//------------------------------// // 299. Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster by Taranth // Story: The Sun and the Stars: A Twilestia Prompt Collab // by Fuzzyfurvert //------------------------------// by Taranth *** There are some jobs where you might expect to be woken up at any time of night, and some where you can expect a decent night’s uninterrupted sleep and do the work in the morning. Mine usually falls into the latter category - although admittedly, when the call does come, it’s usually interesting enough to make it worth it. That doesn’t mean I’m gonna be thrilled with somepony banging wildly at my door at two in the bucking morning, though. When I’d finally gotten my hooves under me and trotted down to the front door of the apartment, wondering what sort of idiot would do something like this and ready to buck them in the face if it was somepony knocking on the wrong door, I’ll admit I might have looked something of a fright, but… The earth pony at the door didn’t even see me, collapsing straight down onto the ground as his next round of knocking failed to connect, and proceeded to flail at the floor instead, as if he hadn’t noticed that the world had tipped sideways. I blinked, looking down. “...Grid Survey?” ~-~-~-~ Five minutes later, we were both inside, and I had some coffee going as I tried to figure out what in Equestria had happened to my old colleague. I recognised him by coat and mark, but beyond that I would never have guessed him. He’d never been much of a drinker before, but right now he was more plastered than anypony I’d ever seen before - though I’ll admit I don’t hang in the right social circles for that to be too much of a competition. The stench of alcohol coming off him was horrific, and his face bleary, miserable and barely focused. There was a bottle he had clutched in one hoof, which I had managed to extract from him with some difficulty; I didn’t recognise the smell, but just a whiff of it nearly knocked me out. “What is this?” I asked, pushing it away. “D’no.” He slurred. “Asked f’r the strooooongest thing there was. Ever. Pan… Panagalattic… garrrr… dunno.” The label on the bottle showed a cartoon of a cheerful-looking two-headed earth pony - looked vaguely familiar, probably some movie or book I’d seen an ad for - and a physically impossible alcohol rating. Putting it well out of the way, I turned back to my friend as he wavered on my couch. “...Was it worth it?” He blinked, having to think about that a long moment, then somehow contrived to look even more miserable as he shook his head slowly. and muttered. “Still ‘memb’r.” I sighed, walking out into the kitchen as the kettle whistled. I think I was going to need a lot of coffee for this… ~-~-~-~ Once I was a little more awake, and we both had some coffee in us - no more of that drink - I sat down and tried to interrogate the drunken archaeologist. “Alright. What in Tartarus happened to you?” “Ruined. Ruined ev’rythin’.” “Ruined what?” “Ev’rything!” His hooves shot out, as if to demonstrate the magnitude of the ruination, before the sudden motion left him toppling once more into the floor in an amazingly uncomfortable-looking position. “D… dunno what t’do. Dunno who to go to.” As pathetic as this was, somehow this was giving me a chill down my spine. “...What did you do?” “Found a book.” He whispered. He started trying to reach towards his saddlebags, and panicked as he groped at his sides. “No! No no no no no it can’t be gone no!” “Your bags are over here.” I picked them up, and watched as he practically collapsed with relief. Even more concerned, I opened them up, finding - amongst the usual collection of paraphenalia - a notebook filled with loose sheets shoved between pages, and another book which immediately grabbed my attention. It was old. Those not in the business probably wouldn’t even have noticed, since it looked pristine, maybe even fresh from the binders. But there’s a certain… weight to items that have been around forever, and this one had been around far, far longer than I had. There were a couple of other hints, too, of course. The first being the aura of a preservative spell of considerable power; the second being the symbol on the front - a purple, six-pointed starburst, with a second white starburst behind and surrounded by several smaller white stars - a symbol anypony would recognise - and some scribbles along the bottom which most ponies wouldn’t - but I - and assumedly Grid - easily recognised as ancient Equestrian. The numbers I recognised easily, but the other word took a little more time before I remembered what it meant, and I hissed in a breath. Diary. I was holding Princess Twilight Sparkle’s Diary. And those numbers would be… dates. Oh. This would be her last diary. “Where… where did you…” “Some colt… some colt foun’ it. Was just wannnnndering through the ol’ tree-castle on one o’ those tours. Pressed some secret button we haven’t found in millenniennia. ‘cos if the buckin’ Princess doesn’t want us findin’ her Diary, we ain’t gonna find it! ‘cept by accident. “Dinneven know what it was. Thought he just foun’ some weird ol’ code book. Saw him wanderin’ wiffit through the market, got it off’f him for a hunnred bits.” He gave a laugh, which sounded more like a death rattle. That would make sense. Grid’s talent lay in spotting important things among the dross, so if anypony was going to spot something like that in a crowd… I opened the book reverently. Well, if it wasn’t the Princess’ own tome, it was a damn good fake - her hornwriting was distinctive and fairly easy to recognise for somepony in my business, even if I wasn’t completely fluent in the long-dead language. A lot of Princess Twilight’s writings had survived to present day, translated and passed on as borderline scripture - but something this personal… Grid groaned, clutching his head, and I remembered that there was something more to this. I set it aside carefully - of course, I could have tossed the thing in the fireplace without damaging it, but seriously - and picked up the notebook. As I suspected, Grid had been translating it. His grasp of the ancient language wasn’t nearly as good as mine - special talent and all - but he knew a bit, and had sources to work with more, and had basically picked out key words in the various entries to get a better idea of the theme of each. I flipped forward to the end of his works, and prepared myself for whatever madness-inducing horrors seemed to have claimed my friend… ...Well, a lot of mentions of Princess Celestia. That one was easy. And… huh... ‘bound’... ‘hobbled’... ‘overpowered’... ‘forced’... ‘restrained magic’... ‘struck’... ‘control’... ‘begging’... ‘servant’... ‘Queen Twilight Sparkle’... I hissed through my teeth, checking the words in question on the untranslated page - most of them fairly easy, a lot of surviving texts for translation were for battles, and many of the words used were common enough in those. And the context was definitely that Twilight was performing the actions, and Celestia was the recipient. This was not in the history books. And there wasn’t a lot of diary after this. There really wasn’t a lot of information on why the Alicorns vanished from the world, all those thousands of years ago… but if Princess Twilight Sparkle had betrayed Celestia and attacked her… then… “Everything we know about the Princesses…” “It’s all ruined!” wailed Grid, making me jump - I’d actually forgotten he was there. Calming my heart, and turning back to the book of heresy before me, I reached out to the diary with a shaking hoof. By the sun, moon and stars… what in Tartarus was I supposed to do with this? ~-~-~-~ Well, the first thing to do with it was to make sure this wasn’t a massive misunderstanding. I lured Grid onto the couch, found a blanket to wrap around him, and he was asleep in moments, leaving me free to take the books into my study for more professional examination. A few quick checks confirmed that the book was Princess Twilight’s, definitely, or at least previously enchanted by her. Her enchantments were always easy to spot - a couple millennia or so of progress had seen some significant improvement in spellwork since her time, but her preservation spells simply… didn’t stop. Every part of the spell matrix she used had been examined and reverse engineered many times over the centuries, and there was no good reason for it - it just seemed that if the Alicorn of magic had wanted a spell to keep going, that spell bucking well kept going. Aside from being remarkably decent of her from the point of view of us archaeologists, it also made it amazingly difficult to forge. The handwriting was hers, the book was hers… so unless something very tricky was going on, this was her diary, and I wasn’t getting out of this that easily. So, time to start parsing. I pulled out my translation texts, and got to work... The words translated were all accurate, and filling in the gaps between them only made things worse. Princess Twilight had clearly enjoyed the process, expounding on the indignities she had inflicted on the Princess of the Sun in detail and with excitement and glee. I had to pause a couple of times to keep from throwing up at the very thought. I mean, even knowing the old, old stories about Nightmare Moon, the idea of the Alicorns fighting amongst themselves - let alone described like this - was horrifying, like walking in on one of your parents casually torturing the other… and then asking if you’d like to help… It took me a few long moments to recover from that little simile. I did manage to get some context near the beginning of the entry, however. Princess Twilight had written of a relationship that Princess Celestia had demanded be kept secret, which she certainly didn’t seem happy about. Still, that hardly seemed reason enough to torture and overthrow your peer… It was frustratingly slow going. Special talent can only help so much, especially when part of you is fairly sure you don’t want to know what’s going on, and the book was written in a far more personal style than the more official documentation we normally got to translate. The fact that Princess Twilight had been around for a few centuries at this point meant that she pulled linguistics from all over the place. When I was mostly ready to sink into despair at the destruction of the hero figure of my youth, it seemed almost like my prayers had been answered as I neared the end of the text, for suddenly it had Twilight describing a conversation with Celestia, all hostility seemingly forgotten. Slightly convinced I might be hallucinating by this point, I looked over it carefully, translating it as best I could… It didn’t sound like Twilight was discussing with a thrall, but with all the respect she had previously had, and that they were still friendly. Was there memory magic at play? Was this all supposed to be a dream? No, there was no overtone of fear or anxiety… ‘Celestia said she had never’ something ‘so strongly before’ - maybe this was all some magical trial? That word was probably important, but I entirely didn’t recognise it. I knew virtually every word relating to fighting, struggling, war, magic, but the books I had didn’t recognise it. Maybe some form of slang? Knowing Princess Twilight, it might be something completely made up. I sighed, leaning back and wincing as the sun streamed in through the window into my face. Oh, sunrise already? I’d been at this for hours… I stood, my joints cracking as I wandered over to the window, staring out at the city and the rising sun. “What happened to you?” I wondered quietly. “...And what am I going to do about it?” What could I do? If we published this, it’d overturn society. To learn that one of the princesses had assaulted another, which had probably set off the last days of the Alicorns, would be a scandal that would rock the entirety of Equestria… “I wonder if that secret relationship would have been this much of a--” Wait. Ooooooh no. I rushed back to the books, looking over the entry again and suddenly reading everything in a new light, my muzzle growing redder and redder as everything fit into place. That bit of context made everything make a LOT more sense. And suddenly that mental image I had before about walking in on my parents… well… I fell into a coughing fit, staring at the translation through teary eyes. Oooh, I bet I knew what that missing word was, too. Oh Celestia, I… uh… oh my. I staggered away from the study, unable to read any further, most of the blood in my body now gathered in my face - and trying quite hard to ignore wherever else it was collecting - and collapsed on the couch across from Grid with a heavy thump. It was enough to wake him up, and his head blearily raised, staring over at me. I coughed into my hoof. “Ermm… you, um, were wrong about one thing, and right about two things.” “Ehhh?” He drawled. “Well, it’s not nearly as bad as you thought. Princess Twilight didn’t overthrow Princess Celestia.” “I… oh, Celestia, I didn’t dream that… Wait, she didn’t?” “No. But… that book probably will turn society on its head. You were right about that.” He stared for a long moment. “And… the other right thing?” I floated over the bottle of Pan-galactic Gargle Blaster, staring at the label with a trepidatious horror. “...That we are far, far too sober to deal with this.”