Princess Autumn

by stillinbeta

Chapter 1

I woke up in the morning around 7 am, like I always do. I dragged myself out of bed at 7:30, like I always do. I walked down the same path to work that I always do, dodging the same merchants I always do. I grabbed a coffee that my usual barista had waiting for me, and finished it just as I my commute brought me to the castle gates.

The guard did not part to let me through, as he always did. I almost ran into him.

“Halt,” the guard barked. All the royal guards looked identical on duty, but I would’ve recognised the voice of my usual dawn guard.

“Where’s Resolute Shield?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.

The guard’s stone-faced expression dropped for a second. “Oh, he got promoted, he’s going to...” A shake of the head, a cleared throat and the Royal Guard Face returned. A newbie, I guessed.

“What’s your business here, sir?”

Years of practice kept me from flinching. Instead, my horn flared as I pulled a well-worn scroll from my saddlebag, emblazoned with Luna’s royal seal. I unrolled it very gently, cringing at the sound of brittle paper, and presented it to the guard.

“Argent Sword, sir. Royal Archivist, third class.”

The guard looked at my credentials, then frowned his eyes and looked back at me... and my golden coat.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Yes, I know ‘argent’ means silver. My father, on the other hoof, did not. Or perhaps didn’t care. Maybe it just sounded cool. And besides –” I gestured at the silver quill cutie mark on my flank “– he was almost right. Now can I go? I’m going to be late.”

The guard narrowed his eyes at me, glanced at the paper again, and then shrugged. He stepped out of my path, and allowed me to pass.

Distracted by the interruption to my routine, I forgot to turn before I could catch a glance of my reflection in the grand mirror at the end of the hall. I scowled at my long, pointed snout and dull matte coat, and felt a familiar darkness descend on my mood. Today was going to be a long day.

---

Perhaps one could guess by my name that my father didn’t intend for me to be a “Royal Archivist, 3rd class.” He, his father before him, and his father before him had always been guardsponies. Unfortunately, fate had other plans for me. After I got that quill, my mother (bless her) made some comment about the quill being mightier than the sword. She would not be the last.

My father was upset, of course, but no-one can argue with a cutie mark. After I graduated from university, he pulled a string or two and got me an apprenticeship in the Royal Canterlot Library. And here I was, six years later, late for work for the second time that week.

“Late again, Mr. Sword,” chided my supervisor.

No flinch.

“Sorry, Ms. Bookend. The new guards kept me busy confirming I wasn’t the world’s least interesting spy.”

She rolled her eyes and hoofed me a scroll with a checklist on it. “You’ll be doing inventory on the restricted section again today.”

I groaned outwardly, mostly to cover my smile. I had to keep up appearances, but the restricted section was my favourite corner of the archives.

“Does it have to be me? Last time I was sneezing out scroll dust for days!” I whined.

“Nobody wants this job, Argent. But you’re the lowest-ranking member of my staff, and I’m your boss, so yes, has to be you.” Her eyes twinkled.

I gave an exaggerated shrug, then got to work. Grabbing her checklist, a quill, and a bottle of ink in my magic, I made my way towards a dark corner of the library. Maybe today wasn’t a total loss after all.

The restricted section of the library was dusty, dingy, and precarious. Scrolls were stacked next to books and the occasional clay tablet seemingly at random, and in configurations that sneered at both physics and topology. The system had surely made sense to the head archivist who had designed it, but its secrets had been lost to time. Every once in awhile a reorganisation was attempted, but the wards and charms that kept the shelves from crumbling were... temperamental. The last effort, some two centuries previous, was still spoken of only in hushed tones among the senior archivists.

I kept a careful eye on the door that lead back to the office. Satisfied that I was alone, I carefully pulled a scroll labelled “On Alicorns and Unicorns” in a nigh-unreadable cursive out of my bag and placed it on its shelf, checking it off the giant inventory list with a sigh of relief. Unauthorised use of Archive materials was a very grave offence, and I would rest easier knowing there was no contraband in my saddlebags anymore.

Moving on to the next row, a new book caught my eye. Or rather, the fact that it was new did. This section of the library was mostly old, forgotten magics and histories that Celestia had decided were better left forgotten. A new volume stuck out like a sore thumb.

I pulled the pristine volume off the shelf and my eyes just got wider. “Alicorn Ascension: A First Pony Account. By HRH Twilight Sparkle.”

---

Seven years ago I made a discovery. It was... mostly an accident. I was taking a research methods class at university that I’d been putting off since I started. The ascension of Equestria’s newest princess six months ago was still fresh in everyone’s mind, and so I decided I’d write my term paper on the history of alicorns.

This turned out to be a mistake. Our newest princess and her sister-in-law were too young to have much written about them, and the only other two Alicorns alive seemed to predate history itself. This made getting my citation quota of “three primary sources” quite difficult. To make matters worse, my professor vetoed simply interviewing one of our rulers as “a waste of their very important time.”

I ended up finding a book Luna had written a century prior to her banishment. I had to get special permission to access the restricted section of the archives (the one I’m currently coughing my lungs out in). Even though I had to translate the book from Middle Equestrian, my cantankerous professor only counted it as one “source” and gave me a C. But even a total failure on the paper would’ve been worth the secret that book imparted.

I already knew that Equestria didn’t have any alicorn princes, but we weren’t exactly rolling in them to begin with, so that wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was that Equestria used to have a lot more alicorns in its history, and furthermore, they’d all been princesses too. Luna spelled it out in her own florid, barely readable prose: alicornhood was synonymous with marehood.

It was a good thing I already had nine-tenths of a library science degree, or I would’ve dropped out right then. That moment crystalised something I’d kind of always known I’d wanted but never thought I could achieve. There were probably a thousand reasons to want to ascend to alicornhood: immortality, unrivaled power, giant wings, a really sweet castle. I didn’t care about any of that. My goal was simple: I just wanted to be a mare.

---

I looked around very carefully, grabbed the shiny new tome, and walked out of the the dusty archives. I told my boss I wasn’t feeling well and that I needed to head home. I had a lot of reading to do.

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