• Published 9th May 2019
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1000 Years Later - DekaSkittalz



After the events of 1000 Years, our (technically not so young) teenage protagonist is ready to face the world. Or is he?

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Testing Limits

After Dinner, Luna and I decided to walk around the castle grounds. Well, I decided to, Luna just followed. After a while of walking in companionable silence, I find myself subconsciously gravitating towards the garden. Upon reaching it, the first thing I look at is the broken remnants of my own statue. Luna comes up beside me, and looks at the rubble that used to be me.

Neither of us know what to say, and I don’t know what to feel. Confused, I walk up to it, and pick up a part of the rubble. It all fell from my body like a shell. Looking up at the pedestal, I see myself standing on it. Not another statue, but my actual fleshy self… just… standing there as if I was a statue… then it looks at me; my own two eyes staring down at me. It then fades away, with no rhyme or reason. Looking back down at the rubble in my hand, I chuck it as hard as I can at my pedestal. I don’t want to look at it, but I can’t bring myself to look away… angry at my own indecision, I do the only thing I can think to do. I blast it. It explodes into a shower of stones, and I grasp my eye in pain. Gritting my teeth, I look back at the place where the pedestal used to be, holding my hand over my left eye.

“Null! What has gotten into you!” Luna says from behind me.

“I couldn’t stand looking at it… It was mine, I should be allowed to decide what happens to it.” Luna goes to say something, but then something lands behind me, interrupting her as she lets out an sound of panic. Turning around, I see it’s my plaque. I sigh and pick it up, and wipe off the dust. Of course though, I accidentally smear a bit of blood on it. I hand it to Luna, who takes it in her magic with a bit of confusion. “You keep it. It was a nice gift, but I don’t want to see it. It’s just a reminder of the past.”

Luna fixes me with a glare. “Null. you need to control yourself. You can’t just go and destroy everything that angers you! Not just for the obvious, but because you’re also hurting yourself in the process!” she says pointing at the blood on the plaque for emphasis.

Looking back at the rubble, something clicks in my head. “Hey Luna. If you’re back here… why weren’t you the one that free’d me?” I ask, not taking my eyes of the rubble.

“I was going to! But I’d had only been back for a year or so. And when I got back, I didn’t have nearly enough magic to do it… and when I did, I found out Nightmare Moon tampered with the original spell, so I had to redo a couple parts. I wanted to make sure you were exactly how you should be.” She defends herself.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding in. Glad she didn’t forget about me… of course she had a legitimate reason.

Looking to the evening sky, I see that it's actually closer to night than evening. “Hey… Don’t you work during the night?”

“I do. But I’m not going to just leave you alone.” she answers.

“So you’re staying?” I ask hopefully.

She shakes her head, much to my disappointment. “I’m going to be assigning a guard to keep an eye on you. I’m sure you can handle that.”

I raise an eyebrow skeptically. “You serious? A guard. In case you can’t recall, I nearly killed some guards when I first woke up. How do I know they won’t try to kill me?”

She rolls her eyes. “Because the guards you nearly killed were my sisters guards. As much as it pains me to discredit Equestria’s defenses, her guards are… below my guards standards. On top of that, this particular guard is from of a group I trained personally; The Crescents.”

I raise my eyebrow higher. “Really now?”

She nods. “Yes, they’re the very best the Lunar guard has to offer.” she says with a stamp of her hoof for emphasis.

I fix her with a skeptical glare. “Best or not, you ever stop to think maybe I don’t want a guard following me around?”

She just gives me a small glare of her own.

“You don’t trust me.” I say simply.

Her look quickly changes into something between sadness and anger. “It’s not that I don’t trust you Null. I just don’t trust that eye of yours. Whether you claim to have control of it or not, however small that control may be, there's no telling what else it’s capable of, or if it could take control of you at any moment. You said it yourself, you don’t know what else it can do. It’s just too much of a risk that cannot be left unchecked. I trust you Null, I really do. But given the history of that eye, I have to do this. Please, understand this.”

I continue to glare at her for a moment before turning with a hmph. “Fine.”

She lets out a sigh of relief; Probably glad I’m being cooperative. “Thank you.” she lets out a quick whistle that I almost missed. After that, I hear the flapping of wings. Landing next to Luna is a Thestral. Quickly using my eye on it, I find that his name is Skyline, and that he is indeed, very tough. Not that I have much to compare to for reference, but he could probably keep up with Luna herself in a fight. Definitely not beat her, but he could hold off for a while.

This thestral is a dark gray color, with a slightly lighter shade of gray for hair, with neon blue tips. Said hair is shaggy and unkempt; same goes for his tail. He’s got no armour, and the only thing to indicate he’s even a guard is the blade that’s strapped to his side. His smile and easygoing expression is strange, like it doesn’t belong on someone like him. After a moment of awkward silence on their part, Skyline finally speaks up. “Hey there.”

“...Hey there? Luna, aren’t guards supposed to be more… is disciplined the word I’m looking for?” I question.

“The Crescents are trained differently. Instead of stripping them of their differences, they embrace it. None of them act like traditional guards do; makes them think differently, and come to their own conclusions. However, they are very disciplined; Each are under a special oath.” she quickly defends.

Examining Skyline again, I see that nothing’s changed. As stupid as it sounds, she definitely seems to have gotten results. Letting out a groan, I just sit down on the ground. “If you say so. Cya around Luna.”

She seems a bit off put by my sudden dismissal, but seeing nothing else that needs to be said, and a growing urgency for her to go to work, she takes off with a huff.

When she’s out of sight, Skyline speaks up again. “You’re too rude to those you consider friends, you know that?”

Fixing him with a glare, I respond tersely. “And you’re too laid back for the position you’re in, you know that? And who are you to tell me how I should treat my friends?”

“Not telling you how to treat your friends, just pointing it your poor attempts at keeping them. Or in your case, your only one.” he quips with the same smug smile he’s had the entire time.

“How do you-” he cuts me off.

“Know she’s your only friend? Every pony in Canterlot knows. You screamed it to the heavens above when you attacked Princess Celestia.” he explains.

“Not my brightest moment. I should have just killed her instead of wasting time.” I state coldly.

“Try it again and I’ll have to stop you. I seem laid back but honestly, you’ve got me more on guard than I’ve been in a long time. Luna trusts in you, and that’s enough for me to give you a chance; but I won’t hesitate if it turns out her trust is misplaced.”

Rolling my eyes, I get up and stretch. “Yeah yeah, whatever. For as different from a regular guard as you are, you all have one thing in common. Your undying loyalty to the throne.”

He raises an eyebrow. “What’s wrong with being loyal to one’s nation?”

“Nothing wrong with that. Just pointing it out. Now, I know you have to have a dueling circle around here somewhere. Where is it?” I question.

“I’m not going to fight you if I don’t have to.” he states.

Letting out a scoff, I look at him like he’s stupid. “I don’t want to go there to fight you. The sooner I get a handle on my powers, the sooner I can rid myself of you. So out of courtesy, I’d rather mess around there than cause more damage. I didn’t care about this pedestal because it was mine, but everything else isn’t.”

He considers this for a moment, then nods and starts walking towards the back of the castle. I follow him and he leads me to what looks to be a training area. In the middle, I spot the big open dueling circle. Bigger than the one back at the Everfree castle. Stepping inside it, he steps inside as well, and a big dome of magic encompasses us. “I thought you said you weren’t going to fight me?”

“I’m not. But two ponies have to be in the dueling circle for it to activate. So, here I am. Just don’t actually attack me and it should stay on.” he explains.

After contemplating the workings of a magic arena, I shrug it off and turn to the opposite end of the circle. “Alright, then lets try going all out. See how that ends.” I say, and start charging my eye. When I feel I’m at my limit, I let out the blast and immediately regret it as an indescribable amount of pain shoots through my eye; enough to cause me to yell out in pain. Clamping my hand on my eye, I can feel a lot of blood flowing from it like a river. I stand there, teeth gritted, and completely ignoring whatever I might have done to the shield, if anything at all.

When the pain goes down to a tolerable level, I glance at the spot where I blasted and find nothing there. Same old dome. Looking down at Skyline, I see he has an impressed look of shock on his face. “How’d it turn out?” I question.

He picks up his jaw from the ground and looks at me. “You actually cracked the entire shield. This entire dome was covered in cracks! And these things are stronger than even Luna’s shielding magic!”

“Huh… so I could have actually killed Celestia if I was a bit more calm and actually focused... too late now.” I mutter to myself. Still clutching my eye, I glance at him. “Hey, how come you’re not disturbed by the blood?”

He looks at me again. “I’ve seen my fair share of nasty wounds. Wasn’t expecting it, but I’m definitely more used to it than I should be.”

I scoff. “Sure, you’re probably just a vampire, and don’t wanna admit it.”

He chuckles. “Nah, you can tell a sanguine apart easily by their eyes. They have red eyes; I’m just a regular thestral.”

“Sanguine?” I question.

“The correct term for what you called a ‘vampire’”. He explains.

“Right… well, let’s see if I can figure out what else I can do with this thing.” I say as I turn away from him.


After a couple hours of just standing in that circle, Skyline being bored, and me trying to do anything other than blast or examine, It starts to click in my head that this is gonna be way harder than I thought. Groaning, I look back at Skyline. “Hey, you. Try to attack me.”

He raises an eyebrow at me. “Uh… are you sure about that?”

“Yeah, I’m thinkin maybe I’ll figure something out in the heat of a fight. I won’t fight back, don’t worry. And go slow! I know you can keep up with Luna, and she’s way faster than I could ever hope to be.” I explain.

He shrugs and unstraps his blade, and holds it at a ready position. “You ready?”

I nod and keep an eye on him, lowering into some form of a defensive stance. He simply walks up to me, and does a couple of regular slashes at me. I jump away from them, simply avoiding each attack. However, I quickly find myself against the dome wall, which he quickly thrusts at my head. His blade and himself, along with me, is quickly caught in a magical aura, inches from my face. He’s floats away from me, and me to the side, before we’re unfrozen and I glare at him.

“Again!” I yell out in frustration.

He shrugs and steps outside the circle, then back in, causing the dome to reappear. We both take positions in the middle of the circle, and we begin when he starts throwing the same lazy swings at me. This time, instead of letting myself get cornered, I roll to the side a step or two away from the wall, and watch as he raises an eyebrow at me. He shrugs and continues his lazy onslaught, and me backing away constantly. Two more near corners and a couple rolls later, he swings one a bit too far, and I decide to capitalize on that. His apathetic behaviour is beginning to piss me off. I duck under the swing and rush him. Once I get within a distance I can attack him, I kinda lock up and don’t exactly know what to do; I settle for just grabbing him by the neck.

However, the match doesn’t end as neither of us are encased in magic. He takes this moment to thrust at my abdomen, ending the match then and there.

“What were you planning to even do? You caught onto my intentional slip up, but after that you just… froze.” he questions.

“I don’t know, I don’t actually know how to fight! I just got tired of you not taking this seriously.” I vent.

He rubs his neck at the spot where I grabbed him. “Well one thing’s for sure. You’re not very strong. I almost didn’t feel you grab my neck.”

I let out a sigh. “One more time. This time, put me under more pressure. Don’t let up either.”

He looks at me like I’m stupid. “You sure you wanna go through with this?”

I nod. He resets the circle, and we take up our positions again. This time, he is constantly making swings at me, and I can barely keep up with them. After one particularly close swing, I ended up falling to the floor, and he swings downward at me. I roll to the side, and recover my footing at the end of it, and dart my head back from a thrust that very nearly touches my nose. I jump back again, and now there's a fair distance between us. He quickly closes the distance between us with a flap of his wings. In a quick moment of panic, I find myself falling down to the ground again, but he quickly adjusts to keep me in his line of attack. In a split second, I look a little ways away past him from underneath him, and suddenly, my world shifts. I feel a strange sense of vertigo, combined with a feeling of motionlessness; one that I would associate with weightlessness. It all passes in less than a second, and I hit the ground, landing on my hands and knees. I hear the sound of Skylines blade dinging off the shield, and I get up and look around wide eyed. I find myself a couple feet behind him, and he turns to look at me confused.

I look at him just as, if not more confused. “I can teleport!?”

Author's Note:

Alrighty! a couple things to say for this chapter! the reason this one took a bit longer to get out is I had to take a step back to brain storm and think about where i wanted to take this story, and how I wanted to go about it. I'm confident in saying that I've at least got a general idea, that will continue to be refined as I idly think about it during my days.

this chapter is longer than the others! I actually tried to put a bit more substance in this one, on account of it having been a while since the last one, and the fact that I won't be putting these chapters out as quickly as I have been when I first started this.

Introducing Skyline!

this is an OC of mine that I had lying around, and I figured, why not chuck him in? i can make it work.

and lastly, Null's recently discovered power. He can teleport! well, sort of. you'll see what becomes of that in the later chapters.

please, lemme know what you think in the comments down below as I always read every single one, and I hope you enjoyed!