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// The Alicorn's Prize 
// Story: The Ancient Alicorn 
// by manawar20 
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		The pony's eyes shined in the murky night, his body only noticeable as a darker shade of black. He sat, crouched behind the lush green bush, as the guard walked by, patrolling the walls of Canterlot. When the royal guard's back was to the pony, he dashed out, and with a practiced move, knocked out the guard.
"We should kill the guard, it would be more fun," the alicorn said to himself.
"No, we must leave him alive, or it will give our position away to her," he answered himself.
"Alright," agreed the alicorn as he began to scale the white washed walls. "I still don't understand why we can't just fly over the wall."
"Because," replied the alicorn in frustration, "She'll detect us, and the same goes for our magic." Finally silencing his argument, the pitch black pony neared the summit of the wall, his gray cutie mark catching the light of the moon. Once at the top, the alicorn began to silently walk along the wall, all the while avoiding the guards, who were noticeable against the black night by their shining armor.
"Can we at least knockout those guards, it will be fun," asked the alicorn.
"No," replied the alicorn firmly, "The more guards we engage, the more likely we are to get caught. Instead, we should focus on infiltrating the castle and getting what we came here for." With that, the alicorn leapt from the top of the wall, and landed silently inside the city of Canterlot.
With a silent determination, the alicorn made his way through the city, all the while avoiding detection. "How will we know which one is the castle?" he asked himself.
"I don't know, maybe it will be towards the center of the city and surrounded by guards," the alicorn replied sarcastically. "I highly doubt it will be that hard to find."
Sure enough, the alicorn soon arrived at the palace walls. However, to his surprise, there were not nearly as many guards as he had been expecting, and, in fact, there was little more than a dozen. 'Now that's odd,' the alicorn thought to himself, 'There should be far more guards than this, after all, they are protecting their nation's ruler.'
Looking from afar, the alicorn scanned for possible entry points and soon found an open window, near the top of the building. Waiting until there was a gap in the patrols, which wasn't long given how few guards there were, the alicorn abandoned his hiding place and headed for the base of the palace walls. Once he arrived at the base of the wall, the alicorn wasted no time in scaling the small wall and landed on the palace grounds.
When he glanced around, afraid he had been spotted; he noticed that there were no guards at all inside the palace grounds. Alarm bells went off in the demented alicorn's head as he wondered why there were no guards. Despite this, the alicorn deemed his task to important to stop now, and he began to scale the palace in order to reach the open window. After a few minutes, he reached the window, and, silently, climed inside.
The first thing the alicorn noticed was the grandeur of the room he was in, from the premium red carpets to the dazzling paintings in the walls, which were a pale pink. Torches, which were evenly spaced, lined the walls and emitted a sickly sweet scent, similar to that of a perfumed flower. Beautifully carved oaken furniture, with velvet cushions, were pushed against the walls, and were separated by grand buttresses.
The second thing he noticed was that he was in a long hallway, and there were no guards. 'The Grand Hall,' the alicorn thought, 'good, this should make getting to my destination much easier.' With great stealth, the alicorn made his way towards where his prize was held, which was a simple matter due to the maps of the palace he had studied earlier. 
As he drew nearer to "The Vault," as he liked to call it, the alicorn expected greater resistance, from magic and from guards, but the only ponies the alicorn came across were a five guards and some servants, all of whom he easily subdued.
It was not until the alicorn reached The Vault, which was blocked behind large oaken doors, did he encounter any magical resistance. "Hmm... Princess Celestia was very thorough with her defense spell, but I am sure we can crack it."
"Why don't we just open it?" asked the alicorn.
"Because, if we do that, it will likely alert Celestia and harm us," the alicorn answered. "We have a better chance to recover our prize if we remove Celestia's safeguard.
"Well then, what are we waiting for?" exclaimed the alicorn as he began to cast a very powerful and complex spell. His horn lit up with darkness, which swallowed the light around it like a void. The darkness spread farther and farther from the horn until it blotted out the entire room. Suddenly, the darkness shifted, and it began to collapse in on itself. When the darkness had completely cleared, the malevolent alicorn stood triumphant, and the oaken doors were wide open.
The alicorn, unable to control himself, rushed into the room, all caution forgotten as he headed for his prize. Looking around frantically, the alicorn spotted a lone pedestal in the room where his prize should have been resting, and nothing else. The room was bare, his prize was gone, and it felt like the pale pink walls of The Vault were closing in on him.
"Where is our prize," inquired the alicorn, "where are the Elements of Harmony? We didn't already steal them, did we?"
"NO!" boomed a feminine voice, "I have the Elements of Harmony, Evenos, and I will never let you have them."
"Our new name is Dusk Striker," cried the alicorn angrily, "and you will not keep us from the Elements of Harmony, Celestia."
To Be Continued