//------------------------------// // First Lessons // Story: Life, Death, and Ponies // by thunderclap //------------------------------// Bang. The noise rang out and woke you from your sleep in your old apartment. You sprang up out of your bed and rushed to your father’s room. A smell stopped you as you reached out to the door handle. You couldn’t quite place it but it was almost sickly sweet and a bit metallic. You opened the door, your concern for your father won out over your growing fear. When you opened the door the smell that had stopped you before suddenly rushed into your nostrils. You were unprepared for such a terrible smell and quickly fell to your knees and threw up for a minute or so. You finally steeled yourself enough to look back up and that’s when you saw it. Blood. Blood covered every surface of what was once your father’s bedroom. You almost threw up again but stopped it from happening midway. You started crying as you scanned the room hoping to find any answers as to what had happened here. You found what you were looking for when you spotted your father’s corpse lying in the corner of the room, most of his face missing and a pistol in his hand. You ran over to your father asking him if he was okay. Deep in your heart you knew there wouldn’t be a response. But you were in shock at losing the last person in the world that cared about you. After a while you gave up and ran into the kitchen to call the ambulance. You made it to the phone and pressed the buttons as quickly as your frantic little fingers would let you. “Hello, 911 what’s your emergency?” Asked a voice from a female dispatcher. “M, m, my daddy’s hurt!” You cried out, barely keeping yourself under control. “Please calm down and tell us your information.” “I’m [your name], and I live on…” In the background there was a shuffling noise that was steadily growing louder. “Ok, we’ll send someone right over, please stay calm and don’t leave the area.” “Sure I won’… mmph.” You were suddenly wrenched from the phone as an unknown hand pulled on you and shoved you to the ground. You couldn’t move and were at the complete mercy of whomever it was that had grabbed you. Your assailant turned you over to look at you. At first all you could see was a silhouette but the figure came into your light to allow you to see something terrible… … The corpse of your father. Most of the left half of his face was completely gone and what did remain of it was barely held together. He stared at you with his right eye, looking deep into your own eyes before deciding to speak. “This is all your fault.” He rasped in a sinister tone. “What do you mean daddy?” You were scared and confused. What did he mean? What was your fault? “Don’t play dumb with me you bastard!” Your father cursed his rage increasing as he shook you violently. “Your mother’s death, my suicide, none of it would’ve happened if it weren’t for you and your damn thread! You never should’ve been born, you freak!” “Daddy, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I never wanted any of this to happen!” “Well it did happen, and now you have to live with it.” Your father hissed one last time before the dream started to dissipate. You woke up covered in a cold sweat, tears in the corners of your eyes, and confused about your exact location. You then remembered your death and the fact that you were now a unicorn in a magical land of ponies. You shook your head for a moment and wondered what your dream was all about. You had relived that night countless times, but this was the first time your father’s corpse had reanimated itself and attacked you. His large bloodshot eye still crept in the corners of your mind causing you to shudder for a bit. You started to think that despite the princesses’ words, you still blamed yourself for the death of your parents. You felt a small pain in your chest that caused you to cry silently for a few more moments. When you were finished you looked out your window and saw that it was only the beginning of the morning. You debated for a moment on whether or not you should go back to bed, but the thought of having that dream again made you shudder one more time. In the end you threw the covers off of you and stretched for a moment. You went through your morning routine just as anyone would in the morning, except you were using your new magic to levitate anything and everything that was even remotely related to preparing you for your first day of magical training. Finally, you used your magic to carefully place your bag over your neck and draped it behind your back. You then opened the door to your room and were greeted by an unfamiliar guard. He was a light grey winged pony with yellow eyes. Instead of gold armor his was purple, and he had wings like a bat instead of the feathered ones you had seen on all of the other winged guards. He stared at you with something like a cross between a sneer and a glare for a moment before you decided to speak up first. “Umm, what happened to my guard from before?” “We switched posts a while ago. I am one of Luna’s night guards.” His voice sounded friendly enough, but his demeanor hadn’t changed at all. “Uh huh, and is there a reason why you look like a vampire pony or am I just crazy?” “Yes there is a reason, every guard wears enchanted armor to change their appearance based on their duties. Celestia’s pegasi will become white and Luna’s will change into something like what I look like right now. Normally, I’m red and yeah, I do have feathers.” He explained it with a chuckle, which allowed you to warm up to him a bit. “You’re way more personable than my other guard; he nearly had a stroke when I asked for some ice cream. I was beginning to think all you guards were stiffs.” “That guard was my brother.” Your guard said, his glare intensifying. “But yeah he always does have a stick up his flank so don’t be too offended. He prefers to take his guard duties seriously. Me, let’s just say I let loose once in a while.” “No problems here, I don’t deal well with people who take themselves too seriously anyways.” “Me either, my name’s Flarewing by the way, what’s yours?” “Oh, it’s Blackstar. Nice to meet you, Flarewing.” “Pleasantries aside, your lesson with the princesses doesn’t start for a few more hours so you can go back to bed if you like.” “No thanks, I’d much rather take a look around the castle if it’s all the same to you?” You said, laughing nervously at the offer. “Alright, follow me and let the tour begin.” Flarewing led you through a great deal of hallways and chambers and went through a basic rundown of each one. Along the way you two made small talk as you went. “You should know that everypony in Canterlot is talking about you right now.” “Oh really what are they talking about? Is it my dashing good looks or my cast iron wit?” “No, they’re saying that some odd pony was found in the royal garden and suddenly he’s become the princesses’ newest student.” Flarewing said with a chuckle. “It wasn’t all of a sudden; I had to have an entire conversation with them.” “Still, who exactly are you? Are you some kind of foreign dignitary or something?” “Tell me Flarewing, do I seem like a foreign dignitary to you?” You said with an incredulous look on your face. “Not at all, which is why I asked. Normally, you can tell a diplomat from a normal pony the instant they walk into the room.” “Good because I’m not, so can you show me the library, I overheard yesterday that it was really impressive.” “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. There may still be some students from the magic school studying in there and if they see you, the source of all sorts of rumors, they might start asking you a lot of questions.” “I guess you have a point. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to wait until later to get my hooves on the books there.” You said with a sigh. You were interested in learning more about the place you were supposed to call home, but not at the cost of having to put up with a bunch of annoying chatter. You had had your fill of being interrogated yesterday. “You didn’t strike me as a bookworm, Blackstar.” “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Flarewing.” “Like what?” “Sorry, but a pony has to keep his secrets.” You replied, hoping the pegasus would drop the topic. A few more hours passed and you were brought into a large circular chamber, where Princess Luna was waiting for you. The room was mostly bare save for a tapestry here or there and a large fireplace that had logs but no fire in it. The floor was scattered with a few stacks of books. Luna had an excited look on her face. You guessed that this was her first time teaching and walked into the room with a weak smile. “Hello, Blackstar are you ready for your first lessons in magic?” “Yes, I look forward to the lesson, But where’s Celestia?” “She has other matters to attend to at the moment so I will be the one to teach you for now. Let us begin with the basic of all basics, what is magic?” Luna asked it as if it was some sort of philosophical question. “Magic is taking energy inside of one’s self and using it to do tasks that one would otherwise consider impossible.” “Correct, but magic does have its limits.” Luna warned. “Magic’s effects are not permanent and cannot be used to do things like bring back the dead.” “How do you know so much about magic already? Were you able to use it back when you were a human?” “No, humans aren’t able to use magic. There are stories about humans that could called witches and wizards, but they were usually portrayed as evil and there’s no proof that anything like that ever existed. I’m just inferring based on what I’ve already seen.” “You have a much sharper mind than I had anticipated. Let’s move on to the next part of our lesson, levitation. All you have to do is…” “Actually, Princess I kind of learned how to do that already.” You said with a grin. “How did you do that?” Luna asked in disbelief. “Ice cream.” “Huh?” “I asked for a hot fudge sundae yesterday after our meeting, and I tried to lift the spoon with my hooves, but it didn’t work. So I tried to use magic to do it and after a while I figured out how to use levitation. I can even use it to write.” “You’re ability to learn so quickly is truly impressive. We may go through our lessons much more quickly than I had originally thought.” Luna stated with a smile of approval. “Is our next lesson going to be starting a fire with magic?” “What makes you think that?” “The fireplace has logs but no fire; something tells me you wouldn’t set up a fireplace without planning to start a fire so I figured it must be part of our lesson.” “Very observant, I can see why you were born into this world as a unicorn, it’s almost like your mind was made for the intricacies of magic.” “I wasn’t always this observant, and it’s not that impressive. After being sent to a number of abusive homes I just learned to pick up on certain behaviors and things so it would be easier for me to avoid punishment.” “Don’t sell yourself short, Blackstar. Many others would crumble if they were given such a life. Instead you adapted and have ended up a splendid young pony because of it. I once made a very large mistake and I’m still trying to make amends for it.” “You, I don’t believe it. You’re usually so quiet and kind. What mistake could you have made?” “As you can probably imagine being the princess in charge of the moon is not that glamorous of a position. Everypony does their business during the day and sleeps at night.” “So, being in charge of the night means that you allow everypony to get some rest so they can do the things they have to for the next day, to me it seems like a position of quiet respect.” “You’re right of course, if I had been half as mature as you are now I would have seen that. But, instead I grew jealous and bitter with my lot in life and allowed myself to be consumed with anger. In the end I was sent to the moon for a thousand years and then the Elements of Harmony saved me from that bitter rage that I allowed into my heart.” “I take it you’re saying I shouldn’t be too upset over this whole becoming a pony thing, huh?” “I was just telling you a little story, but if you draw a deeper meaning from it then that’s fine. Now, let’s return to our lesson. In order to create a fire you must first concentrate a strong image in your mind. Any image, you can think of that spreads a warm feeling down your entire being and then focus that feeling onto one spot.” You did as you were told and you thought of something that always spread a warm feeling inside of you, your family. You thought of a time you were all together. Your mother and father were looking up at you while you sat on their shoulders. You could feel the magic working for a moment but something happened. Your concentration was broken when the image of your father’s corpse appeared, causing your spell to backfire. You were knocked onto your flank and part of your mane was singed. “What went wrong?” Luna asked, concerned. “A disturbing image popped into my head is all. Let’s try a different spell.” You said rubbing your now aching head. "Let’s continue with the lesson then.” You nodded your head and a few hours later Princess Luna told you that the lesson was over. You had learned how to control your levitation to a point where you could lift incredibly heavy objects or many objects at once. You also learned how to change water into ice and a few other little spells. Princess Luna gave you a book on magic for beginners and told you to practice whenever you got the chance. You took the book and exited the room excited at the prospect of learning more magic.