//------------------------------// // 8 Truth revealed // Story: For science - Book two // by Znegil //------------------------------// As we walked around a small hill the tower came finally into view. The big hole in the first floor was the prominent thing I noticed. I was surprised it hadn't collapsed so far, it was in a terrible state. It took us another twenty minutes to reach it. "Who this thing looks horrible.", Lyra stated. She hadn't stopped asking Cadence about her life all the way here. I had never imagined she would be the kind of mare impressed by a title, but Cadence was a fascinating character for sure. "So... this was my home.", said the princess while she slowly moved closer to the tower, she looked conflicted. "I'm curious but also afraid." "We're here with you princess, you're not alone.", I tried to support her. "Well, it's just an old building and we're here to find some answers.", she said after a few seconds and started to use her magic to tear off some planks that had been nailed over the entrance door. Once the door was free again she carefully pushed to open it. Instead of swinging open it just fell inside the tower swirling up an incredible amount of dust. Coughing we took a few steps back and waited for the dust to settle again. "We should expect everything to be in this bad condition.", I told them. "So let's be extra careful when we enter the tower, we don't want anyone to get hurt." I remembered what Bon Bon had told me and decided to watch Lyra extra closely while we walked through this dilapidated building. We slowly entered while the floor creaked under every of our steps. The whole place looked like it hadn't been visited by anyone for years, the dust was half an inch thick. Old wooden furniture stood all around, only illuminated by the dirty windows. Twilight used a simple light spell, which helped us to see much better. The tower was quite large in diameter, there were several rooms on the ground floor. There was a kitchen, a bath, a living room and a dining room, but we didn't found anything of interest there. No one dared to open any cabinets in the kitchen. At least we found a spiral staircase leading up to the next floor. We decided to use it only one at the time, not pushing our luck. This floor was much brighter thanks to the giant gaping hole in the side wall, most of the stuff in it looked burned or damaged. The biggest part of it seemed like it had been a library before. I saw the pain in Twilight face and felt it through our connection as she inspected several books only to find them in an unreadable state and falling apart as she lifted them. Cadence instead was focused on a small unharmed spot within all this chaos, a little cradle standing in it. We walked up to it and inspected it closely. It was a simple wooden cradle, some stars were carved into it. Cadence lifted it with her magic and examined it from all sides, but there wasn't much to see. "I'm taking this with me.", she announced, not surprising to any of us. We searched the whole floor but found only four readable books we could take with us for further studies. "I had expected to find more intact stuff.", I said quite disappointed. "Well, the inside of this tower had been unprotected to weather for many years now.", Twilight explained. "We shouldn't have hoped for much." Twilight had packed the books into her saddlebags and Cadence was levitating the cradle behind her as we walked one by one down the stairs again. "At least it had been nice to see the place where I'm from.", the princess concluded our experience. We shouldn't have stood all in one place for long on this rotten wooden floor, because it broke underneath us and we all fell down. ... Painful groans all around me, including myself. We had fallen down a floor into a large room that had been hidden. I was happy the height of a typical pony room was just so that I was able to stand in it, so the fall wasn't that deep. It was dark since Twilight lost her concentration on the light spell. A new light spell came from Cadence instead. "Is everypony alright?", she asked. "I felt better, but nothing seems to be broken.", I responded after slowly standing up. "I'm fine too." "Me too." I looked around and saw a huge lab, still in excellent condition and only a little dust in it. It was filled with strange apparatuses and crystals I had never seen before. We carefully wandered through all these things, trying to figure out what their purpose was. While doing it we also found a staircase leading to the ground floor, there it had been hidden in a part of the wall. "A secret lab is almost a bit cliché.", I told the others. "What do you mean?", Twilight asked. "You know like in many books and movies there is always a secret lab with the really important experiments." "Not in the books I read, and we don't have many movies." "Right... different universe or dimension, I still tend to forget this sometimes." I found an object shaped like... a gun maybe. It had a grip to hold it but also a stand to put it on a surface. I decided to touch it and since nothing bad happened I carefully picked it up and examined it. The was a hole in its top, its shape reminded me of something but I wasn't sure what it was. "What have you found?", Twilight asked and got closer. "I'm not sure, but something seems missing." I looked around the table where I had found this thing, there wasn't anything unusual only these crystals that laid all around this lab... the shape of these crystals. I put the 'gun' down on the table again aimed at a nearby wall and picked up on of the pink crystals. "It looks like they would fit inside this thing, is it ammo?", I pondered. "Something is written on this one, '25'. Could you all please stand behind me when I try to activate it, I don't want anyone to get hurt." They all did like I said and I carefully put in the crystal and pulled the 'trigger'. A three-dimensional life-sized hologram of a white pegasus mare with a purple and dark red mane appeared only a few feet in front of us, so detailed I even was able to see her breathe. The unknown object was some kind of projector. "Test number twenty-five", we heard a stallion's voice. "Say something, Honey." "What should I say?", the hologram asked. "It doesn't matter this test is just to improve the audio quality." "A black rabbit jumps over the moon. Fish are dancing through the street.", the mare said smiling. We heard the stallion laugh. "You can be such a clown, Mira." The hologram disappeared and we all stood there flabbergasted. "Had this been my parents?", Cadence broke the silence after a few seconds. I looked at her, she had tears in her eyes. "Mira...", she whispered. "Well they could have been, it's hard to say when this recording has been made.", Twilight replied. "This technology is so far beyond what we have right now. The only thing we can do is put still images into crystals." "We should try a few more of them and see what we can learn.", I suggested. ... We tried different crystals and watched what had been recorded. The numbers one to ten had been just recordings of objects, apples, a chair... and pretty low quality. Up to number twenty the quality improved a lot and Mira showed up sometimes. Twenty-one was the first with sound but there wasn't any additional information in these. "Here is a bigger yellow crystal in a little stand.", Lyra shouted as we scanned the lab for more crystals. "Maybe there is something important on it." Cadence used her magic to bring the crystal over to the projector and inserted it. A hologram of Mira and a red unicorn stallion with a light brown mane appeared. "Hi Aurora, this is our first crystal diary. We will do at least one per month to document your progress and have you in it as well, but your sleeping right now.", Mira said. "Also this is made with the new invention of your father, the crystal camera." "You're probably wondering about the bad quality when you will be watching this.", the stallion said. "I'm sure we have improved this technology quite much by your time. Next weekend I will travel to Canterlot to meet with some investors who can provide much higher quality crystals, I just have to finish another project before..." "That's really not what this diary was supposed to be about.", Mira interrupted him. "Sorry, you're right. Should we start again?" "No, I don't know how long she will be sleeping, let's just move on." He took a deep breath and started to talk again. "My dear Aurora, it has been only six days since you were born, but you're the cutest thing ever. When I see you sleeping in your cradle, with you beautiful multicolored hair, I feel so complete. I'm so thankful your mother gave me this precious gift." He kissed Mira's cheek. "All these things Redwood just said are true.", Mira continued. "When I hold you in my hooves nothing else seem to matter, I will always love you and protect you from all harm. We're looking forward seeing you grow up and explore the world." "The crystal is almost full.", Redwood whispered. "We will do more recordings soon, so you can look back on your own development once you're an adult... and of course to remember ourself of all these happy times." They waved goodbye together before their hologram faded. Twilight just wordlessly drew Cadence into a hug, while the princess cried and looked overwhelmed by all of this. "Mira and Redwood...", she whispered between the sobbing. "And their daughter Aurora." After a few moments I talked to them: "Maybe you should lead Cadence out of the tower so she can relax in the autumn sun... away from all this stuff, while Lyra and I are carefully packing all this stuff into the saddlebags." Twilight nodded and led Cadence up the staircase and outside the tower. ... We had ignited a few torches on the wall and after a few minutes, we had packed all the crystals and the equipment for them in our saddlebags. We had put them in a corner while we further examined the rest of the lab. "I was hoping to get more information about Cadenza on this trip.", I told Lyra while looking around. "The recording had been a good source of information so far, maybe we find even more.", she replied. I looked at her. "No, not about Cadence, I meant the other Cadenza." Her eyes darted from side to side. "I... I'm sure you can just visit her when you have some free time." "What?", I asked confused. "I... I meant... you can ask her when she is back... from vacation?" "You have no idea what I'm talking about and you acted strange all day... who are you?", I stepped towards 'Lyra'. Suddenly there was a green flash and a much bigger black creature with blueish mane, transparent wings, and a crooked horn appeared. It rushed towards me, its fangs clearly visible, only by reflex I was able to bring my arm up for protection. Without slowing down it bit in my arm... its growling turned into sounds of pain, it hadn't been pleasant to bite into wood. I used this moment to punch the creature in the face and it stumbled a few steps back. Before I was able to land another hit I was engulfed in a magical green aura which made it impossible to move anymore. It also held my mouth shut and prevented me from screaming for help. I levitated towards the black creature. "Why do you have to make everything so complicated.", she said with a feminine but strange voice. Then something hit me on the head and everything went black.