Beyond The Veil

by chief maximus

Prologue

Beams of sunlight drifted through the library windows. The curtains remained half drawn, and dust hovered in the air, illuminated by the shafts of light. An alien stillness hung in the the main chamber. By now, the young occupants should have gotten started on the morning's chores, opening the Golden Oak library for the day's customers—few though they may be.

An impatient knock at the door shattered the peace. After it went unanswered, the visitor rapped again.

"Twilight?" a feminine yet raspy voice called from beyond the house. "Open up, I know the new Daring Do is out, and I'm not paying twenty nine ninety five for it!"

The knocking ceased as Rainbow Dash wandered around to the back of the house. "What is her deal lately?" she muttered to herself.

She's probably still in bed, she thought, though if she were, Spike would usually be awake to watch the library. Neither of them answering the door didn't add up. Rainbow hovered to Twilight's bedroom window, hoping to see a purple mane raggedly sticking out from her starry bedspread.

Rainbow gasped. Her bed was a mess; papers littered the floor and books were scattered on just about every surface in her room. Although robbery wasn't her first thought, it soon entered her mind as she took in the overall state of the normally tidy mare's room. A gentle push on the window pane revealed it to be unlocked. Rainbow hovered inside, softly setting hoof onto the hardwood floor, her wash blowing a few papers to the corners of the room. The first and most disturbing thing she noticed was that her bedroom was covered in a layer of fine dust.

"Twilight? You here?" she called, getting no response. Slowly, Rainbow crept out of Twilight's room and down the stairs. She noticed the door hadn't been broken or forced, and that downstairs was actually very tidy, with the exception of the dust layer coating nearly everything. Dishes sat still dirty in the sink, the soft buzzing of flies being the only soundtrack to Dash's wandering.

Maybe the Princess called her to Canterlot for something?

No sooner had the thought crossed her mind did she recognize the fault in that logic. Twilight would never leave her room that dirty, nor would she leave the library unattended. Rainbow turned back to the living room and noticed the door to the basement was ajar.

Swallowing, Dash tried to suppress all the notions horror movies had instilled in her about basements and what usually goes on in them. The old wooden staircase creaked with every step. Rainbow's foreleg fumbled for the light switch against the wall. Twilight's basement was one of the few places in Ponyville with an actual hookup for electricity. She knew Twilight had all kinds of scientific instruments down here, most of which she couldn't pronounce. Not that she cared. All the books in the world couldn't equate to the rush of a perfectly executed stunt or the bliss of a nap on the fluffiest of clouds. Finding the switch and breathing a sigh of relief, she flipped it only to find herself still staring into the blackness of the windowless room.

Cursing at herself for not bringing a candle with her, she tried to let her eyes adjust to the darkness. The basic outlines of some of Twilight's gadgets were visible, but not much else.

"Twilight?" Rainbow called softly. Still no reply. Rainbow had once been asked by Twilight to watch the library while she and Spike visited her parents in Manehatten. Dash contemplated refusing, but Twilight sweetened the deal by allowing her into the basement to play something she invented called a "video-game."

She called it "Pong". It was basically a dot that was bounced across the screen between two vertical lines. Applejack and Rainbow played it for hours the very first night. In case the power ever went out, Twilight had shown Rainbow where something called a "circuit breaker" was mounted on the wall.

Remembering this, she edged her way toward the center of the room, recalling where exactly it was located. Stepping lightly, she knocked against something in the middle of the floor, sending her tumbling over it and smacking her chin on the hard concrete. Cursing aloud, she rubbed her bruise and vowed to take her anger out on whatever Twilight had laid carelessly in the middle of the room.

Dash reached the other side, feeling against the wall with her hooves until she located the switches. Finding the one that was tripped, she flipped it back into its appropriate position. The lights flickered to life along with some of the machines in the room. Turning around to focus her anger on whatever had tripped her, her eyes widened.

Twilight lay sprawled on the floor, showing no sign of physical injury, but looking far more thin than any healthy pony should. Dash bolted to her side, turning her over onto her back, relieved to see her chest rising and falling.

"Twilight! Can you hear me?" she asked, failing to contain the panic in her voice. Rainbow cradled Twilight's head in her forelegs as it simply rolled on her neck. A few of her ribs were showing from her sides, but that was the least of Rainbow's concerns. Twilight's eyes were wide open, completely dilated, no whites whatsoever. Her jaw hung slack as she continued to breathe, seeming to simply exist and nothing more. Getting no response from Twilight, Rainbow scooped her up into her forelegs and flew out of the basement and towards the hospital.

"Howdy, Spike!" Applejack beamed from her cart. "Th' usual?"

"Yeah, if you've got it," he replied, unloading his heavy bags of groceries off his shoulders. Applejack's stand was the last stop on his grocery rounds.

"Ah ain't seen Twilight in a while," Applejack said, filling his burlap bag with the week's groceries. "She still holed up in th' library?"

Spike nodded "Yeah," he groaned, hefting his purchases back onto his shoulders. "You should stop by. I may not be able to get her outside, but I'm sure one of you guys could."

"Well, if Ah sell out early Ah might just take you up on that."

"Sounds good," he said, turning to leave before Applejack stopped him.

"Say Spike, what exactly is it she's doin' that's got her so preoccupied?"

He shrugged. "Beats me. She tried to explain it, but it was all over my head. Princess Celestia let her into the restricted section of the Canterlot library last week to pick one book for her birthday, and she's been reading it ever since. I figure I'll just let it run its course and she'll be over it soon."

Applejack smiled. "Well that sounds like Twilight all right. Have a good one, Spike!"

"You too, AJ!"

Spike managed to make it back to the library without his arms falling off. He set his heavy bags down on the kitchen table, already knowing where he would find Twilight. He entered the basement, the hum of the fluorescent lighting and the rustling of papers greeting his ears.

"You know, I'm beginning to regret giving you that letter from the princess about letting you into the restricted section."

"Don't be silly, Spike. Princess Celestia trusted me enough to take one book out of the greatest compilation of knowledge ponykind has ever seen! What was I supposed to do? Say 'no'?" she said, double checking her notes and constantly trotting back to an old book on the central table to compare. Her eyes sagged a bit and stray strands of mane stuck out form her normally well combed hairstyle.

Spike rolled his eyes and hopped up onto a table. "So what is this thing you're building again?"

"It's going to let me know the contents of every book in the restricted section. I wrote down the authors and titles of every book in that section while I was allowed to browse it."

"What? How does this thing let you read books you don't have?"

"It's not going to let me read books, Spike. It's going to let me talk to the authors! What better way to understand a piece of text than to hear about it from the pony who wrote it?" she explained, connecting wires to other wires and checking various instruments around the lab. "It's almost ready to test! Isn't this exciting, Spike?" she asked.

Her expression dropped at her assistant's unenthusiastic response.

"If you say so." Spike shrugged. "So how can you talk to ponies that have been dead for thousands of years with this?"

"Are you sure you want me to explain this again?" she deadpanned, looking up from her notes. "Last time you said it gave you a headache."

She bounced from monitor to monitor with Pinkie Pie levels of energy as Spike nodded. "I'm sure, just try and keep the words to three syllables, okay?" Twilight pulled herself from her equipment and sat in front of Spike.

"Okay." She took a deep breath, and began. "It has long been theorized that time moves in a circle, an ever-expanding spiral marching endlessly and unceasingly toward the future. According to the laws of relativity, backwards time travel is impossible except for short, spell-based bursts. However, if I've translated this correctly, this book has a way of skirting those rules." Holding up the ancient tome, she showed Spike the appropriate page, thought it was all nonsense to him. "The author theorized that one can open a gateway into the past by harnessing and controlling the three forces that govern our universe: magic, gravity, and magnetism. The machine described within erects—" Twilight glared at Spike as he held back giggles.

"Try to be mature about this, Spike. Anyway, this device builds a tunnel into the fabric of time itself, to a moment in time dictated by the amount of power used. Going back five minutes wouldn't take as much energy as going back, say, five hundred years. According to all modern science, something like this shouldn't be possible."

Spike nodded slowly. "So, do you think it is possible?"

"Not at all." She smiled, shaking her head.

Spike raised an eyebrow, "Then why did you go through all this trouble to build it?"

"Because, this book was hidden from everypony for a reason, right?" A smile began to tug at Twilight's lips.

"I guess..." He shrugged, idly kicking his legs in in thought.

"So that means that it contains knowledge not everypony should know, right?" Twilight led, inching closer to her assistant.

"Sure... so you actually believe this dusty book full of gibberish is telling the truth?"

"Don't be silly, Spike. I don't believe this even has a chance of working," she scoffed, waving a hoof.

Spike worked his jaw, Twilight's logic confusing him far more than the explanation of the function of the rather large device she had built.

"So then why try it?"

"Because Spike," she whispered, her smile now out in force. "What if it does?"