//------------------------------// // The Uneventful Day // Story: The Path of Lore and Kings // by PassionQuill //------------------------------// Chapter 1: The Uneventful Day The wind howled and screeched like an Ursa Major in pain, and the rain roared in equal competition as it bombarded the surface of the Canterlot Castle Train Station. A sole guard waited on the platform, quietly observing the endless blanket of pitch black clouds covering the sky. A lightning bolt would occasional strike in the far distance, but it wasn’t of any concern to him. He was focused on one task, greeting a semi-important guest. A wide smile appeared on his face as after having waited for over an hour, the direct train from Las Pegasus came rolling in. The guard quickly ran out from the sheltering overhanging-roof of the platform to stand in front of the train doors, holding up an umbrella as the doors slowly opened. A small mare wearing a long brown hooded cloak emerged from the train as seemingly the only passenger to be on it. “You must be Miss Loré Scroll,” chirped the white pegasus guard clad in golden armor. “My name is Steadfast Honor, but you can just call me Honor. I personally volunteered to greet you and show you to your quarters.” Loré first stood in silence as she listened and observed the guard. She first started moving when he was done talking, not giving him an answer nor any recognition of his existence, she merely went on out of the train and on her way towards the castle. Honor was slightly taken aback by the behavior of Loré, but not enough to cause him to lag behind. “Erhm, you did hear me, right?” he asked curiously. “Yes, I did,” replied Loré with complete indifference to the guard. The walk from the train station to the castle was a quiet one, well quiet if one was to ignore the minor storm raging around them. Honor was still unsure if this was actually the pony he was supposed to escort. The darkness of the clouds and her cloak made her features difficult to make out. He put it out of his mind and just ran with the assumption it was her and instead focused on keeping her dry with the wide umbrella he held for the both of them. Though, Loré didn’t seem to care about getting wet. She would keep on going until she reached the castle, with or without an umbrella covering her body. “You’re staying in the west wing Miss Scroll,” said Honor while closing the umbrella, watching Loré’s strange behavior of letting her cloak fall to the ground in the entrance hall. “And are you sure you don’t want me to carry those bags for you?” he asked, noticing the two saddlebags hanging near her haunches. “I already know this. I’ve been here several times before,” grumbled Loré in return. “And, no. I can carry my saddlebags just fine on my own.” “My apologies Miss Scroll. I’m new to the royal guard. Not ‘new new’. I’ve been on the force for like, two months, I mean… as I said at the platform, when I heard you were coming to Canterlot, I volunteered to greet you. I’m kind of a fan of your work.” He smiled nervously at Loré, still a bit unsure of what to expect from her. “A fan of my work?” sounded Loré with a hint of surprise. “Only ponies within the academic circles really know who I am. Though, I find it even more interesting that you, a soldier of Celestia enjoy my work, considering what I wrote in my last book.” The two of them walked out of the massive entrance hall and into a smaller corridor, still walking side by side as they conversed. “Well, everypony has different opinions, and even if I’m a guardpony, I can still enjoy reading about history,” said Honor with a bit of pride in his voice. Though, Loré didn’t seem impressed about his interest in her work, nor did she seem to even care about him being there. “I must say Miss Scroll, I really enjoyed your paper on Clover The Clever and Princess Paltinum of the unicorn tribe. It was really insightful. How did you figure out so much about such an old event?” asked Honor, trying his best to stir up some conversation with Loré. “I guess I just have a knack for figuring out connects between old texts, ancient artifacts, and hear-says. It’s my special talent after all…” Her voice started out strong, but ended with trailing off. Loré’s expression was like that of a statue. Staring constantly straight ahead as she tried to ignore her host. “I hope I didn’t offend you, Miss Scroll. I’m just a bit excited to meet you.” The guard smiled warmly, though with a hint of embarrassment from his declaration. “Also… I hope you don’t mind me asking this, but how come your horn is two colors?” Loré sighed deeply before holding out a hoof in front of her chirpy host, stopping him in his tracks. “I’m not offended by your question.” She turned her head to look up at him, being a fair bit shorter than what was average for a mare. “I just don’t like you. You simply annoy me with your overly cheery attitude, and downright moronic questions. I’ve had a long journey getting all the way over here to Canterlot from Las Pegasus. This is not my first time here either. I’ve been to the Canterlonian archives 29 times for my different research projects. I know precisely where the room I’m going to sleep in is, and I know precisely where to get food or anything else I’ll need. All I want is for you to just leave me alone.” The guard stared down at Loré with confusion in his eyes. She in turn stared back with complete indifference. “That’ll be all, sir,” was the last thing she said to the guard before continuing her walk down the hallway to her room, leaving the excited guard in disappointment. “I told you she was cold,” sounded the familiar voice of his superior behind Honor. Honor quickly spun around to salute Shining Armor. “Sir, I didn’t see you there.” “Take it easy. I just came to make sure you were alright. I knew you’d end up disappointed. You had way too high hopes for this little meeting.” He smiled sincerely at Honor, placing a hoof reassuringly on his shoulder. Honor slowly looked down the hall where Loré had disappeared into one of the many rooms in the west wing. “I thought she would have been a bit more… alive. Her writing is so passionate and vibrant.” He quickly looked back at Shining Armor. “Is she always this gloomy and cold?” He chuckled loudly at his question and shook his head. “Nope, you actually caught her on a good day, the rain seems to make her cheerier than normal. Most of the time she’s a pain in the ass and mean to anypony who even dares to approach her. There’s something terribly wrong with that pony if you asked me, Honor.” “Maybe she’s lonely and is pushing away everypony to protect herself from getting hurt.” Honor turned around to face away from Shining Armor. “Her eyes seemed so warm and embracing… there’s still something good in there, it’s just buried deep within her. If somepony reach out to her and– “ Shining Armor patted his shoulder once more while he chuckled. “Honor, you have a good heart in you. It’s part of what makes you a fantastic guard here.” His cheerful demeanor soured slowly as he went to change the topic. “But, reaching out to her won’t help. I’ve seen her come and go enough times to at least know this much. She lashes out at anypony near her. I’m sure somepony’s tried to reach out to her. I also bet that they’ve all given up after being around long enough to realize there’s nothing behind her insults and anger. She’s just hateful, Honor.” Something in Honor refused to believe that somepony, anypony for that matter, could just be hateful without reason. Though, he knew she wanted to be alone, and he had duties to attend to. Shining Armor’s words only added to the growing lists of reasons to avoid their tactless guest. “I should get back to my post,” sighed Honor. “Thanks for the warning though. I guess it was interesting meeting her, even if I was disappointed with who she actually was…” He mumbled the last part as he walked back the way he came. The small confines of Loré’s room were depressingly familiar to her. She had formed a routine through the numerous visits to Canterlot. First she dropped her bag onto bed and flipped it open. This was followed by pulling out several scrolls, a quill, an ink bottle, and a few books from her bags with magic and then carelessly placing them all on the wooden table across from the bed. Next came unpacking her hygienic supplies, bundling them all together in the small bathroom connected to her bedroom. She finished it all up with placing a small potted plant next to her organized mess. The bright colors of Canterlot were all wasted on Loré. As beautifully decorated as her room was, nothing but uninspiring and dull tones came to her vision when she looked around. Everything had as much life to it as her own dull gray coat. Not that this bothered Loré terribly much, it was how everything had looked to her for as long as she could remember. In a way, it was why she preferred being in the Canterlonian Archives. They had dark tones of gray, brown and black, as much of a contrast to the rest of the castle as night was to day. It was a place devoid of life for most of the time Loré wasn’t there, but most importantly, it was a place where everypony seemed to see what she always saw. Having unpacked all her stuff in the same fashion, time, and vigor as she’d done so many times before, she moved to step two of her arrival ritual. She was going to pay the archives a visit. The first action Loré took after leaving her room was to keep her head down, avoiding anypony she passed in the hallways leading to the archives. Though this didn’t seem to be too difficult a task, as most ponies working in the west wing had at one point or another seen or met Loré, knowing precisely which kind of pony she was. The room housing thousands upon thousands of volumes of lore was gigantic. It was circular and with half a dozen levels to it. There were, however, no windows at all in this room. It was presumably to protect the oldest parchments from being worn out by sunlight. The blazing torches equally spaced along the walls were, however, more than enough to give the room an atmosphere of permanent twilight. Loré admired the books and scrolls tucked away on all the shelves, and even more so the study table she’d spent hundreds of hours hunched over, deciphering books and stringing together past events to make coherent narratives of the past. She took a deep breath to take in the dusty smell of old paper, burning wood, and dry stone. She almost felt at home in this place, despite it being almost as far away from her actual home as possible. The old wooden chair creaked loudly as she sat down on it, and the table welcomed her with an equally loud sound as she plopped down a stack of books for her latest research project, the truth of the love poison. Her eyes were half lidded as they slowly strolled across the lines of her first book. Only a small candle on the table was there to keep her company as she went on the adventurous path through the fragmented history of ponies’ past. Day in and day out she repeated this pattern: Dragging herself from the bedroom to the archive, pulling out more and more books, reading them, taking notes, and compiling her findings in the bedroom before falling asleep. The days soon turned to weeks, and the weeks became a month. She only exchanged words with anypony when she had no choice and only took breaks from her work when she had to eat. Time just lost meaning to her, and the days melted together. Time would have become completely indistinguishable for Loré if she hadn’t kept an extremely rigorous routine. Though, her life of endless repetition came to an end on one particular morning. “Did you hear about the Empire’s return?” asked one of the three guards standing inside what Loré presumed to be a break room of some sort for them, but she had never had enough curiosity to actually confirm her suspicion. “Yeah, I just happened to eavesdrop on Princess Celestia talking to Twilight Sparkle about it. They’re saying that some kind of evil king is back,” answered another guard. “Yeah right. Which evil king would that be? Where did he return from for that matter?” said a third guard. Loré merely shook her head at the three of them as she walked by the room, sticking to the habits she’d practice for the month she’d been there. There was still a bit more work to do, a few more books to read before she could make a proper paper on the subject of the love poison. But, that research was never finished. Loré had barely gotten to sit down before a painfully loud thud echoed through the room. She covered her ears while falling out of her chair, causing a second echo to bounce around the walls. “Argh! Who did that!!” yelled Loré while sitting back up onto her haunches. A quick inspection of the room revealed the culprit of the sound. It was a book, a very old one at that. Loré slowly approached the dark blue cover, gently tracing a hoof across the surface as she read out loud the title of the book. “The King and The Crystal Empire.” Her eyes wandered from the book to the shelf behind it, but nothing had fallen from there. Her eyes just kept on climbing higher and higher till she couldn’t distinguish if it had come from the shelves at the very top or not. “Did you fall from all the way up there? How come you aren’t broken?” Her gaze went back to the book and her hoof kept on tracing the surface of the book. “You’re very old, aren’t you? Something as fragile as you wouldn’t be able to fall that far without getting damaged.” A strange smile crept into Loré’s stern expression. “I know there’s only one door into this library, and it’s always in my line of sight when I study. How did you fall?” The book was hoisted onto her studying table, and despite reassuring herself that nopony was in the room with her, she couldn’t shake off the feeling of being constantly watched now. Glancing around the room and the different floors did nothing to reveal a possible intruder. “Though, maybe you just fell on your own? I guess I’ve heard more ludicrous theories than a book falling out of its shelf on its own. Perhaps you were improperly stored. Or, maybe you wanted me to find you…” She flipped open the book and was immediately met with an old sketch of King Sombra himself. The dramatic drawing caused Sombra to simply ooze with power and the bold lines gave off the right impression of his dark and malevolent intents. Though, the thing that made Loré’s eyes go wide, and was the only thing she cared about, was the discoloration of his horn. “You’re… you’re like me.” She gently ran a hoof along her horn before continuing her reading. Her eager to read the book only increased from every page turned. The more she came to learn of King Sombra and the Crystal Empire, the more she wanted to know. Everything non-related to Sombra was simply brushed off the table. She journeyed up the ramps coiling along the walls to get to the upper most level of the library to retrieve every single book she could find on Sombra and the Crystal Empire. One book became two, and the two soon enough became a dozen. Her research on the Dark King took up several more days of her stay in Canterlot, and it came to the point where Loré was not satisfied with just reading the unmarked history books of ages past. She snuck in the dead of the night her way into the northern wing to collect other books, books on lineage. Her talent came to great use as she pieced together one little bit of information with another, tracing her bloodline backwards until the inevitable conclusion stood before her. “I… I got my horn from you?” Loré shook her head rapidly while quickly mumbling, “No, no, no, no. I can’t be. You were powerful and great and… I’m just… I can’t be.” With a deeply frustrated sigh, she tore down the comprehensive list of names she’d strung together on one of the library walls to map out her bloodline. “I can’t be related to him. He disappeared for a thousand years, everypony in his kingdom did.” In disbelief and defeat, Loré retreated to her chambers in hope of a good night’s sleep would put things into perspective, or perhaps give her insight into something she had overlooked during her research. Loré tossed and turned that night. Sweat poured down her head as her inner self was exposed to visions and voices of outside influences. It was a dream like no other she’d had before. Everything seemed so real, and no matter how hard she gripped the warm sheets, they wouldn’t protect her from the darkness she saw. Though, it was a darkness with answers. Loré flew up into a sitting position, having woken up as if from a horrible nightmare. She panted heavily while looking around in her room to make sure she was actually in the bedroom of the castle. The only words she said before disappearing from Canterlot that night were, “I have to go home.”