Glowing in Everglow

by Darkmoon9

Chapter 1: The Missing Horn

Diary of Cozy Glow
It had been an unknown amount of time since my imprisonment in stone since my second attempt to overthrow Princess Twilight Sparkle, but it felt like it had been millennia. I was conscious and aware of my surroundings, but unable to move a muscle or communicate in any way, it drove me to the point of madness.
Twilight had put the statue I had become in the palace garden in Canterlot, tour guides would frequently tell the story of my defeat and the defeat of my co-conspirators, Tirek and Chrysalis. Of course they would get the facts wrong, but at least I was pleased that I managed to achieve a level of infamy, in a way I had succeeded in my goals, leaving a legacy that would be talked about for generations to come.

I think it is time I told my side of the story. I was born to a regular Pegasus family living in the outskirts of Equestria, but my parents perished shortly after my birth, so I was raised in an orphanage. I was born gifted, with a sharp mind and impressive oratory skills. But I always felt isolated from my peers who couldn’t possibly relate to someone of my intellectual level. I found my Cutie Mark after I was first introduced to the game of chess, it took the form of a rook. Representing both my gift at deception and my gift for the game.

I would soon dominate local competitions. When foals proved inadequate against me, I soon entered competitions for adults, soon becoming the youngest Chessmaster in Equestrian history. However, I soon grew bored of this success, as even the adults of the chess world proved a little challenge to someone as gifted as I. To be honest I had trouble even pretending to be interested in the mundanity of most ponies’ lives. I yearned for something more, a real challenge, something that would really put my name in the history books. I decided that as I seem to have no equal, I was the best suited to rule Equestria.

Using means I rather not disclose, I contacted the demon Tirek, one of the most infamous villains in Equestrian history, imprisoned in Tartarus after his defeat. In return for promising to be his vessel for revenge, he taught me many things, including a ritual that would drain all magic from Equestria. I realized that if this ritual was successful, it would even out the playing field, making unicorn magic useless, in such an environment someone like me could truly emerge as the greatest of all.
Tirek and I devised a plan to use the ritual to trap Princess Twilight and her friends in Tartarus. In order to gather the artifacts necessary for the ritual, I needed contacts, so I decided to sign up for Twilight’s School of Friendship. I reluctantly must admit I learned many things from my lessons at the school, including how to master the art of persuasion to get ponies to regard me as a friend. I even made a few friends; I was especially close to the young changeling known as Ocellus. Even if I always knew they would abandon me if they knew the real reason why I was there. But ultimately, I learned that there was no more powerful force in the universe than friendship. Twilight may say that Friendship is Magic, I developed a similar yet still different philosophy, Friendship Is Power. For I would use it to elevate myself as the new ruler of Equestria once I got rid of Twilight.

When I put my plan into motion, I initially succeeded in trapping Twilight and her comrades in Tartarus. But my plans were ultimately foiled by a group of students who learned of my plans, one of them being the changeling I had grown so attached to, Ocellus. I was right, she abandoned me once she found out about my true nature. Twilight imprisoned me in Tartarus together with Tirek. This imprisonment was infuriating, yet I would eventually deem it less bad than my eventual imprisonment in stone. At least in Tartarus I could still move and communicate, I even had someone to connect with, Tirek.

I like to believe that I managed to form a genuine bond with the demon, I started to regard him as a sort of father figure. Eventually we would both be rescued by someone who claimed to be a sorcerer of olden times, Grogar the Necromancer. Grogar wanted to create a League of Evil to defeat Twilight Sparkle and the Elements of Harmony. Other than me and
Tirek, King Sombra was also recruited, as well as the Changeling Queen, Chrysalis, who I eventually would start to regard as a mother. Grogar encouraged us to work together as only united could we stone a chance against our enemies, I agreed with this notion, after all, individually we had all failed, but Friendship Is Power and together we could accomplish
what we couldn’t on our own.

While Grogar would eventually be revealed to be the Spirit of Chaos, Discord, who had played us all for fools in order to create a test for Twilight. Once he found out, we managed to overwhelm him using the bell of the real Grogar, granting us unimaginable power. Yet our defeat would come at our own hoof, as Chrysalis spread her ideas of friendship being poison, which ultimately divided us against the united front that was the Elements of Harmony, who had mastered the magic of friendship,together with other companions they had forged bonds with along the way. Me, Chrysalis and Tirek were turned to stone to spend eternity in Twilight’s Garden. But my experiences in this final battle had ultimately proven me right, friendship was indeed power.

Eventually another pony would visit us in the garden under the cover of night, she was a unicorn mare, with an orange coat and red and yellow mane like a flame, her Cutie Mark was the emblem of a sun, much like that of Princess Celestia. I suspected she might be a relative, but I could swear I had never seen this unicorn before. She freed me from my stone prison, but leaving Chrysalis and Tirek petrified.
I asked her what her name was, and she answered me: Sunset Shimmer. She told me that she used to be a villain like me, but that she had found the light of redemption, the naïve fool wanted to give me the same opportunity. In the matter of minutes, my body quickly grew to that of an older teenager, when I asked Sunset about this, she told me that I had been stone for years and that my body was just catching up to my actual age. Sunset took me to a portal, which she told me led into another world, but it seemed that something went wrong and the portal took us to a different world
than expected.

Upon entering this new world, Sunset cursed, immediately attempting to open another portal, but to no avail. She made comments about her powers being weakened. But I didn’t particularly care where we went. We had entered into a new world, a world that didn’t know me, I saw this as an opportunity to start over, to make a name for myself and eventually make myself the ruler of this new world.
Granted, Sunset saw it as an opportunity for me to turn over a new leaf and become something other than a villain. I had no intention of doing that, but I would play along for now, being perceived as a hero could work to my advantage.

We quickly found out that we found ourselves in the unicorn kingdom of Taralos, this world was very much like Equestria, or how it used to be in the ancient past, before pony tribes
were united under one banner. We tried to establish ourselves in the city of Vil, the capital of Taralos. Sunset quickly drew attention because of her Cutie Mark resembling a sun, a holy symbol in Taralos, a holy symbol.of some deity called the Sun Queen. Sunset soon drew the attention of members of the Kings court. The first one to contact us was a a royal intelligence operative, a unicorn who called themselves Cipher. Cipher had a grey coat and a black mane, and he always clad himself in a black robe. The way he spoke was very deliberate and calculating, it was obvious to me that he was hiding something and that this was somepony used to the arts of manipulation. As such I detected a kindred spirit,
and he seemed to do the same, we hit it off instantly, becoming friends as the weeks went by in Taralos, Cipher using his connections to the king to grant us quarters within the city, I made my living as an entertainer, telling the masses stories from my home realm, as well as
playing the occasional game of chess, making a reputation for myself as both a storyteller and a tactician.

We would also eventually be introduced to Silverwing, a Griffin who served as a member of the royal guard, Silverwing came across as a dumb brute, but he seems to be loyal and honorable, if sometimes temperamental. So of course he and Sunset became friends.

One day, I woke up to the tolling of bells from the palace. There were shouts and cries as well as ponies running in all directions. When I looked outside I could see a maid running past with tears in her eyes and people emerging into the street, of what may have caused to be disturbance. When me and Sunset stepped out into the street, the maid was gone and the crowd was already gathering and swapping rumors.

The common consensus was that the Prince was attacked in his sleep, but no one seemed to be sure what had befallen him, maybe he was dead, maybe he was injured, no one really seemed to know. Some people are blaming Gem Gnolls, possibly a local variant of Diamond Dog. Yet others are saying that the
prince’s uncle, Swiftblade, tried to have him assassinated.
Eventually I saw a distinguished unicorn dressed in palace finery make his way through the crowd. he was well known in the town, so I knew his name, Staybright, one of the higher ranking members of the palace staff.
Staybright turned to me and Sunset and told us Cipher and Silverwing vouched for us, and that the royal family needed our help and that we should meet him in the palace Green Room in one hour. Staybright passing a small piece of paper that just had our names and "Green Room" written on it. The whole thing has me intrigued, if I could ingratiate myself with the royal family was something I could use to gain more power. I spoke to Sunset about it and she agreed that we should
go, at least to see what this was about.

When we arrived at the palace,
we noticed that the entire thing had been turned upside down. The guards at the gateglanced at our papers and then waved us through, but I noticed that anyone leaving was being searched thoroughly. As we were taken to the Green Room, I saw furniture, chests rifled through, and bags and clothing being from around. People were clearly looking for
something and very hard indeed. I asked around about what was happening and found out pretty quickly that the Prince had been attacked in the night but was still alive. The Green Room was a simple room with huge windows, live plants growing, that would have been calming if it were not for the commotion that was going on outside. Soon Staybright comes hustling into the room, together with Cipher and Silverwing. Staybright nodded solemnly to us all and then quickly explained that the Prince was drugged and then attacked in the nightand that his horn had been stolen. I couldn’t help but find the situation of a unicorn with a stolen horn humerus, but I kept back my laughter as that wouldn’t serve my purposes at that moment. But I had always despised unicorns, born with so much magical power, yet I, despite knowing quite a bit about magic couldn’t use any of it. I hated the fact I was born a pegasus. They didn’t know why the horn was stolen or by who. But this was according to them a serious issue as it meant that without his horn the Prince couldn’t be coronated as planned in one months time as the elderly King Graybeard stepped down for his son Prince Shining Horn. If the horn could be found then there were ways to reattach it, but no pony had yet found a way to regrow one without the missing piece.

Staybright explained this was clearly an inside job, someone inside the
palace must’ve helped drug the Prince and steal the horn. They had identified that he was given a potent sleeping potion that someone must’ve been slipped into his food or drink. Since they
didn't know who to trust on inside they are bringing in ponies from the outside to help with investigations.
Staybright already had multiple staff members ready for us to interview. We were told to report anything we found back to Staybright.

We started by interviewing the guard that guarded the prince’s door that night. He was a grizzled veteran who limped into the room, an old war injury perhaps? He wore the uniform of the guard. He gave us a polit bow as he entered the room and said: “Scarred Flank, at your service." Telling us that he had been instructed to answer any question we may have had about last night.

Before Sunset could utter a word, I took the lead in the interrogation, asking him to describe the shift during the period of time the Prince was drugged. The only unusual he noticed was a
window that had not been latched and was banging in the wind.

He left his post briefly to secure it but remained in the corridor and always had vision on the door to the Prince’s
room. If anyone had opened the door he would’ve known. He had heard nothing from inside the Prince’s room all night, and he saw no one go in or out after the milkmaid took to the Prince his bedtime glass of milk.

Sensing a potential suspect, I asked him for the identity of this milkmaid, I learned that her name was Lilac Blossom, she was always the evening maid so he would have remembered if it was anyone different.

The second pony to interview was one of the kitchen helpers. A young and nervous looking pony walked into the room and looked around. “Erm, hello.” He said in a high-pitched voice, “they said I need to come talk to you.” They introduced themselves as Orange Dreamer and was
working in the kitchen last night where he was to make sure everything was ready to start baking in time for breakfast. He told us he ate some of the stew leftovers from the evening meal and thought it tasted a little different from usual. But when pressed on this issue said that it didn't make him feel unusually sleepy or anything.

But he told me he did see one strange thing that evening, when he went to throw out some rubbish early in the evening, there was an argument going on in the courtyard. One of
the ponies arguing and one of them gave the other a small glass vial, although he said it was too dark to make out who either of them might’ve been. I told Sunset to investigate the strange tasting stew while I conducted the next interview.

An older female pony with striking blue eyes strode into the room. Her brand of destiny was a perfect square and she was immaculately groomed, with not a hair out of place. “My palace is being turned upside down and now I need to talk to you? Let’s get this over with quickly, I am very busy”. The snooty sounding mare told me.
When I inquired to her about her identity and why she called it “her palace”, she told me that her name was Pure Eyes and that she was the Head Maid.

I asked her if she saw something, but she told me she was asleep, She told me she saw nothing unusual before she went to bed. I asked her about Lilac Blossom, Pure Eyes told me that Lilac Blossom had been acting strangely for a few months now. She was even caught for trying to sneak out of the palace a few times which was not something that happened before. Pure Eyes saw Lilac Blossom first thing this morning looking upset, but had not seen her since.

By that point I was sure I had the right suspect I needed to find this Lilac Blossom. Soon after, Sunset came back from the kitchen, confirming that the strange tasting stew was just a new recipe the cook had been trying out that day, it was even tested by the court mages, who's numbers included Cipher, and was confirmed to contain nothing dangerous.

I told Sunset about Lilac Blossom, and she went to Staybright to tell her what we found out
and how I suspected that Lilac Blossom drugged the Prince. Sunset looked at me with a concerned look in her eyes, before telling me that she thought I was right.

After discussing the issue with Sunset for a while, Staybright
appeared at the door once more. “She’s left her palace” he informed us, “The guards saw
her leaving this morning just before the gates were sealed.

We asked around on the streets outside the palace and we found out that Lilac went straight through the city and then out to the south gate, heading for the Forest of Dreams. We went back to report this to Staybright. Who told us we needed to head towards the Forest of Dreams in order to bring her back alive. The mare potentially had information they could use.

Comments

[Noul2909]

Great chapter

[Wild Stallion]

Good Start. I would advise you an editor to go over your formatting though.

[redmar]

Given your interest in Ponyfinder you should check out the account of David Silver. https://www.fimfiction.net/user/162259/David+Silver
He's vague about wheter he's the developer of Ponyfinder but the stories are great.
About the story itself I suggest getting an editor to check the formatting. Other that that it's an interesting start.