//------------------------------//
// Part V - Chapter 8: Ulterior Motives 
// Story: Alicornae: The Legend of Starlit Sky 
// by PortalJumper 
//------------------------------//


Alicornae: The Legend of Starlit Sky


Part V - Chapter 8: Ulterior Motives







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The process of removing and reforming the pieces of the Heart of Fate was tedious and exhausting to her magic, but for as slow going as it was it gave a her quite a bit of time to contemplate what could possibly be happening with them. As it stood now she had a prevailing theory that Twilight, somehow, was using these pieces to animate these constructs, although the methods she had used and the amount of fragments she had managed to steal from Chrysalis was eluding her.

With the last piece reformed, there was only a tiny, pinhole sized pit in the center of her own shard. It pulsed merrily in the grip of Starlit's magic before she turns it back around her neck.

Taking a moment to rest herself, Starlit took in the scenery of the castle's courtyard. On the whole it was in better shape than the surrounding city by several degrees of magnitude. The hedges and flower gardens, while now wildly overgrown, were still green and lush, and the marble pathways that intersected around the grounds were still in good condition, if somewhat grimy from exposure. Even the magnificent staircase leading up to the open portcullis of the palace itself was in fantastic condition; Starlit had figured that, expecting a siege, the defenders of this palace might have destroyed something like this to make it harder for potential invaders to enter the palace itself.

The opulence of the palace itself made the ruination of the city surrounding it all the more stark for the juxtaposition, at least until Starlit noticed the burned tatters that had once been the five flags of the other Princesses. A scrap of blue here, a melted fastening with some orange still stuck to it there, and all of it a grim reminder of what exactly the cost of all of this was.

Standing tall, Starlit pulled the spear she had salvaged out from its holster in her side, holding it forward as she began her ascent up the stairs, one quickly halted by what she saw at the top of it.

Standing in perfect lockstep with each other were another sextet of constructs, each with spears leveled forward, and the moment they saw Starlit crest the landing of the stairs they began their purposeful, inexorable, march forward.

Starlit barely had a moment to conjure her ward before the first spear struck true, just barely getting past the ward before it fully manifested and gouging a hole in her chest. Starlit coughed viciously, blood dribbling down her chin, as the spear was pulled out. Even worse,  she began to gasp and struggle for air as she felt a lung collapse inside of her.

Acting purely on instinct Starlit threw the spear in her magic forward wildly, managing to drill the hard steel point through the visor of the construct and straight out the back. There was a pop of grey light from the back of its metal head before it fell limp, held aloft only by the spear's haft before its aged rivets fell apart and left only the helmet on her spear.

Starlit had no room to maneuver and no space to reorient herself before the next construct was upon her, followed closely behind by two of its compatriots. Thinking quickly she swung the haft of the spear at the advancing armor, sending the helmet of the first crashing directly into the helmet of the second. Rivets and plating failed as the two collided, and the second construct's helmeted head flew a good dozen feet to the left while its body collapsed and tumbled down the stairs.

A burning pain tore down Starlit's side as a spear just barely glanced off of her armor, still cutting through and deeply enough the leave a neat, bleeding gash down the length of Starlit's torso. She didn't have time to savor this injury before another spear dug straight into the joint of her knee, knocking her backwards and sending her tumbling down the polished marble steps after the armor she had sent clattering down.

Starlit bounced and crashed until she fell flat against the marble landing at the bottom of the steps. Her body was contused and bleeding, her left eye had swollen shut, and all she felt from her left leg was a searing pain that stopped short at her knee. Looking down at her leg and then up to the stairs, Starlit found that the leverage from the spear lodged in the knee had torn her lower leg fully clean from her body, and she let out a bloodcurdling scream of pain at the realization.

Her howls of pain and rage were cut brutally short, when another spear pierced through her side where the armor was split, gouging straight through her stomach and out the other side to pin her in place, followed by two more sent through her chest and her eyeball, followed by nothing but blackness. Starlit knew this darkness well, and she welcomed the chance to try again it afforded her.

Yet, in this blackness there was now something else. Whenever Starlit had come to this place before it was just herself and the pulsing beat of the stone. It had seemed more like sleeping than anything else, but now she knew better, because there were other figures here with her.

Standing some distance away Starlit saw six ponies, four earth ponies and two unicorns. They were all male, all of various shades and colors, and all looked to be in the throes of despair. They wailed and cried out in suffering, but no sounds escaped their lips. Indeed, the only sound Starlit could hear in this place was the pulsing beat of the shard she carried, before even that faded away as she felt herself leaving the horrific scene before her. For the first time Starlit could recall she didn't want to leave it.

When her eyes snapped open Starlit found that barely any time had passed at all; the sun was still in he same position, the blood beneath her was still fresh, and though her leg was reattached she could still feel the phantom pain from when it had been torn off. This process, which normally took hours by her last estimate, had barely taken the space of a few minutes.

"What is this?" Starlit frantically thought to herself. "What did Twilight do? What did I do?!"

Starlit found barely any time to contemplate the matter before remembering that she was still, technically, in the middle of a fight. She quickly got to her hooves, taking up her spear from where it had fallen, to see that the constructs had retreated back to the top of the stairs.

Taking a moment to manifest her ward once more, Starlit marched purposefully up the bloodstained stairs. The constructs at the top were prepared to march, but Starlit was ready this time. Feinting right as a spear sailed past her head, Starlit made a wide, sweeping slash with the spear tip that caught all of the constructs at head level. One after the other rivets popped out under the force of her blow, sending the helmets of these animated suits of armor colliding into each other, one by one, until all four had been ripped off and their bodies fallen limp to the ground.

Starlit didn't take the time to savor her victory, instead letting her spear clatter to the ground as she quickly pulled the necklace off of her neck and held it aloft in front of her. There was no change in its surface from when she had last put it on; same smooth surface, same small pit in the center that leaked out grey light. Everything was exactly the same, which made what Starlit had just seen all the more inexplicable.

"This has never happened before," Starlit said to herself. "Why would there have been ponies in there? I didn't even know that the—"

Starlit lifted her head with a start, a realization suddenly taking hold in her mind. It wasn't something she wanted to entertain as an idea, but she had no other way of explaining it bar Sun descending down from on high to give her any other answer.

Slowly, carefully, Starlit pulled the helmets of the fallen armors open, wherein she found another four shards exactly like the ones she'd found in the six at the bottom of the stairs. The filmy organic substance holding them onto the surface suddenly made far more sense to her, as did their position in the helmets.

"These were ponies," Starlit muttered. "She gave these ponies pieces of the Heart of Fate that she'd stolen from Chrysalis, and used her magic to bind them to their bodies. Which means that, whatever magic trapped them in these suits of armor…"

Starlit dropped the helmet she was holding, going weak at the knees. She collapsed to the polished marble landing, nearly laying prostrate before the massive open portcullis as the weight of what she knew overtook her.

"This magic is tied to me, and I can't get rid of it."

Starlit felt herself shaking; from anger, from betrayal, from sheer indignation at how thoroughly she had been used for so long. She wanted to cry, wanted to scream, wanted to do anything to feel like she could take back control of this situation, but deep down she knew nothing she could do here would help.

Slowly, purposefully, Starlit rose to her hooves. She took up her spear, restrung the stone around her neck, and began the long, slow march into the palace. If there were answers to be had they would come from the Princess herself, and Starlit was going to wring them out of that pompous, self-aggrandizing, overly-inflated ego if it was the last thing she ever did.



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A clatter of steel on stone echoed off of the polished marble walls as another of Twilight Sparkle's animated armors fell to Starlit's blows. With a heavy sigh Starlit holstered her pilfered spear as she lifted the helmet off of the armor and opened its visor. With a sharp yank she dislodged the piece of the Heart of Fate from inside and gently hovered it into the pouch on her saddlebags that she had been keeping all of them.

In total, not counting the six Starlit had fed into her own before realizing what exactly they were, she had collected twenty-six from the fallen constructs. The clattered and clinked together as she walked the empty, beautiful halls, a chorus of memories that she carried with her from whomever these ponies had been.

Everywhere Starlit looked she was given a glimpse of what her world might have been like had Equestria not fallen apart and lost its magic; luxurious paintings depicting grand conquests and idyllic scenes of merriment, dark wood furnishings upholstered with dark purple cushions, elegant bedrooms and drawing chambers that looked like they had only just been occupied; in the hours that Starlit had wandered the empty halls, she had seen every creature comfort afforded to a populace that was no longer around to enjoy it.

"All of this, and nopony to share it with," Starlit mused to herself as she poked her head into yet another bedroom. "Maybe if Twilight had focused more on rebuilding and getting ponies to help her do it rather than becoming a tinpot tyrant, she wouldn't have needed me at all."

Hours of walking in the palace, and nothing to show for it save a bag of stones and worrying thoughts that threatened to make Starlit doubt herself. It came as a relief when her bag of fragments along with the one she wore around her neck tugged to the right, giving Starlit something else to focus on.

Following the gentle pulling Starlit was led to a door, one situated in a large pillar that dominated a large, central rotunda, and unlike any of the other ones that she had seen thus far. Where all of the other doors she had happened across in the palace were made from a similar dark wood, this one was instead made from wrought iron, held closed by three heavy latches that had no discernible locks or mechanisms for holding them shut.

Starlit laid a hoof in the door, running it down the latches and across the rough surface. There was a familiar hum of magic emanating from it, and as Starlit examined the frame she could see various runes not too dissimilar to her own warding lines back home.

"Shame whichever Princess made this door didn't use a normal lock for this," Starlit said as she illuminated her horn.

Concentrating on the runes carved into the frame, Starlit slowly began the work of undoing the enchantment. The spell was complex, far more so than her own warding lines or even the shields she could now generate, but the underlying sigils were still the same, and by working through those she could unravel the more complicated spellcraft that had been woven into it.

With a flash of teal magic tinted by silver, the runes on the door dissipated and the humming ceased. Three heavy iron clanks echoed down the hall as the latches fell open, followed by a long, high creak as the door swung open on ancient hinges. A series of teal torches illuminated along the walls, showing the spiraling staircase descending and ascending into darkness.

Taking her spear up in her magic, Starlit made her way down. The staircase was narrow, just barely wide enough for herself to get down, but was tall enough that Starlit could hold her spear over her head to keep it out of the way. The smell of must and dampness got more pervasive the further down she went, and a chill began to creep up her spine the further she went into the earth.

After an interminable amount of time Starlit finally reached the bottom of the stairs, which led out into a large, smoothed out cavern that smelled of mold and metal. Illuminating her horn, Starlit took a few cautious steps forward, only for her spear to drop as she saw something she was certain Twilight didn't mean for her to see.

Scattered around this cavernous space were shelves and tables covered in old scrolls, tomes, and all sorts of exotic and arcane equipment that reminded Starlit all too much of Twilight's basement in the Golden Oak. All of this paled in comparison, though, to the centerpiece of this workshop; hovering above a large stone slab and held in place by six metallic arms, was a massive black stone that hummed with power and glowed with brilliant silver light.

Starlit could only stand, stunned into awe, as she looked upon what could only be the Heart of Fate itself. The stone was titanic in size, easily filling up the entire back of the thirty foot tall cavern. It dwarfed the prison that Luna had been encased in when Starlit had found her considerably, and true to its name it was indeed shaped like a massive, beating heart. It pulsated with a sound like grinding stone, and its beats were both natural and disconcerting at the same time.

As Starlit slowly approached the Heart she noticed that her saddlebags were no longer rattling, and a quick inspection led her to realize that all,of her collected fragments were missing. An cacophony of clinks drew her attention back to the Heart, where she could see the twenty-six stones clattering against their progenitor before slowly sinking into its surface.

"How did she get this thing here?" Starlit muttered. "This was supposed to be Chrysa—"

Starlit stopped short when her brain caught up with what she was about to say, the realization hitting her with the force of an explosion; Sun was in danger, and Starlit had to warn him. He had to know that the Heart of Fate was no longer with Chrysalis.

Thinking quickly, Starlit began to root through the scrolls and books littering the workspace that had been set up down here. There had to be something that would help her figure this out, or at least something that would let her get out a message to Sun. Unfortunately, all she found were descriptions of magical formulae that she couldn't make heads or tails of, and those were just the things that she could recognize; everything else was in old Equestrian, which was a damn sight different than her own language. In a rage Starlit threw the books to the floor, sending one of the smaller tables crashing to the stone floor along with the equipment it was supporting.

So consumed was she in her search for any sort of clue or indicator on how to proceed that Starlit hadn't noticed the steady, gentle beat of her own fragment around her neck. She gingerly pulled it from inside of her armor, afraid that it would fly away towards the Heart, and saw that it was glowing fully now with a nimbus of silver light not unlike the Heart itself. She could feel the pull of its magic towards the Heart, as though it wanted to join the other fragments Starlit had saved from the automatons.

With careful, measured steps, Starlit walked to the Heart, feeling the pull of the stone in her magic getting stronger and stronger as she got closer. Before too long it became a struggle to hold onto it, and with a nervous grimace Starlit let it go. The stone rocketed forward to the Heart, striking its surface with a deep, resonant crack that echoed all throughout the cavern. Slowly but surely it was drawn into the Heart as the other fragments had been, leaving the leather cord and silver bezel it had been wrapped into fall to the ground as it was completely subsumed. The only remnant of it was the tiny pit from its surface which still exuded a pinprick of silver light.

Starlit felt no different than she had before, save for the creeping dread that she had given up her lifeline and her only chance to possibly get a hold of Sun, until she noticed the pinhole light crack slightly. The first fissure was followed by another, then another, and yet another still, until a symphony of cracks like glass being ground down echoed throughout the cavern. Every single crack, puncture, shatter exposed more and more silver light from within the Heart itself as pieces of its smooth black surface fell inward towards the light before fading from view.

When the cracking finally finished there was a jagged hole roughly Starlit's size in the surface of the Heart of Fate that had an illusion of depth to it. She simply couldn't shake the feeling that she could just cross the threshold of the Heart and walk into it like she had done with Luna's cage. As Starlit tentatively walked towards the Heart she saw a silvery hoof reach out from it. It was the same color as the light the Heart was radiating, and despite her own better sense Starlit took it with her own hoof.

There was a familiarity Starlit hadn't expected when she took the hoof in her own, one that was warm and inviting, and without a second thought Starlit crossed the threshold and went into the light.



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A flash of magenta light banished all sights in her throne room for a moment, though Twilight Sparkle didn't need to shield her eyes from her own magic. Sweat dripped down her forehead, focused as she was on her latest attempt to wrest full control of the Crystal Heart back from her fellow Princesses.

As the glare dissipated Twilight examined her work; a core of magenta magic roughly the size of her own head pulsed and warbled inside of its crystalline case, only slightly larger than it had been before this latest session. It was a beautiful sight to be sure, but it was not one that Twilight had wanted to see. She remembered that, when power was shared between the four alicorns, the heart would fully change color to suit each of them. It's pale, translucent surface irked Twilight to no end.

Perched on each of their three thrones, entombed in crystal, Celestia, Luna, and Cadance sat. Their faces were placid and regal, as Twilight's enchantment upon their thrones had not sprung until they sat upon them, but now she felt their frozen expressions of gentility were silently mocking her.

"If you all had just listened to what I had had to say all those years ago then none of this would be happening," Twilight stated to the statues. Her voice echoed in the cavernous hall, the only reply she would receive.

Twilight walked up to Luna's crystal prison and clinked a hoof against it. The dull ringing sound was pleasant, but was badly contrasted by its grim contents. If what Starlit Sky had told her was accurate then this was certainly a familiar state of being for the Princess of Night, and Twilight couldn't help but feel a measure of guilt for the irony.

Twilight let out a sigh before turning and descending down the dais to assume her position at the supplicant's podium. Starlit Sky was going to be coming for her at any moment, and Twilight wanted to have a spectacle to show her when she arrived.

"A just a fair Queen, to rule all Equestria with a firm hoof and a gentle heart," Twilight said to herself before forging the magical connection between herself and the Crystal Heart. A beam of magic shot from the tip of her horn into her crown, before focusing through the five fragments of the Heart of Fate embedded into it and recasting back to the Crystal Heart through it. The bright magenta beam illuminated the room, and Twilight prepared for drain in her power that would soon follow.

What came next was decidedly unexpected when she suddenly felt like her head was being yanked down by her horn. With a crack against the railing of the podium Twilight's vision flashed with sparks of light, and clink of metal on the ground drew her attention when her sight came back and she stopped writhing from the sudden blow to her forehead.

On the ground, seemingly pinned there by its five black stone adornments, was her crown. It had landed perfectly on its face, and was now quivering as though trying to force its way through the floor by sheer brute strength. What's more, each of the stones was now glowing with a small nimbus of silvery light.

Curiosity gave way to worry; Twilight had never seen these stones do anything like this before, but as a precaution she tried to focus her magic into the crown to contact Starlit Sky. Twilight knew that her wayward servant had been using the stones to spy on her, though how she had yet to discern given Starlit's dearth of magical skill compared to herself, but it wouldn't hurt to check in.

Slowly the magic wormed into the disconcerting aura of the Heart of Fate's fragments, but instead of projecting her consciousness across space Twilight was assaulted by innumerable voices and sights. The deluge of sensory information sent her collapsing to the floor, and after what felt like a day but could have only been a moment she ended the connection.

Twilight's vision swam, he head pounded, and her whole body felt numb. On the whole this was the most debilitated she had felt since becoming an alicorn, and she knew exactly why this was happening.

As soon as her traitorous nerves and muscles would let her Twilight got back up, took to the air, and sped out of the throne room. Her wings pumped with such speed and ferocity that she wondered why she hadn't created a rainboom yet, but aerial tricks weren't her concern; she needed speed, and she needed it badly.

At the far end of the receiving hall Twilight saw the central column that supported the top spire and served as the only elevator to the ground floor from the throne room. The floating stone disc that normally ascended the structure would take far too long to get her where she needed to be, so she opted to simply blow through it with a beam of pure destructive magic and fly past the debris.

Down and down Twilight flew, her way lit by teal fire from the magical torches embedded in the walls of the shaft, until she could see the bottom of the shaft coming up. With another blast of magic Twilight opened a hole in the floor of the shaft and zoomed down further, taking note of the fact that the magically locked and warded iron door protecting her great work was open.

"She can't have gotten past that, she can't!" Twilight roared in her head as she slowed down to avoid slamming into the true bottom of the shaft. With a sharp turn Twilight decelerated and slid to a halt on her gilded horseshoes, taking in a sight that was both awe-inspiring and blindingly infuriating in equal measure.

The Heart of Fate was beating, spreading an aura of silver light all across her workshop, and just inside of its black surface Twilight could see Starlit Sky walking into the blackness of its inner confines.



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