Two unicorns and a dragon working in tandem proved to make short work of the cluttered closet. Its contents had consisted of scrapbooks of old newspaper clippings, trophies for various academic events, and other various odds and ends that may have had some sentimental value to somepony at one time. Twilight recalled that the previous librarian had passed away not long before she had moved in, and because she didn't have many personal belongings in the first place, she hadn't ever really needed the space. And so, because he had no next of kin or any other known family, many of his old belongings simply sat there gathering dust. It was all just as Spike declared it: junk. Rarity, of course, had objected to Spike's terminology. As she put it, the stuff had been valuable enough to somepony at some point that they wanted to keep it, so it should be treated with respect.
At Rarity's insistence, they salvaged what few things might still be useful to other ponies - mostly just a few quilts - and boxed it up to be taken to a homeless shelter in Canterlot. They put the rest of the stuff in a large cart and recruited Big Macintosh to haul the cart off to the nearest dump. Rarity was aghast, but couldn't come up with anything better to be done with it, since it truly was junk. Only two items were kept. One was a large mirror that sat against the back of the closet. Rarity had declared her love for it, claiming it would be perfectly suited to her fitting room, so they left it there, as it took very little space for the time being.
The remaining object fascinated Twilight. It was a black sphere that had resisted any attempts to lift it telekinetically, which was the only reason she hadn't simply tossed it aside as more trash. She had studied the curious item for two days, poring through her collection of books about magical artifacts, seeking any insight to the item's nature, but nothing surfaced. Books on artifacts exhausted, she was just settling in to try some experiments when a sharp knocking on the door distracted her.
She jerked her head up and stared toward the door for a brief moment. As the library was currently open and the door unlocked, she found herself pondering if she should call them in or answer the door in person. She rapidly lost the battle to polite societal norms and trotted over to the door, grasping the handle with her magic. The door swung open and Twilight poked her head out curiously. At the door was a familiar gray pegasus mare with a pale yellow mane and a cutie mark consisting of several bubbles. The mare was smiling, her left eye focused on Twilight, and the other pointed somewhere above. Hitched to the mare was a cart about twice the width of a pony and two and a half times as long, stacked nearly twice Twilight's height with boxes bearing the Strings and Things emblem. Twilight put her hoof to her face and sighed. The delivery was nearly three times what she expected.
"Hello there, Ditzy," said Twilight, putting her hoof back down. "Judging from the boxes you're hauling today, I'm guessing Rarity directed you my way?" It wasn't really a guess. Twilight eyed the boxes with mild annoyance.
"I'm sorry, Princess Twilight Sparkle." Twilight grimaced. She hated people using her full title, as she preferred to see everyone as equals. To Twilight, the only true Princesses were Celestia and Luna. Ditzy continued, "I just always try to follow instructions as best I can. Do ...", the mare stopped briefly as she noticed Twilight's expression. "Do you want me to return them to Canterlot? You don't seem too happy about this..." Ditzy's voice trailed off as her head drooped. This had the slightly unsettling effect of having the right eye originally pointed toward the ceiling come down to focus on Twilight instead, as the left eye that had been focused on her seemed to be now studying the floor. Twilight was used to dealing with this eccentricity by now, but it still caused her some discomfort. Ditzy pawed at the ground with her hoof, nervously.
Twilight smiled. "Please, just call me Twilight. And no, you don't need to return to Canterlot, it will be fine to drop Rarity's ... uh, cargo ... here." She paused, levitating a quill over. "Do I need to sign for this?"
Ditzy shook her head and looked up again. Her right eye followed and her left eye again returned to gaze at Twilight. "Nope, not this time!" Ditzy seemed to cheer up suddenly, and bounded happily through the door, rocking the cart and its contents as she went. "Umm ... Where do you want me to put it all at? I have to keep the cart. You just get the boxes. I can't let you have that cart, or my boss will be angry with me. So just boxes." She paused, and then intoned in deadpan. "There's a lot of boxes."
Twilight glanced around the library. The storage closet was on the second floor, and there really wasn't much in the way of room for that volume of fabric to sit on the first floor even as a temporary measure. Twilight also didn't trust Ditzy to fly it up to the second floor with the entire load in tow. Thinking for a moment, she grasped several boxes with her telekinesis. "I will handle it, thanks." Twilight smiled at Ditzy as she floated the boxes, several at a time, up the stairs and into the storage closet. "And that's that. Anyway, I would love for you to stay and chat, but I'm really busy researching something right now, and I would like to get back to it. I'm also quite certain you have more work to get done, right? Is there anything else I can do for you before you go?"
Ditzy cast her gazes about the library and nodded sagely, as if she had found some deep insight into the way the world works just from the way the books were shelved. "No, Princess. That will be all." And with that declaration, she took flight and bolted out the door. The cart, still hitched to her, caught in the doorway. With a loud cracking sound, the harness pulled tight, slamming Ditzy into the ground just outside the library. Twilight winced.
"Are you okay?" she called, walking to the fallen mare. Ditzy shook her head a few times and pulled herself slowly to her hooves. Twilight stepped closer to her and rested a wing across her shoulders. "Does it hurt?"
Her legs wobbling slightly, Ditzy looked to Twilight. Both of her eyes briefly focused together on Twilight before one drifted away again, and in that moment, Twilight could see that tears were forming in them. Her chin was badly scraped from the impact against the hard-packed dirt outside. Ditzy sniffled once, and then stood up straight. "No, I ... I think I'm okay. I'm kinda used to this sort of thing." She craned her head back, readjusting her harness and checking to make sure it was secure and unbroken before limping over to the cart to check its condition. Twilight immediately noticed her limp.
"Your leg is hurt, isn't it?" Twilight knelt down to examine Ditzy's leg. "Are you sure you're going to be okay?"
Ditzy drew herself up straight and thrust her chest out proudly. "I'll be fine. I don't need my legs to fly!"
Twilight shook her head, unable to argue with her, but still concerned. "Okay," she said, hesitantly. "Be careful then ... and fly safe!" Ditzy spread her wings, made sure the cart was clear of the doorway this time, and took flight once again. As soon as Ditzy had disappeared from sight, Twilight shook her head again. "That's why ponies call you Derpy, you know," she spoke quietly to herself. Turning around, she retreated back into the library and returned to the strange orb. There was still plenty of research to be done, after all.
The remainder of Twilight's evening was consumed experimenting with the orb. In addition to resisting attempts to lift it, Twilight discovered that it would also absorb any spell she cast on it, glowing softly for a moment before fading back to it's usual black color. She also discovered that it absorbed the energy of other magical objects it came into contact with. Some of them would stop working permanently. Others would work again after a few minutes away from the ball. Between experiments, she would review her books on artifacts again, trying to find any related behaviors.
It was nearly nightfall when Twilight found an entry that finally lined up with what she was observing. Deep in a book of ancient magical artifacts, in what seemed more like a footnote than a proper entry, Twilight found a description of an object called a 'mana battery' that had properties that matched the orb's description. According to the book, a mana battery could store residual magical energy, which later could be used to amplify a spell or power a magical device. Unfortunately, to Twilight's frustration, the book hadn't gone into any detail whatsoever on how to release the energy in a mana battery. She resolved to go to Canterlot to check out the Canterlot Archives, and perhaps she would also ask Princess Celestia.
<><><><><>
Several days had passed. The strange stone excavated from the tunnel was certainly unlike anything Rebecca had seen prior, and she had already done a fair amount of work attempting to ascertain the stone's properties. Her first course of action was going to be figuring out the strange glow that occurred when striking one of the stones. Very early on, she learned that her co-workers hadn't been joking about kinetic force. She could hammer extremely hard on the stone and it would absorb nearly all of the kinetic energy. Nothing beneath the stone would appear to feel the impact at all; she could set it on her knee and hammer at it without any worries. And no matter how hard she swung, the impact wouldn't vibrate through the hammer to hurt or numb her hand, though it did nothing for preventing her arm from tiring out after a time.
Armed with this knowledge, she began hammering on pretty much every piece they had managed to chip off the walls, taking notes on the reactions each had. While all of them would glow slightly, if briefly, at the point of impact, her experiment lead to the discovery that some of them, when struck enough times in rapid succession, would begin to glow softly with a pulsing, purple light that would fade off over the span of several hours. One of the labs was set aside for Rebecca to work on this phenomenon. She set up a steel folding table, and sorted the stones out by size and shape. With a bit of experimentation, she determined that repeated strikes would eventually stop making the stone glow more brightly, and size and shape affected how quickly and how brightly each would glow.
Today, she was chiseling on the largest piece they had managed to break off of the wall. She had already beaten it with a hammer for over an hour, having pounded on it until it no longer appeared to get any brighter. Now, she was trying to see if she could increase the peak luminosity by manually reshaping the piece. The piece itself was slightly smaller than a basketball, and it was getting closer to a perfect sphere in shape. She'd done some work sculpting stone before, so she understood the general principles well enough, but making a perfect sphere was not the easiest of tasks. As she was finishing up, Sarah walked into the room.
"Becky, I was just about to make some lunch. Would you like anything?"
Rebecca looked up, satisfied with the current shape of the orb. "Uh, sure. A ham sandwich would be nice, I suppose."
Sarah nodded and left the room. Rebecca turned her attention again to the spherical object in front of her. She set down the chisel, and began tapping it with her hammer. Almost immediately, the glowing orb became noticeably brighter. So far, so good. Getting a firm grip on the hammer, Rebecca began slamming it into the orb repeatedly. As she pounded away, putting all of her might into her onslaught, she was reminded of how strange it was that she could hit something so hard with a hammer and not feel a jarring pain in her arm, but she continued to savage the orb. After a time, she decided that, once again, it wasn't getting any brighter.
In retrospect, she realized, this was probably a good thing. This orb was glowing brilliantly, and the color was no longer purple, but a blazing white, far brighter than any of the other pieces she had worked on. It was almost bright enough to be painful to look at. Rebecca grabbed a notepad and started scribbling some notes down. Wondering if it was warm to the touch, she reached out to the orb.
CRACK!
Before her hand even touched the orb, her hand recoiled violently with the shock. It startled Rebecca, and she withdrew her hand entirely, a slight tingle in her finger. "A static shock?" Rebecca asked out loud, to no one in particular.
"That was a shock? Really? I heard that in the hallway!" Sarah had returned with sandwiches. "I've never heard a shock quite that loud. Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, I think. It just startled me, that's all." Rebecca touched the metal table she was working on to make sure she had been fully discharged. "I don't know why that happened though. Not to make a pun out of our situation, but we're well-grounded in this place." She turned to Sarah. "Has that happened to anyone else before?"
"Not that I've heard of, but I'm not here to do the research, remember?"
Rebecca looked back at her most recent subject of abuse and shrugged. "Well, hopefully that will only happen once. It didn't really hurt, just a bit of a scare." She eyed the sandwiches Sarah brought. "I'm getting pretty hungry though. Thanks for grabbing me some food."
As both women sat and ate their lunch, the conversation eventually switched to their hobbies. Rebecca was surprised to learn that Sarah was a musician. "What do you play?" she inquired.
Sarah leaned against the wall, staring at the ceiling. "Let me think." She began visibly counting on her fingers as she listed instruments. "Flute, clarinet, oboe, saxophone, violin, viola, guitar, piano, french horn ... I'm forgetting something ... oh yes, bassoon. I write my own music, too."
Rebecca stared, uncertain how to respond. After a moment, she blurted out, "I can play the triangle." She immediately realized how stupid she sounded, and her cheeks flushed crimson. Bursting into laughter, Sarah slid down the wall and sat on the floor.
When her laughter finally subsided, she looked to Rebecca again. "So yeah, I'm a musician, I guess. What about you? What do you do in your spare time?"
A frown crossed Rebecca's face briefly. "I do some spelunking once in a while, when I have the spare time. In some ways, I guess you could say that it makes this place feel kinda like home."
"That sounds like a lot of fun. Is that what got you into studying rocks?"
Rebecca smiled as she recalled her childhood adventures. "Yeah. My father and I used to go together all the time before he passed. My first trip was when I was 9, and we ran across a geode during one of our trips. I became absolutely fascinated with rocks after that Unfortunately, I just haven't had the time to do much spelunking recently. This is the first time I've been inside a cave in three years."
"So, what have you been doing with your spare time since then?"
"Well, I know some people consider it to be a sign of a simple mind, but I really enjoy just watching television. I absolutely love a good soap, and game shows are as addictive as any drug. Right now, I'm really looking forward to the next season of that new crime drama, The Judgement. How about you, do you follow any shows regularly?"
This time, it was Sarah's turn to frown. "I don't really know any good shows. My parents never had a television when I was growing up, so I guess I just never really learned to like it. I mean, I barely ever touch a television, especially now that we're down here. We can't even get ancient public broadcasting stations on the surface here, much less here underground. And to be honest, now that I'm an adult, I just don't see the appeal."
Rebecca pondered Sarah's answer for a bit. "I suppose it isn't for everyone. So, what about you? What do you do when you're not making music? I can't imagine that's all you do."
Sarah's smile returned. "I also love spending time with animals. My mom worked at a petting zoo when I was a kid, and I really grew attached to all the different kinds of animals out there. My favorite part was when my mom would let me ride the horses, even though all I could really do was go in a circle on them, real slow. Now that I'm an adult, I actually own a horse, and I occasionally go riding when I have the time. Her name is Gemini."
"Oh," Rebecca responded, sedately. Sarah raised an eyebrow. "I, uh ... I don't much care for animals. I'm allergic to cats, and I was bitten by a dog when I was little, which left me terrified of dogs for the longest time. I guess pets have never really appealed to me. I also don't really get the infatuation that so many women have with horses. I guess animals just aren't my thing." Rebecca stuffed the last of her sandwich into her mouth, and turned in her seat to look back at the stone. She shielded her eyes for a moment, caught off-guard because of its brilliance. "Whoa."
"You know, if you don't stop hammering on that rock, it'll be brighter than you are," Sarah teased.
Rebecca snorted. "I'm not sure if I should be insulted or flattered."
Sarah frowned. "No, I'm serious. You're smart. I'm only here to do menial chores, clean up the place, and keep an eye on the front door for when Lance gets back. Sure, technically I'm supposed to be handling communications, but it's truthfully a pretty simple job; I have almost no formal training. I know that what you're doing looks pretty simple ... I mean, how hard can it be to hit rocks with a hammer? But what you're doing is actually so much more than just swinging tools around. I wish I had the even half the intellect to follow along with the sorts of things that must go on in your mind."
"Don't beat yourself up so much. You have plenty of talent." Rebecca stood up. "Playing ten different instruments and writing your own music? That's not something I could do, even if my life depended on it. I also can't cook for beans, while you make amazing food. I've been impressed with pretty much everything you've cooked since I arrived in this place. I don't know how I'm going to survive eventually going home and having to suffer with my own cooking again. Or even fast food." She paused. "And here I am, wasting your talents on a ham sandwich. Sorry about that." Rebecca turned around again. "Meanwhile, I sit here and do exactly what you said. I hit rocks." She rested her hand on the orb.
CRACK!
Her entire body rocked as if she'd been struck with an intense electric shock, causing her to convulse repeatedly. Her vision went white. When she could see again, she found herself lying sprawled out on the ground and she could feel that the entire cavern was shaking. Sarah's screaming pierced through the horrific rumbling noise around her. As her vision cleared, she could clearly see arcs of electric current forking through the air, connecting each and every stone she had hammered on over the past weeks, and the stone she had just touched was also arcing to her hand. She tried to lift her arm, to see if she could interrupt the strange current, but her entire body was completely numb and unresponsive.
Rebecca realized that Sarah had also fallen to the ground, and though she couldn't turn her head, she able to see the doorway from where she was at. She watched as Sarah crawled into her field of vision, heading toward the door. Then, grasping for the doorknob, she pulled herself up, opened the door, and unsteadily fled down the hallway, screaming. As Sarah fled, Rebecca heard shuffling and tumbling followed by loud bone-shattering sound echoing back down the hall. More screaming. Rebecca tried to will herself to follow Sarah and make sure she would be okay, but her body still wouldn't respond, and her vision slowly faded to black.
<><><><><>
As Twilight approached Ponyville, she noticed the clouds below her taking on a dark gray shade and the wind was beginning to whip about unpleasantly. The pegasi had apparently let the weather get out of control, as Twilight could see several of the winged ponies zipping around trying to corral the uncooperative storm front. It was clear that down below the clouds it would be raining hard. Twilight sighed, and began her slow descent, knowing she needed to be under the clouds just to make out where she was going to be landing.
Below the clouds, the rain was coming down in sheets; a rain far heavier than any other Twilight could recall in recent memory. She noted with disdain that she wasn't as close to Golden Oaks Library as she had hoped, but she was close enough that there would be no point in going above the clouds again, so she continued to fly under the clouds. The wind whipped at her wings, making it difficult for her to fly well, and soon after, Twilight found herself being weighed down by the rain soaking into her coat, mane, and tail. Even though she could fly, she couldn't fly like a real pegasus. The strength and stamina of a mare who spends her entire life exercising her wings simply dwarfed that of someone who had only had wings for a short time, so she opted for her more familiar mode of transport, dropping down to earth gently and trotting along the muddy ground instead. Twilight chose to look at the positive side of the situation: she could relax her wings after such a long flight.
As she trotted along, she passed by Sugarcube Corner and noticed the sign on the door read 'Closed', and all the window shutters were secured. Curious, she stopped and rapped on the door with a hoof. Off to her left, the shutter was pushed open. Carrot Cake stuck his head out the window and looked toward the door Twilight was standing in front of, shouting over the din of heavy rain. "I'm sorry, Princess, but we're closed, and Pinkie is out at her family's farm throwing a surprise party for her sister's birthday. Can I help you?"
Twilight perked an eyebrow, unaware that Pinkie was visiting family. "No, that's alright. I was just wondering why you guys are closed up early tonight."
Carrot looked out into the pouring rain as he responded, making it difficult for Twilight to hear him. "All this rain started some floods down-river. Riverlight was forced to abandon the generator down there about an hour ago, so there's no power in the entire town right now. If you really need power, you'll have to talk to her and see if the two of you can make the generator safe again." Twilight wasn't terribly concerned with the lack of power, since anything she needed she could simply emulate with a spell. Carrot turned back to face her, his voice clearer again. "I hope the pegasi can get this under control soon. The whole house is candle-lit now, and Cup is struggling to keep the twins calm with all the thunder overhead." Then, realizing that Twilight was standing there soaked to the bone, he quickly added, "but if you would like to get out of the rain, you're welcome to come inside!"
She smiled at him and shook her head. "No, thank you. I do appreciate the offer, but I have things I need to get done tonight, so I should be getting back to the library. And I'm concerned about Spike." She nodded politely to Carrot Cake, and turned to leave.
Behind her, she heard, "Okay. Travel safe!", followed by the sound of a window shutter being closed.
Twilight stepped back into the street. It was only then that she realized she was the only one outdoors in the pouring rain. She had been so preoccupied with getting home to test out what she had learned at the Royal Archive that she had been oblivious to her surroundings. All of the houses around her were just like Sugarcube Corner: windows either dark or shuttered, and doors closed tight. No sign of ponies anywhere except the occasional weather pegasus overhead. The normally busy town square was muddy and deserted. Twilight found the effect wholly depressing.
She resumed walking. As she walked, she thought about what she learned in Canterlot. According to the books she had found there, mana batteries glowed brightly while charging or charged. The orb she had in the library hadn't been glowing, despite absorbing several spells she had directed at it. Some things just didn't match up. Twilight found herself getting frustrated that the Archive wouldn't let her take any of the books home with her. She had even used the 'But I'm a Princess' approach - something she loathed doing - to no effect. She would have to go back later to finish her research.
It didn't take long before the library came into view, the branches of the great tree whipping around violently in the wind. Twilight breathed a sigh of relief seeing that none of them had snapped off under the stress. She pushed open the door, stepped inside and quickly closed it behind her. Once the door was secured, she fluffed her wings sharply and shook her whole body in an attempt to evict the water that had taken up residence all over her.
Twilight stood still and allowed her eyes to finish adjusting to the dim interior as a few last drops fell to the ground. The library was completely dark, save for a soft purple glow emanating from somewhere upstairs. "Spike?" she called up the stairs. No answer. Was he out? Why was there a light if there was no power? Curious, she created a magical light with her horn and started up the stairs. When she reached the second floor, she could see the light was coming from the door to the storage closet they had put Rarity's fabrics in. Had Rarity special-ordered enchanted fabrics that glowed? Twilight briefly pondered the implications of wearing glowing clothing. She couldn't imagine Rarity, of all ponies, utilizing such a garish design decision.
Peering into the closet, she noticed that the light was reflecting clearly off of the old mirror, and was not coming from any of the boxes, but instead from somewhere behind them. There was little room to maneuver in the closet, so Twilight worked her way to the back slowly, moving the boxes out of the way one at a time, lifting them over her head with her magic and setting them in a stack just outside the door, blocking the doorway. When she was finally had moved enough of the boxes to be able to see to the far back of the closet, she discovered the light was coming from a small stone; about the size of a marble. It had fallen into a crack in the wooden floor, and it glowed with a ferocious intensity; a shade of purple that reminded Twilight of her own magic. She picked it up with her telekinesis.
The mirror reflected the light from the trinket and Twilight got a good look at herself. Her mane was still wet, hanging down off her neck in a most unflattering way. Her tail was limp and lifeless. The color of the glow accentuated her own color in the mirror, making her look almost ghostly against the dim wall on the other side of the closet. Twilight found the overall effect hauntingly beautiful in its own way. She brought the stone down in front of her face.
Examining it so close proved to be more difficult than she had anticipated, as it was bright enough that trying to look closely at it hurt her eyes. Deciding to take it downstairs with her, Twilight turned to the door, but ran snout-first into a wall of boxes. She had barricaded herself in. Still holding on to the glowing marble with her magic, she reached out to lift one of the boxes in front of her also. As she grabbed the top-most box, a sudden shock struck her horn. Twilight had suffered from magical feedback before, but this was an intensity that was unprecedented. Feedback was normally uncomfortable at worst, but this was one of the most intense pains she had ever felt in her life.
Her concentration broke as she dropped the glowing marble to the floor. Striking the wood, it started humming with a low alien sound that Twilight had never heard before. Gripped with pain and fear, Twilight decided she needed to get away from whatever this thing was, and she needed to leave fast. She looked to the door. The boxes were still blocking her exit. She focused, trying to visualize the room on the other side of the boxes.
As she had learned in Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, the first step to teleportation was to visualize where you wanted to go. Teleporting somewhere in line of sight was trivially simple, as you could see the place, but teleporting anywhere else required a bit of concentration, and an intimate memory of the place you wanted to go helped considerably. Fortunately, her mental image of the room beyond was nearly perfect.
Attempting to channel the energy necessary to teleport nearly caused her to black out from the pain. She collapsed to the ground, and the base of her horn, like Twilight herself, was screaming in agony. The pain was so great that Twilight could do nothing but writhe on the floor as a numb, tingling sensation began to spread through her. A foreboding sense of dread fell over her.
Rising in pitch, the humming noise grew steadily louder. Twilight steeled her mind against the pain as much as she could and forced herself to stand. Magic clearly was out of the question right now. She staggered to the pile of boxes, leaning against them, trying to force them out of the way with the weight of her body. They moved slightly, but then stopped, stuck on something. To her horror, she realized that the closet was in a hallway, and the stack of boxes was pushed up cleanly against the wall across from the door. There was no easy escape. She tried to buck the boxes as hard as she could, hoping they would give way, but she was in too much pain to balance properly; her legs flew out behind her and she slammed to the ground. The pain finally overwhelmed her strong emotional barriers.
"Celestia ... please..." she whispered. Twilight began to cry, sobbing into the floor beneath her, and covering her head with her hooves. Resigning herself to whatever fate she would suffer, she turned to face the strange force that had put her in this predicament. The glowing object was no longer just radiating purple, but was now a brilliant white so bright that Twilight was blinded as soon as she turned her head. The searing pain from the light forced her to shut her eyes tightly.
"... Save me ..." She began to wail as she finished her prayer, though she couldn't hear her own lamentations as the humming was suddenly replaced by a deafening roar. Twilight felt something wash over her, carrying an intense heat that made her feel like she was on fire, intensifying the pain even more. She was also fairly certain she had started screaming, but couldn't hear anything over the sound of the roar. Tears began streaking down her face, dropping to the wooden floor below.
A second cacophony, even louder than the first, erupted from within the small room. Twilight could no longer hear anything, her ears ringing and adding to the painful experience, and even though she had no more air in her lungs to scream with, she found herself unable to inhale so she could scream more. A massive concussive force rocked her as a third wave washed over Twilight, and as it passed, she felt a terrible wrenching sensation, unlike anything she'd felt before. And then she felt nothing at all.