Cards of Legacy

by SwordTune

Lost Legacy

Pick a card.

The seat Twilight sat on was cold. By her count, she had waited two days, hoping to bore the Card Master into letting her go. His games could be beat, Celestia had proven that, but whatever magic he had would work its way into her the same way it had for Celestia.

Princess, please. Even you can't count the hours forever. How long until you start skipping days, or forgetting weeks? The world will not be the same by the time I tire of waiting.

Twilight didn't react. She didn't want to give any sign that the Card Master was getting to her, but the darkness was maddening. The soil at her hooves felt like rough dirt, but it was impossible to tell what it was. Similarly, the walls of what she assumed was the Card Master's tent was shrouded in the same darkness.

Stand and stare all you want, just pick a card.

The Princess's eyes flicked to the center of the darkness. Just one card to pick from. Its edges glowed with magic, shimmering and pulsing like it was trying to call to her. She definitely couldn't avoid the fact that her cutie mark was replicated on the back of the card, while the front shifted its images second to second, never stopping long enough for Twilight to see what would come from the card.

"You're not a cheater, Card Master," she told the Card Master. "One card, with no equipment, that's not your usual game. If this is different, what are the rules?"

Tsk tsk, why spoil the fun Princess?

Twilight scowled at the way the Card Master addressed her. Not only did his voice permeate the darkness, his tone was calm and an intimate, his words feeling their way along her coat. "Don't 'Princess' me, you don't care about that status. I don't think you care about anything but your own games."

You're very wrong. Oh Princess, I wish you'd play. I've never pulled out this game before, even for your beautiful mentor.

"You don't get to say things like that." Twilight immediately became defensive, aiming her horn all across the darkness. "You changed her, altered subtle things that only ponies who truly knew her would recognize. You're sick, ensuring she'd only hurt the ones closest to her."

Pick a card. I promise, you captivate me far more than the radiant sun. You will stay in my game long enough for the fun to begin.

Twilight ground her teeth against each other. The Card Master was infuriatingly relentless, and she knew she'd only be able to handle another day or two before she completely lost all her senses. With the strongest reluctance, Twilight reached out with her horn and brought the card closer with her magic.

The Card Master said nothing, which Twilight instantly recognized to mean there was something more for her to do. It was the same silence Celestia gave her when she was very close to figuring out a spell, even if she didn't know it, and the same silence she gave Spike when he was on the brink of solving the morning's crossword.

She felt like a child or a doll, being played with by a higher power. Twilight glanced at the flashes of images on her card before reading it out loud. "The First Griffon War," read the card. Images slowed to a stand still, molding the scene into a battlefield of pegasi and griffons. She couldn't make out the the landscape, but Twilight knew she would see it in full detail.

In came the howling winds. They flowed through her mane with the coming tide. She smelled the sea breeze, distinctively Manehattan but with none of the bustling ponies and cluttered streets. The shoreline was littered in feathered bodies. Twilight sank into the rough dirt, slowly, until sand covered her hooves entirely. Wet, and soaked, her wings strained her muscles in an attempt to pull herself out.

A stone shot struck the beach and threw her back toward the land. War machines like that had not been used for thousands of years, this she knew for certain. Twilight decided to take to the sky and figure out her surroundings. No sooner did she taste the clouds than she felt another ballista shot plunge through the air. It nearly struck her, missing only by the force of luck.

She pondered calling out to the Card Master, but shut her mouth when she focused her sight on the ships that swelled on the waves toward the shore. Griffon banners, all across the sails, Twilight saw. Ahead of the galleys a small fort stood vigilantly, braving the storm and the wind.

"Why attack by sea?" Twilight asked herself. The card wouldn't lie. She knew the Card Master would find no amusement in simple dishonesty. She looked again, returning to land to avoid the howling shots. Of course, it was the land. The fort, Twilight turned her attention to it, and saw the difficulty the Griffons would have.

Pegasi defended their earth pony brethren to the death, dependent on the food they produced. The skies were as thick as the earth, bounded by storms clouds and claps of thunder, charged by the infinite power of lightning. Twilight understood that the Griffons could attack the skies, but like them, she understood war far better.

Ultimate victory would not be determined by those who could fight and win, but by those who could fight and win, and do it all with little effort. A surprise assault on the coast rendered the Pegasi defenseless. But Twilight knew just a little more than that fact. She had read the legends of the First Griffon War, and all tellings of the story did not end in Equestria's victory.

"If stopping war-hungry griffons is what I have to do, then so be it," she murmured, gliding low across the beach toward the fort that would burn under feathered talons. The gates were sealed by magic, a gift from the Unicorns who ate earth pony bread and drank earth pony cider. The symbols hummed and shook at the presence of an alicorn princess, erupting in power and forcing open the heavy wooden gates.

"Every pony has to evacuate!" Twilight announced. "The griffons will take this fort by nightfall!"

All bodies froze in the encampment, all eyes locked onto the purple messenger. Twilight stared back, anticipating their panic and listing all her methods to control the ponies. She was, after all, a princess of Equestria. One by one, they began to move frantically. Ponies packed their carts with food and filled their saddlebags with ammunition and weapons.

Twilight stepped forward, eager to lead the ponies to safety, even if they were only constructs of the Card Master.

Watch.

The word hit her in the chest, pulling the air out of her just for a moment. It was enough to give Twilight a jolt, but she managed to take the advice and focus on the ponies. They rushed, for sure. They rumbled across the trodden dirt with all things for war. But they unloaded them too. A few pegasi ferried carts from the fort, dragging weapons and ammunition into tunnels underground.

"Didn't you hear what I said?" Twilight cried out. This time, few even glanced her way. It was a spell, she was sure of it, a magic to make her unnoticed by the ponies, because the Card Master didn't want her to ruin his game. But they did react at first, Twilight thought. Why then?

A stallion rushed by, knocking over the princess without another word. More ponies ran by, ether trotting over her or stepping aside.

"Fine," Twilight whispered to herself as she pushed herself off the ground, "I'll find out what's going on by myself."

If it was an evacuation, she assumed the tunnels would be for supplies to the next fortress. She followed them, seeing where they were headed. No records were kept of the events between the major battles of the First Griffon War, but if she had an idea of where they would be, she could figure out a way to help them prepare for the battles she had read about.

"Hey you!" a voice caught her. A stallion's hoof blocked her way to the tunnel entrances before pointing to the top of the fort's walls. "We could use a helping hoof on the wall turrets."

Twilight turned to the weapons facing the coast, mounted along the top of the walls. Slingshots and trebuchets fired repeatedly, slowing the griffon fleet.

"I want to see where they're taking the carts," Twilight told the stallion, fully aware he was nothing more than a pawn for the Card Master.

He laughed. "Every pony wants to see the action. Trust me, the walls are the best spot to see the griffon fleet face pegasi warriors."

Whatever the card she was in had planned, Twilight guessed the whole point was to play along. It was the first card, after all, and she needed to know what she was facing. The stallion led her up to the top of the wall where earth ponies and even some unicorns were firing heavy stones from their own trebuchets.

"Load a rock in and let it loose," the stallion said, directing Twilight to a pile of rocks. He showed her the steps to reload once the stone was fired, and then took a spot at the weapon next to her. "Don't think about aiming, we just have to hold the griffons until the pegasi are ready."

Twilight didn't like the idea of hurling stones at others, but reminded herself with each shot it wasn't real. She wasn't sure if it was her morality or the magic of the card, but each stone that landed on the deck of a ship told her otherwise.

Finally, a horn blasted from inside the fortress, and every pony stopped working. The trebuchets were halted and every pony rushed up to the fortress to see how the pegasi fared.

"What's going on?" Twilight asked the stallions that led her to the top of the walls. "I don't see any pony, and an attack from the sky would just crash against the defenses on the Griffon ships."

The stallion just grinned and pointed at the shore. The attack came. It rose slowly at first, like the tide following the moon. Water reached up and split, and the griffons could not react in time to the spikes. Like flipped ships, the large shields of the pegasi erupted onto the surface of the sea. The soldiers under each shield working in sync. Locking together, the array of shields formed a wall, placing the spikes on their surface in the path of the griffons.

The cracking of wood could be heard even from the fort as dozens of ships met hundreds of shields, and from under those shields rose thousands of pegasi. Their battlecry, as Twilight heard it, rung around the world announcing that Equestria would not fall easily to any force. As the Griffons sank, the pegasi rose, flying up the sides of the galleys and slicing the throats of the griffons as they passed by.

"This isn't right," Twilight mumbled to herself. "Starswirl himself wrote a chapter on this battle, saying how the ponies lost."

"And you believe it, Princess?"

Twilight jumped aside at the Card Master's voice, spoken through the vessel of the stallion. She glanced around at the crowd surrounding her, but every pony at the fort was gone. The only thing that remained was the raging battle along the coast.

"What are you trying to do?" She asked him.

"I'm trying to tell you something about this place, Princess. You should listen harder."

She shook her head, pointing to the battle with a wing. "This never happened. Starswirl himself wrote what Celestia told him about the First Griffon War, and Celestia was around-"

"A thousand years ago, yes. And when she ascended to power, she heard from the elders and learned to lead the three races. Elders who heard stories from their parents, who heard it from their parents, who were once certain that their grandparents were here on this battlefield."

Twilight furrowed her brow, considering the possibility. The war was ancient, even before the earliest written documents, but that didn't mean what she read was incorrect.

"Please, don't be so proud, or worse, naive. Stories change from pony to pony. Do you think this is any different?"

"So how do you know what happened?" Twilight countered. "There's no way you could be so old. I don't even think Discord's that old."

"You're right. In fact, I'm not even as old as Celestia. I died here on this battlefield after the battle was won. A griffon, desperate to find honor and glory, fired the last ballistas on his ship. One shot went wide, and found me while I stood by my trebuchet."

It was a sad story, to have died for no reason, but it didn't explain anything to Twilight. "What does that have to do with cards or games?"

"That is the Card Master's business. I'm trapped here in my story, watching the end play out over and over."

The stallion turned away from Twilight and faced the coast. His eyes locked on to a ship in the distance. A single griffon soldier, surrounded by pegasi troops, slashed his claw across a row of ballistas, damaging the mechanisms. One shot went wide, and soared through the air.

"You don't have to let it be that way," Twilight said, moving to pushed the stallion aside. She took a step but moved no further, frozen by the will of the card alone, and tumbled backwards as the heavy stone eliminated the section of the wall.

That looked painful.

Twilight rolled off the floor, this time sure of the Card Master's presence, and faced the direction of the voice. She was back in the endless darkness, and felt the dirt below her hooves slip away and leave behind a cold, blank platform. In front of her was the Card Master, clad in a hooded robe and standing calmly in place.

I'm afraid that card can no longer entertain you and I, Princess.

"Who was that?" she asked. "He was speaking with your voice, but he acted apart from you."

The dead do not speak, even you should understand this. Instead, I must lend them my voice.

Twilight was taken aback by the subtle tone the Card Master had. Even she should understand? She understood perfectly well, and as a Princess of Equestria, she had a responsibility to her people. Why wouldn't she understand?

"What are you talking about?" she hissed at him. "I've never acted as if life does matter, or as if death isn't a reality."

But have you actually been through it? Have you seen death with your own eyes?

Twilight hesitated this time to retort.

Tell me, Princess, when was the last time you felt death? A friend? Family?

A hoof tugged at Twilight's right wing. "It's my mommy miss," squeaked a little voice. She whirled around with a jolt, staring at the little figure in front of her. A small unicorn, even younger than Sweetie Belle, looked up at her with desperate eyes.

"Can you help? It's what you do as our new Princess, right?"

Twilight wasn't sure how to respond. Her first reaction was to follow and see what the problem was, and figure out how to solve it. But if everything was going to be like the last card, then the events were set, no matter what she tried.

"What are you trying to do Card Master?" Twilight turned around and began drawing power to her horn, aiming it at the Card Master. At his range, she couldn't have missed, and she didn't. The bolt of magic struck the tree stump in the very center and shattered it, sending splinters across the edge of the forest.

The filly shrieked and jumped back, tripping on the roots of a tree.

"I'm so sorry!" Twilight said, catching the filly with magic before she hit her head on the ground. "Are you okay?"

The little unicorn just stared at her with wide eyes, and then at crater that once held a tree stump. "Luna, why did you destroy that stump?"

Twilight furrowed her brow. "Luna's the Princess of the Night, my name is-"

Twilight noticed her magic around the filly. Her magic aura glowed a different color. She placed the unicorn back on the ground and quickly cast a mirror image spell on herself.

Before them, a faintly glowing apparition appeared and formed into the mirror image of Twilight. Though it remained somewhat translucent, it was clearly not what Twilight wanted to see.

The filly stepped away slowly. "Are you alright Princess Luna?" She was right. The image was not Twilight's body, but Luna's instead. It was a younger form too, she noticed, with her size and mane not yet at their peak of power. Luna's mane sat still on her head, light blue and devoid of magic power.

"I'm fine," Twilight sighed, looking at the filly. Another pony from the past, she presumed. The very far past. "Didn't you say something about your mother? I'd like to see her."

The filly returned to her normal attitude and gestured down a road, leading to a small cottage at the top of the hill. "It's the nightmares. My mommy can't sleep."

Twilight felt uneasy doing Luna's work, even in a card's setting, but she followed the unicorn back to her family anyways. She didn't trust any of what the Card Master was showing her, but as far as she knew there was no other way. Even as she walked, Twilight could feel her own actions merge with Luna's, and though every action had a thought behind it, it seemed as if her free will was only an illusion within the card. Willing or not, she'd play to its rules.

They arrived at the cottage in a few minutes, and Twilight immediately got to work. The mother was hysterical, screaming in some kind of night terror and throwing pots and vases onto the floor.

"Get out! Get out!" she shrieked, frantically searching her home for more objects. "Get away from me!"

Twilight lifted her horn and grappled the unicorn mother with magic, suspending her in a field of magic to prevent her from causing further damage. "Does this happen often?" she asked the filly.

"It started just a few days ago, after daddy died," she said, then pointed to a scorpion tail mounted on the wall. "Some bounty hunters killed the manticore, but they couldn't save my dad."

It must be trauma, Twilight thought to herself. She knew what she needed to do, but the question was how. She'd only seen Luna join dreams once, when she had to chase down the Tantabus, and she couldn't figure out how the spell was cast. Furthermore, if she could even get inside the mother's head, how would she navigate the nightmare to fix it?

"Do you have anything to sedate her?" Twilight asked. "I need her to sleep."

The little filly nodded and scurried into the kitchen, kicking around the shattered clay and glass from her mother's night terrors. She returned seconds later with a jar of dried herbs from from one of the cabinets, miraculously untouched. "When I'm too scared of the dark to sleep, mommy mixes this with a cup of water so I can sleep better."

Twilight took the jar and moved into the kitchen, still focusing on holding the mother still in the other room. She brewed a strong mixture of the herbs, mostly with magic as the stove and oven were broken by a few bashes from an iron pan. Likely the mother's doing, Twilight assumed.

Once the tea was finished and the scent of the herbs filled the kitchen, she followed the filly to the mother's bedroom and prepared the bed. She set the mother down, swaddling her with two layers of blankets so that she could barely move, and slowly drizzled the tea into the mother's mouth.

"Here I go," Twilight muttered, tapping into her magic. Likely by the will of the card, she was able to create the dream spell to walk in the dream of the mother, though there was little to see.

The long corridor of locked doors was dimly lit, but with a little magic light, Twilight could just about read out the labels on each door. "Spiders," one read, while another had "Drowning" scribbled on it. They were the mother's fears. Twilight grappled with the first door, the fear of spiders, and broke the lock with relative ease.

Inside was pretty much what she expected, though it still shocked her nonetheless. Thousands of spiders, of varying species no less, invaded the room. Twilight could barely make out what was under the living layer, but saw the panicking figure at the center of the room just fine. The mother was less hysterical, but still very afraid. Her beams of magic kept the spiders at bay, but she was clearly exhausted from the strain.

Twilight herself was not overly fond of spiders, but luckily, her friend Fluttershy had gotten her over her qualms with the creatures. Confident she knew what to do, Twilight stepped into the room. First, there was a soft rumble and dozens of spiders moved in unison to crawl up her leg, but her limited reaction quickly drove off the spiders, even pushing them back to clear a path to the mother.

"I'm here to help you," she told the mother, reaching out with a hoof. "Come with me, and let me guide you."

"I can't, they're everywhere," the mother said, continuing shoot rays of magic around herself.

Twilight decided she couldn't work with her if she was so distracted by the spiders. She formed a shield around them pushing the swarm to the edges of the room, though not completely removing them. "Have you always been this afraid of spiders?"

She shook her head. "My husband, we were childhood friends even before our teenage years. He'd always drive away the really big spider, the kind that sometimes wandered from the forests. I've gotten used to having him around, and now, with him gone..."

"The fear comes back, doesn't it?" Twilight asked. The mother nodded.

Reaching out with magic, she got a feel of the dream's condition. Twilight touched the fear as is it was a physical form, but it was weak. There were insecurities for sure, but web around the mother's dream and mind was thin.

"Follow me," she told the mother. "This is your dream, you have control over it. You believe you can't handle your fears, but your husband only filled a place in your life you could fill yourself."

"Princess Luna, I'm not strong like you," the mother replied, "There's just too many things that I'm afraid off. I don't think I can be brave."

"You don't have a choice now," Twilight persisted. "Your daughter lost her father, and she needs you now, more than ever. Just because you have fears doesn't mean you can't be brave enough to face them. Bravery isn't about being fearless, it's about having fears but facing the challenge anyway. Can't you do that, even if it's just for your daughter?"

The mother paused, considering what her little one must be going through. Losing a father was bad enough, having a mother taken by fear was something she couldn't let her daughter live through. "Yes," she finally said. "I'll follow you. I'll let you help me."

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"Steady yourself, it can smell your fear." Twilight cautioned the mother, guiding her steps slowly towards the manticore. It was one of the strongest fears, and for good reason. Regardless, she had to confront the source of her fears, and Twilight knew exactly how.

She reached out with her mind, touching the mother with her magic. Manticores were deadly creatures, but not mindless killers. Twilight once saw them as a threat, and would have reacted to one as such if it weren't for her friend's display of kindness and charm. She showed the mother this, and fed the kindness into her heart.

"Don't try it Princess Luna," the mother warned. "After what it's done to my family, if I can't fear the beast I'll surely hate it."

The memory replayed, over and over like a broken recording. Trapped in its nest, surrounded by mountain walls, neither the manticore nor her husband had anywhere to go.

"Animals have fears too," Twilight told her, "no matter how big they are, they still act on fear, just as your husband did."

Her husband did act on fear, launching stones with magic the moment he caught sight of the manticore near him. His eyes saw only gnawing fangs that shredded flesh, punctured veins, and devoured children. The beast felt the sting of the rocks, weapons used by a unicorn to attack its lair. The scent was minute, unknown even to some of its species, but this manticore knew the scent well.

The memory replayed, over and over with a bloody fear. A family of manticores, slaughtered by a unicorn hunting for hides. The smell of magic burned the air. A subtle aura, but noticeable by the young manticore who suffered the loss of its parents. From then on, magic meant danger, and the husband's rocks were plastered with the scent of his magical aura.

The mother watched the memory as it replayed, softened by the manticore's own suffering but still not entirely convinced. "What can I do? The bounty hunters killed the beast, but revenge hasn't brought back my husband."

"Forgive it," Twilight told her. "Your plague does not lie with the loss of you husband alone. Let go of your rage toward the the beast, and your fears of future danger will wash away with it. Understand that the world you live in is not always hungering for death, though it can seem so at times."

"I have to worry, for the sake of my daughter," the mother defended.

"And caution can only go so far," replied Twilight. "Do not hate the dangers you cannot control, or you'll never control it. Fight to know it, to connect with it, and then you will have nothing to fear."

The mother tried, and as she tried, the manticore seemed less and less. It shrunk and crawled away into the corners of the room, until every inch of the nightmare was cleaned.

"Good, just one more nightmare, and you'll return to your daughter," Twilight said. She teleported them out of the dream room, returning to the hallway. The final door was the largest, locked down with chain and metal bars.

"I cannot do this unless you are ready," Twilight told the mother.

The mother looked at the door for a while, gazing at the humming door nob, and took a deep breath. The chains slipped away, tearing off their locks, leaving the door hanging wide open. Twilight took the first step in, guiding the mother. The room was smaller than she expected, but still as dark as the other nightmares. In the middle of the room, a child. The filly looked like the mother's daughter, but at times it wasn't.

Twilight looked hard at the figure as it changed. She couldn't tell what it was doing, only that the filly looked different from time to time.

"It's me," the mother said.

Twilight looked again and the figure took its shape as the mother, only much younger. Like a ghost, it walked through them, kneeling beside two crumpled bodies. It rested its head down and cried with no sound.

Twilight looked to the mother for some explanation.

"I lost my parents in a house fire," she explained. "My husband's family, our families were friends back then so they took me in. This place, this was the room they died in when the burning roof collapsed on them."

"Does it still bother you?" Twilight asked.

The mother shook her head. "I honestly don't remember much from my youth."

While that may have been a simple fact, there was something that told Twilight that the mother wasn't completely sure herself, or was holding something in so deeply she wasn't completely aware of it herself. "Why do you think we're here?" she asked. "There's something about this that's been with you all these years."

The mother had a look of thoughtfulness for a moment. "I guess I've always been kind afraid to be on my own. I can do things by myself just fine, but the thought of not having a home with others around me is just... disturbing."

"What about your daughter? You're not alone, you have her." The image blurred, suddenly becoming the family's cottage. The daughter was the mother now, sitting in the middle of the home with teary eyes.

"Princess Luna, what would happen if I just gave in?" asked the mother. "I want to see him, my husband. If you take my daughter and raise her well in Canterlot, nothing's stopping me from being with my husband."

Twilight's eyes widened. "You don't mean..."

"He's been with me my whole life," she explained, "I have to do the same and be there for him."

"I can't take your child," Twilight said, the words coming almost of their own free will. "The castle's no place for a child. My sister and I, we're barely putting together the local governments, and the three pony races still have problems to resolve before they can work seamlessly together. She'd better off with you anyways. A daughter shouldn't be apart from her mother."

The nightmare slowly softened, and the mother sighed as if dropping a heavy weight. "Your right, family is family. I can't leave her."

Twilight smiled. "Good, that's the last of the nightmare doors." She turned and faced the hallway. "Time to get you back home." She raised her horn and shut off the spell, tearing herself out of the mother's dream.

The shock of coming out of the dream jarred Twilight, and she teetered on her hooves from the sudden exhaustion of the spell. They had been in the dream for hours, long enough for the sun to dip into the horizon. Instinctively, she rushed out of the cottage and began to raise the moon.

You deserve hot cocoa tonight. It's been a long day, and you deserve it. Twilight wondered if those thoughts were Luna's or her own. She was exhausted, not only from the magic but guiding the mother through her fears. Though, for all the insecurities she suppressed, the endeavor took less time than she expected. If nothing else, she could at least respect Luna a bit more for the power of dreams.

There was a shattering from the kitchen and a muffled scream. Twilight let go of the moon, setting it on its nightly course, and rushed back into the cottage.

Her stomach churned at what she saw. Two spots, red and splattered, and the little unicorn barely moving.

"What is the meaning of this?" Twilight roared with the unmistakable royal voice.

The mother didn't listen, though she clearly heard it. She reached with her magic and grabbed her child, and thrashed her against the last of the plates. Twilight's first instinct was to turn away from the sight of skin peeling from the skull. But if the mother wouldn't stop herself, some pony else would.

Twilight tackled the mother into a wall, breaking her attention long enough to levitate the unicorn to safety. "She's your daughter! I thought you were going to be with her!"

In the face of Twilight's rage and Luna's power, the mother was nothing but calm. "You don't see how dangerous it is outside the cities. The world's full of dangers and I can't protect her from any of them. I'll fail as a mother unless I do this. We'll be with her father again, all because of me. We'll be a family, because I became a parent for once."

"The threat is gone! Stop this before it's too-" Twilight was cut of as the mother prodded her eye with the tip of her horn. Even as she blinked the pain away, she turned around to face the mother. Her vision was blurred but the kitchen knife slashing the filly's neck was too clear. And then, it was too late.

All Twilight could do was ask. Herself, the mother, and even the Card Master. "Why?"

The mother looked to Twilight and smiled. Her last words went unheard. The blood gurgled in her mouth and spilled from her throat. The knife fell and all ceased.

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A whole family gone

Where did she go wrong

Lock after lock the doors opened the fears and the fears left so everything was fine Nothing was fine it couldn't have ever been fine

did she fail or did Luna or was it both of them who couldn't help what did the card try to say?

Get your head together Princess. You've only witnessed two deaths.

Twilight tried to stand, but her hooves shook took much to even balance. "You're sick. That's all their is to it."

Go on.

"I don't want to, I'm done."

I'm afraid that's not allowed.

"I don't care!" Twilight shouted, stomping onto the dark floor. "Whatever you're trying to tell me, I don't get it. I admit it, I don't understand your lessons."

Neither did the Princess of the Night. She did not know what went wrong.

Twilight gazed up at the Card Master standing in front of her. Despite the darkness, he could still be seen like he was in broad daylight. "I know Princess Luna. Something so terrible, she would have said."

Their lives outlive their memories. For the Princess of the Night, her own darkness took much of the past away.

"Why did you show me that card then?" Twilight asked, finally regaining her footing to match the Card Master's gaze. "It's just plain horrible. What could it possibly do to the world now?"

Did you honestly think you could slip in and resolve the problem? You were more than a perfect fit for the Princess of the Night.

"You said she didn't know what went wrong either," Twilight said. "What was it?"

Power. You know the saying, "absolute power corrupts absolutely."

"I'm not corrupt."

You trotted in blindly and forced the situation, like a god among ponies. You may not have ill intent, but your mind is clouded with power, as was the Princess of the Night's. The notion that magic and dreams can resolve that much fear and trauma is too much. Like the princess before you, it was far too easy.

"There wasn't any time," Twilight defended. "The dream couldn't last forever, and filly needed her mother."

She definitely got what her mother had to give. Tragedy.

"I don't believe you didn't have a hoof in this," Twilight growled. She was beginning to get irritated again at the Card Master's tone. "A mother wouldn't end her family because of a loss like that. She should have valued life for what it was, and appreciated what she had."

Can you judge what she felt? Is it so similar for every pony that you, oh great and powerful Princess, can generalize?

Twilight didn't answer, but glared at the Card Master.

Come now, save your energy and hate. You'll need it, you're going to war.