“Woah, woah, woah, wait a minute here!” Dash folded her arms across her chest, shooting the firey little creature a solid glare. It didn’t matter who she was, nobody pushed Dash around. “How about you tell me where I am, first?”
A crimson glow flared around that spiralling horn, even as those icy eyes narrowed. Dash all at once felt a pressure all along her body, almost like she was deep underwater. Her feet left the floor, and she found her arms and legs flailing of their own accord, instinct taking over. She opened her mouth to shout, but the pressure redoubled, and all the air in her lungs shot out in a startled wheeze.
“You answer my questions, and then I’ll answer yours, deal?” Those frozen eyes bored into Dash, until she nodded frantically, her diaphragm spamming against the pressure encasing her. It lessened slightly, and she immediately gasped in relief.
“General...” Twilight began, only to be silenced by that same piercing stare. She ducked her head.
“Now.” Sunset trotted over to her table, lifting Dash’s father’s journal off of it with that same crimson glow, and flipping through the pages so quickly they blurred. She stopped, and turned the book to where Dash could see. On one page was scrawled what looked like a four pointed compass rose, five gems studded pentagonally around a sixth in the center. “Where are these ruins?”
“Ruins?” Dash stared at the page, the particular image not stirring any particular memories. “I dunno.” She felt the pressure tighten, and squeaked quickly. “I mean I don’t recognize them, genius! I need to see the other pages!” She shivered as the pressure lessened again, and fought the urge to glare as the book was thrust into her paws.
She quickly flipped back, searching for the details of the ruin in particular.
Today we found the most fantastic thing. There, in a great lava chamber, was an entire city of gold and silver, glittering with gems that looked poured rather than cut, as though they had once flowed between their mountings. They curl and sweep like nothing I’ve ever seen. Of course Rex tried to snap one off for his collection, but would you believe his pick just glanced off? Not even a scratch! I look forward to exploring more of the city. What wonders it may hold!
She started to remember the passage, and immediately her heart sank. If this general was looking for this place, she was going to be really disappointed.
I have never had an expedition go from such hope to such… emptiness. The entire city is completely impenetrable. The walls, the windows, even the mountings of the gems are utterly impervious to any attack. We even took Daisy’s diamond file, and that just slid off the glass without even a rasp. We can clear away the lava flows at least, but it seems to have flooded the doors on both sides, so even those we can clear our way to, we can’t open.
We’ll be leaving in a few hours, supplies are low and we still need to find something we can actually profit from. I did have hopes for one door, the stone is warped and smoothed before it, like it was opened and closed while the lava was settling, but the mechanism is completely incomprehensible. I’ll take a rubbing before I go, perhaps another ruin will shed more light on this later.
Dash swallowed, and quickly made her way back to the earlier entries, backtracking her father’s notes relative to the other charts he made. “It’s… 175 kilofathoms due southwest from Quebark, but that’s going through the tunnels. There might be a faster way through a side tunnel, but as far as I know they haven’t charted those yet.”
The General stared at her a moment. “And where is Quebark?”
“Oh, it’s pretty far west of Arfberta, a few weeks travel, easy.” She stared at the blank looks she was receiving. “What?”
The General pressed a hoof to her forehead, and rubbed the base of her horn. “Twilight Sparkle, when you promised me progress, I wasn’t expecting you to lean so heavily on the technical definition.”
“General Shimmer--” She again bit her tongue as the General raised a hoof.
“Let me make myself clear. If this project were not important, I would not have bothered with the difficulties of opening her holiness’ archives to you, much less the incessant nagging of bureaucrats and your ‘abominable’ inclusion in her school.” She turned and fixed the griffon with a stare that made Twilight nearly implode on herself. “And were you not, by technicality, presenting me with the best results seen in centuries, I would send you packing back to your flea and frost bitten eyries with that hideous staff preventing you from sitting ever again.” She let out a low, hissing breath that could have been a boiling pot, or a venomous snake. “However, I find myself forced to let you continue. So take your savage, and find those ruins on a map I can use!”
Dash suddenly felt herself moving, and before she could even yip she found herself slammed into Twilight, and the both of them sent flying down the hallway out of the room. Skidding, tumbling, spinning, the two crashed into a heap in the middle of the cold marble floors. The slam of doors echoed a moment later.
“I-I’m sorry for the general.” Twilight said, her feathers fluffing out and her eyes going wide a moment later. “N-not that I’m questioning her decisions or judgements!” Her eyes whipped around frantically, but if someone had heard, they weren’t making a show of it. She sighed and slowly smoothed her feathers, offering Dash a talon to help her up.
“What is her deal?” Dash brushed herself off with a huff, finally letting loose with every glare she had saved up at the looming red and gold doors they’d just been tossed through. A second later they creaked back open, and the temperature dropped as a single turquoise eye gazed through the gap.
“She’sverystressedandhasalotonherplateandisactuallyveryniceandweshouldbegoingRIGHTNOW!” Twilight grabbed Dash by the tail so hard her claws probably drew blood, dragging her so quickly her paws slid with a clattering of her claws on the smooth stone.
They didn’t stop until Twilight heaved open a door for them, and shut it just as Dash dove in. Twilight turned and slumped her back against it, panting. Dash was about to offer her a helping paw, when she noticed the room was filled with the strangest light. She turned around, and found herself staring out a window, but not like the windows in Arfberta.
Before her was a vista of more light than she could ever have imagined. Great gold and marble spires rose into an emptiness the color of purest sapphire. Great tufts of something drifted past on high. Her heart gave a start as she realized some of the puffy things were shaped into towers and buildings. Little flecks of color darted between them, feathered limbs propelling them through the air with a grace and majesty no bat had ever possessed.
“Welcome to Canterlot,” Twilight said, not so much breaking Dash out of her reverie as reminding her that there was more to the world than the vista outside.
“Dead ends,” Dash swore softly. “This is incredible.”
“I mean, I actually prefer the pre-classical architecture of...” Twilight glanced at Dash and sighed. “Yes, it’s amazing.”
Dash pressed her face to the window. Outside, the city stretched on and on both left and right. Below, streets thronged with more life than she’d ever seen. Even at midlights in Arfberta, you could throw a rock and stand an even chance of hitting someone. Here it looked like you couldn’t throw so much as a punch without knocking into three.
“How are there so many people?” She asked, staring down at the clogged streets. “What do they eat?”
“What do they… Oh! Oh of course!” Twilight bonked her head, and ran over to one of the shelves littering her room. Dash finally dragged herself away from the window to watch, and immediately became aware of something interesting. Twilight’s room wasn’t so much a living room filled with books, as it was a booking room Twilight apparently lived in. Aside from the shelves, books hung suspended on various strings and pulleys from the ceiling. As she watched, Twilight deftly adjusted several, swapped two or three for others on the shelves beside them, then spooled a set down from on high to hang where she could read them on the ground.
“What I wouldn’t have given to be born with a horn,” Twilight grumbled, finally having an adequate quintuplet of tomes open to her. She then grabbed a scroll and started scribbling on it. “Still, I can’t believe I never realized the energy restrictions a subterranean society would face! Of course there would be such an emphasis on developing fossil fuels, and a push for increased mechanization to compensate for a severely circumscribed population capacity.” Her head whipped up, and fixed Dash with a gaze that nearly made her back right up out the window. “Do you still operate on a twenty four hour circadian rhythm or has your society abandoned those conventions in light of the resource demands of illumination?”
Rainbow blinked rapidly, trying to parse what Twilight had just asked. Maybe the General’s whatever-she-did was wearing off. “What’s a sirkadian?”
“I…” Twilight blinked and shook herself, immediately giggling and quickly roping the books up to the ceiling as though embarrassed of them. “Sorry, sorry! I just… got a little excited. I’m sorry, here I’ve yanked you out of your home and now I’m badgering you with questions. Are you hungry, cold, hot? Is the light too bright? Oh, feathers! You’re not allergic to light are you?” She immediately seized one of Dash’s paws, examining the fur before Dash yanked it away.
“I’m fine!” She frowned at Twilight, giving her a firm bonk on the head with her paw. “Besides, that General seemed pretty ticked about whatever you’re doing for her.” Her eyes went wide. “My journal! She still has--”
Twilight all but flew in front of the door. “I’ll get it back, I promise! Just… once she’s in a better mood. I’m sure she’ll give it back as soon as we ask… assuming she’s in a better mood. Here, here, help me...” She again fiddled with her pulleys, drawing down several other books. “Help me figure out where the ruins are. Then we’ll go to the General, get your journal, and I won’t have my staff… improperly stored.” Twilight shivered at the last two words.
Dash noticed the staff in question propped against one of the walls. She was about to ask why Sunset had seemed so repulsed by it, until she noticed that spiraling bone affixed to the top. The same one that had adorned Sunset’s own brow. Twilight must have noticed her staring, because she gave an uncomfortable cough.
“I sometimes wonder if bringing that thing wasn’t a mistake,” she said, a conflicted expression on her face. “We griffons don’t put a lot of weight on the dead, everyone makes their own legacy, not their parents or grandparents.” She stepped over and took the staff in her talons, hefting it back and forth. “Ponies love history though. You’ll hear earth ponies talk about how many generations back they can follow their farm’s lineage. Pegasi will brag about the heroism of their ancestors, their legacies of service. And unicorns will actually keep charts, absolutely staggering ones, detailing every single branch and fork of their family tree, and each one of their accomplishments. So of course, I thought I’d impress them by bringing them an obvious pony heirloom, show them that I was different from other griffons, that I cared about the things they did.”
“I, uh...” Dash wasn’t exactly the queen of sensitivity, but the message was impossible to miss. “I’m guessing that didn’t go too well?”
“Unicorns are terribly, terribly proud of their magic.” She said, her voice small and soft as her claws caressed the horn atop the staff. “It doesn’t help that its channeled through their horns. A broken horn never heals, you know. To break a unicorn’s horn is to put them to a fate worse than death.”
“But… couldn’t they just...” Dash glanced at the staff, and suddenly felt like there was something horrible lurking behind the answer.
“Ah, you saw it too, huh?” She gave an odd, wry smile, which was a trick with a beak. “Somepony had the same idea did you just did, the same one I had when I saw the staff. Why not just find another way?” Her voice grew softer. “The unicorn’s name was Heart Mender, ironically they worked mostly in skeletal anatomy... well, ironically to you and I. To unicorns I’m sure the name has a certain poignancy. She had a sibling, Foxglove, who lost her horn. Probably the impetus for her research. She was sure the connection could be repaired. She found that the horn wasn’t the source of magic, but more like a focus. A unicorn without a horn can still produce magic. If anything they can’t stop. That’s the problem, you can’t set the horn again with the magic rushing out, and any fixative that could actually seal the horn has to be magically active as well, and…”
“Can’t be done?” Dash said, finishing the thought.
“Uh, yeah, in a nutshell. But Heart Mender didn’t give up. She knew magic came from elsewhere in the pony, so she kept digging. It grew into an obsession. It got to the point where it was destroying her relationship with Foxglove, until the day Foxglove demanded her horn back.” The room felt oddly quiet, as though the world outside had retreated from the tale. “Remember how important unicorn horns are? An argument broke out, the story goes. Neither one would budge, and Foxglove finally threatened to fetch the guards. Of course they would side with Foxglove, it was her horn. They’d treat it as though she were asking for the body of a loved one. In a fit of rage, Heart Mender threw the horn at her, staff and all.”
A shiver ran down Dash’s spine as she suddenly noticed how very sharp the tip of the horn was.
“No one agrees on how much of it was intentional. In the end, Heart Mender solved her problem. Magic comes from blood. You wouldn’t think it, without any vessels in the horn itself, but it does. Create a proper base for a broken horn, supply it with blood, and it’s good as new. But ponies love their history, and they could never forget how that fact was discovered. The whole thing got lumped under the same auspices as necromancy and, fittingly, blood magic. Horns had always been considered semi-sacred, but after that any broken horn was to be destroyed, and grave robbing became a capital offense. After a while, ponies forgot why this was even done. Until a hapless griffon found an old staff tipped in unicorn horn and thought it would be a great gift to impress her teachers.”
“Ouch,” Dash said.
“Sorry,” Twilight coughed, and set the staff back down. “I haven’t really been able to talk about that story with anyone. It’s not the kind of thing you can bring up with ponies.”
“Ah...” Dash scratched the back of her neck, her eyes drifting back to the staff. “How’d she get around the blood thing?”
“She didn’t.” When Dash cocked her head, Twilight lifted her talons. There, between the scales, were sets of thin white scars. “You can’t tell just looking at the staff, but the grip is serrated. Just needs a drop to establish the connection. Turns out lots of creatures have enough magic in their blood for spells, it’s just that unicorns have the horns. Another reason my staff isn’t that popular. If it hadn’t turned out that the staff had been ‘gifted’ to King Grover in return for his allegiance to Solaria, they would have destroyed it on the spot.”
“Who’d give a gift like that?” Dash asked.
Twilight snorted. “Somepony who finds out a griffon found their ancient, hated staff, and doesn’t have the leverage to get it back.” She sighed. “Sorry again, it’s… nice to have someone to talk to.”
“Uh, no problem.” Dash managed an awkward smile. “Should we--”
“Oh, oh! Oh you’re right, the maps!” She immediately snapped back to attention, quickly tugging strings and setting books flying around the room. “How much do you know about, geology, geography, and climatic trends since the pre-separation era?”
“Uhhhhhh,” Dash said, trailing off. It was going to be a long day.