"Come with me, Sunset."
I swear I didn't squeak when I heard Twilight Sparkle call out to me after our joint meal. Looking up, I saw her already heading towards one of the far palace doors as though it was a forgone conclusion that I would follow her. Looking momentarily towards Princess Luna, she simply nodded her head in the direction of her daughter while the guards, just at the edge of my vision, seemed to tense as though readying for a fight.
'I guess there's no way around this...'
With a soft sigh, I got up on my hooves and followed after her. Every guard we passed snapped to attention, while every maid would bend their foreleg. But, it was clear most of them were giving me a nervous look.
"I guess you really are a Princess-General," I grumbled as we continued on.
"Out of necessity only, if I'm being honest." Twilight turned back and looked at me with a sad smile. "I would give anything to have been born into a time when I could have been seen as a Magus as you were."
It was hard to admit that I didn't feel a hint of pride at being called a Magus. Me? In the same league as ancient unicorns like Star Swirl the Bearded, Mistmane, or Clover the Clever? I felt the edges of my lips turn up into a smile.
'If only Celestia could have heard that...'
My joy quickly returned to anger as my mind brought up my old mentor. The internal fuming lasted until we stopped in front of a pair of guarded doors I remember distinctly from my last days in Equestria...
"Step aside that we may enter, Lieutenant."
"F-Forgive me, your Highness, but... Sh-Should we really be allowing her in?"
'Wow. A guard with the gall to second-guess his princess?'
I looked at the blue-haired pegasus before us. Something about his voice seemed so... familiar...
"Step. Aside."
The poor guard quickly cowered and did as order, even going as far as to open the door.
"Thank you, Lieutenant Sentry."
I blinked in shock and gave the guardspony a second glance. I could almost see it, but I didn't want to make a foal of myself here. I could always ask the Princess once we were along in the Restricted Castle Library...
"So, you use to date an alternate version of Flash Sentry in this alternate realm you'd been trapped in?"
My eyes were glancing around the various storage shelves throughout the library as we were talking. This place was so different from what I remembered. Celestia's Restricted Library had been just that, a collection of dark magic tomes that she didn't want her little ponies to have access to. But this place? It was more like a museum. It wasn't just books. There were scrolls and tablets scattered here and there. And everything was clearly labelled! My eyes fell upon a chunk of stone that looked extremely similar to the white castle stonework I remembered from Celestia's Canterlot Castle.
I shall have my daughter back... even if Equestria itself must burn!
"P-Princess... What... What's this?" I blinked and pointed to the stone.
"A piece of the old Castle of the Two Sisters... your old home..." Twilight was standing beside me, her ears pressed back against her skull as she was suddenly extremely interested in her hooves. "It's also part of what I... what we wanted you to see in here. There haven't been very many expeditions out to your old home. Even one thousand years later, the site of the final battle of the Celestial Civil War is still too dangerous to approach."
"What happened?"
"Your mother... Well, no... I guess it would be better to refer to her exclusively as Daybreaker by that point..." Twilight turned her face away from me. "When you disappeared, Celestia locked herself away in her room. From what Mother tells me, she took several tomes of dark and crystal magic with her. I'm not entirely certain... no one truely is... but our best assumption given everything Mother has learned over all these years, she was looking for a way to break into the Gyre to rescue you. It seems, in the final months of the war, she might have actually discovered a way to do so. The result was the near-complete destruction of the Castle of the Two Sisters, as well as such a massive influx of Chaos Magic that effected everything within a roughly 100 mile radius."
"The Everfree Forest..."
Twilight let out a small laugh. "I guess I shouldn't be that surprised you know the name. You seem to know more about the current world state than I would have expected from someone that disappeared back at the end of the Age of the Diarchy. I don't think I've once heard you even slightly slip into Ancient High Ponish like Mother does from time to time."
"You mean like her insistence on the use of the Royal We?" I let a small giggle escape my lips.
"Royal We? I suspect you mean the Diarchical We, but yes. Exactly that." Twilight finally let out a small smile. "But, enough of that! We... Err... You and I have another purpose for coming here."
I followed behind Twilight as she guided me deeper into the... Well, I guess I'd rather call it the 'Royal Museum' than the 'Castle's Restricted Library'. When we turned the corner at the end of the aisle, I stopped in my tracks, fell back onto my flank, and gasped.
"While the expeditions to the old castle have indeed been few and far between, Mother herself traveled there on only one occasion... specifically to collect this. It hung in her room for almost a century, in the hopes that it would ease the pain of having lost her beloved niece and having to banish her dear older sister to the sun. But, it turned out to be more a curse than a blessing, as it only deepened her pain. So she had it moved here."
My vision became blurry. Though whether it was because of tears of pain or anger, I honestly could not say. Hanging before me on the wall was a charred and torn painting of the royal family in happier times... a cheerful, younger Princess Luna draping a wing over a positively glowing Princess Celestia. And there, in Celestia's arms, was a perfect image of my chubby foal face, giggling as I sucked on my wing tip.