Season Unending

by RealBarenziah

Chapter 3, Defiance

Twilight woke the next morning full of excitement. She stretched her stiff limbs and descended the stairs to start the day. She was eager to get back to her Skyrim studies and it wasn't long before she was sitting down again with her precious materials before her. Twilight decided to start reading the essay, knowing it would contain more current information.

She sipped a cool glass of orangeade as she sat in the comfort of her room, enthralled in the scroll. She didn't even stop to take notes. The essay started by saying that Skyrim was already a ruinous country during Tamriel's hayday nearly one thousand years ago, and that little remained of the great province. Long, long ago Skyrim was home to great temples, tombs, and castles, now reduced to rubble and buried in snow. Twilight read that presently Skyrim had few inhabitants, most of the hamlets lost to time and the harsh weather.

"Hmm...looks like all the cities in Skyrim were already tiny a thousand years ago. It's no wonder they're gone now."

Twilight drank her drink and read, absorbing every word. When she approached a paragraph addressing Skyrim's history of dragons, she paused. She noticed that her glass was empty and left to refill it in the kitchen. Her mind was glued to Skyrim and all the wonders it held. She thought visiting the place, and her desire for it suddenly swelled in her chest; it seemed to have grown overnight. When she returned, Twilight looked at the most current map of Skyrim and found herself studying the main roads. She giggled at herself as she pulled out a piece of parchment and wrote: "Skyrim Vacation Itinerary."

"Just for fun. If I really was going to visit Skyrim...let's see..."

Ignoring the fact that she was distracting herself from her studies, she scrawled several items on the parchment, looking back and forth from it to the map after every entree. As was her habit when studying something exciting, she spoke to herself.

"Whiterun, definitely! That's one of the oldest cities there. Rorikstead. It started off as such a tiny village, but now it’s about the size of Whiterun. And...ooh! The ruins of Solitude! The High King of Skyrim used to live there! And the famous murder of the Emperor of Tamriel took place there....hm. Tamriel really is a rough place..."

She paused. The page beginning the chapter on dragons still lay open on the floor. Twilight thought to herself how she was procrastinating. Was she stalling? Something about it made her nervous. Shifting her weight so she sat in front of the book again, she abandoned the imaginary itinerary and glanced over the page. The top was illustrated with a beautiful woodcut in which Twilight recognized the Nordic style from earlier chapters. The image depicted a ferocious dragon unlike any she had ever seen in Equestria. Its scales were sharper and thicker, forming into vicious spikes along the spine. It had only two back legs and a pair of wings that seemed to take the place of arms. Although the illustration was primitive and worn with age, Twilight could see something far more sinister in the eyes of the dragon before her than anything she'd ever seen. Even the eyes of a Cocatrice had never looked at her so.

Below was an annotation saying, Above is a reproduction of an ancient Nordic woodcut of a Frost Dragon, one of many species found in the peaks of Skyrim. Images from Twilight's dream suddenly flooded back to her, and she shook her head to dispel them before panic could rise in her chest. She huffed in exasperation.

"Honestly Twilight. Letting a dream get in the way of your studies," She muttered to herself.

She glued her eyes to the top of the page and forced herself to stare at it until she could focus on the words. She read: The dragons of Skyrim, or rather all of Tamriel, couldn't be more different from their Equestrian cousins. They are much smaller in size, most likely an adaptation to their harsh environment. Their scales are thicker and significantly sharper than Equestrian dragons and serve as a stronger natural armor in comparison. They lack front arms and use their wings to stabilize themselves when treading on the ground, referred to as a 'wyvern' style by some drakonoligists. As a result, the wings of Tamrielic dragons are far stronger than Equestrian species,' allowing them to travel farther distances, stay airborne for longer periods of time, and scale rough terrain more easily.

Twilight paused, thinking again of her dream. The more she thought about it, the more the dragon she saw seemed to match the description in the book.
"But how?" she said to herself. "I've never read anything about them before. How could I have dreamed about one before I..." she trailed off. Shaking her head of the notion she said "No, that's ridiculous. My brain is just filling in blanks with new information." She returned her mind to her studies, looking down at the book again and rereading a few sentences.

Twilight looked up to jot down a few notes and suddenly noticed how nice the weather was outside and how dim the library was in comparison. Summoning a cloud of magical energy she got up and headed to her balcony, the book, her parchments, and orangeade following close behind. Twilight left her fake itinerary on a nearby table, pushed the door to the balcony open with a puff of telekinesis and neatly arranged the rest of her items on the ground. She heaved a sigh and smiled. Her endurance had improved. There was a time when levitating so many objects at once winded her, but now it was as easy as climbing the stairs.

Before she sat down to her studies again Twilight looked at the town below her. The sun had risen high in the sky and Ponyville was alive with the usual daytime bustle. Ponies were scattered all around the square below her exchanging jokes, arranging displays in shop windows, shopping at the vendors' stalls, drinking from the fountain, and having brunch at the cafés and restaurants.

Twilight smiled at the scene. When living in Canterlot, everything was always loud and everypony was always in a hurry. Things were so much quieter in Ponyville; so much more peaceful. She frowned. This kind of life must be so foreign the ponies of Tamriel. There was more hardship in that continent, and although Equestria had its share of dangers, it was still safe enough to travel on the main roads without having to worry about beasts or bandits.

Still, though, Tamriel was an unknown, and Twilight had to discover it. Her lifetime desire for knowledge was too strong for the barbarism of the foreign land to scare her off.

She looked down at her book again and was about to sit down when the faintest rumble tickled her ears, like the strike of distant thunder. She looked up and set her eyes on the sky. Was it going to rain?

There was nothing. Only a clear blue sky dotted here and there with tiny puffs of white. Her eyes drifted northward and froze on the horizon. She angled her ears toward the space in hopes of catching the rumble again, for it had died away as quickly as it appeared.

Suddenly a great noise tore through the air from the spot that she watched and consumed Ponyville. It was an impossibly loud roll of thunder, like that of an old and ancient voice that shook the ground beneath Twilight's hooves. Her vision was being shaken so violently she had to squeeze her eyes shut. Her organs shook with the force of the noise and her bones quivered beneath it. She soon realized that the noise wasn't like a voice, it was a voice saying...something. It was so loud it was hard to tell and her heart was beating so hard that it choked her throat and clogged her ears with its rhythm.

Then all at once she comprehended what it was saying. The voice, the one that shook the world and threatened her skeleton's integrity, was calling her name.

The whole affair lasted only a moment, barely a few seconds, before it died away, leaving Twilight frozen and shaking. Her heart was still beating at a frantic pace and adrenalin raced through her veins. Breathing rapidly, she went to the edge of the balcony and was about to call down, ask if everypony below was okay, when she froze again.

They were the same as they were before. Talking, playing, and laughing as if nothing had happened.

"H - how -" she choked to herself. "What's -"

Her eyes shot around the town, for she could see a good deal of it from her perch, but not one pony seemed to have noticed anything. But how? She backed away from the railing until she felt the shade of her ceiling inside conceal her back leg from the sun. Was she going crazy? Had she imagined it?

"Just...just another dream...yeah - I...I just didn't get enough sleep and -"

She looked down at her legs and saw they were quivering. She couldn't make them stop. The very marrow her bones still resonated with the sound she had just heard. No matter how hard she tried to deny it and will it away, there was no forgetting what had just happened. She turned her gaze to the north, where the sound had come from. She peered at the horizon relentlessly, as if staring would help her discern what was going on.

All of Twilight's attention was drawn to that point in the distance. The world around her disappeared into a haze and she became deaf to the rustle of the leaves above her and the voices below. The only thing that reached her was the deep blue that stood so far away, eluding her. As she stared, a single snowflake drifted into her vision between her eyes and alighted on her nose. She felt its chill prick for an instant, only to melt away at first contact.

She blinked. The world returned. The ponies still bustled below her, sky was calm, and her things still lay alone on the floor. Looking up, she saw that there was no cloud nearby. There was no way snow would be falling in the middle of summer. Twilight's legs continued to wobble precariously and they finally buckled beneath her. She sat on the floor and tried to still herself. Was it an illusion? An hallucination? She bowed her head and hid them under her hooves.

"What is happening?" She whispered.

She frantically searched her mind for anything that could explain what was going on. Twilight remembered illnesses that could cause hallucinations, charms and spells that if cast incorrectly could have similar effects, but nothing seemed to fit. However hard she tried her mind kept going back to Skyrim. The voice that had called her name...it had come from the north.

"But how?" She said.

Twilight lifted her head and saw her book. The pages had blown in the breeze and the tome now lay open to a page dedicated to illustrations of dragons. A gentle wind caressed Twilight's cheek, and the page turned in the breeze again.

Before her then was a two page recreation of an old painting of Skyrim. It shone with the glistening snow-capped peaks that were home to the Nords. There was a ruined tower jutting out of the rocks and perched on it was a dragon. It looked out over the painted scene with piercing eyes, and when Twilight followed its gaze she saw it was staring at the sun as peeked between two mountains, bathing the snow and rock in a radiant twilight.

With a shudder, Twilight shifted her gaze to the bottom of the page and read the title of the painting. It was in a dead language, but the book translated it as: Twilight Sparkles.

It was too much to be coincidence. Her excited planning for an imaginary trip, the voice, the page, and her fascination with it all just seemed too unnatural. She looked behind her and saw the itinerary laying open on the desk.

"This is crazy…" She said.

She went into her room, putting as much distance as she could between herself and the book. She paced in the shaded bedroom, turning over and over in her mind what she should and should not do. She even tried to think about something else, failing miserably. Finally she could think of only one thing to do. Taking a piece of parchment and a quill before her she quickly wrote:

Dear Princess Celestia,

She stopped. Perhaps this wasn't the best time to be bothering the Princess. She was a very busy pony and Twilight probably was only suffering from nerves or food sickness.

"Oh what are you thinking Twilight!? Of course there's something wrong," she said to herself.

The sharp prick of anxiousness in her skin at the confession was enough to start her writing.

It's a lovely day here in Ponyville. I haven't learned anything about friendship lately, but I do have a bit of a problem. How are things in Canterlot? I just exchanged some letters with some old acquaintances - the library people, you know. One of them gave me some great material for-well it's actually those materials that led me to - it's a very interesting subject you know

"UGH STOP RAMBLING," she yelled at herself.

Twilight hastily scratched out everything she had written and started anew, getting right to the point:

Something's happening to me, Princess. I've recently discovered something amazing: Skyrim, a province of Tamriel. I had a hard time finding more material on it but I eventually found some very helpful maps and literature. You know how I've always loved to learn new things and explore the unknown territories of knowledge, but this is different. I'm obsessed. I can't stop thinking about Skyrim. The snow, the dragons, the Nord ponies.
I had a terrifying dream the other night. I was about to be smashed between the jaws of a dragon more terrifying and vicious than any I've seen in Equestria. The next day I learned about the ferocity of Tamrielic dragons and how they don't compare to the Equestrian species. I came to the conclusion that the dragon from my dream was a Tamrielic dragon, but when I had the dream I had not yet learned about them.
That's not only what's unnerved me, Princess. Only a few moments ago, I was studying on the balcony of my room when I a voice came from the north. It shouted my name, calling me. Then as I looked northward, a saw a snowflake fall in front of me, but it's summer and there's not a cloud in the sky. I feel certain now that the voice was calling me to Skyrim. I don't know why and I don't know how.

I need to know what to do. I need your advice. Please respond as soon as you can.

Your most faithful student,

Twilight Sparkle

No sooner had she signed her name did the scroll roll up and disappear with a faint pop. Twilight stood there, counting the seconds. There was no way the Princess would send a reply immediately, but Twilight found herself waiting for it anyway.

Desperate for some kind of distraction, she levitated all her supplies from the balcony and stacked them on the desk, averting her eyes from the book as it closed. She sighed as she placed the glass of orangeade on the desk as well. Her appetite had completely disappeared. Twilight focused on breathing evenly, and her legs slowly began to still.

It had been only a few minutes when Twilight heard a gentle voice say,

"Twilight."

Celestia stood in the doorway to the balcony. She had appeared noiselessly, alighting on the balcony with silent wings and entering on quiet hooves. Twilight was filled with relief at seeing her beloved mentor, but was almost instantly filled again with apprehension.

Why had she responded so quickly? Why had she come herself and not written a letter? She saw Celestia's unusual disposition: she stood in the doorway calmly, but there was something in her eyes that Twilight couldn't place. Twilight started towards her.

"Princess I -"

"Twilight, you cannot pursue this," Celestia said sternly.

Twilight stopped, startled by the firmness in Celestia's tone.

"Princess, I don't understand what's going on."

"Twilight. Cease your studies on Skyrim immediately."

Twilight froze. Celestia was doing something she had never done to her before. She was giving her an order. A straight-up, harsh, cold order.

"I don't understand," Twilight responded.

"You don't need to."

Twilight was silent for a moment. She thought about everything that had happened, and she remembered her itinerary.

"Princess. I want to go to Skyrim."

"No."

"But Princess-"

"Twilight!" Twilight felt a flash of surprise, almost fear, at Celestia’s tone. It had never sounded so angry and dark before. Celestia continued,

"Skyrim a broken place. There's nothing for you there. There's only stone and ice where terrible history was once written. There are beasts and murderers and thieves around every corner. It's land of ruin with a long and bloody history and hardly anypony lives there now. It would be a waste of your time to go there."

"Princess," Twilight had become resolute. "I need to go."

"I forbid it!" Celestia declared.

For the first time in Twilight's life she did the unspeakable. She refused a direct order from her mentor, her princess.

"No."

"What did you say?"

"No, Princess. I know that there's something there. Everything that’s happened - it’s far too much to be coincidence. Something is calling me there. I have to go." She met her mentor's gaze. "I have to go."

After a moment Celestia's stone eyes softened in defeat. Behind her irises there was a hopelessness that Twilight barely caught before the princess turned away and said,

"Very well, Twilight Sparkle. Go, if you must, but I will have no part in your endeavor. You're on your own. I will be waiting for your return."

She spread her wings and took flight before Twilight could respond. As she left, Twilight spotted two shining droplets fall from the alabaster form above her.

---

Celestia touched down on the great castle balcony that extended from her chambers. When she received Twilight's letter the princess had been engaged with a mountain of scrolls and books which stood waiting in the middle of the suite in a rather haphazard pile. It would take Celestia hours to complete her work for the day and it looked like a late night ahead of her, but she didn't move from the balcony.

She stared at nothing, absorbing the fate that she knew of and had tried so desperately to postpone. She knew in her heart, however, there was no stopping what drew Twilight to Skyrim.

"There's nothing I can do to save you, Twilight," she said with tears in her eyes. "No matter how hard I try, one way or another you'd end up going there eventually..."

She turned and looked to the horizon.

"Mother...my most beloved subject will be visiting your land soon, and she'll be going where I cannot follow. I don't know if you can hear me from all the way over here, but please," her voice reduced to a desperate whisper. "Watch over my Twilight."

Comments

[hyourei]

Just remember one thing Twilight:
Stay away from Riften!

[Winter Storm]

A word of advice: Don't kill any chickens. It really pisses them off. But by all means, murder the Emperor. They could care less about that.

[La Vallett1]

Twi, you should know that the tombs in Skyrim is full of undead. Be careful when going there.

[HJSDGCE]

1295422
But that's the best city!