Princess Celestia saw everything go wrong all at once, her heightened senses causing everything to appear as if it was transpiring in slow motion. Adam had snapped. He was rushing towards her former student, Bunsen Burner. Acting on instinct, she intervened. In a flash of golden light, particles of magic spontaneously appeared, coalescing into the shape of a long sword, its blade shaped in a waved pattern, its guards like two elegant flames. She sprang off of her back legs, clearing the gap between her and the being easily. She brought her blade up, and her hilt came down, striking him across the back of the head in a clean blow. His body crumpled beneath him. Suddenly glass burst into the room: the window in the front of the library facing the southwest had burst inward. A strange, nearly melodic sound, one which seemed both familiar and alien, ceased. She hadn't noticed its presence until it had vanished. Time it seemed had also returned to its normal pace, and she became more aware of her surroundings.
Bunsen was shaking off bits of glass from his back, a grimace on his face. The unconscious creature lay before her. She then turned to Twilight and Spike, and quickly asked, "Are you both alright?"
Spike nodded his head, a quiet 'yeah' escaping his lips. Twilight was speechless, her mouth open as she looked down at the human, then back up at her. The Princess then realized that the both of them weren't staring at her, but right next to her. She quickly glanced at her side, realizing her sword was still there, blade pointed downward but at the ready. She quickly dematerialized it, waving the golden dust away left in the air with her right wing.
She turned to Bunsen once again, her expression now back to its practiced blank poker face, "Search him." He strode over to the fallen being and began to flip him over.
"I-" Twilight tried to say, then she began again, a little stronger this time, "I don't understand."
The Princess turned back to her, a small sympathetic frown on her face.
"He was looking for help," she continued as she walked towards Adam's body, "He wasn't like this before. He just wanted to be left in peace."
The Princess stopped her student as she tried to go around her, bringing her into a quick hug, "Oh Twilight. I'm so sorry." She broke the embrace, but keep a firm hoof on her right shoulder with her left hoof. "It can sometimes be that foul enemies come in fair guises," she declared, "Believe me, in my many years I've seen it time and time again."
"He's been around a lot of ponies, including me, and never acted like this before," Twilight said with a small shake of her head, "He's not like what the legends ever said. He's not like them!"
"No weapons," Bunsen called out, "He only has a canteen it seems. He might have set up a shelter in the Everfree, or taken a quick walk there: it wouldn't hold more than a day's water."
The Princess looked over her shoulder to him and gave a quick nod, "Bunsen, you have my permission to take him into custody. Put all your resources towards finding the missing mare."
He gave a stiff nod in lieu of a bow and turned to get his squad's help, "As you wish."
"And Bunsen-"
He turned back to her.
"Treat him better than he did you," she commanded, "Show him what we've become in their absence."
Another quick nod, a 'Your Majesty', and he trotted out the door, coordinating his troops.
Spike strolled toward the broken window, looking at the shards he now had to clean up. "What a mess," he grumbled to himself softly. He was about to go to the nearby closet and retrieve the dustpan and broom when he noticed something odd outside. A small solitary cloud, which practically sat smack in the center of the oak frame of the wall, suddenly had its bottom drop out beneath it. A lone figure, an armored pegasus, slipped out from within the cloud and flew away. Judging by its direction it was heading northeast towards the train station. Spike's draconic eyes narrowed, and as Bunsen came back in to oversee the two armored ponies carrying Adam out, his suspicions grew.
"I cannot stay here any longer," the Princess declared as she turned to Twilight, who now stood at her side as they watched the procession remove the being from the library, "One of the Ruined is a threat, but if there are more...preparations must be made." She craned her neck down so she was at eye level with her student, "I know this has to have been traumatic for you and Spike. If you need anything don't hesitate to write."
"Yes...Princess," Twilight replied dejectedly, her voice just as broken as her will.
"Rest well tonight," the Princess murmured, before she walked to Bunsen's side, who stood near the door, "I'm sure you're keen to get to your observations about him, but as soon as you get back to Canterlot I want a packet concerning the Ruined in front of me with everything from our archive. I also want a progress report every twelve hours on the rescue status of our missing pony. Set your priority on finding out whether this was just a lone figure, or if there are others nearby."
"It will take us a few hours to return, but I'll have the Lieutenant begin compiling our findings once we can hail him."
"Safe travels, Bunsen," she declared, before she vanished in a flash of light.
The earth pony stood momentarily in the doorway, before he exited. With a quick wordless glance he looked back at Twilight for a moment before he closed the door behind him, and trotted off into the evening's growing darkness.
The crowd ringing the library began to disperse as the soldier's capture was brought out, their destination an emergency high speed engine and rail car parked on the secondary train track. There were a few faces in the crowd who recognized their quarry. Rarity looked on in alarm, but did her best to restrain Pinkie Pie, covering her mouth. As the energetic pony tried to speak around her friend's hoof, the unicorn muttered, "There's nothing that can be done for him right now. What we can do is talk with Twilight and find out what mess our biped friend has gotten himself into. See to getting the others, would you?"
"Oo-ie Doo-ie Lo-ie," replied with concern but also muffled enthusiasm, her mouth still full of hoof.
"What now," Ditzy Doo asked solemnly as they watched the soldiers pass.
Despite their attempts to be quiet, the Doctor had overheard everything the two friends had been discussing. "We wait for the Elements to arrive," he murmured with a quick gesture of his head towards the two now retreating ponies, "If I had to wager I'd say they want to get him back as much as we do. We have our various motivations, but what we all need is a rescue plan."
Twilight set down the third book she had skimmed through in the past twenty minutes. “Nothing useful at all,” she muttered in frustration and turned to the next in the stack near her.
Spike was quick to swipe up the now discarded book and walked back to the nearby shelves to put it back in its place near its fellows, “What exactly are you looking for, anyway? You didn’t really explain.”
Twilight finished the last sentence she had read, gazed up at the ceiling to collect her thoughts for a moment, and then turned to look at him, “I’m looking for any definite information on the Ruined. So far I’ve got nothing that really feels concrete aside from a hint on their physical description. In Zebra culture they have their own more benevolent interpretation of what they are. They called them the Upright Ones.” Twilight gave a little snort, “I guess if the connection is true their ancients were a bit more literal than ours.”
Spike looked at her curiously as he came back to the table, placing his claws on the tempered wood edge, “So I’m still really not getting this. Why have I never heard of them, whatever they’re called, before?”
“You know how ponies had a hard time remembering Nightmare Moon,” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“That was just a thousand years. The myths about the Ruined are even older than that. Good record keeping and archiving didn’t really start until around YOL 300, so what we do have are recordings of oral tradition, each retelling potentially different from the last.”
“Sounds like that’d be mess to get all those different versions written down,” Spike declared with wonder.
“There do seem to be some agreed upon details though,” Twilight said as she jotted down a new note as she continued reading, “The Ruined had their dominion over the world before the First Diarchial period, so that puts us hundreds of years before the establishment of the Solarian calendar system we use today. They were said to have been slavers and masochists, as well as summoners and retainers of demons.”
“What is a masochist?”
“It’s, uh, somepony who enjoys pain, specifically pain inflicted on themselves.”
“Oooookaaaay,” Spike said, momentarily surprised and confused by such a strange idea, “What was that about demons?”
“It’s believed they actually made Tartarus as a home for the creatures they summoned. They put more than half the things believed to be in there for safekeeping.”
The little dragon’s brow furrowed, “So if they had so much power, why aren’t they here anymore?”
She looked at him for a moment before uttering one word, “Discord.”
Spike shuddered a little.
She didn’t want to admit it but she felt the back of her mane stand up a little, “I’d say it was the only good thing he’s ever done, but it was really just one oppressor overthrowing another. After that the Royal Sisters overthrew him, and Equestria was eventually formed.”
Twilight closed the last book in front of her, and Spike dutifully took it away. She thought hard for a long time, staring off to the other side of the table, her internal world full of tumult.
“I’m trying to convince myself that that’s not Adam,” she said with a thread of doubt strung through her voice, “but after that...episode...I don’t know.” Spike looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to continue, which she did with his silent prompting, “I’ve never seen such a violent rage before, and to think that he’s one of them.” She then turned to look him straight in the eyes, “Did it seem like when we talked to him he was ever lying to us about himself? Were we- Was I blinded by my curiosity?”
Spike thought for a second before he looked back to Twilight, “I’m not a lie detector or anything, but I’m pretty sure he was telling the truth when we had our big talk with him. Besides, he is from another world, right? Maybe where he’s from they’re not as bad as the stories say they were here.”
“Can we risk that though,” she asked as she looked for his advice, “Those stories...they’re of ponies in pain, put in that state by the Ruined, who subjugated them and made them their playthings. They were kept in dark places, kept from learning and communicating. That’s a kind of ugliness I’d never want to see put on anypony.”
Spike looked down at the table for a moment, then reflexively closed his claws a little, “I get that he could remind you of something scary, but what about me?”
She looked at him quizzically, “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m a dragon, related to big, scary, fire-breathing, big winged dragons. What if it were me instead of him?”
“There’d be no question Spike,” she said with a shake of her head, “I’d fight to keep you safe, but you’re different than other dragons.”
“Yeah, I am,” he replied, “but if one different dragon is enough, isn’t one different human enough?”
That gave Twilight a self-conscious moment of pause. In the scenario Spike had given her, would she really be so committed to saving him if she’d never really known him? Would she have instead let him be taken away because he could be a threat to the ponies around him, with his lust for jewels and desire to hoard, his magical flames, and his teeth and claws? While he still had all these attributes, he was able to control those urges: plus he was a wonderful assistant and a friend. Another thing to consider was this: Fluttershy dealt with many creatures that had violent tendencies all the time, and that didn’t stop her from caring about them. They could lash out, and ponies could lash out at others as well. Perhaps Adam’s kind was no different? He could reason, just like her. He could get angry, just like her. Then there was the other account of the Ruined told by the zebras. In it they had given themselves up to reveal Discord’s weakness, allowing him to be toppled from his pedestal as mad ruler of the world. It was a noble sacrificial story, but was it true? Moreover, did the stories she knew have any truth to them either?
Internally she had made up her mind, and was ready to answer him when the both of them heard a soft boom in the distance. Just a moment later there was heavy, incessant knocking at the door, “Twilight! Spike! Are you in there? Is Adam with you?” Twilight galloped towards the door and yanked it open from a distance, allowing a very frazzled and out of breath Rainbow Dash to stumble in. “Is he...downstairs,” she puffed between heaving breaths before her friend stopped her,
“Just calm down, Rainbow. Spike, can you get her a glass of water?”
“On it,” he replied as he rushed off to the kitchen.
“Is he here,” Rainbow tried to ask again, worry growing in her eyes, “Did he make it?”
Twilight nodded her head, then replied quietly, “Adam made it, but there was nothing we could do: he’s been taken away.”
Rainbow Dash looked at her in stunned silence for a minute, before she exclaimed, “You just let them take him away? I covered for him, almost got caught doing it too-”
Twilight replied in frustration, “You weren’t here: he attacked one of the ponies. We tried to argue his case, but after that we couldn’t do anything.”
The other four Elements and Spike had rushed into the front room upon hearing the raised voices. It took a few moments to get everyone calmed down and informed about the situation, but eventually everyone was more or less on the same page.
“Even if we’re fairly certain he is innocent, what he did is going to be hard to brush under the rug,” Rarity exclaimed with a sigh, “Do we know for certain what caused him to become as agitated as you described, Twilight?”
She shook her head, “One moment he seemed fine, but when the pony he attacked, Bunsen Burner, called him one of the Ruined, he just went berserk.”
“This is the first I’ve ever heard of this pony,” Fluttershy exclaimed, her shock at Adam’s behavior still written all over her face, “Who is this Bunsen Burner?”
“He’s apparently one of my predecessors,” she said, and then she clarified, “Another student of the Princess’.”
Spike, who had been silent for a little while, spoke up, “I don’t think we should really give Bunsen Burner the benefit of the doubt: in fact I have a feeling we shouldn’t trust him at all.”
Twilight glanced at him for a moment, and began to gently chastise him, “I know he was rude and a little off base, Spike, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad pony.”
“Maybe,” he replied, “but when I was cleaning up the glass shards from when the window shattered I saw a pegasus fly away from a cloud that could look directly in on us as we were talking.”
“They did have two pegasi with them,” Rainbow Dash exclaimed, “I saw them when I was with Adam: one had a war saddle with some kind of long rifle-like thing.”
Twilight put a hoof to her chin, then turned back to Spike, “What did the glass look like as you were cleaning it up?”
“Besides broken? I dunno, like glass.”
She waved her hoof in a circle, “But what was the glass’ shape? Were the pieces big or small?”
“Big,” Spike said as he nodded his head and confirmed his memory, “Really big.”
“Were there any pieces that looked like they had a hole in them or near their edge?”
He shook his head, “No, they were just jagged pieces and some dust. The fragments looked like teeth almost.”
“Where’re ya goin’ with this, Twilight,” Applejack asked with an incredulous frown.
“Just bare with me a little longer, AJ,” she replied, then swiped Rainbow’s empty glass away, “I just need to check something for sure: did you know that you can shatter glass with sound alone?”
“Oo! Oo! Oo Oo! Let me! Let me!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed as she jumped from side to side.
“Uh, I was just going to make a sound with my horn-” Twilight tried to finish before the pink earth pony cut her off, “It’s ok! I know what to do. When I was growing up on the rock farm my sister would get sent to a time out in the silica mine. She’d shatter most of the crystals with her angry screams.”
Twilight blinked twice in quick succession as she tried to comprehend what Pinkie had said before the glass that had been taken from her was placed gently down on the floor far away from the others.
“You might want to cover your ears,” Pinkie declared lightheartedly, “This is going to be super loud!” Despite her jovial tone the others in the room quickly sought cover, all while shoving their hooves as far as they could into their ears. Pinkie took in an enormous gulp of breath.
Suddenly, a soft, strange vibrating sound entered into earshot. The glass broke into seven large fragments, each piece rolling on its curved surface on the floor. The earth pony was so surprised by her thunder being stolen that the air in her lungs rushed out of her like a deflating balloon, leaving her with very long lips and an equally long face, “What gives?”
“My way’s a little quicker,” a brown earth pony with deep brown eyes declared as he stepped into the library, a grey wall-eyed pegasus hovering near his side. The blue light at the end of the device in his mouth turned off, and the alien sound ceased. “Plus it’s not nearly as deafening. Hello, all! I’m the Doctor; this is Ditzy Doo, and we’re here to help save your human friend!”