//------------------------------// // Completely Unavoidable // Story: Starlight Glimmer Makes Many Mistakes // by MagicS //------------------------------// Dilapidated as it was, the Caste of the Two Sisters was still an impressive sight under the light of the moon. Standing proud in the middle of the Everfree; despite its ruined nature one could easily see how it was the seat of royalty in the past. It would most definitely make a good place to stay for the night and perhaps many more. Plenty of room, no one else there, Spike knew the layout fairly well and most importantly where the bedrooms were, and it was already essentially a ruin so there wasn’t much more Starlight could do to it if they had another accidental case of home destruction. “Wow, good thing you remembered Spike. I wasn’t even thinking about coming here.” Starlight said to her dragon friend as the two of them stood on the grounds outside the castle, the cool night air making the castle even more desirable. A brief gust of eerie wind sent waves through the grass. The castle may have been desirable but it was not exactly inviting. Spike gulped looking at it, knowing its history and some of the scary stuff inside, even if a lot of it was actually meant for entertainment. Starlight meanwhile was completely unbothered by the intimidating aura that the castle currently gave off in the dead of night. “Shall we?” She asked Spike as she began to saunter across the grass to the entrance of the castle. “Uh, yeah. Right behind you.” Spike replied, pushing his claws together and waddling after her. Pushing open the large double-doors Starlight led the two of them into the ruined hall. Rubble was strewn about the insides, pillars and walls were chipped and grass and mold grew uncontrollably. The castle was a shadow of its former self but still more than what Starlight and Spike needed at the moment. Looking up Starlght saw the two tapestries that hung from the back wall, those at least were still as impressive and pretty as ever. As the moonlight still shined down on them from holes in the ceiling a sudden yawn escaped from Starlight. Holding a hoof to her open mouth she then turned to Spike. “Well I kind of want to explore a little but we should probably hit the hay first and leave that for tomorrow.” “Fine by me.” Spike quickly said before frowning and giving Starlight a look. “And we don’t need to go exploring at all. And we probably shouldn’t go exploring at all.” “Spike I’m just gonna tell you right now that we’re definitely going exploring tomorrow.” Starlight said with a carefree smile. “Besides, I think that’s preferable to running around the Everfree causing all kinds of chaos, wouldn’t you?” Spike was unconvinced. “Maybe if it wasn’t for certain very important things that were in this castle, and the fact that I don’t know all of the crazy stuff that Celestia and Luna put in here. We could get lost or trapped by something.” “You told me that all the stuff they had in here was for fun?” Starlight frowned. “I’m sure there’s nothing dangerous. And there’s no way I can do to this castle what I accidentally did to the library and the underground grotto.” Spike sighed and once again smacked himself in the face. “Starlight, saying that is just inviting bad luck.” Starlight rolled her eyes. “You’re being too pessimistic, Spike. Now come on, where’s a good room for us to stay in for the night?” Spike realized he wasn’t getting any further with Starlight tonight and so the two of them started to look for a bedroom to conk out in. Spike’s memory of the castle wasn’t the best but he at least knew enough to not trigger any “traps” that Luna and Celestia had left behind. The last thing they needed now was falling down a trap door or getting separated by a revolving wall. Before long he had led them to the old secret room he and Twilight had found once here where some of Celestia and Luna’s old books and journals were. “Oooh, a secret hideaway huh?” Starlight said as she looked around, levitating a book off one of the shelves and flipping through its pages. “Do you think Twilight would be jealous to learn I technically got in here and read some of Celestia’s old stuff before her?” She asked, giggling a little at the thought. “Maybe, but it’s not something you should bring up in the first place since she’s gonna have enough things to be stressed about when she sees us again.” Spike’s answer was bereft of any of the amusement that Starlight had in her. “I suppose.” Starlight said as she hopped into a chair and started to curl up in it. Spike followed along, getting into his own chair. They were comfortable enough, the cushioning surprisingly intact. He would never admit how much he acted like a dog as he spun around a couple of times before finding the perfect spot and lying down. “Goodnight, Spike.” “Goodnight, Starlight.” “Fun morning ahead.” “I hope not.” “This is fuuuuun!” Spike yelled as he and Starlight slid down and down the spiral slide into the depths of the castle for the tenth time that morning. Starlight used her magic to decrease their friction to make for an even smoother and faster ride this time, the two of them now yelling in delight and holding their hooves or claws in the air as they finally reached the bottom and spilled out onto a bed of carefully placed pillows. “That was even better than the last time!” Spike said as he got up, dusting himself off. “Right? Next time I’ll use a propelling spell to make us go even faster!” Starlight was ecstatically tittering up and down on her hooves as she spoke. “Geez, this place is more like a funhouse than a castle, isn’t it?” “I know right? I wish Twilight’s castle had stuff like this in it.” Spike said. “We should totally install some stuff when we get back!” “Yeah!” For once Spike was agreeing with Starlight. “Although I’m not sure if Twilight would really go for that.” Starlight smirked and winked at him. “Who says she has to know?” “Hehe. Good point.” Spike winked back at her. The two of them were back to their usually friendly selves now that they were just able to kick back and have some fun without something bad coming up or Starlight going off on some dumb idea. The whole morning had been spent searching through the castle and finding all of the hidden toys, secret passages, and other fun stuff. Starlight and Spike had elected not to read Celestia’s journal and instead decided to find everything for themselves. “Slide again or do you want to find something new now?” Starlight asked Spike, “I think there’s a spring-loaded platform somewhere that can shoot you over the castle, let’s try and find that!” Spike exuberantly said, the small dragon totally caught up in Starlight’s pace ever since the morning began. “Alright, let’s go find it!” Starlight said and the two of them ditched the basement and headed into another part of the castle. Normally the stairs out of the basement would make for quite the climb but Starlight now also had a good enough grasp of the castle’s layout to safely teleport them out of it and back into the main hall. Any platform that would supposedly fling them over the castle was probably on an upper level or the castle wall itself. So much of that was gone though that it may not be there at all anymore. No sense in not trying for it though! “Was there an observatory in this castle or anything like that? I figure any fun stuff like the slides and rotating walls would be around old rooms or structures up here.” Starlight asked Spike as she walked along the destroyed roof, Spike flapping in the air next to her. “Probably, but I dunno.” Spike answered. Starlight took a breath of fresh air as she and Spike stood on top of one of the half-destroyed towers of the castle, it was such a nice day out that she was almost tempted to spend the rest of it outside instead of having fun inside the castle. But there was simply far too much exploring to do. Starlight and Spike hopped up and down on every single individual stone looking for the rumored platform but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Halfway through looking for it it turned into just trying to discover any old thing on the rooftop as Starlight levitated a pile of rubble off a parapet and dumped it over the side. Even Spike at this point had forgotten that maybe they shouldn’t be moving stuff around like that. Treating the castle like their own personal amusement park/archaeological dig site was making the morning a lot more enjoyable than thinking about any of that annoying “don’t mess around with the past” kind of stuff. Still, eventually even they got bored of just rooting around the roof for what turned out to be nothing, and the sun was directly overhead now and things were starting to get a little hot. “I’m surprised Princess Celestia just let this place all fall apart like this.” Starlight wondered aloud. “I would think she’d want to preserve it.” “Too many bad memories?” Spike suggested. “I mean, you know what happened here and all.” “True. But considering it’s right by the Tree of Harmony and the elements are technically still here too...” Starlight trailed off. “Meh, Celestia works in mysterious ways you know? She planned for all sorts of things when it came to Twilight.” “Guess so.” Starlight stopped for a second, just glancing around the rooftop before sighing. “I don’t see that platform or anything like it anywhere.” “Maybe it got destroyed or fell apart a long time ago?” Spike suggested. “Probably.” Starlight said with dismay. “Darn, I really wanted to find all the little secrets and gizmos in here.” “Let’s go back down and get Celestia’s journal this time. I’m sure we can find everything out with it.” Spike said. Starlight frowned but gave in, it was something of a bitter pill to swallow but not like it was really a big deal or anything. “Alright, guess we might as well now.” The pony and dragon made their way back down through the castle proper, the two now walking through the hallways where rows of old plate armor lined the walls. At night it might be scary but in the middle of the day it just looked fancy. Starlight and Spike both had the suspicion that the armor was Luna’s idea. Getting out of that hallway and walking past the room with the large pipe organ, Starlight briefly thought it might be nice if she had any sort of musical talent. From what Spike had told her the organ still functioned perfectly well, it might’ve been fun to try out but with her lack of knowledge it would probably just end up sounding really bad. “You left the journal right on the chair, right?” Starlight asked Spike as they once more stepped inside the old reading room. “Yep.” Spike flew right over to the chair he had been sleeping on the night before and grabbed Celestia’s journal. “See? Right where I left it.” Starlight took it with her magic and levitated it in front of her face. “You know it’s not just that I wanted a challenge I also didn’t really want to invade Celestia’s privacy.” Spike looked at her like she grew a second head. “Really? You’re saying that? And you didn’t have a problem with invading her home.” Starlight frowned at him but had no come back. “Fair point.” Taking a look at the journal she noticed there was still a thin layer of dust over it. “Yuck, it’s still so dirty.” With a great intake of breath Starlight then exhaled and blew all of the dust off the journal. This had a number of side-effects. The first being that a cloud of dust had now entered the air. The second being that because Starlight was holding the book right up to her face the cloud of dust was now enveloping her head. And the third being that the dust tickled her sensitive nose and caused her to have a truly monumental sneeze all in the span of about two seconds. And that sneeze had its own very unfortunate side-effect. Starlight briefly lost control of her magic and spell, dropping the journal but firing a small concentrated blast of magic out the tip of her horn that bounced off the walls of the reading room. Books were knocked off their shelves, one of the chairs had a hole shot through it, and Spike was knocked upside the head by it causing him to accidentally breath fire onto the rug before the magic ricocheted out of the room and down the hallway they came from. The out of control magic continued to knock down any remaining torches or chandeliers on its rampage and just by happenstance ended up going into the organ room where it collided with the organ, not completely destroying it but getting inside its pipes to ricochet and resonate to an even more powerful degree (while at the same time creating some actually pretty nice music) upon which exiting the pipes it blasted straight through one of the castle’s walls into the hallway with the standing armors. The magic barely nudged the first suit of armor but it was enough to cause it to fall over sideways, knocking over the next one and then the next one like an incredibly loud and cantankerous row of dominoes. Now the ball of magic sped into the main hall of the castle, hitting and knocking over each and every pillar as it pinballed back and forth between the walls before finally sliding along the back wall at just the perfect angle to bifurcate the two formerly beautiful tapestries. But Starlight’s magic was hardly done yet. Bouncing off the corner of an entryway the magic was shot into the floor, breaking right through the stone and smashing into the slide that Starlight and Spike had used just earlier. The magic slid down the slick metal, gaining more and more speed before it finally hit the bottom of the slide, obliterating and setting fire to the pillows that were set there. The pillows however changed its trajectory just enough to make the magic careen into the central pillar that held up the basement, half destroying its base and causing a huge portion of the castle to suddenly shift and sink down with the floors directly above it splitting apart and the walls of the basement suddenly cracking to allow tons of dirt and rock to flood and bury it completely. At the same time Spike’s fire raged out of control, devouring the reading room and spreading out to the rest of the castle, smoke and fire burning out the windows and temporarily threatening even to consume more of the castle than Starlight’s magic had destroyed. Luckily (just for once) there wasn’t enough flammable material for the fire to spread to the other half of the castle from where the reading room was. So it only ended up mostly burnt instead of completely. And all the while Starlight and Spike watched this chaos from the grounds outside the castle. A quick teleport from Starlight having taken them to safety at the beginning. Spike’s face was surprisingly neutral considering what was happening, probably just too used to it by now to care. Getting enough of the destruction he turned to Starlight. “Well Starlight, what’s next? Blow up Cloudsdale? Start a war with the Yaks? Or are we just gonna go all out and free Discord?” Starlight as well just looked at the burning castle apathetically. “Actually I was thinking we could just go to Sweet Apple Acres now?” She replied. “Oh.” Spike said. “I guess that’s okay too, but if you accidentally burn down the orchards and make Applejack cry don’t blame me.” Starlight was going to reply when her vision went white and a sudden shaking overtook her. Her hooves felt like the ground fell out beneath them and her body became jelly, the strong vibrations making everything a great white blur. And then just as before it was done as fast as it started, Starlight checking to make sure she was still okay and looking over at Spike to see that he had again felt the same thing and was blearily blinking his eyes. Sighing, Starlight turned from the burning castle and began to head in the direction of Sweet Apple Acres as the past once more changed in a negative way Starlight didn’t intend. Messing with the past? That was the plan. Causing problems and making things worse? Not so much.