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// Journey Through the Dark - Part 26 
// Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot 
// by Equimorto 
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Of all the things that could stand in her way, be them guards or spells or traps or secret entrances, none had proven themselves quite as challenging to Twilight's ability to progress through her explorations as closed doors. Not gates, or hidden passages, or heavily fortified entrances. Simple, plain, unlocked doors. The kind that could have ponies behind them. One day, she swore, she'd devise a spell specifically designed to open doors without anyone noticing, even though she doubted she'd ever find a use for it. Though, in fairness, through a thousand years or so she might eventually run into a situation where such a spell was indeed useful. Or she may simply grow into the kind of pony who'd use it to spy on others in secret.
The specific door blocking her path at that moment was barren of any indication of what was actually behind it, much like how everything that wasn't a bathroom lacked any form of sign or tag in the building. What she could tell for sure was that there were ponies in there, but it was more thanks to the general sound of hoofsteps and tools being used than through any bits of conversation to pick up on. It did have a knob at least, rather than whatever mechanism the main entrance used to open, and in general it looked much more like a regular door than that one had. Nevertheless, it still blocked her path.
It was while she tried to think of some way to enter, probing the door with her magic to make sure it didn't have any specific kinds of enchantments, that she heard hoofsteps approaching to her right. She turned to see a unicorn mare walking towards her at a brisk pace, light yellow coat, short brown bangs, wearing a lab coat. Twilight stepped out of the way.
The mare, however, stopped right in front of the door and knocked on it. She looked almost annoyed, or at least definitely in a hurry. The door slowly opened a couple of seconds later, only slightly ajar, and a stallion peered through at her. From what Twilight could make out he had a brown coat, green eyes, and a short and messy black mane. He was a little taller than them, though still shorter than someone like Shining, and Twilight thought she could make out a horn but she wasn't sure. He looked over the mare for a moment, then opened the door fully. "Sorry about that," he said in a warm tone.
Twilight was quick to walk inside before the door was closed again. The room wasn't small, but it was still cramped. Aside from the stallion, who she could now confirm was a unicorn, there were a pegasus mare, a female unicorn, two male pegasi one of which was asleep on the floor and another stallion, an earth pony. The three sides of the room where the door wasn't were occupied by tables filled with calculators and piles of notes, and in the centre, leaving only a narrow width of empty pavement to circle around it, was a machine hooked up to a set of monitors and printers.
Twilight had enough experience to tell where the actual machine itself began and where the monitoring equipment ended, and to tell that whoever was in charge of things there had more than a few problems with proper organisation. Disregarding the wires and cables that didn't belong to the actual thing itself, she tried to figure out exactly what the machine was supposed to be, while keeping her ears perked for anything the ponies there might say.
From a circular base of red-brown metal, wide enough for a pony to uncomfortably stand with all hooves inside it, rose four curved rods of the same material with spherical ends slightly larger than the rest of the bar they were attached to. They stood a little taller than her horn, enough to force her to turn her neck a little to see them properly, but no more than that. They almost made the structure look like a birdcage with their shape, or like a fishing tool of some sort.
Inside the structure, held up halfway through its height by a metal cross with each end attached to one of the rods, a small crystal ball with something black-blue inside it that Twilight couldn't make out exactly. A little under that, hanging from the centre of the metal structure supporting the crystal, another, smaller metal cross with uneven arms, made of a different material. It was a dull grey, with black inscription carved into it.
Finally, next to the top of each rod, a black crystal with its base wrapped around the metal sprouted towards the centre of the structure, each one of the four with a slightly different angle and length but all pointing generally downwards.
Twilight was shaken from her observation as the sound of yawning was heard breaking the quiet buzzing of the room, and a voice spoke up soon after, still somewhat slurred. "Any news?"