//------------------------------// // Chapter Eight // Story: Myth Chaser and the Secret of Starswirl // by Myth Chaser //------------------------------// Myth, Snapshot, and Jewel were all on the train, feeling more relaxed now that the train had already departed, bringing them away from the zebra's crew and the unicorn. Once aboard the train they made their way through until they found a car empty of passengers, leaving them alone to talk in private. “So, let me get this straight,” Snapshot spoke up, adjusting her position in her seat and looking to her brother, sitting in a seat across the aisle from her. “The zebra's name is Askari. That unicorn guy's name is Star Gaze. And there's another unicorn now that seems to be their leader?” Myth nods in reply. “Even Askari seemed to be afraid of her. Didn't catch her name though, so she's still a mystery.” “Wow... And she was pretty scary to begin with. For her to be cowering, I can't even imagine what that unicorn is capable of... And she held a knife to your throat?” “Yeah,” Myth replied, leaning his head back and pointing a hoof to his neck. “She had the tip pressed right up against my throat, asking me about what I knew. Of course I didn't want to die right then and there, so I told her I knew about Luna and Starswirl having some kind of secret, something about a location hidden away somewhere, and it involves the artifact to unlock it.” “And she let you go?” Jewel asked, sitting in the seat behind Myth. “Just like that?” “Just like that,” Myth replied. “Apparently I didn't know enough to be of any trouble to them, and they didn't want the trouble of dealing with a dead body, so they just let me go.” “But you didn't tell the whole truth,” Jewel said. “About what all you knew.” The stallion couldn't help but grin. “If I'd said everything, I'd probably be dead for sure.” “What do you know?” Snapshot asked, leaning against the back of her seat and looking at her brother curiously. Myth chuckled a little. “I know it was pretty stupid of them to let me read Starswirl's journal and then let me go without interrogating me more horrifyingly about what I know.” “Well, what did you read in the journal?” Jewel asked, eager to listen. “Most of it was theoretical stuff about some spells. Stuff like inter-dimensional travel or even time travel. Impossible stuff, really. But then I got to the stuff about him and Luna and focused on it some more. I don't have what he wrote down memorized or anything, but from what I understood of it... He asked Princess Luna for a favor. One that apparently only she would be capable of helping him with.” “What was it?” Snapshot asked impatiently. “He didn't go into detail,” Myth answered. “But whatever it was, he was taking her to this secret location to do, under the cover of night. And he told Princess Celestia not to follow them. This was between him and Luna, and they would tell Celestia about it once they knew more, but in the meantime it would only put her in danger.” “So something at this location is dangerous?” Jewel asked. “He didn't go into detail about what the danger was,” Myth replied. “Just that it was a danger to Celestia if she were to follow them. But here's what interests me. Whatever the favor was he had been asking of Luna... he regrets. Starswirl wrote so much about his regret for asking Luna to do what she was doing, and he had to put their experiment to an end. So he created the lock to seal away the location and had a long journey to find a safe, hidden place to hide it.” “Experiment...?” Jewel muttered curiously. “Again, he didn't go into detail,” Myth said quickly. “Some kind of experiment between Starswirl and Luna, it takes place in some location that he didn't want to name even in his journal, and Starswirl regrets the whole thing. His journal doesn't explain anything about what the experiment was or why he was starting to regret it.” “This is scaring me,” Snapshot said. “Do we really want to be going somewhere that Starswirl regretted bringing the Princess for some unknown experiment? There could be something serious there. Especially if he ended up having to seal it away behind a magic lock so nopony could ever go there again.” “Yeah,” Myth agreed. “I'm pretty scared about it, too, Snaps... But aren't you still curious?” Snapshot stayed silent for a moment, looking to the floor of the train car as she thought about the question. Was she curious? She was curious to know what the big deal was, and how everything fits together... But if there was something so dangerous it made a powerful wizard regret messing with it, maybe they shouldn't be messing with it either. “Well, I say we still go,” Jewel said with a little shrug. “I've had this secret of theirs on my mind since I was a little filly. It'll kill me if I had this opportunity to get some answers and ended up quitting so close to the end goal.” “That's how I'm starting to feel,” Myth said. “Plus, we pretty much decided to do this for our parents. We both agreed to see their adventure through to the very end.” Snapshot looked back up to her brother again when he mentioned their parents. She remembered back before they left home, when they'd talked about it. Myth had seemed so eager to finish their parents' adventure for them, and she'd felt in her heart that she would be willing to face anything they might come across to do it. The stakes were so high now. They were getting into some serious stuff. There was something in her, though, that made her want to keep going. “What do you think, Snaps?” Myth asked, looking to her sister. “Your call. Want to call it quits, or go through with it?” She wasn't sure if it was her own burning curiosity or something else entirely, but she wanted to continue. She wanted to find Luna and Starswirl's secret place and find out what their big secret is. “Let's do it,” she said, putting a smile on her face, and getting a smile in return from Myth and Jewel. “So what about the combination for the lock?” Jewel asked, looking to the tan stallion. “You said we didn't need the journal for it.” “Oh! Right. The lock actually has the combination in itself,” Myth responded. The unicorn gave a confused look and dug into her bag, slipping the golden-colored artifact out. She looked over it with a strange look and passed it over the seat to him. “Well, please explain. Cause I've looked over it plenty of times and I haven't seen anything like a combination.” “Because you don't know exactly how to look at it,” Myth said with a chuckle. He set the disc down on the seat, holding it down to the cushion, and pulled at the knob of the dial. With a click, the knob popped off, revealing it was hollow inside, providing space for what lay within. Inside was a sort of metallic-looking mechanism. The metal was connected to the red needle, and formed a circle, surrounding a red gemstone. Myth grabbed the ruby from its place, bringing the artifact into three separate pieces now; the hollow dial piece, the ruby, and the disc with the metal mechanism and needle. He took the red gem and held it up, inspecting it. The ruby was shaped like a typical diamond would be; a circular top that came down to meet at a sharp point at the bottom. Keeping it in his grasp, Myth turned and opened his bag, reaching in and pulling out a flashlight. Jewel and Snapshot exchanged confused glances before looking back to him. He flipped the switch a few times, making sure the light actually worked. Aiming the flashlight, he shined the light beam at the door of the train car, and smiled. It seemed plenty bright enough for him. The next thing he did brought out an awed gasp from both Jewel and Snapshot. He held the ruby up to the flashlight with the flat, circular top of it pressed against the glass of the flashlight, causing the light to shine through the gem and shine a pretty, red glow on the door, with light reflecting around inside the gem and shining the red glow all over the wall and seats. “Wait, what's that?” Snapshot asked, gesturing with her hoof along a pinkish line that ran along the wall of the train car. “That's what we need to look at,” Myth said. He moved the ruby and flashlight closer to the wall, shrinking the large glow down and bringing the line smaller with it. Once close enough to the door, the three ponies would see the red glow in the shape of the circular top of the ruby. Inside the circle shape were five sort-of-familiar symbols in seemingly random positions. Myth rotated the ruby in his hoof. It moved the symbols around until they recognized them as numbers. Numbers one, two, three, four, and five, to be specific. The numbers were a pink color within the reddish glow. They'd been cut out in the ruby so they could be seen when shone like this. The numbers were scattered in random positions though. The five was shown at the top of the circle. Going clockwise from there, the numbers were three at the right position, one at the bottom right position, four in the bottom left, and a two at the top left, then back to the five at the very top. Jewel gasped when she saw this. “No way...” “What's it mean?” Snapshot asked, confused about the numbers and their random positions. Before Myth could even ask her to do so, Jewel grabbed the disc piece of the artifact with the symbols and needle on it. She held it up against the door, in the path of the light beam shining through the ruby so that the glow and the numbers were now overlaid on top of the golden-colored disc. She rotated it so that the needle was pointed straight up, just as it was supposed to be. Then Snapshot gasped at the realization. When the red glowing circle of the light shining through the ruby matched up with the circular edge of the disc-shaped artifact, she saw it. The numbers one through five lined up with certain symbols on the lock. “That's our combination,” Myth said with a grin. “Bottom right, top left, right, bottom left, and then the top.” “That is genius...” Snapshot said in awe. Jewel gave a laugh. “You weren't kidding, Myth. The lock had the combination. We had it the whole time.” Myth then turned off the flashlight, setting it back in his bag. “Nobody would ever think to check for the combination to a lock inside the lock itself, let alone engraved into a gemstone so tiny you have to do that to see it.” “And he wrote about it in his journal?” Snapshot asked. “Sort of,” Myth answered as Jewel handed him the pieces of the artifact and he put them back together, with the ruby in its metallic setting with the dial set over it, pressing it down until it clicked into place, returning the artifact back to the way it was before. “I don't have it memorized word for word, but what he wrote was something along the lines of, 'The code lies within the heart.' I remembered dad said something about a gem being in the center of the lock, and I figured that gem must be the heart Starswirl referred to.” “That's amazing,” Jewel said, still giddy about what they just discovered. “I knew Starswirl was smart and all, but that's some Daring Do kind of thing I wasn't expecting from him.” “Yeah. So we've pretty much got almost everything we need,” Myth said. “Almost?” Snapshot asked. “That's not it? We have the lock, the combination, and you said you know where the location is. What are we missing, exactly?” “The spell,” Myth reminded her. “Dad mentioned in his journal that the blueprints for the lock said something about needing a spell to activate the lock so you're even capable of putting the combination in. Starswirl confirmed that in his own journal, it only works with a specific spell.” “Oh, right,” Jewel sighed. “We don't know exactly what kind of spell it needs, so we need to find that out... And I guess I'll have to learn it, since I'm the only one of us that could cast it.” “So that's why we're heading to Canterlot,” Snapshot said. “To find the spell, hopefully in the Starswirl archives,” Myth confirmed with a nod. “And to also visit Star.” “You want to visit Star Gaze?” Jewel asked. “Why would you-” “No, no,” Myth interrupted with a chuckle. “Star Shimmer. She's a friend of ours. And if we're going to find that location, we're going to need a map. I know the coordinates, but it's not like I can put the numbers to a location without seeing it on a map.” “Fair enough,” Snapshot said. “So now what?” “Well,” Myth sighed, looking out the train window at the scenery. “We've got a long way to go until we get to Canterlot. This is as good a time to rest as any, right?” It had been a while. They were pretty much nonstop since they got to Manehattan the afternoon before. They'd gone from the train station to the museum, to Jewel's penthouse where they had dinner, to the warehouse where Snapshot was kept hostage, then to the hideout, all the way until now, back on the train the next morning. It had been all day and night for the two of them, meanwhile Snapshot had gotten sleep for most of the night while she was in the hospital for her wing... She was rested up and ready to go. “Sounds like a good plan to me,” Jewel said, kicking back and laying herself across the train seat and resting her head on her bag, using it as a pillow. “We'll probably have to go hiking through a forest or something anyways. I'm definitely not doing that half asleep...” Myth let out a long yawn and lay himself across his own seat, deciding to rest his head back on his own hooves, with his bag on the floor next to him. He then looked over to his sister. “You staying up?” Snapshot nodded a bit and smiled. “Yeah, I pretty much just woke up right before we left. You go ahead and sleep. I'll wake you guys when we get to Canterlot.” “Sounds good.” Myth lay his head back down and let out a tired sigh, closing his eyes for some well-deserved rest. Myth could feel his body being shaken. “We're here,” Snapshot's voice said, a bit muffled as it sounded like she had a mouth full of food. The stallion sat up, yawning as he tiredly rubbed at his eyes. The train was still moving but a look out the window showed that they were in Canterlot and the train was slowly coming to a stop to the station just up ahead. He looked over to see Jewel already awake, her magic running a brush through her messy mane, while also chewing on some snack bar. “I got us some snacks from the food car,” Snapshot said. Looking back to his sister, he saw her holding a packaged snack bar to him. “Thanks,” Myth said, smiling tiredly. He took it while running his other hoof through his mane, quickly fixing up the mess his sleeping had caused. Not feeling quite hungry at the moment, he slid it into the side pocket on his bag to save for later. The train screeched to a stop and the horn sounded out loudly, signaling everyone on board that they had arrived. The three ponies got up from their seats, strapping their saddlebags on, and made their way off the train and to the station. “Where to first?” Snapshot asked. “I want to go ahead and get the map and mark the coordinates, so I won't have to worry about forgetting it later,” Myth said. “I'll go ahead to the Canterlot library,” Jewel said. “There's a lot of spells to go through.” “You can go ahead with Jewel if you want,” Myth said, looking to his sister. “I'm just getting a map real quick and I'll meet you two at the library.” “Sounds like a plan,” Snapshot agreed. “Say hi to Star for me.” Jewel and Snapshot then turned away, making their way toward the library. Myth turned as well, taking a look around and then heading in the opposite direction, toward Star Shimmer's shop. It was only a few blocks away. He approached, noticing the signs for discounts on certain items. Looking up he'd see the tall building with a balcony near the top, and what appeared to be a large dome roof that looked like it could be opened up. He recognized it as an observatory. He didn't remember Star having an observatory last time he was at her store. She must have had it installed recently. An astronomer like her needed a good place to watch the sky. He walked inside, hearing the familiar chime of the bell at the top of the door. He started walking, having not visited the shop in a while. The store looked pretty focused around camping and hiking. There were tents, sleeping bags, fishing rods, bags, flashlights, bug spray, compasses, and pretty much any other items that someone might want or need for camping out, or even just hiking. Along the back wall were shelves lined with boxes of telescopes and replacement parts for them. Spread throughout the store were tents that were set up, showing examples of how big they were and what they looked like, along with telescopes for customers to look through, up at the ceiling which was painted black and had glowing star stickers to mimic the night sky. When he got toward the back of the camping/astronomy store, he found Star at the register. The white unicorn mare looked bored out of her mind, leaning her head on a hoof on the counter top as her pink colored eyes scanned through a magazine she had held up in the pink glow of her magic. “Slow day?” Myth asked, approaching the counter. Star looked up from the magazine and smiled, closing the magazine and setting it down by the register, giving Myth a peek to see that it was an astronomy-themed magazine. “So far, yeah,” she answered. “It's usually like this in the mornings.” “Ever think about opening later in the day then?” Myth asked. “Tried it,” Star replied. “But I don't really have much to do in the mornings, and I figured I may as well open up earlier so the few customers I do have can get what they need.” “Fair enough.” “So did you and Snapshot finish that quest of yours yet?” Star asked. “Figure out the big secret and all that?” “Not yet, but we're getting pretty close,” Myth said with a smile. “We got the combination we needed for the lock. Snaps and Jewel are at the Canterlot library trying to find the right spell we need to activate it.” “Who's Jewel?” “Oh, she's a new friend of ours,” Myth answered. “We actually met her just after you left the library when you helped us figure out the artifact was a combination lock. She's a big fan of Starswirl's stuff and she's been a huge help so far.” “She sounds pretty nice. Is she cute?” Star asked with a teasing grin. Myth blushed almost immediately and awkward rubbed at the back of his neck, feeling uncomfortable with answering that about a new friend. Star giggled at his reaction. “Aww, Mythy's got a crush?” she asked teasingly. “That's so cute! I can't wait to meet her.” “I-It's not like that!” he replied, perhaps a bit too defensively. “We're just friends.” “Uh-huh. Sure you are.” Star grinned, and decided to let it go and change the subject. She didn't want to embarrass him too much. “Anyways. What can I do for you? Take a look at some new artifact or something?” “Uhm...” Myth cleared his throat, trying to cool off the warmth in his cheeks. “Actually, I need a map. I've got some coordinates, but I need to see where they are exactly, and how to get there.” “Easy enough,” Star said. She pointed to the side, showing Myth an area dedicated to maps. “Should be right over there somewhere.” Myth went over and started looking through the inventory. There were star maps, maps of the ocean floor or well known underground tunnel systems, and maps for places around the world, varying in scale depending on what a customer needed, ranging from the whole world down to certain towns and cities. It took him a while of searching before he finally found a map of the right scale he was comfortable with that also contained the latitude and longitude coordinates he was looking for. He sighed when he tracked down the coordinates to find where they would be heading. “Looks like we're hiking up the mountains,” he said, rolling up the map back the way it was and wrapping the tie back around it to keep it wrapped into a scroll. “Mountain hiking? Yikes...” Star said. “Sounds like you'll be needing some hiking equipment.” “Seems like it,” Myth agreed, turning and looking around Star's store, seeing the various tents, sleeping bags, and other camping necessities. “Good thing I'm in the perfect store to get what we'll need.”