Cadance was sitting in the castle kitchen reading the newspaper when Twilight walked in. The two of them had been up for a while the previous night following Twilight’s arrival in Canterlot with the captured airship, but anything that wasn’t of pressing concern then, Twilight had said she was going to put in her report.
Twilight put a binder down on the table. Cadance looked at it, and then at Twilight, whose eyes were bloodshot. “Did you sleep?”
“I’m not sure.” Twilight grabbed a cup of coffee.
“You shouldn’t overwork yourself.”
“Do you want Equestria saved or not?”
“You can’t save Equestria if you die of exhaustion.”
Twilight’s horn fired and the two of them were suddenly cut off from the sounds of the kitchen. Twilight said, “After walking around the wilderness all day yesterday looking for that village, fighting Tempest, staying up all night to fly her airship back to Canterlot and write my report…” Twilight wavered “...I’m as tired as I’ve ever been and I can barely keep my eyes open.”
Her head drooped. Cadance scooted her chair sideways and Twilight leaned into her.
“Then why aren’t you in bed?”
“I can’t remember the last time I ate. That seemed more important.”
Cadance hadn’t eaten her toast yet and slid the plate over. Twilight picked up one slice with her magic, but missed her mouth on the first try. Cadance helped her. Twilight mumbled something that sounded like a thanks while she chewed.
Cadance knew she had made the right choice in picking Twilight to lead the team, but she also feared something like this would happen. Twilight didn’t do things halfway. She was fully against rejoining the development group right up until she was fully committed to returning. Stubborn, like her brother. Cadance closed her eyes for a moment, resting her chin atop Twilight’s head, allowing herself the memory. Twilight even smelled slightly like Shining Armor.
“‘s this?” Twilight muttered through her full mouth. She slid the newspaper closer. There was a picture of the airship on the front page.
“We didn’t want to acknowledge the Commander, so we said the Elements captured some sky pirates’ vessel,” Cadance said. “Technically true, even.”
“Did we have to?” Twilight blinked as she read down the page, struggling to focus her eyes through her fatigue. “At least there isn’t much here for trackers.”
She yawned. “And I still have to go to the library. I promised Tempest to look for a way to fix her horn. I’m sure there’s something in the books there. It’ll just take time.”
Three seconds later she started to snore, still leaning on Cadance’s shoulder.
Cadance smiled to herself, again an old memory coming to her. It was just like old times, as if she was Twilight's babysitter again and no one was trying to kill them.
She picked up the newspaper, Twilight’s report, and Twilight herself, walking out of the kitchen.
“Did we have to pick a dungeon for this?” said Fluttershy, glancing around at the rough stone corridors lit by torch.
“It’s secure,” said Applejack.
“Though I think Tempest may well share some of Fluttershy’s feelings,” said Rarity. “It’s not exactly conducive to a non-threatening interview.”
“Who said this was going to be a non-threatening interview?” said Rainbow.
“Twilight did,” Pinkie provided. “So I brought cupcakes.”
“She could have at least been here,” muttered Rainbow. “What did Cadance say she was doing?”
“Sleeping in the library, I think,” Rarity replied.
The five of them arrived at an iron door guarded by Spitfire and Soarin’. Pinkie had extra cupcakes for them, too.
Inside the room behind the door were six chairs and Tempest. She wasn’t bound, but it was clear from her expression that it barely changed her view of the situation.
“Cupcake?” said Pinkie.
“No,” Tempest replied.
“Well jeez.” Pinkie popped the entire thing into her own mouth. She and the others took their seats in a semicircle around Tempest.
“We have some questions,” said Applejack. Tempest met her eyes, but didn’t reply.
“Why should we trust you?” said Rainbow.
“Twilight Sparkle said she would attempt to fix my horn.”
“No, I meant that rhetorically.” Rainbow looked around at the rest of them and pointed a hoof at Tempest. “She tried to kill us.”
Tempest’s mouth twisted as if she wanted to spit out something particularly foul-tasting. “I’m...sorry.”
“Well, that’s good enough for me,” said Pinkie, “which is what I would say if it actually was.”
“Do you have any questions, or are you just here to repeat what all of us already know?” Tempest asked, an edge in her usually neutral voice.
“How long ago was your horn broken?” Fluttershy asked.
“Seventeen years. The piece is long gone, probably back where it broke.” Tempest paused. “Could you fix it?”
“I’m afraid not.” Fluttershy shook her head. “I can fix a lot of things, but not something so sensitive or so long ago injured.”
“Who made your armor?” asked Rarity, taking the conversation a different direction.
“The Commander.”
“Who is the Commander?” said Applejack.
“I don’t know.”
“What do they look like?” asked Rarity.
Tempest frowned in thought. “I can’t really...describe what I’ve seen. I think she’s either an Element or has the same glamour. I think she wears a mask.”
“Definitely female?” said Applejack.
“Yes.”
“What happened the night the café blew up?” said Rainbow.
“The Commander told me where to find it. I broke into the basement to retrieve the items you’d captured and then I set the building on fire.”
“How?” said Pinkie.
Tempest touched what remained of her horn. “That’s about all I can do now.”
“How did the Commander know what was in the basement?” asked Rarity.
“I don’t know, but her information is always very good.”
“Does she have spies?” said Rainbow.
“There may be more like Grubber, or it may be someone else.”
The Elements traded glances. The implications could be huge. Anypony could be the Commander’s eyes.
“What about Chrysalis?” said Applejack. “She’s vanished.”
“I’m guessing the Commander called her back to the village,” said Tempest. “I was expecting to get the order to kill her because she knew too much.”
Fluttershy grimaced at Tempest’s matter-of-fact tone. Pinkie said, “So who all lives in the village?”
“Starlight Glimmer is the mayor. She controls everypony with some kind of cutie mark magic. Everyone else who lives there is a changeling.”
“Tell us about Starlight,” said Rarity.
Tempest paused. “She’s powerful, and emotional. She recruits ponies to join the village.”
“Like some kind of cult leader?” said Pinkie.
“Maybe.”
“What’s her relationship to the Commander?” Fluttershy asked.
“I don’t know. Starlight normally wouldn’t tolerate somepony more powerful than herself, so maybe the Commander is the source of her power, or can take it away. The village serves as a dumping ground for ponies who are no longer needed and a place to sustain changelings so they can do the Commander’s bidding.”
“What do you know about runes painted in blood?” Rainbow asked.
“One of the Commander’s experiments. She explores a lot of diverse magic.”
“What about that shadow being we were keeping in a jar in the basement?” said Pinkie.
“We found it in the Everfree Forest, probably left over from the war, and bound it to a body. It wasn’t bright, but followed the Commander’s orders.”
“What happened to it?” Applejack asked.
“Burned up in the fire. I left it in the jar when I set off the building. Too weak, the Commander said.”
“What’s she got that’s stronger?” said Rainbow.
“I don’t know. The Commander wasn’t finished with it yet.”
“Where does the Commander keep things like that?” Applejack asked.
“The village?” Pinkie guessed.
“I don’t know. The Commander always met me, never invited me anywhere. If she has a hideout, I don’t know where it is.”
“But you do know where the village is?” said Rarity.
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go find Twilight and get going,” said Rainbow.
“You need at least another day to heal, since you refused to wear the sling I gave you for that broken leg,” said Fluttershy.
“You didn’t need to say that in front of her!” Rainbow gestured. She glared at Tempest, whose face remained impassive. “You just got lucky.”
“Luck is a superstition,” said Tempest. “Everything bad that happens is someone’s fault.” her eyes dropped. “Sometimes mine.”
Twilight jerked awake. She was slumped on a library table. She didn’t remember going to the library, though it wouldn’t be the first time she’d woken up there. She looked down, seeing that her head had been resting on a carefully folded copy of the newspaper. Maybe Cadance had dropped her off.
Well, she’d wanted to come to the library anyway. She got up, feeling more energetic than she should. Checking the clock on the wall, she saw that she’d gotten almost four hours of sleep. Hey, that was practically enough.
Turning her mind to the task in front of her, Twilight waded into the stacks of books.
Twilight had been the number one student at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns not because she was powerful - though she was - but because she was a fanatical researcher. The librarians remembered her from school, and mostly left her alone. She already knew where everything was.
In the first two hours, she’d gone through magical medicine, bone fractures, prosthetics, and kept adding other possibilities to her list. Twilight was already theorising that there might not be one simple answer. She should also probably consult Fluttershy.
Coming back to her table, she was surprised to find Sunset sitting there, bent over the table, with her glasses sitting low on her nose. Upon seeing Twilight, Sunset stood up and slipped her glasses back on. She’d apparently been examining Twilight’s notes.
“Something I can help you with?” Twilight said, setting down the next load of books.
“I just wanted to talk to you again about my project,” said Sunset. “Maybe stop by the lab?”
“I’ll see if I can make time,” said Twilight.
“What are you working on?”
“I’m developing a way to compensate for a unicorn’s broken horn. I’m still trying to figure out whether repair or replace or some other method would be the best course of action.”
“Is that the most pressing thing on your mind?”
“What are you saying?”
“Nothing,” said Sunset. “Come see me, if you get time.” She walked away.
Twilight frowned, not sure what to make of the conversation. She’d expected Sunset would still try to push for exporting the Elements, and maybe she would try to convince Twilight again.
She sat down and went back to work. Apparently, the brief break in study reenergized Twilight’s creativity because an idea came to her in a flash of inspiration. In the old days, a broken vase might be repaired by filling the cracks between pieces with a molten metal like gold. The nerve core of a unicorn’s horn was contained and directed by the conical bone structure. What if there was some artificial substance that could fill in the broken area and conduct magic?
Metal? Not normal metal. Maybe a previously enchanted artifact could be adapted. Where would she get something like that, something with which somepony would be willing to part? What about the Alicorn Amulet?
No, terrible idea. After Trixie had used it, Twilight had done some research. The amulet amplified both the user’s power and evil tendencies. That was the last thing they wanted to pair permanently with a pony like Tempest Shadow.
But the more she thought about it, the more the idea nagged at her. They already had the amulet, recovered from one of the crates on the airship. If they just had some way to remove its undesirable traits.
She dove into another wave of research.
In a dusty book in the charms section that nopony had looked at in a hundred years - Twilight noted the checkout card - she found a few scripts from Starswirl the Bearded. He was everywhere, it seemed. Twilight had always treated it as a private scavenger hunt, looking for books by him around the library.
Starswirl had dabbled in curse breaking. Sufficiently powerful magic could alter the properties of an artifact. If one could overpower an item, then one could force it to change. The effect was enhanced with the additional act of substantially changing the object’s form.
How much magic would it take to alter the Alicorn Amulet? Twilight frowned. A lot.
She grabbed a book on magical artifact construction and another on metallurgy. The clock indicated that it was lunchtime, but she didn’t look at it. She was on the cusp of something. It would just take a little more time.
Moon Dancer couldn’t believe she had agreed to this. All they had was the name Cadance, who Twilight had told them was her sister. In a society where many didn’t share familial names, that made it extremely difficult to find ponies via household data.
Still, Moon Dancer was nothing if not a willing researcher. She was going to prove to Lyra that there was nothing to be found. She hoped. It already felt dishonorable enough to be looking into Twilight’s personal life without her knowledge.
After school, at the library’s city records section, Moon Dancer took the formal documents while Lyra went for more lifestyle pieces. There wasn’t likely to be much in newspapers, but she had called dibs on that over boring government paperwork.
In the first hour, Moon Dancer found a record of Twilight’s birth. Her parents were Night Light and Twilight Velvet. She added the names and their relationship to a pad of paper between her and Lyra.
Running records for Twilight’s parents, it wasn’t difficult to find records of their deaths. They died on same day, cause: “nightmare.”
Moon Dancer hadn’t remembered the exact date, but she did remember what had happened when Nightmare Moon came to Canterlot. There were so many casualties that many victims hadn’t even received a proper autopsy. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before moving on.
Further searching for Twilight’s parents uncovered a second birth certificate for Shining Armor, apparently Twilight’s older brother. He, too, was dead, though in battle in the Everfree Forest.
At this point, Moon Dancer wasn’t sure how much more she wanted to search. She pressed on, though, because it might mean the difference in seeing Twilight again. If she was going to be there for her friend, she was going to have to be there for the bad parts, too.
“Oh my sweet Celestia!” Lyra suddenly burst out, holding her hooves to the side of her head. Her eyes were huge, staring at the newspaper in front of her. A librarian shushed her.
“What is it?” Moon Dancer asked. She leaned over. A full-color picture showed the newest inductees to Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns from a few years ago. Twilight, though much younger, was clearly visible.
“So she went to some prestigious school,” said Moon Dancer. “It’s weird that she transferred to our school, but it doesn’t prove anything.”
Lyra still looked too stupefied to speak. She merely pointed to the back row.
Arranged with the crowd of young foals were Princess Celestia and - at the time - the newly crowned Princess of Love, Mi Amore Cadenza.
“That…” Moon Dancer leaned closer to the page.
“That’s Twilight’s sister!” Lyra hissed. “The mane was cut differently and she was covered up, but I’m sure of it.”
“But I remember Mi Amore Cadenza died only months after her coronation, in in the Battle of the Everfree…” Moon Dancer grabbed her notes. “...where the Elements were also present, and where Twilight’s brother was killed. I mean, there might be some resemblance, but-”
“And remember, there’s Café Cadenza,” said Lyra.
“I remember we tried to go, but it was closed. What does that have to do with anything? It’s just a name.”
Lyra pulled another newspaper out of her pile, this one much more recent, and pointed to the headline. “Café Cadenza burned down the same night Twilight met with the Element of Magic!” The librarian shushed her again.
“But...but...Princess Mi Amore Cadenza is dead.”
“What if she’s not?”
“But she’s not Twilight’s sister.”
“What if Twilight lied to us because she didn’t want to admit she was meeting with a Princess who is supposed to be dead?”
Moon Dancer could do nothing but gape for several seconds. “This is ridiculous.”
“But what if it’s true?”
Lyra had her there, Moon Dancer had to admit.