Rainbow winced in pain as she looked around the unfamiliar hall she laid in, her head throbbing with the start of a migraine.

I told you that you were going to regret that.

The mare made no response and instead went to examine the rough-hewn stone that the hall had been tunneled through. Unlike most of the halls that had been smoothed flat, the walls here still showed the scars of their birth. There was no tool marks on the walls but the stress fractures seemed to indicate that the tunnels had been dug with some type of shatter spell. Not surprising as the Twilights were a unicorn house, shatter had been a favourite of unicorn miners since ancient Unicornia.

Yeah, that’s not going to work. I know you can hear me. As impressive as your capability for wilful ignorance is, it’s also very rude.

That’s easy for you to say, when you’re not the one going crazy.

You’re not going crazy.

Says the voice in my head.

There was a sensation of laughter, I’m the sword, you thickheaded filly.

The sword?

Yes, I’m the ancient and renowned Ensouled Blade Iridescence, and you – somehow – are my bearer.

Somehow?

I was bound to be used by but a single soul, and you are not her. But despite that, my soul responds to you as it did her. There was a pause. Although you are not the first, there was a mare before you. Unfortunately, she was ... ailed in the mind, so I did not acknowledge her ... there was a brief sensation of mortification and disgust ... advances.

Okay, that’s weird ... Rainbow paused as she once again looked around, I’m pretty lost, do you know where we are?

We’re underground.

Rainbow rolled her eyes, Thank you, you’re so helpful.

I’m a sword, not a nav-slate, although I doubt the latter would be much use here unless it was keyed into the wards.

So you can’t give any help?

I can suggest you follow the leylines, the local spirit seemed helpful earlier.

Leylines? Suddenly Rainbow was aware of the thrumming geomantic power flowing under her hooves, greeting her like an overly affectionate puppy. She took a step back, lifted her left forehoof and stared at it, How? I’m a pegasus.

That is only mostly correct, my bearer.

Hybrid tribe ponies don’t exist. Despite the ... Rainbow grimaced ... experiments, the magic of two different tribes cannot coexist in the body of a mortal pony, the soul just can’t handle it.

You are correct, a mortal pony cannot belong to more than one tribe.

Suddenly the manor spirit made an insistent tug of geomantic mana, causing Rainbow to stumble.

Iridescence laughed, An insistant one isn’t she.

Rainbow sighed and let herself be directed by the magic

...

Rainbow stopped, Iridescence, I just tried to kill a pony, didn’t I.

Ponies do tend to die when I’m impaled into them.

Rainbow stared blankly in horror, What the buck is wrong with me?

Many things, do you want me to list them off, it might take a couple days

Well, buck you too.

Such a thing is inadvisable to do with a sword.

---

“Do not lie to me, Twilight Sparkle.” The mare spoke with brief intensity before returning to a more happy countenance, “But worry not, I approve of the match. In fact, I quite like her – far more than your other minions - she’s probably the best match a Twilight’s brought home in a long time, despite being only a pegasus.”

Twilight’s eyes opened in horror, “Oh Rainbow, what did you do?!”

“She did something incredibly foolish, but oh so entertaining.” Velvet whispered in her son’s ear, “It takes a very special kind of pony to assault me in my sanctum.”

Twilight shuddered and took a step back. “Okay, we’re leaving now.”

“Oh, no, please don’t go, we have so many things to talk about.” Velvet whined.

“Nope.” Twilight levitated Fluttershy and left the room.

---

“... and this hallway was constructed in year 189 of the Summer Sun, by Twilight Twinkle the Twenty First of that name. You will notice, if you look closely, that the stone of this hallway was dug with a different spell than the last couple hallways, as a more efficient shatter spell had recently been developed, one designed to be used solely against stone.” Twilight Spark spoke as she gestured at a perfectly smooth wall. “You will also notice small inclusions of quartz in this wall, large enough to be visible but not large enough to be valuable”.

Twilight walked in to find a rather dreary picture. His friends clearly bored beyond reason as Spark nattered about irrelevant intricacies of the manor’s construction.

Rarity was preforming admirably, but her polite facade was starting to break, but Applejack was poorly hiding a yawn and Pinkie’s mane was starting to deflate.

That’s not good, Twilight thought, shuddering at the memory of the ‘Pinkamina Diane Pie debacle’. “Spark.” He said sharply.

“Yes Sparkle.”

“You know the manor’s halls?” Twilight asked commandingly.

“Like the back of my fetlock.”

“Good, because you’ve volunteered yourself to find Rainbow Dash.”

“When’d I do that?”

“When you lost her.” He stalked towards the mare.

“Remind me again who this is.”

“One of my friends, who you lost after promising me that you’d protect them. She somehow managed to make her way to mother’s ‘lair’.” He said growling.

“Oh ...” Spark put on a sympathetic face “... my condolences.”

“She’s not dead, which is good for you, since your survival hinges on hers. Mother said she left her in the manor halls.”

“What is that, Sparkle? Is that a threat? I thought that the Princess’s perfect protege was above such things.”

“I am.” He stared at Spark with intensity, “That, my dear cousin, was a promise.”

“Ooh, that gave me shivers~” Spark shuddered, “So where did the Mad Lady ditch your wayward friend.”

“Somewhere in the manor halls, I don’t know where, mother didn’t elaborate.” And she’s more likely to hinder than help if outright asked.

“Somewhere in the manor halls ...?” Spark looked concerned, “Do you have any idea how many kilometres of halls there are in this manor?!”

“No, it’s not like I was raised here,” Twilight rolled his eyes. “But it sounds like you have your work cut out for you.”

“A thorough search could take months!”

“Well you have hours.”

“Hours?!”

“The manor is dangerous, every second wasted is one less second to find Rainbow,” Twilight paused snarling, “So you better get a move on.”

“Fine.” Spark grumbled before disappearing in a flash of lightning.

Twilight looked over to his friends, who were staring in shock.

...

Twilight sighed and deflated, “I’m sorry you had to see me like that. There’s a reason why I didn’t want you here, my family gets to me.”

“That ain’t what we care about.”

“What?”

“What Applejack is trying to say is that we’re worried about Rainbow, she must be terrified to be alone and lost in an unfamiliar ...” Rarity tilted her head, “... structure?”

“Is Dashie going to be okay?”

Twilight sighed, “The manor has many dangerous things in it, but it has even more empty halls. It’s incredibly difficult to find such dangers, even if you’re looking for them.” He stated, leaving off the fact that they were significantly easier to find if you weren’t looking for them.

Applejack narrowed her eyes, “Then what was all that about never wandering on our own and how this place was so dangerous.”

“I may have exaggerated just a little bit,” Twilight lied, “after all, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Follow me, I know how to find Rainbow.” He turned and started cantering away, not noticing the look of skepticism Applejack was giving him.

Twilight led them on a twisting path – the mares needing to nearly gallop to keep up with his longer stride – before stopping next to a seemingly featureless wall. He lit his horn and placed a hoof against the stone, causing a small circle to depress into the wall.

There was a loud rumbling sound as a seamless rectangle of stone started to slowly sing into the floor, revealing a narrow, poorly lit hallway.

The five moved quickly down the hallway, one by one. Twilight ducked uncomfortably – the ceiling was too low for even his head, yet alone his horn – and his wings clenched tightly against his barrel.

“Where are we going?”

Twillight laughed darkly, “Welcome to House Twilight’s scrying room.” he walked into a smallish perfectly spherical room with dozens of small circular silver mirrors arrayed on it’s inner surface; each surrounded by glowing runes and showing an image of a hall or room of the manor. Levitating in the centre of the room was a small glass sphere, glowing pale blue with magic. “Spark would have an aneurysm if she knew I was showing this to you.” He said with a touch of humour, especially considering she has never been allowed in here herself to my knowledge.

Twilight turned his attention to the small indigo-coated blank-flank filly who had somehow missed their entrance as she intently scanned the mirror at the exact bottom of the sphere, the images quickly changing as she flashed her horn. “CIV, what are you doing here?”

“Mother hid the cookie jar and she said I could have as many as I wanted if I found it.”

“Huh, that’s surprisingly tame for her.”

“She also said that it would prove me worthy of learning to summon minor Outsiders.”

Twilight sighed, “That sounds a lot more like her.” He remembered when he – she – was first taught such summoning, the young filly had gotten something more Significant than what she’d intended; she had always had trouble moderating her enormous magical power. Luckily the manor wards stopped Anathemic Unbeing from fully manifesting into reality, and House Twilight had more than enough hornpower to fight back it’s toxic Unreality. But the Incursion had left Scars, places where space wasn’t quite flat, or gravity pointed in the wrong direction, or everything smelt strongly of cheese. There was also a couple of hallways that were replaced by spiral staircases for some reason, they still went to the same places they did before, the journey was just wrong.

The incident had terrified the young filly, she had been psychologically incapable of using magic for months after that, it wasn’t until the audition for Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns that she regained his magic, that fateful day where a filly hatched a dragon egg, gained her Cutie Mark and had her fate tied inextricably to five other fillies.

“Mother even said that it could earn me my Cutie Mark.”

“I sincerely hope it doesn’t, you deserve a much better Cutie Mark than that, CIV”

“I guess ...” The filly paused, “... hay, who are you? You aren’t supposed to be here!” The small filly lit her horn and turned to face the larger stallion attempting to put on an intimidating glare that only made her look adorable.

“It’s me, CIV.” Twilight said, briefly lighting his horn and flapping his wings.

The filly tilted her head for a second ... “Sparkles?”

“Ye ... oof.” Twilight took a step back as he was impacted by a filly sized missile.

“I’m not calling you my BS BFS ...”

“BBBFF”

“... yeah, that thing. It’s gay.”

---

Rainbow’s head ached as she wandered through the empty halls; she felt that she was drawing near the place she has been pulled towards, the journey had been odd, a far cry from the wide, straight, smooth and brightly lit hallways that Spark had guided them down, instead the halls were increasingly rough, unfinished and winding, to the point that the last few she had cantered down couldn’t really honestly be called ‘halls’, more like tunnels. The journey had been extremely meandering, she was sure that her route should have intersected itself at least seven times, and she wasn’t sure whether that was due to something interfering with her internal compass or if space in the mountain wasn’t quite right. And then there were the several places where the navigational organ had pointed in a direction that ... didn’t exist.

She winced as she remembered that uniquely unpleasant sensation, the mere memory causing her head to ache.

Rainbow shook her head, this was not the time to dwell on such things; she needed her mind sharp, expecially considering how she was holding off a migraine through willpower alone.

She looked around; the tunnel had narrowed even further – to the point that two ponies would have struggled to trot haunch to haunch – and was lit by the occasional magelight concealed in holes in the wall. She no longer felt that she was in Twilight Manor, rather just some nameless unicorn dug tunnels.

Nameless tunnels through the largest mountain ever known by ponykind.

The Pillar of Twilight, beyond the most westward edges of the Republic of Equestria, The mountain upon which the Sun and Moon set, and from which sprung the liminal twilight. And also apparently sprung the – seemingly also liminal – Twilights.

It is stark how the history of Pony civilization was a slow trek to the West to this very mountain: from the ancient tribal nations of the East, to the City-State of Equestria; staked ‘Just in sight of the Pillar of Twilight’ as Clover the Clever prophesied, to Everfree; originally founded by criminals and outcasts in the mountain’s evening shadow, to Canterlot; built near her very peak.

Hay, even the ancient creation myths of Solstice claimed that the original unicorns were actually two different tribes, the Solars who stepped off the Sun on the first Dawn, and the Lunars who stepped off the Moon on the first Dusk; both onto the very East of the world in order to shepherd their respective celestial bodies to their final resting point in the West.

Rainbow grimaced, and then certain foolish individuals interbred with the base beasts they found there to produce the other ‘lesser’ ‘impure’ tribes of ponies and indirectly tie the two tribes to the land, forever repeating the night and day until they could ‘atone’ for their ‘sins’ and finally leave this world on the final Sunset and Moondown.

She scoffed, of course it was all stupid tribalist nonsense, anyone who studied the archaeological evidence quickly came to the conclusion that not only did all seven primary tribes came into existence at roughly the same time – if not the exact same time, as some evidence implies – unicorns moving the Sun and Moon was a relatively recent event, all evidence from prehistoric pre-tribe proto-pony cultures clearly showed that the Sun and Moon used to move on their own, and stopped moving for reasons lost to time. Well ‘relatively recent’ in the time of the old tribal nations, I don’t think that term still applies this many millennia later.

Of course, the reasons that the Sun and Moon stopped moving may not have been lost for time if Princess Radiant hadn’t declared the entire Archaeologist’s Guild heretics for their discovery and had them all executed in a day, including Prince Resolute’s mistress. He was furious when he woke that evening, he immediately denounced his opposing diarch as a murderess, demanded recompense in blood, and – when that was denied – formally seceded the Moon Clans from Solstice.

And thus started the Unicornian Civil War, a conflict that would eventually spiral out of control into a chaotic free-for-all that drenched all of ancient Ponydom in blood for a hundred years.

Then, from the Far North came the Windegos.

And the rest is history, Princess Platinum took the Sun Clans to the West as Prince Remembrance stayed and died with half the Moon Clans in the East. Thus ended the line of Moon Princes of Unicornia and never again would ponykind have a ruling prince.

Well, until this very week.

Rainbow stopped as the tunnel ended in a rough doorway that opened into an abandoned storage room.

Ah, the door must have already fled from your terrible smashing hooves, by bearer.

The pegasus rolled her eyes and ignored the blade’s mild sas. She slowly stepped into the room feeling that she was close to what she was being drawn to. Cautiously she entered, eyes searching and ears swivelling, wary of any potential threat. After a few moments of silence, she let her guard down slightly and started examining the closest shelves, carved out of the stone, slightly damp and empty but for the occasional broken pot or damaged crate.

She examined the splintered remains of a crate, the wood it was composed of looked ancient, yet when she pressed her hoof against it, she found it hard and completely without rot. Clearly the room was under some type of preservation spell, hardly surprising considering the room’s purpose.

The mare slowly made her way down the shelf lined aisle, occasionally leaping into the air to examine the shelves, but finding nothing of interest; the ponies who had emptied the room had been thorough.

She slowed as she came to a four way intersection; with straight ahead terminating in a dead end. She looked to the left, finding seven more rows of shelves branching off the from both sides of the aisle, parallel to the passage she had entered from. A look to the right revealed three more.

She paused, briefly wondering which way to go, before feeling a faint spiritual pull to the left. Left it is.

Rainbow slowly trotted down the aisles, checking both ways down each one; and finding the shelves just as bare as the first. A couple of the aisles ended in a doorway connecting to winding tunnels similar to the one she entered to warehouse from, but most were dead ends.

Finally, to the left, down the third aisle from the end she saw something different. Is that a pony?

Be careful, my bearer, I have a bad feeling about this.

As, Rainbow approached, it became increasingly obvious that it was a pony. Or, rather, that it had been a pony. The corpse was remarkably well preserved, all things considered – likely due to the enchantments on the place – but it’s – or rather her – seeming age was belied by the lack of a cutie mark.

Unless the mare had been one of the unfortunate rare adult ponies who had never discovered her Talent – which was even less likely, as adult blankflanks were not the type of pony to be found dead in an abandoned subterranean warehouse – she had been dead for at least a decade. Making her a reatively recent addition to the warehouse.

As the pegasus approached the corpse, she took in the dead mare’s features. The earth pony had a green mane and purple fur – both slightly greyed with time, corroborating Rainbow’s estimates of age – seemed rather emaciated – indicating either starvation before her death or dehydration afterwards – and was curled up in a faetal position, her head cradled in her forehooves and adorned with a braided silver circlet.

Rainbow paused before tentatively reaching out a hoof to touch the dead mare, finding the dead flesh to be firm and leathery – completely unlike the desiccated flesh of a mummy – which, combined with the lack of any obvious wounds, made Rainbow conclude that the mare had, likely, starved to death.

After releasing a pulse of unshaped mana from her hoof; the lack of resonance confirming that the mare was properly dead and not undead. The last thing she needed was a hungry zombie or – even worse – ghoul to pounce on her when she was distracted. She felt a resistance near the corpse’s head, indicating a fairly strong enchantment on the circlet, albeit one that, thankfully, had no effect on dead flesh.

Satisfied she wasn’t going to get jumped by a ravenous undead, Rainbow turned her attention to the burlap sack sitting beside the corpse and opening it.

“Wow.” She took a step back and sat down in shock, the sack was completely filled with jewellery, and not inexpensive jewellery at that. She spotted multiple pieces made of oricalcum or set with dragonstone, it was a bloody fortune, even if mundane. And, considering what Twilight said about her family, it was doubtful that even a single piece lacked an enchantment.

Rainbow inched foreward, peeking into the sack.

Careful.

I know, don’t touch the magical, possibly cursed jewelry. I’m not stu...

Suddenly, the contents of the sack exploded towards the surprised mare, pummelling her with jewellery and knocking her onto her back.

In the confusion, Rainbow felt something clamp down around her neck, Oh, buck.

Rainbow tried to get up, only to find that her muscles didn’t respond ...

... then her body started to get up without her input. Double buck.

“Eh heh heh heh heh,” Came a deep, resonant and alien voice from the pegasus’s lips, “Ah ha ha ha ha, MWA HA HA HA HA.” Rainbow’s felt her body take a bipedal stance, forehooves pointed skyward in exaltation, “I’M ALIVE!”

Thud.

Rainbow felt her head turn and saw that the bodyjacker had impaled a crate with her wingblade.

...

No, it had impaled a crate with each wingblade.

Rainbow couldn’t help it, she broke out in mental laughter. Good going, dumbass.

Well, it has been just over a decade since I first posted this story and over 2 years as such I have bittersweet news. I am officially cancelling The Twilight Prince and starting a complete rewrite of the story. I didn't really have a good plan for where this story was going and thus the direction of the story changed severely harming the overall cohesion and internal consistency of this story. I am also unhappy with the pacing of the earlier chapters and the characterization of a couple characters (namely Rainbow Dash who gets her entire personality subverted by foreign memories to the point that she's nearly unrecognizable, and Twilight who suddenly has a poorly explained disdain for Princess Celestia).

The rewrite will address all these problems and many more that I won't am not mentioning. Hopefully ending with a result that is much more coherent and overall better quality.