Prologue: A Thief in the Shadows
The faint light of the stars shine down on the land of Mystica from the dark, jewel encrusted night sky. Throughout this land people are taking to their beds and entering the world of dreams. This they do, knowing that the kind Princess of the night is watching over them with the soft, gentle light of her silver stars.
However, the lunar Princess is unable to properly watch over her sleeping subjects on this night. For the moon that is her eye during the night is in the darkest phase of its lunar cycle. The shadow cast upon the moon obscures her vision of her peaceful kingdom below. Few know this fact, though some that do use it to their advantage.
In the orchards of Sweet Apple Acres one such person darts about the trees. Quickly, but quietly, making his way through the trees to a monastery sitting atop a hill. He stopped at the edge of the orchard to examine the stone building.
The building itself wasn’t very large, since it was only intended to house the local branch of the Apple family. There wasn’t any sort of magical or divine protection surrounding it, instead there was simply a large wooden door as the entrance. But upon the door, difficult to make out on this moonless night, was the emblem of the fertility goddess the family worships, Eponi.
The figure felt a bit of disappointment with how little security there was to guard the place. This isn’t the first monastery he’s broken into, and the ones before had much better security than this one. Although, they didn’t have anything as valuable as the Element of Honesty that was located inside this one.
That was when realization struck him like a ton of bricks. The current Avatar of the element guarded it. She had helped defeat and even reform the Avatar of Chaos, if the stories were to be believed. If she is half as strong as the rumors claim, then any other security would just be redundant. This realization rekindled his excitement, yet a bit of disappointment remained.
Creeping out of the orchard, the figure makes his way to the large wooden door that is between him and access to the monastery. He examines the door to make sure that there are no surprises that the family might have placed on the door to keep out people like him. After a thorough search he finds nothing except for the basic ward used by practitioners of divine magics.
The figure places his gloved hand on in the center of Eponi’s emblem, a horse rearing up inside a ring of fire, and recites the prayer necessary to to release the lock. Immediately after finishing the prayer, the lock disengages with a satisfying click. The large door creaks slightly from age as he pushes it open.
The door closes behind him as he enters the house, which is rather typical of doors locked by divine magic, so it was more irritating to him than surprising. Looking around, the place seemed rather plain. There is furniture and a few decorations, but they few and quite simple in design. And there is nothing that didn’t have a purpose, pictures, chairs, couch, table, etc.
He does notice, however, that there is a staircase leading to a second floor. He follows them up to a hallway. The hall comes to a dead end, but there are four doors branching off from the hall. Engraved upon three of the doors is the emblem of the person whose room it is. One with three apples, one with a large green apple, and one with a pie.
The figure opens the the door with the emblem depicting three apples. The room he enters is just as plain as the rest of the monastery. There are a couple nightstands with pictures on top on either side of an occupied bed. On the wall closest to the bed is a window with a large great sword leaning right next to it, and opposite that is a wardrobe. On the ground next to the wardrobe lies a sleeping dog.
Let sleeping dogs lie. The figure thinks to himself. Now, I have a few minutes for this before I need to get out of here, prize or no. Where would she hide the Element of Honesty to keep it out of the hands of the Avatar of Chaos? It would need to be close by, and hiding it out in the orchard is risking it being picked up by by a stray animal. The wardrobe and nightstands are too obvious a hiding spot for something so valuable. The only other places I can think of are under her bed, under her mattress, and under her pillow. None of which sound particularly comforting.
Making a snap decision the thief decides that going from the ground up would be a good course of action. So he inches up to the bed before getting down on his hands and knees to look under her bed. While he doesn’t see the Element of Honesty, he does see a small, ornate wooden box.
His curiosity getting the better of him, he reaches under the bed and pulls out the box, being careful not to make any noise. Carefully standing up, he examines the wooden box to notice that it is a complex puzzle box. Wondering as to what could be inside he begins to work on solving the mystery as to what is contained within.
Not wasting any time, he hurriedly fiddles with the box. It’s not long before has has completed the box’s puzzle. And, upon doing so, the box makes a slight click. Not noticing, he opens the top of the box to see that inside is the Element of Honesty. Almost reverently, he removes the ancient artifact from the box.
As he begins to admire his prize a growling sound comes from the doorway. Whirling around he sees that the dog has awoken and his blocking the door. And she does not look happy.
“Hmm? What is it Winona?” asks the room’s other resident as she groggily rises out of bed to see what got her dog so upset. The moment she sets her eyes on the intruder she snaps wide awake and grabs her sword. “Who are ya and what do ya want?” She asks as she sizes him up.
The intruder is a few inches shorter than her, is rather skinny, and carries himself with a haughty arrogance. He has a cowl covering the lower half of his face, and the hood of a black cloak covering his head. The only bit that’s exposed is bits of royal blue hair sticking out from underneath the hood and his lavender eyes. The cloak is held in place by a silver chain and has violet feathers on the shoulders, something that’s typical in sky-born wardrobe. He wears a purple tunic with the ends of the sleeves tucked into black leather gloves. The hem of the shirt is tucked into his tan pants which are held up by a leather belt with a silver belt buckle. He wears leather boots and has two pouches strapped to his belt.
As she sized him up, he did the same to her. She has long blonde hair that was a bit messy. She is wearing light blue pajamas that seem a little worn, which is something he didn’t really expect. The unhappy look in her baggy, green eyes was copied to the rest of her face. With her sword ready to attack she stood with all the confidence of one that has fought many foes. As to what he can tell, she appears to be in her early 20’s.
The sight brought a little smirk to his face even though it was concealed by the mask. “I was just here to pick up a souvenir, so that I might remember my time spent here in Magiville. I wasn’t expecting to wake up Celestia’s little attack dog, or her attack dog. As for who I am, well, let’s say that bit is unimportant?” he stated, attempting to anger her.
“What did ya call me?” she fumed, irritated by both what he said and the nonchalant way in which he said it. “I’m not Celestia’s attack dog. I just do what I can when I’m needed.”
Slipping a card from his sleeve into the box without her noticing, “Oh come on, Applejack. You’re going to tell me that you didn’t help defeat Nightmare Moon, Discord, the changelings and various other dangerous beasts upon Celestia’s orders? I mean while the rumors of you being a fighter of unmatched skill and strength is complete hogwash, your accomplishments certainly aren’t.” He closes the box on the final word.
“What do you mean complete hogwash? I’ll teach you what a life of honest labor can do if you don’t put back what you took and get out of here.” she fumed, clearly mad at his insult.
Taking note of her angered state, he felt that it was time to make his move. “I’m sure you would to any common thief. However, I am no common thief.”
Immediately after finishing his sentence he tossed the box to Applejack. In response to this sudden action she lets go of the sword and catches it. Briefly she looks down at what she caught before Winona, who ran to attack just after the box got thrown, tackled her to the ground. The two quickly get back up to find the thief to be nowhere in sight.
“Consarn it!” Applejack mutters to herself. “How could he have escaped so quickly? He didn’t even make a sound.”
From behind her comes the noise of the window opening. She turns around to find the thief sitting on the windowsill facing inwards. In his eyes she notices a mischievous glint.
“How did ya do that?” she is clearly caught off guard by his sudden reappearance. “It’s like ya just teleported.”
The Thief let out a small chuckle before responding. “I told you I’m no ordinary thief. And, hopefully, we won’t be meeting again.” He jumps out of the window and runs away as the shadows move to conceal him.
Applejack rushes to the window, but despite the fact that he just left she couldn’t find any sign of him. Letting out an irritated sigh she closes the window before going and sitting on the side of her bed. Finally taking the time to see what he took.
She examines the thing he threw, only to realize that it’s the puzzle box that Celestia had made to contain the Element of Honesty. Beginning to panic she quickly solves the puzzle like she was shown. Upon opening it, however, she only finds a card depicting a silver colored lock being picked by two black feathers.
Knowing just what kind of power the element contained she began to panic. Wondering what he would want it for and why. She picked up the card, desperately trying to find a clue as to where he would go. Sure enough on the back of the card he left a message.
“Be wary.” She says, reading the message out loud. She flips it over a few times to see it there was anything else on the card. Just as she was about to give up, she notices a glint in the bottom corner on the back of the card. Using the light coming from the window, she is barely able to make out what it is “Cherry Petal Potions and Prints.”
She turns around to look out the window the thief escaped from. “I don’t know who ya are, but I know you’re obviously up to something. My friends and I are gonna find out what it is, and we’re gonna stop it.” she states, trying to hold back a yawn.
With that she closes the door to her room and opens the door to her wardrobe. She pushes aside her usual work clothes, for her armor. Applejack slips out her pajamas, and quickly dons slides on her brown, leather pants and undershirt. After which, she puts on her long, scarlet overcoat. Finally, she straps on the bronze plating, and slides on her boots.
Not believing the note the thief left, Applejack was wholeheartedly determined to stop whatever it was he was planning. Not wanting to waste anymore time dilly dallying, she sped from her room, down the stairs, and out the front door. Intent on telling her friends on what had happened.
While at the far edge of the orchard, the shadows enveloping the thief collapse. Letting out a hearty laugh he removes his mask and hood, which reveals him to be about seventeen, eighteen years old with straight, royal blue hair with blue-grey tips, that seems to stick up in some places. He begins to hum a soft melody as he examines the nights spoils.
“Oh, this was too easy. I'm disappointed with the protection the princesses gave this thing. Any two-bit thief could have done this." Dejectedly, the thief mumbled to himself. "And of the six of them, the least guarded had to be the one with the dog. She had to have a pet that could-"
THUNK! His ramblings were cut short by a knife embedding itself in a tree behind him. The thief was wide eyed due to the blade having come too close to his head for comfort.
“Not her.” he whispers.
Seconds later, another knife embedded itself in the tree behind him. However, the thief was nowhere to be seen, having disappeared again into the darkness.