Lightning Dust woke up to a bright light with a splitting headache. Opening her eyes, she discovered she was in a bright room filled with pastel colors. Directly in front of her was an enormous window with a beautiful view of the morning sun.
This isn't my room. She thought, starting to panic. She tried to think about how she got here, and quickly remembered Discord knocking on her door, giving her a riddle, then teleporting her to Canterlot where she gave princess Celestia a letter. Now that she thought about it, she probably should have checked what was on that letter... But, she wasn't waking up in a dungeon, so it probably didn't say anything too bad.
"Oh, you're awake, my little pony," Lightning heard a calm voice off to her side. "Are you ready to start the interview?"
Lightning Dust looked over to her side and saw none other than princess Celestia. She looked directly at Lightning with an expression of... hope?
"Princess Celestia!" A voice shouted from outside the room, causing Celestia to jump and shy away from the door. "It is time for your royal duties."
"I'm sorry, something has come up, I will have to take care of them later!" Celestia replied with a sheepish grin. Lightning Dust raised an eyebrow.
"What!?" The voice yelled back and tried to push the door open. Celestia ran over and tried to stop the yelling pony from entering. "What could possibly be more important than deciding the laws of Equestria!? Your decisions could effect the very fabric of space!"
"I highly doubt that," she said back while holding the door shut. "Besides, these matters are more immediate."
"Oh, and what would those be?" the voice asked, now annoyed.
Celestia narrowed her eyes, "Rule Maze..." she scolded.
"Oh very well..." Rule Maze gave up. Lightning could hear him slowly trotting away, defeated.
"What are those guards even here for?" Celestia sighed.
"Now," She turned around, shining a hopeful grin at Lightning Dust again. "What questions do you have for me?"
"Uh..." Lightning Dust had a hard time thinking of any questions after that scene. After a few seconds of watching Celestia's smile slowly fade, she decided to ask the obvious.
"How did you and Luna become princesses originally?" She cringed. She was sure that would have been in a book somewhere, and now she appeared unprepared, like a rookie.
"Hmm," Celestia tilted her head, "No one has ever asked me that before..."
Really? Lightning thought.
"Very well," Celestia righted her head, "would you like the short version, or the long version."
"Long version." Lightning said. she had the time, and she was curious.
"Very well," Celestia waved a hoof, marking the beginning of the story, "it all started a long time after the uniting of the pony races. How long, few can remember..."
Trixie concentrated hard on her gravity cloak spell. It was simple in theory, but pulling it off took effort. You had to bend the space around you, making sure to leave at least one part uncloaked so that you wouldn't fall through the ground. It took her months of storing her energy to find the power to pull off the spell, and now it would be easy to sneak into Star-Sparkle the Bearded's wing of the Canterlot archives. She just had to pull it off in 15 minutes, otherwise she would have less time to escape.
She walked up the steps towards the enormous castle, then turned left. She walked over to a statue and started observing it. According to her notes, the statue should block sight from ponies walking towards the castle, ponies walking towards the archives, and ponies guarding the archives. Trixie poked and prodded the statue, feigning interest as she slowly made her way around to the the hidden side. And then, she was there.
She pulled an hour glass from her cloak that had markings for each minute. The sand was up to the 30th minute on the bottom, even after she flipped it over, which caused her artifacts to release and her cloak to begin. 15 minutes left for entry.
She walked out from behind the statue and noticed a crunching sound. She still made an indentation on the grass. She would have to take care not too make too much noise with that. But more importantly, she would have to make sure she never lost her balance and fell over, unless she wanted to fall into the earth and struggle to get out before her time ended. She was glad she could still see though, she wasn't sure if having half the cloak over her eyes and ears would work.
She stepped off the grass and onto the pathway. Noticing the clopping noise, she softened her steps and slid along the curving path towards the archives.
Slide.
Step.
Slide.
She started to speed up after understanding the motion.
slide.
Step.
Slide...
Finally, she made it to the entrance. The guard pony was still there, attentive as ever, and the door was closed... but that didn't matter...
Reluctantly, Trixie walked forwards into the door. As she closed her eyes and made sure the bottoms her hooves were facing away from the door, she slowly passed inside.
Shaking her head and letting her eyes get used to the brighter inside, she looked down the hall.
"Star-Sparkle the Bearded" She saw a sign down the hall.
This is too easy. She smirked, and slowly made her way to, and through, the door.
Slide...
Step...
Slide...
After walking far enough into the Bearded wing, she took out her hour-glass and turned it over, turning off the spell.
"Ahh..." She quietly sighed to herself. That cloak spell was... suffocating.
Celestia suddenly stood up from her sitting position.
Unwittingly, Lightning Dust mimicked the motion and stood up on the bed.
"Yes, things were very simple back then," Celestia began.
"Flora, a flower sails-pony and the inventor of several farming techniques still used today. Aero, the original stunt-flyer. Luna, my sister. And me. We all decided that it would be a good idea to try and find out where all these strange creatures were coming from. Originally there were only windigoes, but those suddenly vanished decades ago, and Flora was right in thinking that didn't make sense at all. More interestingly, almost all the new species came from east of Old Canterlot. So the four of us started our journey..."
After wandering around the Bearded wing for a while, the title of one scroll caught Trixie's eye.
"Star-Sparkle's Guide to Powerful Magic" read the title.
Without hesitation, Trixie gracefully plucked the scroll from the shelf and unrolled it, not making a sound...
"After consulting my old friend Air Blade on what he thought made better flyers, I've started thinking that the attributes he lists could be applied to magic, and whatever earth-ponies do as well. These attributes are as follows:
" Intense driving emotions, including, but not limited to: happiness, hatred, hope, love, humor, pride, contempt, sadness...
"In fact, the only emotion found to decrease magic was hopelessness.
"But in the long list of emotions that boosted magic power, there were two that stood out. The first being love.
"In the background studies of strong athletes and powerful magic users, the most common attribute was being surrounded by friendly ponies that supported their efforts. This allowed love to slowly grow over time, bringing emotions like hope, pride, humor, and surprisingly hatred and contempt along with it. Apparently, being around ponies with similar values serves as an emotion booster. Of course, it also increased time for practice.
"The second emotion was limerance, a feeling of infatuation with one or more subject(s) (really, any animate or inanimate objects or ideas at all) due to perceived favorable qualities and ignored or mitigated unfavorable qualities. Several ponies surprised everypony else when they surpassed others with much more training and experience by reinforcing the belief that what they had to protect was important.
"There have only been accounts of ponies using extremes of either emotion to power themselves. Alone, the power granted is significant, but combined, those emotions could result in seemingly impossible occurrences, such as, at least for pegasi, surpassing the theoretical sound speed limit."
...
Trixie slid the scroll back into place. So... Twilight was powerful because she had "love", or friendship, and she had that because she was lucky... figures. It sure would make things more fair if that scroll were publicly available...
Trixie thought back to why she originally started her shows. At first, it was to annoy ponies she didn't like...
Actually... no, it wasn't. It was to entertain her siblings. She enjoyed hearing them laugh and cheer for her, and later, when hecklers wouldn't believe her, it would feel good to show them how wrong they were and prove her family right at the same time. But her family was far away now, all of them doing their own things. They had different purposes, and sometimes that tore ponies apart. So she traveled, that way, no matter where they were, her family and friends would hear about her and cheer for her. That was the whole reason for her traveling magic show.
She had a loving family and loving friends, and somewhere far away, they would hear about what she did. And there was something else. She would have more friends if her next performance went well enough. The first performance in a while would have to be a good one. She could feel it.
"And after sealing Discord in stone, we returned to our new home..." Celestia sat, having finished her story.
She brought her hoof to her chin, pondering the past,
"Funny, without him, me and my sister may never have found our special talents of raising the sun and moon, and we may have never found the elements of harmony. And after all that we did together, the citizens finally gave up the foolish discussion of whether me or Luna should rule, and decided that we both had important virtues for ruling Equestria."
Lightning Dust started slowly clopping her hooves together. That was an amazing and impressively delivered story. And now she had a whole new set of questions to ask. This Aero pony sounded interesting. She wondered why she hadn't heard about him before in any history books.