//------------------------------// // Chapter Six // Story: The Corvus Prince // by Daemon McRae //------------------------------// Chapter Six To assume the strength of light, its force, its grace, its power Is to forget the will of night, the purpose of its hour. For when the sun recedes at dusk and gives way to the moon It is to witness darkness’ strength, the shadow’s greatest boon. The dark exists where light does not, and patiently it waits For it exists without the light, the greatest of its traits. The sun exists to banish dark, to bring light to the land But the night will wait forever until only Shadows Stand. Princess Luna ran. Down hallways, down corridors, throwing open doors long before she had to pass them. Those ponies still standing around, either unaware of the danger, or having evaded it for now, leaped out of her way, or were leaped over. She had no time for obstacles. She also had no ideas. How was she to start gathering shadows? They were not her domain, despite popular opinion. She knew dreams. She knew the moon, and the stars. She knew the creatures of the night. Not the dark, however. Not the shadows underneath her very hooves. There were beasts there, too. She knew that, now more than ever. None of this helped her. But she knew something that could, just maybe. Of all of her precious books, a love that, unfortunately, had led to the very peril she now faced, there were some that even she dared not to keep out in the open. Some had to be locked away in special places, only to be read in quiet, away from prying, untrained eyes. The irony of her lack of discipline in regards to the tome Corvus had emerged from was not lost on her. With each step towards her destination, she kicked herself for her blind enthusiasm, her lack of caution, her childish curiosity. Partway down, some part of her realized that it was those traits Corvus had been most likely depending on the whole time. She set aside that train of thought, that she had been played so easily, as she finally approached the long hallway leading to her goal. The more dangerous books she kept, she kept in special safes. Locked away, but easy to get to, for her. The most dangerous, the most tempting, she had trapped in their own special vault, buried far and away into the heart of the mountain that Canterlot had been built on. It was into these tunnels she ran, past torchlit hallways and giant locked doors promising dangerous secrets she had no use for now. At least, she hoped she hadn’t. At the very end of the last of these hallways, there was a great golden door. An ornate promise of illicit, Royal secrets, covered in special locks and wards. Still, this was not her goal. Into a side passage she ducked, a hollowed out expanse of stone with roughly cut steps, as if done so by workers with no intention of staying there a second longer than they had to. Which they did not. Luna flew down these steps, quite literally, taking no risks at tripping herself up on the rough cut stone. The landing at the bottom was a tight fit for an alicorn, but soon gave way to a larger chamber, with a single grey steel door with a simple lock on it. There were no hinges to this door. It was simply a large square slat of thick metal set firmly into even thicker stone. The lock itself was a simple metal circle in the dead center, with a single large keyhole. Yet no key would open this door. “Librus!” Luna called. “I need you!” The circle of metal spun, the keyhole twisting sideways, and reshaping itself, until it blinked, revealing a single bright blue eye where there was none seconds ago. The chamber echoed with a high-pitch, effeminate voice. “What do you want, Luna?” it said simply, with an impatient edge. “I need to get into the archives! Something in there has to help me!” she cried, trotting in place impatiently. The eye rolled. “We do not have to help you, Luna. We are here because we wish it.” “Yes, but this is an emergency! Corvus is loose!” she barked, hoping the name would ring enough bells to open the damn door. The eye widened, and the voice raised in pitch. “That’s impossible! I’d know better than anyone if his book had left my… my… shelves… oh dear.” “What, what is it?” Luna ordered, looking over her shoulder, wondering if Corvus had followed her into the mountain. Seeing nothing, she turned back to the door, who, if it could, would look rather sheepish right now. “Well,” Librus said, trying to lower the timbre of his voice to a more respectable pitch, like for instance, one dogs could still hear, “It seems as though a few… choice tomes have left their posts. Not that I could stop them if I wanted, mind you, but I should have noticed.” Luna glared daggers at the single eye, which suddenly found the wall behind her more fascinating than anything. “Would one of these books perhaps be The Penumbral Son?” There was a loud cough, and the door clicked loudly as it swung open. “Please, do come in,” Librus said guiltily. Luna simply scoffed and hurried into the unlit room beyond. Soon, the whole room was cast in dim light with no source. As if the walls themselves were aglow, suddenly every nook and cranny was illuminated, if but a little. The Princess trotted up and down the aisles, glancing impatiently t book after book, her years of speed reading allowing her to analyze entire shelves of currently useless forbidden lore at once. Cursory examinations of their titles revealed such books as Lockjaw the Mad’s Methods of War, The Journals of Dimension Diver, and All Hazard’s Final Words. Finally, somewhere near the middle, away from the great tomes bound in chains, several rows down from the books in large glass cases, Luna found a book that might in fact be able to help her. Shadows Stand: The Last Bastion of Things Beyond the Light. "...wait. What did you mean, a few?!"