A lilac unicorn ran straight into the door of the Crystal Tree’s map room. It was a pull, not a push. She rubbed her nose, a small trickle of blood running down from where she’d slammed it right on the door.
“By Starswirl’s bearded arse crack,” Starlight muttered. “Stupid spell couldn’t have reset me to the moment I cast it, oh no, why not ten seconds before I cast it when I was trying to enter the room.”
The door began to glow teal, surrounded by Starlight’s magic, until it slowly crumbled down to dust. Only once it was a small pile of crystal dust on the floor did she bother to walk through.
After she got to the table, she pulled out her scroll and tried casting the spell again. Nothing happened. She began to examine the table and scan it with her magic. She had spent months planning this, studying every spell she could find. Breaking into the Starswirl the Bearded wing to steal his work on time magic had been easy. With an invisibility spell and a silence spell she’d learned, she was in and out of the deepest parts of Canterlot castle with none the wiser. Starlight had found flaws in Starswirl’s time travel spell, and had worked hard to make her own version that could go back further in time than a single week.
She pulled out his opus magnum, a thick tome filled with spells that could easily restructure the four dimensions that Equestria existed in. It was no wonder that it had been kept under lock and key. Starswirl's Guide to Time, the Universe, and Everything may have been pretentiously titled, but contained every finished and unfinished spell he’d ever created. Once Starlight was done here, there were at least a dozen other spells in the book that she would have fun completing.
Yet try as she might to figure out why this simple time travel spell had failed, she could find no flaws in her calculations. Clearly something had gone wrong, or she’d be in Cloudsdale right now. Instead, she had spent the last few days stuck in this empty castle with only the baby dragon as company. Of course, Starlight avoided him so as to not waste time or possibly get recognized.
If her spell was flawed, then perhaps she should cross-reference any books in the castle’s library to determine if she forgot to carry the zero or something. As Starlight headed down the hallway towards the library, she realized the hallways and doors all looked the same.
Sure enough, she was lost and going in circles only a few seconds later. She heard some talking coming from one of the rooms, and slowly approached.
“Got any four’s?” a stallion asked.
“Go fish,” a dragon replied.
Starlight trotted closer, realizing the crystal floors and walls made for a very loud echo.
“Hear something?”
She ducked behind a curtain and cast a spell to make herself less interesting, then peeked out. If anypony tried to look at her, they’d find the curtain painfully boring and look away.
A blue pegasus trotted out into the hallway. Starlight tilted her head curiously. She thought Spike, Twilight’s assistant, was the only one living in the castle. Perhaps this other pony was the foalsitter.
“Yeah, I thought I heard somepony out there but I didn't see anything.” The stallion closed the door and went back into the room.
Starlight let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding, and cast a teleportation spell to cross the hallway and land at the intersection about four doors down. She looked around for any distinctive markings. Now that she knew where the dragon and it’s foalsitter were, Starlight could just avoid that hallway. The pony and dragon would be stuck in the loop, reliving the same day over and over. Meanwhile, she’d be free to fix this spell, travel to Cloudsdale, and have her revenge once and for all.