Valey rubbed her eyes, staring at the staircase where Lavender had vanished. Waterfall looked like she wanted to say something, but couldn't bring herself to say it. Everyone on the couches was staring.
"Look," Valey said, "you have to admit stuff getting ruined because someone eloped is just a little funny, right?"
"That's the point." Waterfall shrugged. "And we didn't take it that way, and some of us realized it was a problem if house Laughter couldn't laugh something off. Just so you know, most of the first and second-years think that story is a fairy tale, not a tragedy."
Before Valey could reply, a middle-aged stallion in an over-the-top academic robe stepped out of a doorway. "I say," he said in a science-y voice, "did someone tell a joke without me?"
Valey blinked. "Old dude! Do I know you? What's up?"
"No, but I know you!" He glanced between her and the couch, then waved her over. As Valey and Waterfall approached, he continued, "I'm Doctor Lost World, the head of house Laughter and Kinmari's unfortunately small history department, and owner and proprietor of the largest collection of historical artifacts on the island. But you can call me Doctor Lost if I lose myself on a tangent or forget where I'm going halfway through a walk around campus. Hoho!"
"A pleasure, really," Felicity quickly said, sprawled luxuriously on a couch and looking disappointed the hearth flames were illusory and just for show. "If you're the one responsible for choosing the furnishings in this room, consider yourself owed a debt of gratitude."
Doctor Lost chuckled, patting the cushion he was seated on. "Oh, thanks for that would go to the student council, but I'm glad you approve! To the young, comfort is comfort, but they don't realize how much of a difference it can make for old bones such as ours!"
A single strand on Felicity's mane popped out of place, and her eye imperceptibly twitched. "Old bones, hmm? I'm not that old..."
Maple gingerly tilted her head. "How do you know us?" she asked. "We're just that famous here, I guess?"
"Hoho. No, Sea Star briefed me this afternoon." The doctor shook his head. "It's a great pleasure to meet such exotic creatures in person. I'm greatly looking forward to hearing anything and everything you'd care to impart about your homeland. But first, is there any hospitality you've been lacking? Any way in which I can ease your stay?"
The more he talked, the more Valey noticed a slightly unusual cadence to his rhythms and pronunciations, as if he had spent so much time learning or speaking dead languages it bled into his normal speech. "Uhh, I'd like some fruit, if it's no trouble?" she volunteered, mind elsewhere.
"After how dreadful the last month has been, I'll never say no to more pampering," Felicity complained. "Though I sincerely doubt your well-meaning yet general offer includes things like a hoof massage."
"Oh!" Doctor Lost's cheeks lightened slightly, and he shook his head. "Yes, that might have to be arranged at a... later date. Specklefruit, could you search my office and see if there's any of your namesake laying around? I'm sure I had some uneaten zucchini in my lunch yesterday..."
Valey almost laughed again. At least house Laughter's professor was appropriately absent-minded and silly... "Nah, nah, I'm not that hungry." She urgently waved a hoof for Specklefruit not to go. "Tell us a crazy story about this place, doctor dude."
Doctor Lost fluttered his mustache and scratched at his graying goatee. "Now that's a very broad index to start from..."
Maple smiled and carefully cleared her throat. "If someone could get some water, I'd actually appreciate it."
Specklefruit ducked out with a nod. "Hmm," Doctor Lost mused, still deep in thought. "You ask for a story, but perhaps I could show you my collection and library instead? Any one of the things in there could have a story all of its own, and you'd have a much easier time picking out which ones interest you than I."
"Ehh..." Valey glanced far, far to the side. "What are the odds this artifact collection of yours has stuff that's evil or cursed? Just in case we happened to be avoiding that sort of stuff?"
"One hundred percent!" the doctor laughed, getting to his hooves. "But don't worry. I've been doing this for decades, and I'm still righter than a fresh-baked strawberry pie. Just don't touch anything if you don't know what it is."
Not touching things in Doctor Lost's office turned out to be harder than he had chalked it up to be.
Shelf upon shelf of things filled the walls, surrounding a desk so big and so old it looked like it had been wrought for a different society altogether. Illusory candles kept the tall room feeling cozy and warm, though it also felt even more likely to collapse than Arambai's workshop in Riverfall.
Valey whistled. "Okay, this is a pretty gnarly collection. Not too shabby."
"Oho, these day-to-day office supplies aren't my collection," the doctor chuckled. "This is my collection."
He pulled a giant lever which wasn't intended to be hidden, yet camouflaged perfectly with the room's chaotic, rusty-orange aesthetic. With a grinding of gears and a sifting of dust, two bookshelves rotated and drew to the sides like a complex double-door.
"...Of course you have one of those," Valey muttered, suppressing another grin.
Starlight followed the group inside, her small size giving her a considerable advantage in not stepping on detritus. The room was piled so high, it would take a pegasus to have a hope of reaching the upper areas, and so tightly one couldn't fly anyway without unshelving half the room with their wingspan. Only someone like Shinespark would be able to properly navigate it, though with clever use of crystal platforms she probably could too.
Most of the shelves weren't even sorted, Starlight realized as she followed, her newly-transformed stick carried closely on her back. There were just boxes or even barrels, either unlabeled or categorized in a way she couldn't identify.
"So what even is this stuff?" Valey asked, tapping a barrel Starlight had a feeling wasn't dangerous enough to avoid. "This doesn't even look like it's been opened in a million years."
"That's a blind barrel," Doctor Lost proudly said. "Sometimes, antique shops will get more donations than they can measure or identify, so they box things up and sell them for incredibly little! Then someone else can buy them and do the identification work instead. It might be mostly garbage, but you never know when you could dig up something impossibly rare! These little treasure hunts I bring back from every corner of Equestria whenever I have time to travel."
"Really?" Valey squinted at it. "So what's in this one?"
"I don't know!" the doctor laughed. "I haven't had time to sort that one yet either!"
Valey and Maple gave each other a look.
"Well, you did say you'd have a story about something fascinating in here for us," Felicity remarked, looking vaguely bothered by the dust as she stepped through an aisle of cavernous bookshelves. "How about this one?" She pointed to a crate. "What's in here?"
"Ah, this." Doctor Lost darted over and polished the box lovingly. "Also uncatalogued, but I know what's inside! This is from an estate sale from the family of a mare who fled the north more than seven hundred years ago, much like yourselves! What was her name...? Seraphim, she was called. All sorts of legends about that one, mostly restricted to old writings from a tiny area in northern Equestria, mind you, but still! Some that were obviously false, like how calamity would befall a continent called the Griffon Empire if she ever passed away, but there were others saying she could fly and use magic at the same time!"
Valey blinked hard. "You don't say."
"And this was how long ago?" Maple asked, leaning in.
"Seven hundred and seventy-six years, if my mental math doesn't fail me," Doctor Lost chuckled fondly, wiping a nostalgic tear from his eye. "Ah, what I wouldn't give for a free weekend to sort through this box... but in a most ironic tragedy, I have dozens like it all competing for my time!"
"How many flying unicorns or magical pegasi even are there?" Starlight asked, deciding to let her curiosity get the better of her.
Doctor Lost raised his eyebrows. "Flying unicorns or magical pegasi? That depends on your definition. Certainly there are ponies like Lighthooves..." He huffed. "And those are all very well and good, but what if this is a case like Mi Amore Cadenza?"
"Lighthooves?" Valey squinted, tilting her head. "I feel like I've heard that before..."
Doctor Lost waved a hoof. "Don't think too hard on it. He was some nobody from five years ago. At least, that's what my class has rebuffed every legitimate scientific interest with. Harrumph..."
Felicity opened her mouth to speak, inhaled dust, and broke off coughing. "Who's...?" she gasped. "Who's Mi Amore Cadenza, darling?"
"Oho, the Cadenza papers...!" The professor's excitement returned. "...But no, is that too much of a secret? I couldn't dare spoil one of the most interesting unsolved twists of modern history..."
"Oh, come on!" Valey complained. "Spill it, doctor dude!"
"Alright, alright!" Doctor Lost wheezed. "Since time immemorial, Equestria has been ruled by one alicorn princess and one alone! But seven-odd years ago, a new one appeared. Mi Amore Cadenza, a new goddess... Where it gets mysterious, however, is that there was already a Mi Amore Cadenza long before her! Historical proof of her existence is difficult to find on an almost unheard-of level, but I knew her myself. She was a student here in the first class I ever taught... Could it be possible for ordinary ponies to somehow become alicorns, gaining the magic of all three races at once?"
Starlight instantly decided she wasn't interested. If this Cadenza pony had once been normal and somehow become a goddess, that was far too close for comfort to Glimmer's ominous warnings that anything was possible if she tried hard enough, and how there were heights of the world that should never be reached. She hoped she never accidentally became an alicorn.
"I've done some theorization on what sort of process must have been involved," Doctor Lost's unwelcome voice continued, and Starlight pointedly started trotting away. "Perhaps her body could have been deconstructed and her spirit transferred to a new one by a force of unimaginable power? But the physical resemblance she bore before and after must hint at something far..."
Starlight rounded a corner, and her ears went back at the sight of a giant display case filled with a substance she knew all too well: moon glass.
Of course Doctor Lost had moon glass in his collection. Starlight trotted up to it, having had far too many interactions with the stuff to be afraid of it. It was in a case. If she couldn't touch it, it couldn't hurt her.
But this moon glass was different than any she had seen before. It looked like someone had tried to take the pieces, all shattered splinters of the original meteor, and piece them back together...
Obsidian meteorite chunk, a plaque on the case read. These 23 fragments were all discovered at the same crash site in the base of the Aldenfold north of Sires Hollow. They have been reassembled into a larger section of the original meteor, allowing some details to be visible that are not apparent at a finer granularity. Contributed by Doctor Caballeron.
Starlight looked up again, letting out a sigh at the mention of her original hometown. The positions of the cracks on the meteor where it had originally split were still obvious, but... the grooves that occasionally marked pieces of moon glass she saw naturally, she now realized, weren't natural at all. On one of the cluster's faces, they formed a mural.
It was the Emblem of the Nine Virtues, heavily stylized yet unmistakable. And above it, printed in a faintly-semicircular capital font, was the word, EYLISTA.
Starlight felt her breathing speed up. That was what the door had called her in the metal area, near the end of her time stuck in her own moon glass with Chrysalis. And where this had fallen...
Her instincts didn't leave her brain any longer to follow that train of thought. She lit her horn and teleported far, far away.