In the shadow of the Sun Empress Celestia, the dreamy orphan Twilight discovers her terrifying heritage and dark secrets that could threaten the fate of the world.
In the narrow alleys of Canterlot, Twilight, a dreamy orphan, grows up hidden in the shadows of the mighty Sun Empress Celestia. Through a series of surprising events, Twilight suddenly finds herself in the role of Celestia's personal apprentice. However, with this new position also come strange dreams that haunt her at night, and the monarch's behavior towards her becomes increasingly enigmatic and atypical.
Twilight's life takes a dramatic turn when she looks behind Celestia's carefully maintained facade. While rummaging through forbidden archives, she discovers censored documents that not only reveal the truth about her past but also Celestia's secret plans for the fate of the world. Caught between loyalty to Celestia and the urge to find her own identity, Twilight must decide how far she is willing to go to uncover the truth and avert the impending doom.
Every lover of a strong and clever Twilight will get their money's worth here. There are some very dark, but also very sweet scenes.
Warm blood met cold marble. Twilight lay defeated, her fragile form sprawled upon the frigid marble floor. Iron chains, heavy and unyielding, bound her emaciated body while a deep wound seeped blood, staining the purity of the marble beneath her. Her once-vibrant eyes now held a vacant, lifeless echo of despair. Standing before her was the monarch, an imposing figure radiating authority, observing the broken figure below.
In the silence, a faint, empty whisper escaped Twilight's lips. “Oh, hello,” she murmured, her voice a mere echo of its former strength. “You know, I imagined this moment differently. When I imagined this moment, you weren’t there.” A weak chuckle followed.
“But here you are, even though I imagined this moment differently.” Her chuckle wavered as she added, “Although, I think you’re a hallucination...” Twilight stopped her sentence and paused briefly. Then, because she considered her remark impolite, she added, “I’m sorry. I did not mean to be so direct. But you see, it’s unlikely that you’re the real monarch. If you were, I’d be dead already. Please understand,” Twilight’s voice cracked, a trickle of blood escaping her lips, “the shadow of death looms over me.” As an illustration, she moved a leg and smeared some of the blood she lay in. Her voice was a mere breath. “It’s not unusual for people like me who are dying to have hallucinatory experiences.”
“My dear Twilight, you're gravely mistaken; indeed, it is I,” the monarch's voice a blend of warmth and chilling resolve. She lowered a hoof to stroke Twilight’s cheek in a caring gesture to prove her point. The monarch’s glowing eyes looked into Twilight’s lifeless ones for a moment before she withdrew her hoof. “Why did it come to this?” The monarch paused as if weighing her following words carefully. "I too envisioned this moment differently… I actually hoped it would never come to this." The monarch continued talking, but Twilight didn’t understand the words.
Struggling to focus, Twilight mustered enough strength to speak. “Sorry, can you repeat that? I couldn’t hear what you said,” Twilight smiled at the hallucination. She wanted to understand what she was saying. Who wouldn’t want to listen to her? Her voice was beautiful. "But if you stand before me, not as a wraith of my imaginings, then... it means my time has come, doesn't it?" her words trembled with a touch of sorrow, a whisper trailing into the quiet air.
"I wish things had gone differently. You and I had to make a lot of decisions and some of them led us down the wrong path. I regret a lot of things... I regret having failed you,” she paused and considered her next words very carefully, before she added, "This is the end of one story, perhaps, but not the end of all. Your spirit, indomitable even now, speaks of legacies not yet fully realized," she said cryptically.
Twilight's lips curved into a faint, resigned smile. "Legacies... a comforting notion when faced with the abyss. I understand I’ve let you down. The how eludes me."
…
The monarch looked silently at Twilight. A few emotions flitted through her eyes as if she were debating with herself.
…
"Twilight, what actually happens in a chess game when the pieces refuse to obey the player?" The monarch asked the question with a calmness that seemed almost eerie, a calmness that carried the weight of centuries of reign. She smiled gently. Behind her eyes trembled an ocean of unspoken words and hidden emotions, but her mask was otherwise perfect. To the untrained observer, she must have seemed relaxed.
Twilight's laughter broke through the silence, a faint yet defiant sound. "That's a strange question." Her voice was weak, but her mind flashed in that moment of challenge. The chains that held her clinked softly, a sign of her indefatigable spirit. "If the pieces refuse to follow, then... then the player faces a conundrum, does he not? The player loses control of the game and cannot play anymore." She turned to the monarch, searching her eyes for an answer, for a sign of understanding or perhaps even remorse.
The monarch held her gaze, and for a fleeting moment, it seemed as if the walls she had built around herself were beginning to crumble. "Twilight, you don't get it. It's not about what the player does when the pieces don't hear. It's about what the pieces do without the player's guidance. How they decide... how they proceed."
...
...
Twilight’s gaze started to waver, her eyes losing focus as if struggling against a heavy mist settling over her mind with naive innocence. “It’s icy in here,” she said, her words tinged with childlike vulnerability. “I get sick when it’s cold,” she added, her voice quivering, a sob escaping her lips as if she were on the verge of tears. Her voice wavered as her distress spilled over. “I don’t want to get sick, but... It’s cold. And I’ll get sick...” Tears gathered under her eyes and dripped onto the floor. “I don’t want to get sick. I want to do something else. Like before.” She continued to cry.
“You will endure, Twilight. You’re stronger than this.” Concern about Twilight’s change in behavior crept into her voice. “You will be fine. “
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“I’m having a panic attack again, aren’t I?”
“I believe so.”
“That’s okay. Now that I know I have a panic attack, I also know... also that... that I’m venting. My thoughts aren’t a rational analysis of my current situation. My thoughts result from a... d-dis-prop-p-proportional defense reaction to stress.” Twilight recited as if she had memorized it. “It’s hard to think clearly when you’re dying… Can you tell me what it’s like to be dead? But of course, you wouldn’t know because you’re not dead...not dead.” Twilight giggled at her syllogism. She stared blankly at the ceiling for a while, opening her mouth a few times and then closing it again. “Oh, I’m having trouble speaking. I think I’m talking unclearly. Can you understand me?”
“I understand what you’re saying. In fact, you just shouted.” The monarch tried to refocus her attention. “Now tell me, Twilight, what happens when a chess player can no longer play because the pieces have stopped listening to her?” The monarch came back to her question.
…
…
“The game continues, even if the player can no longer play... The chess pieces must now make decisions for themselves... “Her last words were so quiet they were almost inaudible, each word a struggle, as if speaking through a veil of darkness that threatened to consume her.
For a moment, silence hung heavy between them, a testament to the unspoken sorrow that enveloped both their hearts.
...
...
With the last of her strength ebbing away, Twilight’s voice barely rose above a whisper: „Can I go to sleep now? I’m so tired, the shadows grow long and it’s like my head is stuffed with clouds.”
“Yes, Twilight, you can go to sleep now.”
“Thank you... I’m glad you were here.” In her last moment, she felt a moment of relief.
Celestia stood there for a while, watching her before quietly leaving. A tear escaped her eye and fell silently onto the ground.
The still young rays of a rising sun streamed through an open window on the upper floor of a relatively small ancient building, casting a harsh yellowish light on the silhouette of a pony lying awkwardly in a nest of blankets and other fabrics. Despite the bright sunlight, Twilight dreamily peered out from her perch of colorful material to look out the window. You could hear the chirping of some birds nesting on the roofs of the surrounding houses. A long, soft yawn filled the room as Twilight stretched her limbs in all directions.
Once again, she stayed up late into the night, reading books on various subjects and taking notes in bed. The evidence for this was scattered all over the room. Half-written scrolls and broken quills lay scattered around her figure, tangled on the floor and untidily in her bed. Numerous inkblots stained her crumpled sheets and told her she had fallen asleep again while writing. The inkblots meant she would have to sneak into the laundry room again to scrub them out of the fabric.
"Great," she murmured, annoyed, to no one in particular.
Well, that was simply the price of studying late into the night. But, spoken in her defense, she had no other choice but to stay up late, at least if she wanted the opportunity to read any books without getting in trouble.
It wasn't that reading was forbidden in general, but it would raise the question of where she got all the books. As a child from an orphanage in the city's poor district, even the ability to read was unusual. If someone caught her holding a book in her hoofs, even more, a new and well-cared-for one, she would have to explain how she could put her hooves on it and where it came from. If the truth came out about how she snuck over the stone wall in the fourth adjacent district to steal from the old closed library there, her days of late-night reading would be over very quickly. It's actually a miracle that Twilight discovered her passion for reading and learning at all. People who are so poor only sometimes have the opportunity to look into a book. Here they try to prepare the foals for more "practical" work and regard books as a pure luxury.
She shook her sleepy head awake and slowly unraveled herself from the self-made nest of old rags and blankets she seemed to have made provisionally in her sleep. She was careful about this in an ongoing attempt to remain quiet and not wake anyone in the house, but as she stretched extensively and looked out the window at the sky, a sudden sense of panic spread through her mind. If she remembered the date correctly and the sun was already this high in the sky, that could mean only one thing—oh no. She had actually overslept.
Without another thought to remain as quiet and unnoticed as possible, as she had tried to do earlier, she raced through her admittedly small and sporadically furnished room, tucking all sorts of empty scrolls and books hidden under the bed into a small canvas bag. Hopefully, no one at the orphanage would dare try to stop her and look in there.
Next, she reached onto the small wooden stool beside the bed and grabbed her carefully folded clothes, which she had put there the day before. A pair of tight black pants, made of a material unknown to her, and a lavender shirt, apparently made of linen. In a ridiculous pose, she hastily pulled the pants over her hind legs, the loose-fitting shirt over her Unkempt hair, and finally, over her up-to-now naked body. It was not unusual to walk around naked. Instead, the opposite was true. However, it had become customary to dress accordingly on special occasions to clarify that it was not commonplace.
Twilight always felt like someone else when she put on her clothes. Like someone who didn't belong in a place like this orphanage. Like she was someone important. A thought that others would probably smile at best and scold at worst. Reality always caught up with Twilight in the end. She was no one special. These few rags were nothing more than a mask. A lie you put on to make others feel less bad for you in their presence.
Her clothes were among the End Twi's most valuable possessions, at least in pure monetary value. Nobles always see this as an excellent opportunity to polish their image thoroughly and donate their no longer usable possessions to poor orphanages in the region. As it happens, every noble in the kingdom thinks their old, worn-out clothes would make a perfect donation.
And so it came to pass that every orphan in the orphanage, and probably in every other similar institution, was furnished with more or less fine textiles. Those nobles had no books or anything like that to give away was, of course, obvious. Who needs something like education?
As soon as Twilight was ready and had gathered all her necessary utensils, she vigorously tugged open the decayed wooden door of her room. The faint morning light streaming through the narrow windows of the upstairs hallway cast long shadows in her path as she stormed down the monotonous corridor. Each of her steps made the dusty floor creak as she reached the stairs in record time.
When she ran down the steps, skipping every other one in an ongoing attempt to move faster, she nearly toppled over due to her admittedly small stature. From a distance, the scene must have looked ridiculous. With each of her jumps, the old wood of the stairs protested with an almost unbelievably loud creaking, as if the steps wanted to draw extra attention to their dilapidated state.
Swirls of dust danced in the rays of light that crept in through the broken windows as Twilight continued her way down.
The warm morning light that poured in through the large gates at the end of the hallway drew bright paths across the cool stone floor, making the otherwise plain walls shine in an unusual glow for the facility.
Unfortunately, once on the first floor, she didn't get twenty feet before a rough and familiar hoof grabbed her by the shoulder and slowed her down. "Wow, what's the hurry today? Otherwise, at least in the morning, we'll be spared from you," an arrogant voice next to her mocked.
Twilight's muscles tensed instinctively, and she whirled around to face the source of the mocking voice, only to meet the cheeky grin of Silver Gleam. He was towering over her, his broad shoulders blocking the light. He was three years older and at least a head taller than her. The difference in stature was only emphasized by the fact that he was solidly built.
"Dressed to impress, aren't we? It looks as though you have something important going on," he said, stepping closer to her with a confidence that filled the space around them. His unwavering grin never left his face.
She took a hesitant step back, deliberately increasing the distance between them, and put on a tentative brave grin, but the subtle quiver in her gaze pierced through the facade. "Oh, nothing really important," she stammered, barely hiding her urge to flee. "I just wanted to take a walk. I'm already leaving," she added, her voice trailing off, "and won't bother you further." She spun around, her hooves barely touching the ground, as she attempted to exit the foyer as quickly as possible and resume her hurried sprint through the city to her destination. Yet, before Twilight could start running, she was grabbed roughly by the same hoof on her shoulder, pulling her back with force. Her heart sank as the realization hit her; there was no easy escape from this confrontation.
Hold on a minute," he started. "Believe me, nothing would make me happier than for you to go away for a while." he let his words hang in the air as if it was a complete statement. "But come on, you're not seriously going to tell me you got all dressed up just for a little walk," his grin widened even more. "Besides, don't think I didn't notice the bag you're clutching so tightly. So, what are you hiding?" he teased, his voice dripping with mock concern.
Twilight felt a knot form in her stomach, her grip on the bag tightening reflexively. She fought to keep her expression neutral, aware that any sign of weakness would only encourage him.
"I... uh..." Twilight stammered. Her voice barely escaped her throat. Her breath hitched, and her heart hammered incessantly in her chest, echoing like thunder in her ears. She knew what he was up to. Silver didn't like her. That was no secret. He was always looking for a way to make her day difficult. Truth be told, Twilight didn't care what he or anyone else thought of her. She had long ago dismissed the significance of others' opinions, focusing on the worlds hidden within her treasured books, far from the scornful glances and whispered judgments.
In the eyes of the others, she was already written off anyway. She was an anomaly. This one dissonant note that didn't fit in with the rest of the harmonic symphony. The freak. A label forced upon her by those who couldn't or wouldn't look past her quirks. But who needs the recognition of others? They only distracted from the essentials anyway.
However, Silver Gleam's mockery cut deeper and proved far more invasive. He had taken every opportunity to make her six years in the orphanage as unbearable as possible. In one instance, Twilight ran through the echoing corridors, her heart pounding as Silver's menacing hoofsteps caught up with her. The chase ended at the old laundry room, where he mercilessly plunged her into a vat of icy, soapy water, holding her down until her frantic struggles ceased.
On another grim occasion, Silver confined her to a suffocating closet, its air thick with mustiness, leaving her imprisoned for the whole night. Or the other time, he had chased her onto the orphanage's roof, where he threatened to push her off. Silver probably would have done it too, but it had occurred to even a brute like Silver that he wouldn't get away with it unnoticed and had left it at, scaring Twilight with the prospect of the fall. He was never punished for his numerous misdeeds.
The house's matron was seldom seen and didn't care much for her protégés anyway, so Silver had been given many opportunities to bully Twilight in any way he could. But probably the cruelest thing he had ever done to her occurred a few months ago on her sixth birthday.
Twilight looked up at Silver. The disgustingly twisted grin on his face resembled a caricature. She could feel the bile rising slowly within her. His gaze and the proud manner in which he towered over her stirred up some painful memories—memories she had tried to bury deep in her thoughts and forget.
As she closed her eyes, the harsh reality of the orphanage's foyer faded, replaced with the scene from a small wooden chamber in which Twilight was hiding.
