Chapter 2 - The Second Letter
After another moment’s hesitation Sunset shoved her finger across the center of the envelope’s flap, breaking the seal and feeling an icy shudder shoot up her arm and down her spine.
Carefully unfolding the paper contained within, she glanced at the Vice Principal, wondering if the woman knew she was about to be reading something from her counterpart across the bridge between their worlds.
In large ornate calligraphy, stylized and fluid almost to the point of illegibility, written not just with a normal quill point but with the type designed to create letters which were each as much a work of art as a form of communication, the letter spilled out across the page in an ink not like the modern blacks and blues used by most ponies, but a glittering, ancient look like tarnished silver.
Greetings former subject of Equestria, Sunset Shimmer.
I have drafted this missive to you at the encouragement of my sister, your former teacher Celestia, and the newly crowned Princess Twilight Sparkle. I must ask your forbearance of my rudeness but I shall be direct in my statements regarding the letters sent to you. I am aware of their contents as all three of my fellow Princesses showed me them in an attempt to persuade me to add remarks on my own thoughts to theirs.
One the one hoof, you have repeatedly presented threats both passive and active to the citizens of Our realm by bringing disharmony and chaos with forbidden magics, and sowing discord with your naught but your tongue. Your latest attempts to take what you have not earned could have resulted in more than one form of catastrophe for the subjects of Our realm and indeed one or both of the worlds involved could very well have been destroyed.
More than a thousand years ago, one who threatened my little ponies in such a way would have felt my swift and immediate retribution. Were I still that mare I should demand the portal buried to prevent your return in any conceivable duration of your lifetime.
In many ways, I still am that mare.
But I have learned that redemption can be earned by nearly anypony, for those deeds that are the dark beyond even your imaginings.
For on the other hoof, I too once fell to darkness, for reasons in many ways more petty than your own. When then not yet Princess Sparkle wielded the Elements against against me only a few short years ago, my inner demons were stripped from me and I was forced to confront them.
Much, possibly, as you have been.
I was confused, terrified, saddened, and disgusted with what I had become. I sought not to help my little ponies as a ruler should, but to control and own them.
My Sister and her Student may not know this, and we have agreed they shall not read this letter I have drawn up for you, but I still had a choice. I could have still embraced the Nightmare and fought the Elements. The Nightmare within me thought we could still win, though given what I have seen of Twilight Sparkle I think there was never any possibility of such an event. Had I lost the outcome would have been in even more doubt. Wielding the Elements with her fellow bearers enabled Twilight Sparkle to strip the Nightmare from me, but had I resisted I am unsure she understood well enough what she had undertaken that I would have ended back, trapped within the Moon that had been my home for a millennia. No, had I fought back I believe the outcome would have been my death. Such an event would have wounded my Sister more than even my battles with her, and my forcing her to banish me from the face of our world.
In the end, that’s why I allowed myself to be purged be the Elements. Stripped of my powers, and placed at the mercy of my Sister, the Bearers, and whatever justice she would meet out upon me for my treachery. I was fortunate to earn another chance.
On yet another hoof, I find myself wondering if it is possible for us to trust that the Elements have acted as we would expect them too. It should not have been possible for anypony to tap any of the power of the Element of Magic aside from Twilight, and even for her the powers should have been much reduced as the physical manifestations of the other Elements were still safely isolated on this side of the portal. While I accept that the embodiments of those Elements wield power in their own right and that the rules of the world you inhabit are different, it is those differences that worry me.
Thus I shall withhold my judgement upon allowing you both return and leaving you at liberty, especially given the constraints we must deal with to enable such a return. But I get ahead of myself.
I have however consented to assisting Twilight Sparkle in enabling the gate to pass these messages. As the portal is linked to the cycles of the Moon, the pair of us are able to make small changes to its normal function, though not without considerable effort.
I suggest you carefully consider your response to Princess Sparkle’s offer.
Her Royal Highness, Princess of Equestria,
Guardian of Dreams, Herald of the Night,
Grand Artist of the tapestry of the Night Sky,
and Shepherdess of the Moon,
Princess Luna Sélénia Nocturna
Sunset took some time to absorb the contents of this second letter that she had read. It appeared the one princess she had never met in any form was highly suspicious of her motives.
To be quite frank with herself, at this point she wasn’t really sure what her motives even were. Did she even want to return to Equestria now, assuming it was possible? What were these conditions that kept being hinted at, and what was this ‘offer’ of Twilight’s?
Hopefully the other letters would answer at least the last of these questions.
After placing the second letter back in it’s envelope, she picked up the other letter not marked to read last, and was not entirely surprised to see a wax seal on the back in the shape of a faceted heart gem surrounded by some filigree. Given what she’d read so far, she had already figured out the final letter would be from Twilight. Sunset assumed she would have to wait till the end to satisfy her curiosity about what her offer was.