//------------------------------// // Journey Through the Dark - Part 9 // Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot // by Equimorto //------------------------------// "I'll go clean the other room," the mare said after a moment of silence. "We cleaned it yestercycle," the stallion noted, finishing his crackers. "You can never get clean enough with this sort of things. Wanna make sure the experiment are conducted in a sterile environment and all that," the mare droned out as she got up and headed for one of the doors. Twilight thought it rather obvious that she was just looking for an excuse to pretend she'd done something, and the stallion seemed to have caught on too. "Make sure you take care of the corners properly," he said as he watched her go. Twilight quickly decided to follow the mare, and teleported in the room on the other side of the door as soon as she opened it. It looked like another, smaller laboratory, with far less clutter around and without a table in the middle. But its most interesting feature was a fully transparent wall on one side, likely glass or crystal. In front of it was a control panel of sorts, and on the other side was a sight Twilight was unfortunately familiar with. The table in the middle was probably the same one as before. The black crystal formation hanging on top of it had to be new though, a replacement for the one blown to pieces the last time she'd been on the other side of that glass. She did wonder, sincerely, what consequences her and Chrysalis's incursion there had brought. If maybe that had been the cause of Nightmare Moon taking interest in their world. Though she wouldn't be able to figure out how she was sending things there by staying in that laboratory, most likely. She followed the mare through another door, out into a corridor, and almost immediately into the room with the table, the door to which the unicorn unlocked with her magic. Twilight recognised it as the one Chrysalis's attempt at escaping had come to an end against. She teleported in before the mare closed her out in the corridor. The room inside was actually rather clean, which made sense given what the stallion had said, and perhaps surprisingly it didn't really smell any particular way. She'd always thought the stench of charred and rotted flesh could only at best be covered by the chemical smell of particularly aggressive cleaning products, but it seemed that was too romantic a thought to stand up to reality. Not romantic in the love way, of course, just- Twilight shook her head and focused on the mare again. She was busy using her magic to scrub against the places where the floor met the walls. It didn't look like it was doing anything, but she certainly seemed to be putting some actual effort in it, so at least Twilight supposed she wouldn't be lying when claiming she'd spent her time cleaning the room. While the unicorn busied herself with that, Twilight carefully walked closer to the centre of the room and focused on the crystal contraption. It almost reminded her of some weird mix between magic crystal artifacts like the Elements or the Heart, and Sombra's anti-magic constructs. Definitely something she could see originating from the Empire, and the mention of a northern laboratory seemed to point in that direction as a possibility, but also definitely the result of dark magic. Looking a little closer, and tilting her head slightly, she thought she could almost see something trapped within the crystal, barely noticeable. She was distracted by having to move out of the way, to avoid the other mare walking into her. She appeared to be done with the edges of the room, and ready to take care of the table instead. It, too, looked pretty much spotless, though that did nothing to take away the knowledge of what it was used for. The unicorn's magic settled on its surface and began to scrub it, while Twilight looked around the place. She could probably get out the other door once the mare left if she moved quickly enough, assuming it still wasn't locked. But she wasn't sure she could find much that way, the information she wanted was probably elsewhere. So she had to wait. The glass wall was enchanted to prevent teleportation through it, and for good reasons she was sure. Stepping back, she kept studying the crystal from afar, while also keeping and eye on the mare as she cleaned the table.