Crimson Dance

by Nightmares Madness

Prologue

The view in front of her was astonishing, yet alien as well. She looked down on the land she recognized as Equestria, from the maps of history before the tragedy. So much was different than what it was now. The towns were quiet hamlets, the cities held sprawling towers, the largest of which appeared to be precariously perched on the side of a large mountain. She almost did not recognize it as it was still whole, unlike the one that was partially broken a few years previously. As she looked, she noticed there were no walls surrounding every city and hamlet alike.

There were no battles across vast expanses of land, forests were not being burned, and no army of creatures living, dead or otherwise attempted to lay waste to all before them.

“Do you believe in destiny, Twilight Sparkle?” Came a voice from somewhere behind her. Looking, Twilight felt unnerved to find herself alone.

“Hello?” She called out to the black void around her.

“Do you think the world you live in is real?” The voice came again from behind her. Turning, she found the picturesque Equestria she had seen was gone, and again she was alone. She steadied her breathing as she considered the questions presented to her.

“I believe the world I am in is real; The pain, the struggle, and more, proves that it is real. I understand the world that affects my senses, along with rational thought are proof. As for destiny, I believe destiny is only something that affect our lives, those who live, and those who die.”

There was silence at first. Looking about her, she spotted a speck of light in the distance. As she moved toward it, she could see it grow slowly.

After a time, she found, too, that it seemed to rise above the horizon of whatever place she was in. Closer, and closer she got, soon found her beneath the glow of the moon. Or, at least, one of them and there upon its surface she could see the silhouette of the fabled ‘Mare in the Moon’.

“What have you learned in your studies, young Twilight?” Came the voice for a third time, though now it sounded right beside her.

Growing weary of the voice without a body, she closed her eyes and breathed in to settle her growing ire.

“In a world of life and magic, there is always one irrefutable fact: ‘For every action there comes an opposite and equal reaction’.” She recited from memory.

“This is correct. One could also say it means simply, encountering consequences for the choices that have been made.”

Twilight glanced out the corner of her eye to finally find a form to the voice. Turning her head, she could now see a woman standing beside her, staring up at the moon. Her eyes widened slightly, seeing the woman with a multi-colored hair flowing out behind her shoulders in some unknown breeze. She was dressed in a moderately long white dress, though it did dip low at her bust. Twilight noted, that above this, hanging from a golden chain was an amulet of a sun, the familiar form of Celestias sun, to be exact.

“Twilight,” the woman spoke, turning to her, “She will be returning. A thousand years alone has not helped her madness to abate itself. She will be dangerous to all races and creatures of this world. There are six elder artifacts that can be found and used against her if those of your world are threatened. You do not have much time, please, hurry and find them before all is lost.”

Twilight rose up suddenly from her bed, arm stretched out, grasping in the darkness of night. “Wait, I-” Looking around, she saw she was back in her room.

Shivering, Twilight lowered herself back down on her bedding, pulling a blanket up and over her body once more. Before she closed her eyes she reached out and grasping blindly. After a few seconds, she found what she sought, a thick wooden surface that was her staff. With a sigh of relief, she drew it closer before pressing her head into the mat that covered her straw bed.

It was fortunate she was able to find sleep again, though she allowed the memory of the words the woman in white spoke to, flow through her mind.

---

The rest of her night was dreamless, and Twilight stretched out before getting up from her bed on the floor. The morning sun shone through the window as it began to rise from the edge of the world.

Twilight strode across the room and stopped at the door, where she was able to find a bucket of fresh water from the well waiting right outside the door. Keeping her form hidden behind the door, she looked up and down the hall to ensure she was truly alone and none would see her. Once she was sure, she leaned down and hefted the bucket up and brought it inside her room. She used her hips to close the door and walked over where she set the bucket down before a mirror on a dresser.

Twilight busied herself with wetting a small cloth nearby she worked to clean her body from top to bottom as well as she could. As she finished wiping her face she lowered the cloth, covering her chest with it and her arms.

Twilight stared at her reflection in the mirror before her, looking at the form of a young thin Equine. Her features were humanoid, though, unlike humans she did not have feet, she had hooves. Her hands were similar to humans, as well as most of her body, often she and many other Equines found similarities. Not just hands, but their forms as well, though not just her hooves were the difference. Humans were covered in thin wisps of what they called hair which did not cover as much of their body. For Twilight, she and many of her kind were fully covered in hair, though due to it being thicker and more course, though not quite as long, it was like being covered in fur. The humans had heads full of hair, where they also often grew beards, or mustaches. Strange as this was to some Equines, few, well the stallions, found interest in mimicking the humans. Twilight, herself, often pondered the interest in facial hair. Additionally, her mane, or hair, as humans called it, was very thick and long. Humans often complained having hair that thick and long would be detrimental to their health.

The last difference between Equines and humans, were their tails. Some humans claimed, after much thought and study, they came from a kind of primate that was capable of sentience superior to that of others. Twilight had come to understand this, due to similarities she had read about in the great library of the arcane school, she did find those primates had once had tails. When she brought this up to some humans, she was met with disdain and anger. Humans did not want to be considered, ‘bestial’ and considered themselves better than an animal. They barely acknowledged dwarves and elves as brethren in intelligence, though not species.

Twilight let out a sigh as she considered the long and difficult history of her Equine ancestry, often mistreated, and often violated. Unicorns often had it the worst, as humans delighted in attacking them for their horns, thinking them as magical in nature. Granted, they had often helped Unicorns delve into magic from within and without, they also allowed them to focus, and more. So many aspects, yet often Unicorns were found dead, horns grotesquely removed and left to rot. Many unicorn after that began to try and hide their horns using magic. A form of protection still used in her own time.

Twilight glanced up at her face, and horn as she thought of this brief extent of history she had learned years before. Her coat was purple, her mane and tail a much darker shade. She smiled at the two stripes of color that somehow always made her feel unique, as they were pink and violet. Humans had multiple colors, but nothing even compared to herself or her Equine race.

Twilight shook her head to try and focus, the words from her dream echoing once again. Twilight narrowed her eyes, calling forth her magic and applied the hidden spell over her horn, the effect making seem to fade. Once done, Twilight looked into the mirror and turned her head from one side to the other, inspecting her work. Satisfied she looked more like an Earth Equine than a Unicorn, Twilight turned.

She could not help her shoulders drooping, she wished with all her heart she could walk around without fear of being judged, or constantly looking over her shoulders to find the hungry and greedy looks of those who knew what a Unicorn horn could bring them when trading such a rare thing. Twilight walked over to the closet and grabbed her clothing. She did not take long to pull on her loose shirt and leggings, followed by the robes marking her as a mage. Once done, she grabbed her staff and made her way from her room.

Her objective now, was the library, she had to find out as much information as she could before taking off on this quest. She had to make sure it wasn’t some strange delusion from some of her magic building up inside of her. If the information proved accurate enough, she could go on and find these so called artifacts. Though this also included needing to fin d the correct way to handle them.

Many wizards, mages, sorcerers, and all others of magical inclination often met their end when messing around with dangerous artifacts without taking proper precautions.

---

As Twilight entered the library, she stopped to take a moment to draw in a breath. She smiled, the scent of old and new books always made her feel great, she was never sure why or how, but being surrounded by so much knowledge. She felt as if she had walked into the home of a long and old dear friend who wanted to embrace her.

“Twilight, how may we help you today?” Asked a nearby scholar as he carried a hefty tome from one line of shelves over to a table. There he set the tome down and opened it to a marked page, where a nearby student began to work reading and scribing the words onto a scroll.

“Well, I am looking on some very old documents, covering some of the legends from perhaps around the time of the Convergence.”

The scholar thought for a moment before shaking his head, “That is difficult, as you should very well know. There are almost no records left of that time in any of our history.”

“Yes, I realize the limit on what would be available, but I also know that nearly all of those records are collected by the arcane schools and housed in libraries, until they can be brought here.” Twilight pointed out.

The scholar chuckled, “Sharp as ever, Twilight. Right this way,” he said as he turned and led her to the back of the immense building where they came to a separate section with much older scrolls and books, the smell of mold and age prominent here.

The two continued on through the slightly darker areas, as allowing these already age worn and sensitive articles of words and history in the light would quickly destroy them. Traversing the shelves, it took some time before the scholar came to another section where he began to peruse the stands where they held the titles held in each section. Looking at the fifth one he moved his finger down the line of titles and stopped with an, “Aha,” as he seemed to find what they sought.

“Well, Twilight, here is where you will find what you are looking for in our histories around the time of the Convergence. As well, it would seem we are fortunate to have a three shelves of the histories of all the three worlds before said convergence.”

“Thank you very much, this is proving very beneficial, more than I would have thought.” Twilight replied, with a kind smile.

“Out of curiosity, were you looking for anything in particular? I may be able to help you narrow things down a bit, or were you just interested in your Equine heritage?”

“Well, I was looking to see if there were any distinctions between the Equines before and after the Convergence. I am curious as to what progress we have been able to make in various aptitudes of knowledge and economy.”

The scholar chuckled, “As to be expected, you are looking for more than what I can humbly offer.” With that, the scholar walked around Twilight and made his way back to the front of the library to resume his work.

With him gone, Twilight breathed a sigh of relief, thankful he had no idea she was only just rambling about the first topic of nonsense she could come up with right off the top of her head. With that, she began scouring the titles until she located a few of what she was looking for including before, and after the convergence.

Settling herself down at a nearby table, Twilight lit a candle in a small lantern to ensure she received enough light for her studying and began to work her way through her chosen titles. It took some time to cross reference what she was looking for, as far as artifacts went. However, this brought about another small issue, there were originally somewhere around over two hundred Equestrian Artifacts. She was not sure what she was looking for exactly, until she came across a small paragraph mentioning an old curse and six gemstone artifacts.

She worked her way through the books still left until she found the title mentioned in the paragraph. There she read through the old story of the former princesses who helped in the world of Equestria before the convergence. At least, this is what she assumed considering she did not find any mention of the convergence of this time. She continued until she found, further in the back of the book there was mention of the sisters coming across a strange creature. After that, twilight saw that the book seemed to jump several pages and came to the cursed mare, and the ‘mare in the moon’ story.

“Odd, there were a lot of pages missing in the Equestrian histories. Though, I suppose considering the issues of how old the book is, somewhere about a thousand years or so I suppose the pages were either lost a long time ago, or simply dusted.” She thought out loud. It was a term used for the aged books, meaning the dusted pages ad aged and were less taken care of for whatever reason. Either more use than other pages, or simply a flaw in the pages themselves, the pages had broken down to dust.

Twilight settled down in her chair as she read over the story, about how the younger sister had fought valiantly for her night against creatures that had wanted to usurp her and her sister. A large war broke out, and despite their efforts, the creatures found a way to instill madness into the younger sister. The magic of Equines knew nothing of this kind of power or magic and thus could not counter it. When it came to be too much and the younger sister was corrupted with the madness, the elder gathered six powerful artifacts, glass orbs housing strange crystals within and banished her sister to the moon.

“Wait, that’s it? Wow, it would seem as though more information is missing, or whomever recorded this, left out the specifics. It doesn’t even say where to find the artifacts-” Twilight paused as she went to pick up the book and found a small square of paper slip and fall to the table. She placed the book to the side and opened it to find a map of the land dated for shortly after the convergence. The lines showed a path from the Fallen Mountain going south through the fields, and through a small town and then to the East into a forest marked, ‘The Wilds’.

Twilight smiled, grateful for this much as she folded the paper and placed it inside of her robes. Once done, she worked to replace the books back to where they belonged before leaving the library.

The town was only a couple of days away and Twilight would be there in no time. Then she could find the artifacts and prepare for the cursed princess to return to their world.

Comments

[Moongaze14]

This seems like an entertaining story.

[Nightmares Madness]

6154674 Thank you, let's hope I keep it that way at the very least, and make it more than entertaining at the very most.