//------------------------------//
// Chapter 37 - The Mark 
// Story: Twilight Daylight: Psera, The Legend of Legends 
// by thedarktome 
//------------------------------//

When Madun dropped that bomb, they took this conversation to the right side away from Twilight's resting place. Leaving Fresh Dawn to be distracted with Dark Dust and her cousins.

Once they were all in a private circle away from listening ears, Molten Ice explained in much deeper detail from next to Secretary Gardeen dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. "In light of recent events, Psera's Government has decided that Psera is once again cutting all communications with outside lands after we transport you back home. This was planned from the beginning. That if something were to get past the Queen's barriers onto our land, we would cut all ties with any outside forces and reinforce the law from the very beginning. The day the CPC fell, a meeting was called in Congress and we decided that after the war was finished, we would drop you off back on Equestria and supply you with the device using the late Queen's very first spell on this soil. After that... You will hear from us no more, unless we find something."

Luna shared a look with her sister and niece. Then back to Madun to clarify, "So we're being cut off from everything."

He nodded and answered, "Unfortunately. If something else ever happens across seas, we want nothing to do with it. Trade is over, communications are over, talks are over. Whatever we gave you, you can keep. But you will not hear from us anymore after you're dropped off. All of you."

Well there goes the trade dreams, Novo thought. Celestia sighed and nodded in understanding in a close knit next to her. To keep anymore attacks from this peaceful land that has the biggest military she's ever seen with the largest of all structures, it only made sense to make this place Pseratep only. Leaving them all to each other. Psera just doesn't want any more of their citizens getting hurt.

She replied, "I understand. We'll inform our citizens at once. When will we depart?"

He stroked that perfect goatee that made him even the more handsome and answered, "The sooner the better. Now that the war's over, there is no need for you to stay much longer. The Queen's dream came true. To unite us all together to save each other and avoid a desolate world. And now that it's achieved, we must leave you again. We cannot risk anymore of our lives."

"Of course, I understand. I will let them know. Will now be the last time we see you or Fresh Dawn?"

He blinked and answered honestly, "I highly doubt it. But you won't see us for many years."

"Very well."

Madun nodded to them and looked around. Most of the Pserateps had either left the Mausoleum or were doing something here in Lavender. The news crews and such were packing up and leaving in silence. He sighed and said, "Now... We must move forward for a brighter future. The remains of the CPC site is still being cleaned. And I have to get ready for tomorrow. Someone grab Dawn. It's time to leave mommy to rest."



Waves splashed on the edge of the world. On the edge of Psera. They splashed against the rocks below Dawn and Dust's rear hooves. The edge of Lavender at the docks. Spanning out in front of them were blue seas while behind them were green blades of grass.

While Fresh Dawn and Dark Dust were kicking their hooves back and forth on the ledge of rocks, Lightning and Daisy Fire were running around behind them playing some type of game.

Dark looked to his left at Fresh Dawn and asked, "Do you think there's anything out there? In this way?" He pointed a hoof out to the right of them. To the blue seas and a patrolling Aquata.

Fresh Dawn smiled and playfully corrected, "In this direction." All she got was a tongue poking out at her. "And I don't know. I don't think grandma and grandpa live out there. I think they live over there." She pointed her hoof to the left. "In the... East, I think."

"Oh." Dark Dust kicked a rock loose and watched it fall to the waves below. "Hey... I'm really sorry about your mom. Not a lot of ponies know magic here."

"No one knows magic here. The only one that knew it was mom and Grandma Celestia, Grandma Luna, and Aunt Caddy. And they're all going back to Equestria now. Mah super Equestria taw mool."

They're all staying in Equestria. Which meant Dawn would have to learn solo. Dark smiled and said, "Well, I bet you can figure it out on your own. Your mom always levitated things. That looks easy. Maybe you can do it too!"

Dawn shrugged like it were no big deal. "I can already do that. See?" Dawn's horn turned red and she levitated a rock up from the ocean below into her hoof. "I just can't do big things. Because they're too heavy and it's stressful."

Daisy and Lightning immediately zipped over into her face and eyed the rock like it was an abomination. Daisy's red and orange mane slapped Dawn in the face when she flipped her hair and asked in bewilderment, "How did you do that? I wanna do that! Wait... Can we do that?!"

Lightning jumped on top of Daisy's head and pushed her face into the ground. "Nuh uh!" She answered. "We can't do that!" Then looked up to Fresh Dawn and whispered, "Can we do that?" Daisy popped back up and flung her sister onto her back in the grass. These two were always so hyper. It amused Dawn, but also made her a tad freaked out.

Fresh Dawn shook her head and answered, "No, you have to have a horn. Like this!" She pointed her hoof up to the prominent purple horn on her head.

"Ohhh, can you make me one?! I want one! I want—"

Lightning pushed her sister's face to the side and cut in with, "Don't give her one, she already has everything in the world! Give me one!"

Daisy bopped Lightning on the head and corrected, "We both have the same things, Lightning!"

"Nuh uh, Daisy!"

"Yeah huh!"

"Nuh uh!"

"Yeah huh!"

"Nuh uh!"

Fresh Dawn and Dark Dust followed them with their eyes rolling around in the grass wrestling. Nonchalant were their attitudes while Daisy's and Lightning's were either upset with each other, or playing with each other. You could never tell with those two.

High winds blew Dawn's red mane around past her neckline and into Dust's face. More specifically his mouth. "Ew, ugh, gross! Filly hair!!"

He spat it out and wiped his tongue off while Dawn just laughed at him. Then something hit her in the back of the head. "OW!! WHAT WAS THAT?!" She yelled.

A guard was over by her side looking to the grass the second she yelled in pain. He picked up what looked like... A bird? Dawn gasped and pulled the flaring bird out of his hooves with a sadness in her eyes.

"Oh no, he's hurt!" She cried. "Something's wrong with his wing!"

The bird, a red and blue feather kind with a yellow beak was tweeting desperately and flapping it's left wing while the right one was twisted in a different angle. The top half of it was snapped in half. Ooohhh, that had to be painful.

Daisy and Lightning zipped over and took a gander with Dark. Dawn looked up to the Guard and said, "He looks so desperate! He needs help!"

Dark poked her and suggested, "Why don't you use your magic to fix his wing? I know you can do it!!"

"Yeah!" Daisy and Lightning agreed.

But Dawn wasn't so sure. She shook her head and answered, "I-I don't know. I've never done that before and I doubt mom ever did too."

The Guard softly pulled the bird out of her hooves much to her shock. "I do not believe your father would appreciate you holding an unchecked animal, Princess."

"No, no!" Dawn jumped up to take the bird back. Then walked away saying, "I can fix him, I can fix him! Mom would want me to fix him, I can do it!" Dawn softly set the bird down in the grass and glared down at him with a glowing horn. The bird was wrapped in a red glow that gradually turned a terrifying black. That has never happened before.

The bird stopped flapping and tweeting to allow Dawn to do whatever she was doing. The right wing shifted while her thoughts raced. Making weird unnatural sounds. Her mother's voice rang through her head. A very important trick from one of their lessons. "Feel the magic deep inside you. Then let it out with the goal you want to achieve."

Dawn did. She reached deep down and grabbed her magic. Then focused it on the bird. The broken wing suddenly twitched then slowly merged back together before their eyes. The bird jumped up on its talons and faced Dawn flapping both of its wings successfully.

Dawn squealed and jumped up and down excitedly with the fledgling. "I did it, I DID IT!!! I FIXED THE WING!" Her witnesses only stared at the bird walking around and flapping. That wing was completely out. As in never coming back. Then the bones just...

Daisy shouted, "That was so gross!! The wing just... Ugghhh, it was so nasty!" She slapped her hooves over her eyes with her sister. Dusk fell over on his side with a terrified expression and the guard had thoughts running through his mind about being reprimanded and losing his job.

Then the space that held Dawn flashed like the sun, turning their environment so bright they had to cover their eyes. Dusk shook his head behind his hooves and muttered, "Please, no more magic. Please no more." But magic was happening, and it was happening now.

After a little while, the glowing behind his hooves dimmed and was replaced by the natural light of the sun above. They removed their hooves and eyed Fresh Dawn, confusedly looking around.

Apart from her dress slightly ruffled, she looked... Fine. But with everything that's been happening recently the Guard wasted no time in grabbing her hoof and relaying into his Comm Block, "Code Blue! Code Blue! We're going to the King!"

A few more landed quickly and grabbed Daisy, Lightning, and Dark. Then took back off into the air for the Mausoleum.



Before anyone could start heading back, Madun laughed and said in the circle, "I'm sure you haven't seen Fresh Dawn's first steps."

Cadance shook her head with a smile from next to him and stated, "Twilight told us that she was going to show us some time. On Dawn's birthday. But we never got around—"

"My King!" Madun turned around to face the interruption. The Guards watching over Fresh Dawn and her friends landed with them in their hooves away from the Mausoleum where their pods sat. "Code Blue!"

Code Blue?! Madun sprung into action. He jumped off the stage and ran straight for them with a few more ponies. "What happened?!" He ordered. He slid to a stop in front of Fresh Dawn and started looking her over.

The Guard that witnessed the whole thing answered, "A bird flew into her head with a broken wing, she experimented with using her magic and actually managed to fully heal it..." The bird he spoke of tweeted and landed on the top of Dawn's head, much to her obvious delight since she grabbed and hugged it. "Then she glowed like the sun, blinding us with her light. Something may have happened. We're not sure what."

Madun looked Dawn over and checked under her wings, her hooves, her mane. "I don't see anything wrong," he admitted. His hoof rose to his chin and added, "But this sounds like a magical issue. Uhhh... Equestria!" The ponies from Equestria watching from afar trotted over and nodded with a face of focus.

He pointed a hoof at his daughter and explained very briefly, "Dawn plays, bird crashes into her head with a broken wing, she uses magic and heals the bird's broken wing, she glows, no clue why. Is there something wrong?"

Celestia hummed and conducted the same routine Madun did. Even looked into her violet eyes. Cadance walked around to her tail and checked there while Luna lifted up her dress. There it is.

She gasped and yelled, "Oooh, she got her cutie mark!!"

"She has a what?!" Madun walked around to where Luna was pointing and eyed the shapes on her flank. There was an exact but smaller copy of Twilight's own Cutie Mark centered directly below a large silver crown with diamonds that took up a large majority of her flanks. The crown held diamonds on four points. Two purple and two red.

"Oh so she does get one," Madun whispered. He looked up to Celestia and asked, "Is it normal to get this at five?"

She nodded and admitted surprisedly, "She's actually early. Most foals get them at the age of seven. She got hers two years ahead." She smiled down to Dawn and grinned in clear excitement. "You got your cutie mark! Isn't that exciting?!"

Dawn stared at her with a blank face and a mouth partly open. Then took a quick breath in and screamed. Celestia jumped back so Dawn could rush past screaming, "Get it off, get it off, get it off!! I don't wanna be teased, I don't want this!!"

"Whoa, hold on!" Applejack snatched her up before she could rush past and carefully settled her down in front of her. "Having a cutie mark isn't a bad thing. It shows you accomplished somethin' that ponies need in their lives. And it shows a direct statement into what your future holds. Your Cutie Mark says... Uhhh..." She leaned in closer to Dawn's flank and scuffed her chin. "Hmm... Huh. Well I don't rightly know what this actually says."

Rainbow Dash swooped in and took a look herself. She pointed to the sparkle and stated, "Well this is Twilight's cutie mark right here, so... Uhh... Yeah, this is a Cutie Mark problem with Twilight's magic."

"Cutie Mark Crusaders, comin' through!" Sweetie Belle burst her way through the two of them and slid to a stop in front of Fresh Dawn. Followed shortly by Scootaloo and Applebloom. "We heard a Cutie Mark problem, where is it?"

Rainbow glanced to Applejack and whispered, "I didn't even know they were here."

Madun pointed to Applebloom but glanced to Luna. "And who are they?" He slowly inquired. He slowly raised his right hoof and gestured forward so the Guards could approach them.

Luna quickly placed a tender hoof on Sweetie's back and explained, "Hold on, this is Sweetie Belle, Applebloom, and Scootaloo. They're experts in helping foals get Cutie Marks. If anyone can figure this out, they can." Madun held up his hoof and gave a curt nod to the Guards. Stay close and tense.

Scootaloo whipped out a clipboard from somewhere along with a pen that even made Pinkie Pie go poofy-mane again. She wrote a note down titled, "Foal #104." Then started taking notes down at the start. Name? Princess Fresh Dawn. Occupation? Princess of Psera. Daughter of Queen Twilight 'Arcadia Nova' Sparkle. Age... She glanced up and asked, "Age?"

Fresh Dawn answered, "I'm five. Can you get rid of it?"

"Er... Uhhh..." The crusaders looked at each other then back down to Fresh Dawn. "It's impossible to get rid of a Cutie Mark, Princess. Okay, parent? Queen Twilight 'Arcadia Nova' Sparkle and King Shimmering Madun. Sometimes foals get the same skills as their parents. And since we can cross off that King Madun passed off any magical traits of any kind that differ from Twilight's... We can only assume the basic fact that Fresh Dawn possibly gained a trait from her mother and either built upon it, or copied it. It happens a lot with our clients."

Applebloom asked Dawn kindly, "Can you tell us what you were doing before you got your cutie mark?"

Dawn wiped her eyes and flipped her flowing red mane to the side. She answered quickly, "We were playing, and I levitated a rock into my hoof, then a bird with a broken wing flew into my head. So I used my magic to heal the bird and now his wing is fixed. See?"

Dawn lifted the bird she was hiding under her dress into view and pointed to the wing that had been broken. But Celestia waved her hooves in front of her face and slowed it down. "Whoa, wait, hold on!" She ordered. "You 'healed' the bird? As in fixed its wing?"

"Yeah, see?" Fresh Dawn held the bird up so it could tweet and flap its wings. "He's all better now!"

Molten Ice chuckled a rather cold laugh and corrected, "That's a she, sweetheart."

"Oh. She's all better now!"

Celestia couldn't wrap her poor fragile mind around it. "So... Like the bone was broken?"

The Guard that was there explained it even more clear. "The bone was snapped, the wing was out of place. It was useless. And she used her magic to heal it. Like it glowed and shifted back into place."

Daisy Fire from the back said, "It was really, really gross! It popped and moved, it... Ugggh!" Daisy shivered with her other friends just from replaying it in her mind.

The Princesses looked down from them to Fresh Dawn. Innocently playing with the bird flying around her head. Apparently something was up.

"What is it?" Madun asked.

Luna rubbed the back of her neck nervously as if her explanation caused a crick and answered, "Well there has never been in any history where magic could heal physical ailments. It has been sought after but never achieved since the very beginning. Such as sicknesses, wounds, lacerations, none of it. It usually resulted in very messy and unforeseen consequences. So, unless this is a trick or lie, then that would mean Fresh Dawn is the first pony ever to... Heal with magic."

Scootaloo rushed forward and asked, "Has Fresh Dawn ever gotten sick before?"

Madun thought back through the years. There were plenty of vaccinations, but there was more physical contact than anything else. Was she ever sick?

Madun's eyes widened and he slowly shook his head. "No. Dawn has never been sick now that I think about it. Ever since she was born. She's been to more than enough checkups, but she's always a been a healthy filly."

Scootaloo casually wrote that down while the adults tried to process that. The twins had been sick plenty of times already from playing too much, and Dark Dust had his share of colds and fevers. But Dawn? Never? Scootaloo looked to her partners and wrapped her wings around them in a huddle. Loudly whispering incoherent sayings.

Sweetie looked up at the Mausoleum then back down whispering, "Well we can't ask her, let's ask somepony else."

Sweetie walked away from it and asked, "I recall Rarity telling me Twilight was able to restore life to your land. As in grass, trees, overall nature. Is this true?"

Madun nodded and pointed his hoof to the Mountain Range where Cop was hiding behind. "Myself and many others witnessed her process from the very top of this mountain range. From there we would be able to see all of the city-states of Psera. She would first send out a magical beam from her horn that would travel over the dirt to tell the distance. Then she would 'get the data', and use it to optimize her spell in the form of a purple wave. In less than a minute, the plains of grass were made. Lakes, ponds, forests, it was as if she painted a picture of a home for the animals."

Sweetie nodded and ducked back in to converse with her fellow crusaders. But Fresh Dawn was interested. Interested in that story.

She swiveled her body around and looked up to face her father. "Daddy? Is all of that true? About Mommy?"

Madun used his hoof to scoop Dawn up from the ground to his chest and answered proudly, "Every last bit of it, Sugar Plum. Your mommy was a really powerful pony. The first Alicorn-Pseratep known to pony-kind. You are actually two thirds Pseratep, and one third Alicorn. Which means you don't have as much magic as your mother did."

Dawn gasped and denied, "I do too! And I'm going to be as powerful as mommy!" While they played around, Scootaloo held their findings up to Rainbow Dash and the rest of Equestria to look at. But they gawked and made a face of extreme bewilderment. Next, looked to them for an explanation. Scootaloo, Applebloom and Sweetie Belle went deep into it that and had the Princesses nodding along to every word.

Back to the King and Princess' conversation, Madun smirked and teased, "Oh I don't know... Will you practice?"

"I will! Watch!" Dawn closed her eyes and focused on her magic. Then threw her head back and shot it forward. A huge purple beam shot right out and into the sky that made them all jump. Dawn's eyes were glowing purple just like the blast that lasted a total of five seconds. The sky grew nearly dark She sizzled out her magic as quick as it began. Then dropped into her father's hooves and started snoring.

Crickets started chirping through their minds while they tried to process that. To figure out what just happened. Merry took a deep breath in and whispered, "And that's our cue to leave."

Buck yeah it was. But Madun had one last thing to do. He nodded to them and shifted Fresh Dawn so she was sleeping over his neck. Then whispered, "I'll catch up to you. "

While they moved for the last available Pods, Madun made his way back across stone over to the Mausoleum. To Twilight's new home with only Dawn in his hooves. He needed privacy with his wife. With his family.

His softly moving hooves stopped a few feet from the Queen's tomb with a head held low. "I never thought you would be here so young," he said. "Only twenty-six. You were one of the best things to ever happen in my life. Your gift of Dawn to me was just the same."

He laughed and looked up past the doors to Twilight's statue. "And guess what? Our baby actually got her cutie mark! Early! I don't know much about it, but it must be a pretty big deal over in Equestria if your teacher can actually prance in place because of it. If only you were here to see it. It has your own mark in it." Madun flipped up Dawn's dress and eyed the mark while he spoke. "She doesn't want it, but something is telling me she'll grow to love it."

He let the dress go and focused again on the doors with love and care. "We love you sweetheart. I promise we'll visit every birthday, okay? We're... We're going to miss you. And things will never be the same without you... Goodbye, Twilight." Once he was finished, he finally turned around and made his way back to the Pods. He had a filly to put to bed.