(♫)
Twilight dropped down onto her haunches and started to wiggle inside the opening. Rough stone scraped against her back and barrel in alternating sequence, leaving grime and moss wherever it passed, and she suddenly wished she’d taken Rarity up on that offer of boots and a traveling cloak. Born and raised in marble-paved Canterlot, she had always dismissed clothing in general as the domain of distractable socialites with nothing productive to do with their time and the anonymous tradesponies who were only allowed in to clean up their messes. Now that she was the one crawling on her knees and ankles through the consequences of some long-dead land baron’s poor decision-making, she was beginning to see the appeal.
Finally she felt the stone fall away beneath her front hooves, and a moment later four-taloned claws wrapped around her forelegs and pulled her the rest of the way out.
Stumbling back onto all fours, Twilight peered across the dim, underground space. It must have been around eight in the evening- or at least that was her best estimate; after graduating from the Academy her mother had given her an expensive gold hoofwatch, but she was too afraid of damaging it to wear it routinely and too afraid of appearing ungrateful to buy a cheaper one. The sun hung low at exactly the right angle to shine through the opening she had made and provide limited illumination of the dusty flagstones beyond. Twilight wondered if that was sheer coincidence or something the designers had intended. She hadn’t realized quite how hot the day had gotten when she’d been out in it; that only became apparent by contrast with the pleasant coolness she was experiencing now that she was underground.
The space was larger than it looked on the outside, and cleaner than she’d been expecting given Applejack’s accusations of vandalism. While the great iron doors to either side of her showed clear signs of being pried open by force, the floor held only a few scraps of cloth and desiccated leaf litter and a single long-extinguished lantern. She muttered a quick illumination spell and directed the glowing orb it produced into the center of the room, revealing it in its entirety for the first time in probably the better part of a thousand years.
The majority of the place was made from bricks of some sort of dark blue stone, possibly the same type that lent the mountains Twilight had seen to the south their blue-green tint but polished and cleaned of patina. A double row of columns reached up easily five meters to merge seamlessly with the arched ceiling, and delineated a series of alcoves along the entire length of the structure. Within each was a simple, rectangular plinth of either basaltic andesite or particularly fine black marble, Twilight couldn’t immediately tell, and atop each of those rested a single equine skeleton. Some of them still wore armor and had weapons of nearly every description laid across their barrels, the midnight-blue finish seeming almost to glow with the faint purple tint of her magelight; others had obviously had their equipment pulled away sometime more recently and been left to fall apart. There was far more missing than Rarity had taken to her shop for restoration, and Twilight was surprised by how angry seeing that made her.
Cautiously, she walked down what she supposed was the central isle of the place, counting as she went. Eighteen alcoves to a side, for a total of thirty-six. Every third body has wingbones, each one after it has the shell of a horn. If she recalled correctly, that matched up pretty much exactly with the Equestrian Army’s “new doctrine” of mixed-tribe units, implemented some years after the Lunar Rebellion had drawn to a close. Interesting.
The Cairn finally came to an end at a raised, circular platform about two meters across, the Lunar crescent inlaid into its surface in what appeared to be silver; Twilight didn’t dare take a sample for later alchemical analysis.
Drawing closer she saw that carved into the curved wall behind it were four rows of nine names each, written in Old Ponish majuscules but recognizable enough to Twilight’s studied eye, and below that four lines of text:
As the sunset fades away the yellow turns the gray
The moonlight shines across the land, a calling we obey
From purest black we shadows rise to fight a greater fight
Our brothers and sisters move as one, we soldiers of the night!
“Twilight?” Spike called from further back near the entrance, but she didn’t respond just yet, still silently mouthing the words, trying to place them in her memories of recovered Lunar propaganda, and coming up with nothing.
“Twilight!” he called, more urgently this time, and she turned around to find him making his way slowly towards her, ducking into each alcove in turn. “Why were they all buried looking up?”
Peering onto the nearest few alcoves herself she saw that the dragon was right- each and every intact skeleton lay on its back, head tilted at just the right angle to point directly at the central vaulted ceiling. Muttering a quick cantrip Twilight dispelled her first magelight and cast another farther up, then stepped back and gasped. What she’d mistaken for plain black stone at first now glowed with hundreds of tiny pinpricks of reflected light. The ceiling was low enough that she had a good view of what was causing the effect- tiny, circular inserts of silver, some empty and the stone around them marred by tooling marks, but others still intact and holding exquisitely-cut gemstones. Heedless of the dust and grime Twilight crouched down and then rolled onto her back to get a better look at the whole of it, a pattern that had already seemed hauntingly familiar suddenly resolving itself into the same one she’d seen thousands of times through the lens of a telescope and filled several pads of graph paper with as she deciphered its arcane significance with growing dismay.
“Starswirl’s bells! It’s a map! The rest of the sky must be in the other Cairns, and that circle at the end is the Moon! It’s a map of how Nightmare Moon’ll return!”
As she got to her hooves Spike was already heading back to the entrance. “Nothing you found in the archives even mentioned this. Let me get some parchment and we can write a letter to- HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!”
Hearing her assistant hiss in alarm Twilight bolted forward, only to find him standing with his claws crossed over his chest in front of the pink-maned pegasus from the farmhouse.
“Fluttershy? What in Tartarus are you doing down here?!” Twilight demanded, but the pegasus just lowered her head and backed away. Twilight realized she’d just assumed the locals knew she’d want to continue with her investigation undisturbed, but had never actually made mention of that fact.
“I’m… I’m sorry for scaring you,” Spike amended, making sure to keep his voice low and gentle, “You just startled me is all. How much did you hear?”
Slowly, the other mare got back to her hooves, tremors subsiding. “Just… just something about writing a letter? I hope I didn’t get Twilight in any trouble with your professors… now that the boulders are clear I just thought I could make sure all the bones are put together properly…”
Spike cocked his head to one side and muttered under his breath, “So, she’s terrified of postdocs but wants to make friends with the skeletons. That’s… interesting.”
“Oh!” Apparently, Fluttershy had heard him as well, and somehow her already-downcast expression turned even more contrite. “Well, they are the only ponies you can be sure won’t ever hurt you. And you can also find all kinds of interesting bugs down here!”
Twilight knew some necromancers back at the Academy who could present very effective counterarguments- it was in fact perfectly legal to experiment on donated cadavers under controlled conditions- but decided not to force the issue and instead stepped back to let the strange little pegasus further inside. Fluttershy stopped at the first disrupted skeleton and began carefully reassembling what appeared to be a pile of wingbones, although judging by what Twilight knew of anatomy she wasn’t doing a very good job.
That wasn’t surprising- amateur restoration efforts typically did more harm than good at historical sites, although since there were other undisturbed cairns in the Everfree, and this one was probably already a lost cause, Twilight wasn’t going to press the issue. But as her work progressed Twilight realized the pegasus did indeed seem to have some knowledge of anatomy- it was what she was working with that was wrong. “Twilight, take a look at this…” Spike whispered, and motioned Twilight closer. She stepped to Fluttershy’s side and examined the thin, twisted bone structure of the wings. They lacked the three strong phalanges of a normal pegasus wing in favor of four light, agile ones, and were tipped with a strange, wicked-looking hook. “These... were made for combat,” the dragon muttered.
Now that Twilight knew what to look for she could see the odd curvature of each of the unicorns’ horns as well, and wondered what other differences might have been apparent had the bodies still been covered in flesh.
There was a school of art during the Rebellions that focused in equal measure on the famine and disease faced by the Lunar Army, their zealous fighting style, and the supposed physical changes they underwent in the service of their dark sovereign. Those painters in the early second century had filled their canvas with gruesome images of emaciated, bat-winged soldiers fighting grimly on despite wounds that would cripple any normal pony, but Twilight had long ago dismissed it all as sensationalized nonsense. Conditions in the ‘Lunar Republic’ were poor, certainly. But according to what little had made it into the archaeological record soldiers were fed at least enough to get by even if that meant others had to starve- an odd decision for a group that railed against the ‘tyranny’ of the Solar Army, certainly, but one that was well-attested by excavation of granaries and graveyards alike. Deformities of the wing and horn had been more common in ponies of that era, though; the possibility of so many otherwise fighting-fit individuals sharing the same deformities strained credulity, but perhaps they had been preferentially recruited for some religious or political reason? The old Telekinetic Order Of Moon-Raisers that had early on pledged itself to Princess Luna’s service had, after all, employed much iconography of bats and been accused of binding their foals’ horns with cloth and wooden splints to reshape them.
“I doubt it,” was all she said aloud.
“That’s not the only thing that’s odd,” Spike continued as Fluttershy worked on, oblivious. “These are Rebel war casualties, right? So why are there so few signs of trauma? No holes in the skulls, no missing ribs…”
Twilight made another circuit of the nearby alcoves and confirmed the observation for herself. There were obvious injuries to some of the bodies, but nowhere near as many as would be expected from her experience with other battlefield excavations. “I mean, some of them could’ve bled out or suffered some other kind of damage that wasn’t visible, but… all of them?”
“Do you think it was magic?” Fluttershy’s soft voice called from behind them.
Twilight shook her head. “We won’t know for sure until we can bring in a precision dowsing specialist and even then environmental exposure’s probably drowned out any residual mana, but I don’t see any characteristic burns or corrosion.”
“Were they… buried alive?” Fluttershy sounded more regretful than afraid.
“I doubt it,” Spike cut in, “There’s no sign of restraints and they were all carrying weapons. Some kind of disease, maybe.”
“No, look at their teeth, they’re all healthy and intact,” the yellow pegasus spoke with surprising conviction. “These ponies were in their mid-20s when they all just… died.”
The sun finally dipped below the treeline completely, and in Twilight’s wan, fading purple hornlight the sepulchral atmosphere of the ruin ceased to be peaceful and dived towards oppressive. “Y’all doin’ OK in there?” Applejack called from outside, and Twilight caught a tinge of apprehension in her voice. “It’ll be gettin’ mighty dark ‘round here soon enough, might wanna call it a night.”
“Oh, don’t tell me a tough, sensible mare like you is afraid of some dusty old graves,” Twilight joked, although she wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince the farmer or herself.
“Well it’s gettin’ hard to see an’ that hole’s jammed full a’ rusty old sharp things. Ah’d be a fool if I wasn’t! That, an’ this ain’t the Everfree proper- if’n it was Ah’d’a brought along my granny’s old warhammer- but sometimes the Timberwolves do come out this far when the Moon gets high enough…”
Not a great deal was known about the creatures since specimens disintegrated into mundane woodland detritus if brought too far from the Everfree, but Twilight had read enough reports from official and unofficial expeditions into the place to know that her chances going up against a pack of them were slim. “Actually, that is a pretty compelling argument.”
“Timberwolves usually are…”
“All right. I think I’ve made a good start on what I wanted to find here and I’ll need some time to go over it all. Spike, Fluttershy, after you?”
Both managed to squeeze through the opening in the door with relatively little difficulty; Twilight followed with significantly greater struggle, shook what dirt she could off of both herself and her saddlebags, and repositioned them on her back.
(♫)
She was dimly aware that Spike, Fluttershy, and Applejack were chatting jovially on the way back to the farmhouse, but was too wrapped up in her own thoughts to pay any attention. The obvious implication of the Cairn’s starmap that the Lunar Rebels themselves knew of what would later become Mist Watcher’s prophecy should have concerned her, but more than anything Twilight felt vindicated. What she’d found in the Cairn was concrete proof of her theories, and if the Lunars had known about the prophecy and references to it had been interred alongside them, then a proper team of archaeologists and diviners could very probably reconstruct an intact copy of the text.
What concerned her more, though, were the implications of the structure of the Cairn itself. Obviously a great deal of time and care had been put into its construction, but by whom? The generally-agreed-upon account of the structures’ origins came from a stone history tablet smuggled out of the Dragonlands and an undelivered letter to Princess Celestia from a certain Major Firefly of the Day Guard, which both attributed the structures to ‘friends and family of the fallen Lunars’. Later analysts, Twilight included, had concluded that this most likely meant neutral ponies or moderate Solars who had been reluctant to take up arms against their loved ones but at the same time hadn’t directly aided the Rebellion. That theory fit well enough with the long-held contention that few if any actual Lunar soldiers had survived the Battle of Everfree and the old capitol’s subsequent fall- there was, after all, no record of their integration into wider pony society during the whirlwind of Celestia’s reforms that had followed.
The exhaustively-cited and meticulous report delivered by the famous tactician, spymaster, and scholar General Gul to the newly-crowned King Grover less than a decade after the Rebellions described the Lunars’ operation as something a cross between a guerrilla campaign, a secret society, and a cult. Their ranks, the griffon wrote, had been filled by the outcasts and disaffected of Equestria- more often but by no means always younger than their opponents, comprised of each tribe in roughly equal thirds, and while no more inclined to recruit from the upper or lower classes in general showing a preference for ponies who had recently experienced major upward or downward changes in fortune. While relatively few career soldiers defected to join the Republic, their troop base did recruit heavily from former criminals, mages, woodsponies, artisans, and other groups predisposed to learn skills directly or indirectly relevant to a major war effort. Most importantly, operated almost to the point of obsession in secrets and riddles, constructing a complicated symbolic system derived from the old imagery of the Order of Moon-raisers.
Against the conventional armies of the Council of Five Hundred that secrecy had been their greatest asset, and against the more organized and efficient Day Guard of Princess Celestia it had ultimately proven to be their undoing. The same compulsion that led them to conceal the entrances to their secret shelters -some of which were still being discovered today- with expertly-crafted puzzles was evidently on display inside their burial Cairns, including iconography that remained unknown elsewhere. Had members of the Lunar ranks proper- possibly even close retainers of Nightmare Moon herself- actually survived the Battle of Everfree? Towards the end of his life Gul had insisted that they had, and some of his later writings even described a covert trip to Equestria to ‘pay respects’ to the Lunars. Due to what seemed to be errors in his descriptions of the Cairns and claims of having gotten inside of them by reciting some form of poem the general academic consensus had been that the old bird had taken leave of his memory by that point. But now, his accounts had been in some ways corroborated.
As her small party crossed from the forest into the orchards of Sweet Apple Acres proper Twilight’s thoughts turned again to the star map. She wondered how accurate it was, and if using it as a secondary point of reference against the stars as they were now would allow her to bypass some of the instrument imprecision that had so far frustrated her attempts to model Nightmare Moon’s entry. Without knowing anything about the verbal, somatic, material, or environmental components of the spell Nightmare Moon was casting there wasn’t much she could do to understand its function, but while not quite as useful as a precise arrival time itself the end-configuration of the summoning stars would be useful. Knowing where the stars were now and having an upper bound on their velocity based on their lack of detectable motion, a time was that much closer to being known for sure. The map was obviously spread across multiple Cairns, however, and some of them would not be accessible without expensive, dangerous expeditions into the Everfree.
That was another concerning development. The ceiling she’d seen corresponded pretty much exactly to a rectilinear projection of a five-degree angular sector stretching from the Moon to the opposite end of the sky- she’d recognized the constellation Canis the Diamond Dog taking up most of it. Unless major sections of the sky were duplicated, that implied a total of only seventy-two Lunar Cairns, far fewer than the accepted estimate of two to three hundred. Even if the Cairns were in general twice the size of the one she’d explored – which Twilight doubted, as the dimensions of their construction seemed of strong ritualistic significance, and in any case that would give each an even larger portion of the sky – that still meant only about five thousand Lunars in total were interred. That was out of a force estimated by farmers’ sales records and similar documents to have numbered closer to ten or fifteen thousand, a staggering casualty rate by any reasonable modern standard but low compared to other known battles where entire Rebel brigades had fought to the death. Why didn’t they do so at Everfree, and what exactly happened to the ones who weren’t buried?
(♫)
By the time they were back in sight of the farmhouse she had settled on a plan. As she rooted around in her saddlebags for her companions’ pay, she asked “By the way, I’d like to get a few aerial sketches of the ruins made to compare back against my institution’s records. Could either of you by any chance point me to the weather captain, or somepony else who might be able to take charts?” She didn’t actually know if Ponyville had a commissioned professional weather team or just some variety of volunteer arrangement, but figured the townsponies would be flattered by her assuming that they did.
“Oh.” Fluttershy half-raised a hoof. “I’m sure Rainbow Dash would be happy to help you. She’s the chief weathermare and she spends a lot of time down on Sweet Apple Acres.”
“Wait, I thought Derpy Hooves was the chief weathermare,” Spike rasped as he handed over two small stacks of bits, “What was she doing at the Celebration meeting, then?” Much like worship of the Unconquered Sun held particular prominence in the higher levels of the Equestrian military and government, the weather services and the Four Winds’ religion heavily overlapped. Although there was no official requirement for it, the positions of weather captain and regina sacorum were generally considered synonymous.
“Well…” Applejack rolled her eyes, “Rainbow used to lead ‘em back after she first came here from Cloudsdale, but the pegasi ‘round here got tired a’ her whole “logistical grace” schtick quicker than honeybees in a cauliflower patch, so Sparkler, Honey Rays, an’ White Lightnin’ sat her down and talked her inta’ steppin’ aside. Derpy’s got a good head on her shoulders, lotta’ the town looks up to ‘er, and she was lookin’ for somethin’ else to keep herself useful at ‘sides flyin’ packages all day, so they all figured she was the logical choice. Poor mare… ain’t fit for weather work on account a’ ‘er condition an’ all, though, so it’s still Rainbow you’ll want for maps an’ the like. Bet she’s still out ‘round the farm at this hour… just look for the tree with the lazy rainbow tail hangin’ from it!”
“Wait, that bum we saw on the way in was the chief weathermare?” Twilight asked, incredulous.
Applejack and Fluttershy both chuckled. “Yeah, that sounds ‘bout right,” the former answered. “She dun’ like to move much after ‘bout four in the afternoon, so I reckon she’s still wherever y’all left ‘er. Prob’ly shouldn’t call ‘er a bum to ‘er face, though… I mean, not to imply she ain’t a bum, of course, just that you prob’ly shouldn’t mention it.” She shook her head, but her green eyes still warmed with affection.
“Uhhh… thanks for the tip?” Twilight and Spike both turned to leave.
“Hey, if’n you do run into ‘er do me a favor and tell ‘er Ah still need ‘er to move them rainclouds out over the East Orchard. She’ll know what that means,” the farmer called from behind them.
“I’ll be sure to make a note of it.”
The sun had well and truly set by the time Twilight made it back to the section of orchard from which she had first entered, although the glow over much of the horizon still made it easy enough to see. Exactly as Applejack predicted, the blue outline of a pegasus was still visible through the dense summer foliage.
Spike took the opportunity to scrabble up another tree on the opposite side of the row and disappear from view as Twilight gave the trunk a quick rap with her hoof. “Excuse me?”
“Fine, fine! I’m leaving!” the pegasus above called, and bolted downward with surprising grace for a pony who had a few seconds ago been fast asleep. Without the obscuring foliage she proved to be uniformly sky-blue in coloration save for her loosely-combed mane and tail, which were split into such vibrant and perfectly-delineated rainbow bands that Twilight wondered idly if they were entirely natural in origin. She was a good bit taller than Twilight, with the lean and sleekly muscular build of a professional flier, and her striking, pinkish-purple eyes tracked suspiciously over the treeline before settling on the young scholar. “Wait… you’re not Applejack…” Her voice was odd, simultaneously scratchy and fillyish, giving the impression of a teenager who spent most of her nights screaming along to those horrible My Mystical Romance records that had swept through Canterlot a few years back; although Twilight recognized the condition as equally common among high-altitude fliers and airship crews who spent more time than was entirely healthy sucking down cold, dry, low-pressure air.
Twilight stood her ground. “Let me guess, you’re Rainbow Dash?”
“The one and only…” Her ears flicked forward. “Wait, you’ve heard of me?”
“Sort of,” Twilight shrugged, and pulled out Celestia’s much-abused royal writ, “My name’s Twilight Sparkle, I’m a clerk with the Day Court here to make arrangements for the Summer Sun Festival. I was on my way back from Sweet Apple Acres and Applejack told me if I ran into you she needs some clouds moved over to the East Orchard.”
“Huh.” The pegasus turned and began to walk away, stretching her wings in preparation to take flight. “I’ll get to it after the Celebration, don’t worry.”
“I got the impression it was… urgent?”
“Don’t worry, Applejack takes everything that seriously.” She jumped off the ground and pulled into a hover, “I gotta get back home, come find me at the Celebration and I’ll get you a good seat at my aerobatics show!”
Twilight scowled. She supposed she did owe Applejack and Fluttershy for trying to con them into accessing the Cairn, and dealing with the recalcitrant pegasus would probably be considered a favor. Dash was clearly not a Canterlot fop in the same sense as Jet-Set or Blueblood and would probably take offense at being compared to either, but Twilight recognized the similarities just the same. “Well, if it’s too hard for a small-town weathermare like you,” she turned as if to leave, “I suppose I could have some pegasi from the Royal security detail handle it… they could move a cloudbank in ten seconds flat.”
Rainbow Dash blew past her before Twilight even had a chance to register her approach, climbing skyward at a military-precise thirty-degree angle and executing a neat trio of rapid barrel-rolls for no apparent reason other than that she could. She dove through a section of cloud near the edge of the property and slashed off a particularly thick section with imaginary wingblades, looped overhead in what Twilight recognized as a standard Equestrian Army thundercloud-delivery maneuver and deposited her cargo over what was presumably the Easternmost section of the orchard, finally streaking back to land scarcely out of breath directly in front of Twilight. By the scholar’s estimate, the entire process had indeed taken a little under nine seconds.
“That was… actually pretty impressive!” Twilight reached back into her saddlebags and extracted her pouch of bits. “Hey, if you’ve got the time, I’d be interested in making use of your skills for… I guess you could call it a personal project.”
“I’m listening.” The pegasus reached up a hoof and a-little-too-casually adjusted the black leather strap of her flight googles. Twilight recognized the model as a top-tier replica of the Wizard’s Peak Obsidian goggles worn by the most elite Royal Guard and Wonderbolts combat fliers. Those were typically collectors’ items not meant for routine use, although judging by the faint green glow leaking out from around her eye sockets Dash had had an aftermarket night-vision enchantment none-too-precisely installed. In anything resembling the actual combat situations the real Obsidians were designed for that glow would be a major liability, and Twilight wondered why Dash hadn’t just secured one of the many brands of hunter’s and surveyor’s goggles available on the civilian market that were ensorcelled more properly.
“You know those ruins around here, the Lunar Cairns?”
“Yeah… you know,” Dash’s eyes narrowed behind the green fog of her goggles, “They say that when old Idle Rich busted one open, the bodies inside it were still as fresh as the day they were buried…”
“That’s… interesting.” And necrologically dubious, Twilight amended mentally. She could hardly blame Applejack for failing to mention every stupid filly’s story the locals had cooked up, particularly such an implausible one. Necromantic preservation spells did technically exist during the late First Century, but had yet to make it beyond the laboratories of a few specialist wizards and in any case would have required an immense amount of power to sustain over so long. “I’m not actually looking at what’s inside the Cairns right now, though. I just noticed some discrepancies relating to their locations in the official registries we have in Canterlot, so I’d really appreciate it if you could map them out firsthoof. There should be a total of seventy-two, but that’s one of the things I’m trying to double-check.”
“Nuh-uh. Nopony’s supposed to fly over the Everfree forest after dark.”
“What’s the matter, are you scared-”
“I’m not scared, I just…” Rainbow suddenly dipped her head and pawed nervously at the dirt. “I don’t wanna have the rest of the weather team out looking for me or following me into something they can’t handle.” From anypony else it would have sounded defensive, but Twilight thought she picked up genuine concern in the pegasus’s expression.
“Look, I never said you have to do it at night,” Twilight amended, “I just need it done sometime before I leave Ponyville after the Celebration. You can take care of it when the sun’s back up.”
The pegasus hovered for a moment, eyes tracking back and forth between Twilight and a spot on the eastern horizon.
“Please, I’ll make it worth your while, I just really don’t want to go back to Cel- well, my superiors empty-hoofed.”
“You can count on me!” Dash pulled off a sloppy salute and was gone a moment later.
With nary a sound Spike descended from the tree where he’d been concealed. “Well that was… interesting.”
Pinkie Pie was waiting for them on the road outside Sweet Apple Acres, that slightly alarming grin still plastered across her muzzle. “Oh, hey Twilight!” she called as she trotted over- skipped, really. “The big meeting just ended and Rarity said you went up to the farm to check on the Apples!” Her blue eyes narrowed suspiciously, “You were in the bathroom a really long time!”
“Oh! Uh… yeah, I remembered I had some other errands to run around town. I… didn’t want to annoy anypony by running in and out,” Twilight finished lamely. Starswirl’s bells, the damn thing really did take all day.
Pinkie turned away from her and headed back towards the center of town. After a moment’s hesitation, Twilight and her assistant followed. “Hey, thanks for covering for me at the meeting, by the way. This whole festival’s been just a massive headache for me… in more ways than one.”
“Don’t worry about it, planning parties is kind of what I do. And the Summer Sun Celebration’s just a really big party where some of the guests can charge you with treason!”
Warm yellow lights were flickering into being in windows around them. Ponyville, Twilight realized, had no street lights, and the sky above presented a truly mind-boggling collection of stars. She thought of a vaulted ceiling of heavy black stone, and shivered despite the warm weather. “So, Pinkie, you’re… what, the Mayor’s executive assistant? Ombudsmare?” she asked, anxious to dispel the sudden gloom building up in her thoughts.
“Oh, heavens no! I’m apprenticed to be a baker!”
Twilight was finding it increasingly difficult to determine when the pink earth pony was being serious. Probably never. Potentially always. She wasn’t sure which possibility was more alarming. “You know, that actually explains a lot about the condition of this town.”
“Hey, baking’s as much an art as a science, you know! I still don’t know how I’m going to make Celestia a ‘Yeah-sure-OK’ cake like you told my boss about. I tried baking a few that were adequate in every way but also completely uninspired, but those were kind of hard to chew and I also thought a yeah-sure-OK cake should be more accommodating, so now I don’t know what I’ll do…” She gave Twilight another sidelong look, “You know, a lesser pony might think you weren’t paying attention when those ponies in the square wanted your help with things…”
“Uh.”
“Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ve been awful busy!”
“So, tell me,” Spike asked, “Is it customary for visitors to Sweet Apple Acres to be greeted with a kick to the head?”
“Only during cider season!” The inner part of town had emptied out significantly since Twilight had been mobbed that morning, but there were still a fair number of ponies out and about, covering the distant noise of crickets and night-flying birds with laughter and faint snatches of music. It wasn’t dissimilar to what she heard from the windows of her tower in Canterlot Castle overlooking the Academy gardens, and for the first time since coming to Ponyville Twilight felt herself beginning to relax. It helped that there was something profoundly disarming about Pinkie Pie; her constant, low-grade absurdity helped put a pony’s concerns into perspective. She caught the scent of herb-roasted oats issuing from an open-air cafe and was immediately and sharply reminded that her Lunar explorations had left no time to break for lunch. She considered stopping to grab a quick bite but decided that might unreasonably inconvenience her host and guide. Better to just grin and bear it until she was set up with accommodations.
“So… Pinkie Pie…” Spike continued, “What’s the deal with Rainbow Dash?”
“What isn’t the deal with Rainbow Dash? If you think she’s crazy now, you should’ve seen her when she first came here from Cloudsdale and tried to run the whole town like a flight school. When it comes to being entitled and pushy your friend Twilight’s not even in the top ten.”
Twilight and Spike both chuckled before the unicorn worked fully through what she had heard. “Wait…”
A rebuke died in her throat as she realized they had come to a stop at the large tree she’d initially assumed to be part of a small park off of the square- it was, in fact, hollowed out to serve as a decent-sized building. That style of construction had originally been an export from ancient Zebrica long before the nation had voluntarily cut itself off from the rest of the known world; carving rooms out of a tree without killing it was a fiddly, complicated affair typically performed only at great expense to create something more a work of art than a structure. The idea of such an artifact being commissioned in Ponyville of all places baffled Twilight, but what gave her greater pause was the sign beside the front door.
“Pinkie?” Spike asked, “How’d you know to put Twilight in the library?”
“Wellllll… all the inns around here are full with ponies coming in for the Celebration, and the big hotel’s still under construction… but if you don’t like it I’m sure Rarity’d let you stay in her shop overnight, you’re into all that gothy Lunar stuff, right?”
“’Gothy’? ‘Gothy’??” Spike fought to twist his features into an overemphasized parody of outrage, but couldn’t keep his grin from breaking through.
Twilight contemplated the idea of spending a night with that suit of half-assembled Lunar armor looming over her, and shuddered. “No, the library’s… the library’s fine, thanks!”
“Why, it’s not like Rarity’s mannequins’ll get possessed by the souls of murdered fillies and rise up and stalk ponies in the dead of the night, stuffing their victims in their cold, rusty innards! Well, not anymore, at least…”
“Why would the souls of murdered fillies possess mannequins?”
“You’re right, that doesn’t seem to make very much sense.”
Twilight fished back into her saddlebags and telekinetically extracted a quill and some sturdy parchment. “Hey, Pinkie, out of all the ponies in this town you're probably the one I've found to be closest to actually coherent.”
“Oh, wow, good one, Twilight!”
“Can… can you do me a favor?” She scribbled a quick note to the Interior Ministry in Canterlot asking for any information on ponies named Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Applejack, or Rainbow Dash, and then signed it with a small ink stamp of her cutie mark. Dusty Pages, the mare in charge of the Records Division, was an avid collector of rare manuscripts and owed much of her library to Twilight’s research. She’d make sure Twilight’s request was fast-tracked through the typical three-day approval process; it wasn’t like she was asking for anything confidential. “Run this down to the post office for me.” She transferred the letter and a few bits for postage to Pinkie’s waiting hoof and stepped through the library doors.