Deep castle

Starlight's hoofsteps echoed against the crystal walls of Twilight's castle, her ears flickering every which way. The hallways were pitch black, save for the gentle teal glow emanating from her horn. It wasn't nearly this dark when she scouted it weeks ago, but maybe Twilight closed all the curtains today. She glanced around at the surrounding decor, or rather, lack thereof. It made it rather difficult to navigate, but she knew she didn't have the time to waste.

Just as planned, her little appearance at Twilight's stupid seminar about how "special" her friendships were certainly rattled the alicorn to the core. A quick invisibility spell as soon as Twilight's gaze left her in the audience and, boom, perfect seed of paranoia planted. She had to stifle her chuckling when Twilight was forced to bring up her flashcards for the presentation.

Her failure to demonstrate how important her little friendships are to those ignorant citizens of Ponyville would be the least of her worries real soon.

How important can a friendship really be anyway?

Starlight blinked, realizing she had been standing still in the hallway during her musing and shook her head. Focus. She needed to focus. Her modification of Starswirl's spell wouldn't work without the castle's famous "Cutie Map". As fun as it was to stir Twilight's nerves, it very likely would lead to her speeding up her presentation to get home earlier. The sooner she found this dumb map, the better.

A T-intersection loomed up ahead. She approached the corner, slowed her pace, and cautiously peeked around it. No movement in sight. She turned the other way and confirmed the same result, sighing in relief.

Sure, Twilight was busy and accounted for, but one of Twilight's bumbling friends could come bursting through any of the tens of doors around her and get the better of her. She was no fool, capturing Twilight and her friends took significant planning, numbers advantage, and the element of surprise.

Here, she was on enemy turf. She had none of those. If she got caught, all those months of planning would be for naught.

Starlight glanced behind her just to be sure, then closed her eyes and expanded her senses. She sent a subtle ping with her magic signature, and moments later, detected a response from the left, indicating a dead end. She turned right.

The reverb of her hoofsteps gradually blended together into an ambient soup of sound, allowing her thoughts to wander once more.

She hated Twilight.

She thought she knew hate before, when Sunburst left her after getting his cutie mark, when she was rejected from magic school for still lacking hers, and when what little friends she had left abandoned her out of jealousy and fear when she finally got her cutie mark in magic, being capable of so much more than they could ever imagine.

No.

Twilight broke her. The idea of a spoiled little princess showing up to her town and reinvigorating the false allure of cutie marks to her village, the lie that stole her life away, just because her friendships magically didn't fall apart like everypony else's absolutely sickened her. She tore her ponies from the freedom Starlight had finally granted them, ripping them away just to be whisked back into the prison of the marks.

Starlight slowed down and stomped her hoof against the floor in rage. The impact reverberated around her, as did the quick clip clop of her hoofsteps.

She blinked and froze, snapping out of her thoughts.

The echoes gradually faded away, leaving her in silence. She glanced behind her, but could discern nothing beyond the faint glow of her horn. She poured more magic into her lighting matrix, the glow light around her intensifying, yet failing to permeate the darkness.

Her eyebrows furrowed. In her weeks of scouting, she had not uncovered any defenses Twilight may have put in place in her castle. In fact, it was one of the biggest reasons why Starlight had waited so long to enact her plan. She couldn't fathom any of Equestria's alicorn princesses having absolutely zero safeguards against intruders to their residence. No wards, no enchantments, not even something as simple as a deadbolt on the front entrance. She was sure she was missing something.

And perhaps she did. This was the Bearer of the Element of Magic, sole protege to Princess Celestia herself. It'd be no surprise she could whip something up beyond her detection capability, unless her ego really was that monumentous to believe nothing could threaten her.

Starlight sent out another ping with her magic into the darkness of the hallway behind her. Nothing.

"Hello?"

Still nothing.

She narrowed her eyes and began trotting forward, her hoofsteps filling the air once more. The darkness crept forward as her horn light retreated.

She paused and glanced behind her again.

Echoing hoofsteps continued reaching her ears as the darkness approached, penetrating the usual radius of her magic's glow.

"What the-?!"

Her eyes widened in panic, and she instinctively broke into a gallop. The echoes chased her through the seemingly never-ending hallway, still at a trot's pace, yet always sounding right behind her. The shadows kept on her tail, and for a moment, she could have sworn she felt something brush against it.

The doors whisking past around her began to melt together into a teal blur, blending into the hue of her magic. She gritted her teeth and laced her magic into a crystalline shield around her, planting her hooves. She did not spend months alone in the badlands training and scheming just to fall to some half-baked scare attempt of a defense.

The darkness washed around her shield like waves against a rock. Her shield held firm for a moment before slowly eroding at the edges. Starlight's breathing quickened. She knew of no sort of magic attack that could eat away at [i]her[i] shield like that. She hesitated for a moment, then sent a general echolocation ping around her to penetrate the shadows, letting her know the nearest door was immediately to her right. Wasting no time, she shot a beam blindly in its direction and threw herself towards it just as her shield collapsed.

"Oof!"

She crashed through the hole in the door, narrowly avoiding the wooden edges of the hole she made, and tumbled onto the floor. She rolled painfully before coming to a stop against the opposite wall. In a moment she was back on her hooves, horn burning with a blinding glow as she faced the door.

Nothing came in.

In fact, the hallway outside looked normal, brightly lit like it always should have been. She blinked, and lifted a hoof towards it to check it out when-

"S-Starlight?"

A high-pitched voice called out to her from behind, one all too familiar, yet one she thought she had left behind forever. She froze in her tracks and slowly turned around.

"Sunburst?"

The small, orange colt from her past sat on the crystal floor, glancing up at her curiously. "Starlight? What are you doing here?"

"Me?! Wha- I-" Starlight stumbled over her words, not realizing her voice slowly climbing higher in pitch. "What are YOU doing here?! Aren't you supposed to be at magic school?!" She galloped over and sat down beside him, now the same height.

"I- I was. But, I couldn't just leave you behind, Starlight."

"What are you talking about?! You DID leave me! You abandoned me and you didn't even say goodbye!"

"I know, and I'm sorry." The young Sunburst looked down shamefully , pawing at the ground with his hooves. "But... you didn't think I forgot about you, right? You know I wouldn't just leave you."

"But that's exactly what you did!"

"I'm here now, right?" Sunburst put a hoof around Starlight's shoulder and squeezed gently.

Starlight's thoughts halted. She hadn't felt him in years, yet it was like he had never left. She leaned closer. "I... I guess. I just..." She sniffled. "Why? Why couldn't you have just written to me? Something, anything would've helped. I wouldn't have... gone off and made a stupid cult. I could've had a normal life."

"I can't answer that." Sunburst muttered. "But we aren't meant to change the past. All we can do is live with what's happened and move on."

Starlight glared. "What do you mean, you can't answer that? Do you not know? Or you just don't want to say why?" She stared into his huge, blue eyes, then shifted her gaze to the wooden walls of her childhood home around her. "Was I not worth your time anymore?! What, because of your cutie mark?"

"This was never about my cutie mark, Starlight." Sunburst held her gaze. "You need to learn to move on with your life, and grow. You can't let yourself stay shackled forever in the past. These walls you've built need to come down, or you'll be buried within them forever."

Something was wrong. Her eyes narrowed as she finally broke free from his gaze and scanned her old home. The door was just a few shades darker. A bookshelf stood where a table used to. The boardgames she and Sunburst used to play all the time displayed gibberish on their titles.

"What... what is this?!" She shoved Sunburst away from her. He did not stumble over, but rather smoothly slid away. "Who are you?!"

"I care about you, Starlight. Really. Please, you have to listen to m-"

"No. No, no, no. I don't have to listen to ANYPONY! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"

Sunburst reached a hoof out. "Starlight, I-"

[size=2em]"I SAID GET OUT!"[/size]

Starlight swept her horn, sweeping a spell canceling enchantment around her. Her home melted away into nothing, and Sunburst stared solemnly into her eyes before fading away.

---

Starlight's eyes shot open. She found herself lying at the foot of the cutie map, the room brightly lit. She stomped her hoof in rage. "YOU! You thought you could just erase everything that happened to me?! With your dirty lies and tricks?!" She jumped onto Fluttershy's throne and stamped angrily on the map, watching as the display flickered slightly.

"I see through that crap, nothing anypony says will change my mind!"

She pulled out the scroll containing Starswirl's modified spell. "You will watch as I erase everything your precious princess created, and THEN you will see I am right."