//------------------------------// // Chapter 15 // Story: Sunset Shimmer and the Shadowbolts // by KittyrinnAiko //------------------------------// Granny had as per her usual, outdone herself considerably. Crusty homemade bread, potato chowder, fried chicken, zucchini casserole, sweet potato pie, apple sausage patties, green beans, biscuits, gravy, and several salads. “Granny, I sure wish you’d let us help out a little more in the kitchen,” Applejack lamented as she went to her usual place. “Might be easier to chase you out and just use magic,” Nova teased. “Now don’t be telling them…” Granny protested. “Maggie, they kind of already know about magic,” Nova offered kindly enough as everyone took their places. “Granny?” Applejack inquired as she helped herself to a heaping helping of casserole. “Yes, AJ? Can I do magic, is it?” Granny teased. “Not like any of you ever showed any aptitude. I just figured that so long as you couldn't do any magic, there was no point in telling you. And slow down, there’s plenty of food.” “My family did the same thing,” Miss Twilight offered as she was directed to a place to sit. “Turns out I can do magic. I didn’t even know magic was a real thing until recently.” “Canterlot City is a good way off the grid, in regards to the magical community,” Granny offered. “There’s more than a few who settled in this area to get away from the old world attitudes and troubles. If’n our young folk couldn't do magic, we all figured there was no point in telling them. Far less likely to attract the wrong sort of attention.” “Wrong sort?” Princess Twilight asked as everyone sat down. “Might take a while to explain, but it’s related to religious nut jobs,” Sunset offered. “Extremist. Both non-magical and magical alike,” Nova explained. “But let’s not dwell on that. Maggie has outdone herself again and I have got a hearty appetite.” “Well,” Twilight said as she wound up her request. “Perhaps you can tell me, us, something about yourself?” “Sweet potato, dear?” Granny offered to Twilight. “Oh, yes, thank you.” “I’d like to hear about how Mrs Swan and Granny know each other?” Apple Bloom requested as everyone began helping themselves to the food. “Your Granny and I met shortly after I traveled into this world,” Nova offered. “From Equestria?” Sunset asked her plate now full of food. “Yes, Sunset. From Equestria. I came over to attend the Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft shortly after the Nightmare Night celebration when you were just a little filly. Fairly sure that was you?” “So that toothy little princess was you.” Sunset couldn't help but smile. “Anyway…” Nova offered while deciding to ignore the ‘toothy’ comment. “Thousands of years ago there was a mighty empire that spanned the cosmos. That was until a scientist named Grogar began tinkering with things he had no business messing with. The beings of Equestria were born, and the empire collapsed. And yes, they were human. Mostly. They were in many ways far advanced from modern humans because the schism between magical and nonmagical hadn’t happened yet. “I am,” Nova had to think for a bit to choose her words. After all, there was no way she could come right out and tell the truth of her origin with her own as yet unwed mother in the room. Had Twilight even met the stallion yet? “..a refugee of sorts. I imagine I could have stayed in Equestria, but Princess Celestia and I had determined that my staying might result in problems that Equestria simply wasn’t ready for. The Elements of Harmony needed to be revived yet.” At the mention of the Elements, Princess Twilight perked up and even momentarily forgot about her food. “So you came here?” Sunset asked. “Indeed. England to be exact. I have traveled to many lands, many worlds, but chose to stay here. As to how I got to this world, there is an old workshop that houses many mirrors that link dimensions. Some of which were destroyed by Starswirl the Bearded long ago as he’d come to the conclusion the worlds they connected to were far too dangerous. One he destroyed because Princess Celestia had become obsessed with venturing in to see a King Sombra that had not yet been turned to evil when she first went through.” “I don’t understand? If he wasn’t evil, why was it so bad for Celestia to see him?” Twilight asked. She was genuinely confused. “All of Equestria depended on Princess Celestia and Starswirl feared she might go and never return,” Nova supplied. “That and that Sombra had become tainted as well. You’d have to ask her about the details if she’s willing to talk about it. “As for myself, the mirror I traveled through took me to a world of humans who had magic. Though I can’t help but think that Starswirl never realized that the mirror which leads to England and the one that connects Canterlot City lead to the same world. Granted that this place may have been wilderness at the time.” “If he had known, he’d not likely have dumped so many dangerous artifacts here. That is according to the records. He’s yet to fess up to what all went through that portal,” Twilight offered softly. In the process of cross-referencing mentions of the human world Twilight had discovered that it’d been used as a dumping ground and had a mind to grill herself some horseflesh – figuratively speaking of course. A fact that had really taken the wind out of her hero worship of Starswirl. Not like a part of her wasn’t wishing that she’d never freed the pony in the first place. The stallion was the very epitome of Canterlot arrogance. “Indeed, and don’t worry about the memory stone, I’ve got it.” “Memory stone?” Applejack asked. “That little trinket Miss Blush had,” Nova supplied. “Oh, I knew she had it, but I had to be careful about the where and when to go after it. I let Shield take it, and then I switched it with a copy that’s not quite so dangerous before they could figure out just how dangerous it really is. There are people in that organization I don’t trust, so I left them with a trinket that would cause people to rethink their priorities. And this time it wasn't Starswirl, it was Clover the Clever who dumped that specific item. In truth, it should never have left Equestria, but what’s done is done. It presently exists outside the time stream. For safekeeping. You and Sunset might like to go to Equestria and have a look through the Canterlot restricted section if you’ve got a mind to research its history, with Princess Celestia’s permission of course.” “I’m not making that mistake twice,” Sunset vowed. “Sneaking into the restricted section is what led to my ending up over here.” “No more sneaking then,” Nova teased. “Now to get back to my story, the mirror opened up on a blind alley in downtown London. From there I made my way to a little dive known as the Leaky Cauldron where I met and was subsequently taken in by Maggie’s father. A gentleman by the name of Henry Weasley.” “Weasley?” Applejack asked. She had a big smile on her face. “You’re Great Grandfather on my side of the family,” Granny informed her. “Smith isn’t even my real last name. It’s an assumed name. “Yer Grandfather was a Mackintosh, but he’d decided to call himself Apfel and the customs guy just went and wrote Apple.” Granny laughed at her recounting. “He and I met, courted one another, got married, and that’s how you ended up with Apple as our last name. I went back to using Smith after he died.” “Seriously?” AJ was stunned. “But why all the name changing?” “People were afraid of being tracked by some rather unsavory folks back then,” Nova explained. “First it was the followers of a man called Gellert Grindelwald, and then another one who’d dubbed himself Lord Voldemort. In truth, the man’s name was Tom Riddle and he’d a father from the nonmagical community. Still though,” She let out a sigh punctuated only by the clinking of tableware on dishes. “Grindelwald wanted a world where magic users didn’t have to hide. Trouble was, his solution to everything was to use the sledgehammer approach. And to be true, there were a lot of people who liked his ideas. The downside is that he perceived bench sitters as opposition. No sitting on the sidelines, either you were one-hundred percent for him, or…” “Or?” Miss Twilight prompted. “He’d kill anyone he saw as a threat, and his supporters weren’t much better,” Granny informed them. “Riddle was worse. Kind of like saying vote for me or my followers will track you down, and kill you. It’s why I left England under an assumed name. Historians will say things weren’t all that bad in England, and they were worse in Amareica. Europe was in turmoil, and truth be told, Amareica offered opportunities.” “At the time I was restoring the Silver Wood Village, which was not too far from where Hogwarts is.” “I hear Hogwarts has really gone downhill,” Granny prompted. “It has. Ever since Professor Dumbledore got in, the curriculum has been slowly dumbed down. Worst yet is the houses are all at each other’s throats. It’s not like how it was when we attended. We had so much fun back then, didn’t we?” “When I met you, you’d just broken the Floo network,” Granny announced. “Floo network?” Miss Twilight asked. “Sort of a transport tube slash particle accelerator transportation system they have in England. Mostly in the big cities.” Nova explained. “There are reasons we call magic, ‘Magic’ instead of some fancy scientific name. Magic makes it possible to do things that would otherwise be impossible because it allows us to play with the quantum state of reality. That and the majority of users have an education level that’s barely past the primary level and lack the understanding necessary for better terminology.” “On discovering the thrill of chasing through the Floo, she proceeded to race back and forth through it while carrying a case that was, in reality, the entry to a rather large displaced space. A portal to a pocket dimension within the confines of transport matrices,” Granny explained. There was a big grin on her face. “What?” Princess Twilight exclaimed. “But, but…” “Inert when the doors are shut tight,” Nova offered. “But the gravitational interaction of the two…” Princess Twilight protested. “They shut the whole thing down for nearly a week to give it time to stabilize,” Nova informed her. “First time we met she was in her little fox form,” Granny informed. “I’d been unaware of what had happened, and only knew the Floo Room had been filled with smoke earlier, and that we had a guest. Never occurred to me that the cute little fox with the adorable feathery wings was the guest. So I glomped her.” “And got an earful, as I recall.” “And you were so cute sitting up on top of the bookshelf preening your wings.” “Hang on, you can turn into a fox?” Sunset asked. “Well, I am kitsune after all.” “Hang on, I thought you were a pony princess?” Apple Jack asked. Being both a Pony Princess and Kitsune had been warring with her ever since Granny had told Fluttershy that Nova was a Fox Girl. “I am,” Nova offered with a smirk. “I am also Kitsune.” She took a moment. “Long ago a tribe of Kitsune discovered a portal to Equestria. They immigrated there to escape persecution. Thanks to how the magic of Equestria works, their default form in Equestria is a pony form. When I’m in Equestria I’m a pony. Here, on the other hand, is another matter altogether.” “I’m to understand that you are Princess Luna’s daughter?” Princess Twilight inquired. “I gather it was Lord Prince Blueblood who dropped that little bombshell,” Nova replied with an air of resignation. “Adopted, really. Princess Celestia does tell me things she thinks I need to know. I hear he was a bit chuffed because I have a certain family heirloom.” “Princess Celestia set him straight. Although, I’ve got a feeling he did it deliberately because Princess Celestia doesn't seem to want to talk about it.” Princess Twilight informed Nova. “I’m to understand the crown had a curse on it.” “Placed there by King Sombra in his madness. The crown in Question was known as the Blood Moon crown. And I am to understand that Princess Luna remembers little from the time leading up to Nightfall.” “If she does remember anything, she doesn't talk about it. I looked up the available information on King Sombra’s known artifacts,” Princess Twilight confided. “According to the information in the archives, any creature in possession of the crown would act as King Sombra’s agent.” Twilight took a breath and let it out slowly. “I fear the crown may have been the root of a number of decisions, including the one that took Sunset from the Stallion who should have been her legal guardian.” “What?” Sunset asked with a mouth full of half-eaten food. “How’s that?” Dusty was curious too. “Prince was more than happy to share with me certain uncomfortable truths about his family’s past dealings. When added with things I already knew, it added up to a rather nefarious plot,” Princess Twilight offered. “In Equestria, Pippin had married Snap Shutter because she wasn't happy about her Dusty being gone all the time. Shortly after Sunset got pulled from the river she had a power surge that brought her to Princess Celestia’s attention. The Platinum family saw Sunset only as a potential asset. When Snap married Pippin, custody of Sunset was kind of up in the air because the Dusk Shimmer over there was out on assignment and not available to consent to Snap having legal custody. Sunset was Dusk Shimmer’s daughter, not Snap Shutter’s daughter, and the Platinums leveraged Sunset’s ambiguous legal custody status to gain custody. Without that little power play, it would have been a simple matter for Snap to assume custody until such time as Dusk Shimmer returned.” “And all this time I thought they’d taken me in out of the goodness of their hearts?’ Sunset protested. “The Prince Platinum I met was a good stallion,” Nova protested in turn. “But then again, I hadn’t met him until after Sunset’s little blunder spelled the end of the Blood Moon gem embedded in the crown. Never met his father though … I suppose it’s possible they had unwittingly set a number of ill-conceived plans into motion while under its influence and hadn’t the wisdom to see the error of their ways.” “And everything suggests that once they had Sunset in their control, parties within the family gas-lighted her,” Princess Twilight added. “It never occurred to them that what they were doing was wrong.” “You, um, find out what had happened when Pippin, the river, I’m assuming she and sunset went into the river?” Dusty asked. “The case had been ruled as an accident,” Twilight offered. “I found the rope though. The Canterlot Guard had kept it as evidence. It’d been cut a little at a time to look like it frayed. Cut on the near shore. Finding out who did it after all these years is not likely to happen and the ponies behind it fell victim to their own scheming. I’m finding that Prince has just been playing the fool in public to throw ponies off their guard. Likely worried he’ll be next.” “Probably worried Dusk Shimmer might come back from the grave,” Dusty teased. There was a slight edge to his voice though. “And to think I could have had a halfway normal foal-hood,” Sunset lamented. “Take into consideration that you ending up here, kind of spoiled a whole bunch of plans,” Princess Twilight offered. “Yes, and no,” Scootaloo interjected. “I mean, I love my dad, but if…” “If the Snap Shutter in Equestria is anything like my brother, Sunset, it’d been just you and that other Scootaloo more often than not,” Holiday finished. “And I’d have likely ended up in a dorm… which is where I ended up anyway. Still though.” “To be true, Maggi and I spent the better part of seven years living in a dorm,” Nova offered. “I mean, it’s not bad if no one’s trying to mess with your head.” “We lived in an old tower in a castle. Lots of fun save for the year the roof got blown off.” Granny informed them. “That is one event I’ll not soon forget. Afterward, there wasn’t enough space in what was left of the tower. They moved me to my own private quarters, and that’s when I decided I was done dimension-hopping.” “Dimension-hopping?” Princess Twilight asked. “I can, if I have a mind, slip through the curtain between dimensions. It tends to be an iffy proposition and can often be a one-way trip due to the ebb and flow of the time streams. It’s often left me without a friend in the world, and I was done with doing that.” “You’ve had a good life here,” Granny offered. “You and Alalme married Cygnus Black…” “Hang on, two women married one guy?” Scootaloo protested. “Could have been three of us,” Granny offered. “Save I wasn’t too keen on group marriages.” “Ya, it’s more of a pony thing. Oddly enough, wizard law allowed it,” Nova informed her. “To my surprise, Cygnus’s sister Belvina was our staunchest supporter. You see, even back then people had ideas about blood purity. The irony is that it seems to have originated among Muggles who’d ideas about reinventing old religions way back in the Victorian era. Many were diligently trying to revive long-repressed religions, but among those were people who didn't care about accuracy or integrity. They would typically be non-magic users who had a bad habit of taking shortcuts, and in this case, I’m talking about charismatic people who were so out there, even their contemporaries thought they were nuts. The worst of the lot never bothered to do research and just made things up to justify their own selfishness. The worst part is many of the ideas, such as racial superiority and blood purity gained a foothold in the minds of people who would listen, in whom those ideas took root, and flourished. Granted back then the notion was that the English were somehow superior to all other nationalities. Back when the British Empire and colonialism was in its heyday. “It was that kind of thinking that Grindelwald was guilty of. He’d a good idea, a world where magic users could live openly but went about it in all the wrong ways. “As for our proposed marriage, there were quite a few that objected to the union, and most vehemently too. Cygnus’s sister Belvina really wanted me as part of the Black family. Not so much because she saw Alalme and me as individuals worthy of her brother, but because she’d realized that we’d be an asset to the family. Part of her argument stemmed from research that hinted that wizardkind owed their ability to use magic thanks to marrying magical creatures in human form. Then she points at me and says ‘that woman is not a mindless creature’, and ‘you can call her a beast if you want, but you’d better have a smile on your face because so help me, if anyone walking this earth on two legs could be considered a demigod, it’s her.” She even went so far as to state that she’d be willing to wager that I was every bit as powerful as a Priestesses of Akkadia of legend. And then I’m like, um, actually, I am a priestess of Akkadia.” A rather wicked smile crossed Nova’s face. “You could have heard a pin drop when I dropped that bit of information. She then went on to argue that if they kept doing what they had been doing, the Black family would soon go the way of many of the other old families in decline. In the end, they grudgingly went along with it because what idiot craving power doesn’t like the idea of bringing a powerful ally into the family. Those that were on the fence or opposed changed their minds when I went up against Grindelwald as part of a team to bring him to justice. I was working as an Auror, a sort of magical police officer. Grindelwald had developed a lightning jinx, and well, lightning has no effect on me. Heck, it’s a byproduct of my ability to open portals.” “But, a typical lightning strike has around three hundred million volts of electricity?” Miss Twilight stated. “To be true his spell was only in the kilovolt range.” “She’d likely have the same abilities as a pegasus,” Sunset offered. “A pegasus forms an energy barrier around their body in much the same way as an electric eel generates an electric charge. Only in this case, it’s a fairly benign field. The field shields the individual from electrical discharge, the air pressure generated by rushing through the air at great speeds, and sudden impacts.” “Faced with an opponent his little trick didn’t work on, he surrendered,” Nova offered. “Just like that?” Scootaloo asked. “Just like that. His giving up so easily had me baffled as well. That and a little disappointment. What I hadn’t known was that he’d planned for just that eventuality. He made good his escape not long after we handed him over to the local authorities.” “But they caught him again, didn’t they?” Apple Bloom asked. “We did, but not before his followers had managed to corner and kill Cygnus.” Nova’s tone had dropped to that of a person echoing a deep longing. “No point in dwelling on it,” Granny chastised. Granny was quick to see if she could change the subject because she didn’t think anyone needed to hear about what Nova had done to Grindelwald and his lieutenants. The ultimate irony is that Nova’s involvement had been overshadowed by one Professor Dumbledore who’d taken credit for putting an end to Grindelwald. “Now who wants dessert?” “I do!” Apple Bloom was the first to speak up. She then proceeded to shrink back from a withering glare from Granny. “Guests first, of course,” she added sounding rather sheepish.