As Hitch and Zipp reentered, they were glad to see that the other three members of their friend group had calmed down, speaking quietly to each other as they hugged tightly.
“Ahem…if you’ve gotten all that out of your system, fillies, I’d say it’s about time we got to work,” Hitch interjected authoritatively, prompting Pipp to part from the group embrace and return to Zipp’s side. Sunny and Izzy held their embrace for longer but eventually shared a brief kiss as they separated.
“So, Sunny, where’re all these artifacts you’ve told us about?” Zipp asked. “From what you’ve told me, we’re going to have our hooves full going through all of them.”
Sunny nodded. “Mmhmm, that’s right,” she began, gesturing for the rest of the group to follow as she walked towards Argyle’s study room. “My dad spent years searching through ruins for answers about Equestria’s past, and he picked up a lot of little things along the way,” Arriving at Argyle’s book- and trinket-laden desk, she picked up the first thing that caught her eye — an impression of what appeared to be some sort of reptilian foot. “Huh. Didn’t know my dad was into fossil collection, too. Wonder what makes this so significant that he kept it around," she mused to herself.
“Does everything your dad did have to have some kind of significance? What if it’s just a cool rock he found while he was out adventuring?” Pipp asked, rolling her eyes a bit. She appreciated a good mystery as much as the next pony, but there were definitely times where Sunny could read too much into things…
Squinting at it, as if trying to discern a deeper meaning of some sort, she sighed to herself as she placed it back down atop a stack of books. “You’re probably right. Let’s keep looking…I’m sure we’ll find something.”
“What the heck is this thing?” Zipp muttered to herself as she took notice of the ominous-looking crystalline staff propped up in the corner. The pointy blue crystal that adorned it seemed to call to her, a feeling of electricity tingling at her hooves before spreading up through the rest of her body as she stared at it, entranced. “Whatever the hay it is, just looking at it makes me feel all tingly. That’s definitely something dangerously powerful.” Glancing at each of her friends in turn as they gave her a worried glance, she frowned to herself. “We should be careful. With Equestrian magic restored, it looks like these artifacts have regained whatever power they had before, too. And with how long it’s been, with nopony able to maintain the integrity of these enchantments, some of them are bound to be…unstable.”
Held high on a shelf, a triangular black-and-red amulet with the visage of an alicorn caught Izzy’s attention. Encased within a protective glass container, Izzy carefully floated it down from the shelf and rested it on a nearby table, eying it with childlike wonder and intrigue as the gem at its core crackled erratically with red lightning. Something about it beckoned to her, imploring her to put it on…how it’d look just lovely as a part of one of her crafting projects…
Just as Izzy grabbed the glass dome of the container, intending to lift it up and release the artifact contained within, Hitch gripped her forehoof. “Up bup bup! Really, Izzy? Just look at that thing! It practically screams ‘Hey, look at me, I’m a super-evil piece of costume jewelry, put me on if you wanna turn evil and zap everypony with your horn lasers’!”
Rapidly shaking her head to clear her mind of the foreign thoughts guiding her actions, Izzy’s eyes widened. “Woah. You’re right, Hitch, it was totally telling me to put it on and use its power to subjugate everypony!” Izzy said with far too much nonchalance and enthusiasm, leading everypony else to freeze in their tracks and stare at her worriedly. “…Kidding! C’mon, ponies, it was a joke!”
Chuckling to himself, Hitch set the artifact aside, pointedly avoiding looking at it as he covered the container with a piece of cloth. “Riiight. Ooo-kay, that’s definitely one for the ‘ancient evil artifacts’ section.” Glancing over at his childhood friend, he called her name, “Sunny? We should really be keeping a list, here. CanterLogic needs to know how big they’re going to have to make their new artifact vault, and what precautions they’re going to have to take. Mark this thing up for ‘mental manipulation’ and ‘extremely dangerous levels of power amplification’ while you’re making that list. I can already feel something in my head just from glancing at it for a moment...I really don’t want to find out what it’d do if somepony actually put it on.”
As the others gathered around the encased amulet, discussing plans for how to properly contain it, another mysterious trinket on the shelf caught Izzy’s attention.
A cracked and chipped bronze bell, with a strange eye-like design on its surface, sat innocuously on top of a stack of books. The design on its face flickered erratically with an eerie white light as she stared at it, and arcs of magical lightning shimmered and danced across its surface, colored the eerie twinkling navy of a clear night sky. The barely-restrained power she felt emanating from it was so oppressive that it nearly left her breathless, leaving her to wonder how nopony else had noticed it yet.
Worries about what her friends might be doing fell by the wayside — a serene, articulate voice echoed inarticulately in her mind, crying out in heart-wrenching agony for her to pick up the bell.
Despite having never heard the voice before in her life, it felt unerringly familiar to her, tickling some distant corner of her mind. Before she even realized what she was doing, Izzy held the bell aloft in her magic, bringing it down from the shelf to hover in front of her.
‘We beg thee, my little pony! Whomever thee are! Ring the bell that thou holdest, and grant us release from our eternal torment!’ The voice in her head demanded with regal authority, figuratively pounding on the walls of the prison that contained it.
“Uhh, Izzy, what do you think you’re doing with that?!” Zipp interjected, alarmed, before Izzy had a chance to respond to the voice.
“Didn’t I just get through warning everypony not to touch the crazy artifacts? Seriously, does anypony ever listen to me?” Hitch grumbled, cautiously approaching Izzy as he eyed the mysterious old bell held aloft in her magic, “set it down, Izzy. We don’t know what that thing’s capable of.”
‘Do not listen to them! Prithee, ring the bell! We’ve waited so long to be put to rest, and we fear that we do not know how many more centuries we can wait!’
“Centuries?!” Izzy parroted, much to the confusion of everypony else in the room.
“Izz? Is it…is the bell talking to you?” Sunny asked, her brow knitting with worry.
“Oookay, yep, another artifact that talks to you in your head to try and convince you to use it? No siree.” Hitch stated firmly, reaching for the bell…as Izzy pulled it up out of his reach.
“Hold on a minute, here, ponies. This isn’t like that creepy amulet. It doesn’t…feel like a simple enchantment behind the voice. It feels like…like a pony. There’s an enchantment on the bell, and it’s a really strong one, but I don’t think it has the same mind-bendy stuff as that amulet.”
As Hitch started to speak up again, Sunny interrupted him. “Hitch, wait a sec. Izzy…can you ask the voice who they are?”
"Sunny, are you seriously indulging this insanity?" Hitch scoffed. Sunny waved him off, causing him to roll his eyes in exasperation.
‘We are Princess Luna, Lunar Diarch of the Princessdom of Equestria, Steward of the Night, Blade of the Shadows, and Protector of the Dream Realm, you uneducated whelps! The most diabolical of nightmare creatures cower beneath our might!’ The diarch's regal voice thundered in her head, nearly loud enough to give Izzy a headache.
Izzy’s eyes got wider and wider as the trapped voice from within the bell listed off their formal titles, a hoof flying up to her mouth as she sat back onto her haunches. “S-sunny?” She whimpered, head spinning from the revelation. “I think somepony really important is trapped inside this bell…”
“I’m no expert on creepy magical artifacts, but it looks a little too small to fit a whole pony inside,” Pipp pondered skeptically.
Zipp facehooved, shaking her head admonishingly as she launched into an explanation. “It’s not the whole pony, Pipp. If there's one thing I've learned from reading about old artifacts like these, it’s more like…their magic? Their essence?” She mused to herself, searching for the right words, “The connection between a pony’s magic and mind isn’t very well understood, mostly because all the books that would’ve known more about it aren’t in any modern libraries. It’s obvious now that there’s something to it, given how a lack of magic has put unicorns into a depressive state that’s lasted as long as any of them can remember, but without magic itself to study for so long, the best that anypony’s probably been able to use has been guesswork. Pegasi and earth ponies have been able to cope without their magic since it isn’t as important to them, but for unicorns…it’s a huge part of their identity.”
‘Your well-spoken friend is correct, Isadora Moonbow. A pony’s magic is indeed a tremendous portion of their identity, whether or not they possess a horn. We are saddened to hear that magic has been lost to Equestria for longer than current generations can remember, but it is not an unanticipated outcome given the events preceding our imprisonment within this blasted Bell.’ The voice answered within Izzy’s head.
“Why are you talking like that? And…wait, how the hay do you know my full name? I’ve never told anypony else that!” Izzy replied aloud, visibly alarmed.
‘When you are as old as we are, you learn many things about magic. As to our manner of speaking…in the early years of Equestria, before my sister banished me to the moon, it was commonplace for royalty such as us to address our citizens in this manner.’
“Your sister banished you? To the moon? How does that even work?!” Izzy exclaimed, growing increasingly confused.
The group’s eyes collectively widened, eying the bell with a new sense of apprehension. Was the pony trapped within deserving of their prison, and would it be unwise to release her?
Luna’s exasperated sigh filled Izzy’s thoughts. ‘We tire of retelling such times in our history, as they are the years we wish most to forget…perhaps we may tell this tale another time, Miss Moonbow, but it is not important now. What is important is releasing us from this bell and ending the suffering that we have endured for more years than we can even express.’
Izzy hummed to herself, unconvinced for a moment, but her trusting nature won out in the end, and she nodded approvingly to herself.
“Izzy, let’s not do anything rash, now…” Hitch said, tone full of authoritative warning as he reached for his hoofcuffs.
“Oh c’mooooonnn, Hitch, don’t you wanna meet one of the lost Princesses of Equestria?” Izzy teased, hefting the bell side-to-side in her magic as her eyebrows wiggled imploringly.
Pipp and Zipp glanced at each other for a moment. “Princesses? Like us?” Pipp whispered to her sister, who shrugged and shook her head in response.
Sunny’s eyes brightened noticeably at the mention of ‘Princesses’, an unreadable expression on her face as she looked at the spot on her back where her phantom wings had previously appeared. “You mean…like the Princess of Friendship, Twilight Sparkle? That isn’t just an inspirational old bedtime story for young ponies?”
The bell shuddered in Izzy’s grip, a palpable aura of sadness emanating from within it. ‘Oh, Twilight…’ Luna bemoaned, sounding at once nostalgic and heartbroken.
“You…you really are from old Equestria, aren’t you? You aren’t trying to fool us,” Izzy asked softly, her ears lowering in along with her mood at the revelation.
‘It has been so long since we thought of our beloved…we thought we had gotten over her, but hearing her name spoken upon somepony’s lips again is nearly too much for us to bear.’
‘Beloved…’ Izzy mouthed to herself, eyes widening. Her gaze shifted towards Sunny for a long moment, imagining what it might be like to be forced apart from the love of her life for countless eons. It was impossible to imagine the depth of Luna’s loss…even the thought of being away from Sunny for a single day sent unpleasant shivers down her spine.
Taking matters into her own hooves, Izzy gripped the bell strongly in her magic as she stared into that cold, swirling white eye on its face. Its inner workings came to her as if she had always known them, and she merely had to imagine pushing against the vast wellspring of power she could feel within it before it responded to her mental command. She aimed its aperture towards her face, and it hummed ominously with building power, eldritch light spilling through the growing cracks that spiderwebbed across it.
“IZZY, NO!” Her four friends shouted as they realized her plot, diving toward her in an attempt to halt the process that Izzy had started.
Just feet from reaching her, their reaching hooves met a swirling yellow-and-black barrier that flashed to life as they neared it, blocking them from interfering.
The bell jerked within Izzy’s sorcerous grip, and its clapper rang out one oppressively loud, dull note that only seemed to grow in magnitude as time passed, like some horrifying magical feedback loop.
‘You FOOL! I did not yet instruct you on the proper means of freeing me from my prison! You’ll kill us both, and all of your friends, just to free me?!’ Luna’s third-person narrative slipped for the first time since she’d begun talking to Izzy; a poignant metric of her distress.
“I’ve got this, Luna! Just trust me! I’ll get you outta there soon, I just know it! I just...“ Izzy’s teeth clenched hard as waves of searing pain racked through her body, the grooves of her horn glowing brightly as the process ran its course. She felt her mane and tail become weightless as her entire body began to levitate off of the floor, her friends watching in anguished, impotent horror as they could do naught but watch. "I...can't control it, now! What's it going to do to me?!"
‘You haven’t triggered the command to RELEASE me, you’ve triggered the command to ABSORB me! An alicorn’s power within a mortal body will DESTROY you!‘ Luna had nearly gone into the full Royal Canterlot Voice now, both out of anguish and out of a desperation to be heard over the building roar of the Bell. Wisps of deep-blue, star-filled magic began to reach out from the inside of the eldritch artifact, grasping at the air as they grew towards Izzy’s horn.
Izzy’s eyes snapped wide, pupils shrinking to pinpricks as she realized her fatally impulsive error. Overwhelming, existential horror filled her as she witnessed Luna’s power searching for its next soon-to-be host.
‘Can’t…maintain our connection…while being pulled out…’ Luna advised, her voice growing choppier and quieter as more tendrils of magic exited the bell. ‘You must…tell your friends…to RUN!’ She screamed with her last figurative breath, the connection fading away entirely as the first tendril made its hesitant touch upon Izzy’s horn.
Her every nerve flared with searing agony as her senses failed her. An unstoppable torrent of power filled her reserves to overflowing as that forbidden connection grew in strength, despite her every wish to stop what she’d begun. Her last sight was of her beloved Sunny, her ethereal wings flared wide, slamming her hooves on the barrier to no avail as tears streamed down her cheeks.
She felt a tear roll down her own cheek in return as her vision became pure white, and within moments, she knew no more.