//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3 
// Story: My Little Pony: Symphony of Fire 
// by LordStarKnight 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 3


For the young fashion designer Rarity Belle, everything was perfect: business was going well, Sweetie Belle was good as gold, and the stylist had just started new dresses that promised to be Magnifique, a very important order for a famous unicorn mare of Canterlot. The latter had torn her favorite dress during the wedding of Princess Cadence, which was infiltrated by despicable changelings to start an invasion. Once the situation was over, the client had asked the famous Element of Generosity to make her a new piece of clothing. It was an amazing opportunity, an immense honor, and a great joy. Everything was going well in an absolute tranquility punctuated by the ticking of her clock.

But then, why did she feel unsatisfied? There was a problem, but she could not tell what it was. The regular echo of her clock bounced off the walls of her shop. She gave a long sigh before levitating one of the innumerable reels of cord which were lined up like good little soldiers ready to serve.

As the milk-white unicorn finished tying some froufrou to her new piece of work, someone knocked on the door of the store. The stylist approached it, announcing her arrival with as much joy as possible. When she opened the door, a pink ball screamed, "Okay! See you tonight then!" Before running like the wind. Rarity was speechless, unable to understand what had happened. Then the pink flash reappeared in front of her.

"Oopsie! Sorry. I was so excited that I skipped a few lines."

The unicorn could only laugh heartily, which was not a surprise.

"Oh, Pinkie," she said, "it's always good to see you." The fashionista invited her pony friend to enter. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"

"Well, this morning I got up as usual. I had my breakfast, which was particularly good because I tried out a new waffle recipe. I put some good strawberries and ..."

Rarity quickly put a hoof over her friend's mouth.

"The short version, please,” she asked politely.

"Okay! You see, I realized that we haven’t seen Twilight much lately. It's been a while since the last time she came to Sugarcube Corner, and believe me, not coming regularly to take some sugar isn’t good at all."

The stylist realized that Pinkie wasn’t wrong, generally speaking. She hadn’t met with Twilight Sparkle for a while. Her librarian friend often plunged herself into a ton of work, but never to the point of disappearing for so many days. Was that what was worrying her? Rarity shared her concern with the living candy, and asked if she knew what could hold Twilight for so long.

"I have no idea," replied the unicorn. "On the other hand, Derpy told me at the spa that she had to deliver a lot of parcels to her house lately, more than anyone else this month. Twilight barely opened the door."

"Do you think she's planning something? Something funny?” Asked Pinkie very quickly. "I know! A huge party! Like with lots of balloons, cake, confetti, music ... "

Rarity hurried to interrupt her.

"I think it's something you would do, Pinkie. In any case, it may be better to talk about this with the others. "

"Oh, it's already done," Pinkie announced proudly. "When I realized Twilight was gone, I went to see Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and even Zecora to be sure. None of them have seen her during the last few days. In fact, the library hasn’t opened for a long time. And Spike only goes out to shop, it seems."

"Really? Has anyone asked him why she’s absent?"

"Of course. But he just says that Twilight has a lot of work."

Rarity's expression darkened.

"All this is indeed troubling. Spike may be her assistant, but he's just a kid. It's not good for him to work so much and be kept apart from others his age."

"I agree," Pinkie said.

"But how can it be that none of us have realized it?"

"We were all very busy apparently. Applejack with her fields, Dashie with the preparations for the spring rains, Fluttershy with all her little companions ... "Pinkie seemed to remember a detail she hadn’t paid attention to. "Besides, she seemed to have more animals than usual at home when I went to see her. So I proposed something to the others to make up for all this time thinking about work. I hope we can count on you."

"What did you have in mind?"

Pinkie looked around her, making sure no one was listening to them. She leaned over to whisper in the stylist's ear. What she heard illuminated her face.

"It's a wonderful idea!" Rarity ignited. "It promises to be fun."

But her current order came back to her mind. She looked worriedly at the dress she was working on; the stylist had barely begun. There was still a lot of work to do before it was ready. If it wasn’t delivered in time, it could be very bad for her reputation and business. Could she afford to do anything else right now?

"Is something wrong, Rarity?" Pinkie asked.

The big innocent eyes and the teasing little smile of the element of laughter made her hesitate, then capitulate.

"No, Pinkie. You can count on me."

"Okay! See you tonight then!"

The pink pony departed at the speed of light. Rarity returned to her army of models and sighed at her unfinished work. She levitated her equipment to work on her new dress. She sewed the ribbons, pearls, and sequins one after the other with gestures of a mechanical precision. She was looking forward to tonight.


xXx


The setting sun embellished the Ponyville Library with a beautiful orange hue. Carved in the oldest tree of the city, it was a temple of order and discipline serving knowledge. Or rather it was. For some time, books and parchments had covered every square inch of the tree-house to form a terrible jumble. Spike had to be careful not to spill the pile of books he was carrying while avoiding the documentation lying on the floor, an exercise as exhausting for his little body as for his young mind. He barely avoided hitting the table on which a particular spell was bustling. He finally put his package next to his purple unicorn friend who was flipping through an old grimoire. He just had time to breathe before she screamed and threw her book in the air. Every muscle on her face was shaking like tensed elastic. Her magic caught the book before it crashed to the ground. The little dragon was shaking too, but with fear, like he was surprised by thunder. He had to gather all his courage to dare to pronounce a single word.

"Twilight?" he asked.

"WHAT?!" she shouted.

The power of the purple unicorn's scream made him fall back. The Royal Canterlot Voice seemed to him almost like the loving whisper of a mother in comparison. He didn’t know what to say now. He simply asked her if she was fine.

"No, I’m not," she replied, still screaming. "I’ve been studying for days and haven’t found anything interesting yet. I flipped through storybooks, poetry collections, archeology treatises, encyclopedias from all of Equestria’s peoples ... I read about the life of Equis so often that it goes in a loop in my head. And yet I can’t find anything on an alicorn similar to the one in the painting we found. Nothing about this utopian city or bipedal monsters without fur or scales. And even less so on a so-called Canticle of Truth. It’s like all this is a huge hoax! "

"Maybe..." Spike hesitated before being cut off by the frozen voice of Twilight.

"If you try to confirm this possibility right now, you can say goodbye to jewels for the rest of your life."

Spike preferred to stay silent. The discussion, however, made him want to see if the papers were repaired by Twilight’s new spell. He approached the little table he had avoided so far and observed what was on it. The spell that her friend had thrown at the old paper had been at work for four days already. Although at the beginning it had seemed frightfully slow in the eyes of the little dragon, he had to admit that its effects were now very visible. The crumbs of the old story had changed from the brown color of old tree bark to a slightly yellowish white. Some tiny pieces were attached to others to form other passages of the story, and ink lines once gone had begun to reappear. The scholar unicorn placed herself near his assistant and took advantage of this moment to say what she was thinking.

"The good news, at least, is that this old spell from Starswirl the Bearded seems to work better than expected. Well, I shouldn’t be surprised that one of his spells is effective, but given the age of the scroll you found, it is impressive."

Spike rolled his eyes. He was used to hearing the purple unicorn talk about her idol with praise and preferred to try to ignore them. The language in which this canticle was written was rather archaic, but Twilight had given him some notions which allowed him to identify some passages. Nothing new in the end, apart from the confirmation of the ferocity of Blazing Sky’s armies and a passage different from the rest of the text. It was a sentence with more curved letters, like a footnote put by someone else.

"We should be able to recover a little less than half of the text in a few days if nothing comes to disrupt that spell," Twilight explained.

As she uttered the last word of this sentence, someone knocked on the door. She wasn’t expecting visitors. It was probably one of her friends coming to ask how she was. The unicorn walked towards the door, determined to politely dismiss the unexpected visitor. When she opened the door to let her head pass, she discovered not one but all her friends that she discovered.

"SURPRISE SLEEPOVER!"

Twilight slammed the door, her face twisted in a panic. Her frenzied eyes looked at the hundreds of books, the many papers and dozens of scribbled notes that littered the floor and hid every piece of furniture in the tree house. She stared at the desk on which the old spell was reviving the mysterious document she had promised to keep secret. Princess Celestia herself relied on her discretion. Somepony knocked at the door again.

"Twilight?" called Applejack in a worried voice. "Are you OK?"

"It's extremely rude to slam the door on people's faces, you know," Rarity added.

Seeing Twilight’s look, Spike immediately knew what to do next. Like a good soldier who had retains his instructions, he began to run around every corner to put away the countless documents that were scattered everywhere at lightning speed. Twilight reopened the door slightly and poked her head out with a small embarrassed laugh under their curious eyes.

"Hey everypony! What are you doing here?"

"We just told you, silly filly," said the cupcake lover. "We organized a surprise sleepover!"

The sleeping bags on their backs confirmed that.

"Since we haven’t seen you for a long time," Fluttershy explained in her feather-light voice, "Pinkie has come up with that to see how you're doing and make up for lost time."

The young purple unicorn felt deeply touched by the solidarity of her friends.

"That's nice of you," she admitted. "But we didn’t see each other that long ago, right?"

"You've been here for almost two weeks!" screamed Rainbow Dash.

This indication took the librarian off-guard.

"Really?"

"Maybe you were just having so much fun you didn’t notice!"

"Yeah, sure Pinkie," Twilight pronounced with a fake smile.

"Hmm... are you going to let us in someday?"

The element of magic glanced anxiously behind her, then opened her eyes wide. She opened the door wide for her friends, inviting them to enter her perfectly clean and tidy home. They all did so without hesitation, except for Applejack, puzzled by the fickle attitude of the librarian. She eventually ended up joining the others inside. The first pony to be heard was Rarity.

"Dear Celestia! Is Spike alright?"

Her concern spread to the other guests when they noticed in turn the state of the little dragon. He was out of breath and covered with sweat, sprawled on the floor like a gelatinous mass that had just finished a marathon.

"Don’t worry about him," Twilight said. "He had a very busy day. Besides, he wanted to go to bed earlier."

Twilight used her magic to levitate the baby dragon like an old bag. She suggested to her friends to put everything in place for their evening while she brought him upstairs. The elements of harmony exchanged anxious glances. They ended up doing what the scholar had suggested with the reinforced impression that this sleepover was absolutely necessary.


xXx


Ten PM was about to ring. In all Ponyville, ponies were sleeping with the blessed sleep of Luna. The only exception was the treehouse of Celestia's pupil. Inside, the six elements of harmony were laughing heartily in their sleeping bags around a small lamp, the only source of light kept, like a campfire. The friends were having fun sharing their everyday life stories, mixed with juicy rumors. All of them had a wide smile on their face. They had roasted marshmallows in the fireplace, had combed each other, with the exception of Rainbow Dash, and made all kinds of games. Twilight felt lucky to have friends who would organize such a moment for her.

"So I told him," Pinkie concluded, "it's cupcake or no cake!"

The whole gang laughed heartily. Pinkie’s stories, they had to admit, were by far the best.

"Oh dear," Rarity said, "I wonder what the Cake family would do without you. Whose turn is it?"

"I think it's Applejack’s," Twilight informed.

The element of honesty saw all the eyes of the gang on her. She had to save the honor of the Apple family with a more entertaining story. She thought for a moment and a recent anecdote came back to her mind.

"Okay girls," she began, "I have a good one for you. It was four days ago. Applebloom had invited the other Crusaders for a sleepover exactly like this one. Well, they said they wanted to talk about new ideas to find their Cutie Mark but you can imagine that they quickly moved on. Anyway, they asked me if they could stay in their treehouse. I refused because I knew they would end up getting scared. They could have lost themselves in the dark trying to come back."

"I appreciate your foresight," announced Rarity. "Sweetie Belle is not really the intrepid kind. It could have ruined all her fun. "

"Unlike Scootaloo," said Rainbow Dash, "she would’ve done way better."

Applejack rolled her eyes, amused, before speaking again.

"Except that these smart little apples managed to deceive me by overthrowing all the clean clothes that Big Macintosh and I had just fold and making us believe that it was Winona's fault. As soon as we focused on the mess, they went through the kitchen door to go in the apple orchards. "

"Oh my..." interrupted Fluttershy. "You must have worried a lot."

"Not exactly. As soon as we finished tidying up the laundry, we heard a scream becoming more and more powerful. We barely had time to wonder where it was coming from when the door opened with a huge slam. It was our three little fillies screaming in fear and running to take refuge in the room they were supposed to be in. Big Mac and I quickly joined them to figure out what happened. It wasn’t long before we realized that they had disobeyed us and had the biggest scare of their lives among the trees. And I understand them a little, when they are plunged into darkness, these apple trees can be damn tricksters. Except that when we got into Applebloom's room, they were nowhere to be seen. We heard the clicks of their little clogs and we found them hidden under the bed with their lamps lit, shaking like leaves."

"So that's why Sweetie Belle insisted on keeping the light on these last few nights," Rarity worried. "If I had known... I would not have told her how childish her behavior was."

"Trust me, there’s nothing like a little thrill to build character," said Applejack.

"That’s right," Rainbow Dash conceded.

"It was definitely an evening she’ll remember," laughed Twilight with a bit of shame. "I hope she’ll recover."

"And it’ll make good memories later," continued the farm-pony. "One day they'll laugh about how they mixed up an apple tree with a giant monster."

"A giant monster?" worried Fluttershy.

"Yeah, they were so scared that they told us such a stupid story that I’m quite sure they imagined it between them before their night getaway."

"Tell us! Tell us! "asked Rainbow Dash.

"On the way to the treehouse, they say they heard a strange noise. Nothing surprising in nature, no? They wanted to see where the sound was coming from, which was more like a humming sound as they went on. When they found it, armed only with their little lantern, they said they found a gigantic creature illuminated by a pale light coming from the ground. They said he was standing on two legs and had huge, thin arms with awful claws, like old dead branches, and that they were so long that he could take the apples from our trees without any effort. And as if that was not enough, the girls said that the hum that they heard was the song of this creature and that it was uttering some really creepy stuff. How was it? Ah yes!"

Slenderman, Slenderman

His branching arms are for collecting

Slenderman, Slenderman

His face is empty of expressing

Slenderman, Slenderman

He won't let you say goodbye

Slenderman, Slenderman

You most certainly will die

When she finished these few words, Applejack laughed, like the story she had just told was completely ridiculous. She didn’t realize that Fluttershy had been hiding under her pillow since she'd talked about the humming in the night. Pinkie and Rarity laughed with her while Twilight eased the confusion of Rainbow Dash.

"What's a man?" asked the blue pegasus.

"That's the word used to indicate a male individual in some cultures. Like the minotaurs."

When the three others finally burst out laughing, Rarity declared with amusement, "I have to admit it was very entertaining."

"Thank you," Applejack prided itself. "But all the credit goes to the crusaders and their overflowing imagination."

Without hesitation, Pinkie announced, "Oh, it wasn’t their imagination. There really is a singing monster in the woods."

Each of the ponies present in the room looked at the element of laughter as if a third eye had appeared on her forehead. Their faces were frozen with uncertainty. Pinkie was known for her jokes, but over time the elements of harmony had learned to see the difference between her little jokes and her serious statements. Except this time, they weren’t sure whether to laugh or worry. The first to break the silence was Fluttershy.

"Are you trying to scare me again, Pinkie? That’s not very nice."

"I plead not guilty. It's the strict truth."

"Be serious, Pinkie," interjected Applejack. "A creature like that, it never existed. Ain’t that right, Twilight?"

"I would have to check, but it doesn’t sound familiar."

"But I swear it's true! By the way, the monster that the crusaders saw, was it wearing some sort of red and black plaid shirt?"

Applejack seemed being caught flat-hoofed.

"How do you know that? Did they tell you? "

"Nope. That's how Zecora described it to me. She also told me that she found its music noisy and disturbing. "

Each of the ponies showed a total confusion at these words.

"That’s odd," said Fluttershy, "that reminds me of what some forest animals told me while I was caring for them. Some rabbits and hedgehogs told me they had to leave their den because of a beast that was making too much noise. I didn’t pay too much attention to it. I thought it was a new animal who would eventually calm down."

"Now that you say that," added Rarity, "I remember having a rather curious discussion at the spa with Octavia."

"You seem to meet everypony at the spa," noted Pinkie.

"I guess so. Anyway, Octavia told me that she heard something weird during a stroll with Vinyl Scratch. They were walking near the forest when they heard some strange orchestral music. The kind that Octavia plays from time to time in Canterlot, but it came from really far away. Without her trained ears, she probably wouldn’t have noticed it."

The six friends didn’t know what to think about this. Twilight noticed their confusion and turned to the pink pony.

"I think you should tell us exactly what Zecora told you."

"Okey dokey! It happened a few days ago. I was delivering a box of choco-coconut cupcakes to our favorite zebra. She never talks about it, but she likes a little pastry at night before going to bed, lulled by the sounds of the forest. So I brought her order, as usual, but I quickly realized that something was wrong. When she opened the door, she looked really worried and looked everywhere before letting me in. I know that the Everfree Forest isn’t a very reassuring place at times, but it seemed like that she was used to it, so when I saw that she wasn’t in a teasing mood, I asked her what was wrong."

"And what did she tell you?" Twilight asked.

"You know how Zecora likes to listen to the sounds of nature before going to sleep? Well, a few days before I came, she noticed that, to quote her: ‘The music of the forest is different now. I needed to know what troubles it and how.’ She thought she heard some unusual sounds in the distance, amidst the friction of leaves and songs of birds. When night came, and everything was calmer, she sank into the forest to find where it was coming from."

"She really went into Everfree Forest alone? In the middle of the night?” interrupted Rainbow Dash. "Total respect."

"After several hours, she finally heard something really strange, like musical instruments. You know, the kind we hear when we start singing. Except that they sounded odd according to her. She recognized drums and cymbals, but also a kind of strangely deep string instrument that seemed to screech from time to time. Zecora said it was really scary."

"Wh ... What happened then?" asked Fluttershy from under the table.

“She followed the music to find a small cliff at the foot of which was a small cave. In front of the entrance, there was a huge fire with a huge creature playing guitar in front of it. "

"Guitar?" Rarity raised her eyebrows.

"Well, some kind of guitar. Like I said, the sound was deeper than an ordinary one. Besides, this monster had started singing something really weird. She listened and watched carefully, hidden in the bushes. That's how I knew about the plaid shirt. She told me she wanted to run away when she saw the shadows projected on the cliff by the flames. They took disturbing forms following the rhythm of the music, like creepers or tentacles, while the creature danced in a curious way. It was shaking its head, pounding the ground with its feet and writhing like a madman. "

"Can you sing it to us?" asked Twilight.

"Is that really necessary?" whispered Fluttershy.

"Give me a second to remember it clearly..." accepted Pinkie. "Right! It was something like this: "

She dimmed the light and the horrible scene replayed in the minds of everypony.

Messenger of fear in sight 
Dark deception kills the light  
Hybrid children watch the sea 
Pray for father, roaming free  

Fearless wretch 
Insanity 
He watches 
Lurking beneath the sea 
Great old one 
Forbidden site 
He searches 
Hunter of the shadows is rising 
Immortal 
In madness you dwell... 

A horrified silence took place once the song ended. Each had wide eyes and a paler coat, with the exception of the candy-pink singer. The animal lover had changed into a big quivering mess. The intellectual seemed immersed in her thoughts. Even the brave Rainbow Dash and Applejack were frightened.

"Why did you not told us this before?" Applejack asked in amazement.

"It's not as fun as the No Cake story." Rainbow pointed out.

"She means, why didn’t you tell us this as soon as Zecora told you about it? And why didn’t shet tell us herself?”

"She asked me to do it for her. She wanted to keep watching the creature, so I came to see you but you didn’t have time to listen to me."

Pinkie explained that all of them seemed so busy that she thought it could wait, and after that she got new pastry order and forgot about it for a while.

"Okay, but couldn’t you have insisted a little more? Anything that comes out of the Everfree can be super dangerous! Should I remind you that the clouds themselves do what they want there? It can rain anytime! This creature in the forest, maybe it eats ponies!"

"Rainbow!" Rarity intervened. "You'll scare Fluttershy even more!"

"It didn’t seem that important at all," Pinkie replied. "Evil people don’t sing!"

"That's a dangerous assumption, Pinkie!" declared Twilight.

Applejack stood up, her eyes filled with concern and told the others that she had to leave.

"Now that I know this thing exists," she explained, "I need to talk to Applebloom."

"I'd better go, too," said Rarity. "Sweetie Belle must be so scared. No wonder she's been so quiet lately. I must go and comfort her. "

Twilight realized that the sleepover was finished. This disturbing discovery would henceforth keep their minds occupied until this matter was solved. The Element of Magic suggested that it was better for each of them to go home, and added that they should all come back to the library tomorrow to talk about this monster case. All of them accepted, a bit of sadness in Pinkie Pie’s eyes.

Twilight watched her friends leave with a heavy heart. She hesitated to close the door behind them, feeling sad and guilty. That sleepover had made her believe that she had just been a little busy with her mission, carried away by her enthusiasm. But she realized now that it was more serious than that. She felt she had completely neglected her friends and Ponyville itself. Plunged in her books, she hadn’t noticed that something serious was going on in the Everfree Forest. Before going to sleep, she glanced into the cellar where she had hidden the reconstructing pieces of parchment. The ink of their words full of secrets was reappearing step by step. Twilight remembered that their revelation was a task of the utmost importance, entrusted by Princess Celestia herself. She hoped to be able to solve this monster issue as soon as possible.


xXx


The day had been very long for the solar princess. The requests from her subjects had been as diverse as they were numerous, but most of them had been formulated by members of the nobility. Most had come to expose such ridiculous problems that only her immense mastery of decorum and her many centuries of practice had kept her from throwing them out without thinking. And when her agenda spared her from time to time the presence of this kind of spoiled child, it was to meet ambassadors and businessmen as ambitious or unkind as the other. Every problem solved seemed to be followed by three new ones. But their complexity was less in their gravity than in the character of their exponents. In fact, and this was what saddened her most, she felt that her role was less to solve the kingdom's problems than to prevent it from collapsing under the weight of its general stupidity.

After a quiet dinner, far from trouble, she set out for her room, where she planned to collapse on her bed without losing a moment. As she passed in front of the throne room, she heard a powerful voice coming from it. The usual echo due to the size of the place, however, prevented her from grasping whether the person speaking was angry or very worried. She knew that her sister, Luna, was at this time in charge of the affairs of the kingdom, as they had decided on after her return from the moon. But the sense of responsibility due to her role, as well as her curiosity, made her change course, not without a deep sigh. Fewer minutes of sleep in her long, long life was not going to hurt her. She passed in front of her sister's guards, who saluted her like any other soldier.

Although Celestia had become used to their presence, she was still a little intrigued by her sister's guards. She had nothing against the bat ponies. She herself had chosen to assign their kind in priority to her sister's troops, given their natural preference for nightlife. But the style chosen by Luna, all in dark armor with pointy parts and sometimes provided with eyes like crystals, worried her a little. She feared that people would never stop being suspicious of her with such intimidating soldiers around her, but that wasn’t the most urgent problem. She hurried back into the throne room to discover the source of the din.

Once inside, she realized that the voice she had heard was moved by an understandable frustration. She was beginning to guess why when she discovered that the discussion was animated by her sister Luna and one of her soldiers, most certainly a lieutenant. Since the departure of Shining Armor, and as long as a new captain was not chosen by the two sovereigns together, the guards had to report in case of serious problem to the princess in charge at the time of their arrival. This of course was posing some problems. The guards were not used to waiting for their instructions, which reminded the sovereign of the day that it was necessary to take care of this subject with her sister as soon as possible.

The bat-pony soldier stopped and bowed when he saw the solar princess arriving. She apologized for her intrusion and asked her sister if there was a problem. The princess of the night first explained to the soldier that he had permission to do what he had proposed. She also ordered him to inform the day guards so they could organize themselves to do the same. Said soldier greeted the princess of the night with deep satisfaction. When he left the room, closing the door behind him, Luna addressed her sister without dithering.

"It happened again. At the north of the forest this time, during the day. "

Celestia knew what her sister was talking about. Her gaze briefly exposed a mixture of surprise and worry. She resumed, however, her royal calm.

"I see," she said firmly. "Another merchant's caravan?"

"No. It was the trailer of a young unicorn mare, a traveling magician. She was not hurt, fortunately. But what she told to the guards is really disturbing. "

"So we have a witness this time. Tell me everything."

"The magician was on her way to Baltimare and she was traveling along the Everfree. It was the shortest way. She had stopped to rest a bit in her trailer when she heard heavy but fast noises outside. She barely had time to turn to her window before a huge arm got through her wall."

The face of the solar princess was marked by anxiety.

"The young mare immediately fled through another window. When she turned around, she saw a huge creature overturning and tearing her trailer as if it was made only of cardboard. It was reduced to shreds in just a few seconds. She was so scared that she ran away without looking behind her."

"Understandable. Did she see what that monster was?"

"She was in panic. All she was able to tell us was that it was much larger than a pony, standing on two legs with two strong arms with hands."

"A minotaur maybe?"

"I don’t think so. She said it had no horn or fur. Not even scales."

This description titillated the memory of the princess of the day. Her sister noticed it and anticipated her reaction.

"That reminds me of the description in the text that Twilight showed us two weeks ago."

"It must be a coincidence, surely?" worried Celestia.

"I hope so. But I do not know any creature like the one this unicorn described."

Celestia couldn’t hide her anxiety this time. She understood why her sister had allowed the previous guard to form patrols and congratulated her sister for her initiative.

"We should ask Twilight where she is with her research," the solar monarch offered.

"You're right, although I hope it has nothing to do with this famous canticle of truth."

"Likewise, sister. The Everfree Forest has always been a complete mystery even for us. I'm aware that curious creatures live and strange things happens there, but this... It makes me fear the worst. "

A form of hesitation formed in Luna's gaze. Something else was troubling her.

"To be honest, there is something else, Celestia. During my patrols in the realm of dreams, I discovered several very troubling things. There are three fillies who recently had terrible nightmares with one common element: a gigantic monster with arms. I had a hard time convincing them that everything would be fine after dispersing the creature from their dreams. They claimed to have seen in the real world the creature that haunted them. Until tonight, I thought it was the fruit of their imagination. Now, I'm not sure at all."

Celestia had wide eyes as she discovered this.

"But it's not even the most important part. You know what dreams are like for us: bubbles of lights floating in the infinite. Last week, you see, I came across a very special one. It was... dark, like a dying ember covered with a thick veil of darkness. I tried to get in but I could not do it. Entering people's dreams is my privilege as sovereign of the realm of dreams, but this one rejected me with such force that even I did not dare to force the entrance for fear of breaking it. I do not know how it is possible. I have never seen this before. And yet I have seen the dreams of many ponies, griffins, and even dragons and diamond dogs. Every night I go to see this dark dream and try to enter inside, but each time I find myself repulsed. Sometimes I even get burned."

This revelation left Celestia in a state of profound stupor. She hurried to ask Luna why she hadn’t told her this before. Luna apologized and explained that she would have done so eventually. Dreams were under her jurisdiction and she knew better than anyone how to deal with them. She thought she was the best pony to pierce this mystery and didn’t want to worry her sister with that. Celestia was partially saddened. She had too often gotten the impression that her sister was not open to her. She hoped that this discussion would convince her to do it a little more. Something terrible seemed to be happening in the Everfree Forest.

The two sisters continued to exchange their fears and theories without suspecting that they were sharing them with another person. Only trained eyes could have seen the opening in the ceiling just above the throne, an orifice through which piercing eyes observed everything that happened between the princesses for longer than they could imagine.


xXx


Midnight was about to ring in the Carousel Shop. Rarity had a hard time getting her dear little sister to sleep. The creature living in the forest became for her a constant source of nightmares and anguish. The element of generosity had to promise to stay awake all night and make sure nothing would come for her during her sleep. Rarity was already scheduling a session at the spa to prevent the formation of vile, dark circles on her immaculate face.

In order to stay awake longer, the stylist had prepared some hot tea. When it was ready, she sat near her window to enjoy a cool breeze that had risen. The evening had been much more complicated than she imagined. She was far from stupid. She had seen that Twilight had been secretive for some time. She had the eyes and ears for that kind of thing. She had also noticed that Applejack realized it too. It filled the heart of the white unicorn with sorrow, but all she could do for the moment was hope that it was nothing serious. This monster story was more important, if only to reassure Sweetie Belle. She knew, like everypony else, that the forest was filled with strange things, but they usually seemed so far away, stuck in their strange woods. She noticed that the breeze she enjoyed so much seemed to come from the direction of the forest. It now seemed too cold, like the breath of a nightmarish creature. She was about to close her window when a very soft sound came to caress her ears, a crystalline sound.

The sound was far away, but by concentrating, she seemed to perceive a melody. It was the deep, melancholy sound of a stringed instrument. Was Octavia doing some night practice? No, that was unusual for her. Rarity's curiosity was strongly stirred. She left her shop to follow the sound; it became easier the moment drums were added to the melody. The streets of Ponyville were still deserted. No one else seemed to have noticed this music. Since it was late, Rarity was unsurprised. The sound was very light, and only her focused attention allowed her to perceive it.

The music became more and more perceptible. She was on the right track, but she stopped following it when she arrived at the Everfree Forest. The stylist froze in fear before the darkness of this terrible place. But, in a strange way, the martial and symphonic melody that seemed to emanate from it calmed her fears.

As if by magic, the music seemed to fill her heart with irrational and exhilarating courage. It was giving her the feeling that something grandiose was preparing in the dark depths of the forest. Would it be something wonderful or terrible? She couldn’t tell. What she was sure of, and what amazed her the most, was that she wanted to listen to this incredible symphony until the end.

The music of the Everfree Forest