My Brave Pony: The Knight Who Fell From Space

by Scipio Smith

Strangers in Ponyville

Strangers in Ponyville

The pony stood in the midst of a field of swords. They littered the ground, buried point first, jutting up like markers of some kind, or like plants blossoming in the otherwise dead and stony ground. Nothing lived upon this field, save only the single pony who stood in the midst of all those blades; one living creature surrounded by the implements of death.

She – and even though the shape in front of her was too blurry, almost more like a shadow, to make out any details Twilight could nevertheless tell, could feel in her gut, that it was a mare – hung her head. Just as Twilight could sense that this was a mare, so too she could feel the despair, the melancholy of defeat, that clung to this pony like the smell of sweat.

“The fire of heaven burns within my blood.”

The words echoed as if they were falling from the cloudy sky, and though they were spoken in a whispered tone Twilight could hear them as if they sprang from all around her.

“With this flame I will light a way through darkness, and turn to ashes all who oppose me.”

Twilight couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t feel anything, but if she had been able to feel then she would have shivered to hear that. It was such a terrible thing, to wish such harm upon others (and what did ‘oppose’ mean? That was open to such loose interpretation, it could mean anybody you had an argument with) and all the more so because it was said so coldly. There was no emotion in it whatsoever, it was like a catechism learned by rote, devoid of belief or faith or truth, spoken because it was expected that it should be said.

“I burn ferociously, so that my enemies will fall before me. I burn brightly, so that my friends will see me and take heart just as my foes will see me and know fear. I burn warmly, so that many may shelter within my protection. Liar.” That last sounded more emotional than anything that had come before, a single word loaded with bitterness. The pony’s head descended further, even closer to the ground. “Girls… I’m so sorry.”

Twilight Sparkle opened her eyes. The familiar ceiling of her bedroom in the Golden Oaks library, her home since the past summer, confronted her eyes.

Just a dream, Twilight thought. Only a dream. A strange dream, to be sure, but a dream nonetheless. She paid it little mind. Although there was some tradition of prophetic or otherwise revelatory dreaming to be found in the lore and mythology of which she was familiar it was an exceedingly thin tradition rarely attested to even when compared with the body of lore surrounding prophecy – and prophecy itself was an area of magical study that was considered marginal by mainstream academia. And besides, such dreams – when they came – came only to those who were quite extraordinary, and Twilight was not so vain as to claim that mantle for herself.

Not when there was a more explanation in the form of the snack that she had eaten later in the evening than she ought to have done. She had eaten too close to bed-time, and as a result she had been given that strange dream for her trouble.

Twilight threw off her quilt and blanket and climbed out of bed, not really wanting to think of the dream any more but at the same time not quite able to turn her mind away from it. She couldn’t help but wonder who the mare was, what had happened to her, who were the girls to whom she had to apologise and where were they? What was the catechism she recited and why did it lie? If she had been more artistically inclined she might have found it inspiring in a dark or gloomy fashion.

But, though she wasn’t averse to good work of fiction, Twilight preferred to read them than to create them; she preferred writing papers to writing stories.

So she put the dream in all its strangeness out of her mind, or at least shoved it to the back where it would gather dust in the cupboard until eventually it disappeared completely – not that things ever did that when she shoved them to the back of real cupboards, she might have more space if they did – and prepared to face the day. She glanced down at Spike, sleeping in his basket.

Twilight smiled fondly as she adjusted his blanket with a touch of telekinesis; there was no need to wake him yet. He was just a baby, and he needed his rest.

Twilight completed her morning ablutions and went downstairs. Her horn flared lavender as she pulled out the book – the somewhat oxymoronically titled Advanced Animation: A Primer – from the shelf where she had replaced it when she had, somewhat reluctantly, given up work and gone to bed the night before. The golem was waiting for her near the back of the room.

Yes, the golem. They were creations that she had come across in her reading, with a history that was by turns rather creepy and almost amusingly banal; she had found more information in this book about the more modern, unicorn-pioneered form that had enabled her to start working on one of her own. She probably wasn’t going to animate it; she almost certainly wasn’t going to animate it – what would it do? Did she want the responsibility for bringing life into the world? No, it would be like becoming a mother and she was nowhere near ready for that kind of responsibility yet – but she relished the challenge of bringing such a thing to the point where it could be animated by a spell, and the thought of learning the spell itself, even if she never used it in her life, was a rather enticing thought to her as well. For Twilight Sparkle there was nothing wrong with knowledge for the sake of knowledge, in fact she considered it to be amongst the best kinds.

That was why there was a statue of a pony taking form out of clay in her library, a statue which, when finished, she could in theory – but would not in practice – cause to wake up, to walk around, even to talk if she cast the more advanced version of the spell. She could even compel it to obey her every command, cause it to awaken without free will or self awareness.

Sometimes knowledge for the knowledge’s sake was the only acceptable way to possess such knowledge. Some spells should be learnt but never used.

But in the meantime, even if the usage was morally questionable at best, the act of learning involved could be thoroughly, well, educational. That was why there was a statue of a pony taking form out of clay in her library: this project had already taught her so much about clay and the proper use of telekinesis in the moulding therein, sculpting, anatomy, proportion, all manner of spells that she had never guessed at before.

Twilight studied the statue that she had begun; she had stayed up late working on it because she felt as though she was almost done with it, and she had felt as she so often did when working on a project, that desire to push forward beyond all obstacles and reach the finish. Spike had been asleep for hours by the time Twilight went to bed, and even Owlowiscious had called it a night while Twilight burned the candle. She was so close, she just wanted to get there and see if she could do it.

She could feel the excitement that had proved more effective than caffeine building up inside of her even now as she gazed upon her as yet unfinished work. The golem she was making – the clay sculpture that would become a golem if she cast the spell that she would not cast; the sculpture (the vessel as the books referred to it) was as important as the spell itself, not just as any statue or sculpture would do, it had to be prepared in the proper way; something else that Twilight had learnt as a result of this – was a unicorn, or had a unicorn’s shape, but partially by accident and then, once she noticed it, by design Twilight found that she had ended up incorporating bits of all her friends into the design. It had Applejack’s strong hind legs, in fact when Twilight looked at it she found that the posture into which she had moulded the golem reminded her very much of Applejack, not only her strength but unprepossessing self-confidence, the easygoing self-assurance of her manner; and yet she fancied that there was also something of Rarity’s grace in there, particularly the way in which she held her head; while the smile that Twilight had sculpted on the golem’s face was pure Pinkie Pie, with all of the infectious joy that Twilight had been able to transmute from memory into the clay; the shape of the eyes belonged to Fluttershy, kindly and soft; while the body was lean and built for speed, just like Rainbow Dash. Of Twilight herself she had only added a superficial element: the cut of the golem’s mane would be her own, if she animated it which she would probably not.

But how eager was she to get to the point at which she could make that decision in practice.

Twilight levitated the book over to her, to see what the next step was. She was about to begin reading when the air was rent by an enormous explosion, louder by several times than Rainbow’s sonic rainboom, splitting the sky outside.

Twilight jumped at the sound, losing her grip on the book which fell to the floor with a solid thump as a squeak of fright escaped her lips. What was that? It was louder than a dragon’s roar, and sharper too, and swifter? Twilight rushed to the window, her ears ringing so badly that she couldn’t even hear the sound of her hooves upon the floorboards, and looked out, her wide eyes scanning the sky all around.

There! There, to the east of town, between the outskirts of Ponyville and the Everfree Forest, Twilight saw it. Saw something at least. What exactly it was that she was seeing she couldn’t really say, but she was seeing something.

It looked like a hole in the sky. That was a best way that Twilight could describe it, her rigorous intellect going numb with disbelief and leaving her to grasp as simple concepts to describe the undoubtedly vast complexity of what she was seeing; but it looked like a hole in the sky, or maybe a funnel in the sky; it looked like something had punched a hole through the blue as though the air itself were some painted background through which things could intrude upon reality with sufficient force, leaving this hole, this tunnel into the dark void beyond, this tunnel that was whooshing as air was pushed out of it and down upon the ground below with sufficient force to smash the trees beneath to splinters.

A hole through which Twilight could see a single object, too far away to make out more than a dark blob silhouetted against the sky, falling as the hole closed up behind it and the powerful onrush of air ceased.

And yet the object continued to fall, quickly and inexorably, towards the ground.

---

Pinkie hopped merrily down the street; she was a naturally early riser, just because she had too much energy for a bed to contain it for any longer than absolutely necessary, so she had already been up for about an hour or so, maybe a little longer. Actually it must have been longer because she’d already gotten a batch of cupcakes made before she headed out to spring her legs and that took a bit more than hour, so there.

She waved to a couple of friends, Lyra and Bon Bon, going the other way, and was rewarded with a cheery greeting that she returned with equal good cheer; they didn’t look as though they needed any especial cheering up though, so Pinkie didn’t stop but continued on her way.

A feeling, an itch in her nose to be precise, told her that she was about to collide with somebody, so Pinkie skidded to a stop right before a pony emerged from out of the alleyway directly in front of her.

The pony was draped in a dark blue cloak, with a hood covering their head so that Pinkie couldn’t even tell if they were a mare or a stallion, let alone if they were an earth pony or a unicorn or a pegasus or what kind of coat they had or the colour of their eyes or mane or anything at all. It was kind of weird, to be honest; not many ponies bothered to wear clothes in Ponyville – not even Rarity got dressed up every day, only for special occasions like the Grand Galloping Gala that was coming up in just a few days – and those that did didn’t cover themselves up so nobody could see them. It was like this pony was hiding from something, like they didn’t want anybody to see them.

Thinking of it that way made Pinkie feel kind of sad; nobody should have to hide who they were because they were scared.

Good thing that the number one party pony of Ponyville was here to take care of anything that might be bothering them!

“Hey there!” Pinkie said brightly.

The pony in the hood and cloak noticed Pinkie with a start, shuffling backwards away from her with a soft gasp of surprise. “Pinkie!” she exclaimed, in a voice that was scratchy and harsh but… it was weird, it kind of felt as though Pinkie remembered that voice, even though she didn’t, which was odd because Pinkie never forgot the sound of a friends voice any more than she ever forgot a face and if they’d met before she would have remembered this voice, and she didn’t… so why did it seem so familiar? “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry,” Pinkie said. “I just wanted to say hello and welcome to- wait a second. You know who I am! Have we met before?”

The hooded pony was silent for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “A… a very long time ago.”

Pinkie frowned. “It can’t have been that long of a time ago, I haven’t been around for any time long enough to be a long time. And why don’t I remember you?”

“I’m not particularly memorable.”

“Don’t say that,” Pinkie said. “I remember all of my friends. Or I thought I did. I don’t think that I’ve forgotten anybody I’ve ever met.” Pinkie gasped as a horrifying thought struck her. “But then if I’d forgotten anypony then how would I know? This is terrible! What if I’ve forgotten almost everypony that I’ve ever met? What if I forget about Twilight? Or Rainbow Dash? What if I’ve got creeping amnesia and I wake up tomorrow and I don’t remember any of my friends in fact I don’t even remember what friends are?!”

The pony’s face was hidden behind the hood, but Pinkie found that she could imagine the look on her face just by the tone of her voice as she said, “You know, somehow I think you’ll be okay.”

“But then why don’t I remember who you are?” Pinkie demanded.

“You’re not losing your memory,” the pony said. “You don’t remember me because…” she sighed. “Because a lot has changed since we last met. At least… I’ve changed, although I’m glad to see that you haven’t. I’ve changed so much that it doesn’t surprise me that you don’t know who I am. I’d be astonished if you did.”

Pinkie tilted her head to one side. “Well… why don’t you tell me your name?”

“Raven,” Raven said. “I go by Raven now.”

“Huh,” Pinkie said. It wasn’t exactly an odd name, but it wasn’t usual either. It was kind of in that in-between kind of space. “What did you used to be called?”

“I… I’d rather not say.”

“Oh, okay,” Pinkie said. “Well, anyway, welcome back to Ponyville. Or… it was Ponyville where we met, wasn’t it?”

Raven chuckled. “Yes, Pinkie; we met right here.”

Pinkie smiled. “Has it been a while?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Raven said. It was hard to be sure but by the way her hood moved it looked as though she was looking around. “I… I’d forgotten how lovely it was here. It’s a pity that I can’t stay longer.”

“If it’s a pity then why don’t you stay as long as you want?” Pinkie asked.

“That’s not possible,” Raven said. “With luck my business will be concluded in just a few days time.”

Pinkie didn’t pry into what that business was. Instead she said, “Ooh, since I don’t remember your Welcome to Ponyville Party how about I throw you a welcome back party?”

“That would be great, I’m sure, but not necessary,” Raven said.

“It might not be necessary,” Pinkie said. “But that doesn’t mean that it won’t be fun. Most of the most fun things in life aren’t necessary, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do them. If everypony only ever did what was necessary and never stopped to enjoy life then… then life wouldn’t be enjoyable at all.”

“I suppose you’re not wrong about that. Pinkie, will you make me a promise?”

“That depends,” Pinkie said. “I’d like to, but… what is it?”

“Don’t ever change,” Raven said plaintively.

Pinkie tilted her head ninety degrees to one side. “I don’t know if I could promise that. Everypony changes, right?”

Raven was quiet for a moment. “Yes,” she said sadly. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. But… don’t change too much, okay. Don’t lose sight of who you are. Don’t lose your heart.”

Pinkie smiled. “I won’t. I promise,” she said, with a light heart because she hadn’t been planning on ever losing it anyway.

“Pinkie promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye,” Pinkie said. “Ow,” she added as she poked herself in said eye. Her smile remained in place. “You know, I think I will throw you that welcome back party, you seem like you could use it.”

“I don’t need a party, Pinkie.”

“Then why do you seem so sad?” Pinkie asked.

“I’m not sad,” Raven said. “I am… a little solemn, perhaps, but I feel much better already just from hearing you make that promise. And besides, you don’t have time to throw me a party right now.”

“Huh?” Pinkie said. “What do you mean? We’ve got-“ she stopped, her word train slamming to a halt as a twitch in her tail warned her of an impending falling object. A real doozy of a falling object. She dived for cover in the shelter of the alleyway from which Raven had just emerged. “Raven! Get down!”

“It won’t fall on us, don’t worry,” Raven said calmly. “That’s not why you’re sensing danger.”

An explosion split the sky.

---

Twilight ran out of Ponyville and across the field towards the source of the explosion. As she left the library and headed down Mane Street as quickly as she could – she realised when she was halfway out of town that she hadn’t told Spike anything about where she was going, but consoled herself that he’d probably be able to guess once he got to a window and saw the immense cloud of dust that had been kicked up by the crash of whatever it was that had fallen out of the sky – she could see ponies poking their heads out of doors, looking anxiously out of windows, staring in the direction of the hole that had briefly been torn in their sky, and at the crater formed in the fields beyond and all the dust that was being thrown up there.

“Don’t worry, Twilight will handle it,” she heard someone say as she rushed past. She wasn’t sure whether to take it as a compliment or wish that other ponies were more proactive. A bit of both was probably the honest answer.

She wasn’t the first one on the scene. She hadn’t expected to be. Rainbow Dash was there before her, the rainbow trail that followed in her wake announcing that fact as she swooped out of the clouds and down towards the dust cloud, hovering a few feet away from it as she waited, forehooves folded, for the others to arrive. Twilight could see Applejack coming down from her farm, and a quick glance behind her showed that Pinkie was catching up with Twilight, with Rarity not too far behind.

Of Fluttershy there was, as yet, no sign, and it occurred to Twilight that her animals had probably been frightened half to death by the sudden blast and all its consequence, and would require a degree of calming down.

For that matter, Fluttershy had probably been a little startled herself.

Twilight arrived at the crater, the air still foggy with dust kicked up that had not yet settled, such a storm of dust that it was still nigh impossible to see beyond it. And so the five friends who gathered there waited, silently, cautious but prepared, peering into the dust as they waited for it to die down so they could see what waited on the other side.

What could it be? Twilight wondered. Her mind was a whirl of possibilities, most of them starting with the fact that that hole in the sky had to be incredibly advanced and powerful magic. So what did they want, and were they friend or… or not so friendly.

A voice, male but not overly deep, a little higher in pitch than Shining Armour’s voice or… somewhere around there, anyway, the voice of someone about Twilight’s age she would have said, issued from the other side of the dust cloud. “Krysta, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” replied a high-pitched female voice. “You saw to that when you decided to play cushion for me. How are you holding up?”

The male groaned. “I’ll be fine.”

“Great!” the other – Krysta, presumably – cried. “Because that means I can say that that was totally awesome!”

“So you were screaming in excitement?”

“Obviously, what else would I be screaming about?”

“The fact that we were in free fall?”

“I knew your hard head would be able to take it,” Krysta said. “Seriously, you are okay, right? You did land pretty hard.”

The male winced. “It isn’t just my head that’s hard, praise be to the King,” he said. “Although I don’t relish the thought of doing that very often. Anyway, I saw a settlement as we came down, we should try and make contact with someone in authority.”

“They do know we can hear every word of this, right?” Rainbow asked.

There was a moment of silence from the other side.

“You know, Lightning, it kinda sounds as though the locals have come to us,” Krysta said. “I guess we did make a pretty big entrance.”

A pair of shapes began to form in the murky haze formed by the dust, resolving into the pair of creatures who emerged from out of crater and cloud, dusty but seeming untroubled by the fact as they halted, facing the five mares of Ponyville, the two sides each regarding one another.

Twilight lost the battle to keep the shock off her face instantly, for these two visitors from wherever they had come from where neither like anything that she had ever seen before in her life. One – Krysta, she could only assume, although having never seen anything like her before she had no grounds to base that on other than process of elimination – stood just a little taller than Spike or a young filly the age of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, coming perhaps just a little below the shoulder of Twilight or her friends. She was a curious creature that stood on two legs like a minotaur, with hands like a minotaur also; and yet her skin was a very pale shade of beige, and her features were flat, with a tiny nose that barely protruded out in front of her face, a face that was dominated by a pair of large and sparklingly vivid blue eyes accentuated by copious amounts of smoky eyeshadow; her hair was black with an electric blue streak, cut with a fringe like Twilight’s before falling straight down her back, and her lips were painted a glossy neon pink; a quartet of gossamer wings emerged from out of her back. She was dressed in a black top that left her arms exposed, or would have done if she were not also wearing long black gloves that went almost up to her shoulders; her skirt was short, but her boots went up higher than her knees.

If Twilight felt reasonably confident in identifying that creature as Krysta then it was only because her companion was a more familiar sight in some respects, though in others he was almost as bizarre as she. He – Lightning, was that his name? – was a stallion, of that Twilight was certain, having seen enough stallions to be reasonably sure of it. He was a stallion as big as Applejack’s brother, but without any of the soft roundness in Big Macintosh’s build or features, reminding Twilight more of her own brother for the square quality of his face and build, but if possible even more so. He looked, indeed, as if he had been carved out of stone, and by a rather inept journeymare stonecutter at that.

More specifically he looked as though he had been carved out of marble, for the most striking thing about him was the colour of his coat, which was more or less white but shot through with veins of various shades of grey, creating a mottled effect that was exactly like marble. It was probably the most unusual thing about him, which was saying something considering that the second most unusual thing about him was that he had both a pair of wings – his feathers were as mottled and marble-like as his coat – and a golden horn rising out of the untidy nest of his dark brown mane; alicorns were unusual enough, so unusual that Twilight had thought that she could count them off on her forehooves, but to find one that she did not know standing before her and one whose horn was a different colour than his coat, too? It did match his eyes, which were similarly gold, but that was of little matter since horns did not match the colour of eyes but of coats, and in this instance there was a decided mismatch.

The stallion was armoured in garb of silver, that seemed to offer him far more protection than the gear worn by the royal guard back in Canterlot, although she wondered how he managed to fly bearing the weight of it. He had no visible weapon that she could see, but Krysta seemed to have a small sword worn across her back.

Twilight was about to speak, but Krysta pre-empted her. “Yo! Locals! How’re you doing?”

“Krysta!” Lightning squawked, seeming to go a little red in the face.

Krysta looked at him. “What?”

“You can’t just say ‘Yo! Locals!’ like that!”

“Why not?”

“Because you sound like a tourist,” Lightning said. “This is a serious-“

“A serious expedition, yes, I know.”

“Yes, which means that we have to take this seriously,” Lightning said. “This is why I-“ he stopped, taking a deep breath. “Never mind.”

“No, let’s mind, let’s hear what the prince has to say,” Krysta said. She put both hands on her hips. “You were going to say ‘This is why I never take you anywhere’ weren’t you?”

“I-“

“Weren’t you?”

Lightning bowed his head, a shamefaced expression crossing his marbled face. “I didn’t mean… it’s just that you don’t always treat things with the gravity that they require.”

“You mean that unlike you I haven’t gotten a stick up my-“

Twilight coughed politely into her hoof.

The stallion and whatever Krysta was glanced out of the corners of their eyes at the five bemused mares who stood watching them, as if they had temporarily forgotten that they had an audience.

“Can we not do this now?” Lightning hissed out of the side of his mouth.

“Sure, we’ll finish this later,” Krysta murmured.

Lightning’s cheeks flushed a little red as he straightened up, coughed into his own hoof in turn, and cleared his throat. “Greetings, gently and base born mares alike,” he declared, bowing his head. “I come in friendship and goodwill from the court of His Most Radiant Majesty Jupiter, King of Kings and Guardian of the Light; I would be very much obliged if you could direct me towards someone in authority.”

A moment of silence greeted this pronouncement.

Rainbow snorted. “You would have done better starting with ‘Yo! Locals!’”

“Told ya!” Krysta cried triumphantly.

“Although if you do want authority you could do worse than Twilight here,” Rarity said.

“Huh?” Twilight said.

Rarity shrugged. “You are the princess’ student, darling.”

“Well, yes, but…” Twilight fell silent. What Rarity had said was true, after all; and she did enjoy a direct line to Princess Celestia via Spike. You can do this. You can be diplomatic. You can be nice. And he’s just a guy from another world representing someone you’ve never heard of but with a very grandiose title. How hard can it be?

Twilight smiled as she took a step forward. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Twilight Sparkle, and these are my friends Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Applejack and Pinkie Pie. Welcome to Ponyville.” She chuckled nervously. “You certainly made quite an entrance.”

Krysta scratched the back of her head nervously with one hand. “Yeah… sorry about that.”

Lightning advanced towards her, bowing her head and hooking one of his armoured forehooves – his silver armour was cold to the touch – around one of Twilight’s legs, raising it to his lips as he kissed her hoof.

Twilight’s eyebrows rose. She had no idea what had possessed him to do such a thing, nor what she was supposed to do in response. She looked helplessly around at her friends, focussing on Rarity who would surely know what to do if anypony did. But Rarity simply looked bemused by it, and nopony else looked as if they had even a sliver of a clue.

“My lady, I thank you for your welcome, and have the honour to name myself Lightning Dawn, Knight of the Star Legion and Prince of the Jovians, and this is my sister, Krysta.”

“That’s Krysta Brighteyes, Princess of Awesomeness,” Krysta declared, waving her hands elaborately on either side of her as she gave a florid bow, grinning all the time. “But you mere mortals may call me Princess Awesome.”

Lightning rolled his eyes as Rainbow and Pinkie sniggered appreciatively. Lightning cleared his throat. “Please forgive her, she has a heart too merry for the times upon occasion.”

Twilight shook her head. “There’s nothing to forgive in a little bit of fun, even at an auspicious moment such as this. I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid that I don’t recognise any of what you’re talking about, Jovians or the Star Legion or the king we overheard you talking about before.”

“That doesn’t surprise me, this is a shield world after all,” Lightning said. “That was the reason for our somewhat dramatic entrance, by the way, for which I apologise; it was the only way for us to enter this world.”

“Shield world?” Twilight repeated, not knowing what Lightning meant by that either. “I don’t suppose that there’s any way that you could start from the beginning and explain who you are and what you’re doing here?”

“Perhaps I could,” Lightning said. “But I’m afraid that I do not really see the point; when our mission is completed Krysta and I will be gone from this place, never to return.”

“But you could at least leave knowledge behind you,” Twilight said. “Just your being here suggests so much, so much that I’d never even thought about before. I appreciate that you aren’t here to pander to my curiosity, and I will help you in your mission. I will get in touch with Princess Celestia-“

“Celestia?” Lightning said sharply. “Did you say Princess Celestia?”

Twilight blinked. “Yes? Have you heard that name before?”

“We’ve never heard of y’all but y’all folks have heard of our princess?” Applejack said.

Lightning and Krysta looked at one another. “Could it be?” Lightning asked.

“No way,” Krysta murmured. “One thousand years of searching and we’ve just found it by accident? What are the odds of that?”

“What are you two talking about?” Twilight asked.

“Celestia is the princess to whom you are a student?” Lightning demanded. “Then this… is this the magical land of Equestria?”

“Yes,” Twilight said. “Wasn’t this where you were intending to end up?”

Lightning and Krysta were both staring at her with such amazement that Twilight took a step backwards. “Equestria,” Lightning repeated in hushed tones, as if it was a name of power to conjure with. “Krysta,” he said, looking at his sister. “This is amazing! Father will be-“

“So proud of you,” Krysta said, punching him lightly on the shoulder. “Everyone is going to be so proud of you. They’ll be singing your name in every hall from New Olympia to… to everywhere. Right across space.” Twilight couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t actually sound as enthusiastic about this as her words might lead one to expect. “Everybody’s going to love you now.”

Lightning, on the other hoof, seemed deaf to her tone. He shook his head. “The personal rewards and acclaim are immaterial, but once we return with this news and the Prism Stone in hoof then…” He seemed to remember the existence of Twilight and the others. “Forgive me, lady Twilight, forgive me all of you, but this is such a momentous occasion that... I quite forgot myself.”

“That’s fine,” Twilight said. “But would you mind explaining why this is such a momentous occasion?”

Lightning frowned. “I had accepted your ignorance as being due to the isolation of a shield world but… you don’t know? How can you not know? If this is Equestria then how can you be ignorant of your own history, of Jupiter and Saturn and the fall of Olympia?”

“The lost city of Olympia?” Twilight said. “That’s a myth.”

“A myth?” Lightning repeated incredulously. “No, it is no myth. My father is Jupiter, lost and yet eternal King of Olympia, once and future consort prince over all Equestria… our promised land.”

Comments

[TheIdiot]

Hmmm, a nice start Scipio.

I can see the possible (and probable) directions you're going to take this in. I look forward to seeing more of this.

Of course, You have to believe to see it. And good for me that I can see plenty.

Until the next installment,
TheIdiot

[Mkchief34]

Okay, this looks nice. Will read later.

[Purple Patch]

Okay.
It's well-written but I'm finding it a bit hard to follow.
Would you mind explaining? I could just be a bit slow today.

[geomease]

Is this a crossover? If so with what series?

[NerfedFalcon]

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It's an alternative take on a fairly infamous fanfic on this very site called "My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic" in which the author of that series basically tears down everything you love about MLP:FiM and replaces it with his bad OCs and worse philosophy.

[Scipio Smith]

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If you're lost by everything that Lightning has just said then you're in the same boat as Twilight and that was partly the point. More explanations are going to follow next chapter that will hopefully clarify a lot of stuff.

[Purple Patch]

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Okay.