Dictators Of Ponyville

by Dragon-In-Black

Chapter 15 — Sweetie Belle 2

Sweetie Belle felt her blood turn ice cold when she heard the knock on the door. Her mind was going haywire and she felt the beginning stages of a panic attack. She looked around the room for an escape route and found two windows, but she immediately ruled them out because they were connected to the front door.

She dashed away from the table and looked all over the place for an escape route but she couldn't find any routes. This was bad. Sweetie Belle was getting frantic. There was no way she could ever be caught and brought back to Ponyville. She just couldn’t.

Zecora being the adult remained calm. She did want to open the door and reveal to whoever was on the other side that Sweetie Belle was home, but she knew that she couldn’t do that. Looking around the room she saw another cauldron she sometimes uses for advanced potions.

“Sweetie,” The zebra whispered loud enough for the filly to hear and pointed towards the cauldron in the corner where she’d put it. The filly dashed over and jumped inside and put a lid over just in case.

Suddenly, there was another knock on the door, this time, Zecora made her way to the door and peeked through the peephole. She was surprised to see Twilight Sparkle be the pony that had decided to visit her. She opened the door and greeted the mare with a smile on her face.

“Hello, Twilight,” Zecora greeted opening the door wide for the pony to step inside.

Twilight Sparkle walked inside the cottage with a small smile on her face.

“Hello, Zecora, I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything,” The mare apologetically said. Zecora waved it off with a shake of her head.

“I was relaxing when I heard a breeze, so I went to see,” She clarified, easing Twilight’s worries slightly.

Twilight was an academic at the bottom of her heart and she had studied the art of potion-making and knew the dangers and the time that was needed to create potions. Because when she works; she doesn’t want to be interrupted which is why she does the same courtesy to others.

“I shall make tea, then we will speak,” Zecora smiled and made her way to the small kitchen area and started to prepare the tea and laid out a few biscuits on a plate. While doing this, the zebra mare couldn’t help but think to herself whether or not she should tell the alicorn mare in the room that one of the missing fillies was inside her cottage. Her heart started to beat faster as she realised that nothing was stopping her from revealing the truth. No doubt, Twilight would bring up the three Crusaders somehow.

With a heavy heart, she placed the tea and the plate with biscuits on the table and sat down and began chatting merrily with Twilight. At first, it seemed as though the alicorn wasn’t going to speak of the Crusaders even once, but she was wrong. After Twilight and Zecora had an interesting discussion regarding dark potions that belonged in the “Dark Arts” section, Twilight had then become gloomy.

“Now when I think about it...” The alicorn began with a tremble in her voice. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Sweetie Belle would follow the path of dark magic,” This earned a gasp from Zecora. The zebra’s eyes widened in disbelief and felt her jaw hit the floor.

“Twilight, how could you say that?” The mare was so shocked, she could care less about rhyming. “Where is this coming from?”

Twilight hung her head in sadness and made circles with her hoof on the table staring at her reflection in her teacup. She saw the look in her eyes that only she could see. The look no pony else seemed to have noticed other than herself. The look of sad acceptance.

“I know this is out of character for me Zecora; but think about it, Sweetie Belle as well as her two friends are understandably angry and sad at us for what we did to them. But with Sweetie Belle, it will be different. She is a unicorn that will be able to cast direct magical spells that can do anything in her will. Of course, this doesn’t mean that she will become an academic like me and know and try all spells, but it means that she will feel forced to know as many spells as possible to defend herself in the Badlands. And the Badlands have no laws when it comes to legal and dark magic.”

Zecora dreaded what Twilight was going with this.

“My second reason for believing this is because whenever I would teach her a few basic spells when she came over, I always felt the magical signature coming from her. It was big and it was powerful. I had never felt such power coming from a young filly before. I’m not saying she’s the next alicorn of course, but what I’m saying is; she is a very powerful filly who could become someone respected in the magic community. I’m certain Princess Celestia would agree with me,”

Zecora was just about to ask her how her statement proved the theory that Sweetie Belle would resort to dark magic when Twilight seemed to have realised her error with a sigh.

“I didn’t prove anything at all,” She muttered.

“But I still believe what I said: my second reason for believing this is because Sweetie Belle either knows by now or feels like she has no other choice but to use dark magic. The Badlands is one of the most dangerous kingdoms in the entire world with the criminality being so high, even Princess Celestia avoids it like the plague. And then we have the Crusaders; three young fillies that don’t... didn’t know how dangerous it was. No doubt, Sweetie Belle has had no other choice other than to study the dark arts just to survive in the most unforgiving kingdom on the planet.”

Zecora wanted to intervene, but Twilight beat her to it.

“Of course, she is quite young so I suppose there is a small possibility she’s never had to resort to such evil magics. That, or she just never had a reason to use dark magic. That is also a possibility, but I refuse to believe that she didn’t use or at least read a book about dark magic. The possibility is simply too high to ignore.” Twilight concluded with a sad sigh.

“Oh, sorry Zecora, I didn’t mean to bring up such a topic and I’m sorry for ignoring you before going into the topic.” The alicorn apologised with shame written on her face.

Zecora on the other hoof didn’t know what to say. She wanted to say that her friend was wrong and that Sweetie Belle never indulged herself in the dark arts, but... the points Twilight made had a lot of merits. The Badlands is a place where good creatures come out questionable. And for good reason. The Badlands isn’t a simple kingdom that has laws and rules every creature living there can follow. No. There aren’t any laws or rules, meaning some creature using dark magic isn’t frowned upon, discourages, or even acknowledged.

Because of that, creatures can do as they please; they can get a normal job somewhere in the many towns and cities scattered around the place, or they can live a life of crime. Either is something the creatures probably don’t care about. As long as they can pay their rent and avoid taxes of any kind, then anything is fair game for them. Sweetie Belle very well could have bought a book about dark magic and never had second thoughts about it. The Badlands probably didn’t care about how old a creature was as long as they made bits.

“No, Twilight, your right.” The mare replied without rhyming. “There probably is a possibility that the young filly felt like she had to learn to defend herself. Dark magic is a great thing to learn if you can control its corrupting power. We have seen and heard tales of creatures who were corrupted by dark magic,”

Twilight understood what the zebra meant.

“Yes. The greatest examples we have is King Sombra and Nightmare Moon, but they are the only ones that are noteworthy in the sense that those ponies are the only ones we talk about; there is another one that I read in a scroll somewhere involving Starswirl The Bearded and his friends, the Pillars how a pony became greedy and turned into a creature known as The Pony Of Shadows. However, the tale doesn’t explain how they defeated the creature and there haven’t been any recordings of the Pillars living or passing away somewhere. The same is said with the greedy pony.”

Zecora was intrigued. She hadn’t heard this story before.

“Interesting, I haven’t heard of that story, thanks for enlightening me.” Zecora smiled at Twilight and the alicorn mare did the same.

“My pleasure, sorry again about before,” Twilight said with sincerity in her voice. Zecora smiled.

“Water under the bridge,” She replied with a sad smile.

Suddenly, Twilight got up after she finished her tea. “I think I have overstayed for a bit. Thank you for the tea, it was delicious as well as the biscuits. Oh! Before I forget I did get the book about dark potions if you are interested in reading it?”

The zebra thought about it and nodded. Dark potions were something that was rarely discussed because of the fact of how rare it was. Back in her homeland where potion making is a very common profession the same way unicorns learn magic. Unicorns learn quickly to never learn dark magic spells. Well, the same can be said about potions in Zecora’s case, but she felt like she knew potions well enough to at least read about them.

“Yes, I’m quite curious about how they differ from normal potions and potion accidents,” Zecora answered with honesty clear in her voice.

Twilight smiled and waved goodbye and Zecora returned the greeting and waited for the door to close before she walked over to the cauldron the unicorn was hiding in. The zebra pulled away the lid for the cauldron and saw Sweetie Belle inside with tears streaming down her face.

This was the reason Zecora had been shocked by what Twilight had said before. She didn’t want to see Sweetie Belle crying over something that was maybe true. But also because the filly they were talking about was in the same cottage as the alicorn.

“You heard.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.

“Yes,” The filly admitted but... she suddenly started to giggle and that giggling turned into laughter. She couldn’t help but laugh. “But... she wasn’t wrong you know,”

Zecora didn’t respond.

“You see, I did everything I could to stay alive. Even if I didn’t have to seriously injure some creature, I wasn’t about to take any risks. I had to fight fully grown creatures because they liked me. Despite my age,”

The zebra mare didn’t like where this was going.

“Of course, I naturally learned the dark arts of magic so I could protect myself, and surprisingly after a few attempts, the creatures became too afraid to do anything against me. But I must say, I enjoy the power. The power that I can use whenever I please. To put any creature that thinks it can outsmart me into a tight cage.”

Zecora didn’t know what to do or say so she just waited for the filly to finish ranting.

Suddenly, Sweetie Belle stopped laughing and straightened herself and apologised to the zebra.

“Sorry about that Zecora, I didn’t mean to do... this.” The older mare didn’t respond. “Okay, I will be leaving for Manehattan now, I hope to see you one more time before I leave for the Badlands. You won’t tell any pony that I was here would you?”

Zecora shook her head and Sweetie Belle smiled.

“Goodbye, Zecora,” She waved before she left with her bags.

After Zecora was sure the filly was out of earshot, she looked down at the floor and cried. “I’m sorry, Sweetie Belle,”

Author's Note:

Hello, everypony Dragon-In-Black here, thank you for reading this chapter and I hope to see you in the next one. I Apologise for the pacing of the chapter.

Comments

[TrainDude90S]

It was well worth the wait. S.W.B still isn't out of the woods or in the clear yet. To reach Manehattan, she'll still need a disguise to get pass those looking for her & avoid unwanted attention.

[Theresa]

I thought surely she would have told sweetie how much everyone felt awful about how they treated them and how they missed them and wanted them to come home. Maybe sweetie has learned dark magic but to protect herself . She doesn't seem to fallen to darkness because of it.

[Ryshinki]

Very nice.

[TrainDude90S]

11553678
Agreed.