Trapped In Canterlot

by TartarusFire

C12 - Prelude to Darkness

Listening through the wall opposite of the window, Caedes focused on listening for fast movements of Empathy, checking to see if she was awake.

An hour had passed in muffled silence, waiting for the noise to cease, yet it persisted.

Starting to get heavy lidded, the pervading silence made Caedes’s ears droop from the stress of listening.

She whispered, "Silence?"

Renewed hope came back to her, jolting her from her near slumber.

Dashing back over to the wall, she sat close to it. Her mane sashayed over to the right side, the side she did not wear it normally, so she tossed it back over. Pulling a pitiful amount of magic, she touched the rune, exciting it.

Ten minutes passed, and her initial joy died.

Twenty minutes had passed, and the energy she had given herself had been lost.

Forty minutes had passed in the same way: giving most of her magic to the rune and stopping, waiting to replenish her magic, and continuing the cycle. She had nearly fallen asleep, but the area around the rune started to darken, letting her know that her efforts were about to come to fruition.

Forty five minutes later ended with a yawn. The rune seemed to be at its maximum which had turned black and burnt around the rune while the lines themselves glowed brightly enough to ruin Caedes’s night vision.

Stretching, she got up from the book while keeping the magic at her forefront, lest it all drift away. "What now?" She ran her hoof in the carpet, watching the book. "What magic can I use this with to get the window unlocked?"

"...Stupid me. You can’t just figure out how to get a window open... You ‘re a failure at magic. All you can do is make stuff float – sometimes." She berated herself, knowing that it had been a pointless endeavor in the end.

Her words had not fallen on deaf ears however.

Actually figuring out how to use the stored magic had never occurred to her. Just getting enough magic to make a decent sized spell was hard enough. She was pacing in front of her means to escape.

An eruption threw the door of the room off its hinges. Empathy glowered in the room, having been woken up by self-defeating ranting. "AND WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!"

"What—" was all the time Caedes had to say before she focused herself on the monster that had invaded her room. The explosion was small, but forceful enough to collapse a small section of the wall behind it while its light masked another flash as Caedes was thrown from the miniature explosion.

A buzzing sound haunted Empathy’s ears. Years of time flashed before her eyes as Caedes was blasted away, hitting her bedframe. All the time, wasted by one single book. A book that was brought by an usurper to the plan.

Caedes knew how to escape; she knew how to make her own destiny.

It was horrifying.

***

Her vision was blurred, and she couldn’t seem to find a way up. Caedes stared at a wood post with a smear of red. Touching her forehead, her hoof came back tarnished with the same color.

Standing, she fell over, apparently without balance. Her right flank and leg were raw. She gazed down, only to find that she had landed on her right side, preventing the injury from being seen.

Attempting to regain balance, she stumbled upright, and glanced around at the carpet. It held a slightly darker hue as she looked around with white spots clouding parts of her vision. Finally noticing the hole in the wall, her initial goal took over, and she fled.

The hole had left her with splinters in her belly, but she couldn’t feel them. She felt nothing. Not her hoof, not her head, not her leg, nothing. Everything buzzed with a dull ache, letting her dash about onto the streets in the dark of early morning with vision obscured by orbs of light and everything being too bright.

***

She hadn’t noticed it before. The event might have been salvageable by force, but as soon as Empathy had seen it, she had lost any urge to move.

Initially that flash had seemed strange which she had disregarded. However, now that it had been revealed, it was most assuredly a strange event.

While she had been attempting to walk toward Caedes, her burnt flank showed some fur which should have been seared away from the blast. Instead, it was a hued image in the center of her flank.

A cutie mark from an accident. A mark of Fate does not work based on accidents. However, this one did.

It had marked the end of an era: an era of life, Caedes’s life.

No greater obscenity or slight had ever been presented to Empathy. No matter what she did, no matter how far she went to maintain the balance, Fate had still won.

"Nothing awaits except for agony. It was all a lie in the first place."

She cringed, bringing her hooves to her face. "I wonder if Fate had conspired against me, against all of us to bring the chaos into our lives to guarantee her mark. I cannot fathom what twists have been turned, allowing for this absolute outcome."

Magic flowed into her horn. "I cannot stand being a puppet... I must make sure that I am anything but part of Harmony. I will regret my life intersecting hers, not for my own sake, but for hers."

***

She ran into the night. Sounds of two Night Guards flying overhead whipped by, intent on investigating the sounds. Caedes could care less.

Besides being dizzy and unable to think straight, she was free! After so long, she could finally be away from Empathy. Slowing to a quick trot, she breezed over small hills and on top of paths. The castle was high in the sky, and she could do as she pleased.

From far behind Caedes, sounds of metal clashing rang into the night.