Celestial Era 1010. After the attempted coup by Nightmare Moon and the bloody conflict that followed, Celestia has emerged victorious. With her sister's forces scattered and leaderless, she creates the Order of Celestial Paladins to hunt down and capture any remaining Lunar Pegasi.
Should they come quietly, they will be purged of Luna's magic and transformed back into regular Pegasi. But if they refuse, well, Celestia has zero tolerance for Children of the Night. This is the story of one of them, a mare named Dusk Blossom, hunted by her own brother on order of Celestia.
Can she survive? And what will it do to her relationship with her brother?
This fic is a remake of the first fantasy short story I ever wrote, way back in 2012, simply entitled "Paladin". Consider this a thank you to all my followers who have helped me grow as a writer over the years within the pony fiction community!
This story assumes that the Children of the Night PMV is canon, with ponies willingly following Princess Luna.
Edit: Made the feature box! 12/02/2022
Twilight and her friends will be disgusted with Celestia.
Story-wise, this is supposed to be an action drama with a political and philosophical argument in the backdrop and I have to say that it...kinda does its job...alternating in which one of the four it does best throughout the story. I mean, in all honesty, all Dusk managed to do was convince her brother to become a renegade like her after purposefully trying to leave him as a cripple
This
Followed by this
Just tells me that these are two fanatics going at each other's throats. I feel as if their direct blood relation had absolutely nothing to do with the story, it weighed very little to Storm and seemingly nothing to Dusk. Here's another example:
"They might brainwash you, they might purge you, they might kill you, but your wanted posted/grave will have your correct gender"
I mean. I'm sorry, but this is some lackluster brotherly love on display. Nvm that Storm comes off as the more concerned one, Dusk outright tried to cripple him in order to "Show Celestia the truth"
And then we get golden nuggets like this:
Where through-out the combat, the actual relationship suddenly matters. It's what I mean by "It succeeds in an alternating fashion". Character-wise, I didn't really care much for either Storm or Dusk at the end since I didn't buy much of their familial relationship or love. I do understand that Storm's POV is that he's trying to capture Dusk so she has a better survival chance but I really didn't "get" much of anything from Dusk.
Grammar wise it's pretty good, I did spot some minor errors here and there, but nothing major to make it unreadable. Pacing is good, which is important for the fight scenes. I did understand most of them, and really liked the end part transformations and the summoning of each particular's magic.
Thanks for writing this and keep improving!
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Thank you for the feedback! This kind of character balance was difficult to write, as while I can write interesting villains, writing morally grey characters is much harder. This was an experiment, and I know I'll get better with time.