//------------------------------// // Prologue // Story: Surrogate Light // by scootalooftw //------------------------------// My wings shuffled restlessly on my back as I glared down at the open book before me. My attempts at writing the story of how I came to Equestria left many crossed out paragraphs on the once blank pages. “You alright in there?” a voice called from behind the closed door causing me to jump. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I called back. “Just trying to… organize my thoughts is all.” “Alright, just let me know if you need any help,” the voice called back. “Ok, Twi?” “Will do,” I responded, turning to a fresh page as a sudden bout of inspiration hit me. “Thanks, Spike.” Lighting up my horn, I picked up one of the discarded quills scattered around the room. Dipping it into the open inkwell on my desk, I put stem to paper as the sound of writing filled my bedroom. “Despite what some stories may have you believe,” I said, reading aloud what I had written, “my entry into Equestria was not a peaceful transition. It was not like closing my eyes in one life and opening them in another. My first memories of this world are nothing but a blur of noise, color, and pain…” ~   ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~   ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~   ~  ~  ~  ~  ~ The taste of copper in my mouth was the first thing I noticed as consciousness slowly returned to me. Feeling the thick coppery liquid begin to pool in my mouth, I attempted to roll over to spit it out but stopped as a searing pain shot through my body causing me to lock up. I opened my mouth to gasp in pain but only succeeded in inhaling the mouthful of blood I had been attempting to dispose of. What followed was an indeterminate period of time that I spent hacking and coughing as my body attempted to clear the liquid from my lungs. White hot lances of pain shot through my body with each cough causing me to fade in and out of consciousness multiple times. As my senses once more fully returned to me, I mentally sighed in relief when I realized that not only had I finally cleared my lungs but during my coughing fit I had managed to roll over onto my side. Doing my best to ignore the dull painful throb that encompassed the entirety of my being, I slowly opened one eye in an attempt to figure out where I was. The first thing I noticed as my surroundings came into focus was that wherever I was, it was quite dark. Besides the ground obscuring half of my vision all I could make out were a few blurry spots of light in the distance. I attempted to turn my head to see if I could see anything else, but my attempts were swiftly stopped as the pain I was quickly becoming familiar with coursed through my neck causing me to see white. Tears streamed from my eyes as I clenched them shut and ground my teeth together, attempting to ride out the pain. After what felt like hours later, the pain finally subsided enough for me to make another attempt at discerning my whereabouts. Once more opening the eye that wasn’t currently pressed into the ground, I wrinkled my brow in confusion when I noticed the lights seemed more spread out than they previously had been, and that a pair of those lights was moving closer. Afraid that any more attempts at moving would cause me to blackout again, I settled with watching as the lights swept back and forth, my eyes grew heavy as they slowly drew closer. I don’t know when I had passed out, but it seemed as though one moment the lights were still a long ways off in the distance, and then suddenly they were right on top of me as the sound of multiple sets of feet shuffling through grass surrounded me. “Oh, dear,” a feminine voice nearby said, “I guess the little guy wasn’t lying.” “Kinda wish he was,” another female voice spoke up, this one with a bit of a southern drawl. “Don’t look like nopony else made it.” The creak of metal being bent reached my ears, followed shortly by gagging. “The poor dears didn’t even make it out of their harnesses,” the first voice said. “Ah coulda gone the rest a’ mah life without seein’ somethin’ like this,” the second voice groaned. The first speaker mumbled quietly to herself as she as she moved through the clearing, the sound of her voice helping me track her as she moved closer. Just as she was about to step into my line of sight, her musings abruptly stopped as she caught sight of me. “Oh, my,” I heard the owner of the first voice speak up. “It seems I found the mare that young drake was asking about.” “Didja now?” the second voice asked. Dropping whatever they had been doing, the two people that had split off came running over. “How’s she lookin’?” “Doesn’t look good,” the first person spoke up. “From the looks of all of the blood…” The owner of the first voice was cut off by a choked gasp as the brightness of the light she had been carrying caused me to squint. “Sweet Celestia of Equestria, she’s alive!” the first person shouted. “You gotta be kiddin’ me,” the second person said in disbelief. I was momentarily blinded by a lantern being waved in my face. “Not just alive,” the first person said, “she’s conscious! Her pupils are dilated, but she isn’t responding to the light. I think she may be in shock.” My pain-addled brain momentarily tuned them out as I attempted to figure out why they had been referring to me as ‘she’ and ‘mare’. My thoughts ground to a halt when my sight cleared and instead of two people, as I had been expecting, two equines stood before me in their place. My vision slowly tunneled as my mind raced in an attempt to make sense of the situation I had found myself in. I had been expecting bipedal creatures to have been what found me, but yet I wasn’t nearly as shocked as I should have been when instead it was a pair of equines that had stumbled upon me instead. Ponies, my mind kept wanting to label them. If these ponies are what found me then it’s safe to assume that, judging by their reaction to me, I’m a pony as well. But yet, that didn’t seem to make sense, either. Whenever I tried to picture myself in my head, what came to mind was a tall bipedal being. A male bipedal being, which I’m starting to think I’m not. If I’m not one of these… humans, like my memory keeps wanting to say I am, then why do I have all of these memories… memories that aren’t mine. When I try to think back past the accident I seem to have found myself in, there's nothing but a jumble of half-memories, seeming more like dreams than anything else. I see a young filly, barely able to contain her enthusiasm as she prepares to enter the school of her dreams for the first time. I see a young boy, using video games as an escape from the world that seems to be crumbling around him. I see two horned ponies… two unicorns, showering their daughter with love and affection as she brings home A after A from school. I see a young boy, tossing his C riddled report card in the trash, eating cold Spaghetti-O's again since his dad isn’t around anymore, and his mother will be working too late to cook. My thoughts ground to a halt as my entire body erupts into pain. Feeling myself being lifted off the ground, both my eyes shot wide open as a choked scream tore through my raw throat. “Shh, shh, I know it hurts,” the first voice attempted to soothe me. “We need to get you back to town, though.” “Wouldn’t it be easier ta go back n’ bring someone ta her?” The second pony, who's back I now rested on, asked. “Seems like we're putin’ her through an awful lotta grief just ta get her back ta town.” “Normally yes, but…” the first pony walked in front of them and paused to look at me. “I fear if we took the time to go get help, then come back… she might not have that long.” Darkness encroached on my vision as I struggled to stay awake, my mind raced as it tried to sort through all the information that was currently flowing through it. My eyes rolled back in my head and my body began violently shaking as memories from two different lives fought for dominance. “Uhh, Redheart?” the second pony called out. “Ah think somethin’s wrong with ‘er!” “What’s wrong, Applejack?” the first pony called out. “Is she…” My entrance exam into magic school… my first day of kindergarten…. My first crush, that filly that sat in front of me in Applied Magics.... My first crush, the girl that lived next door to my childhood home… “Oh dear, she’s having a seizure,” Redheart gasped. “We need to get her back, now.” “But what if there’s somepony else who…” Applejack started, only to be cut off. “There is nopony else,” Redheart said. “According to the young drake that came stumbling into town, it was only her and the two guards. The two guards are already gone, and we’ll lose her too if we don’t get her help.” I saw myself as a human in an auditorium, my face scrunched in concentration as I attempted to make the dragon egg in front of me hatch. I saw myself as a filly, my GameBoy held firmly in my grasp as I attempted to show my completed Pokedex off to the neighbor girl. “Don’t worry about jostling her too much,” Redheart commanded. The two ponies ran side by side with me nestled firmly between the two of them. “I’ll support her neck and head, just make sure you don’t outpace me.” I could barely register the sight of a small lantern lit village rapidly approaching as color slowly started to fade from the world. As the memories came faster and faster, my mind soon blanked out as the information became too much to process. “Comin’ through!” Applejack yelled, startling the weary ponies that were milling around in town. “Make way! We got an injured pony comin’ through!” My vision had gone almost completely black as a large set of double doors came into sight, the large cross decorating them looked strangely familiar. Just as I was about to slip into a blissful comatose state, one name forced itself to the forefront of my mind. “Doctor Stable!” Redheart yelled as they burst through the hospital doors. “We’ve got an emergency here!” Jumping up from where he had been napping, the brown unicorn lit his horn before his eyes were even fully open and pulled a stretcher in from a nearby hallway. Sliding to a stop in front of the stretcher, the two mares waited patiently waited for the doctor to take the mare upon their backs in his magic before stepping out and allowing him to set her on the stretcher. One name forced itself to be heard through the chaos in my head and seemed to shatter my very existence. “What do we have?” The brown unicorn stallion asked. “Survivor from that carriage crash the drake we had in here earlier was talking about,” Redheart answered. “You mean somepony actually survived that?” Doctor Stable asked, gaping in amazement at the mare. “From the condition that young dragon was in I didn’t think any ponies would have survived.” Just one name that forced itself to be heard before I slipped from the world of the living, and into somewhere in between life and death. “The guards didn’t,” Redheart sighed. “We’ll have to send somepony back to clean up, and make sure they get a proper burial.” Doctor Stable remained silent, opting to nod in response as they pushed me down the hallway and into the ER wing of the hospital. Twilight Sparkle.