//------------------------------// // Chapter LVI // Story: Journey to the center of Equestria // by Rarity Belle //------------------------------// The soul of Twilight Sparkle was leaving the caverns deep and made its way through the thick layers of the rocks that separated the company from the world above. Even when she came back to the top did she continue to rise upwards. The mare had set her mind on something she hadn’t been gone too much before. A place that was mostly hidden and forgotten from everypony. A place where the nightmares of those who lived all gathered and the night always shone. A location that would even be giving Twilight the creeps no matter what and why. Yet she thought that that place would have been the best one to go to. She had to find something upon the words that she had read upon the plate. Something that could be helping her and aiding her further in her quest of madness. Higher and higher did the soul of the mare rise up until it just faded away. Faded away out of the realm that was known to all of the anthronies and made the jump over to the planes of the goddesses. The planes where Celestia ruled together with her sister, Luna. Nothing was sacred anymore. For Twilight knew the history as it was by then and she released a deep sigh through her nostrils. She had wanted to believe the evolution theory for so long, yet when it was finally revealed to be true, even she did have trouble believing it as it was. The unicorn shook her head a bit from side to side as she tried to place the thought aside. No matter how hard she tried, it always returned to linger right in the back of her head. Waiting for possibly the right moment to strike her when she least wanted it. It was how most thoughts in her mind worked in fact. Lying in wait before making the strike that’s needed to set the mare completely off course. Her eyes glanced over the beautiful celestial planes while the sun was shining bright before and in her eyes. There was only one little problem though: she didn’t had to be there. She had to go to the other place. The place where the darkness constantly reigned. The lunar planes were the very places that she needed to be going. The soul of the mare made its way over the grassy fields like a soaring pegasus. She had to reach the border that separated both light and dark from one another. There wasn’t any other choice as she had to wade herself into the darkness that reigned over the ominous planes. Only there could she find the location she needed to be. Only there, could she find it. That one place that probably held the answers she was looking for or at least would be giving her a sense of direction. Everything came with a price though. For the influences from the devil herself were present in the very land of darkness. Legends had it that the lunar goddess and the devil once shared the same body before the devil took over. Many years later was she then banished to her own dark realm, but pieces of the devil still remained within the lunar goddess. A shiver went down the spine of Twilight when she thought about the facts as they were. She couldn’t believe how it must have felt to have the actual devil roaming through the body one carried. Her eyes were torn away from the border for just a couple of seconds as she gave her mind the time to come up with a plan. For no doubt would Nightmare Moon try to get to her. On the mountain ridge that separated the light from the darkness had the unicorn made her descent. All the way down until her hooves touched the ground of the summit. Her eyes glanced over to the realm of darkness but further than a couple hundred hooves she couldn’t witness. Not even the light of the moon was strong enough to light the faces of those very lands. It worried Twilight to no end before she stroked her chin a little bit. She knew where she needed to be, she knew how she could have gotten there even. What she didn’t knew was what she would encounter on those plains. A deep exhale was released through her mouth as she eyes constantly shifted from left to right and back. She needed to know exactly where she would be ending up with everything. Yet in the planes of the lunar goddess, that was something that nopony knew. Even the soothsayers who had made that place their home couldn’t tie the ropes together. “Alright then, time to take the step, Twilight. You have gotten this far already, so why not just continue like you’ve been doing all this time?” she said to herself. Then her eyes just turned over to the border of both light and dark. It was such a simple looking line in her eyes but one that made all the differences within the whole wide world. A deep exhale was being released through the nostrils of the unicorn once more before she nearly blind had set her steps into the direction of the lunar planes. ~~~~ A little bit later was the unicorn soaring through the skies of the dark planes with the moon always in the corner of her eye. Its light was weak but bright enough to give an odd sense of hope. The unicorn couldn’t really place it in her mind. Yet every time she looked up to the thing, there were two feelings that went through her. One of hope, but the other was sadness. Why could she be feeling the sadness of the rock? It was a feeling that not even she could truly understand. All that she knew was that she had to keep her attention focused upon something else. Something that was a little bit more in her territory. Like a massive open field in the literal middle of nowhere, for example. Her eyes gazed over the place and a smile grew below her nose. She had reached her destination, or at least  part of it. The soul of the mare made the descend down towards the ground once more. Her hooves touched the soft and moist grass before she would be taking her first steps forward. The unicorn never dared to enter the field as a whole and therefore remained a little bit around the edges. Words in an ancient tongue were spoken up by her while her horn charged itself a little bit. The aura of her magic was perhaps the only other source of light on the entire plane for as much as she could see. Hopes were made up all while the preparations for the worst came in. It was then or never that she could be finding the answers she needed. With her horn she drew the lunar symbols into the air before they were sent out over the field. Only to be dropped in the grass before the mare just began to watch. She hadn’t done any of it before nor had she seen any of it before. Yet she knew there was a place there that could be of aid to her from the worlds of the soothsayers who had visited the realm before. A place of unimaginable knowledge and powers was hidden from the gaze of the sun. Everything that was once a secret has been stored there. Yet caution was advised, open the wrong scroll and one could be getting to know something it was never supposed to know. The symbols were in place and they burned themselves into the grass itself. Soon enough had the whole field been caught on fire and it began spread itself over the whole of it. Though it never seemed to have even dared to come any closer towards any of the other vegetation there was standing around. Just the field and its grass would have been burned to a crisp. In the end did the flames had to die out because of their lack of fuel. Which resulted in a field of nothing but scorched earth. Twilight hoped that they were right on the matter of what would be coming next. Because if they were wrong, she had just destroyed something that belonged to the lunar goddess. A goddess who probably was watching her every move when she thought that. “From the scorched earth it shall rise, rise and be built like the day it was put together,” the soothsayer repeated to herself. It was what some of the soothsayer had told her, or what she caught up from them at least. She could only wait while the seconds seemed to have been actual hours within her mind. Yet then it happened. It finally seemed to be happening within her own eyes. The magic that was used to burn all of the grass off of the field had recollected itself together to form perhaps one of the most magical looking buildings that the mare had ever seen. A building that just rose from the ground as if it was nothing. In her eyes did Twilight caught spires which stood at each of the corners and a gothic-like exterior. The whole structure just fitted the theme of the lunar goddess so well. All of the statues that were placed all around the building of anthronies in different poses. One striking factor of the statues was that none of them carried any kind of face. All of them were highly detailed, but their faces looked like they had been worn off by the acidic rain. The unicorn didn’t stood still at it for too long though. She had to enter the place while it was still being built before her eyes. Before her eyes was a library being built. A massive and vast library that was worthy of competing against the celestial one in the desert. Though the location of that one was a little bit more favorable. The nightly air was both cool and calm. Perhaps a little bit too calm but Twilight didn’t seemed to be minding that fact, yet. While she stood inside of the walls while the ceiling and the shelves were still being created from the countless tons of arcane magic that seemed to have been used. “Wow,” was the only word that she could be saying against all of it. Never in her life had she expected that the build of a library could have been that breathtaking. But there was the moment, right before her. The flames in the chandeliers all shone a bright and powerful light before the unicorn quietly walked through the hallway. One massive hallway with multiple levels filled with scrolls was what she saw. Every last thing that didn’t belong in the other library was sent over to that place. And Twilight could see straight away why such a thing was done. The strange, gothic-like exterior was just about doubled on the interior. The place was dark, eerie and highly uncomfortable. Not the kind of place where the mare would have loved to be stuck at night. Despite the fact that the night always had reigned there to begin with. The unicorn shook her head a little bit to get all of the dark thoughts out of her head. She had to focus herself upon the matter ahead while the clouded mind of the mare was a great subject for the darker influences that the place carried. Almost as if the place had some sort of will of its own. Thoughts of pasts rather forgotten by her returned as something seemed to have been prying open her very mind. ~~~~ Minutes had done by before they turned into hours. With the darker influences all around her, Twilight had set herself upon the difficult task of discovering just what the riddle or the quote actually meant. The mare was having countless of ideas for certain but she needed some kind of proof that one of her eyes actually was getting close or be the thing that needed to be done. It was a difficult task for certain because the scrolls didn’t spoke of too much in their rights about what the answer could have been. Only vague hints were given off to the unicorn. Hints that either proved or wronged her own theories. But she wasn’t making all too much process with them. The hands of the mare were rested against her head while a deep groan was given off through her mouth. She was annoyed, angry and even more confused than she used to be. Nothing seemed to be making sense anymore to her while she wanted to keep on figuring stuff out. The mare closed her eyes for a couple of seconds as the words on the golden plate were repeated over and over again. There must have been something that she had missed, right? That somewhere must have stood within one of the many scrolls that the library carried. The right answer upon the riddle was stored had to be found. Yet she still had to find that very scroll. Another sigh was given off by the mare as she then leaned back against her chair and just looked over the scene as a whole. As beautiful as the library happened to be, that eerie and confusing it also was. “Why doesn’t anything you two do make a bit of sense. Guess that old habits never truly die, am I right?” Twilight spoke towards the ceiling of the place in an annoyed tone. Silence took over just before the whispers could be caught within her ears. Whispers of a being whom was darker than Chrysalis, more cunning than Sunset Shimmer and a whole lot more dangerous than the Gorgon One. “Whatever you can offer me, I decline upon it. I have no intent to rise to power nor do I have the wish to becoming involved in an unpayable debt. So leave me alone!” Twilight yelled all of the sudden towards the other voice in her head. The voice on the other end didn’t seem to be leaving though. Instead it had taken up the tone of the unicorn herself and spoke to her directly. Almost as if the mind was speaking to Twilight herself. Whispers of grandness were promised to her, knowledge of the worlds beyond words and the infernal cages of Tartarus. The knowledge to prove each and every being wrong on the spot. The opportunity to bend time, to her very will. “No, no, no, no, no, I know who you are! And I shall not fall before one of your traps like my friend once did! You are nothing but an echo of the past trying to get a firm footing in our world. I command thee to leave this place and leave me alone, Nightmare Moon,” the soothsayer yelled on pretty much the top of her lungs. Desperation had setting in, hoping it would leave her alone. She was angry at the devil herself. Angry that she had consumed one of her only friends during her years of long ago. Never would Twilight have been able to forgive the devil for doing such a horrible thing to such a wonderful student. “Leave now, and never come back!” Twilight said in a tone that was almost classified as desperate. “Leave now, and never, come, back!” Silence. Nothing else but the original silence had returned to the library. No more voices in her head outside of her own one, no more whispers in the faint air. No nothing. Could it have been that the unicorn’s mind was strong enough to repel an attack of the devil? Or had the devil just given in for this one time? Who knew, but Twilight wasn’t in the mood to figure it all out. Twilight was still having her own problems when it came down to figuring stuff out. She still had to discover the answers upon the riddle or quote that was given to her. Something that proved to have been a lot harder then she would have expected it to be. “Sun or moon, both equal, both different. Balance is the key,” she repeated to herself. The rest of the words didn’t seem to be holding that much value to her. It was the last part that had the greatest amount of worth to her. It almost felt as if she could find the answer right there. “Balance, balance, balance… What could be meant with it? Like, tuning the light of the sun and moon to one another that they are in balance? No, that’s too easy…” Twilight mumbled before one of her eyebrows rose itself up. But was it really that simple? Yet from that idea there was another spark that rushed through her. “Lessen the light of the sun to bring it down to the shine of the moon is not equaling it out. But lessening the light of the sun and bring that light to increase the shine of the moon makes them equal! Balance is the key, the light emitted by both objects need to be the same!” Twilight had it in her eyes, she had the answer that was needed upon the riddle or the quote. There only was one other little problem that she needed to overcome. Where the words meant metaphorically, or did the actual sun and moon had to cancel each other out? The second that realization went through her did the eyes of the mare turn themselves wide. She had solved one bit of the puzzle via the mentioning of words within the scrolls her eyes had gone by. Yet another problem was already right at her doorstep. “Why can’t these things never be easy..? Just, why?” With a grumble in her tone were the scrolls placed back in their rightful places before she just left the library as a whole. Her eyes were given one last look over the thing before she would be taking off to the skies once more. She had the answers that she needed or that she could be finding. All that rested to her was to execute the thoughts she had within the realm of the physical world. Her eyes were closed in a calm manner while the world around her began to fade itself away. She was making the descend back to her own body which stood in the middle of the caverns. Only then could her theory be tested out. A theory that was actually still in the make with every passing second. So many things could have been the answer upon it, so many things could have been gone wrong at her end. Yet through a miracle did everything just seem to be going as it should have been doing. A little fact for which she was happy in secret. ~~~~ The eyes of the unicorn finally opened themselves again. Twilight Sparkle had returned to the physical realm again. Her legs were snapped into place mere seconds before she rose herself from her sitting position. The time had come for her to perform the thoughts she had. She wanted and needed to have the answers upon the questions in her mind and she needed them then and there. The return of the soothsayer wasn’t something that went unnoticed by the others though. All of the mares knew almost in an instant that she was back when they heard the snapping legs. Twilight had returned and they could only hope that she was having some form of good news. For they didn’t have that sadly enough. “Twilight, I know you’re busy, but there’s something that we need to be telling you,” said Rarity. The pirate captain was the first one to walk up to the soothsayer. The soothsayer turned herself around and rose an eyebrow towards the pirate captain. What in the world had they been doing while she was up there? Twilight hoped with the whole of her heart that they hadn’t be doing something that could be classified as downright stupid. “Well, what happened, Rarity, I’m waiting,” said Twilight in a less than patient tone. She had to keep her thoughts together in order to not lose them at all. Which was perhaps a little bit easier said than done, especially for a mare like herself. An exhale came through the mouth of the unicorn before she nodded. “Yes, yes, sorry. While you were away, we heard howling through the caverns. Not an injured creature or wolves from the sounds of it. But something we have no idea about. It can be anything really, possibly just the wind, as Applejack already said. But Pinkie’s scared to death for it,” explained Rarity. “Hm? How so?” Straight away had the attention shifted from the theory over to Rarity. Pinkie was not only their guide during that time. The soothsayer had silently taken it upon herself to also take care of the lamia in the best manner that she could. “Well, she says it’s, it’s that gorgon one she believes in,” spoke Rarity up. The pirate then knew that she had to come clean with the soothsayer. Her revelations of the palace weren’t spoken before to her knowledge so the time was there to finally come clean. The mare walked closer to Twilight and placed a hand upon her shoulder. Then the mouth was moved over to the ear and the words were whispered within. “When I was in the palace, I heard the lamia king saying that the gorgon one had been asleep for such a long time. If it really was him, we’re in deep trouble. Pinkie was never a true sacrifice, he just needed to get her out of the city without killing her.” The revelation that was being made within the ears of Twilight was not a thing she had been expecting that quick out of her descend. Yet she still nodded to the words and placed a hand upon Rarity’s shoulder. “I appreciate it that you finally told me this, I really do. But if that is indeed the Gorgon One, we need to make haste and I probably be having the one solution. Can you, comfort her a little bit? At least until we can go further,” asked and pleaded Twilight of her. Rarity nodded in return to the request that was given to her. “That I shall, Twilight. Do what you think is best and we’ll see from there,” she said. The distance between the two widened again. “Heh, haven’t we be doing that since we began this trip?” asked Twilight a bit louder. That way could the departing Rarity still hear them. “Without a doubt,” the pirate captain returned. After which she continued on her way to find Pinkie and comfort her in perhaps the only she knew how. Even if that way was little bit on the rough side of everything. Twilight just shook her head a couple of times before she returned her attention towards the statue. Her eyes were looking at it from every possible angle and she noticed something strange. If a line would have been drawn from the horn to the ground, the line would never hit the ground itself. Not even princess Celestia would have been able to shoot blasts of magic after a certain degree. “Curious, perhaps behind there,” mumbled Twilight to herself. She could be seeing everything falling together in the puzzle she was solving. “Oh that’s clever. That’s clever indeed.” The next thing she tried to discover where the eyes of the alicorn. She was for the most part interested in what position they were standing and where they were looking at. One eye was quickly discovered but the pupil seemed to have been gone or forgotten. As strange as it was, it actually helped the mare with her own investigation. The next eye was a little bit more tricky to be found because of the waving mane that were in the way. Yet it was there and once again without a pupil of any kind. The soothsayer nodded to herself as she knew more than enough to perform what she thought was right. She took a couple of steps back as her horn charged itself up. Her hands were spread outwards and her fingers coiled in the manner as if she would be holding up a fireball. But instead of a fireball were there two orbs of light that formed themselves. One of them was as bright as the sun and moved itself over to the left eye of the pony. The other orb was as weak as the moon and placed before the right eye. Only to then be merged within the eyes to become the pupils that the alicorn of the sun seemed to have been missing. The wait began for the mare to see if anything of interest would be happening. The longer she waited, the greater the feelings became that nothing would have been going on there. The two orbs of light were placed in the right location for her feelings, but she hadn’t in- and decreased the levels of light. “Balance is the key,” she repeated to herself. The eyes of Twilight went wide when she remembered those little words. Her horn increased itself in aura as the light of the sun began to decrease. Yet the light of the moon was increasing before her very eyes. There must have been that one point where the two of them would be equal to one another. Minutes it would have taken for the unicorn to not notice any kind of difference within the two orbs of light. Minutes she was trying to equal the both of them out to a degree they were perfect. “Come on, come on,” she whispered quietly to herself. Her magic took away from one and added it to the other. The rest of the company had been looking at her with some strange sets of eyes but they didn’t spoke a word would what was right or wrong. Twilight was the one who had been going up, Twilight was the one with the possible answers upon everything. They were just there for the protection of everyone in the moment. Which was exactly the thing they did. Rarity was comforting Pinkie Pie while the ears of Rainbow, Applejack and Fluttershy always kept themselves perked for the howling to return. That haunted tone that was screeching through the sets of caverns. As eerie as it was, as unsettling as it happened to be, it gave them all a sense of urgency. They wanted to continue onward, but they were at a dead end for the time being. Only Twilight could be changing their fortune around and the unicorn knew that fact all too well. With the lights finally being equal to one another had Twilight discharged her horn and she took a couple of steps out of the way. Whatever would be happening next, it certainly would have been spectacular to watch. Both of the orbs had turned into goldish colored rims when they were tuned by the magic of Twilight. She could only be hoping that she was right upon her thoughts and that it all had been for something. The attention of the company was turned towards the statue as a whole all of the sudden. There was a thing inside of it that began to rumble. Something began to rumble as if it hadn’t been in motion for a very long time. The eyes of the other mares couldn’t believe what they saw. Yet in their eyes did they all got the same view. The horn of the alicorn pony that stood there began to coat itself within a golden aura. An aura that only became stronger and stronger with each passing moment of time. Seconds it was charging up before it would just held the magic there. “And now? We say a spell or something?” Pinkie Pie dared to ask aloud. She was curious to the events. She only got a pair of strange eyes from Fluttershy the rest of them just waited in anticipation. Even though nothing else was happening, Twilight did knew that she had done the right thing. Her theory had worked and she couldn’t be more happy about that. It wouldn’t have mattered too much if the events that would be coming next would have been a total failure. It still meant that she had conquered both the riddle and the dreaded library. That was enough for one day, for her. The tension rose and rose while the thoughts of something else happening to the statue decreased. The hopes of some kind of blast being fired off from it had been pretty much going down the drain and Rainbow had already turned her back towards it. None of them believed in the fact as it was anymore. It simply wouldn’t be happening. Yet Twilight was the only one that remained hopeful on the matter. Even with the others having given up, the unicorn soothsayer held her leg stuff and she knew that something would happened. “Light our darkest hour,” the mare said in a whisper. Twilight tried to remember what it said on the plate. Her eyes closed themselves for just a second when a massive rumble was sent through the room. The anthronies turned back around to see the statue and they were just in time to see what was going on. All of the arcane power that was stored in the horn was released into the world and straight into the opposing wall. A wall that created a massive doorway just like the one they had been going into the mountain with. The sight was marvelous to behold but at the same time also a little bit eerie. For it could have meant that the entrance they couldn’t be going through, actually would have been leading them straight to there. The light that was cast from the statue revealed not only a doorway, but also the staircase that was resting behind it. None of the anthronies could be believing the facts as they were presented. They must had been seeing everything in their lives by then. Something about the whole scene just made their jaws drop almost to the ground. The sheer power that was being stored inside of the statue wasn’t something to be toyed around with. Silence had taken the lot of them over. But it was a good silence, a silence that only the sheer amazement of something could have made. Words wouldn’t have been able to express the situation that they were in. Twilight gleamed like mad just before she said her words towards the rest of the company. “I think it’s time for us to continue on. We’re going further down from the looks of it.” The mares and the lamia could only nod as they then made their way over to the doorway. One problem that struck them right away was the sheer amount of heat that came from it. Almost as if somepony had opened the door of a sauna. A sauna that was about ten times hotter than the comfort zone from each of them. “Lava,” the admiral of the navy said in a bleak tone, “only that creates such heats.” Twilight nodded to the words. It was indeed the sheer heat of magma that made its way upwards and towards them. Highly uncomfortable for certain and a pain to get through. But it was the thing that had taken a refuge down below. They were entering the fiery domain of the molten rock. Deadly streams of the stuff could be making a hazardous mission even more terrible with just one wrong step. The soothsayer was weighing the odds of everything of against each other before she nodded powerful. “There’s no other way, we have to go through it. We’ll see how it goes and if it becomes too dangerous or too exhausting, we can probably teleport out. I remember this place well enough to do such a thing.” Nopony of the company could argue against the facts that were given to them. It was perhaps the only thing that they could be doing in the moment. So one by one, they all entered the doorway and made their way over to the staircase. A staircase that would be guiding them even further into the pits of Tartarus, for all they knew.