“Twilight! Twilight, we have to go!”
Twilight twitched at the sound of the shout and accidentally pumped too much power into a ‘move’ command, causing a strand of magic to shoot clean through her thought template. The whole thing started to unravel. She dived to the other side of the room, ready for the explosion, but professor Radiance charged through the door and reached the template, which dissolved into its composite strands and faded once he got close enough, obviously the effect of a few runes.
“What...professor! I was almost done!” Twilight shot her most venomous look at the professor, who started pushing her from the room. She stumbled to her legs and swayed from side to side, unused to walking after moving nothing but her eyes for...however long she’d been building her template.
“I’ll explain on the way, but right now we need to evacuate Canterlot,” the professor said, nudging her down the stairs. She took them one step at a time, the pauses between each one growing shorter as she got used to walking again.
“Wait but—What! Evacuate?” Twilight got out when she regained enough focus that she was able to talk without risking a misstep.
“Yes, and I’ll explain on the way, but right now we need to go!”
Before Twilight could say anything else, they reached the tower’s exit and the professor threw the door open. Twilight stared. On the street were more ponies than she’d ever seen outside at one time. The mob streamed for the exits, communication reduced to a few hurried whispers. Moonlight shone down on everyone, giving the whole scene a strange dreamlike quality.
“Follow me. Amber’s waiting just outside of the city with most of the class. Veracity and Luminescence are with the other two unicorns who were using the towers. They were much closer; they’re probably with Amber’s group already,” the professor said as they joined the exodus. “It’s times like these that make me wish I had a horn,” he continued in a mumble.
“Professor, why is everyone so quiet?” Twilight whispered as they neared the gates.
“Because ponies like you insist on whispering,” the professor replied in a normal tone, the volume seeming very out of place. “Sorry, it’s not you. I forgot you don’t know anything that’s going on. I’ll tell you when we find everyone the rest of the class. Promise.”
Twilight continued moving in silence for a few seconds, the forced exercise having already gotten the blood flowing through her. Then a thought occurred. “If we’re leaving, then—my parents! My books,” she hissed.
“If they found the rest of the school, then we’ll find them. If not, then try not to worry about it. Even a foal can outrun it. As for the books, well, they’re replaceable.”
“It?”
“Well, since you clearly won’t stop pestering me long enough for us to reach a place where I can give you the full explanation, the short of it is that the Everfree’s expanding and it’s almost reached the city, the princess is missing, and it’s been night for two days.
“How does that require a full explanation?”
“I was kind of hoping to ease you into it, but you don’t seem that surprised, so I guess that was all you needed.”
“Trust me, I’m going to be very shocked when I have time to think about what you just said.”
“Fair enough,” the professor said, and then they left the city.
Twilight shivered in the chill night air and looked around. It was difficult, since ponies require a lot more light than most animals to see clearly, but with the light of the moon she could make out several large groups of ponies clustered on the grass outside the gates, while individuals and smaller groups continued on the path down the mountain.
Professor Radiance idly stomped a hoof in the stiff grass then continued moving. “This way, they should be on the right side of the...aha!”
Twilight followed the professor’s gaze and made out several familiar forms. There was Moon Dancer, who she knew because that was the one student in Celestia’s school who wasn’t a constant annoyance and refrained from constantly sending Twilight invitations to this party or that ceremony, and Minuette, Lemon Hearts, and Twinkleshine; Twilight’s roommates, and Lyra, one of her old roommates before she’d moved out and Twinkleshine had moved in. Surrounding the group were three harassed-looking unicorn professors, and judging by the movements of their heads as Twilight drew near, they all seemed to be occupied in a never-ending head count.
“Got her,” professor Radiance said once they were next to the group.
An unfamiliar white unicorn with a highly stylized purple mane burst out of the group and stood in front of the professor. “Excellent! Then we can begin searching the paths leading from Ponyville at once,” she said.
The professor sighed. “As I’m sure my colleagues have already told you, we’re heading straight for Manehattan, not traipsing around searching the entirety of Equestria for ponies who could already be on another continent by now. That’s the job of the Wonderbolts, and they can do it much more efficiently than we can.”
“But I couldn’t possibly leave—”
A Lyra placed a foreleg over the white unicorn’s neck, interrupting her. “Rarity. They’re right. If they escaped, they’re probably already in Manehattan by now. If not, then there’s nothing we can...nothing we can do for them,” she said, closing her eyes.
Twilight averted her eyes from the scene and tried to think of something to say to drown out the sound of the two mares quietly sobbing.
“Uh, professor, why can’t we just take one of the trains?” she finally blurted out.
“Too many ponies. Also, I think a bunch of them broke down from carrying way over their maximum capacity,” professor Radiance said.
His explanation seemed to remind the other professors that they were there. Amber turned her head to face them, her disheveled red mane obscuring many of the stern lines of her face, giving her a worried look.
“Right. Now that you lot are here, it’s time to get moving. Rarity, Lyra, Twilight, and any pony who doesn’t know their basics: go get a copy of the Essential Book of Spells from professor Veracity. The rest of you, follow me. Anyone who passes me gets zapped. If I’m feeling generous. Try my patience and I’ll let Veracity lecture you.” With that, the orange unicorn lit up her horn and marched toward the sloping path down the mountain. After a moment, the rest of the group followed suit.
Twilight looked for professor Veracity and spotted the blue unicorn levitating the large saddlebags off her back, revealing the cutie mark of a thin black stick with sparks shooting out of the tip on her flanks. She trotted over to the professor and spotted Lyra and the white unicorn—Rarity, that was her name—approaching.
“Professor, I—”
“Don’t have saddlebags. Yes, I see. Fortunately for you, I have spares.”
With that, the professor levitated a set of saddlebags consisting of two small pouches, each big enough to fit a few books and nothing else, on to her back.
“The book’s on the right side. If you want to read it, get someone else to levitate for you. If you try to levitate it and mess it up, it’s on your head.”
Twilight murmured her thanks and stepped away, letting Rarity and Lyra pass her to collect their books. Hopefully they’d stop and camp somewhere on the way to Manehattan so she could rebuild her first thought template. Casting out of a spell book was all well and good in theory, but having to finagle it so she could read it, then hold the entire thought pattern in her head instead of having it imprinted into her horn would be a chore, not to mention the fact that spells cast from books couldn’t be modified.
She then caught up with the rest of the group, but stayed slightly behind the pack so that she could think without interruptions.
What could have caused the Everfree to suddenly expand after centuries of being the exact same size? Ponies had lived near and sometimes in the magical forest their entire lives, harvesting magical plants and minerals that couldn’t be found anywhere else. If some random pony could have tripped something that caused the expansion, it would almost certainly have already happened. Whatever it was, it had to have something to do with the princess disappearing and the night lasting two days in a row. Those three events happening all at once had to be related somehow. Despite the fact that the Everfree forest was expanding and displacing thousands, if not millions, of ponies from their homes, that wasn’t the most upsetting fact. Twilight hadn’t been one of those superstitious ponies who believed that the princess literally raised the sun; astronomers had known for centuries that the tiny star revolved around the planet, which in turn revolved around the moon. Even if Celestia did control the sun, all she had to do was place it in a stable orbit around the planet and it would continue revolving all on its own.
The only conclusions she could draw from any of this was that nothing about the situation made sense. But Twilight was going to become a famous magic researcher one day, as famous as Starswirl the Bearded. Her ultimate goal was to figure out where magic came from. Next to that, something as simple as the Everfree mysteriously deciding to eat the planet, Celestia going missing, and night lasting for days was not a mystery, but a puzzle. And she excelled at solving puzzles.