Five hundred years after Nightmare Moon's banishment, a foal proposes to Princess Celestia.

Being strong and protecting the weak makes one loved.

Being god like and protecting everyone makes one hated.

This was a lesson Princess Celestia learned early on.

This is that lesson.

Princess Celestia decided to open a jar, in doing so, she changed the fate of Equestria forever.

Random guy ends up in Equestria story, yet for reasons unbeknownst to him, he finds himself in an Equestria much like the one he barely remembers from a show he once watched, yet very different in all the wrong aspects.

It can't possibly be because he turned into a changeling right after their infamous invasion.

Right?

And now with an editor. A huge round of applause to Kablam Pony for helping me with editing this story.

A giant round of applause for mix-up for drawing such splendid cover art.

Tags:

AU: This is literally an alternate Equestria, where grim events happen as normal occurrences, also, the story starts from season 2 and moves up to season 4.

Comedy: who doesn't like to laugh at the misery of a fictional character?

Adventure: if that wasn't obvious I don't know what is.

Dark: Some of you pointed out that it has some dark elements, but don't worry, I will not write anything overboard.

Human: dare I need to state why.

Teen because of a couple of death scenes here and there, no gore, unless it's written in an extremely scientific language.

Oh, it's a shameless self insert by the way. I want to see how much I can write myself as a character in my own story and how much it relates to other characters I have written.

In an Equestria that predates the return of the princess of the night, in a time when princess Mi Amore Cadenza has just got her cutie mark, and subsequently her alicornhood. In an era so close to our time, yet so far in the past. An earth pony not native to Equestria stood in front the princess of the sun. His scars are many, standing proud as testament to the fierce battles he fought. However, if there was any pride in his past, he was not showing it. Instead he was bowing, begging for asylum. And his reasons were none too clearer, a filly in his shadow and a foal on his back.

That was the start of the legend known as the colt of the castle. After many years since that day, it became custom to find a young earth pony colt moseying around the castle with no watcher over him. He would stroll about aimlessly among the greatest and the brightest of Equestria, be they guards or scholars, always listening, always learning, and forever sharing whatever knowledge came across his pass.

However that leisure lifestyle of his will soon be shattered when a certain filly moves into the castle as Celestia’s protégé after hatching a dragon egg then turning the hatchling into an adult with a blink of an eye, a filly under the name of Twilight Sparkle.

Some clarifications before you start:

If it wasn't clear enough in the description, yes, this story takes place before the event of the series and will end before the beginning of its events. Because of that it did not warrant an AU tag in my opinion.

I was struggling between adventure and slice of life, but chose adventure because of the nature of the events are too over the top for slice of life.

I am still unsure if a tragedy tag is needed or not.

What inspired this story was the thought: "what would make a child to reject all forms of friendship in a world such as mlp?" Season 1 episode 1 Twilight was adamant that she did not need friends after all, what made her reach that conclusion, but still accept other friends quite readily?

Finally, I'd implore you dear readers if you dislike my story, I'd be very grateful if you told me why as well

Cover Art done by the amazing mix-up You can be dazzled in all of it's glory.

Instead of stone, the elements of harmony turned discord into a draconequus foal who imprinted on twilight sparkle as his mother, nothing wrong with that, right?

Written for Equestria Daily's The More Most Dangerous Game Writing Contest

Prompt:

-"An old foe is reincarnated in the body of a young pony. What will the Mane Six do when they find out?" (Past Sins)

After a failed experiment, Twilight accidentally sends Spike to the human world. Where he is found by the author of this fan fiction, this is a story of one of those days spent with the baby dragon.

rated teen because of handling of topics like death and sexuality.

Inspired by Children of the night

To my dragon friend

Greetings and grand salutation my dearest friend, It has been a long while since we spoke, and I apologies for my carelessness on that part, you see, returning after a thousand years leaves one with too many things to catch up upon, which can leave one such as myself, well, overwhelmed.

But enough about me, how have you been? I keep hearing great things about you, your heroic feat travel far and wide, and warms my heart to no end when I hear you defeated a foe or aided a kingdom, I do hope we can meet up again and catch up on everything. It has been a year since we last met, has it not? A full year since you helped my children of the night returned to their homeland from the land of eternal night and the beautiful city of Darkrise.
How time flies by. Though being an immortal, a full year may feel like a day, but I know, you have grown so much since that time, and I cannot wait to hear all about it.

Well enough small talk for now, I am sending you this letter to ask a favor of you; for you see a while back one of your colleagues managed to take away a precious dragon from my kingdom, and Equestria is in shambles, I fear the call for blood may soon over shadow the call for wisdom, I implore you to act fast. I do not wish to see another war against your kind, I still remember how terrifying the last one had been, and I wish to avoid it at all cost. I know this is a heavy burden for you to bear, but I know I can count on you, you may just be the right dragon for this job.

I do hope that I am not burdening you too much with my request, and again I apologies for asking your help like this.

In hopes that we meet again my friend

Yours truly

Princess Luna

Discord’s ascension to the throne of Equestria wasn't an easy one. Though it was filled with many perils and innumerable foes, he triumphed with wits and magic. He beat them all, with the exception of the celestial sisters, of course. They imprisoned him into stone for a thousand years. How rude of them...

For the past millennium, Discord had never thought of any of the hordes of enemies he had defeated in order to gain the throne. He didn’t need to. Even if they didn’t suffer from an unfortunate "accident," and survived long enough to see his reign end, they’re still not immortal enough to have survived a thousand years, right? How wrong he was. Your past can always return to bite you in the ass.

Author's note:
Story takes place after season three, so I'm assuming that the last season will never happened.
Story contains more than one language, I'd highly appreciate any correction of any mistakes I've unknowingly made while using them.

Many thanks to Alicorn Activist and sevenofeleven for editing and proofreading.