Eighteen Years Later.

"Ma’am, that carriage is ready for you outside." said the pony at the door.

"Alright I'll be right there, just give me a moment to see if I have everything I need." Lyra replied.

"Of course ma'am, take as long as you need." He said as he closed the door.

'Humph' She thought, she had waited nearly two years for this, 'I cannot believe it took a year for the Princesses to approve this expedition, then another to uncover the sight, I have waited to long for this.'

Normally the Goddesses approved of things like this, 'new chances for her subjects to learn valuable lessons', but normally their ponies did not go looking for 'valuable lessons' in the Everfree Forest. They both had told her that an archeological expedition into Everfree would be too dangerous to make it a meaningful trip without a guarantee that there was something to be found. They had argued that the old castles was the only worthwhile thing there and that it, and the surrounding areas, had been thoroughly searched and mapped for artifacts and nothing else of value was to be found. But they were not closed on the issue and they had told her if she could find proof that there was something else that the original expedition had missed they would clear hers' to go and look.

Be that as it may, it still took almost a year to find truly compelling evidence, but find it she did, She had found a map in the ruins of a city called 'Indus' a Neolithic period city that was found in the near the Whitetail woods, The map was damaged but it showed an area that was now part of Everfree but was in the time that 'Indus' was a thriving city, was unclaimed by the forest and ,according to its size on the map, was almost double the size of Indus. The map was not all she found, she found a stone tablet on what was the cities old temple, it told of a massive city called 'Alexandria' it was told to be the 'Home of the gods'. She knew of the old Equestrian faiths, they were usually polytheistic with a god of the sun and/or moon, stars, harvest, death. Although almost all of them fell out of practice ,at least the pony ones any way, when Celestia and Luna came into existence, being able to control the sun and moon respectively made most of the other faiths moot, although there is free faith laws in Equestria and anypony can worship, or not worship, anything they think is right. As long as they do not hurt anypony else while doing so. It was just hard to do anything else when the real gods of the sun and moon were now a real thing and not some fairytale to be told around a fire.

The old faiths were usually centered in tribes of small cities with each having its own set of gods or god, but Indus and Alexandria appeared to share a faith, from what she learned from Indus their gods where incredibly powerful, intelligent and helpful, They also appeared, at least if her linguist was translating this right, tangible just like Celestia and Luna are today, although she dismissed this because almost all the old faiths put forth similar claims. That was all she got from the stone because it was damaged due to age.

And now she was off to 'Alexandra' to see what she could find.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Three Weeks Later

"Ma'am Can you come over here for a second." asked one of her assistant archaeologists.

"Of course, just one minute." She replied happily.

Alexandra was a treasure trove of artifacts, from clay pots to full buildings were being uncovered from the forest, and they had only uncovered about twenty-five percent of the city!

"Now what have you found, Feather Duster?" Lyra asked.

Feather looked at Lyra and began, "I was looking at the murals on the walls and I am beginning to notice a pattern, look do you see it ma’am?”

Lyra looked at the stone carving, it ran the full length of the room they were in, a full fifty feet. It depicted a group of earth ponies walking in the woods, then on the next part a huge city in a clearing with the earth ponies going towards it. It then depicted a group of earth ponies looking over a large field of grain or some other type of crop.

Lyra looked back at Feather. “I don't see anything out of the ordinary, just a town of earth ponies."

Feathers' eyes lit up. “That exactly what I mean ma'am, just EARTH ponies, where are the Pegasi, or the Unicorns? There are none."

Lyra sighed, "Feather Duster, you know as well as I that the three tribes did not get along with each other. It would only make sense that we would have lived in different areas."

Feather rolled her eyes, " That’s not what I meant, you know how OLD this place is don't you!? This city is well over 9,000 YEARS old Lyra, that 5,000 years older than anything else we have found, have you read what we have translated? The other two races of pony are not even hinted at, not ONCE. This mural has the entire history of this city right here; I cannot wait for the translator to show up."  

"Don't get ahead of yourself Feather, we have seen this before, remember Landdown? The entire city was unicorn and none of their tomes or art had any of the other races in them." Lyra told her. 'Although this is still interesting.' she thought.

"Hey look there's Tongue Tied now," Feather waved the translator over, "So can you read it?"

He looked at the wall for a moment. "Yes, I can, it appears to be a story of some kind."

Lyra looked over, "Read it out loud please."

Tongue Tied looked at the wall for a moment, then after taking a large breath, he began.

"To those it may concern, I write this to stone in the name of the forgotten ones. Long ago, we were without peace before they came to us. In the time before the ones of light there was only darkness. All the beasts of the world came to the sounds of our endless cries, cries of pain, of loss, of fear. They feed on our fear the elders say, the monsters in the dark places that come to steal little ones from their mothers’ hoofs. We would cry for salvation, but none would ever come. One night during a full moon the shaman prayed to the stars to deliver unto us safety from the monsters in the dark, and when the stars held no answers the shaman held his head loss in shame he had failed his followers. So moved by his cries a star ripped itself from the dark and fell to the earth below, seeing this a little one ran off to catch it, and the mother ran off to save her child. The little one in her rush failed to see where she was running; neither did the rest of the tribe. The mother and daughter were missing but it took not long to find the two, but the other ponies were not what had found them first, a great beast of blue and white had found then first and had killed them both. The tribe found the two bodies and cried for the loss, but the beast came to their cries to end them as well, and in one last plea of salvation the beast reared up, but this was not the end, the star was so moved by the cry and let loose a lance of light that speared the beast through the chest. Although the beast was defiant and lashed out at the figure only to hit a wall of water that stopped a paw that even a bolder could not. The god angered by the beast’s defiance let another spear of light towards the beast, this time hitting its head and killing it as if it was a bug."

'So this god saved the tribe out of pity? There were similar stories of gods killing huge monsters, that was not uncommon' Lyra thought “Go on please"

"The tribe was fearful of this new being, it had killed a beast we had thought was un-killable. The figure looked at the tribe and we were frozen with fear. All except one filly, this filly was the second born to the mare the beast had slain. In her grief she wrapped her hoofs around the body of her dead mother and cried. The figure so moved by the filly’s' plight, moved to her side and reached out and held her head in his form, and pushed her from the two bodies. The filly did as commanded and moved a few feet away. The figure then reached down and touched both the mare and filly’s bodies. Then to the horror of us all a blackness began to take their forms, like a tar is spread across their forms completely taking them in the blackness, the filly in a rage ran to the figures side and kicked and hit its form but the water came to defend it and it enveloped the filly and picked her up and placed her by the shamans side. Then after holding their forms for a time the blackness reseeded back into the figures forelegs, and when we looked at the bodies we were amazed to see that neither of the two had a mark on them, they looked like they were sleeping and then the figure reached down to them both once more and touched them both and in a flash of thunder, brought their souls back to their bodies and then the figure stepped back."        

'Now THAT was interesting, bringing the dead back to life something even modern magic could not do and had only been tried vary recently, The old cultures had seen death as an end and to try to subvert that would mean the end of the world, This was the first she had seen of it in an ancient culture.'

Lyra looked at Tongue Tied, “Are you certain you are translating that right?"

He scoffed and looked at her., "Lyra I am the best at what I do I am one hundred present positive this is right. Now there is still a bit more."

"The mother and filly opened their eyes and everypony crowded around them. They told the mother and filly what had transpired and when they tuned to look at the figure there was now more than one, they now numbered two and ten and were surrounding us in a circle; the one that had saved us looked towards the figure to its left and made a slight motion towards the mother and daughter. The one then looked at the rest of us and watched what we did. Seemingly satisfied the figure turned back to our savor and nodded it head and it did the same. Then all of them but our savor were swallowed in a cascade of light and vanished. The figure then pointed back towards the clearing from which we had come from telling us to return. We all fallowed its bidding, but when the figure made a sound and we all stopped. Its gaze fell on the filly that had attacked it earlier and it made a 'come hither' motion, the filly obeyed and the figure picked the small pink filly up. The filly was in tears with fear but the figure made a soft chirping noise that calmed the filly. It pointed back to the clearing, but the mother of the filly stopped and came up to the figure and tried to take the filly back. When she did the figure stepped out of reach and shook it head. The mare screamed in rage and the filly began to cry, then in a cascade of light they to, like the others, disappeared."

Feather Duster looked at Lyra, “That does not make sense; no pony religion has ever practices sacrifice."

"Well it’s not exactly sacrifice, the 'figure' TOOK the filly; it did not hurt her." Lyra responded.

Feather looked at the wall, and the Lyra saw something in Feathers eyes, "What’s wrong?"

"Go get the water."

Lyra looked at her for a moment and used her magic to get the bucket of water.

"Now splash it on the wall."

"WHAT, ARE YOU CRAZY THAT COULD RUIN THE WALL?"  Lyra screamed back.

"Just trust me."

Lyra grounded and splashed a small amount of water to see if it would damage the wall, seeing nothing she splashed the whole bucket at where Feather was pointing.

The dirt that was encrusted on the wall was coming off slowly to reveal more words.

"THE STAR GODS" Tongue read slowly.

"What does that me-" Feather started only to be interrupted my Lyra yelling.

"LOOK!!"

"Sweet Celestia, what in the world is that." Feather asked.

“Is it… them?" asked Tongue.

"I don't know, but I intend to find out." answered Lyra.