//------------------------------//
// Mark of Life Anew 
// Story: Shattered Magic 
// by EpicGamer10075 
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“Thanks, Miss Berrytwist!”

“...It’s still Shadow...” Tempest replied weakly, though the foal had already left the store. She shook her head and looked out around the rest of the store, which had some seats and tables lying around, a few ponies sitting at them, amounting to a few less than the other days she had been at the store as a customer. It was hardly surprising, though still a bit disheartening to see...

Of course, most ponies wouldn’t expect her to have a job in a sweets shop of all places, but once they saw her Mark, it was difficult to argue with.

She looked back down at it herself, almost on instinct, and saw the pink cup on her flank, chilled white foam pouring out of it with a straw and a berry atop it, and a pair of hearts just above. It was certainly an odd mark for one with a history like hers, but she was never a complete slave to the Storm King’s whims, and her Mark was really the greatest indication of that.

Taking another glance around the room to make sure she wasn’t missing any customers, Tempest paused to reflect, and she recalled the time she got her Mark some time into her service under the Storm King. It was a independent scouting mission in the depths of winter, and she had holed up in a dense forest to help protect from the cold while also giving her access to more edible things than just grass and flowers.

She had always had a passing interest with berries and had gone foraging for them near Klugetown in her foalhood sometimes, so when it really was her life on the line, she did a lot of experimentation with which berries were best for her health and which just tasted best. And given the snow all around at the time, she put the berries and snow together to help refreshen her and test some ideas and... next thing she new, she had her Mark.

Smiling a little to herself, she also remembered how pissed the Storm King was when he found out that that was her Mark—not anything to do with leadership, or combat, or physical strength; no, it was fucking frozen sweets. He didn’t lash out at her though, as she had already proven her capability as a Lieutenant at the time without a Mark, so he just made sure that she didn’t try and get distracted by it, which she obeyed.

Obviously though, now that he was dead, Tempest was free to do whatever she truly wanted, and with her Mark’s potential quite untapped and little else to do to occupy her time, she found herself working with Bon-Bon to help her little shop’s production. She hadn’t been there long enough to ask for any of the extra equipment that would help make her types of sweets, but there was still a big freezer and a blender, and with the book she acquired after an... uncomfortable conversation with Spike, who was left to tend the Friendship Castle’s library, she had everything she really needed to make some new stuff.

Taking one more look around the quiet and quaint room, she pulled up a little sign from under the counter and placed it on top, letting any new customer know to ring the nearby bell for her if they needed to while she turned around and headed into the back room, which was just Bon-Bon’s kitchen. She quickly went around the central counter to the side wall, where the tall and wide refrigerator/freezer stood, the top third being equipped for the former utility and the rest for the latter, which she promptly opened up with a hoof.

Inside the expansive frozen space were some essential foods like frozen green beans and corn, a few ice cube trays, a bin of sorts to keep the made ice cubes, and about a dozen and a half glasses of different mixes of berry juices, which were frozen into ice and then crushed into slush, and left with a straw and a few berries on top for good measure before getting stuffed in the freezer. It was hardly professionally made, but it tasted really nice in her (obviously unbiased) opinion, and that was good enough for a town like Ponyville.

...Well, for most of the creatures living there, anyway. Twilight’s friends were still avoiding her at every turn possible, and she could hardly blame them, so when she was told it would be a good idea to get back in touch with her Mark—by Pinkie and the the younger sisters of three of Twilight’s friends, oddly enough—she turned down the first idea to pop up, which was to work at Sugarcube Corner. Tempest knew those friends liked to go there, so she didn’t want to break a place they found so important to them, and instead went with the other shop she could work at.

It was only later that she realized her employer was a secret agent, and her marefriend was kind of crazy.

And of course, such business decided to rear its head now of all times, so with the composed Sweetie Drops Bon-Bon out of the shop, she was left with Lyra Heartstrings.

And, as she heard some hoofsteps prancing on down the stairs in the other room, she knew she shouldn’t have dared to invoke that mare’s name.

“Oh!” Lyra gasped out as she spotted Tempest herself, still looking into the freezer with the open door between herself and the other mare, “Hey Fizzy!”

The broken Unicorn sighed. “...It’s still Tempest.”

“Doesn’t matter! Now wachya up to?” Lyra returned without missing a beat.

“Just checking on the ..’slushies’,” Tempest answered tersely, though hesitated for a moment, unfamiliar with the foalish term.

“Ooh! They’re ready!?” The other mare squealed in turn, quickly trotting in place in a way that Tempest wasn’t quite sure of the name of yet, though had already seen it plenty.

However, such happiness wasn’t nearly as contagious as it was to other creatures. “Just because I am checking on them doesn’t mean they’re ready yet, Lyra. I’ve already told you this twice before.” She didn’t need to look over the door to know that Lyra had stopped moving, only tilting her head a bid in sadness and confusion. “But, yes,” She assented with a quiet sigh, “They are ready now.”

Reaching inside the freezer and promptly ignoring the other Unicorn’s cheering, Tempest grabbed the blue and purple one of the drinks with her hoof, pulled back out of the freezer and turned around to put the glass on the central counter, then looked back at the open door for a moment. Taking a deep breath, she channeled her magic up through the cracked stump of her horn, the arcane energies sparking and zapping about as she reached it towards the door, grabbed it as tenderly as she could while keeping a grip on it, then pushed it closed.

WHAM!

Wincing at the noise, Tempest was at least thankful that both she didn’t break the door, and that there weren’t any more noises from inside that signified that something inside ended up falling over or breaking from the force, either. Turning her head back around, she looked back at the blueberry-and-grape slushie she left on the table... only to find it wasn’t there any more.

However, with the loud shl-l-l-lrping noise from just to the side, she found that it was instead held aloft casually in Lyra’s magic, part of it already sucked away through the straw into the minty mare’s maw. Her expression was as blithe as ever, curiously peering down at the icy drink in her hold as she continued sucking it down, unaware, or perhaps just uncaring, for the other Unicorn’s more ticked off stare at her.

Soon enough though, Lyra took the straw out of her mouth and smiled gleefully at the other mare. “It’s really good!” She chirped, hopping a bit in place, “It’s got some juice and it’s not as consistent as the machine-made stuff, but it’s very tasty!”

Blinking expressionlessly for a second, Tempest watched as the other Unicorn returned to slurping up the slushie. “...Thank you,” She eventually said, trying to shake off the bewilderment of the strong emotions shown so openly, and still kind of mixed on how eagerly Lyra was putting down the chilly drink.

“Owf!”

...For multiple reasons.

Lyra quickly returned the slushie back onto the counter as she pressed a hoof to her head, clearly getting ‘brain-freeze’, as Tempest recently learned it was called, though was quite familiar with the feeling itself back when she got her Mark. “Ow ow ow owowow...”

Tempest looked at her for a moment, tilting her head in thought for even longer, and then smirked playfully. “Serves you right for drinking so much of my stuff.”

“Eeeeeenh!” Lyra whined pitifully in response, closing her eyes and furrowing her brow in pain, then shook her head quickly to try and abate it. “Why’s it taste so good and then it does this?! Traitorzzz!!” She cried, not watching how the other Pony flinched slightly at the word.

Sucking in a deep breath through her teeth, Tempest recalled how she’d been referred to as a traitor so many times before, the Ponies within the ruined Canterlot being especially brutal to her. For all the sorrow the Ponies felt for Twilight’s death, there was even more rage for the mare that caused it all, and some even went as far as to demand execution.

Of course, Ponyville was more relaxed about everything, and its atmosphere was only somewhat dreary compared to what she was told it was usually like, but the actual sentence impressed upon her by Princess Luna was the thing that really got her to stop fretting about everypony so much. Primarily a bunch of community serve and reports to Luna herself about her progress, and some occasional check-ins just to make sure she wasn’t up to anything.

She barely even understood why she did everything back then, anyway. Yes, losing her horn was the catalyst and main driving force the entire time, with the Storm King’s various and extensive manipulations all hammering that home and building off of it, making her into nothing short of a monster. Her lines of logic when taking over Canterlot and trapping Twilight seemed so desperate, with the takeover supposedly making everything better, actually, as then it would be under a stronger Empire, despite the horrid conditions they’d live under.

She did have her points back when arguing with Twilight, notably about how the blitheness of Equestria made it so damn easy to capture that she honestly thought there was some trap laying it wait for a while. But even with that, she still shirked trying to point out and test the weak points so that Equestria would become better, and instead tore down the nation with no regard for its citizen’s wellnesses.

All things considered, she would’ve been alright with that capital punishment, as it was pretty deserved, but all the time spent with the Ponies she had just made suffer made her aware that she still had potential in her, and the ability to improve Equestria in a way that nopony else could.

“Fizzlepop!”

Tempest Shadow jerked back to attention, awareness swiftly returning to the world around her and shooting her into a fighting stance, body lowered a bit with her hooves spread out further, eyes shrunken and sharpened, her focus quickly darting around the room, observing every detail in instinctual attention-to-detail so that she would have the best advantage against an opponent... until she actually realized where she was.

“Oh...” She muttered shamefully, looking back at Lyra for a moment, who was pulled back, no doubt shocked by the harsh reaction out of the broken Unicorn. “Sorry... you startled me,” She added while returned to a more normal pose, albeit one that was still more stiff and held higher than the casual mare before her.

“Are you alright?” Lyra asked, tilting her head a bit in polite concern.

Looking back at the other mare, Tempest couldn’t help but feel some envy at her innocence; even with all the mayhem she had heard of happening within this town, it was nothing compared to the constant forms of pain she’d dealt with under the Storm King. But at the same time, she was grateful for everything that had been done for her, not just by Lyra and Bon-Bon, but by all the Ponies of Ponyville along with Princess Luna, as she would likely be suffering even more without their charity.

Casting her gaze around the kitchen, the broken Unicorn and former Commander observed the pleasant pastels painted across the walls, the quaint, yet respectable furnishings and appliances that let her do her work without getting in the way, and the windows that showed the small, humble, yet resilient town beyond that never gave up hope. It was picturesque, something out of a foal’s book, and continued to feel surreal no longer how long she stayed there, and while she knew very well it was hardly something she deserved... she also knew she had every opportunity to give back and earn her place.

“Yeah,” Tempest answered, not taking her eyes off the scenery as a small, yet genuine smile grew on her face, “I’m doing alright.”