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// Prologue: Birth of a Legend 
// Story: Twi Am Legend 
// by ActionPony 
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How did it begin? That is the question always asked. When was the moment that the story was set in motion? Where was the beginning of it all?

In this case, like so many questions, this has more than one answer. The world of the story began on a sunny summer evening, in Canterlot castle. It was just about time to lower the sun, and Princess Celestia was mostly alone.

Mostly. 

There were three with her, including her faithful student Twilight Sparkle, who had come to ask Celestia about an obscure facet of unicorn history, which Celestia was well versed in. The filly was happily skipping along, anticipating Celestia's answer. They were usually interesting. Celestia could make even the most boring things fascinating, although Twilight's own obsession with learning didn't hurt matters.

And that's when It happened. No one was expecting it, not any of Equestria, not the fillies with Celestia, and certainly not Celestia herself. It happened suddenly, and no one could react until it was over. 

Suddenly, Princess Celestia was consumed in a ball of fire, which enveloped her and the three she was with. It vanished as quickly as it came, and Celestia vanished with it. It left behind three unchanged fillies and a very changed Equestria.

And this is where the world began, with the disappearance of Princess Celestia in that mysterious fireball. This permanently changed the world and allowed our story to begin. But this was not when the story truly began. That happened later. To find out what it is, we shall follow Twilight:

When Twilight Sparkle saw that her mentor was gone, she screamed and ran away in panic. She ran through the castle to the throne room, not noticing her surroundings, not noticing anything but her horror, thinking nothing but “She's gone- she's gone- she's gone!”. She arrived at the entrance to the throne room, and there she found ponies, nobility, mostly, waiting for Celestia's return from her walk. 

She stopped and half panted, half sobbed to them “Celestia's gone! Disappeared!”

She then looked up to see that they hadn't seemed to have listened to her. If the had, they'd have been panicking, but they weren't panicking. They were intensely staring at Twilight Sparkle. Twilight began to feel nervous under their gaze, and slowly backed away. 

That's when the ponies in the throne room lunged for her. 

Twilight ran for it again, and they gave chase. Desperation lent the filly endurance, and a knowledge of the back ways to where she was going allowed her to keep ahead of them. She ran through the dusky streets, returning to her house, where she'd find Spike, her precious doll Ms. Smartypants, and her parents, although her brother was out of town on royal guard business. 

She skidded through alleys, dashed across streets, and hid in shadows whenever she could. She hoped that she had lost the horde of ponies chasing her, but she never once looked behind her to make sure. That was against the whole philosophy of running away, as she had been taught by a particularly unlucky unicorn wizard (or wizzard, as he wasn't too good at spelling) in Celestia's court.

When she found her house, she rushed in and locked the doors behind her. She then slid to the ground in exhaustion. 

Once she'd got her breath back, she walked into the kitchen and called out: “Mom? Dad? You here?”

Her worry intensified with each second that they were absent. Finally, her mother and father walked into the room. They stared intensely at their daughter, but appeared not to recognize her. 

And then, they attacked. Twilight screamed again as she dodged her mother, and then her father. She ran under them and telekinetically opened the knife drawer and drew out a very big knife to defend herself. She was scared. Her parents were not acting like they were supposed to. They were her parents. They loved her. Why were they attacking her?

Twilight's father nearly biting on to Twilight's leg spurred the filly into action. She swiped at her father with the knife, leaving a bloody gash on the stallion's chest. He didn't seem to feel it, though, and it closed quickly. Twilight gasped in horror, and managed to escape from her father temporarily by running under him. She skidded towards the living room, and brandished the knife, causing a few more wounds that didn't mean much of anything. 

It was then that Twilight made the panicky decision that the situation called for drastic measures. She drew the knife out so that it was directly to the side of her parents' necks, and then used all her telekinetic strength to move it very quickly to the other side of the room. Backed by the sheer force of speed, the knife sliced cleanly through the necks of Twilight's mother, and then her father.

They toppled to the ground. Their heads toppled to the ground, independently of their bodies. 

And Twilight Sparkle stood there, in shock, telekinetically holding the bloody remains of the knife that she had used to kill them. Her magical strength expended, she dropped what had once been the knife. It clattered to the ground. Twilight slid to the floor.

There was blood... so much blood... blood pooling on the floor where they had fallen... blood on the knife... blood on Twilight Sparkle. 

“Twilight? What's happening?”

Spike's voice cut through the deathly silence. The baby dragon walked down the stairs and into the living room, where he saw the bloody scene. He froze, mouth open in shock.

And it was then that Twilight Sparkle, overwhelmed by everything that had happened to her, everything that she'd done, began to cry.

And it is there that our story begins, with a filly who had just killed her parents. A filly thrust into a dangerous world. A filly defending herself. She is our protagonist. But she wasn't, before. When she used that knife to kill her parents, something changed, and she became a different Twilight than she was. And so the story has begun.