19 - His Spell
Succession
Chapter 19 - His Spell
“Finally! I can’t b-believe all of th-the c-closed chariots were taken!” Artemis complained as she stepped out of the chariot that had taken her and Twilight to Neighbury, doing a little dance on the spot to get her circulation going again.
“I understand the ambassadors traveling to and from Vyatkiev,” Twilight offered, backing out of the chariot awkwardly in order to spare her injured leg any pain. “I hear it’s even colder than Canterlot, and that place was crawling with windigoes. Besides, we’re unicorns; we can heat ourselves with magic.”
“Provided you can k-keep doing that all the way from Manehattan to N-Neighbury,” Artemis returned, resuming the heating spell she had abandoned sometime during the flight. “C-could’ve heated me up if you still had energy to burn.”
“The way my magic’s been acting, I wasn’t sure that would do you any good,” Twilight defended herself, following after Artemis and leaving the pegasi to deal with the chariot. “That solite didn’t take well to getting ‘heated up’.”
“G-good point,” Artemis admitted, stopping and allowing Twilight to catch up. “So, where do we start?” she asked, gesturing at the massive crater that had replaced Neighbury.
“I can’t believe it’s been three months,” Twilight muttered, her eyes widening as she took in the vast destruction the alicorn had wrought. Although the debris had long since been cleared away, the area surrounding Neighbury, even after so long, was still scarred beyond repair by the alicorn’s spell. While snow had fallen over most of Central Equestria, it was sparse in this area, growing vacant altogether near the crater. Twilight poked a hoof at the slightly blackened, barren ground, finding that the soil was noticeably warmer than the frigid air about her.
Looking ahead, she found the crater’s rim before her to be was almost ten feet tall, making it the only part of the crater itself that was visible to her and Artemis. The sheer enormity was more than enough to make Twilight gulp in apprehension. Without the obscuring smoke that had dominated the area the last time she was there, it was much easier for her now to appreciate its size. It had to be at least a quarter of a mile in diameter, a strange red glow emanating from within it giving it an all too familiar and sinister appearance. “I can’t believe I thought I could face him after he did something like this. It’s even bigger than The Great Tragedy.”
“Not as powerful, though,” Artemis pointed out. “Didn’t even make a proper crater, just this flat... canvas. I just hope he doesn’t come by again.”
“You mean he’s been here before?” Twilight asked with worry. “After the explosion?”
“I didn’t tell you? He was here twice while you were in your coma,” Artemis explained. “At least, I assume it was him. There were only a few hundred symbols on the ground when we recovered you. But during the second week of your coma, the soldiers and scientists investigating the scene all fell asleep for three days straight. When they woke up, they found that something had added… a lot more symbols. Two days later, it happened again, but for five days. By then… well, maybe you should see for yourself.” Artemis vanished in a flash and reappeared atop the rim of the crater, gesturing for Twilight to join her.
A second later, Twilight flashed into existence beside Artemis, her jaw dropping as she looked ahead into the interior of the crater. The entire area within the rim of the crater was covered in strange symbols etched into the burned ground, weaving in and out among each other in a barely perceptible pattern. Each symbol glowed the same red color as the alicorn’s magic, pulsing as if alive and covering the area in a myriad of winking lights.
“A quarter of a mile in diameter,” Artemis told her, “giving a total area of point oh five square miles. Average area of one symbol is about one square foot, equalling approximately one million three hundred and ninety-four thousand symbols total. That’s a big spell.”
“I… I see,” Twilight replied weakly, a chill creeping up her spine. “Are you sure you can destroy this?”
“We haven’t really tried yet,” Artemis admitted with a frown. “It’d be best to figure out what we’re dealing with first. There’s a good chance this thing is boobytrapped. But if neither you nor the diamond dog coming in tomorrow night can make sense of it, we’ll have to try.”
“The faster we do this, then, the faster we can get rid of it,” Twilight replied, her gaze hardening as she teleported down the rim of the crater to stand before the symbols closest to her. “Besides glowing, have they done anything else?”
“Prolonged exposure seems to make you nauseous,” Artemis explained, approaching Twilight on hoof. “If you put something on top of a symbol, look away, and look back again, the object will either have been moved so it’s no longer obstructing the symbol, or disappear entirely. Using magic near some markings might give you an electrical shock. It gets worse the closer you get to the center, so be careful about teleporting.”
Twilight nodded her understanding and stopped in front of one of the symbols. “It’s not even close to looking like the Equestrian alphabet,” she concluded.
“Nor any zebran or griffonic,” Artemis added. “It matches no know writing of the three ancient pony tribes and they are almost all completely abstract in form, ruling out the possibility of them being pictograms.”
“Do you know how many different symbols there are?” Twilight asked, lowering her horn to an inch above one symbol to try and scan it.
“Thousands,” Artemis sighed despairingly. “We have found twins, some more common than others, but there are also near-identical symbols containing tiny variations. Most likely, the markings are words, not letters.” The violet unicorn gestured in a roundabout motion with her hoof. “One of the linguists determined that the whole thing was written in a counter-clockwise spiral pattern from the center out. Unfortunately, there seems to be thousands and thousands of subpatterns that complicates things.”
“It’s definitely exuding some kind of magic,” Twilight concluded as she raised her horn again. “But I don’t see a… shape. It just seems like raw energy.”
“Got the same impression when I was here last time,” Artemis sighed, shivering as the cold started leaving her body, partly due to her own heating spell, but mostly because of the energy surrounding her. “I was hoping you’d be able to sense something I wasn’t, but maybe it just is energy.”
“Or maybe I just need some context,” Twilight suggested. “If you’re supposed to read this thing from the center, then maybe we should start there.”
“Best if we walk there,” Artemis warned her before Twilight could teleport. “Wouldn’t wanna get shocked. Or worse.”
Twilight grimaced and felt a twinge of pain in her foreleg, as if it were already voicing its protest at the idea.
“We’ve built a small lodge near the eastern edge of the crater if you need to rest a bit,” Artemis offered, noticing Twilight’s look of discomfort.
“I’m fine. I’ve been resting on the way over here.”
“And been heating yourself up the entire way.”
“I’m fine,” Twilight repeated. “Besides, I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep much right next to Neighbury.
“You should have told me if you didn’t want to come here…”
“Look, I’m fine!” Twilight groaned at Artemis. “I don’t like being here, but I have to.”
“You sure?”
“I thought we ran off from the rest of the council so I didn’t have to deal with ponies asking me how I’m feeling every five minutes!” Although her gaze was fixed on the center of the crater and not the unicorn standing beside her, Twilight could sense Artemis falling silent, more affected by her words than she had meant for her to be. “I’m sorry. I didn’t…” She gave a deep sigh and teleported away from the unicorn and into the center of the crater.
“Twilight! No!” she heard Artemis call out to her across the sizeable gap that had formed between them, but she didn’t look back. Contrary to Artemis’s warnings, the inscriptions beneath Twilight offered no reaction to her sudden arrival, allowing her to take in her surroundings in peace.
The air around Twilight felt much heavier now, laden with the magic seeping out of the glowing symbols all around her. Like a thick fog, the red light saturated the air as well, making it impossible for Twilight to make out the rim of the crater and dulling the brightness of the stars above. As such, it was difficult to determine where she was relative to the center of the crater.
A sudden pulse emanated from somewhere ahead of her; a brightening of the symbols’ glow that spread like rippling water outwards and toward the rim. The light didn’t dim, and another brightening pulse spread out from what Twilight now assumed to be the center of the inscriptions, beckoning for her to come closer. She did so apprehensively, not blind to the fact that the symbols’ behavior seemed to be caused by her presence. The inscriptions pulsed again, and this time Twilight was able to identify the central symbol. She hurried toward it, wincing as she disturbed her right foreleg but ignoring the pain as best she could.
When she came within sight of the central inscription, however, her pace slowed, her eyes widening at the sight. Etched into the center of the enormous crater was a large, solid, six-pointed star, not unlike her own cutie mark. “M-me?” Twilight asked herself, frowning at the symbol. “Or… no. Magic. If you’re writing a spell like this, I suppose you’d start with ‘magic’, right?”
“I suppose you would,” Artemis answered, and Twilight turned her head to see the head of science approaching her from behind. “What do you think it signifies, though? Magic, yourself, or something else?”
“I hope it’s magic,” Twilight murmured uneasily. “It would make sense to put in a spell. But if it’s linking this spell to me...” She hesitated for a while, uncomfortable with voicing her thoughts. “It might be. It would explain why he’s been making me become more and more powerful since The Great Tragedy. If… I’m a power source.”
Artemis’s eyes widened. “Oh Celestia. That never crossed my mind! If you’re right..! We need to get you out of here!”
Twilight nodded dully, the words not having quite the impact they should have had, and she found that her eyes remained glued to the central symbol. “Then l-let’s go.” She let her magic take hold of herself and Artemis, and the two vanished in a flash of light.
They reappeared in the exact same spot, however, and were hurled backwards toward the star symbol in the center of the crater by an unseen force. Twilight grunted and grimaced in pain, and as she lay upon the ground, looking up at the sky, she paled.
“A force field,” Artemis whispered fearfully, pointing a hoof up at the shimmering red barrier Twilight had just noticed above them, curving down all around them and forming an inescapable dome no more than a hundred feet in diameter. “I-I told you not to teleport!” she all but shrieked, scrambling to get back on her hooves and search for a way out. “The symbols keep brightening, the forcefield… they’re both responding to your magic! Your presence!”
“Or… the presence and magic of their creator,” a third voice suggested and Twilight, who was halfway onto her hooves again, stumbled forwards in shock, away from where she heard the voice come from. She regained her footing and turned around quickly to discover that the alicorn of her nightmares had indeed appeared before her once more.
Artemis gasped as she too turned away from Twilight and faced the newcomer. “Thi-th‒ i-is this..?”
The alicorn hardly spared Artemis a glance, his amber eyes locking onto Twilight’s instead. “I would appreciate if you would cease desecrating my spells,” he warned her, taking a step toward the two unicorns, who in turn took two steps back.
“What is it!?” Twilight demanded, drawing a defensive barrier over herself and Artemis and beginning the casting of a dozen more. “What does this spell have to do with me!? What are you using it for!?”
“So many questions… They say that knowledge is power,” the alicorn mused as he continued to approach the two, somehow gaining on them no matter how fast the unicorns backed away. “But all power comes at a cost” ‒ there was a glint in the alicorn’s eyes as he looked at Twilight ‒ “and believe you me: You are not prepared to pay the price.”
“Which is?”
“Life.”
“Run,” Twilight whispered to Artemis, moving herself in between the council member and the alicorn.
“Stay,” the stallion said, and Twilight heard a dull thud from behind her. Looking back, she found Artemis lying unconscious on the ground, twitching and grimacing as she was taken by nightmares.
“Leave this inscription and all future ones you might encounter alone, Twilight,” the alicorn warned her again. “I do not threaten, it is a statement of fact: Learn the purpose of this spell, and you will doom this world.”
“Why should I believe that?” Twilight challenged her enemy, changing directions as she walked backwards to lead the alicorn away from Artemis.
“I have told you nothing but the truth since we met.”
“I’m not going to trust an honest murderer.”
“I wish you would,” the alicorn responded with insincere sadness. “It would make things so much easier if you would only cooperate.”
“I bet it would!”
The stallion stopped advancing upon the unicorn and was silent for a moment, gazing idly at Artemis’s unconscious form that now lay a few feet to his right. “I have done what I came to do. Know that if you attempt to discern the meaning of these markings, your friend’s nightmares will last forever. Leave, and she may awaken.”
Twilight, however, stood her ground. “What are you so afraid of me knowing?”
“Afraid?” The alicorn gave a toothy smile, and Twilight took a cautious step backwards. “I do not yield to fear. On the contrary, as you may have noticed, fear is my weapon.” His wings unfurled suddenly, and the unicorn flinched. “It is ‒ and has always been ‒ my nature.”
“Your special talent…” Twilight whispered to herself, momentarily distracted by the long awaited answer to at least one of the questions surrounding the alicorn. Her gaze went briefly to his exposed cutie mark, but found only a foreign abstract symbol, glowing red like those underneath her hooves. She regained her concentration and gave him a defiant scowl. “Well, you’re not very good at it are you!? I’m not afraid of you! I’m still standing up to you!”
The alicorn returned the scowl. He took a step toward her, and Twilight took another step back. “I can see your fear. I can smell it... I taste it. And although you continue to defy me, you do so with futility. And you do so alone.”
Twilight steeled herself and stepped forwards. “I’m not alone.”
There was a faint sneer upon his lips as he raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” A red aura, barely perceptible in the already glowing red atmosphere, formed about Artemis’s unconscious form, and she was hoisted into the air between Twilight and the alicorn. “Do you consider this a worthy ally? Do you believe her capable of standing against my power?”
“Leave her alone!” Twilight shouted at him, trying to overcome his grasp on Artemis and bring her to safety.
Try as she might, the alicorn’s grip remained, tightening as he dispelled Twilight’s efforts at wrestling with his magic. “You are beginning to understand real power. You must realize how easy it would be for me to destroy this unicorn.”
“Don’t!”
“Perhaps you do not understand how little I care…”
Twilight stepped forward with her right hoof, her nostrils flaring as she held back the pain of using that leg. “Stop it!”
“Why should I go through the trouble of putting her down? I can just as easily erase her and be done with it.”
“I said, stop!” Twilight lowered her horn at the alicorn, but, thinking better of it, she pointed it at one of the symbols next to her. The ground surrounding the symbol started glowing magenta, and was blown to pieces, wiping out the red marking and a dozen of its neighbors. She turned back to the alicorn, returning his angry glare.
“Do that again,” he warned her quietly, “and I shall destroy the very memory of this pony.”
“Kill her, and I’ll keep sabotaging your inscriptions!” Twilight retorted. “Every time you leave this place, I’ll be here! It took you weeks to make all of this, right? I bet I can destroy it much faster!”
The alicorn said nothing, only narrowed his eyes at the unicorn, who for once managed to hold her ground against his stare. Then, his lips curled into a smile, and he chuckled. “Very well.” He tossed the unconscious Artemis at Twilight’s hooves unceremoniously. “It is good to see you go beyond shooting at me with lightning bolts and fireballs. I shall grant you the life of your precious friend. In return, I ask that you never disturb this site or any like it.”
Twilight’s brow furrowed. Her horn glowed again, and Artemis was moved behind her and away from the alicorn. “You mean there’s more of these?”
“In turn for your promise never to disturb these spells, I shall grant you not only the life of Artemis, but a promise of my own,” he told her, ignoring her question. Something in his gaze shifted, and the atmosphere between alicorn and unicorn changed in an instant. The glowing fog of red that coated the entirety of the crater faded from sight as the stallion’s amber eyes acquired that same glint she had momentarily seen in Canterlot. He took a step toward her, and Twilight managed to take a step back despite the paralyzing fear threatening to overtake her. She tripped over Artemis, but as the alicorn closed the distance between them with another step, she had no time to right herself and fell onto her back. The alicorn was standing over her as soon as she hit the ground, his glowing, amber eyes boring into hers. “Disturb any of these symbols, or allow anyone to so much as touch them, and I will extinguish all life in this world.”
“Wh-what?” Twilight asked breathlessly, shivering beneath the giant alicorn standing over her.
“Do you believe me incapable of doing so?”
Twilight gulped. “No…”
“Would I lie to you?”
Twilight grimaced in pain when her neck began to pulse uncomfortably, and she managed to tear her gaze away, pressing the side of her face against the ground to avoid the amber eyes as much as possible. “N-no,” she muttered, sighing as color returned to her vision.
Her sigh was cut short and her body went rigid when she felt an incorporeal presence push against the wound near her neck.
“Good.”
The alicorn’s magical influence pushed through her skin and into her body, leaving no physical damage, but causing Twilight to gasp in pain, gritting her teeth as his magic travelled up the length of her spine and settled around her skull. A familiar coldness formed at the edges of her mind, and her body went completely numb.
“Now leave this place and never return.”
The numbness disappeared, and Twilight felt her muscles twitching and tightening of their own accord. She tried moving her limbs, but they proved unresponsive. Even her face was frozen, but the chilly grip the alicorn was exerting on her mind encroached no further upon her psyche. Acting on an impulse that wasn’t her own at all, her entire body rolled onto its stomach and out from under the alicorn. She gave an internal gasp of pain when she, without wanting to, stepped down on her right foreleg and rose to her hooves.
The freezing grip about her mind wasn’t attacking her, she realized, but isolating her from the rest of her body, allowing the alicorn to magically control her limbs as he saw fit. Her head turned stiffly to look at the alicorn standing beside her, and she saw him hoist Artemis into the air with his magic, dumping her onto Twilight’s back. Her foreleg screamed in protest at the added weight, but the alicorn’s influence forced her to turn around and face him, despite the pain that would have made her collapse.
“We shall part ways for now,” he told her, his mane growing to envelop Twilight and Artemis in complete darkness. “But already, our reunion draws near.”
The darkness clouding Twilight’s vision parted, and she found herself standing outside the crater again, appearing directly in front of the two chariot pullers that had taken her to Neighbury in the first place.
“Twilight!?” one of the pegasi exclaimed as they both jumped back in surprise, bumping into the chariot they had been in the process of pulling and shrugged out of their harnesses. “What happened to Council Member Artemis!?”
“We need to leave,” Twilight answered, although it was still the alicorn controlling her actions, including, it seemed, her speech.
“Why? W-what happened?”
“That was an order,” Twilight only answered, stepping around the confused pegasi and onto the flying chariot. She shrugged Artemis off her back and dumped her onto the floor of the chariot, then engaged the safety railing with her back hoof. “Go!”
“Back to Manehattan?” the second pegasus asked of her incredulously as he and his partner hooked themselves up to the chariot again. “We just came!”
The icy grip that had held her mind trapped finally released her, returning her muscle control suddenly and unexpectedly, and Twilight fell onto her side next Artemis, gasping loudly in pain and clutching her aching leg.
One of the pegasi noticed the sudden movement and gasp and turned his head back at the chariot. “Now what? What’s going on!?”
“Just… go!” Twilight hissed out through clenched teeth, breathing rapidly as she tried to fight back the pain that threatened to overcome her. “I’ll explain later!”
“And we’re going to Manehattan?”
“Yes!” Twilight closed her eyes, still gasping and clutching at her injured leg, but she felt the chariot set into motion, lifting into the air within moments.
Eventually, the unicorn’s breathing calmed, and she opened her eyes again, looking out through the back of the chariot at the giant, glowing crater. She had hardly opened her eyes, however, before a flash of light drew her gaze to the western edge of the crater. A dull boom reached her ears a moment later, and she realized what had happened.
“What was that?” one of the pegasi asked with exasperation, too preoccupied with pulling the chariot into the air to look back.
With a groan and a wince, Twilight rolled onto her back, averting her gaze from the crater. “The lodge. With the scientists studying the symbols. It’s gone.”
“Gone!? Do we… do we turn back?”
Twilight shook her head, although the pegasi had no way of seeing it. “No. We can’t help them.”
She faintly heard the pegasus mutter a curse. “What’s going on, exactly? What happened to you in there?”
“We got attacked by the owner of those markings,” Twilight answered, sighing as the pain in her leg finally wore off. “He put a spell on Artemis, but it should wear off if we put enough distance between us and that crater.”
“You sure?”
“No.” Twilight closed her eyes again and yawned. “If she wakes up, land immediately and try to calm her down. I’m going to… take a rest.” A kick to the ribs made her open her eyes again, and she noticed that Artemis had begun twitching more violently than she had at first. Her horn too was flickering on and off, and Twilight gave a groan of displeasure. “This is gonna be a long night...”
“N-nuh… No!”
Twilight cracked an eye open from where she lay on the black marble floor to look at Artemis, seated awkwardly on the single armchair of her living room. The violet unicorn had finally begun to stir, and so Twilight pulled herself up onto her hooves grudgingly, bracing herself for whichever mood the other unicorn might wake up in.
With a sudden gasp, Artemis opened her eyes wide and leapt out of her seat, knocking her armchair over backwards in the process. A wild gaze flickered about the modestly sized living room, taking in her surroundings before settling on Twilight, standing near the front door to her quarters. Bright indigo flames enveloped Artemis’ horn, and Twilight summoned the force field she had already prepared, shielding her from a quick volley of fireballs and an armchair that shattered against the magical barrier.
A veil of smoke and splinters obscured Twilight’s vision of Artemis, but she saw a bright flash of light indicating a teleportation spell. The confused unicorn reappeared with a thud against the wall to Twilight’s right, however, and the lavender unicorn cleared away the smoke.
“I’ve enchanted the walls,” Twilight explained to Artemis, who was momentarily stunned from the impact, rubbing her head sorely. “You need to calm down, Artemis. I know you’re confused ‒” another volley of fireballs struck her carefully prepared force field “‒ and angry‒”
“Let me go!” Artemis screamed, attempting another teleportation but once more colliding with Twilight’s protective enchantments midjump.
“Not until you calm down!” Twilight insisted.
“Where am I!?” Artemis demanded fiercely, pointing her crackling horn at Twilight and assuming as threatening a stance as she could. “Tell me!”
“Cristallum. We’re in your quarters. Your living room.”
“You destroyed Cristallum!”
Twilight paused for a moment. “Maybe you should tell me what happened. Everything from when the two of us went to Neighbury and now.”
“No! I won’t let you do that to me again!” Artemis’ eyes bulged with anger, but instead of shooting at Twilight, tiny indigo fireballs launched from her horn all over the place, settling on the floor and walls and beginning to smoke profusely. “Unless you want us both to choke to death, you’ll have to dispel those enchantments!”
With her magic, Twilight opened a window and expulsed the smoke forcefully. Artemis hurried after it, but gave a loud groan of frustration when she found that the protective barrier was still spanning the opening of the window. “This barrier has been in effect for two hours, Artemis. If I didn’t allow air to pass through, we’d have suffocated…” Twilight trailed off when she saw Artemis collapse in front of the window, shaking her head in surrender and sobbing uncontrollably.
Twilight sighed and sat down. “Listen to me, Artemis. The two of us met the alicorn, and he put you in a coma‒”
“No! No! You killed me!”
“I won’t hurt you.” Twilight attempted an encouraging smile, but it vanished when a large fireball struck her barrier again. The force field Twilight had spent fifteen minutes preparing, however, remained undamaged.
“Stay back!” Artemis shrieked.
“You had a nightmare!” Twilight plead with the panicked unicorn. “I know it seems real, too real to be discredited just from what I’m saying, but whatever you think I did to hurt you, it wasn’t real!”
“I’m not stupid!” Artemis retorted. “You aren’t fooling me! Stay right there! Pl-please!” Again, the unicorn scanned her surroundings. “Where’s the alicorn!? No-not you, but the other one!”
“I’m not an alicorn, Artemis,” Twilight tried reasoning, gesturing at her wingless back.
“Where is he!?” The violet unicorn only shouted, a bolt of lightning flying from her horn and striking Twilight’s force field.
“He’s long gone by now. He threw us out of Neighbury, and I took you straight home. We’ve been in Cristallum for more than two hours.
“You drove him off!” Artemis insisted frantically. “Your eyes were glowing, a-and there was fire everywhere!”
“He was telling us something about not… desecrating his spell,” Twilight explained. “I told you to run, and then he put you to sleep.”
“No! He ordered me to stay and blasted my horn to pieces! He-he-he almost t-tore off my leg!” Her right foreleg stiffened as she shuddered from the fabricated memory. “I can still feel it!” Artemis sighed as she managed to calm down slightly. “I... I know my leg’s still here. And you look normal. It’s just...”
“Nothing makes sense right now,” Twilight said, trying to level with the traumatized unicorn. “Whatever horrible thing you just experienced, it was much too real to be something you imagined. That’s what was going through my head when I woke up. And it kept going through my head for hours.”
Artemis remained at the window a while longer, hunched over and staring at the floor. “Alright,” she finally relented, lifting her head and rubbing it again. “I guess if you wanted to kill me, you would’ve done it already...”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Twilight repeated, relieved at how easy it had been to calm down the other unicorn.
“Just... stay still,” Artemis told her. “I need to piece it all together. When... when do you say I was put into this... nightmare coma of his?”
“Must’ve been twelve hours ago,” Twilight answered, wondering how long Artemis’ nightmare had felt to her.
Artemis nodded her head thoughtfully. “And then what?”
Twilight shrugged uneasily. “He teleported us out of the crater, and we flew away in the chariot. He… blew up the outpost a few seconds later.”
“He ‒?” Artemis slammed a hoof against the ground angrily. “Why!?”
“He doesn’t want anyone reading those inscriptions. I had to promise him I’d never touch them again in order to save your life. In fact, if anyone ever touches them again, he told me he’d wipe out Equestria.”
The violet unicorn shivered. “Part of me really wants to know what could be so important to him.” She gave Twilight a wary look. “And another part is afraid he just told me.”
Twilight gave her a confused look, but Artemis looked away from her again immediately. “What? Why? What’d you see?”
“I don’t know,” the other unicorn admitted, shaking her head. “There are some things I need to… sort out? Is that what you called it?”
Twilight nodded her head. “I understand.”
“Just… do as he says. Stay away from those inscriptions. C-can I leave now? I need some fresh air.”
“Of course.” A brief glimmer of light surrounded the walls, and the door opened immediately at Artemis’ wordless command. “I don’t suppose you want some company?”
Artemis shook her head, rising onto all fours. She looked at Twilight warily, hesitant to walk past her to get to the door. After a moment’s deliberation, she closed the distance by teleporting, stopping in the doorway. “Does… does anypony know? About this?”
“The chariot pullers promised to keep quiet about this until further notice,” Twilight answered, and she could see Artemis visibly relax. “Not that they really understand what happened.”
The head of science and magic nodded her head dully, and the door closed behind her, leaving Twilight alone in the living room. While the light had somehow magically come on as soon as Artemis had entered the room, her exit immediately led to the glowing buttresses set along the walls of the room going dark.
Left in the living room lit only sparsely by the solites outside and full of the wreckage of her and Artemis’ brief fight, Twilight gave a yawn before turning her gaze up at the ceiling. A flash of light, and she stood in Luna’s old observatory a few stories above. She was surprised to see the chamber completely changed, however. A bed had been moved into the room during her absence, along with a nightstand, a desk and chair, an empty bookcase, drapes for the windows near where Luna’s telescope still stood, and an empty closet.
“That was fast,” Twilight muttered to herself before her eyes riveted on the bed. Having slept only sparsely here and there since leaving the Ponyville hospital, it wasn’t long before Twilight was crawling onto the soft mattress, uttering a contented sigh as she allowed herself to collapse. Only when she buried the side of her face in a sizeable pillow did she notice something lying on her nightstand. She grabbed it with her magic for closer inspection, and discovered that it was a simple rope necklace, a small, sharply faceted emerald serving as its pendant.
The amulet Artemis promised me, Twilight realized, probing the gem and sensing the enchantments placed within it. Wonder why she didn’t bring it along. Certainly could’ve used it.
Shaking her head lightly, Twilight dismissed the speculation from her mind, closed the drapes, and, despite the faux sunlight filtering in through the matte glass all around her, closed her eyes and fell asleep.
With a cough and a choke, Twilight awoke to find a stranglehold about her neck, the pressure quickly spreading to her torso to expel what little air remained in her lungs. She opened her eyes wide only to find her blanket, wreathed in the magenta aura of her own magic, wrapping itself around her throat and throwing her off the bed and into the nightstand. Twilight growled back at the blanket, fighting for air that wouldn’t come. Her already glowing horn took on a brighter hue, and a loud tearing noise sounded throughout her new bedroom as the blanket fell apart into shreds.
Gasping for air, she tried to stand, but fell over when she put weight on her injured foreleg. “I’m so tired of this!” she screamed, slamming her right hoof down on the ground and watching on defiantly as her bandages reddened. Tears welled up in her eyes when the pain became too much, and she rose to her hooves, stumbling away from the bed and toward her desk. She didn’t know for how long she had slept, but the light filtering through the matte glass panels and the curtains told her the solites of Manehattan had already been put out.
“Why can’t I sleep in this stupid palace!?” she groaned, seating herself at the table and slamming her healthy forehoof down upon it. She was met with silence, and her attention soon shifted to a stack of papers and and inkwell placed near the far left corner of the desk. A single sheet soon moved itself to the center of the desk, and a quill streaked across it rapidly, forming the image of Twilight’s cutie mark. The one she had seen in the center of the crater. The one that had been branded into the forefront of her mind by her most recent nightmare.
“Why me?” she whispered, her eyes boring into the star as if it might somehow speak to her. “What does he want? If he would destroy the world to preserve those markings, then what do they do? What could possibly be worse? And why am I a part of it?”
Because I k‒
“No!” Twilight shouted at herself, the part of her that wasn’t yet entirely her. “I didn’t kill her,” she muttered to herself more quietly. “He did it. He did everything. He ruined everything! The fire was his... or Celestia’s... not mine. Only the diamond dogs, not her. Not even if I lost control.”
“Nightmare?” Artemis whispered from across the bedroom, and Twilight flinched in her seat.
She turned her head and saw Artemis phasing through the floor on the elevator, giving her an indecipherable look. Twilight nodded. “You too?”
“I’m afraid of sleeping,” Artemis admitted, approaching the desk and Twilight slowly. “What if I…” Her tone went from uncertain to cautious when she looked at what Twilight had drawn. “Wait, what are you doing?”
Twilight looked at Artemis, who seemed to be growing more afraid by the second, and then back at the symbol she had drawn. “Uhh, I don’t know‒”
“Oh Celestia!” Artemis closed the distance between the two and pulled back the bottom of Twilight’s mane roughly, then drew her hoof away immediately. A subtle crackling alerted Twilight to just how afraid Artemis was, and she quickly summoned a magical wall between the two unicorns. An instant later, a powerful explosion destroyed half of Twilight desk, and everything on Artemis’ side of the shield became obscured by fire and smoke.
Gritting her teeth in anger, Twilight folded the barrier into a bubble around herself and magically cleared away the smoke. Artemis had been thrown across the room by the recoil of her own spell, and sat against a cracked glass pane, shaking her head to regain her senses.
“What in Tartarus was that?” Twilight demanded of the violet unicorn, drawing glowing, magenta chains across Artemis’ limbs to keep her from attacking.
“I told you not to read the inscription!” Artemis shrieked, and a bolt of lightning flew out of her horn.
Twilight met it halfway with a bolt of her own, and the two streams of energy wrestled with each other for half a second before Twilight’s superior power shone through. The point of impact between the two spells moved toward Artemis rapidly, but instead of hurting her when it hit, Twilight’s spell wrapped the other unicorn’s horn in a tight force field, preventing further spellcasting.
“Tell me what happened in your nightmare!” Twilight ordered her.
“Or what!?” Artemis returned angrily, tears in her eyes as she struggled against her bonds.
“Or I won’t be your partner anymore!”
“Fine!”
Twilight bristled. “What do you mean ‘fine’!? You told me yesterday you’d waited a long time to work with me!”
“That was before you… y-you…”
“Before I what!?”
Artemis gave her a defiant glare, refusing to say anything.
“You need to tell me,” Twilight told Artemis, speaking more softly to the panicked unicorn. “I’m going to show you the kindness you’ve shown me and not tell anyone about this, but if you keep attacking me randomly, someone’s gonna notice sooner or later. If they find out what’s happened and how much it’s affected you, there’s a good chance you could lose your job. You may be afraid or angry with me, but you don’t want that to happen, do you?”
Artemis didn’t answer immediately, but the defiance in her expression faded over time until she finally hung her head. “He… he showed me what would happen if you read the inscriptions. Y-you told me to run, but he told me to stay, and he s-shattered my horn. He broke my leg. But then you did that… thing where your eyes start glowing and your magic hits its peak, and you… chased him off.” Artemis shook her head, and Twilight decided to release her from her bonds. “Your eyes didn’t stop glowing… When he was gone, you went right past me even though I was bleeding and crying… like you didn’t care. You went straight for the center of the crater and just stared at the central symbol.” Artemis gave a soft whimper. “And you smiled.”
“Ah.” Twilight nodded her head and looked back at the desk. The piece of paper still resting on the ruined table curled into a small ball and was thrown into a nearby trashcan. “I don’t know exactly why I drew that symbol…”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better…” Artemis shuddered before continuing. “When you finally stopped looking at the symbol and turned your attention to me, your eyes were still glowing. You were giving me the largest grin I’ve ever seen… You started saying… horrible things, your fur blackened, and you sprouted wings! You started growing, a-and‒”
“The alicorn…” Twilight muttered, understanding what Artemis was trying to say. “I became him in your dream.”
“H-h-h-y-you killed me! Y-you tore off my leg!” Artemis shrieked, clutching her foreleg protectively. “You have no idea how much that…” Artemis trailed off when she noticed the sympathy in Twilight’s eyes.
“I had my forelegs burnt to stumps,” Twilight revealed, unable to hold Artemis’ gaze any longer. “I had my skin burned clean off, both in reality and in his nightmare. He killed my friends. I lost everything I had and he took away my hope, made me beg for death before I woke up in Manehattan.”
Twilight teared up and shuddered, forcing back the darker presences within her mind trying to take advantage of her momentary vulnerability. Before she could be overwhelmed, however, Artemis embraced her suddenly, hugging her tightly and causing Twilight’s breathing, having quickened during her brief retelling of the nightmare, to slow down again.
“I guess... I understand you better now,” Artemis muttered sadly. “I’m… I didn’t mean to attack y‒ I mean… I’m sorry.”
“You’re doing better than I am, honestly,” Twilight replied, finding herself smiling a little as she returned the embrace. “It’s confusing at first, but once you manage to convince yourself that it’s just a dream, it gets… manageable.”
Due to their proximity, Twilight could feel Artemis hesitate, and the warmth of their embrace faded. “What if it’s not just a dream?”
“A nightmare, then,” Twilight corrected herself.
“No.” Artemis broke free of the hug. “I mean, what if… there was some kind of truth in it? Like, a vision?”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “What are you saying?”
Artemis took a deep breath to steady herself, wiping a stray lock of indigo mane from her face before looking Twilight in the eyes. “That… thing on your neck. It’s...”
“I’ve had it since The Great Tragedy.”
“I know. I, uh, read your medical files. Sorry. B-but he gave it to you, right? In my dream, when your fur turned black, it started from your neck, from where that wound is.”
Twilight frowned, trying to touch a hoof to the black mark. “You don’t really think he showed you the truth, do you?”
Artemis hesitated, looking at the floor and rubbing her foreleg self-consciously. “What if he did, though? If he is willing to destroy the world to preserve those spell inscriptions, they must be really, really important to him. They must serve a purpose greater than or equal to destroying the world, right?” She lifted her gaze again, her expression dead serious. “What if they’re paramount to his own existence?”
“You’re saying that the alicorn is me, corrupted by that spell?” Twilight asked of Artemis incredulously. “That’s… No! That’s crazy!”
“It’s not!” Artemis insisted, circling Twilight. “You can travel through time! What if this alicorn is you!? Maybe he travelled back in time, caused The Great Tragedy to get rid of those closest to you and is now working on transforming you into himself... to create himself!? That’s... doable, right? According to your theses on time travel?”
“He’s older than ponydom, remember? And he is a stallion!”
“If you can grow wings and destroy the Canterlot palace, you can change your gender,” Artemis countered. “And who knows how far you travelled back in time? Maybe you went all the way back to before the age of ponies!”
“Stop that!” Twilight insisted angrily. “Stop saying I’m the one who did it! Who’s... going to do it! Don’t even dare suggest I would ever kill Celestia! However much that nightmare affected you, how big of an impression it left on you, it was just that: A nightmare! A figment of your imagination!”
“Maybe it was a clue!” Artemis answered defensively. “You can’t know what the future holds! What if he keeps doing whatever he’s been doing to you since The Great Tragedy? It’s driving you over the edge already!”
“I wouldn’t. Kill! Celestia!” Twilight shouted, punctuating each word with a stomp of her bad hoof. “Not Luna, not Cadance, and not my own brother, for pony’s sake!”
“If I’d asked you before meeting that alicorn, you’d say you wouldn’t ever kill the diamond dogs,” Artemis insisted, her voice cooler now.
Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “How can you say that!? How can you only see me as a murderer now!?”
“I’m not!” Artemis insisted.
“Nopony understands!” Twilight practically shrieked. “I wouldn’t ever hurt anyone innocent! The diamond dogs abducted four ponies and were about to kill them! Th-they had it coming!”
“But killing..?”
“Don’t even go there!” Twilight warned the other unicorn, pointing a hoof at her in accusation. “You’re the one who didn’t say anything when Scarlet and Civil drafted me into the Sword of Equestria! All of you thought it was a great idea! None of you bothered to listen to what the Elements of Harmony had to say! You wanna know something? Every one of those ‘threats to Equestria’s safety’ experienced the same thing as you; a close encounter with an alicorn whose special talent is spreading fear! They weren’t evil, they were frightened out of their minds! You tried shooting me when you woke up from that nightmare! Twice! Does that mean I should have killed you!?”
Artemis took a step back. “N-no!”
Twilight followed her gaze and noticed that her horn had, as it had during her trial, once again lit up without her permission. Extinguishing the magenta glow with an exasperated groan, she continued, a little calmer. “And even further down the line, there’s me. He stabbed me through the neck with his horn! And I recognize the kind of pain I felt now! He invaded my soul, the core of my innermost being and cursed me! He put me in the nightmare coma for two whole months! Everywhere I turn, I see him! You don’t know what it’s like! I have the deity of fear himself breathing down my neck constantly!”
Twilight averted her gaze as she felt tears trickling down her cheeks. “After everything he’s done,” she sniffed, “how can you say we’re the one and same?”
“I’m not saying you are the same,” Artemis tried. “Just that... it’s not... entirely impossible.”
“Well, I’m telling you it is!” Twilight replied, annoyed with the other unicorn’s stubbornness. “Besides, I can’t use magic while time travelling! That includes killing Celestia and blowing up the palace!”
“Maybe you found a way. If anyone can‒”
“He’s not me!” Twilight shouted, the force of her voice driving the other unicorn back a step and nearly knocking over the closet behind her. Redness crept into Twilight’s peripheral vision, and she turned away from Artemis with a loud groan. “He’s not me,” she repeated before vanishing in a bright flash.
How can she say that? How can she say that!? Twilight fumed as she reappeared upon the roof of one of the skyscrapers overlooking Cristallum. To even suggest that I killed Celestia!? That I killed my brother!? She has no idea what’s she’s talking about and yet she says it like it’s a fact! Like I’m the one who’s wrong when we’re talking about me! She doesn’t know anything about me! Nopony knows a thing about what I’ve been going through! Not even her!
Venting the minor magical buildup within her, Twilight unleashed a lightning bolt into the air, emitting a thunderous boom throughout most of Manehattan. “I didn’t kill her,” she whispered, walking around a large air handling unit and toward the center of the roof. “Not her. Not my brother. The diamond dogs, yes. And the timberwolves. A-and the windigoes!” Twilight stomped a hoof against the ground. “And where has that gotten me? I’m the most powerful unicorn in Equestria, but I still don’t have a clue as to how I’m going to beat that monster!”
“Twilight.”
Twilight whirled around, eyes bulging, to see Artemis approaching from the same way she had come just a few seconds ago. “Leave me alone!”
“Look, I’m sorry, Twilight,” Artemis told the other unicorn before she had a chance to teleport off the building. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. It wasn’t a statement of fact, but a statement of… well, a theory, I guess.”
“You said I killed Celestia.”
“I didn’t…” Artemis hung her head and sighed. “I’m sort of an inventor,” she explained. “I get ideas, sometimes really strange ideas, and sometimes ideas that seem impossible. I live in one,” she said, waving a hoof back in the direction of her tower in Cristallum. “I don’t throw away ideas, so… well, I’m really, truly sorry if I hurt you, but I’m putting this theory of you being that alicorn in my ‘maybe’ folder.” She tapped the side of her head with a hoof.
Twilight scoffed and turned away from Artemis. “So you think I maybe killed Celestia. That makes everything much better!”
“This alicorn is thousands of years old if we can believe what he told you,” Artemis argued. “He’s been around for a long time, and most likely, that means he’s smart. It’s been more than nine months, and we still don’t know what he wants! Until we find out, we have to keep all options open, Twilight!”
“What we have to do,” Twilight returned, “is trust each other!”
“I… I do,” Artemis answered, and Twilight heard the other unicorn approaching her slowly, though she still refused to spare her a glance. “I was being confused back in the tower. You said so yourself. And… while it is a valid theory, I-I think it’s highly, highly unlikely. That’s what I came here to say. I’m sorry.”
Artemis trotted up to Twilight’s side and sat down, and Twilight glanced at the other unicorn through the corner of her eye, weighing her words. She sighed. “Fine. I’m sorry I… almost threatened you. I guess.” Artemis nodded her head and gave her a soft smile, but Twilight couldn’t find it in herself to return it. “But what do we do now? Two unicorns, driven to the brink of insanity by an unstoppable monster… What can we do?”
“We see if Civil’s people have come up with anything,” Artemis answered her. “We find that alicorn’s weakness, and the two of us figure out a way to destroy him for good.”
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Another great chapter of awesome story.
Keep it up.
Hmm. Story premise reminds me strongly of Equestria's Twilight.
The plot sounds a lot like that of the first inFAMOUS; definitely going to give this a look.
So, for the most part, I like this story, but I really have one problem with it:
There's no light. Anywhere.
I'm serious - this whole thing is about as unremittingly dark as I've ever seen, but that's not always a good thing. Tiny bits of light don't kill a dark story, but they do give a little bit of a respite... and can make things seem even darker when you need them to, thanks to the contrast. At this point, this story is so drowned in dark that I can't feel any of the sadness or despair or any of the rest because they're so omnipresent that they're starting to lose context.
I don't know what the plan for this story is, but it's my sincere hope you give this story a little variance in tone, soon.
3980062
Dude, you can shut up, this is a very dark story, not all story's must have light in them. You cannot just tell him to make a massive change to the story that he made 20 chapters to. It's a very dark story, if you do not like it, then why do you must continue to read this? Your just like all of the other haters, they read story's just to change them and make it different. You can go die now.
3984749 1) I was offering suggestions, not orders. Most authors enjoy feedback, and they are free to listen to, discard, ignore, or accept critiques and suggestions as they wish.
2) I love dark stories. Nearly all of my most favorite stories on this site are dark, some of them extremely so (and one in particular has perfected the art of ripping out your heart and stomping it flat in the process of being an amazingly good story). The thing is that not all stories are perfect, but all the best ones, of any genre, include a variance in tone of some kind - so as to heighten the impact of the story's focus. I offer suggestions because I'd love to see the darkness of this story be even more impactful, not less.
3) You are incredibly rude, and a bad example of humanity and a horrible example of a member of this fandom. Don't ever tell someone to "go die now". I offer you congratulations: You are the first member of this fandom I've chosen to block, and you did it with a single response. Bravo.
3984749 I'll have to agree with 3985124. He/she simply offered an opinion as well as some advice. And as Serifina pointed out, it was merely a suggestion and an expression of hope that I would change things up a bit. It wasn't a demand.
I can handle - and appreciate - critique. I've dealt with much the same complaints in the previous chapter, which is why I didn't immediately feel like answering this one, but I certainly won't hold it against anyone that they didn't read through the entire comment section before posting an opinion.
I appreciate your support, Kingsbury; while critique is important to improving my skills, written comments of praise and appreciation are just as important to my motivation. I thank you, but also hope that you'll express your appreciation less aggressively in the future.
3985205 Thank you. And you're right, I haven't read through all the comments - I only discovered this story with the previous chapter.
3987120 Nobody likes the diamond dogs. Nobody likes Lucre. Obvious allies right there.
But what I do not get is why she has to just say that. Even though what you said was true, she was attempting to change a great story into a... Pice of shit.
3987607 Actually, 3980062 makes a very good point. There is a difference between how dark a story is, and for how long a story is dark. It is a difference I myself am aware of now, but not when I was creating the story line for Succession.
Serafina doesn't criticize the story for being too dark. That's something that's pretty much up to the author as long as it doesn't clash with the story itself. (Focusing too much on gore or other dark material can quickly detract from the story, for example)
Serafina criticizes for how long the story has been dark. Here, the name of the genre itself offers an adequate analogy: Darkness is scary for most people. It's full of the unknown and when faced with it on your own, can easily make you feel vulnerable. However, eventually, your eyes adjust. The unknown becomes known and you no longer feel vulnerable.
In the same way, too much dark story-wise desensitizes the reader to what's happening in the story. At this point, I think you'll agree that the only "dark" thing I could do to garner a significant emotional response in the majority of my readers would be killing off a main character or one of the more beloved background ponies. That's not an ideal situation.
Light makes the shadows seem darker. An example within popular media would be Attack on Titan. Awesome show, super dark, pretty gory. My favorite arc of that anime is the Battle for Trost District. It is a near perfect display of what grimdark should be. The preceding arc has been all about watching the main and side characters develop and hone their skills at slaying Titans. They go through rigorous training for who knows how many months or years, but they finally graduate.
What follows then is the Trost arc, where all these people find out they were horribly unprepared for facing Titans. Everyone is absolutely slaughtered, people you've come to know and love are bitten in half before your eyes, and it's so brutal and perfectly executed that I can do nothing but smile and nod in satisfaction, feeling exceptionally twisted as I do so.
Light can go a far way in a dark fic. Succession has been dark for a while now, longer than I had intended due to many of the arcs dragging out, and it is becoming a problem. If it's to any consolation, though, I cannot accommodate Serafina's wishes within the immediate future. As you said yourself, making such a change after having written 20 chapters would be quite jarring and not currently within the logical constraints of the story.
3987198 Actually, you are mostly correct. In this instance, the moon IS a stand-in for the sun (at least mostly) because it was enchanted by Luna, if you recall.
1) Temperature IS dropping rapidly. In case you don't remember, Canterlot is completely frozen over and It's only the beginning of autumn.
2) The farmponies are only barely keeping things under control: their crops are much less productive, and what little they can grow is thanks only to the artificial solites and the enchanted moon.
3) Hmm, not sure about this one. It's not explained in the story, but my guess is that Flim & Flam are selling them to other nations. We've only seen a little unrest (the potential secession of Coltdoba.) Then again, perhaps other countries are desperately trying to prevent their citizens from panicking, which could be a larger issue. (?)
So, long story short, you're mostly correct: 1 & 2 are in the story, as well as having an enchanted moon to help. Eventually, though, Twi's probably going to replace the sun.
3990420
1. I've only read up to the 2nd chapter, but if it was mentioned that temperatures have dropped then I need to reread to see what I missed. If it's hinted/mentioned in later chapters, I'll get to it eventually.
2-3. I guess that'll be mentioned later on, and my guess from Applejack's musings.
Replace the sun? I guess I have some reading to do. Thanks for the reply.
3992358
I understand that the story is more into the emotions, I kind of got that vibe when looking through the comments.
My previous comment was my thoughts when I just completed the 2nd chapter. The information of the sun disappearing and no explanation of the fallout jarred me enough that I had to comment on it.
3992490 Oh ok.
sorry for spoilers.
Best story I have read in a loooooooong time!
The was exactly the thing that I wanted to hear, even though there is No darkness without the light, I just don't want it to change...
More awesome chapters!
Loving the psychological side of this, I look forwards to the next chapter.
Please be quick!
4004858 Just because it hasn't appeared in the fic does not stop me from shamelessly speculating like a 1920's stockbroker.
Also, I'm glad it's not cannon, because then it would launching large balls of metal in my direction, and my boss would not be happy if we had windows in the office.
Oh i can't waite to read the rest.
You know what's sad. They'd most likely have their bucking sun back by now if they had frigging left Twilight alone in Ponyville.
4067882
But... But I have chapters! That's what they're for!
TwilightxArtemis? I'm not planning on it. You're right in sensing some nonplatonic love between them, but it's not really reciprocal. Twilight is too unstable for a relationship right now, and when she stops being that, she'll be way out of Arty's league. I might have a chapter where she confesses her true feelings to Twi, but I don't see it working out. But then again, I never saw Artemis being an important character before writing these most recent chapters, so who knows?
4069794 I've been thinking about it for a while now, and you've got a really good point. Even if the relationship is fairly unbalanced and generally messed up, it'd still be a rock for Twilight and it is probably the best way to counteract all this depressing stuff the story has been mired in lately.
Artemis isn't even on my kill list, and I do believe I see an opening for her in chapter 21-22. I'll give it a try. Thanks a whole bunch for the idea!
You S. O. B I read this hole function thing agent last night because I have wanted two months for the next chapter and then I had dreams why is this so good yet takes so long to make
>>>The alicorn was standing over her as soon as she hit the ground, his glowing, amber eyes boring into hers. “Disturb any of these symbols, or allow anyone to so much as touch them, and I will extinguish all life in this world.”>>>
My response to this OC alicorn asshat, "Uhm, dumbass, all life in the world is gonna die anyway because everything's going to drop to near absolute zero in a few more weeks. On the other hoof, I now see that you really need this sites because you've now given me ample evidence of their critical importance to your 'Muwah ha ha'-level plans. You are about the most idiotic OP entity I've ever seen, for all your condescending arrogance and pseudointellectualism."
You see, those who pretend to be intelligent get their asses wiped when they actually face someone with actual intelligence.
>>>“But what do we do now? Two unicorns, driven to the brink of insanity by an unstoppable monster… What can we do?”>>>
Simple! Just find another OP alicorn who isn't an asshole!
Oh wait... all OC alicorns are evil assholes. My bad!