I know it was quite the revelation the last time we spoke like this and I’m sure you remember most of it, so could we skip the part where I recap the last session? What do you mean, you write this stuff down?! Didn’t I tell you not to do that during our first meeting? No? Well, don’t do it. Not everyone needs to know about my complicated origins, or even me being one mind controlling two bodies.
Okay, you know what? I don’t care, write the stuff down, nobody will believe it anyway. I eagerly await the day we’re done with this crap and I can go back to living my life like I want to without having someone analyze all my faults and whatnot. No, Twilight, I don’t care that it supposedly helps me deal with it. Can we get started now? Good.
You know, the day Fluttershy brought back those little monsters from the Everfree was the first day you all saw me at my lowest and most cruelest. I’m pretty sure some of you never wanted to talk to me for a while after that, but seeing Celestia do the same thing to those hell spawns changed your perspectives pretty hard, didn’t it? Anyway, let’s start at the beginning.
Like every moderately uneventful day, it began with me doing my rounds at the edge of the Everfree Forest before the sun was even up. I was getting increasingly worried by the withered appearance of some of those timberwolves that dared to get close to the settlement.
Something was happening all over the world, and if that cult in Manehattan didn’t clue me in, then those monsters in the forest did. I was increasingly happy with the performance of the sword I appropriated from the man that tried robbing that bank.
Timberwolves didn’t like me before I had the flaming sword and they certainly didn’t like me after I burned their buddies to ash and cinders. What a little difference like that could do, huh?
Zecora, too, was getting concerned by the increasing change in the wildlife of the Everfree. Multiple times had I tried to get her to move to Ponyville where it was safer, but every time we met over tea she told me the same thing. Unless the very forest started to act out like that, she would remain in her little tree hut.
While I was doing my little part-time job of watching the borders of the Everfree, I gathered the herbs she used most frequently and she taught me a bit about surviving out in nature. And boy, did she know a lot of stuff. Suffice to say, I now knew how to appropriate safe water and food within the forest. Should I get lost in there I wouldn’t be completely useless.
That wasn’t the only thing I made progress on over the last few weeks. I got an epiphany about my wings and I finally managed to fly for real. It was all about the mindset. Believe you can fly and your wings would actually respond in the way you want them to. The fear of falling was quite detrimental to your ability to fly. While I wasn’t the best or fastest flier out there, my endurance allowed me to make long flights in exchange. Rainbow tried to race me a few times but got bored pretty quickly after seeing me not even put up a challenge.
And my dream of making a magic-powered Ducati? Let’s just say we made huge waves in the automobile market with the improved engine design and had enough resources to experiment on reworking the design of the engines to fit on a bicycle frame.
One small step for me, one huge giant leap into the future for Equestria. Celestia was proud of our progress, which was also a nice bonus. Suffice to say, Rarity wasn’t the only rich person in our little group of friends anymore.
With the innovation out on the market, prices for cars were a lot more affordable for the average person now. The times of the car being a toy for rich people was over and with a little nudge in the right direction, mass production was introduced to society.
I don’t feel bad for bringing that to Equestria, it made a lot of things a great deal cheaper. That put an end to exorbitant prices on magi-tech and paved the way for progress. Meanwhile, I stayed out of the limelight, feeling like I cheated on the greatest scientists and inventors from Earth. It didn’t feel right to take credit for an idea I just copied based on the few memories I had of my previous life.
The money I accepted easily, though. What? I’m a greedy bitch, what did you expect of me? Deny the riches I had access to now? Besides, I’m pretty sure I got the short end of the deal while others profited from what I brought to Equestria way more than me.
To honor all the great inventors of Earth I started the whole Nobel Prize thing here in Equestria with a little bit of help from my friends and my unknowing sisters. They were quite intrigued by the idea, everyone was happy, and it helped out up and coming scientists, inventors, politicians, and whatnot. The first Nobel Peace Prize went to my little group of friends, seeing that we friggin’ saved the world.
Yeah, we got the first prize that we introduced to the world, boo-hoo! You won’t see me crying over it. Considering we barely got acknowledgment after we saved the world, I think it was due time my friends got the credit they deserved as the Elements of Harmony.
I could do without all the attention, though. Half of Equestria was now interested in the little hamlet that everybody seemed to forget existed at times. There were a few people that were daring enough to move here, despite out town being next to the Everfree and having a pink-haired god-like being living here.
Spectrum assured me that Pinkie Pie was in fact, not a god or eldritch abomination... or one of my siblings for that matter. My sanity wouldn’t have survived that, I think.
Considering I missed the day where Twilight learned about the ‘Pinkie-Sense’ that reminded me eerily of the ‘Spider-Sense’ from Peter Parker, I had to deal with the aftermath of Twilight going crazy about the impossibility of it all.
Anyway, enough about all the stuff that happened over the last few weeks of this tale, we had a pest problem to deal with and had no one we could call to deal with it in a professional manner.
Apparently, no one had an idea on how to deal with parasprites, besides Pinkie and Celestia. One wanted to shove the problem where it came from, the other wanted to burn them into non-existence. The latter opinion was also my approach, but we’re getting ahead again.
Twilight was in a frenzy about the ‘casual’ visit from Celestia and decided to clean up the library for the umpteenth time that week, while I got dragged into helping decorate the whole town after I was done with my border control at the forest. I was of the opinion that this was entirely unnecessary. Casual was everything but what the people were preparing for here.
Pinkie running around like crazy asking for instruments left me stumped on what was going on. Little did I know what that was the prelude to.
I was curious about the weird insect fluff ball that Twilight said Fluttershy found as she was picking flowers for Celestia, but chalked it up as a last-minute decision for her to acquire a pet for herself and Spike.
And boy, did I wish she burned it to a crisp come the next morning. There were dozens of them fluttering around, eating all the groceries in the kitchen, and my secret fruit stash. I whimpered at being denied my fruity goodness once more.
Then they started to wreck the library that just got a fresh once-over and I said enough. This was getting out of hand, they obviously bred like sex-crazy rabbits going at it all night and day for a whole year. And the next thousand, while they were at it.
Thankfully, fire was the solution to every problem mankind has ever faced. No, I wasn’t a pyromaniac. I just had a slight disposition to... use fire to solve all my problems. But it worked, didn’t it? I mean, if they could multiply like that it wasn’t like I was rotting them out.
Even if they deserved extinction. A fiery blazing inferno of an extinction. Would Celestia banish those pests to the sun if I asked her?
Twilight stared at me like I had gone off the deep end, swinging the flaming sword around like a maniac. Don’t worry! The library won’t go up in flames! We made sure nothing like that could ever happen, just like we made sure no lightning would ever hit the library. And no hurricane could uproot the tree. And nothing short of a nuke could scratch the tree. Probably. It simply was too beautiful to be destroyed like that. There was no way it would come to any harm as long as the wards weren’t overloaded with a huge dosage of magic.
Then I watched the hellspawn hurl up another of their ilk.
“RAGHR!” I screamed as they began to multiply like crazy. I was swinging around my sword in a whirlwind and they decided I was a large enough threat to their existence to begin attacking me.
Now, as I later learned, parasprites are actually quite deadly creatures. In small numbers, they seemed harmless and barely put up a fight, but as soon as they had eaten a large amount of food, like say a week’s worth of groceries, they gained enough energy to produce a gigantic swarm.
And each one of them had the capability to consume flesh. They were the friggin’ piranhas of the air, I tell you. The numbers I was fighting against were starting to grow overwhelmingly in their favor, even as I slaughtered hundreds of them with a few blazing swings of my weapon.
“Retreat! Abandon ship! Everyone fend for themselves!” I ran screaming out the door, all of them flitting after me with a heavy buzzing in the air. I felt them biting into my skin, trying to tear away at it to get to the fleshier parts of me. Meanwhile, Lux was next to useless with her bow, so I had to conjure up a new spell I had been working on.
Arcane Explosion. A nifty spell, one I took heavy inspiration from World of Warcraft. It did what its name suggested. It created a fast-expanding bubble to form around the caster, inflicting crushing pressure and harsh injuries to any living being within the blast radius, ending in explosive force. It was a costly spell that required a lot of mana to cast.
But using one of those a few times caused a couple thousands of the bugs to die while trying to get at me and my mirror images. It gave me just enough leeway to get my bodies away long enough for us to escort Twilight to Fluttershy’s. She wasn’t particularly happy in my methods of dealing with the pest problem we had, but she could suck it up for the moment.
We were trying to survive a hungry swarm hellbent on eating us, so I think a little excessive force was justified. And it barely put a dent in their numbers, anyway. It was high time she learned that killing non-sentient creatures like those was a necessity to stop them from growing out of hand. I had seen pictures of insect swarms causing famines on Earth, I didn’t want to see what would happen with these parasprites spreading all over Equestria.
I didn’t want to know how much lives would be lost to the never-ending hunger of those monsters that had no inhibitions from going after people as well.
On the way over, me doing everything to keep the insects away from us, we stumbled upon a frantic Rarity and Rainbow Dash. Both of them seemed to look a little worse for wear, but fine overall.
Without stopping our sprint to the resident animal caretaker, we were swiftly overwhelmed as her door burst open with even more parasprites. Dread filled my heart as I sprinted through the doorway. Please, don’t let Fluttershy be dead...
Said woman was standing there, completely helpless and I saw quite a few animal skeletons littered around. Horror couldn’t describe my feelings enough. My hatred spiked up hotly within my chests seeing tears run down Fluttershy’s cheeks. Brightpaw was spitting around flames carefully, trying not to damage the house or hurt any of the animals he was protecting.
“Evacuate your animals out of this building, Fluttershy!” I shouted at her, swinging through a cluster of hungry pests. My demand brought her out of her grief, a little light entering her empty eyes in a flicker of hope and she was quick to follow the path we cleared for her. Once outside, the parasprites converged into a larger swarm and Brightpaw was free to turn to his larger self.
“Here’s all those apples you wanted, Fluttershy,” the voice of Applejack reached us, and the parasprites spotted all the new fuel ripe for the taking like a sacrifice offered to a dark god hellbent on destroying the world.
The swarm continued to grow larger and larger, the effort of Brightpaw and I not being enough to remotely stop them. Twilight and Applejack’s idea to herd the things back into the forest turned out to not work at all for the size of the swarm and the attempt at using a tornado of epic proportions to contain them ended up with Pinkie almost killing Rainbow Dash with cymbals.
And then, as if things couldn’t get worse, the swarm decided we weren’t worth their time anymore and invaded Ponyville instead. Understandably, we were all mad at that. Pinkie wasn’t the only one the girls were mad at, though. My tactic of killing them didn’t sit right with most of them.
I didn’t care about their opinion as the parasprites began to cause the greatest famine known to this quaint little town. Everywhere we looked, they ate anything edible within sight. Before Twilight could cast the spell to stop making them want to eat food, I hijacked the spell.
Now, don’t tell me that it was a good idea. It wasn’t. It really wasn’t. Instead of food, I told the spell it wanted to make the parasprites want only one thing.
And that was my specific mana signature.
Yeah, I said it was a stupid thing to do, but I knew the spell Twilight attempted didn’t work the way she intended it for. You had to give it a different target instead, so I panicked and picked the first thing my magic could decide on. That being little old me. Whatever... I have done things that were more asinine than this.
Sometimes it seemed like I had suicidal tendencies, but I assure you I was quite attached to my life. My brain just had a bad case of ‘Give-me-the-most-dangerous-situation-to-get-my-next-fix-on-adrenalin’ addiction. Timberwolves just didn’t do it for me anymore, you know?
“What did you do?!” Twilight screamed at me, fear and rage showing in her expression.
“What I had to do,” I answered back solemnly. “That spell needs a replacement for a target, Twi. Or did you forget that?”
“Lux...” she seethed, grimacing at her slight oversight. “Which target did you give them?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know that?” I shot back, and I ran away from my friends while Sol held them back. All of the parasprites followed after my female half, ready for their next, and last, meal.
Needless to say, I was in quite a pickle. Sol couldn’t hold my friends for long and Lux wouldn’t be able to stand a full assault of the bugs for more than a few minutes. If it came down to it, I could do what that cultist did in the warehouse and wipe the threat away entirely. That was a last, last, laaaast resort, though.
Like, ‘I-was-about-to-die-anyway’ last resort. Which might very well happen, now that I think about it.
Twilight managed to break away from Sol with a desperate teleport, taking me with her, and she watched Lux get surrounded on all sides by the parasprites.
A few arcane explosions kept them away for the moment, but my body began to burn from the abusive amount of mana coursing through it.
Desperate, Twilight tried to cast the spell from earlier again, but I managed to stop her with Sol. She kicked and screamed at me for letting her help me, but I couldn’t risk it.
She was too important to risk her life, it was I that had to make the sacrifice. To do what needed to be done.
I drew more mana from the ley lines, my eyes beginning to glow and my hair started to drift in an unseen wind that wasn’t actually there.
“Okay, please let this work,” I muttered, curling myself up as my body began to float by itself, I let loose a scream starting the surge. That was the last idea I had before I even could entertain the thought of burning my very being to obliterate this plague.
An adult could, in desperate times, force themselves to surge. It wasn’t pretty on the body, though. Normally surges are a sign that the body couldn’t hold the amount of mana yet, and it was a way for it to force the mana pathways to grow so that they could allow a better distribution of the energy within the body. Children were prone to such accidental magic for that very reason, their bodies still being in the growing phase.
I, on the other hand, had a fully grown mana pathway system already. Which meant jack shit, in the end, the surge forcing them even wider than what was the average for a person.
My concentration was straining, vision blurry on Lux. I barely mustered up my willpower to direct the raging mana around me to attack the flying insects around me. They tried to flee, but I pulled them in into the deathtrap I had become. There was no escaping me, I was inevitable. Their end was the only purpose I gave the magic around me, beckoning it to fulfill only that demand.
A burning hot sun gripped my arm, pulling me out of my surge with the sudden force of thousand trucks ramming into me. “Foolish.”
The voice sounded familiar. Also quite angry and disappointed in me.
I had no recollection of the part that followed, so here is what the girls told me. Yes, I know Twilight, you were the one that told me what happened and berated me for it, after my sisters had given me the tongue-lashing of the century, nay, millennia, but the story wouldn’t be complete if I left off here, right?
Twilight stared at her mentor, her hair alight in the glory of a solar flare. She had feared everything was lost by the time her mentor would arrive for the visit, but seeing her there, holding the exhausted Lux in her arms as the very air around her ignited the parasprites, she could only stare dumbly at the display of power.
Celestia watched the face of Lux, a saddened frown on her face. Around that time, Twilight’s friends arrived at the scene, finding Sol desperately clinging onto a now limply sitting Twilight. He seemed to be just as out of it as the personal student of the princess
And all of them watched Celestia slaughter the little insects with no effort at all. Within seconds there was naught but ash remaining of those in the immediate area, a few seconds more, and the rest were caught in the maelstrom of fire. In the end, it seemed like there never were any parasprites, to begin with.
Celestia returned to her normal regal self, my female body already fast asleep due to a sleep spell.
“I’m sorry to have to cut this visit short, but it seems the problem is solved for now. I will take young Lux with me to Canterlot so she can get the medical attention she needs. We will talk later, Twilight,” she said, and then she was gone, Lux with her in tow.
I got myself out of my daze with Sol and the girls told me Lux was going to Canterlot for medical reasons. Well, at least I knew my other half was safe and sound. It would be a good idea to stop with these stupid stunts.
Around evening was the time I awoke with Lux and I wished I remained unconscious. Every fiber of my being protested any kind of movement. My eyes were glad for the darkened room, but even that put a strain on them. Pained moans left my throat, a headache pounding away on the inside of my head like a menagerie worth of animals just decided to trample all over it.
“Finally awake, we see,” Luna’s voice was gentle but held an undertone of strictness in it.
“What happened to me?” I croaked out, I was still hazy on the details. Twilight was currently too busy organizing the town’s distribution of food to tell me the whole story. And the only thing I remember was an arm touching me during the surge, then nothing.
“You experienced a forced mana surge, something that could have ended up quite deadly if it continued on for more than ten minutes. You were fortunate enough that Celestia was already on the way to Ponyville, or you wouldn’t be here right now,” Luna explained, sitting down at the foot of my bed. She studied me for a moment, seemingly uncertain what to make out of my lack of making intelligent decisions on the fly.
“Is Ponyville safe?” I asked. Luna nodded, saying Celestia took care of the problem that befell our town. The parasprites were eradicated to the very last one and she stopped my surge at the same time.
“Were it not for you running out of ideas, we would have you locked up for your own safety. We seem to remember you playing it safe during our training sparring sessions with expertly crafted illusions,” she started. “Would it not have been simple to use them to your advantage against the pest plaguing your town?”
“I...” my breath got stuck in my throat. Why didn’t I think of that? It would have bought me some much needed time, time that was valuable in such a situation.
Would it have changed anything, though? They were attracted to my life essence, would they have fallen for such a trick? Maybe if I had thought of using my illusions before Twilight had started casting that spell? I can’t tell for sure.
“Your training is by far not complete, young Lux. Perhaps another session with you and your friends is in order. We shall see to it, then,” she mused, standing up from my bed and stopping directly in front of me. She let show a small smile at the thought of torturing us again for ‘training’. “And mayhaps Tia will be able to accompany us this time.”
My face paled at that thought. From what I understand, her sister is even more powerful when it comes to purely combat-related spells and having seen those murals in the Everfree? She knew how to handle a weapon expertly, too.
“Are you sure that is necessary? I mean, I can promise to be more careful, if that is what you want?” I asked, knowing full well I meant no word of that promise. The last promise got like, broken in a few weeks. By now I knew being careful was never going to be an option in the long run.
I had to take risks in order to save as many lives, that much I knew for certain. I could try thinking all day long for alternative solutions to the problems I face, but where would that leave me? That would only lead to hesitation on the battlefield and that was not something I could allow.
Luna raised an eyebrow at that and took out a newspaper. A picture of me as my vigilante self was on the front page, showing a scene during the night I led the police on a wild goose chase through the city. Don’t know at which point exactly it was, seeing that it went on quite long, and how someone got a picture of me during that night... but it was me, no denying that.
“It seems ending up in troubling situations is one of your specialty, is it not, Shadow Stalker?” she asked me, her eyes narrowed to slits.
“How...” I stuttered. How indeed? I was pretty sure there was nothing that could give me away like that. Or, was there?
“It is quite simple, we have to say. When there is only one person we ever taught the mirror image spell to and they appear in Manehattan fighting criminals left and right, who do you think that would be?” she asked.
“Oh...”
“Indeed. It was easy to connect the dots with you using a bow and illusions, but that was a dead giveaway,” Luna said matter-of-factly. “We have to ask, though. Where did you get such peculiar armor?”
“It was a family heirloom?” I said unsurely. There was no damn way she would accept that excuse. I could try, though.
“I see...” she said, my hope flaring up at how ridiculously easy that was. “Then your Talent Mark is also a ‘family heirloom’?”
And my hope took a leap out of the burning airplane that was labeled ‘Lux’. Goodbye, it was nice knowing you.
“Um...” I stuttered. “Yes?”
Okay, try to bullshit your way out of this! We have to salvage this situation, asap! I can’t let her know about this...
Who am I kidding? Of course, she already suspects me. They suspected me from the very start we met. I should have gone with something different for weapons to take with me into the Everfree. Like a spear, or something. No hope in denying it any longer, it seems.
“Could you tell the truth for once, please?” Luna scolded me. “We promise you, you are in no way in trouble with us.”
Looking at how sad her eyes appeared on her scowling face, it made my heart pulse with sympathy. She had lost a mentor once upon a time that looked just like me, one that was a previous incarnation of myself. How could I deny her that closure? I mean, I was right in front of her, a haunting memory of times long since passed.
So, I did the right thing and got over my perceived notion of keeping things a secret that shouldn’t stay secret. Admitting to myself that it was childish of me to behave like this wasn’t easy. At some point, it would have come to light, anyway. Why wait for a situation that could perhaps turn out worse than this?
I reached out to my bracelet and held it. Here goes, I guess.
A moment later, Luna studied the bow in my hands with tears in her eyes. She reached out to it, asking with just her expression if she could hold it once more. I presented it to her readily, not having it in my heart to refuse her request.
“I am She who guides the Moon, grant me access to the hidden potential within this bow,” Luna whispered and I watched in awe at what happened. Blades of moonlight extended from both ends, turning the bow into a melee weapon, not unlike the warglaives she was seen wielding in the past. She split the altered weapon in half, holding two warglaives now.
“Truly, we never thought we would see these again,” Luna muttered. “After Moonlight and Sunfire were slain... we tried wielding them for a while, but they never held this form for very long for us. Starswirl was the one to convince us they needed the right wielders, so we placed them beneath the castle, waiting for the right owners to come along.”
The weapons in her hand flashed once, returning to the form I was familiar with. Luna handed it back to me reverently and I returned it back to the bracelet. I watched her, more curious than ever before.
“Tia already suspected you to be the next wielders of these weapons as soon as she saw your choice of weaponry. Both of us held the same suspicions, so we went to our old castle to see if they were still where we left them. Imagine our surprise when we found them gone...
“After we saw what happened in Manehattan, we knew where they went for certain. We wanted to confront you then and there, but Tia wanted to see what you would do. She merely treated your trials during your extended stay in the city as a test. For her, it was a way to see if you were ready for what lies ahead. Suffice to say that you impressed and disappointed us at the same time.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. Luna gave a small laugh at that, shaking her head.
“You reminded us of our own training days under Sunfire and Moonlight, young Lux. We were quite stubborn and hotheaded in our youth, only listening to what we thought would benefit us the most during our teachings. Our teachers weren’t entirely pleased with us, but they understood what we went through at the time. We grew up in a time of war, young Lux, we had not the luxury to think every possibility through, just as we have observed your impulsiveness.
“Moonlight taught us patience, even in battle. It was a tedious process for our teachers, but eventually, we got over our perceived superiority and started listening to them. Sunfire taught us discipline, even as we went against their teaching time and time again. Both of them didn’t give up on us, even as our little temper tantrums got out of hand at times. Starswirl gave us the knowledge we needed to eventually take up the mantle of rulers of this land. Magic was a difficult thing to learn in the olden times, believe it or not. Much progress has been made in that area since we were children, even though Tia saw fit to censor some of the more dangerous arts.”
At that moment the door opened and the other diarch of this country came in, carrying a mug of coffee in her hand.
“Telling her about all our embarrassing moments, Lulu?” Celestia asked, taking a sip from her brew. “Have you told her about the time you decided it was a good idea to have a manticore as a pet?”
“Tia!” Luna pouted. “We merely told her of our time spent training in our youth and how similar we appeared to her own faults.”
“I’m merely teasing you, sister. Have you asked her about her Talent Mark already?” Celestia said, raising an eyebrow.
“Nay, we were still discussing the topic of their weapons.”
“Very well, then. If I might?” Celestia gestured to the sleeve on my arm, sitting down at my side in a chair. I nodded, albeit a bit reluctantly, so she exposed my shoulder and with it the mark that showed the same one on Luna’s shoulder, just with a bow over the moon.
“Did you know, a Talent Mark is specific to one person only? There might be slight variations here and there, but the exact mark has only ever appeared once through the entirety of time itself,” she explained, studying the mark on my shoulder with a critical eye. “Even down to the shimmering stars, there is no doubt in it. You have the same mark as Moonlight. How could this be?”
“If I might make a suggestion?” I said, fidgeting slightly with her so close to me. Celestia raised an eyebrow but gave me the go-ahead. “Are you familiar with the concept of reincarnation?”
“Reincarnation? The returning of the soul to another living being? Yes... I am quite familiar with it, a friend of mine... Are you suggesting what I think you are?” Celestia asked with incredulity. “That means you are... but we thought your soul was destroyed by that monster!”
She stood up abruptly, raising her voice in shock. Celestia and Luna looked like they had seen a ghost. Considering I was literally that come back to life, I guess it wasn’t that far off the mark.
“How else would you explain this here on my shoulders?”
“Tia, we have to say...” Luna began. “With her having the mark, looking like the female version of Moonlight, the necklace in her possession and the weapons removed by them? There is no other possibility but reincarnation.”
“Then... then we could do everything in the right way this time around?” Celestia whispered, hope flaring up in her like a shining beacon. “We could protect them and guide them so we wouldn’t lose them again?”
“Well, if I might say something to that?” I interjected, both of them now looking at me. “Whatever happened in the past to my previous incarnation, I don’t hold it against you that you couldn’t help me then. It sounds more like I failed both of you, so I’m deeply sorry for that. If I could change what happened, I would gladly do so.”
“She even sounds like him when he was apologizing to us...” Celestia hiccuped and then I was subjected to a crushing hug. I let her have this, deciding to endure the pain of my still aching body. “How I wished for so long to just talk to you at least one last time. It might not be how I imagined it, but it is a start. I assume your brother has the mark of Sunfire on his shoulders?”
I nodded and she let out a relieved sob. Feeling a bit awkward, I patted her on her back, unsure how to deal with a crying princess in my embrace. Wasn’t the big sister supposed to console the little one? Talk about a role reversal. Not that she had any idea about that, but I think a revelation like that would break her at this moment. How would I even convince her of that in the first place?
Did I even want to let her know that? I don’t want to be friggin’ royalty! That job was too much of a hassle for me.
Celestia decided to send a letter to Ponyville, summoning my other half to Canterlot and assuring the girls that I was safe and sound. Just a bit under the weather for the moment. Both of them actually used a multitude of healing spells to help my recovery along.
I would have to be careful with the use of magic from now on. My mana pathways were considerably widened, meaning my magic became more potent than before. Celestia and Luna forbid me from using any kind of magic for the next few days, but I could deal with that no problem.
We talked a bit more before they had to get back to running the nation. I actually learned the name of the weapons from them, so there was that. The bow had the apt name of Moon’s Tears, while the sword, that could turn into a halberd as I learned, had the name Sun’s Fury.
Badass names for badass weapons.
Both of them were forged out of the same material that my necklaces were made out of, star steel. Moonlight was responsible for the design, as well as the ability to transform into a different form, while Sunfire had forged them with the abnormal strength required to form the material. Both of them were actually Terra-Blessed, but they were incredibly knowledgable in the use of runes.
It was an ingenious design, even to today’s standards. Celestia wasn’t all that surprised that I took such an interest in magi-tech, now that she knew I was her reincarnated teacher. Too bad I had no memory from those previous incarnations, I would have loved to have access to all that forgotten knowledge they had on runes.
Maybe the tome of magic on my phone had what I was looking for, but judging from the cursory glance I had taken of it in the confines of my own bedroom, there wasn’t enough to recreate the things Moonlight and Sunfire were able to accomplish. Most of the spells in there reminded me more of the magic used in World of Warcraft, to be honest.
I made use of the arcane explosion spell already. What? You thought I created it on my own? Pfft. As if, I wasn’t that good. Why do all the work when I had a whole spellbook I had access to?
Anyway, around evening Celestia was crushing the living daylights out of Sol, as I arrived not too long after I was left alone with Lux. Needless to say, they repeated the whole stuff they told my female self, but I let them believe we were separate beings for now.
How I would open that can of worms to them was beyond me. Both of them were sure to be unnerved if I told them something must have happened to the souls of Moonlight and Sunfire to cause me to be just me. One single entity in two bodies, it still sounded strange, did it not?
The topic wandered all over the place during dinner, from when we would have our next training session, to the Grand Galloping Gala which was being held after winter began.
I was a bit fearful of that time frame because it meant half a year passed since I got to Equestria. The words of Spectrum were still haunting me: ‘you have half a year to prepare after the Summer Sun Celebration’.
They asked me if I had appropriate clothing for such an event, so I told them I would ask Rarity about that in the coming weeks. I’m sure the others would also go to Rarity for that, she was our personal tailor in our group of friends, after all.
It wouldn’t that long until winter started now, seeing that we were already halfway through the autumn season. Time sure was flying by, it seemed. It was a good thing both of them decided to give us another training session, even if I dreaded it already.
After a few days, I was back in Ponyville with Lux recovered enough that I could use magic again. Sol had the pleasure of teaching the kids again after the school break ended and the misfortune to having to deal with a snotty brat that got her Talent Mark while rubbing it in the faces of her schoolmates.
I had no idea how you could be so proud of an image of a tiara upon your shoulders. Applebloom had the fortune to find some true friends at the end of the day, and I was very proud of Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle for standing up to Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon.
And that will be everything, for now, I think. Still have other things to do, and I’m sure you need to get back to your duties, Twilight. We will continue this the next time we sit down like this.
Yeah, sure, I’ll try not to be so snarky next time, but no promises. You know me by now, don’t you?