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The Last Unicorn Princess -Prologue

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TLUPcover by kelseyleah

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Long before the first Hearts-Warming Eve, way back when Alicorns were thought to be unseen gods, the three pony races were small enough that they could live far away from each other.  That’s not to say that they didn’t fight when they met, but it wasn’t frequent enough to catch the attention of the Windigos that would drive them from their lands in the distant future.


    Our story starts in the lands owned by the Unicorns. At first, there were many Unicorn Kingdoms spread across their territory. But to better defend themselves against the two “borish” pony races that would often raid the Unicorn kingdoms for their “glorious wealth”, the two biggest Unicorn kingdoms joined into one and the other smaller kingdoms agreed to come under their rule.

    The cause of that unity? The marriage-alliance between the fiery red-maned stallion Red Throne, and the icy cream and blue-maned mare Gilded Lily. Red Throne was courageous in battle, and led his kingdom to many a victory. Gilded Lily’s plant magic created many a briar wall and impenetrable hedge maze that kept invaders from her kingdom. Together they seemed like a powerful force to protect the Unicorn race.

     Whether they had actual feelings for each other was unknown, but they quickly began to cement their rule by creating heirs to continue their royal line. Over time they had four colts and five fillies- all born with the white fur the royal court insisted meant their line was descended from alicorns.

TLUPprologue1 by kelseyleah


    You’d think the youngest princess would have plenty of family to spoil and dote on her, but the lavender-maned filly felt very isolated and alone. With four colts to possibly take over the kingdom and four fillies that could married into the families of the former kingdoms to insure their loyalties, Princess Amulet Azalea was superfluous. Despite that, being alone was better than when her family paid her attention.

   

    On an average day, Azalea woke up to the sound of bells. Attached to strings on the inside of her bedroom door, closet, wardrobe, and dresser drawers, bells rang as these things were opened.  Azalea had started putting up the alarms when she she- a filly barely out of diapers then- woke up one morning to find her entire wardrobe missing. Her father rarely believed the words of his youngest, and that time than been no different. Despite her protests, the king had ordered a servant to give her a severe spanking for showing up in court underdressed.

    The pony responsible later bragged and laughed when they were alone. Azalea studied locking spells, elaborate traps, even battle magic to get the older pony to stop. It only made the thief work harder. She had almost given up trying, when one morning the thief decided to be blatant.

    “Emerald Gaze!” she yelled at her third eldest sister. The green maned mare loved taking things that weren’t hers, and Azalea was a favorite target of hers.

    “I don’t see your name on this scarf,” she protested from Azalea’s walk-in closet. Azalea detangled herself from the various expensive fabrics that made up her bedsheets and rushed to try to stop the shameless mare. The filly’s presence did nothing to discourage the mare. While Emerald preferred not being caught, the first time she had discovered Azalea’s alarms had embarrassed and angered her, so the mare gave up being subtle on later early morning raids.

    “Ooh, it’s not on this dress, either,” Emerald sneered. It was Azalea’s favorite dress. Somehow Emerald always knew what Azalea liked best.

    “That dress is too small for you!”

    “Are you calling me fat?”

    “What’s going on here?” The second eldest Princess, Copper Curls, asked with genuine curiosity from Azalea’s door. The mare’s flowing copper mane and tail, and gorgeous doe-like eyes made her one of the most desired Princesses of the Kingdom. Personality wise, she wasn’t much better than a doll.

    “Amulet Azalea won’t share with me,” Emerald Gaze explained, sounding hurt.

    “She’s stealing, not borrowing!” Azalea tried to explain.

    “Oh,” Copper Curls replied, looking confused. Emerald Gaze took their elder sister’s hesitation as an opening, and slipped out of Azalea’s room past Copper, her ill-gotten gains trailing after herself in her emerald magic aura.

    “Thanks for letting me borrow these!” Emerald called as she disappeared into the hall. Copper Curls nodded like the problem had been solved and then left, too. Azalea was determined not to cry.

    Azalea’s palace mare came in her room to dress the princess for the morning. The unicorn had a pale green coat under her brown uniform dress and always kept her teal mane tied up in a bun. She didn’t smile or frown at the filly princess, only watched her with her pink eyes expressionlessly.

     The castle’s servants were nicknamed “the shadows and echoes of the castle”, as they were only allowed to speak about things in direct relation to their job, and never to speak to a member of the royal family without first having permission. The only exception to this rule was if not speaking would put the royalty in danger.

    Amulet Azalea only knew her palace mare’s name, Spring Step, because she needed to know it to call her. The Princess would’ve loved to have Spring Step as a friend- possibly the only friend she would’ve had- but due to the castle’s rules, Spring Step would only answer direct questions in short sentences, and never offer her own opinion to anything more meaningful than what looked good on Azalea.

    So to unburden herself, Azalea would often talk at her palace mare.

    “Good morning, Spring Step- I hope your morning has been better than mine.”

    “Good morning, your Royal Highness.”

    “Put me into any morning dress- I don’t have anything I care about anyway,” Azalea pouted.

    “Yes, Miss.”

    Spring Step managed to find a long lacy gray dress with purple ribbons that brought out the Princess’ amethyst eyes, braided the filly’s lavender hair, and selected a simple silver and amethyst pendant that went over the high collar of the dress. The palace mares had been trained to bring out the best appearance of their charges, but Azalea was always amazed to see the beauty Spring Step could bring by putting together seemingly dull pieces.

    “Thank you, Spring Step. You made my day a little brighter,” the Princess said with misty eyes. “It’s just not fair- no pony will believe me about Emerald Gaze stealing from me.”

    The unicorn servant only nodded in response.

    “Last time I told Father, he only had me spanked for lying. Maybe Mother will listen to me this time since Emerald has a dress too small for her in her possession.” Azalea bit her lip as she thought about it. Queen Gilded Lily was almost always in the gardens when court wasn’t in session or the council wasn’t meeting. Maybe she wouldn’t be too preoccupied to listen for just this once?

    “You can leave for now thank you,” Azalea told the palace mare. Spring Step bowed and left, leaving Azalea alone and unwatched. She took a couple of moments to breathe and build up her courage, then left her room. Her hooves echoed on the castle’s stone floors as she moved down through the winding halls. The guards wouldn’t stop her- as a princess, she was allowed close to full access anywhere on the castle grounds, short of the King and Queen’s private chambers and the Council Room when in session. But meeting one of her siblings wouldn’t be pleasant.

    Finally, Azalea descended the last staircase out into the gardens. Instead of a moat, Queen Gilded Lily had grown a gigantic enchanted hedge maze that surrounded the castle. Ponies that wanted to enter the palace had to receive charmed flowers from the guard house outside the maze that would enchant the hedges to open a direct path to the castle.

    Every pony coming in had to hold one, otherwise the maze would stay intact. The flowers usually only lasted a day, and then would wilt, making the magic they were charmed with leave. Ponies that tried to steal the flowers would make them wilt, and trespassers that got too close to the hedges would get ensnared by vines and held prisoner in the hedges. The hedges themselves were even fire-resistant, with pods of water that would open over flames nearby.

    The Queen spent every morning at the crack of dawn renewing the hedge’s spells with her team of trusted unicorn mages. Amulet Azalea only hoped that since it was a little later than dawn that her mother could spare a moment to talk.

    At the core of the maze surrounding the castle were the gardens. Every flower known to ponies was grown here, grown in flowers beds surrounded by shiny stones and dirt paths. In the east side of the garden was a sparkling greenhouse where Gilded Lily often had her gardeners cross bred flowers to get new colors and shapes.

    The princess thought she’d check for her mother in the greenhouse first, and was lucky, sort of. Queen Gilded Lily was in the middle of shouting at her gardeners, but Azalea knew it was a more commanding shout than an angry shout. Still, she looked busy, and that made Azalea hesitant. Just as she was beginning to think that maybe she’d just let Emerald Gaze keep her dress, a melodious voice came from behind her.

    “And what are you doing here, little sister?” Silver Sonnet asked. “Aren’t your morning lessons about to start?” The eldest Princess had a shimmering silver mane and tail that shone in the morning light, but something about her sharp, intelligent features made her seem a little less beautiful than some of her younger sisters. Azalea had forgotten her mother had Silver help her with the garden enchantments sometimes. Silver was almost as scary as their mother.

    “I-I wanted to talk to mother,” Azalea said uncertainly.

    “MOOO~THERRRR~!” Silver Sonnet sang out loudly across greenhouse, giving her sister a wicked grin. “Amulet Az~leeaaaaaaa would like a word!” The queen glared at her daughters like they were weeds, and Azalea galloped over to her, not wanting to waste her mother’s time.

    “Well? What is it?” Gilded Lily asked with little patience.

    “Emerald took my dress,” Azalea explained. “Could you tell her to give it back- when you have time, I mean. Please.”

    “A queen never has a free moment, nor does a princess have someone else fight their battles,” the Queen replied.

    “But she’s bigger and better at magic than me!” Azalea tried to argue.

    “Silver Sonnet, would you take your sister to her lessons?” Their mother asked. Silver bowed and wrapped her little sister into her magic aura, levitating Azalea off the ground.

    “Right awaaaay, Mootheeerrrrrr!” she sang in reply. As they made their way back into the castle, Silver Sonnet was not gentle carrying her little sister in her magic, bumping and brushing the filly against the stone walls and floors, seemingly uncaring to her sister's cries of pain.

    Treasure Tome, the third eldest prince, was already present in the small room where the royal children had been taught to read and write. Rather than pay attention to his sisters, the stallion with a mane like tiger's eye gemstones continued to read one of his precious books as Silver dumped Azalea in front of a desk and strolled out, humming a popular court tune.

    Azalea sulked, generally upset about how her day had gone so far. And it was still morning! Granite Guard, the youngest prince and Azalea’s elder by a year came in and stoically sat next to her at their desk. Like the little soldier he was, he sat at attention, staring straight ahead and waited for Treasure Tome to start the class.

    Treasure Tome was the fourth eldest of the siblings, but after correcting and generally stressing out all their prior teachers by knowing more than them, their parents decided to just have him take over teaching. Only Azalea and Granite hadn’t moved on from their basic education now, but Azalea expected Granite’s period as a Page would be ending soon, and that their eldest brother would probably take him on as a Squire.

    Treasure Tome took a while to start class- he cared more about what he was reading than anything else, after all, and would often wait until he was at a good stopping point to even glance a second away from it.

    Before they could control their magic well enough to turn pages of a book with it, noble unicorns were taught to remove a glove, lick the ungloved hoof, and turn the page before replacing the glove. Treasure Tome had read so much then that even though he used magic to turn the pages, he still licked his hoof to do so. Somehow in mid lick his eyes caught his siblings watching him, and started class.

    “Re-read our unicorn history book, and write down the names of all the ponies involved as you go,” he finally ordered with a dismissive wave of his hoof that wasn’t holding his book. Silently, the younger prince and princess took out their copies and ink wells. It was going to be a long morning.

    They had moved on to sums when the second youngest princess, Precious Peacock interrupted the class.

    “Granite, Treasure, our Father has summoned us. You must escort this beauty speaking to you so the rest of  the family may gaze upon her,” their blue and teal maned sister insisted arrogantly.

    Granite nodded and stood, and Treasure Tome sighed and shut his book, following the young Mare reluctantly. Azalea started to trail after her siblings, but Peacock put a hoof up to stop her.

    “No, Smudge. Father didn't ask for you. Run off now!” Peacock chided Azalea.

    But as Azalea had been lied to before, and as a result had gotten in trouble for not following their father’s summonings, so she followed them through the castle hallways stealthily. She thought she was doing pretty good at going unnoticed until she felt a ribbon pulled out of her hair. She met the green gaze of Emerald who was tying Azalea’s ribbon into her own hair, smirking with pleasure at the theft.

    “Where do you think you're going?” Azalea sister asked. Azalea only glared at her big sister, and tried to hurry after Peacocks group as they disappeared around a castle corridor. But Emerald grabbed Azalea, making the youngest Princess lose track of her query.

     “Don't think you can just do as you please. It's rude to ignore some pony.”

    “Is stealing rude?” Azalea muttered.

    “What is going on in here? Emerald Gaze, Father wanted most of us there,” Their eldest brother, golden-maned Golden Rule asked as he appeared behind them, their second eldest brother Bronze Spear besides him.  

    “Azalea’s trying to sneak her way into our meeting,” Emerald said while sneering at Azalea. Golden Rule’s stoic face remained indifferent to the news.

    “You haven’t seen invited, Amulet Azalea. Return to your room,” he said impassively, and continued on walking towards the council room. Emerald Gaze stuck her tongue out at Azalea and followed.

    “You’d better listen, unless you wanna see what I do to rule breakers,” Bronze Spear added in a whisper as he too followed their siblings. Azalea left, but didn’t go back to her room. Golden Rule didn’t lower himself to what he called “childish trickery”, so she knew she wasn’t invited for real. But what it meant was that something was going on and she was the only one being excluded. It hurt.

    She headed to the library, pulling out books containing maps of the unicorn kingdom and beyond. She was going anywhere but here- and she had a plan.

    Azalea first stole a plain brown cloak that a servant had left on a laundry line, which hid her entire body. A lot of her time was spent researching the maps for a place she wouldn't easily be found, navigating by the Stars, wilderness survival, and time Magic. As she spent a lot of her time in the library before her plans (mostly researching spells to keep her siblings away), nopony seemed to find her suspicious, but she told anypony who asked about the nature of her books that she wanted to lead unicorn colonization teams when she grew older.

    She figured out how to cast a time lapse spell on a hourglass pendulum she put together that would teleport her things to her location a fortnight after her departure. After dark she spent time preparing her body for hardship, and worked on bodybuilding in her room. She intended to climb out of her window making a bed sheet rope, so she practiced climbing up and down four canopy bed posts, calculating the amount of time climbing up and down that would equal climbing down the two stories from her window.

    She also studied the guards’ movements. She knew their routes by heart, even the ones in the hedge maze. But knowing their routes would mean nothing if she so much as touched the maze: as touching the maze would move all the guard’s paths in the maze to the location of the “intruder”. Her plans would only work once.

    The night she ran away came as she climbed out her window unnoticed. She had only a small bag of food, a knife, a compass, her hourglass pendulum and the last of her jewelry to pawn. It was the maze that gave her trouble.

    She thought she knew the layout of the maze, but it was more daunting in the dark. But she suspected it would be so, and pushed her worries asides as she continued inside the maze, lit only by a small light spell from her horn. It was the tenth or so turn that she realized she was lost.

    Azalea pushed back the urge to panic and pulled the compass out of her bag. An amulet’s chain was tangled with the compass’s- a obligatory birthday gift from her mother that  had an amethyst pendant shaped like a flower- so it came out like the compass had petals.

    It gave Azalea a brilliant idea. Thinking hard of her mother and her feelings of discontent, she poured magic into the amulet and compass, fusing them together to make a purple compass rose. The compass rose still worked like a regular compass, but it would also point the way to where her mother was- so she could avoid her family in the future. She didn’t notice then, but she now had a cutie mark that resembled the amulet compass, too.

She had a couple of close calls with the guards, but soon Amulet Azalea was out of the maze, and free of her family.

TLUPprologue2 by kelseyleah

To be continued...

Next: 

The Last Unicorn Princess: Chapter 1
The unicorn stood at the edge of the forest and said aloud, “I am the only unicorn there is.” They were the first words she had spoken, even to herself, in more than a hundred years.
-Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

    In the valley of a nearly unclimbable mountain range, deep in thick woods, a unicorn mare lived alone. Her home was a small one-room tree house up high in the middle of a tree ring, carefully hidden within the branches. While it may see lonely to be isolated away from other ponies, the years she had lived away from her family had been some of the happiest of Amulet Azalea’s life.
    Her daily routine was as follows: In the mornings, she worked on a small vegetable garden (grown entirely with by reading a book on growing food) and foraged in the woods for food. In the afternoons, she read and re-read her spell books while practicing and


I love The Last Unicorn, and was curious to see how it could work in the My Little Pony universe. All humans will be ponified, but I'll do my best to recreate their wonderful characters as if they've been ponies all their life.

Peter S. Beagle's unicorn was described as old and solitary, so it's curious as to why she'd seek out others of her kind. Many of the ponies in the My LIttle Pony universe are social creatures, so I'd really like to expand on Amulet Azalea's bonds as I tell her story, and give her more reason to rescue her race.

It's a slow start, but the adventure will continue. I hope you enjoy it!

© 2017 - 2024 kelseyleah
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