An Alternate Ending to A Canterlot Wedding

by MeadowRosePony

What Happened?

Twilight blinked and wearily shook her head in a futile attempt to rid it of its pounding.

"Where am I?" She wondered as she looked around her, getting more confused as she took in the faded walls and torn curtains covering the sides of a beautiful sunset. "Wait a minute..."

She trotted over to wall, tripping over the cracked and uneven stones making up the floor. Tumbling head over hooves she landed right under the sunset. On closer inspection, she realized that it wasn’t a real sunset. Just a realistic painting framed with curtains to look like a window.

Looking closer, she saw a rope tucked behind one of the curtains. It looked like an old drawstring, like the ones they used to use in olden times to summon servants.

"I wonder what this does?" She murmured to herself, pulling the rope... and jumping away from the painting with a gasp as it suddenly changed to show a night sky. Again she tugged on the rope and again the picture changed, this time revealing a morning sunrise.

“Extraordinary!” She exclaimed. "This must be ancient magic! It’s so realistic and yet it changes with a simple pull on the cord." She pulled once again and the picture changed to a midday sun and the whole room became filled with light.

“Whoa!” Twilight gasped. The room itself was certainly old and crumbling, -or as Rarity would say- in need of a good makeover. But what was inside it was extraordinary!

There was an overstuffed armchair that wasn’t even a little faded. In front of the chair was an old rug, beautifully embroidered with the Equestrian emblem. Large pillows surrounded the rug, giving it the look of Story Time corner in the Golden Oaks Library. A globe and ancient time glass sat on an antique desk, not entirely unlike the one Miss. Cheerilee used in the Ponyville school. Against the far wall was a low table, just the right height for school fillies. On top of it were wooden blocks carved in the shapes of numbers and letters. And in the back corner she found, ‘Wonder of wonders!’ a bookcase filled with scrolls and texts.

"That’s strange." Twilight said. "Most of these books are old foals' tales and reading primers, but some of them are advanced magic scrolls and early history reports." She picked up one of the larger scrolls and unrolled it.

*cough cough* Twilight choked on the dust that came off the ancient scroll. "Really early history reports. These are before the founding of Equestria. And they look like field reports!" She looked back at the bookcase. "What were they doing next to old school books?"

Moving over to the strange window/ picture thing to read the scroll in better light, she suddenly tripped. Looking down she saw that she had stepped on a small doll. She set the scroll back on the bookcase and picked up the doll to examine it.

Unlike the rest of the items in this room, which were old but in decent shape, this doll was obviously well loved. Its gray felt was faded and its purple mane was torn and ragged. As she turned the doll over she noticed a rough seam on the one side where a small hoof had repaired one of the little pegasus doll’s wings.

"Wait..." She moved a patch of the matted yarn that was used to make the mane away from the doll's face and frowned in confusion. There was a small horn on the doll's head. It was an alicorn doll. And not fashioned after any alicorn she recognized either.

"Not that there are a lot of alicorns." She mused to herself. Looking at the doll, it reminded her of her old Smarty Pants doll. The one that her brother had made for her so many years ago.

“Shining” Twilight groaned as suddenly everything that had happened that day hit her and she remembered why she was here. Tears pooled in her eyes as she remembered her hurt and pain at how her brother had kicked her out of the wedding, how her friends didn’t believe her and her mentor wouldn’t even talk to her. And the look on Cadance’s face when Twilight told her that she wouldn’t be in the wedding.

Sobbing openly now, she hugged the small doll to her chest and curled up on the floor, slowly falling into a troubled sleep.

---

Back in Canterlot, Shining Armor blinked as his sister vanished in a flash of purple light.

“Oh dear...” Fluttershy said softly as Rarity loudly exclaimed her despair, fainting on a duvet she had magicked up solely for this purpose.

“Twilight?” Pinkie Pie asked softly as her mane drooped into a slightly deflated mass of curls.

“Now hang on there, sugarcube,” Applejack said, patting her friend on the shoulder. “Ah'm sure we’ll find her! Maybe she’s just blowing off steam, though Ah reckon we do owe her another apology.’

“Well what are we waiting for?” Rainbow Dash shouted, starting to fly off. "Let’s go find her!”

“Girls.” A calm voice stopped them all, except for Rainbow Dash, who suddenly found herself halted by her tail being grabbed in yellow magic.

“Perhaps we should figure out where she went before we all rush off to find her?” Princess Celestia suggested gently, releasing Rainbow Dash’s tail as she spoke.

“Her Majesty is right.” Shining Armor said, taking command of the team. “We need to set up a perimeter and split into te-"

“Shining” Princess Cadance interrupted, “Twilight’s not a criminal, she’s your little sister. We don’t need to set a perimeter. We just need to give her some time. Not box her in and try to trap her. Otherwise she’ll just teleport again as soon as we get close to her. Besides, that wouldn’t work anyway. Twilight has magical surges when she’s upset, remember? And her special talent is magic. Who knows how far she could have gone.”

“Cadance...” Shining Armor said softly, looking at the ground.

“It’s ok.” She said, nuzzling him quickly before turning to others. “How about we start by you all telling me what happened while Queen Chrysalis was taking my place?”

“Well…” Pinkie Pie started, pulling a hat and cup of tea out her mane and settling herself in a big red armchair that was suddenly on the castle lawn. “It all started with a letter…”

---

“Wee!” A filly Twilight squealed in glee as she was levitated though the air with her brother’s magic.

“Got it!” She yelled in triumph as she grabbed her kite out of the tree it had gotten stuck in. Twilight grinned, waiting for her brother to bring her back down with her prize.

“I got it!” She yelled louder when she didn’t move. ”Shiny?” She turned her neck to look down at her brother. But he wasn’t there. ”Shiny?!” She cried in panic as she clung to the tree.

Suddenly the scene around her tree changed. Instead of being at the park she was in the middle of the Royal Guard Academy training grounds. Guards-in-training ran around the ring, tackling training dummies and running though obstacle courses.

ZAP!

A flash of light brought her attention to her left where a group of unicorn trainees were practicing basic blast and shield spells.

ZAP! ZAP!

The blasts of magic landed closer and closer to her spot in the tree. “Shiny!” Twilight screamed for her brother, terrified.

“Shiny!” She breathed in relief spotting him in his training armor as he trotted into view, his horn glowing as he readied a spell. “Help!” She called waving her hooves to get his attention.

“Ahh!” Twilight yelped as his spell took out a branch to her right, causing her to drop the kite. It fluttered to the ground, forgotten, as she cried, screaming in panic, “Shining, help me!"

She clung to the branch, her eyes widening in terror as the next blast came hurtling towards her.

"Stop, please!” She cried out in fear as his spell shattered the branch she was clinging to, causing her to fall as the scene changed again.

She was fully grown and falling through the green fire circle as the changeling Queen disguised as Princess Cadance laughed at her. “Nooo!! Shiny, help me!” Twilight cried as he appeared behind the evil queen.

Shining Armor shook his head and placed a hoof around the now undisguised Queen Chrysalis.

“If you can’t be happy for Cadance and me,” Shining Armor said, pulling Chrysalis closer. “Then maybe you shouldn’t be in the wedding at all!”

With a surge of his horn, Shining Armor blasted Twilight down the hole and into the blackness below.

---

“Nooo!!!” Twilight cried as she jolted upright, fresh tears streaking down her face.

“Shiny...” She cried softly to herself. She took a couple of deep breathes to calm herself.

“It was just a dream...” Twilight told herself. She smiled in relief, only to have it fall off her face as she remembered why she had teleported here in the first place.

She looked around at the ancient school room. “I wonder why I teleported here? Usually you need to know a place in order to teleport there. But I’ve never been here before…have I?” Twilight asked, re-examining the room where she found herself.

“No, impossible, these scrolls are over a thousand years old and some of them don’t look like they’ve been opened since they were written, the seals aren’t even cracked.” She said after picking up a scroll and carefully examining the wax holding it shut.

“Ahh…Ahchoo!” She sneezed.

"Not to mention all the dust." Twilight sniffed and magicked up a hankie to blow her nose.

“So how am I here? Think Twilight, think! There are only a few methods of teleportation. One: you teleport yourself, using an image or memory of your intended location. Two: somepony or some creature teleports you."

(She shuddered, remembering how the changeling queen had transported her to the crystal caves under Canterlot. That hadn’t been pleasant.)

"Three: a group teleportation spell, which is basically a combination of the first two.” Twilight paced the floor as she listed off the possibilities in full-blown scholar-mode. “Well I did start a teleportation spell, but I certainly didn’t intend on teleporting here. And I would have felt it if somepony had teleported me here. Right?”

Twilight stopped suddenly as an idea struck her. “What if somepony had simply redirected my spell?” Twilight paused to consider it. “But they would still need a tremendous amount of power, not to mention the skill to do it without my noticing.”

Twilight stiffened and looked around herself warily. “And they would have needed to teleport with me in order for it to work.”

Comments

[Paradise Oasis]

Nice chapter, love the Flashback with Shining, and her name for him- 'Shiny'. Wonder who teleported her, though? Fizzy teleported me into Paradise Estate's pool oncewhen I wasn't expecting it... not pleasant.

Anyway, looking forward to your next chapter!

Paradise Oasis

[Emperor]

Sounds like the castle of the Pony Sisters. Of course, given the plot synopsis of this story, I'm sure we can all hazard a guess just who redirected Twilight's teleport