Sunset Shimmer Goes to Hell

by scifipony

"Tartarus! It's Tartarus."

Introduction by Twilight Sparkle

When I originally shared my story with my friends, there were many things I had no way of knowing, connections that I couldn’t make between the actions I took and events that followed. However, it wasn’t until long after the Princess reported that Lord Tirek had escaped when Cerberus appeared in town that I realized that a story about my insecurity and control issues was really much deeper than a story about me. At the time, saving the world took priority and I did not think about it much until after Starlight destroyed Equestria a dozen times all in one day.

Then I thought about it. About connections between friends. And those between enemies, and the flux of relationships, and about the coincidences and discrepancies in my life. With a feeling of foreboding, I realized I had to investigate what really had happened, and learn how the daughter of an archivist and a ghost-writer, a scrawny introverted bookish magic-late-bloomer like me could become, briefly, the most powerful being in the world.

This episode is part of a much a larger on-going work. While the larger work is mostly in my voice, so very many others participated in this story that I have no choice but to include them. Today I relate somepony else's story, as is appropriate. Everypony has been very forthcoming—whether coerced in some cases or just via unexpected humility in others. While an essay, a research paper, or even a thesis is a snap and a pleasure to write, I find biography a bit more challenging despite the many good examples I’ve studied. I’m not sure I’ve mastered the medium. Also, I don’t want readers to feel I’m putting on airs or that I am better than them, because I’m not. Maybe I’m less… and I am certainly fallible, and culpable for much hurt and destruction.

That said, it is a pleasure to be permitted to edit this puzzle piece into the greater whole. That day I tested for entrance into Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns was not only a nexus in my life, but also a tipping point in the existence of all Equestria. Sadly, when my magic flared during the test, I not only rendered myself unaware of much that happened but Princess Celestia covered up some of the damage I caused because she thought me too fragile. It remained a mystery to me, but a clue uttered when I learned of Tirek's threat to Equestia lead to research and interviews. I've since pieced together how my magic flare brought destruction to some and healing to others. Of the ponies, there was Princess Celestia, Starlight, and, of course… dearest Sunset. Her story is one that starts in despair, sinks into avariciousness, and rises to a savior of worlds.

This, however, is the episode where she breaks...

Sunset Shimmer

Standing in the shadows of a recessed balcony just below the rafters of the tower, I gazed down into a lecture hall. Princess Celestia had stood behind these same green marble columns, though she thought herself hidden, while I took the test after which she offered to make me her personal student. Today, I had learned from an annoyed teacher who was also a proctor, that Princess Celestia had arranged to test another foal.

The princess herself had told me that a talent like mine appeared once a century.

I was this century. I had to check out the competition. I would keep Celestia focused on me.

My jaw dropped when I saw Mrs. Card Maker lead in this "prodigy," a somewhat goth-looking purple foal with a purple mane and tail. Her little hooves clicked on the light and dark blue checkerboard granite floor. The tiny blank flank looked bewildered and annoyed at the same time, and was barely out of magic kindergarten judging by her age. Her parents entered from the opposite doorway. The pale purple mare and the blue stallion waved, and made a lips-are-sealed motion which did not seem to reassure the foal much.

I knew him. He was the assistant archivist of the Canterlot library branch on the castle grounds. I'd heard he'd recently been rebuked for borrowing rare books, even some from the Star Swirl the Bearded wing and had taken them to his home in Lower Canterlot.

For her to read?

Interesting.

At her age, how magical could she be? Sure, for me, magic had been the sledgehammer that had allowed me to survive life homeless on the street, but a normal at her age… The archivist must have told a real whopper to get himself out of trouble and his daughter would take the brunt of it.

The proctors climbed four rows up into the orange stadium lecture seating and took out their clipboards. Chief protector, professors Lemon Cottoncandy, looked up; knowingly, her purple eyes briefly met mine above her squared off reading glasses. I smiled, then yawned as I watched the proceedings. I wiped dust off the railing with my hoof as this "Twilight Sparkled" worked through relatively tough arithmetic on the blackboard. She was so nervous, she wrote with a chalk holder she grabbed with her mouth, left for the pegasus and earth pony professors who also used this hall. Minutes later, I scoffed: I knew the answer to that history question before I'd ever attended school!

I was wasting my time.

A golden-rod stallion with a brown mane rolled in a cart stuffed with hay in which nestled a large violet polka-dotted lavender dragon egg. Oh, yeah, definitely a fair test, here. I snickered. I would have to talk to the princess about this one. She had clearly miffed the chief proctor and at the same time wasn't supervising the test. What could Sparkled do to hatch a dragon egg? Nopony knew much about dragons. It was an impossible task.

Fine with me.

Sparkled did try, though; what a sorry show. I could sense her working up spells. And even three stories above her sad dance, I felt her magic, but try as she may, every spell she tried just wouldn't trigger. She even waved her hooves like a stage magician, grunted, and repeated spell mnemonics over the egg. The best she could do were a few ironic firework sparkler-sparks before collapsing into a sweaty heap.

I almost felt sorry for the purple runt. Almost. She ought to have been running from the room in tears, but at the end she seemed simply sad as she said, before the proctors and her parents, "I'm so sorry I wasted your time."

The proctors began scribbling rapidly.

A rainbow strobe of light, from roughly the direction in which I had seen the nomad city of Cloudsdale floating in the early dawn, made me look to the south window below my balcony. A boom delayed by a count of ten rattled the purple-tinted glass. Stranger yet, I felt a stretching sensation in my horn. It was as if, for a few instants, it had turned to rubber and something had thwacked it, causing it to flex and ring. In that nauseating passing moment, I felt a sense of foreboding.

Twilight Sparkled sensed it, too. She jumped in shock, but before her hooves could return to the ground, all the pent up magic inside her burst out. Her horn turned into a glowing translucent amethyst too bright to look at while her aura engulfed her and kept her floating at the top of the arc of her jump. But it didn't stop there. I saw—shielding my eyes with a hoof—that magic now flooded out of her eyes and her slack jaw like a purple searchlight.

The very air grew thick with magic—bolts of it, like lightning—some of which I could tell she sucked from another magic source. Into the electric ether crackled spell after spell, all forming but most not effectuating in an odd abeyance. For the first time in my life I saw another's spell casting. Having grown up alone on the street, magic was the only toy I could have that I did not have to worry about being stolen. It manifested as geometric shapes in my head, which, nudged or stretched, could be spun or activated to do amazing things in the real world, like lift, or crush, or glow. Now, one after another, virtual shapes, few of them symmetrical or pretty, came spinning into existence. It was like clouds streaming over the peaks of Canterlot Mountain from a weather front bashing into the north side, presaging the coming of a pegasus-fabulous storm.

Only this was a magic storm. All the fur on my neck and back stood. I knew I ought to run, but like the proctors below, and Sparkled's parents who only gaped, the all of us were held in thrall. I watched as the first spell triggered.

A spiral tornado shape centered itself over the egg; it grew and pulsed. The egg rocked and shivered, then cracked. A tiny purple beak appeared in the wet hole it made, then at an unnaturally frenetic pace, it pried its way out. It was like a chicken egg hatching, only a hundred times faster.

A second spell triggered. Sparkled's parents turned into potted plants, a saguaro cactus and a fern. Somepony's parents had been pushing their daughter too hard at school.

The proctors scattered, but not quickly enough. Suddenly they, and their discarded clipboards, hovered above the desks in a purple aura, flailing and whinnying.

The storm continued, as one after another of the virtual magical shapes I sensed went off as I backed up. But not fast enough. A huge glowing rod-like apparition reached up, extending itself until it struck the wall below the balcony, then like a hot knife in butter, cut up through the roof and the opposite side, neatly cutting the tower in half and cutting my balcony, leaving the stairway on the other side of a two-yard gap. The building shuddered, making me dance to stay upright as the part not attached to the adjacent building began to crumble away.

My part.

With a sudden jerk and a bang, the separation of the tower's halves ceased. I reached with my magic as if I could hold something; that didn't stop the balcony, which had had its beams cut, from collapsing. I was falling—along with the floor, columns, and the dusty banister.

Unicorns don't fly.

Nor can they self-levitate. The rubble would likely crush me worse than the force of falling three stories would.

But I could levitate rubble. I could exert a force proportional to the square of distance of the object from a surface parallel to the ground. I levitated the raft of hardwood flooring attached to mortared stone beneath my hooves until it pushed up at me. The rubble beside me sped past and crashed thunderously into desks opposite from where Sparkled floated. I had barely time to think to flex my legs as my raft landed on top, tilted, and bounced me like a sled down the still rolling debris. I fell bruisingly and slid across the blue checkerboard floor to fetch up against the cart with the egg.

Or rather, the wreckage of the cart with eggshells, scattered hay, and a pony-sized baby dragon. The lizard-creature with glistening purple scales, a green crest and similarly colored frill and tail point, remained in the tornado of what was probably age magic. In a trance, its green vertically slit eyes stared unseeing as the magic continued to work around it.

I scrambled upright and saw something yet more amazing. The force that had rent the tower had done more, much more. A glowing beam of energy, straight as a javelin and a six-pointed star-shape in cross-section, had extended eastward. The apparition faded after about twenty yards unlike its effects. Through the cracked open tower wall I could see the magic had sliced through an ancient oak, shattered the glass Rushing Steps Arboretum to bits just beyond it, and burst from there through the double castle walls and, as far as I could tell, straight down Alicorn Way, through downtown Canterlot, straight to the horizon—having heaved the ground apart below it, leaving a deep chasm. Anchored beside the crushed cart, the end of the magical apparition had formed into a golden mirror, twice Celestia's height, trimmed with a square frame of fire. It crackled and smoked brightly. In it, I saw my shocked light green eyes, my dust-covered mane—the coloring of which mimicked the mirror's rim of flame—and a cut that bled down my right front leg.

Princess Celestia, banking so her huge wingspan could fit through the gap, flew into the tower, her horn ablaze. It had been she who grabbed the walls in her magic and held the tower together. She circled the room and yelled at me. "Take the proctors to safety!"

As she circled, her magical mane and tail looked wind-blown, but pointed at Sparkled no matter where she flew. I'd heard speculation that all magic came from the "Magic Pulse", an ethereal "zephyr" that could be seen only in an alicorn's mane. Now I believed it.

The runty foal was sourcing magic from Celestia herself.

She manipulated alicorn magic, literally pulsed with the stuff like a magic heart, and I could sense the release of yet another spell whirling a four-dimensional shape into the air. It was a magic hurricane. At the rate Sparkled seemed to be shooting off spells, I feared she might explode.

Which was the answer to the problem. I reached for a length of wood, splintered from a table that would make a good spear, and grabbed a nail to jam into the end.

And shocked even me. For all the days that I had lived on the streets, mostly in command of my destiny, I had never taken a life. I'd been beaten up plenty, and thrown my share of assailants into a brick wall, but never—

If Sparkled exploded, how many would die? Maybe hundreds, not including me and the princess. Not all solutions are ideal.

I hefted the spear.

"Sunset Shimmer!" the princess yelled, landing between us. Sparkled now floated incased in her yellow aura.

Despite the roar of magic and the crash of debris, the dropped spear clanked woodenly as it hit the floor. Shocked, I spun and directed my magic at the poor proctors floating in a bubble above the desks. I caught them up just as a bowling ball bit of masonry tumbled down. I jerked hard to levitate them out of the way.

Nothing happened, except that the masonry bounced off the bubble and headed my way. I jumped aside from the bounding rock, which hit behind me with a bang, and redoubled my effort to no avail.

"It's a shield spell," I yelled, looking to Celestia.

She had her head down and was flooding the purple-white aura surround the goth foal with her magic. But between what Sparkled siphoned off and her keeping the tower from disintegrating around us, it did little good in squelching the magic storm.

"You need help!" I yelled what was obvious, to me at least. "I'll get the Collegiate of Mages."

"Yes, my little pony, do. Fetch Sergeant Wolf Run of the Royal Guard; we'll have need of him, too."

I dashed from the tower, striking the doors into the adjacent Regents Building at a full gallop, heaving them aside and barely missing the rebound. Stupidly curious unicorns milled in the hall. I yelled, "The Luna Tower may fall! Get the Tartarus out of the building!"

Maybe not so stupid; the teachers' hoofbeats sounded behind me as I headed for the glass doors of the entrance, but I dodged down the stairs, took two right turns, and rushed through the maintenance corridor that ran underground between the major buildings. It was an old habit of mine, finding the best hidey-holes. Knowing I could find safe places to hide, no matter how stupid since I now lived in one of the castle's ivory towers, kept away the nightmares. I lit my horn and easily galloped past the Accademie building and Granite Hall to Magical Sciences without having to dodge hysterical ponies that probably clogged the hallways or gaped on the quad at the likely rising dust cloud above the canting tower.

I raced up the stairs to ground level, hooves clattering, and had to bellow at college students eight years older and much taller than me that lallygagged at the base of the stairs on the first floor. "Move! I'm on the princess' business!"

Pastel ponies of green, pink, and orange jumped aside as if I'd shot lightning up their flanks. It didn't hurt that I had a much deserved, finely-honed rep for being bossy. I ensured that everypony knew that the princess had chosen me as her personal student and protégé. I was eleven and a half years old (apparently you could tell by looking at my teeth) and in middle school, but I was more powerful than any of them. For the record, I threw only one grown-up earth pony stallion into a brick wall, but had made sure the entire population of Cliffside homeless ponies knew I'd done it.

Proper PR is the key to real power and peaceable relations. Peace through rep is better than peace through force. Nopony beat me after that. It did start a chain of events that led to Celestia discovering me, but that's a story best left untold.

I burst into the conference room of the Collegiate of Unicorn Mages on the third floor. I knew they'd be meeting because had I not been curious about Nightmare Sparkled, or whatever her name was, I'd have been at this meeting. Not that I was a colleague of the group, though I would be one day, but because it never hurt to curry favor with those you would eventually learn from and someday replace. I could brew tea, carry water, mix ink, and clean anything—and stay to listen so long as I was quiet.

The gaggle of adult unicorns had left their mahogany table and velvet chairs, predictably staring out the window and talking over one another in mathematical jargon. Beyond, the cloud of dust I'd expected rose above the canted tower. The mages resembled a magical rainbow, but for the gray manes and threadbare tails I faced.

Though huffing, I said loudly, "The princess can't hold the Luna Tower together—"

They turned to face me. Yeah, they understood their water-girl was the princess' protégé.

"A student is drawing off her magic and the princess needs your help!"

I dodged aside from the stampede, then took the opposite staircase down. Finding a sergeant of the royal guard wouldn't be half as simple, but I knew which part of the castle the provost worked in. Five minutes had passed since Sparkled had wrecked the tower, and it took almost that long to get instructions from the disturbed ant hill that the royal guard headquarters had become. Bells rang everywhere. News of the chasm through the streets of Canterlot had reached them before that of the tower. No matter. The sergeant had been sent to the audience hall to deal with the confusion of ministers and commoners who had flooded into the building. I galloped off with a description and a destination.

I got stares when I burst into the six-story grand hall with Celestia's throne at one end. I was virtually Celestia's daughter, something that I had made sure was well known whenever I visited downtown Canterlot. I spotted a tall mauve stallion with sergeant stripes on his red uniform. A cropped purple mane stuck through his brass helmet. He might have had some Saddle Arabian in him, considering his height. Early morning petitioners circled him. Through the gabble, I could barely hear a deep voice say, "—be calm and—"

I trotted up, searching for an easy opening, past pink and yellow flanks, that I could easily utilize without resorting to sliding ponies around. And then I saw him.

Not Sergeant Wolf Run, but… him. He stood beside the sergeant, tall for an 8th grader. He was the smartest colt in class, and kind, and a good hoofball player, and so unbearably cute that seeing him made me shudder. His coat was golden-brown, but darkened as if burnished to reveal a mysterious black metal. He had black points and a black beauty nose, but his mane and tail were so red as to look like glowing copper—shot through with the coolest streaks of gold.

I stopped. What was he doing here?

I spent my life in class watching him, but unable to conceive of actually talking to him. I mean, I had had thousands of conversations with him in my mind about everything from advanced magic to needing a prince when I succeeded Celestia to the throne. But. But, I had never talked to him. I mean, how could I? I'd talked to the girls in the study group I ran. But never to him. I'd said his name over and over when nopony was looking, and had written it all over some of my notebooks—which I kept hidden under my mattress—but I had never said it to him.Not ever.

I feared my tongue would glue itself to the roof of my mouth. I'd make a foal of myself. I shivered even now, watching as the adorable colt glanced up at the stallion sergeant, who undoubtedly had to be his father. Sweet Celestia. His eyes were a dreamy golden amber!

I—

I—

I gulped. Celestia was in danger. Equestria was in danger. I couldn't let a stupid schoolgirl crush get in the way!

Why were my legs so leaden? Stupid body!

It took more effort than I'd expended saving myself from being splattered in the collapse of the balcony to get myself moving. I stalked woodenly forward, shouldering aside an aristocratic lily-white mare in green taffeta with a purple mane who stepped in my way. With her loud whinny announcing my approach, I got up to the sergeant and shook as I delivered a rapidly practiced line. "There's a magic storm destroying the Luna Tower. The princess asked that you help her."

Green eyes regarded me, recognized me; he bowed before addressing the crowd. "Move aside. Brandywine, stay here."

The crowd separated and, like chaff in the wind, followed in his wake, leaving me alone where I stood.

Well, not quite alone. Brandywine said—to me— "What happened?"

I would have stuttered as I turned in slow motion to face him, except that my voice had completely and utterly failed me. I realized my mouth moved and I didn't want to jibber, so I clacked my jaw shut. My eyes got caught in the gaze of his amber ones. I immediately looked down at my hooves and found myself brushing the marble tile of the audience hall with my right front hoof across the left. My heart pounded so hard, I didn't hear him the first time.

The second time he all but shouted, "You're bleeding!"

I looked down. And paid attention. I left a dribble line of red across the black veins of the white polished stone. My body cooled at once. Dizziness struck.

Brandywine immediately rushed beside me and leaned to keep me from toppling over. I had a colt leaning against me. As his warmth penetrated the confusion, I realized I had Brandywine leaning against me. Even that didn't pierce the shock that finally caught up to me as my body realized I was losing blood. I cast Levitation to press in on the gash.

Pride did have power, though. In unison, he and I (weakly) yelled, "Get her a doctor!" and "Get me a bandage!"

I was no foal.

My voice engaged, I said, "Thank you."

"That's a shock," he said, kindly but with an edge of sarcasm.

I looked right and up. I might be eleven and a half and rapidly reaching my adult height, but he was taller. Probably those refined S'arabian genes, or the fact he was at least two years older than me. His eyes and smile nonplussed me, though.

"Miss Bossy actually has a sweet voice."

He had actually noticed me! My heart lurched and maybe I did, too, as he redirected his efforts to press against me to keep me upright. I said, "A girl has to protect herself, gallant sir."

Oh, Sweet Celestia, what fevered romance-novel-fueled dream had I pulled that last from? No, I'd read it: Belle Worthaton had written it in A Good Mare.

A physician, thankfully not my adopted father, cleaned my wound and rapidly wrapped on a self-sticking bandage while, I think, Celestia's finance minister with bottle-bottom eye-glasses gave me a cup of water. I did my best not to gulp it and to breathe deeply. I nevertheless couldn't keep my eyes from straying toward Brandywine, who mostly looked at the physician while I admired the colt's charcoal black muzzle and marveled at a type of physical contact I knew I craved but which I had been certain I'd never get. Miss Bossy was too scary to be loved. Even her mother had abandoned her.

My strength returned, probably thanks to the water, and I answered his question. "The princess was testing a new prodigy, a Starshine Sparkled, or somepony, and the foal exploded in a magic storm."

"Exploded?"

My cheeks reddened as the physician finished. I stepped away from Brandywine, not wanting the effect to spread or persist as I thought of him. "In a manner of speaking. I went to watch her test—"

"Fearing competition—?"

"Yeah—no! I mean... She turned out to be a magic-retentive, unable to do magic until something, something in the sky, goosed her. Then it all, and I mean all, flooded out. She's an archivist's daughter—"

"Oh, you mean Twilight Sparkle."

"Whatever. She must have read a magic sourcing spell. It struck Celestia and the princess is struggling to get the situation under control."

Brandywine scratched his chin which sported the tiniest bit of prickly peach fuzz. So masculine and yet so cute! He asked, "Why did the princess need Father, then? He's an administrator, not a mage." His amber eyes speared me.

Through the heart.

"Funny, Celestia seemed to want him more than the Collegiate of Mages. Why, I dunno."

"I do. Princess Celestia cares about only one thing besides organization that Father's an expert in—something that I am, too." He trotted away in the direction of the Luna Tower.

I cantered up beside him, the crowd parting at my approach. "But your father said—"

"My father sometimes forgets who saved whom!"

He dashed toward the southern exit. I followed, saying, "Well, if you're determined, I know a faster way."

"Lead then!"

I dashed up the spiral stairs to the flyway, a set of arches that connected the ramparts of the castle above the buildings. In the morning sun, our hooves rang on granite tiles as we galloped down the crenelated walks, through towers, past a half dozen courtyards, to the main guard tower. Down those stairs, we next ran through the royal gardens. Funny how an emergency tended to clear the pleasure areas of the palace, and I had counted on that. I could see that the cloud of dust had dissipated around the tower, though part of the conical roof had collapsed inward. The balcony side. I could see the tower and the Regent's building beyond the wall of the garden. Between the red roses and the pinks, I spotted the stone bench and table I had moved into place—after a lot of careful surveying—and broke into a gallop.

"What are you doing?" Brandywine cried.

Well, I had taken steeplechase as my sport, and, well, I liked to have my little escape routes. I didn't care if this might cause the wound to bleed. I was doing it for Brandywine. This jump would take me onto a grassy knoll beyond the garden wall, and was the quickest route through the university to Celestia's school for Gifted Unicorns. My ivory tower was on the opposite side of the gardens near the cliff and the air-docks and it had kept me from being tardy dozens of times. The Guard might consider it a security issue, but nopony had moved the garden furniture. "Trust me!"

First the black marble bench with a clop, then the mossy sandstone table with a bang, then with a measured spring up, legs tucked to sail over the ivy covered stone wall like a deer.

Horse Apples!

Twilight Sparkled's chasm had opened up along the garden wall. It took every bit of skill in landing and years of muscle control surviving on the streets to skid just short of tumbling into a five-yard deep cut in the earth, and still I banged up against a disgorged row of boulders. I heard Brandywine yell as he jumped behind me.

I scrambled to cast Levitation. If there was any spell I could cast best, it was Levitation, but speed was another matter. I pushed as hard as I could, even as the golden-brown colt crested the wall and yelled, "Whoa!"

Still pushing to get the magical control shapes formed, I watched as he arced down in the space of a heartbeat, his legs pumping as if the long throw he had accomplished because of his longer legs wouldn't send him into the center of the chasm.

I snatched him from the air as he dipped down into the chasm and swished him up and over to the other side. When I let him down, he collapsed on the grass and looked ready to puke.

I ran and crossed, just barely making the jump. I said, "Sorry, I forgot about that."

Closer, I heard him muttering, "Tartarus! It's Tartarus." He turned toward the tower and focused on the six-point star apparition that thrust out along the chasm, though all but the faintest glimmer, like bright gnats, was visible here. The mages were casting magic to hold the tower up. Oddly enough, they all now had black mustaches, in the twirly-end style of the caricature villain from plays a century ago, even the mares.

Assuming that he was swearing, I said, "That runt cast a bolt of something that did this—"

His amber eyes gleamed in the morning sun as he turned to me. For a second, his irises looked slotted, like a cat's or a dragon's. "And it has a flaming square mirror on the end?"

"Well, yeah," I said, frightened for the first time since falling in the tower. "It did."

This time he did curse, "Tartarus!"

Author's Note:

This is the first chapter of a work in progress. Seven chapters are complete so far. Because of a weird personal schedule, these will be posted intermittantly. Please put the story in your tracking folder or follow me to catch all the updates. And please comment! Critiques are welcome, but be sure to quote the part of the story that you are referring to, and tell me what you thought you read when you give the critique. Thanks!

Comments

[Skulljack17]

Hee hee...Sunset is falling for a colt. It's adorable to witness! Oh, um...don't let her know I said it like that, or my insides might become my outsides.

[hmaf43]

Nor can they self-levitate. The rubble would likely crush me worse than the force of falling three stories would.

starlight begged for differ

[scifipony]

11181337
The inside joke in my stories. You get a gold star. 🌟 Read the Enforcer and Her Blackmailers to read Starlight’s revelations on the subject.