Grifixverse Lore IV: Ice and Amber

Look at yourself in the mirror and think of who you will be in the future, of who you were once. All events you go through affect you, the rocks in the course of a river. But if something went differently, would you be somewhere else?

Andromeda took her eyes off the mirror in front of her and pulled out a hair from her head, with a deranged smile on her face. Her magic surrounded the hair as she started laughing maniacally.

Andromeda was a unicorn fascinated by the connection between life and magic. She had similar practices with Enchanted Waters, but unlike her, Andromeda was more fascinated by magic than alchemy.

Andromeda and Enchanted Waters spent many nights together, torturing many rats in their lab. But to them, that was just so they could discover the wonders of magic and alchemy, and they didn't see it as a bad thing. They even experimented on each other. From the beginning, Andromeda had been the best lab rat for Enchanted Waters.

What if there were many of her? They'd be exactly the same, but given different circumstances in life, how would they turn out? Would they be different? If so, how different?

Over the hundreds of years that went by, they became nothing alike, only their bodies reminded others of the fact that they were the same person.

One's name was Arlechino. A code name to differentiate her from the original. She preferred to reside in colder areas of the world, and so left for Simareia, a cold land in the north of Equestria, a deserted, lawless place in those times.

She founded an orphanage there, looking like a hero in the eyes of most, but truth was she wasn’t all that different from her original self: she still lacked the ability to care for others. So what was her motive for doing such a thing? Was life in her orphanage really that good? Was being taken there from the cold land really… saving? 

Or was she just another puppet for Enchanted Waters, doing nothing but providing lab rats for her experiments, until they all perished to the one thing that made them, swallowed by the waters of the Mirror Pond, or encased in Amber forever...