies who would have become her friends made Amber even happier inside.

Amber never let on that she was worried about Nightmare Moon’s return, as Princess Celestia requested in her letter to Twilight that she give the reading a rest. However, she found it hard to stop looking at the moon as the Mayor began to speak.

“Whatcha lookin at, Twilight?” asked Pinkie Pie.

“Um, nothing,” Amber had to think about what she would say. “I, uh… I just have a funny feeling that I’m forgetting something.”

She decided that rather than consult Elements of Harmony: a Reference Guide like Twilight did, she would simply tell her friends that she’d read it before.

“What’d you forget?” asked Pinkie Pie. “No wait, don’t tell me, don’t tell me. Um, you didn’t brush your teeth? No! You left a light on in the library! Oh, oh, oh! You can’t remember what that piñata looked like! Is that it?!”

“Um, I can’t really tell you what I forgot if I forgot it, can I?” asked Amber with a slight chuckle.

“Oh, right!”

The choir of birds began to sing, the spotlight lit up, the Mayor made her introduction, and Rarity pulled the curtain. There was no Princess Celestia.

“She’s gone!” Rarity said.

“Oh!” exclaimed Pinkie Pie. “That’s what you forgot! You forgot to bring Princess Celestia!”

“I wasn’t responsible for bringing her here,” Amber was trying not to laugh too much given the scenario she was in.

Then came the legendary Mare in the Moon. There was a collective gasp from the crowd as she stood on the balcony looking down on them.

“Oh, my beloved subjects. It’s been so long since I’ve seen your…”

Amber quickly lost the desire to laugh. She began to feel a sense of dread. Nightmare Moon was quite intimidating. Looking around at everypony’s worried faces, Amber began to wonder if she should have mentioned something about Nightmare Moon’s return earlier. Maybe they could have found the Elements of Harmony and used them on her as soon as she returned with her eternal night.

“…What? No on put their hoof on it? What a shame. How could you all forget the tale of the Mare in the Moon?”

“You’re N-Nightmare Moon?!” exclaimed Rarity.

Oops, thought Amber. I missed my cue.

Now it was too late to tell Nightmare Moon that she knew she was coming back after a thousand year imprisonment.

“Yes, I am. And I have returned at long last.”

The crowd gasped again.

“Remember this day, for it was your last. From now on, the night will last forever!”

“Seize her!” the Mayor ordered. “She’s the only one who knows where Princess Celestia is!”

The guards advanced on Nightmare Moon, but she summoned a lightning strike to keep them away. Then she turned into a cloud of black smoke and floated out the door into her everlasting night. Rainbow Dash attempted to chase her, but even she couldn’t keep up with a royal pony sister.

“Rainbow, come back in here!” Applejack called. “Twilight says she thinks she knows what to do.”

While the other ponies were scattering around taking in the untimely darkness and pondering what was to become of Equestria, Amber, Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy spoke quietly in the boutique. Spike had dropped off to sleep and was now in a very annoyed Opalescence’s bed.

“Well Pinkie Pie, I remember what I forgot,” said Amber. “I read about how Princess Celestia had defeated Nightmare Moon a thousand years ago using some magical objects called the Elements of Harmony.”

“Elements of Harmony?” repeated Applejack. “What are those?”

“There are six of them,” said Amber. “Kindness, Honesty, Loyalty, Generosity… um…”

She shot a glance at Pinkie Pie to refresh her memory.

“Oh, yeah. Laughter, and Magic,” she finished.

“Did the book say where they are now?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Yeah. Um, you’re not gonna like this…”

Again, Amber was nervous. She’d never gone into the Everfree Forest before, but of course, none of her new friends had either. And she was certain they were her friends, as all five of them agreed to go into the forest with her to look for the Ancient Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters. All the same, as they ventured into the overgrown woodland, her nervous feeling didn’t leave. She remembered that Twilight said the first thing that happened was the ridge collapsed beneath them. She hoped she wouldn’t panic and sprout her wings to fly to safety. Luckily for her, this didn’t happen… because the ridge didn’t collapse.

When Twilight Sparkle told Nightmare Moon that she knew who she was and that she would return that night, the legendary mare grew curious about her knowledge of the Elements of Harmony. So when she went back to Ponyville to find Twilight and discovered that she was reading about their last known location, she’d followed them into the Everfree Forest to prevent them from getting to the castle and the elements. But Amber Aldis didn’t draw attention to herself when Nightmare Moon asked if anypony remembered her. So on this night, Nightmare Moon wasn’t floating around the forest looking for ways to halt anypony’s progress. She was hovering all around Equestria basking in the moonlight feeling larger than life…

Author's Note:

Before I got into this game, most of my fantasy insight came from Harry Potter.