• Published 6th Jul 2012
  • 2,774 Views, 98 Comments

Of Innocence Lost - Lunafan1k



A book of evil finds its way into innocent hooves.

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Chapter 8: A Talent Revealed

“The hay was all that about?” Scootaloo asked as Colgate made her swift departure. She turned to regard her friends, both of whom wore the same bewildered expression. She turned back around and shook her head; things were just as odd as always. She revved her wings and took off down the street, headed for the park to test another crazy idea for a cutie mark.

However, thoughts of cutie marks quickly turned to thoughts of confusion as they neared what appeared to be a giant mob gathered around Diamond Tiara’s mansion. Scootaloo decided to get a closer look, so she guided the scooter and trailing wagon to the front of the crowd. What they saw would change their lives.

Filthy Rich and his wife were crying out as though in great pain, a bloody mess of bone and fur grasped tightly in their hooves. The crusaders could only fit two and two together just as the rest of the crowd did: the grey, bloody mess of fur was what was left of Diamond Tiara.

Sweetie Belle could only look on in pure horror. Had her curse done this? Had she killed another pony? A dark part of her mind told her that DT got what she deserved, even if it was a bit over the top. She shook those thoughts out of her head, she wanted answers and she knew just where to get them.

She turned away from the crowd and ran home, her friends not far behind her. She sprinted into the boutique and seemed to fly past the victory party her sister was throwing. She ran up the stairs and around the corner to her room, where she began frantically searching for the book of spells.

“Sweetie Belle, are ya okay?” Applebloom asked as she and Scootaloo finally caught up to the frantic unicorn. “Ya just took off on us. Ah know it was ah frightful thing, disgusting too, but we should be together tah help us get through this. Ah know she wasn’t the nicest pony, but Ah really don’t think she deserved that.” Sweetie Belle seemed to ignore her as she continued to turn her room inside out. “Sweetie? Y’all listenen to me?”

“Come on, where is it?! I just had it!” Sweetie grumbled in frustration, seemingly oblivious to those around her.

“What? The book?” Scootaloo asked as she pulled the book out from under the bed.

“DON’T TOUCH THAT!” Sweetie Belle practically screamed, ripping the book out of Scootaloo’s hooves. She set it on the floor behind her, blocking it from view.

“Hey! What gives? I was only trying to help!” Scootaloo yelled back, both hurt and angered at Sweetie’s actions.

“I’m sorry, but I really don’t think anypony should be messing with the book…”

“Sweetie? What aren’t y’all tellen us?” inquired Applebloom.

Sweetie Belle looked around the room, a strained expression upon her muzzle as though she were debating something of dire importance. After a few minutes she let out a strained sigh, “It was me…”

“Um… what?”

“It was me, I am responsible for what happened to Diamond Tiara.” Sweetie Belle said, looking at them for the first time. Her eyes were red and puffy, tears flowing down her muzzle as the effects of her spell hit home once again. “She… She jumped me when I was on my way to the club house. I-I used some of my new spells to not get hurt when she tried to beat me up. B-But before that… I learned a new spell… a curse.” She took their stunned silence as a queue to continue, “The curse was a mental instability spell, I thought it would just scare her really bad… not drive her to that…”

All three were silent for a time, Scootaloo and Applebloom unmoving while Sweetie glanced nervously back and forth between them. As the minutes passed, Sweetie began to shuffle nervously where she sat.

“What now?” Applebloom suddenly asked.

“Huh?” Sweetie responded intellectually.

“You just committed and confessed to a murder, Sweetie Belle, you learned and used spells from a book that ah now see as pure evil. What’s tah stop ya from going further? If ah have ta get that book away from you to protect not only those around you, but you as well, will it be given up peacefully or am ah gonna have ta take it by force?” Applebloom leveled a steel-like glare at Sweetie, who felt hefself shrinking under the intensity.

“B-but what if it hurts you?” Sweetie mumbled, just loud enough to hear.

“Y’all forget, Twilight is right downstairs.” Applebloom turned to Scootaloo, who had remained oddly quiet during the exchange. “Go and get Twilight, Don’t say anything about what just happened, they need to hear it from Sweetie.”

“We already did.” The three fillies gasped in shock, there in the doorway stood a furious Twilight, Rarity draped across her back in a dead faint, and Cheerilee staring in complete shock.

“Now hand over the book, I will turn it into Celestia for her to destroy, and your cooperation and testimony should lighten your punishment. If not, then as Applebloom put it, I will have to use force.”

Sweetie Belle slowly nodded, then reached around behind her to retrieve the book. However, it was gone. “Huh? Where-”

“Sweetie Belle! You will hoof over the book this instant or Celestia help me-!”

“But it was right here!” Sweetie Belle pleaded, but to no avail. She saw Twilight’s horn glow, a moment later she found herself in the middle of the street. She had somehow cast the damage reduction spell, preventing her from taking too much damage from being thrown through the wall of the boutique. There was a bright flash of light as Twilight appeared in front of her, sans Rarity.

“You will hand over the book this instant or I will take you down and drag you to Canterlot and lock you in a dungeon myself!” Twilight’s horn glowed brighter as she gripped Sweetie Belle in her magic. But something was wrong, her grip kept failing, like she was trying to hold onto a bar of soap in the shower. Sweetie slipped out of the aura holding her and fell to the ground, she had some minor scuffs but was none the worse for the wear.

“Twilight, please, I don’t know where the book went! I set it behind me when Scootaloo grabbed it! I swear! You have to believe me! I don’t want to fight you…” Sweetie pleaded, but she readied her defenses just in case.

Twilight was just about to unleash another attack, but a blue mare swatted her horn to interrupt the spell. Twilight glared at the interfering pony.

“You will cease all hostile actions at once, I am secret agent Minty Fresh, code name Colgate.” She said, flashing her badge. “I am under direct orders from Princess Luna to retrieve the book, which I have here in my possession. I will also be taking Sweetie Belle into custody for questioning.”

She turned around to regard the filly in question. “Sweetie, drop your spells and come with me peacefully, and I promise things won’t get ugly. Refuse, and I can’t make that promise.”

Sweetie looked at her nervously, she was in way over her head and didn’t want to think about what might happen. She released a breath she didn’t know she was holding and dropped her spells before sedately walking up to ‘Colgate.’

Agent Fresh pulled a ring from the Null Space and placed it on Sweetie’s horn. It instantly contracted and held tightly, inhibiting any and all magic. “Now, come with me to the train station, the next train to Canterlot leaves soon.”

“That won’t be necessary, Agent Fresh.” They all turned to see the princesses standing behind them. “We will take the book from here.” Luna said, teleporting the book off of Agent Fresh’s back. “And I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, little one. The punishment for any type of murder in Equestria is death, but being as you were caught up in events beyond your control, we will lighten the punishment.”

Celestia stepped forward, “For the murder of two ponies, one but a filly like yourself, the sentence shall be life without magic. I will take your horn from your head so you may learn from this, and hopefully not prove to be entirely corrupted by the black magics within the book of darkness. Does anyone disagree with this punishment?” She asked the few ponies in attendance.

“I do.” Several gasps were heard as heads swiveled to see Rarity, no longer in a dead faint and seething with barely suppressed rage. “That book, be it evil or not, gave my sister a chance at magic she never had. Years ago, when our parents took her to the doctor for a checkup, it was discovered that Sweetie Belle would never be able to use her magic because she had an abnormal growth in her brain, in her brain! We looked into surgery, but anything we found had a 90% chance of further damaging her brain, possibly rendering her a vegetable.”

She looked at her younger sister, tears in her eyes, “I’m sorry we kept this from you Sweetie, we thought it best if you didn’t know until you were older. When you cast the light spell the other day, I couldn’t help but think the doctors were wrong, that you could perform magic and that you were just a late bloomer. But if this book is the one responsible for bestowing the gift of magic onto you, then I say learn it all, find your true talent in the dark arts and use them to make this world a better place. I know you can do it-” Rarity was cut off as a spear lodged into her throat, thrown from on high.

“Alright, hand over the book of darkness or we kill each and every one of you lame-o ponies and your widdle pwincess!” A mocking voice demanded from high above. Above them millions of griffons began to blot out the sky, but what concerned the ponies the most, even more so than trying to help Rarity, was a little filly screaming out in pain. Her screams were matched by thousands of others as shadows darker than the night itself erupted around her, filling her with power to seek vengeance upon those that would dare harm her sister.

She glared upward at the griffon that threw the spear, a dark circle of magical runes sprung to life beneath her hooves, and a cutie mark of an enclosed five pointed star flashed into existence upon her flank, “From the land of the living, I call upon thee in the land of the dead, to unleash thy fury of thunder.”

Author's Note:

To be continued in the sequel, The Pursuit of Vengeance!

Also, I figured out why i couldn't write for shit, it was because I wasn't writing on my laptop! i just wrote everything and more i had for the ending of this fic in about two hours, it was so easy i feel stupid that it took that long to realize my fingers missed my laptop keyboard. A macbook pro was my first computer i wrote on, so it makes sense in a way.

Over 9k internets to whomever knows what the spell incantation is from, no cheating!


Afternote, the original plan was for her to fight Celestia and for Rarity to get killed by accident, then have Sweetie run away to the everfree to complete her training. But as it came out that she was terrified of the book I decided she was going to turn herself in.

As for the griffons, I mentioned in the first chapter that they were readying for war. For them to be able to take on the princesses, I decided that *Spoiler alert!* they would develop a means to withstand their magic and empower themselves, then sweetie becomes and anti-hero as she enacts her vengeance upon the griffons.

I decided to split the story for a few reasons, the change in plot was the main reason while the next part is going to be larger and more epic.

As for how sweetie was able to cast magic if she was never able to, the book's magic has different properties and has magic that follows different rules, like the spell circle that gathers energy through it instead of the horn, but requires an incantation to help focus the energy. So she can still cast with an inhibitor but in a different way unknown to Equestria.

As for the spell itself, consider it like a Limit break from final fantasy where the emotional surge just triggers it.