The Twilight Empire

by AimlessPone

Waking Up

Twilight, awoke to an immense amount of pain.

She was not a stranger to pain as, contrary to popular belief, most unicorns built up at least a basic tolerance during the course of their magical training. Causing an explosion, or two, inches from your face tends to do that.

She had to admit, that she had received more than her fair share of explosions to the face. If she was really honest with herself, she had received more than her fair share, and very likely had knocked more than one screw loose.

Fortunately for Equestria, Twilight was not relied upon to wield the Element of Honesty.

After several unsuccessful attempts to restore her ability to think through the pain, she decided to go about categorizing it. After a few moments, she eventually concluded she had either been hit in the head with a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick, or she had gotten so incredibly drunk that she almost died of alcohol poisoning, with either her status as an Alicorn or her magic being what preserved her. After half a second, she acknowledged that it was possible that she had been poisoned outright instead of getting drunk. She was a princess after all, and assassination attempts were always a possibility. Although given how well Equestria got along with it’s neighbors, that wasn't likely. Thanks to Celestia, Equestria held a longer track record for peace with it's fellow nations than any other nation in history.

Distantly, she heard what sounded like a large group of ponies talking amongst themselves.
Unfortunately, finding out exactly what they were saying would require a great deal more focus than she was currently capable of.

Twilight slowly opened her eyes a crack, and was betrayed by her beloved, former teacher’s sun as it cheerfully stabbed her brain, with what was supposed to have been a loving embrace.

She groaned as her eyes slammed shut in self preservation.

'Ugh, sweet Celestia what hit me?' She asked of the pain, which to her growing horror responded with vicious intent.

Pain, it seemed, sounded like a thousand voices in your head, all yelling at you in a garbled mess. In vain she begged respite 'Please... No more... Stop.'

To her tremendous surprise, it instantly did and suddenly the garbled mess seemed to grow very distant. This had the pleasant effect of reducing her pain to little more than a gentle agony. Cautiously she resumed her self-diagnosis based upon what she was able to tell with her eyes closed. She shifted her body slightly, the movement bringing new sensations which were decidedly not good.

Apparently she had at least one cracked rib, and had taken at least one severe blow to the head. This, Twilight rationalized, could explain the voices she heard which seemed to be triggered by her attempt to recall what had happened to her. She pushed the wish to remember to the bottom of her mental checklist of things to do. Returning to her examination, she noted bruises, and general aches all over. A few drops of blood dribbled down her face, it seemed to be coming from her horn. Although, surprisingly, it was one of the few apparent injuries that didn't hurt. Most hornless ponies would worry a lot more at the sight of a bleeding horn than a unicorn would deem necessary. Unicorn horns rarely get injured seriously, due to being made of magically reinforced ivory, but other ponies tended to ignore this because Pegasus wing injuries are almost always serious, although temporary. Thus both Earth ponies and Pegasi automatically attribute horn injures operating in much the same way.

Honestly though, a horn injury was about on par with a bloody nose. A Unicorn’s horn has a very fine lattice of inlaid vessels and nerves, this makes it possible for even a small crack to cause bleeding, and a horrendous amount of pain. It was very peculiar that Twilight’s horn didn't hurt a great deal though. Twilight noted the injury along with the anomaly, and would think twice before she used any magic more strenuous than simple levitation, until she could get a look at it.

'What in bucking Tartarus was I doing?' Twilight wondered, almost in spite of herself, while she regarded her injuries. Realization she had once again thought about the origin of her injuries made her brace for another wave of pain. But to her relief it didn't come.

She had a very valid question however.

She opened her eyes a crack once again, and allowed her vision to adjust to the traitorous sun’s light before she opened them fully. Once she was certain her head was not going to explode, she looked around to began to piece together what happened.

'Let's see, the edge of what appears to be an overly large bed, likely belongs to somepony very extravagant or alicorn. A majestic view of Canterlot, that one is obvious. A dark purple color palette of room based upon small section visible. Lack of excess ornamentation implies the owner is not ostentatious .'

'Hypothesis: I am in an alicorn’s bedroom. Available alicorns are limited to Celestia, Luna, Cadance, and myself. As my brother and sister-in-law moved to the Crystal Empire, the view of Canterlot argues against it belonging to her. The colouration would indicate this room is likely my own, but I have no memory of receiving it nor deciding upon its decor. Conclusion: I am likely in my own room and have either a severe concussion, or amnesia. Possibly both as I have no recollection of it…'

Twilight didn't like her findings to say the least. Most ponies wouldn't.

She turned her head slowly to try and view a larger portion of the room, she categorized the contents. The dresser with her cutie mark more or less confirmed that this was her room and she that was indeed suffering memory loss. The furniture was all to her personal preferences. Everything was practical, well made, and enchanted for durability and resistance to damage. There was also an abnormally high number of heavy set bookshelves which covered most of the visible walls. All of them appeared overladen with books, despite the heavy make and reinforcement.

She turned a bit more and saw what appeared to be a pony on the ground. A pony that wasn't breathing. A trail of blood from his chest traversed across what was once an unstained and beautiful rug. Twilight's dilated eyes slowly followed the splattered trai, as it meandered lazily right up to just above where her head had been lying.

Horn injuries are always painful. The blood that was dripping down her face, wasn’t her’s.
It was from pony that had been injured. A pony who had died, because of her. She began take ragged breaths if only to fuel attempts to exhale, as she attempted to push aside the facts.
Her eyes, against her will, fell upon the empty-eyed, surprised face of the ex-pony who lied feet away. Their proximity hit her with an instinctual desire to distance herself from both death and her deeds. With unthinking need, she drove her magic into the air between them trying to will distance between her and her victim.

Rapidly a mass of power crackled into being, fueled by her fear, and in an eruption of arcane light exploded launching both her, and her unflinching foe into their opposing walls. She heard the sound of a bookcase falling over as she herself was driven into what she assumed was an end table, a small pitcher of water tipped, spilling the majority of its contents onto her before rolling off to her side, its mass thankfully missing her and not adding, yet another bruise to her collection.

Pain reasserted itself at her sudden movement.

'Ow, sweet Celestia, it's like I'm following Pinkie Pie all over again.'

The sound of her beloved, former mentor's voice fill the room as the door opened with a small click.

"Twilight, are you alright? I heard an explosion."

Celestia walked into Twilight’s field of vision and Twilight’s brain refused to process what she saw. Celestia was shorter than she remembered, she was also pink, and lacked her aurora-like flowing mane. To top it all off she was wearing what Twilight’s brain recognized to be, just shy of, a full on sexy maid outfit like one of the ones Rarity had shown her from her private collection.

On a side note, the pictures of Fluttershy in a more modest version Rarity had re-tailored, were far more adorable than anypony had any right being. Twilight never did find out how Rarity talked the shy pony into letting her take those pictures, even if she did look fantastic.

The not-quite Celestia finally seemed to notice her former student, and froze dead in her tracks.

Twilight tried to say something along the lines of "Hi there! If you are who you look like, you seem to be having a very strange day as well. Do you think you could lend me a hoof? I believe I may have a concussion, and amnesia. I also appear have stabbed a pony to death with my horn, but I'm still really in denial about that. Also I might be going into shock about the whole ordeal. "

What came out however, was a pained whimper, and an incredibly pitiful look which, fortunately, seemed to have about the same effect.

"Empress!" Her beloved mentor's doppelganger shouted.

'Huh, Maybe she's a body double or something, that's a funny way of saying "Princess"...' She thought belatedly, not really recognizing all the problems with that particular line of thought.

"Guards, the Empress has been attacked! Send for help, Go! Now!" Celestia-clone shouted.

She rushed over to the lavender alicorns side. "Twilight, help is on the way, I'm going to put you on the bed and perform first aid. I want you to try and stay with me."

“Hnn” was all Twilight was able to get out in reply.

Twilight felt a familiar golden energy surround her. As she was lifted up she glimpsed a very familiar looking cutie mark.

Only half lucid from the continual abuse, Twilight continued trying to rationalize,. 'huh, same magical signature and cutie mark, both would be way too hard to fake, practically impossible, especially for long term. I guess it is Celestia. I bet she will think it’s really funny when I tell her I thought she was her own imposter later on.' the realization was quickly lost to the relief as she was lowered into the soft, warm embrace of the unfairly comfortable mattress.

By far one of the best perks of the whole princess gig, was the creature comforts. Although she still didn't feel comfortable with the respect and adoration she didn't feel that she had earned it yet.
A soft caress enveloped her as familiar magic formed itself into, what she vaguely recognized as, patterns of various high level medical spells. She didn't know how to cast these as well as she would have liked, but Twilight could tell what most mortal level magics were doing by feel. The warm, loving sensation of Celestia’s magic, and the divinely soft bed, made falling back to sleep a forgone conclusion.

.

Author's Note:

[AN: Updated to a fully edited Version 2.0, Special thanks to Foals Errand, and Silverware for editing! And thanks to everyone for your support.:3]

Comments

[Foals Errand]

I am really liking this. Therefore in the gentlest way possible I am going to be the first to tell you this. Please my dear new author. Find yourself a editor. It's very difficult to read right now and people can be rather... mean when editing isn't taken care of. If you would like some help i'd be happy to assist you! You have a great start! Please do not take this as being mean I really do like this.

I do hope to hear from you you are welcome to PM me if you'd like.

Foals Errand

PS

Upvoted Faved and followed

[raw666]

Okay, continue you please for you have my attention.

[Europa]

Very interesting idea, but your spelling is atrocious. Here are just a few, corrected in both spelling and, where needed, capitalization.

catigorizing

categorizing

supprise

surprise

Alicorns

alicorn's

fluttershy

Fluttershy

Pinky

Pinkie

celestias

Celestia's

Also, rule for quotation marks. When you, after the quotation, explain 'how' it was said, end it with a comma and lowercase the beginning of the next word. Like so.

"I dare you to go poke his nose," he smugly challenged.

When you just go right on to something else after the quotation mark, it's a period and uppercase for the next.

"I dare you to go poke his nose." The challenge given, he smiled to himself.

(!) (?) and (...) override the comma/period rule, and rules for capitalizing names overrides the lowercase/uppercase rule.

"You shall not pass!" Gandalf bellowed.

[AN: Heh, Neigh-bors]

NEVER. EVER. EVER. Do this. NEVER include an AN inside your text, no matter how funny you think you are, or how much you think we need your direct clarification. NEVER do that!

I'm not trying to be overly harsh: I made much the same mistakes when I started on fanfiction.net, but you really need to doublecheck your work, run it through a spellcheck (The site gives you one, so use it!) and get an editor to spot the mistakes you do not.

[AimlessPone]

4328752
I reread it after i realized i uploaded the completely unedited version >_< , changed to my spellchecked version at least.
That being said i still needed to go through and check for the things you mentioned in the latter half. I'll try to get an editor right away. (I cannot edit to save my life.)
The latter half of your comment may or may not end up in a folder where i write fanfics for future reference
Anyways, thank you very much for the constructive criticism, ill keep a sharper eye out in the future.

[Europa]

4328816 One more thing!

gold brick that was wrapped with a lemon slice

I see what you did there, Zaphod!

[The Book]

Empress Twilight with amnesia?
static.squarespace.com/static/51aae414e4b013f5da4a816c/t/53345e72e4b09fffc70d3444/1395940979168/

[websterhamster]

and I appear to of stabbed a pony to death with my horn,

Should be "appear to have stabbed a pony to death", not of. "Of" in this context is a phonetic translation of the contraction 've, from would've, should've, could've. Sometimes pronounced as "of", but should definitely not be spelled that way. This is my most hated gripe in amateur fiction.

Otherwise this is an interesting story!

[Cast-Iron Caryatid]

This looks interesting, though there were some awkwardly presented bits. In particular, you spend a paragraph talking about how horn injuries "aren't serious" and then go on to say that they bleed a lot and are incredibly painful. It's not an outright contradiction, but generally when you simply state two facts one after another (Eg. Her hair was green. Her hair was ugly.) the reader will assume that they're connected. I think it would have been much smoother if the contrast was stated with something like "in spite of this..." or "just because they weren't serious didn't mean...", etc

There were a couple more odd things like this, but I don't think I noticed any in the second half of the chapter, so maybe you've already grown past it. Here's hoping—it certainly looks interesting, what with Celestia actually apparently on her side(?).

Also:

If she was really honest with herself, she had received more than her fair share, and likely had very knocked more than one screw loose.

very likely had knocked, maybe?

[Hierophant]

she had received more than her fair share of explosions to the face

Ummm… what?

As previously mentioned, this sucker's got a lot of mechanical errors. For example:

The blood that was dripping down her face, wasn’t her’s.

-The blood dripping down her face wasn't hers.
*Hers is the possessive. Her's is not only a contraction, but a contraction with improper word relation. Would you ever say “her is”?
*Omit “that was”.

Stylistic Advice: (see what I did there ) Be more direct in your use of diction. Use more direct diction. I like the narrative, but slogging through all these passively constructed sentences and superfluous auxiliary verbs puts my brain to sleep. If you're going to dance around the direct message, do so purposefully.

*Another example:

She pushed the wish to remember to the bottom of her mental checklist of things to do.

-She pushed recollection to the bottom of her mental checklist.

“Hnn” was all Twilight was able to get out in reply.

*The phrase “in reply” is 99% of the time not necessary. Only use it if describing something that normally wouldn’t be able to talk, like a wave or a tree branch or some esoteric, philosophical thing. When characters converse, one is obviously replying to the other. Worst case scenario, use 'replied'.
-He screamed until his voice tore like fabric pulled across a steel hook. The ocean moaned in reply.

the realization was quickly lost to the relief as she was lowered into the soft, warm embrace of the unfairly comfortable mattress.

*As she sunk into the mattress, her realization vanished under blunting, amnemonic comfort.

Y’know.

The more you write, the more this’ll evolve into instinct. Natural diction is an extension of command of the language. Command of the language extends into natural diction.

Yeah.

Hope that helps.

[Greatazuredragon]

she eventually concluded she had either been hit in the head with a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick

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