A different take on alicorn ascension. Sixteen years after arriving in Ponyville, Twilight Sparkle is excited to have invented a brand-new kind of spell, but it will come with consequences she cannot possibly anticipate. Meanwhile, threats in shadows around the world conspire to overthrow the Solar Throne. With her world turned upside down, she will have to come to terms with the role that fate has dealt her while straining to keep Celestia in power.

Now with a TVTropes page! Please show it some love! Also check out the official side stories, Designing Intrigue, and Love and Barriers! (With even more in my stories page!)

(Please Note: This story was started before any season three information was available. All episodes in season three and later are non-canon for this story, which also means there's no Crystal Empire in this one. In addition, the promotional map released close to the beginning of season three was also not available and is not compatible with this story. While the OC tag is active because there are OCs in the story, they're really just supporting characters. The focus is on Twilight.)

Also be sure to check out the Rites of Ascension Expanded Universe Group! We're working to develop the resources needed for other authors to try their hand at writing stories set in the Rites Universe!

The Book Two cover art was created by the amazing Silfoe! The original cover art can still be found at Violet Squiggle's deviantArt page.

Author's Notes, including proofreader's credits, can be found here!

"This is 100% Approved by Twilight's Library!"

Rainbow has been feeling uncharacteristically down about herself lately. The ponies she's been interested in seem to gravitate towards more feminine mares, and she's convinced that if she wants to find somepony to love, she needs to work towards that ideal. In her efforts to improve her chances of finding love, she finds a book full of questionable spells that infects the mind of anyone who reads from its aging pages. She has no idea what the book may hold, but it promises to give her what her heart desires most.

Will her friends figure out what's happening in time to help, or will they lose the Dash they know and love forever?

Changelings and ponies had always been natural enemies of each other, especially with the crystal ponies when they were around. Why wouldn't they be? Changelings were like parasites, feeding off the love that ponies gave off and driving them to illness.

However, Changelings had begun to decline. What started out with as seven hives have diminished down into three, all of which had gone into hiding so well that most ponies didn't know what changelings even were. Even Celestia had not seen one for quite a while, a long feat for an immortal pony.

Until she found a nymph. A new Changeling Queen.

Unable to find it within herself to abandon the changeling, Celestia ends up taking the nymph back to Canterlot under guise as Twilight Sparkle. The plan was simple; find the hive that Twilight belonged to and return her back to be raised with her race.

Of course, despite everything she learned through her long life, she had forgotten that things were never that simple.

For starters, she did not anticipate herself to grow fond of Twilight as time began to pass, or to beam in happiness when Twilight began to refer to her as mom.

Many Many Thanks to my Pre-Readers: Rewrite and Doctor Disco (Welcome to the Team Doctor!)

Scootaloo ran away years ago. Since then she's settled into a life in Ponyville. It's not much of one, but it's hers. One cold day she finds herself in the library.

Twilight Sparkle is a Princess, sworn to help all the citizens of Equestria, but how can she help somepony she doesn't know needs it.

Edited by Zimmerwald1915 and Johnny Bench

This story is a sequel to Split Second

Twelve years ago, she broke time. Two alternate timelines exist, each with a different version of Twilight Sparkle. Both versions of her are able to see the other. In this timeline, Sparkle is a Necromancer.

Or rather, she was. Sparkle is dead now, not that she cares. She's got a new body. With Thorn (her undead dragon son) and Cobalt (her apprentice and an assassin for hire) at her side, she's ready to take on the world. Again.

(Spoilers in the comments. Read at your own risk.)

Featured on EQD.
The Tv Tropes page
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This story is a sequel to Split Second and won't make sense without it.
This story also loosely shares continuity with Lupine Tree. Reading that is not required.

Cover art by Swirling Line.

Featured 1st on 05/11/2017

The eternal night is over. The Elements of Harmony have vanquished Nightmare Moon, the world was saved, and Princess Luna has returned to the throne, this time to rule by her sister's side as equals.

The fear of her people, however, remains. She see's it in their eyes, hears it in their whispered words. She accepts it. To her, this is her penance for the pain she has caused. To sink into the night and rule from afar... this is how she will atone for the pain brought to her subjects... to her sister.

Little did she know that fate had other plans in store for her. Plans that would be set in motion by a single sentence, a sentence that would go on to change her life in an instant...

“Luna, I would like you to meet Spike Solaris. My son.”

(Big thanks to dSana over on DeviantArt for letting me use her amazing art as the cover for this Fic!)

Twilight has done a lot for the better of Equestria. And she has done a lot for her nieces and nephews too. Baby sitting, working, loving, cherishing every moment she has with these ponies because it's been her experience that these ponies are gone before she can blink. Twilight lives and loves just like any other pony. And she is responsible for what ponies know as normal now. Not to mention all the technological advancements made by her family. It's been busy, that's for sure.

16-yr-old Twilight has been held in stasis for a millennia, ever since her mother was banished. Now, she must wait. Wait for her mother to return, wait for justice on Celestia and wait for a kinder world. After all, who would trust the Daughter of a Nightmare?
Inspired by Polaris501's story 'Heir of the Nightmare'
Currently going through an edit.

Twilight Sparkle, personal student of Celestia, a loving daughter, a friend to five, and a sister.

She's also known as a freak, a monster, and an abomination to many others.

All because of what she was.

She wasn't a griffin, or a minotaur, or a dragon. She was a draconequus, but nopony except the Princesses knew that. All records of draconequii were destroyed and ponies thought that the statue of Discord was just a statue made by an artist with a wild imagination.

Until Discord breaks free of course.

Now Twilight, her friends, and her family is forced to learn about what she truly is and also have to deal with a huge secret that has been kept from her for a millennia.

And also stop Discord from turning the world inside-out.

Featured - 24/07/2017

Canterlot... For centuries, Canterlot was the shining gem of Equestria, the pinnacle of pony society. Now, it’s a reminder, a bleak and monolithic warning to the world. 

Changed by the chemical and technological poisons that plague the mountain, an abomination of nature, I wander the greatest disaster Equestria has ever seen. 

... I will escape eventually, and when I do, I hope my friends still see me as Twilight Sparkle, and not the monster that hides among the ruins.