They stepped off the train, horns glowing with shared effort of drawing their luggage and their new prize chest along with them. "There you are," spoke Stellar with a bright smile, trotting towards them. "The lovely couple. How was the trip?"
Twilight tilted her head. "I thought Pin--" She was tackled from the side under a pink mass, her world put back in order by her presence. "Nevermind," she laughed, hugging her exuberant friend gently. "Nice to see you too, Pinkie."
Pinkie bobbed her head. "I missed you both so much! I mean, I guess Twilight a bit more, no offense or anything, but I know her better and we do stuff together and yay you're back!"
Sunburst reached up to adjust his glasses lightly. "It's good to be back. Thank you, Mother. That was a lovely trip."
Stellar's expression warmed with the compliment. Her shrewd eyes took in his own expression, quickly determining that she had made the correct decision. "That's new..." She noticed the chest, not a part of their original luggage. "Did one of you buy it?"
Pinkie was suddenly beside the chest, sniffing around it like a curious dog. "Never saw it before. Smells important!"
Twilight sat up without Pinkie mounted on her. "We won it, with a minimum amount of drama." Her horn glowed as she lifted a hoof in time, gesturing dramatically. "I present treasures of Equestria's past!" The lid flopped open, displaying the artifacts to their curious eyes.
Stellar approached curiously, looking into the chest. "How fascinating. I confess, a lot of it just looks old, not valuable..." Appreciating the past was not a habit she had. "This looks nice though." She plucked up the glittering crown, polished and so shiny in the light of the afternoon sun.
Pinkie snatched the crown right out of Stellar's magic. "Oooo! It's a stallion's crown. Those are rare."
Sunburst and Twilight blinked at Pinkie in unison. He responded first, "How can you tell that?"
She shrugged a little. "It doesn't look right for a mare's crown, and it's not a tiara." She set the crown back in the chest and knocked it closed. "Need any help getting this home?"
Soon they were moving, the burden more distributed among them, with Twilight and Sunburst each pulling along their own case by themselves and Pinkie pushing the chest along.
Stellar walked at Sunburst's side. "I hope things went... well." She wanted details... "Anything you want to share?"
Sunburst smiled awkwardly, not rushing to disgorge private information to his mother, however... "Oh! Twilight, can you come here a moment?"
She veered off to get closer to him. "What's wrong, Sunburst?"
"Nothing! Mother--" He gestured a hoof at Twilight. "May I present my girlfriend, Twilight Sparkle. You two may have met before, but--"
Stellar looked confused a moment, but it cleared away. "A pleasure to meet you, Twilight. I hope you treat my son well. If he gives you trouble, you tell me about it." She gestured at herself. "I'm Stellar Flare, but you can call me 'Mom'."
Twilight gave an off-guard chortle as she raised a hoof to her face. "Nice to meet you, again. Mother and student, what a combination. You know we're not..." She rolled the same hoof through the air slowly. "--married or anything just yet."
"The offer remains." She nodded firmly. "Now--" She tossed her head towards the tall tower/castle they were next to. "You two go settle in. I expect I'll see you both tomorrow, in school."
Pinkie pushed the chest up the steps with some effort, leaving it right in front of the door. "There we go. I'll tell all the others that you're back safe and sound." She saluted sharply and vanished in a puff of pink smoke.
Stellar shook her head. "Is there a friendship class explaining her?"
Twilight joined the head shaking. "Maybe as a post-graduate study..." She coughed softly into a hoof. "Be that as it may, it is good to be back, and thank you, for the trip. It was delightful." She offered a raised hoof and soon she and Stellar were sharing a gentle hug.
As that happened, Sunburst slowly made his way up the steps. As tough as they could be, he decided he was doing better than the first day he had arrived. Maybe active magic practice had been doing some good for his horn? He smiled at the idea and made the remaining distance with a smile.
"Hey Sun." Starlight opened the door to the castle from inside, her magic grabbing his luggage and pulling it in without even a delay. "Welcome back. How'd it go?"
His cheeks warmed instantly, and she saw it, laughing. "That good, huh? You stallion, you." She turned back inside, but paused half-turn. "What's that?" She pointed at the chest seemingly abandoned there.
"Oh, take that in too. Twilight and I won it at the convention." He tapped it once with a hoof even as it began to float, already in Starlight's grip. "It has all kinds of interesting artifacts to examine."
"Anything magic?" She hiked a brow. "Or, you know, all 'historical value'."
He fidgeted with his glasses. "Mostly the latter, but there is one--"
"--We were hoping you would help us examine it," cut in Twilight, joining them. Stellar was moving off to other things. "Let's get everything inside and put away before we get to that. Something to look forward to."
Suddenly all the luggage, including the chest, plucked right up and floated over Starlight's head. "Just tell me where you want it."
They all laughed gently as they vanished into the castle, the door closing behind them.
Sunburst, Starlight, and Twilight were seated around a small table. On the table rested the crown in its shiny mystery. Twilight gestured at it. "From preliminary examination, every gem you can see is enchanted with a different spell, meaning this crown could achieve a dizzying number of effects, to say nothing of any potential combinations that may await us."
Sunburst raised a hoof. "There's also the fact that Pinkie seemed certain this was a stallion's crown."
Starlight lifted it in her magic. "In that case, why haven't we already put it on a fine stallion's head?" She moved the crown towards Sunburst, but the glow around the crown altered with Twilight's interference, holding it back.
"Not so fast. We don't know what it might do!"
Starlight tilted her head a little. "There is exactly one way to find out right now. Besides, you want to try it, don't you, Sunburst?"
Sunburst rubbed behind his head. "Uhh, I mean, yeah, I want to know what it does..."
"That doesn't mean we throw him in the line of fire to find out." She set the crown back on the table. "We can do this methodically."
Starlight stuck out her tongue. "If he's not trying it, I could if you'd rather not risk your boyfriend."
Twilight and Sunburst both blushed at that as Starlight laughed.
"What's going on in here?" Spike peeked around the corner through the doorway. "Oh, hey, nice crown." He licked his lips. "Looks tasty..."
Sunburst chuckled at that, some of the tension broken. "Hey, Spike, look what we won." He gestured at the crown on the table. "It's very magic, but we're not sure what it does, exactly."
He flew in, small wings easily holding him aloft. "Huh... Really magic... Do you think it takes unicorn magic to, you know, get it going, or could anyone try it?"
Twilight picked up the crown in her magic. "Well, this I'm willing to try. Most likely, it will do nothing without some magic to nudge it into action." She floated it over towards Spike. "Want to try it on?"
Spike nodded quickly with a grin. "Crown me, Twilight. Make me the king I was always meant to be."
Twilight rolled her eyes with a little laugh at Spike's dramatics. "Of course, My Liege." She set it down gently on his finned head. It was a bit oversized for him, leaning to the side a little. It did not do much.
Spike flew over to a mirror to gaze at his enhanced regality. "Aw yeah, lookin' good!" He flexed and strutted there. "Call the castle servants! I have a decree for them."
Starlight shook her head. "Unless amusing Spike is a magical effect, nope, nothing happened. Guess we need to put it on a unicorn's head to get much out of it." She side-eyed Sunburst. "Oh, where will we find a male unicorn ready at this time of day?"
Twilight clopped the table with a firm strike. "That's quite enough of that. Starlight, are you willing to help us examine the crown?"
Starlight flinched back at Twilight's burst of somewhat-angry authority. "Alright, alright. Let's do it the slow way. Spike? We'll need that back."
"Aw." He flew over to set the crown back where it had started. "Good luck. I'll get some serious studying tea."
As he left, Sunburst raised a brow at Twilight. "You have studying tea?"
Starlight could but roll her eyes. "You're surprised, really? I bet Spike and she have a system worked out with exactly what kind of tea or coffee is called for in a host of situations. Wake up, sleep time, study, panic, panic flavor 2, panic flavor 3--"
"Hey!" Twilight was blushing brightly. "We do not have three flavors of panic tea!" Her voice lowered. "Only two." Coughing softly into a hoof, she pointed at the crown with the other hoof. "Now, as we were saying, we should start with examining the larger jewels. There's one big one here." She reached out and tapped the literal crown jewel. "It may be the center of the magic involved, and if we decipher it, the rest may fall into place easily."
Sunburst gestured to Twilight. "That spell you used, the one we employed to graph out the interior of a horn. Perhaps that would be useful here?"
"Excellent idea!" Her horn glowed as she pulled out a piece of paper and set it on the table. A quill dutifully danced over and slowly began to sketch out the gem from the inside as she concentrated on the task. "Ooo, it's insides are... delightfully intricate... I expected a simple... crystalline... pattern..."
The other two unicorns watched as the sketch continued, detailing an inside to the gem that belied its simple ovular outer-shape. Starlight whistled softly. "That's really something. All of that, inside that smooth rock?" She reached a hoof to a completed portion, trailing along the patterns and paths. "It really does look like it maybe controls way too many things at the same time, say... all the other gems in this crown."
Sunburst smiled. "Yes, which means this is probably the thing you'd want to put magic in to start the process. Sensible enough, really, and where I would have guessed, but it's good to see proof of it. What's the history of this thing? That would go a long way in telling us what it should do."
A book flew in much as Spike had, flopping on the table beside the still-drawing picture. "Here you are." Twilight nodded towards it, her eyes locked on the gem. "It should be in there, I think. Time to study."
"One of my favorite things." He casually opened it to the first page and began to flip quickly, clearly skimming. "Crown, crown, crown..."
Starlight clip-clopped her hooves together. "I'm not going to just sit here. I'll start on the smaller gems." She got out some paper and a quill of her own, starting to map each smaller gem much more quickly. Though they were smaller, they were just as much a confusing network of passages and energy lines. Each was a masterpiece of arcane engineering, waiting to fulfill some unknown purpose. "I'm getting more and more excited! I want to see this thing work."
"Here it is!" Sunburst slapped down a hoof. "Look, it has a picture." He twisted the book around between his forehooves to show it off to the two mares.