Re:Harmony

by starcross7

86 - Chronicles: Lulamoon

Chapter 86 - Chronicles: Lulamoon

Mark being buried alive by an avalanche of books as one of the lamest ways to die. Pegasi unused to underground warfare in enclosed spaces would suffer a nervous breakdown, whether they be surrounded by books, fluffy pillows, or otherwise. But Scootaloo was too good for that. Her wings tightly folded close to the trunk of her body and with a mighty pull, she began worming her way through the dust-covered tomes that threatened her prideful existence. Slowly but surely, each of her front hooves shoved aside book after book blocking her path. When light broke out, she crawled quicker, and then she launched herself upon breaching the surface. She landed with a grin, whipped her short mane from left and right and then raised her hoof in a pose that her illustrious captain would be proud of.

To her annoyance, nopony noticed her. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle were behind her sifting through another hill of books with the magical assistance of unicorn Twilight Sparkle and Sunny the alicorn.

"Fluttershy's gotta be around here somewhere," said Apple Bloom.

Now she remembered. Scootaloo was in a rush to find Rainbow Dash. She almost left her friends in the dust when she rode her Aeroscooter upstairs, but subconsciously she turned it into a race when Fluttershy flew ahead of her. Beaten by timid Fluttershy? No way. Wings or not, Scootaloo was the second fastest in this airship.

However, the end of their "race" resulted in the two 'contestants' and the two unintended passenger-spectators crashing into the library.

Fluttershy exploded from a hill of books with wings erect with her lungs pumping heavily and aggressively. Her surprise appearance shocked Twilight back into a shelf now spilling its books onto the purple unicorn. Then as fast as Rainbow Dash herself, Sunny rushed in and shielded Twilight with her wings. Of course, Rainbow Dash would have done the same for pretty mares like Twilight, but Scootaloo could concede that like a few pegasi, Sunny had strong, bulletproof feathers.

"WHERE'S RAINBOW DASH?" cried Fluttershy.

"You just missed her," replied Twilight.

"I'm too late! She already ate that poor bookworm, and now she is going to have an awful tummy ache because her tummy is not used to eating insect meat."

"Uh, she didn't eat anything, Fluttershy."

"Really? Oh, thank goodness."

"But she did give me weird looks and asked me a lot about Applejack. I'm starting to wonder if this is some weird way they love each other. Anyway, I tried asking her about these books, but she immediately flew off to find Applejack. From all the dust that have accumulated, I say she hasn't touched these books for almost a year."

"Um, yeah," said Scootaloo. "Being an awesome Captain is a full time job. That's why she lets the Twins and I run things around here. Say, do you know where she went?"

"She went up to the deck where Applejack is training for the big race."

"Great! Let's get out of here before some other pony tells us a sappy tale about discovering themselves and all that junk. Hey, I can't open the door. There's too many books here!"

"Wait! You have to be careful with those books. Some of them are over a hundred years old."

"And they're the Captain's books," added Sunny.

Scootaloo's hoof stopped a centimeter from a book's spine before it Twilight magically pulled it away from her. Sure, the Captain did not have time (or the care) to read all these fallen books, but they were hers. As calm as the purple unicorn spoke right now, the pegasus filly sensed that a hidden wrath would erupt out of Twilight if she were to damage these tomes more than they already done so. They might be dusty, and some were in poor condition long before they were brought onboard. That unicorn took a lot of care to magically shelve her books to its proper place on its shelf one by one, but not before giving each one love and care with thorough dusting of the covers. And so, Scootaloo backed away to sit with her filly friends and to wait for the path to be cleared out by Twilight and Sunny. Already the pegasus filly became bored and she slumped her entire body onto the ground after an audible groan.

"Since this'll take a while," said Apple Bloom, "maybe we can hear how Sunny and Twilight got their marks."

"You're right," said Sweetie Belle. "Sunny is an Alicorn. She must have had a special moment when she got hers."

"Mine?" asked Sunny. "Oh, I do wish I could tell you girls, but my memory of my past has yet to return. Perhaps Twilight has a story."

"Me?" asked Twilight. "Didn't I already tell that to one of you girls?"

"I heard it from my sister," said Apple Bloom. "There was some big explosion underground, and then boom! You got your star mark."

"Yes, it was frightening time for me and my best friend. You know, I think Trixie's tale of how she received her Destiny Glyph is a lot more interesting than mine. Do you want to hear about it?"

"Might as well," sighed Scootaloo.

---

When I was young, I was not always interested in our tribe's magical arts. I was more interested in the surface world, and that might have stemmed from my father leaving the underground village before I even knew him. As long as I could remember, I would always venture around the caverns digging up old Gaean technology and fishing up treasures from the underground rivers. I only learned enough magic for me to get around despite my mother forcibly enrolling me in Magisister training. I was able to get away with my excursions because mother never gave me much care and attention. She was too busy focusing on training my brother in the harshest ways imaginable.

It was Trixie's mother and Trixie herself who took care of me, and I became envious how loving Lady Lulamoon and Trixie were towards each other. Unlike my own mother who would just tell Shining Armor to get up and keep climbing the rock face if he sprained his ankle, Lady Lulamoon would bandage Trixie's scrape on her leg she had received from her Magisister training. Lady Lulamoon would feed Trixie every time she failed another magic test. My own mother would let Shining Armor starve if he was one point short of perfection, and usually I had to feed myself until I started to live with Lady Lulamoon and Trixie.

I have never realized that I took Lady Lulamoon's motherly love for me for granted. At first, it was Trixie's mother who accompanied through my excursions to the underground rivers, and she found the surface world objects fascinating. Then without explanation, Trixie took over watching over me, but in contrast with her mother, she wasn't interested with Gaean artifacts. Trixie often lagged behind, and she always complained that we should go back home.

I had always sensed that Trixie's mother was not feeling well, and a few times I offered to help her in her chores. She would not allow it, and instead she told us to go out and play. She even denied help from her own daughter and the rest of the village, and eventually everypony including myself stopped thinking too much about her health. Lady Lulamoon had lived alone with her daughter as long as I remember far from the temple in a stone hut at the wall's edge of Unicornia. I lived in the largest stone house surrounded by the best soil and a well-stocked library, but I considered that little hut home.

In my foolishness, I did not check on up Lady Lulamoon on that fated morning when Trixie and I ventured up to the upper caverns to see and feel the sunlight piercing through a narrow hole high up in the surface. On that day, a blast of rainbow stimulated my unicorn horn. My latent magic went out of control, and I nearly caused a massive cave-in if not for my brother rescuing me.

When we returned to the village, I found that everypony survived except for one--Trixie's mother.

The other unicorns said that she tried to escape in the initial shock, but she collapsed before she could get out through the doorway. All we could see was her blue hoof sticking out of the rocks, and Trixie was the only pony who ran to embrace what's left of her mother in tearful silence. Then my mother marched in with that same stern look on her face and magically separated Trixie away from the rock rubble. She held Trixie down to the ground while she fired a magic blast to cause a controlled cave-in over the ruins of the stone hut. This time, she completely buried all traces of Trixie's mother, and from the looks of things, nopony would know that a pony had lived there. Nopony would know of Lady Lulamoon, her daughter, and the little unicorn who often stayed there because her own mother was too busy to pay attention to her.

I could already see Trixie's sadness flowing from her eyes. A moment ago, she had withheld her tears, but with my mother delivering the final insult, all Trixie could do was run from everypony in the village. I too cried for Lady Lulamoon, but not from sadness. I turned and glared at the heartless mother who called herself Twilight Velvet who I knew had been friends with Trixie's mother since their youth, but had worked her to death to raise me. Then there was my brother, still bruised and scarred from Velvet's training from the day before, looking away in silence and in shame.

"There is no time to mourn," said Velvet. "We have to begin your Exam."

"But Trixie's mother…"

"Death is inevitable, Sparkle. Let's focus on the present."

I could not believe that she would just bury her own best friend like that! In protest, I ran away from my mother and the village, searching for Trixie. Initially, I navigated the secret paths leading to my Secret Cave. She was not inside. The pillar of sunlight would be off limits, and for almost a minute I sat wracking my brains on where she could go. I soon realized that my shuddering heart took control of my body, and my hooves galloped towards the back entrance of the Endless Pits. I saw, to my horror, Trixie standing dangerously close to its edge, peering down as if she was trying to convince herself to jump.

"Trixie!" I yelled.

I realized that with me being here, it made things worse. Trixie looked back at me with one wistful smile, and then she stepped over.

In my panic, I dove right after her. I managed to catch her between my hooves, but we were still falling. Immediately I attempted a teleportation spell, but this was the first time I did so with another pony. Back then, I was not used to teleportation. You could literally feel your own body twisting into a single point through Aether Space. Shapes of light pass by you like blinding blurs, and while it was painless, you could feel sick in both mind and body if you're not used to it. However, it wasn't time for me to hesitate. I had to save my best friend and myself from certain doom.

The energy from my horn opened a crack into Aether Space, and instantly we were back in normal space. We zapped out too fast and too high up in a dark cave system we have never seen before, and we tumbled across the ground until we slammed into a load-bearing stalagmite. Large rocks began raining from the ceiling. Quickly, I loaded Trixie onto my back and hoofed it until we reached edge of a clearing. I illuminated the clearing with a magic flare I fired into air, and before us was a wall of boulders. The weight of Trixie's despair caused her to cry out before she slouched her entire body to the ground.

"You should have let me jump," wept Trixie. "At least I wouldn't have to slowly suffer and die and you would have survived."

"Don't talk," I said as a trotted about our little cave. "There has to be a weak point between these boulders."

"What's the use? Whether we get out or not, we're going to be buried underground one way or another. What's the point of us practicing magic if we're never going to get out these caves?"

"We will get out. I'm sure of it."

"You're just as doomed here as I am."

I did not know what else to say. Even if I were to find a way to teleport or blast my way out of here, Trixie would resist coming with me, and she might even attempt to take her own life again. I needed to find a way to convince her to live for herself. She was my friend. She was like my sister, and I owed her and her mother everything.

"Trixie, do you want to hear what I read about a Gaean city called Manehattan?"

"Please. I don't want to hear another one of your wild stories about the surface."

"In Manehattan there are these Earth ponies called 'magicians', and while they don't possess magic, they are able to use sleight-of-hoof tricks and optical illusions that makes the audience think they are performing magic."

"What's so special about that? We can perform magic. Real magic"

"Yes, but these magicians are performers, and they earn their living making ponies smile with their magic tricks. They are usually found in street corners, but a few of them are able to perform in concert halls as big as our village itself in front of hundreds of ponies. In fact, they are able to dazzle the thousands if not millions more through the use of this thing called a television. These magicians can amaze the entire world if they want to."

"Really?"

"And these magicians earn the adoration of fans across the world as well as live in nice houses and eat the all the best foods like the ones we find washed up in plastic containers, but better!"

I could see Trixie's eyes sparkle and her lips forming a smile as she slowly rose from her haunches. She had always been a timid pony who followed me around wherever I went, but this was the first time I have seen this side of her. She barely suppressed her excitement about these tales of stage magicians when she cleared her throat.

"I cannot see why we should stoop so low just to entertain barbaric Earthians with the simplest of all unicorn magic," said Trixie. "They are already amused by mere optical illusions."

"But think of what you can do with the spells you know already," I said. "You could control rainbows, charm ropes like snakes, or even fend off an Ursa Major! They'll even let you wear a costume."

"A costume?"

"You know, something with a cape with stars stitched on the surface."

"Can you wear a hat?"

"Of course you can! If we ever get out of this rock wall, we can show the Earth Ponies how magical we unicorns are."

"You're right! We unicorns are few, but we are the stewards of all that is magic, and the world must know of our magnificence. Stand back Sparkle, and make way for the Great and Powerful Trixie!"

Trixie sprung to her hind legs, pumped up, and ready to punch out the rocks with a few jabs to the air. If she wore a cape, the wind, artificial or otherwise, would keep it afloat as part of her heroic performance. She landed back on all fours again, and bright lights of pink sparked from the blue horn she aimed towards the rubble that trapped us. I have never seen her put so much effort and focus, and her painful grunting was evidence of this. I knew Trixie was poor at magic. She was only enrolled into the Magisister training and out of pity and she was the worst of our class. To top it off, my own mother never devoted any time to help her develop her skills.

Trixie's horn then fired out shower of colorful lights that reminded me of the fireworks I seen on Gaean videotapes. They were as beautiful as they were effective, and the magical fireworks filled the cavern air with explosions that obliterated almost all of every piece of rocks that walled us in. I was impressed, and at that time I felt she surpassed me in every way. Indeed, this was a powerful spell that no unicorn filly or mare could cast, and I could imagine the strain it put on Trixie. Despite shaking in her hooves, Trixie forced herself to stand, and forced herself to smile to reassure ourselves that we made it. I could not contain my joy and excitement, and immediately I rushed in and hugged my friend.

---

"That was when I Trixie and I earned the marks on our flanks," said a wistful Twilight. "My mother did allow us to take a make-up exam, one that is much harder than the one she would have given us, but the two of us passed with flying colors. It was also the day that Trixie came to live with me. Since then, we devoted ourselves in our magical studies, but we still continued our adventures in the underground rivers to fish out more surface artifacts."

She turned away from the bookshelf she had been reshelving and expected tears to fall from the eyes of her listeners. In a cruel way Fluttershy, the fillies, and even Sunny did not disappoint her.

"Uh, I'm not crying… again," said Scootaloo after wiping her tears. "It's because of all the dust floating around the library."

"Sorry about Lady Lulamoon," said Sweetie Belle, "but your mother in the story was awfully mean to bury her without a funeral."

"I guess anypony would see her as cold-hearted," said Twilight, "but sometimes I forget that deep inside she is still a kind mother."

"How so?"

"Sometime after my First Magisister Exam, I went over to Lady Lulamoon's gravesite to place some old flowers I found washed upon on the shores of the underground river. I found out that somepony arrived early to place a colorful wreath of fresh flowers, which is an unusual sight in Unicornia. Farming is very a difficult task in our village that a few unicorns can accomplish given the poor soil quality and the lack of energy from our sun spell. I had assumed that our designated farmers were the ones who found the time to grow flowers, but when I asked them about it, they denied any responsibility. I noticed that they were somewhat scared if not hesitant in their response, as if they knew who it was, and I became determined to find out. So in the next few days, I woke up several hours early and hid myself not far from Lady Lulamoon's gravesite. A few times I fell asleep and nearly arrived late to my mother's lessons. Eventually I got lucky and I found out that the culprit was none other than my mother. She had cast a powerful sun and growth spell that flowers grew from the withered remains from the old wreath. Even in the dark, I could see it was very draining to her, and yet she still had the energy to work my brother to near death in his Magister lesson in the next morning. I observed her doing this for next few weeks until the village and I were satisfied that a kind stranger was continuing to pay respects to Lady Lulamoon for years to come."

"Is your friend Trixie doing okay right now?" Apple Bloom asked.

The unicorn mare opened her mouth and prepped to utter a reply. Yet no words came out upon her realization that her best friend was now the enemy. In spite of the fillies' brushes with danger, Twilight was certain that her companions had not told them, whether directly or indirectly, about the terror of a Trixie Lulamoon possessed with mad power. She singlehoofedly defeated her and her friends in the Everfree Forest and barely escaped her wrath en route into the Crystal Empire. Trixie took control of the land battleship Excelsus and nearly shattered the Empire's magical barrier. She had changed, and Twilight wasn't sure if was Trixie's pent-up resentment surfacing or the suspicious black necklace she wore on her neck. A tinge of regret befell the young unicorn's heart, but she convinced herself that she made no mistake in saving Trixie on that fated day.

"She's doing fine," lied Twilight Sparkle.

Comments

[Twilight_Scratch]

oooohhhhh....

[Kapuchu]

5267348
Thank you. You are now #4353 to tell me that. Anything else you wish to add while you're at it?

Yes, I know that Fluttershy is a pegasus, but there's the thing called "Clipping wings," y'know? She could have had them removed to appear as an Earth Pony. That was why I initially thought that this character was Fluttershy, because she was identical in every aspect except the wings and personality.

[raw666]

Damn, you know these plot lines gotten old with 'I'm oblivous that someone loves me yet everyone else done.' I've seen it so many times in movies and books. First dozen of times is fine but now its getting anoying.
I think it would be more intersting if Twilight does know and has a feeling but she is trying to deny due to the rare number of Unicorns. Meaning she probably came from a culture same sex is discourage since they don't have the numbers to allow it and may have been punish them for even experimenting and is learning to go against what she is taught. As well as also wonder if its best not to presue since she doesn't want Applejack to lose a chance to continue her family legacy accepting a relation that might be doom. Which leads to Cutie Mark Cursaders Match Makers.

[The Ohvist]

Everyone will possibly be expecting that everything will be all sunshine and celery stalks when we finally finish these Chronicles, but even I can see that with how things are starting to add together here, that Twilight will have even less reason to openly believe and even trust the Captain when she discovers that it was all Dashies' fault that her friendship with Trixie was jeopardized like this, since Trixie believed that it was all Twilights' fault that her own mother died while everyone else survived the event. This hatred would eventually serve as Trixies' motive for setting her down on the path to becoming a villain. And since Twilight has less reason to trust her (and the fact that the effects of the Elements of Empathy and Truth revealing to Fluttershy and Apple Bloom that it was all because of Dashies' apparent father that shaped Posey into the cold and cruel Chancellor she is today) Dashie will have to SERIOUSLY give her all to [-The Following Paragraph Has Been REDACTED By The Author To Prevent Apparent Spoilers-]

[Satto Kez]

Man I love this story! The cutie mark stories... eh, I definitely enjoyed this one though!
Some errors here and there but it did not subtract from how much I enjoyed it!
I hope to see more soon!

[starcross7]

5270544
I wasn't inspired by anything in particular. I merely dwelled on the possibilities on a big what-if scenario in which the three pony tribes never came together in Hearth's Warming Eve. That scenario resulted in a divided land and an all-out war.

Interestingly enough, the working title for Re:Harmony was going to be Equestria Divided.

[ForeverLunar]

5267353
I to initially thought Posey was Flutters. Of course that changed after finding out she is/was the beast master xDD

[Admiral Q Ponyform]

Twilight you get this

And did we really need Trixie's mark story? I don't.

[Just Sandy]

5672608 posey is either her mother or a changeling who took form of flutters just without the wings

[Ash Bark]

6952190 the element of truth gave fluttershy a vision of her infant self being thrown out a castle window into the everfree. Thrown by Posey, I dont think shes a changeling