New Magic

by Mercury Zero

Containment

New Magic

Chapter 6: Containment

"For buck's sake what in Tartarus is wrong with you?" Crystal snarled at Twilight through the closed doorway.

"I told you, I didn't touch anything! It just closed. Please listen to me!" Twilight protested.

Crystal ignored Twilight's protests. "I should never have let you down here! You think you're just Celestia's gift to the universe don't you?" Crystal was furious. "You think you know everything? Huh? You think you know how I should run my dig?"

Twilight's eyes welled with tears. Why was this happening? "I'm telling you this was an accident."

Crystal had already started down the path of venting her feelings, and she wasn't about to stop now. "I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about how Filthy Rich thinks he can send some hotshot down here. We can't all be prodigies like you, Twilight Sparkle. We can't all be magical heroes of the realm. Some of us have to work for a living!"

There were murmurs on the other side of the door. Twilight couldn't make them out but they seemed by their cadences to be urging Crystal to remain calm.

Crystal growled, "No! She wants the job, she can have it. Congratulations princess," she spat the word, "you can touch whatever you want now. Go ruin the dig and get yourself killed." Crystal's voice cracked as she fought back tears, "I did so much work. I did so much work on this project! I poured three months of my life into this, I'm not going to sink more of my life down a black hole just to further inflate some brat's reputation."

There was a thunderous slam on the door in front of Twilight, and she yelped loudly, stumbling backward. She couldn't contain her tears now. They leaked down her muzzle as she cried. Twilight could hear a small scuffle on the other side of the door.

"It's either you or me, Twilight Sparkle. I'm not coming back to this dig until you're gone. Filthy can put that in his damn pipe and smoke it. You hear me?"

Twilight curled up and clutched her head. Everything was ruined now. "I'm sorry! Please! I'm your princess ... please."

"And what have you done to earn that, huh? Princess?" Crystal snarled. Twilight could tell her face was right up against the other side of the door. "I know what happened. You signed over treasury funds for Filthy's dig. You got the tax payers footing the bill for your little adventure ruining my life."

Twilight wanted to protest, to claim that this dig is in the public interest, to lie and say that she didn't do it all for herself, but she couldn't choke back her tears.

Crystal snarled, "You're a disgrace to Equestria!"

It was quiet now.

The silence seemed to stretch on. Twilight could only hear her own sobs, until Spelunky spoke through the door, "Hey. I don't think she means what she says. We're still trying to get you out of there, but we may need you to teleport back up to the surface."

Twilight sniffed, and wiped her eyes. She didn't respond.

Spelunky spoke softly. "There's a button out here, but it flashes with some writing when we try pressing it."

Twilight said nothing.

Spelunky's voice had some worry now. "Twilight. Say something, Twilight."

Twilight whimpered, "She's right."

There was more silence.

Twilight stood up, and she looked around her small prison. There was an glassy red illusion floating in the air. It was two of the characters from the language of the ruins, but she recognized these ones. They were numerals. The ponies of the ruins used a base ten system. This one said seventeen.

She looked down. There was another set of floating numerals. The numbers one through twenty were written inside of an array of square blue glass chips, hovering just in front of the wall next to the door.

Twilight hovered her hoof over the seventeen. She wondered if this was the right thing to press. Would it allow her to escape if she solved this puzzle? Surely the answer couldn't be that simple. That's what she told herself.

She reached for the 'one', and pressed it.

She felt herself become lighter. The knot in her belly, which was already tied tightly by her tears, floated up into her throat. "Spelunky." she called out to the door. There was no answer.

"Spelunky!" she shouted.

She knew what was happening now. The room was falling. The knot just kept getting tighter. She gasped with fright, and her horn started to glow. She drew forth the energy to teleport herself, and just as she was about to fire, she felt heavy. The room came to a stop, and the door slid open.

Twilight stepped out of the elevator, wiping her eyes and sniffing, she brought forth a light spell, illuminating the tip of her horn to pierce the darkness.

The room was fairly large, about the same size and height as her entire tree-house library. The ceiling was the same grid of windows as the main room she used to enter the ruins.

In the center of the room was a circular desk, surrounded by six chairs, which seem to have been formed right out of the floor. The center of the desk was concave and hemispherical.

She drew in a sniff. Her cheeks were prickling now with the feeling of dried tears in her fur.

With a loud clack, the familiar white light of the ruins flooded the room. A blue glow from concave surface of the desk came next, and in one explosive burst, the glow from the desk gave rise to a dozen planes, covered with information, and writing in the language of the ruins.

Each chair seemed to have several different sets of information and moving pictures, and a plane of blue glass symbol chips. There were arrays of graphs, reams of text, and what seemed to be hundreds of colored rectangles, most of them flashing red.

With a flicker, the enormous space over the desk was occupied with a rotating globe. Twilight felt sensation of static electricity in the air with the appearance of the globe, making her fur stand on end, and she stood her ground, mesmerized by the ruin's sudden decision to display the power of its magic so flagrantly.

Twilight stepped toward the chairs. One of them seemed to be set farther away from the others, as if it was placed specifically so that it would be facing toward the other five, and resting on the chair was a small black foreleg bracer.

Twilight blinked at the artifact, and fell on her haunches in front of the chair. She reached out and gently touched it with a hoof. "Princess Celestia. I wish you were here. I don't know if what I've done is right."

She sighed, "No. I know it was wrong. Just because I'm very talented, doesn't mean I'm better than everpony at everything. I know that now. But..."

She looked up at the globe above her head, spotting Equestria as it spun by slowly. "I know I was meant to be here. I was born to learn everything I can about magic. It's who I am."

She gently lifted the bracer from the chair, and connected it to her foreleg. She closed her eyes, and tried to feel its power. Her horn glowed with a warm purple light. After a moment, she sighed. Nothing.

Despondent, she trudged through the ruin, examining each of the corridors and tiny rooms marked with the navigation word.

Her eyes were drawn to one door, facing exactly across from the seat she found the bracer upon. It was striped with red and black diagonal lines. This one was marked with an eleven character word, and five five-pointed stars. Twilight stared at the stars for a moment, and sat down to dig through her saddle bags. She opened one of the specimen boxes Crystal gave her, and pulled out a plastic rectangle with five stars.

She slipped the rest of the rectangle away, and hovered the rectangle near the door. With a hiss, a puff of air shot out of the crack in the center of the door, and it gradually split open, revealing a small room, not much bigger than the one that brought her here.

Twilight's spirits started to rise as she stepped toward the glass case. There they were. Six reflective, rainbow colored silver discs, about the size of a one bit coin. She started by slipping one into her saddle bag.

The red light in the room started to flash, sending shadows of light rotating around the floor, the door slammed down behind her with a ground shaking crash, and she turned around with a start.

She sighed. She could tell by the sound of that door that it isn't the kind that's going to open again.

With a drawing of the wind, Twilight's horn glowed. The dusty floor swirled in a spiral pattern toward her hooves. With a flash and a sparkle, she was gone.

Comments

[an1979]

Very good sci-fi themed fic.
No idea why so many downvotes...

[zero588]

I suppose a'human' tag will eventually pop up?

[Mercury Zero]

3159978

Nope.

[zero588]

3160092
Okay then.

[Silver_Star]

[Hayquill]

Intriguing. The technology is recognizably human, yet just futuristic enough that I can't always guess what it does. I look forward to reading future updates.