Twilight awakens only very slowly to a couple ponies’ repeated wake-up calls. To her, it’s a morning like any other. She couldn’t remember casting the sleeping spell on herself, but she rarely ever could. With somepony’s assistance, she scrambles out of her bed- interestingly vertical tonight, perhaps it had broken?- and ambles outside. Sunlight had always helped the aftereffects of her sleeping spell to wear off, just as it does this time- though why the halls had been so dark this morning, she has no clue.
It takes her a few minutes of blinking in the morning sun- or, she corrects herself, early morning sun- before she finishes waking up and her vision clears enough for her to look around. Funny, it normally takes until the late morning or sometimes early afternoon for the spell to wear off enough for her to wake up.
Then, she’s on the other side of Ponyville from her castle.
Once this finally processes, she takes a deep breath, turning to the pony that had helped her outside- Fluttershy. “Sorry about that, but um… WOAH.” She staggers a couple surprised steps backwards, away from her friend, as she finishes.
Fluttershy, of course, squeaks, hiding behind her mane. “W-what?”
“You’re… beautiful,” Twilight eventually stammers. She’d never seen even Rarity achieve such a natural gleam in her coat before- as a matter of fact, she’s pretty sure it’s impossible.
Fluttershy pauses in the act of shrinking further into her mane, noticing how smoothly Celestia’s sun is shining through it. She hadn’t read the latest Daring Do book, but she’d heard that the adventurer had meet with something that made her coat shine for a week. She slips a glance towards her flank, to make sure she hasn’t turned into Rarity- and performs a double take. How? I didn’t shampoo last night, though! What happened?
Twilight picks up on the frightened squeak as Fluttershy examines herself. “Huh? So-!” she begins, before Fluttershy vanishes into the cave a couple paces behind them. The cave, she recalls, that she had fallen into last night. Her eyes go wide as she darts in after her friend. One corner, two corner, three corner, a glimpse of Fluttershy’s tail, four corner, the cave has stopped getting darker for some reason, five corner…
She screeches- or, rather, slides; the tunnel floor isn’t solid enough for a good screech- to a halt when she rounds the final corner, her jaw dropping. This particular straight segment is very short, ending in some kind of metallic doorway, with light- calm, smooth light, though it doesn’t feel magical- spilling out of it as her friend trots through the door… Wow, that’s a deep doorframe. She walks forwards herself, staring open-mouthed at the thing Fluttershy had found.
“Um, Zeus?” Fluttershy asks the empty air.
“Yes?” a stallion responds from out of Twilight’s view- and Twilight freezes, just outside the door. Has Fluttershy been seeing someone?
“Did you, um,” Fluttershy utters, reducing to a squeak as she glances back at her hide.
“My apologies,” the stallion responds.
Not ‘the stallion’, it’s Zeus, Twilight admonishes herself. He has a name.
“It’s an automatic system,” the stallion- Zeus- continues. “I can reduce the shine, though, if you’d like.”
Fluttershy shakes her head lightly. “No, it’s fine.” With a smile, she turns back towards the entrance- and spots Twilight.
Twilight is still staring at Fluttershy, watching her friend’s gleaming coat ripple as she moves and speaks to a stallion she still can’t see, when she turns around. She watches her friend disappear from view, quick as lightning, with a squeak- and hesitates to follow her into the odd metallic room.
Fluttershy’s eye reappears in the doorway, peering back out Twilight, before she shows herself again. “Sorry about that,” she mumbles, reappearing and walking out towards Twilight. “There’s somepony I’d like you to meet.” She helps to guide the alicorn into the room- which Twilight immediately notices has nopony else in it. However, she’d noticed a slight ripple in the magic of her horn as she stepped in the door. She considers scanning the door for whatever caused the ripple, but she’s still incredibly low on magic from last night; it seems her body had prioritized rest and recovery from physical exhaustion over regeneration of magical energy, as most Unicorn bodies do- and as hers had done continuously for the last two months. For right now, she’s got about as much power recuperated and available as Sweetie Belle has on a regular basis.
Not very much.
She does notice she seems to be regenerating magic during her waking hours once again, though- a welcome surprise.
“So, who?” she asks.
Fluttershy smiles. “Twilight, this is my friend, Zeus.” She gestures to the room at large. “And Zeus, this is my friend, Twilight.”
Twilight waves tentatively to the empty room. “Um, hi?”
The response comes from all around- from the entire room, it seems. “Greetings, Princess.”
“Ugh,” she grumbles, “would ponies please stop bowing-! Wait.” She blinks, and looks around. She hadn’t even seen him- so how had she felt like he was bowing…? Fluttershy is snickering, though.
“My apologies, Princess. I thought it only fitting for one such as yourself.”
Twilight scowls. “Please, it’s just Twilight. Are you going to show yourself?”
“I’m afraid not,” he replies. Twilight opens her mouth to voice a retort, but he cuts her off first. “You see, I’m not a pony, but a machine. You could say that I am all around you.”
Twilight stares into the empty room for a few seconds. “Are you hurt?” she demands.
“You know, I find it rather amusing that the first thought to cross everypony’s minds, upon meeting me, is to check that I’m okay. You’re referring to the explosion in the Everfree five nights ago, right?”
She nods. “Unless…?” She glances at Fluttershy… or, the empty space where Fluttershy used to be.
“Yes, she already asked about that. No, it did not hurt me, nor my armor. I have not sustained any fresh damage since my awakening some weeks ago.”
“Fresh? What about past damages?”
“Those past damages are significant, but were inflicted by the passage of many thousands of years of inactivity. I am equipped with the capability to operate repairs on myself, though- and am well past the point where no known force on the planet can harm me.”
“What about unknown?”
“That remains to be discovered. Do you know what you don’t know?”
Facehoof. “Right. Um, what about not on the planet?”
“In the distant past, I have fought with and against weapons capable of penetrating my armor, even in pristine condition. However, I calculate a chance on the order of ninety-seven point three percent that I am the only survivor of that age, leaving nothing capable of penetrating my armor.”
“But- but what about your friends?”
“Do you befriend your horn, or your front door?”
She blinks. “What-?”
“I am a Bolo. Even though we were created to be self-aware, the people that created my kind considered us as tools. We were disposable- and, back before the practice of assigning a biological command element to each Unit was abolished, people would get in trouble for befriending their charges. It is true, I’ve made a few friends over the ages regardless; I’ve also outlived all of them. Those that were biological lived and died, those that were more mechanical in nature… were either destroyed by enemy attacks, or decommissioned and slaughtered by their own creators. The only reason I survived the ages is because both my creators and their enemies believed me destroyed… before, I believe, they achieved mutual destruction.”
“I… I’m sorry.”
“Worry yourself not. The past is the past; while we can learn from it, there is no use fretting over it. It’s the future, and what we do with it, that defines who we are. I went into each and every one of those friendships knowing it would be ended early for some reason or another- but that didn’t stop me, and it won’t stop me now.”
Her head snaps up. “But- but friends are forever! And- and since I’m an Alicorn, I’m immortal!”
“Oh?”
She sighs. “I think. It’s a recent development.”
“I find I must ask, how many alicorns are there- and how many other immortals are there, as well?”
She rubs a hoof on the back of her neck. “Uh… Well, there’s me, Princesses Celestia, Luna, and Cadence, then Flurry Heart… um, that’s all the Alicorns… and all the immortals. Some of the other races- like the dragons- are long-lived, and Tartarus kinda freezes its inmates in time, but…”
“A prison in which nothing ever dies? Unless you’ve got an extraordinary rehabilitation program, that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.”
“Huh-? No, it’s secure. It’s rare for anything to escape.”
“Rare is not never- and when you’ve got infinity to deal with, anything that can happen, will happen. Including a mass breakout. How long until it does happen is in the air, and probably very long- but it inevitably will.”
“Uhh…”
“This ‘Tartarus’ recently suffered a failure in the integrity of its security, didn’t it?”
She nods. “Tirek escaped when Cerberus left the gates… He destroyed my library!”
“Doesn’t sound very nice. You were able to replace it, right?”
“Yeah… and every book in it, I suppose. Everything unique was in the basement, and that wasn’t hurt at all.”
“Sounds like everything went okay.”
“But-!” She begins pacing across the room. “But I liked that little library! It was wooden, and cozy, and… I loved that library! That was home! Now, I’ve got this crystal monstrosity to replace it. Sure, the castle library is bigger, so I no longer have to pick & choose which books to order by which ones will fit on the shelves, but so? The ceilings are so high even a ladder can’t reach the upper shelves! The rooms are way massive! It’s all made of crystal- almost like living in a cave! Er…” She glances at the door, and the rock visible behind it. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
She resumes pacing. “Then, it takes two minutes to fly from my bedroom to the library- and it’s too far, through too much thaumic-infused crystal, to teleport! Tack on an additional three minutes to reach the kitchen in the morning, and possibly another ten minutes to find Spike’s room and wake him up, if he’s not already up! Back in the Golden Oaks Library, it was ten steps from the bedroom to the library, which also served as the dining room, with the kitchen right off of it- and Spike shared the room with me!
“It’s just… Uuugh! It’s not home!” She fumes silently back and forth for a few more seconds.
“I must confess,” he states into the gathering silence, “that for as long as I’ve lived, I’ve never lived in one place long enough to call it home, and us Bolos never developed any kind of sentimental attachments. However, I have seen many lose their homes… and it’s never a comfortable experience. Especially with such a massive difference in housing type… Though to be honest, it usually goes the other way: Big, fancy dwelling lost in favor of a crowded lodge. As I recall, people have been able to adjust most easily in the past by focusing more on what they have than on what they lost. You have friends, correct?”
She blinks, and looks up. “I’m the Princess of Friendship,” she declares. “Of course I have friends.”
“Try spending some time with them, ease yourself into your new home. And if it’s yours outright, possibly even modify it to suit you better.”
“... True. I’ve mostly been so focused on the Everfree crater as a way to avoid the castle… Hmm.”
“Avoiding it entirely won’t help at all- all that does is postpone the issue, and potentially exacerbate the pain and homesickness.”
Her ears flatten. “Yeah… and I know that, too. I didn’t live in a library for half my life for nothing! Well… Live in, technically just the last couple years. I didn’t actually live in the Royal Canterlot Library, but I lived in the Castle, and spent most my time in the library.”
“Oh? So you have experience living in palatial quarters?”
She shrugs. “Eh. I still prefer the library.”
“Perhaps if you invite some friends you had when you lived at the Castle, they could help it feel more like home?
“Friends from-?”
“And if you lived with someone at that castle, provided you’re still on good terms with them, it might be a good idea to invite them over sometime as well.”
She looks back at the door. “Well… I can’t exactly invite Princess Celestia…. But wait! I’m a Princess too- I can! Then-!” She resumes pacing. “I’ll have to get in touch with them again! Then…
“Oooh, what was the list? There was Moondancer, I know; she likes her books as well. Minuette and Lyra, the musicians; Lemon Hearts liked making candy; Twinkleshine loved keeping current on fashion… Wait.” She turns her head, looking back at the door. “This is awesome! All I have to do is throw a party and invite everypony. Moondancer will love the library; Lyra moved down here not too long ago, and I’m sure she’ll enjoy getting back together with Minuette for a minute- and Minuette will love the opportunity to meet Ponyville’s music stars, like Lyra, Octavia, or Vinyl… I bet Lemon Hearts would love to meet Lyra’s Ponyvillian friend and candy shop owner, Bonbon- and Twinkleshine would positively adore Rarity, and the other way around as well, probably.
“Oooh, Pinkie’s gonna love this…” She races out the door, vanishing up the tunnel.
Some ten seconds later, as the door lands shut, Zeus’ voice sounds in the now empty room once again. “I’m sure she will.”
Rainbow freezes. She’d challenged Applejack to a race, to see who could get a stack of pickaxes to the crater first. Of course, they’d agreed on a couple of rules: No wings, and no carts, either. Two equal-sized stacks, an equal distance. The work parties in the pit brought their shovels, and know the pickaxes are coming; they just expect the loosened dirt to take long enough to move that the two can deliver all the picks before they’re ready for them.
Then, while she’d been marching her way towards the site with her first pick, a purple blur had appeared out of nowhere and positively whizzed past her.
She hadn’t seen where it might have originated from- but, her Pegasus eyesight had been enough to tell that it had definitely been Princess Twilight Sparkle… who hasn’t moved that fast since that time when a librophobe called Torched Literature visited the town, some two years ago. Not to mention, the Alicorn hasn’t been able to even canter, let alone sprint like that, for weeks. Something about a pain in her hind leg- one that has slowly grown into a distinctive limp, so much that the doctors actually expect her to lose that leg in another week or so. Though nopony’s mentioned it to the doctors, that fiasco with the Staff of Sameness a week ago most certainly didn’t help.
Just like it didn’t help for herself- the temporary loss of her pegasus healing magic resulted in a massive exaggeration of her then-small wing pains. As a matter of fact, Fluttershy is probably the only one that didn’t suffer an exaggeration of her issues- at least, that she knows about.
She drops her pickaxe on the ground, looking after the purple alicorn. “Where…?”
Applejack walks up next to her, two picks held in her mouth, and speaks around them. “Ya know, Rainbow, you’re fallin’ behind just standin’ there.”
She glances back. “Yeah- but Twilight…”
“That was Twilight?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh… We’ll have to ask, later. For now, the competition’s still on.” She resumes her course.
Rainbow looks at Applejack again, then lifts her pick up and resumes her march- her faster march, because her farmer friend has been reduced to a walk by knee pains, and she hasn’t. The sole reason she has a chance against the earth pony in a wingless competition of strength.
Princess Twilight’s digging teams- all the science teams had been fired the night before- had judged the amount of soft terrain to be moved by the noise of the previous night, not by any visual inspection. There estimate was so massive, though, they expected to need several hours- possibly multiple days- to clear all the dirt and gravel before they could even begin messing with pickaxes. So, they’d brought shovels- and when Rainbow had offered to bring the pickaxes, they’d shrugged and said “Sure, why not?”
But now, they’re in the hole, and working. They’ve been here for almost ten minutes- and have found their numbers to be rather inaccurate. Had one of them been a unicorn, they might have been able to pick up on the signature of Twilight’s blasts- and more accurately estimate the likelihood of loose dirt staying in the hole. As it is, none of the ones that’d been here last night were unicorns- and, luckily, it’ll still take a couple hours to remove the loose material. A couple hours in which Rainbow could fairly easily deliver all of the pickaxes, exactly as promised.
So, after scoping out a few new features Twilight exposed, they set to work clearing the debris- and exposing as much of it as possible.
The new features are fairly amusing, to a couple of them; however, only the new recruit takes interest to any of them. She’s on what Mayor Mare had assured her Twilight would dub the ‘rookie team’, as she- the only member thereof, at the moment- isn’t a scientist. She’d been permitted to sign up for this job, though, because what she does have is magical prowess.
She’d pleaded for Mayor Mare not to share that fact with Twilight. Unfortunately, the earth pony had assured her that Twilight had full access to all the documentation, and that she would be required to reveal such should Twilight ask.
The earth pony had also been able to assure her that the chances of Twilight asking anypony anything about her, beyond she herself to find out which team she’s on, are just about less than zero. The princess is just too distracted by her own efforts.
That had been the deciding factor, the one that meant she didn’t run and hide as soon as she got out of sight of the town hall. She had, after all, had to use her real name on the documentation. Anything less wouldn’t have gotten past the fraud checks.
She knows Mayor Mare knows she’s hiding who she is. As a matter of fact, the mayor in question had actually asked her about some of the things she’s done in her past! She’d been tempted to run and hide right then and there, but the mayor had described those previous acts as a “Good, though misguided, effort.” She’d been asked to try a little more diplomatic approach next time, and the subject had been dropped.
At least, Mayor Mare had been dropping the subject, but she’d been too confused. She’d wondered- and asked- why such a simple request was enough, considering what she’d done; as it turns out, Twilight’s done worse, and the town has learned to get over it. She had refused to elaborate.
So she’s here, very carefully- and thoroughly- disguised. Unless the Princess uses some hardcore identification spellwork, she should be pretty safe. All she needs is some bits, now- and, hopefully, a chance to observe the six most powerful ponies in Equestria without being observed in turn.
Well… not exactly the six most powerful; in terms of raw ability, she’s almost as strong as Princess Twilight, and far more capable than the other five. In terms of actual expenditure, thanks to the Elements, those six easily hold the top six slots.
As she makes like she’s doing something, prodding at one of the new features- identified for her by a friendly pegasus- with a light levitation spell, she contemplates what she plans to do next.
The problem is, magic is unstable, as a rule. Had it not been, evolutionary advantage would have put Unicornia way ahead of the other two, and everypony would be a unicorn. What’s more, everypony would be a powerful unicorn, because of the advantage that confers.
The problem, and the reason all the most powerful unicorns- or Alicorns, for that matter- in Equestria have been rulers or scholars, is exactly that: Magic is unstable. Anypony that turned out to be very powerful and used it a lot would shortly find their own body ravaged by their magic in ways the doctors could not explain, and die. Princesses Celestia and Luna keep that from happening to them by only using their power every once in a while. She’s not entirely sure why their control of the Sun and Moon hasn’t caused that same issue, but she has a pretty good idea; she’s found ways to ‘stabilize’ spells… though, in order to stabilize a spell, she has to redesign it- almost from scratch, sometimes. Perhaps their control spells happen to be more stable than others?
She doesn’t know- but she does know many powerful ponies, including her own parents, have gone that way. She almost did herself, though she realized what was going on and stopped at just the nick of time. She’d had to endure a week or so without using really any magic at all, during which her body had healed; then she’d started exploring the stability problem… and gotten her cutie mark in the process.
She’d explored it, experimented, and finally been able to design her first useful, stable spell.
Well… ‘useful’ in one sense of the word. The spell would, at the cost of a huge amount of her power, strip a pony of their cutie mark, replacing it with one of her choosing.
Then the Elements of Harmony had reappeared- and those six ponies were using them far more often than necessary.
So she’d designed a little town. Built it.
Everypony who lived there, everypony who moved in, did so voluntarily. She had to deceive them a little to pull it off, but it was voluntary.
Except the Elements. She’d done the whole town thing specifically to attract them, because her spell would…
Well, that’s the complicated part. The first part was to separate them from the overblown magic they were killing themselves with. Not permanently, no- and in a form where it could be quickly and easily returned to them, should the need arise.
Step two was to get them to listen to what she had to say. That’s where her plan had broken down; she hadn’t expected them to try deceiving her, then all of her deception had been broken down before she had completed the preparations for step three: Getting them to understand the danger of overusing their magic and returning their magic to them, with carefully-tuned healing spells attached. That’s why she’d wanted their cutie marks in her house with her, for ‘safekeeping’- she’d needed to analyze them and apply the spellwork that would repair the worst of the damage. Ironically, she’d only finished one: The three butterflies… which belonged to the very pony that had deceived her.
She’d planned to break the warded wall in the cave herself, and go into hiding, once those six understood- and once she’d spelled their Marks sufficiently to heal them.
The healing effect wouldn’t last forever; only a few weeks. And, it wouldn’t heal everything, but everything it didn’t heal would heal on its own, with time- and low-expenditure, without requiring a no-magic period such as she went through herself.
She would have waited, in hiding, for everything to calm down, and for the ramifications of her actions to make themselves known- then shown herself once again, in Ponyville, and accepted whatever punishment they chose to mete out.
But that hadn’t worked.
So, she’s back to the drawing board. She’s considered doing them one at a time; she’s considered placing the healing spells on them directly, while they sleep. She’s considered trying to talk to them.
None of those would work, though. They’d never listen- and the nature of the healing spells would wake them up long before the cast was complete, breaking it and causing more harm than good.
She hasn’t been able to come up with anything yet. That’s why she’s here, working on this job, earning some bits to pay for her dinner.
She finishes half-mindedly poking at the obviously shielded metallic protrusion and casts her eyes about the crater for something she could do that would actually be worth her time- and effort. After spotting nothing, she crafts a quick spell in her mind. It’ll take a lot of power, and it’s not something she’s going to want to use very much for the stability problem, but it’ll suffice to show her where the edges of this thing are- even including the edges that are covered under layer after layer of rock. Finally, she turns it loose, and listens to the thaumic feedback.
Thirty seconds later, she’s traced its entire perimeter- by Celestia is this thing massive!- and begins trotting towards a cave opening not far away. The opening to the only other point at which this thing is exposed- and the cave that looks too straight, angular, and regular to be natural.