Meanwhile...

by WatchMeShadow

At The Ponyville Library part 2

-------------------
Twilight Sparkle
-------------------

Wednesday morning Twilight got up bright and early and was already eager to get that translation book. She crept downstairs so as to not wake up Spike. She made him worry with that stunt she pulled and felt he could use the extra rest. Prepared a cup of tea and waited. While waiting for both the tea and translation book she browsed the book that needed translating to try and get an idea its layout. She has not really looked at it before now, just the first page that Applebloom showed her. As she looked it over she noticed that it was definitely not a printed book, it was more like a very detailed journal. As she flipped through the pages she came across several drawn pictures of a pony getting a cutie mark along with a lot of writing. With a loud hiss the tea kettle went off. She put the book down and got her tea. Once she finished her tea there was a knock on the door.

Twilight quickly got to the door and opened it to see a light brown stallion earth pony wearing tan saddle bags, “Do you happen to be Fossil Records?” she asked happily. The stallion has light blue eyes, his mane and tail is light red, and his cutie mark is a stone-slab hieroglyph. Much to her annoyance he bowed to her.

“Yes I am, your highness,” he said still bowing.

Twilight actually kind of hated that, or at the very least was very frustrated by that action. She was no better than him in any way. She knew of him because she has read some of his brilliant research papers about ancient Zebra civilizations. She read those shortly after she met Zecora. Seeing him bowing like that just wasn’t right. Sighing on the inside, “You may rise Fossil Records you needn't be so formal with me. Twilight is just fine. Now I believe you have a translation book for me?” Twilight asked. He soon pulled out the book in question after digging through his saddle bags.

Twilight quickly levitated it to a podium in the library and was about to thank him before he asked, “and the sword Pri... Twilight?"

Twilight blushed slightly in embarrassment, “Oh right, one moment please," as she quickly went up stairs. Quietly she got the sword that she completely forgot about. She didn’t want to wake up Spike. “Here you go," she said as she laid it down in front of him. “Thank you for bringing this book, I’m sure it will help me find out what happened to the Cutie Mark Crusaders!” she said in a chipper tone.

“Not a problem yo… I mean Twilight, I shall be on my way then,” he replied before he picked up the sword. He didn’t have to struggle too much to find a safe place to attach the sword to his saddlebags; after all, as an archeologist he is use to carrying various ancient objects. When the door closed Twilight quickly went to begin translating. She couldn’t wait to find out what was in this journal.

After a while she began to get a headache. It was such an overly complicated language system. Needlessly complicated even. So many words can mean completely different things based on a word or two before/after it; like, a word for, “potato” could mean “paper” or “love.” That’s right a word for “potato” that means there’s at least one more word for it.

She spent pretty much her whole time there that day getting a very loose grasp on the language. The alphabet symbols were completely different than the current ones but were mostly easy to understand. She started with the first page of the journal that had the pictures of the lily pad. At least she had a context into what the text probable said under each sketch. She did manage to translate it with little issue, but even then she had to recheck the translation book several times to make sure it was right. It was very time consuming. She took some breaks to eat and read more equestrian laws when it got too frustrating. Before she knew it, it was time to go to sleep.

-------------------
Scootaloo
-------------------

Surreal is the only word that could describe how Scootaloo felt. Rainbow Dash isn’t her sister. The last two years of her life have been her best up till yesterday. She allowed herself to believe a lie ever since the camping trip last year. She tried to rationalize it as the self-deception it was, but it only reminded her of things she’d rather forget about. She knew better than to put the blame on Rainbow for how she felt, but the thought of seeing her idol hurt too much to even consider. She stayed inside most of the day, only going out to get something to eat. Both Sweetie and Applebloom were grounded, so she had little to do except stew in her world altering thoughts. She considered talking to Pinkie about it but decided against it; this was her own problem. She had a hard time getting to sleep Wednesday night.

Thursday the feeling was gone briefly and when she got up in the morning she almost went to the park to watch Rainbow practice out of habit. She came to her senses before she did though. Putting herself through that wasn’t something she felt like doing. She was also feeling incredibly bored without Sweetie or Applebloom to hangout with.

With nothing else to do she decided to go to a field in the outskirts of Ponyville where no pony is likely to be. It was a nice clear day and she was trying to make herself feel rebellious. Well anything other than what she has been feeling recently. She even prefered the mind numbness that came with being sleep deprived. She already knew what was going to happen but she hasn’t tried it in a while. She really wanted to try anything to get her mind off Rainbow Dash.

“Okay I got this! I’ll prove them all wrong!” Scootaloo said to herself as she tried to psych herself up, then immediately looked everywhere to make sure nopony was around. Nothing but grass, a few bushes, and a couple trees was in sight. Nopony was present except for her. She took a calming breath, closed her eyes, spread her wings, jumped into the air, and flapped them with all her might. After some flaps, she noticed something off. She's only experienced this feeling the few times Rainbow has given her a ride. The fun feeling of weightlessness. She opened her eyes to a near endless blue expanse. Confusion set in for a second before she looked down. Directly below her she could see Canterlot, Ponyville, The Everfree, and a whole lot more. She was amazed breathless, she saw so much. Everything was so small. Eventually, she had to breath and when she did it was cold and like breathing through a small straw. She wondered how she got up here, as far as she knew flying for her is suppose to be impossible. It’s something she has struggled to accept, but learned to live with. She quickly looked above her to see if somepony was carrying her, and to her horror nopony was there. She quickly looked everywhere only to see clear sky and some clouds far below her. Nopony in sight. Falling she was starting to fall. She’s never been this high before let alone in the sky without somepony she trusted carrying her. She was completely unprepared for this. The ground was slowly getting closer and no pony was there to save her. Terror filled her veins and she hyperventilated in panic. She felt light headed. She couldn't breath, as air whistled by. Everything got blurry and quickly went black.

Scootaloo felt chilly and a constant wind as she regained consciousness. ‘Why’s it so windy? Is the window open?’ she thought just before she opened her eyes. The Everfree and Ponyville presented themselves much closer to her then last she saw them, while Canterlot was clear in view. She panicked. “Ahh~,” she screamed at the top of her lungs while getting closer to the ground, uselessly kicking her legs. She ran out of breath, forcing her to think and breath. She came up with a plan, her only salvation. Gliding was the only thing that came to mind, ‘Okay, okay just spread my wings and don’t flap them,’ relief washed over her the second she stretched them out, because she slowed down significantly. That relief vanished as she realized she passed out while falling. Lazily, she descended to the ground. Her wings ached from keeping them open for as long as she has, but fear kept them petrified in place.

After the terror induced slow fall she finally made it to the ground. It was a somewhat rough landing but she's had much worse crusading. She simply curled up into a ball and laid there in shock. Everything happened so fast she didn’t know what to think, outside of not wanting that to happen ever again. After an unknown amount of time she went to go get something to eat. Luckily Pinkie had good news that she would be able to see her friends in a meeting at Twilights. Pinkie insisted that she finish eating before heading over to the meeting. She just wanted to see her friends; after all, too much has happened recently.

-------------------
Twilight Sparkle
-------------------

Thursday morning she began to translate the second page. It took her almost all day but she got it done before nighttime. It was an incredible annoying task, but she was ecstatic to put it lightly at what it said. The writer had written things in such a way that wasn’t exactly meant for Old Equestrian, it was such that he would throw some words out there but leave it to the reader to determine which word it really was, as words in Old Equestrian often meant more than one thing. It was doable as some words usually made no sense within the building context. It did prove to Twilight that his portrayals in hearth's warming plays were maybe on to something. She was translating a journal from none other than Chancellor Puddinghead:

I Chancellor Puddinghead of the earth pony tribe leave this journal as an account of ponykinds biggest cover-up known by me to ponykind in all of the history that I’m aware of. Perpetrated by me, Commander Hurricane, and Princess Platinum. I will go over every change that I’m aware of happening to the pony races as of forty years after the cover-up. I first would like to point out the sword that was on the pedestal above this journal. It was used to slay the Windigo Queen. The gem in its pommel was at one time a normal gem one that’s close to perfect as perfect can get but a normal gem none-the-less. So if these last forty years have told me anything this might be a world shattering discovery. At the time she “the Windigo Queen” had wiped several towns off the map using a powerful gem so we gathered every pony into a meeting. It was agreed that me, Hurricane, and Platinum would be granted half of every ponies magic and life force to defeat her since our first attempt was utterly hopeless. I think the Windigos collected our negative feelings/energy and put it into a gem during all the years we spent at war with each other before The Great Migration. That is most likely what happened, we were never really sure what gave her gem such power. Anyways, We tried to defeat her with this new power, but only managed to save the townsponies while their towns got destroyed. We knew defeating her this way was impossible so we made the hide-out this journal should be found in. Then we put half of our magic/life force and all of our borrowed magic/life force into the gem of Hurricanes sword. It worked and we were able to slay her. When we did the gem the Windigo Queen used was destroyed, but before that happened the gems traded magical blows. When it was destroyed it shot off six fragments in various directions. While the gem in the pommel of the sword shot off three bolts of magic. Then we hid the sword away so no pony of ill intent could get their muzzle on it, which by the way was our main reason for covering this up. I made it so only three colts and/or fillies of the three tribes could enter; after, I dropped this journal off, but don’t tell Hurricane and Platinum I did that. That’s basically it. Oh, If you’re wondering how I was able to make specific requirements to even enter this hiding spot then feel free to consult page three.

Now some of the basics of what happened to the three tribes after half their magic and life force disappeared.

Earth Ponies

Earth ponies have lost much of their strength, healing, and plant growth abilities. Most gave away these attributes to help in the fight against the Windigo Queen for obvious reasons. I will go more into detail on this in the next page.

Pegasi

Almost all Pegasi have lost their ground magic in favor of keeping their air magic. Even after everything we have been through it saddens me to write that it has been forty years and the few pegasi that kept their ground magic are treated like outsiders to the ones who kept their air magic. I will go into more detail on page four.

Unicorns

Unicorns for the most part are weaker now. Instead of two to three ponies to bring night and day it now takes about fifteen. They also will have more trouble learning new spells but they can still do them all if they got the power. Page five

The Marks

Marks began to appear on the young soon after the defeat of the queen. This caused quite a bit of tragedy. My only guess as to why they suddenly started appearing is because of the missing life force. Pages seven to twelve.

History

We rewrote a lot of history to make this cover up work. We were fortunately able to use the tragedies caused by the ponies reactions to The Marks to get support from enough ponies to change most of our history so as to prevent them from happening again. Due to The Great Migration that wasn’t too hard a task since we abandoned a lot of books. What little we did have I committed to memory what I found to be important and wrote down in the rest of this journal. Pages thirteen to thirty-five.

Page 2

That evening Twilight had Spike send a letter to Celestia detailing her findings. Then she had Spike gather the crusaders, Rarity, and Applejack in the library to tell them what she discovered. While waiting she had some time to think about what Puddinghead wrote. In that time she formed a couple plausible theories around them. Scootaloo was the last to show up.

“Thank you all for showing up on such short notice,” Twilight said as an introduction with a wide smile, “I believe I have some answers to some questions. To start I believe what the CMC first felt when they entered the cave was ambient magic from magic decay of the gem in Hurricanes sword...” Twilight got interrupted.

“Hurricane? As in Commander Hurricane from the hearths warming play?” Sweetie asked. It amazed Twilight how Sweetie could be so on spot sometimes and other times be so utterly clueless.

Twilight smiled at that, “Yes! that is correct Sweetie,” as everypony suddenly looked a lot more interested.

“Woo nelly Rainbow would get a kick out of this, what makes you so sure it was Commander Hurricanes?” Applejack questioned.

Twilight was amused with that. She could only imagine how Rainbow would react. “It says so in Chancellor Puddingheads Journal!” Twilight responded hovering said journal in front of everypony to see.

“Well now, things seem to be getting even better. Please tell me they found something of Princess Platinum's as well!” Rarity exclaimed.

“Nope all we found was the journal and the sword, the rest of the place was vines, leaves, some glowing flowers, and a lily pad elevator,” Applebloom said to a now disappointed Rarity.

Twilight was just so excited she forgot what she was even doing for a second, “To think you literally fell into... ahem, Now as I was saying. I believe what they felt basically was ambient magic over-saturation. I don’t know why it didn’t cast random spells to disperse but I believe it has something to do with this life force Puddinghead mentioned... Oh,” Twilight noticed everyponys confused look and quickly gave them a brief summary of Puddingheads summary. She left out what happened to the defeated Windigo Queen. “As I was saying I believe this life force kept the magic stable somehow. I also believe that the three magic orbs that made you fillies pass out was the magic and life force put in the gem returning to their rightful owners as it were. Though I can’t be certain. In any event Puddinghead suggest that pegisi had something called ground magic which could explain the sword? Earth ponies apparently had the ability to heal and grow things…” before she could continue she got interrupted.

“Wait, are you saying I can grow plants like my potions can?” Applebloom questioned.

Twilight had time to consider that question before they got there, “I’m not sure if you can or not Applebloom.” For some reason Twilight thought it would have been Scootaloo to be the one to interrupt her. A glance at Scootaloo told a different story. She looked tired, but at ease. Well it was getting late Twilight reasoned. Sweetie and Applebloom however looked excited.

“It certainly would be neat,” Applejack added quickly, while giving Twilight the go ahead to continue her speech.

“Right…” Twilight was forgetting something, but couldn’t remember what, “anyways; Sweetie, you might have more magic than me right now. I’m going to have a test to confirm my theory for you three. Meet me tomorrow at noon, and please, don’t try anything until then, especially you Sweetie. I cannot stress enough how dangerous it is for you to try anything with your magic. Anyways, It’s getting late and I still have some work to do, I’ll see you all tomorrow at noon,” Twilight finished. They said their goodbyes and went home. She began to brainstorm on how to make these test.

End Chapter 6

Author's Note:

Oh snap, sounds like things might start to get crazy... Nah, not quite yet but at the same time yes...

Comments

[F]

Another good chapter! I can't wait to read the next one. :)