Lapis was back in the caves again, and this time he knew he was dreaming.
The cavern was well-illuminated, but Lapis wished it wasn’t. Though the warm, reddish-orange light that washed over the rich dark-brown stone was certainly convenient, it was also originating from a number of inconvenient sources - for example, the orange cracks in sections of the stone, revealing the thick orange magma seething just beneath the crust of stone; or else the geysers tucked away into divots in the floor, which would sit and grumble for seconds at a time before releasing searing gouts of flame. Lapis felt the geysers more than he heard them, they rumbled in his gut with every wash of fire they expelled.
Unfortunately, neither the fires nor the magma was Lapis’ primary concern. No, he was looking around the cave for minerals, and simultaneously, he was looking for the faintest glimpse of any kind of indigo smoke. The last time he’d had a dream about the caves, Princess Luna had made an appearance - and, Lapis suspected, she might mean to do so again. Lapis had a plan - or, well, an idea - to use in case Luna showed up, but he was hoping for at least a few seconds’ warning.
Why do all my weirder dreams involve this game, anyway? Lapis wondered, as he grappled over to a vein of blue-green crystal and began to swing his pick. Why do they happen in a game at all? Why don’t I dream about… I don’t know, situations from my real life?
Even here, he was a pony. Lapis tried not to think about it too hard, for fear that thinking about his form would somehow change it, but the sound of his hooves on the stone was just barely too unfamiliar to ignore completely. Was he just getting comfortable enough here, or was he getting too comfortable entirely-
He saw the first glimmer of indigo smoke out of the corner of his eye. Lapis blinked, then snapped his attention onto the vein of blue-green crystal in front of himself, continuing to mine it even as he felt his heart begin to thunder in his chest.
Then, continuing to swing his pick, Lapis shut his eyes and focused on what his face was feeling - and instead of the oppressive heat that should’ve been filling the shimmering air of the half-molten cavern, he found a faint, cool breeze washing across his face. Lapis focused on that breeze, and at once it became harder to swing the pick he held in the crook of his hoof, like he was trying to move his limbs through molasses. Lapis kept trying to swing the pick anyway, counting to ten as the hoofsteps approaching him from behind grew fainter…
…And as he reached zero, Lapis opened his eyes to find himself lying on his back with his bedsheets tangled around his hoof. Lapis blinked the last haze of sleep from his eyes, looking at the window, and grinned as he watched the curtains swaying in the cold breeze of the early-autumn night.
Step one, Lapis thought, throwing his blankets off himself and walking over to the open window, suppressing a shiver as the chill night air washed over his fur. Spot Luna when she’s trying to enter my dreams.
Step two. Let her do whatever, but act like I don’t know she’s there. Instead, keep acting casual… but at the same time, wake myself up, by finding and using a source of grounding stimulation in the waking world.
Step three… Lapis looked to the side, then levitated a glass of water off his nightstand to his side, taking a slow, careful drink. Stay awake for a little bit. Not for long, just for longer than it would take to get back to sleep normally.
Lapis took another drink of water, staring out the window at the night sky, watching the stars twinkle around the pale, gleaming moon. Step four. Go back to sleep, stay ready to wake up, repeat steps one through three until Luna goes back to doing her job, and hope that I get enough REM sleep to not go insane before then.
Lapis yawned, then set the glass of water back on his nightstand and went to bed, pulling the blankets back up to his shoulders. Yeah, this is gonna suck. But, unlike Twilight or her friends, I don’t think I’ve seriously gotten Luna’s attention yet. Her curiosity, maybe, but not her attention. Ergo, for the sake of not somehow fucking up the timeline, I need to keep interaction to a bare minimum.
Slowly, Lapis’ eyelids drifted closed. The ideal would be to look like just one more pony with nightmares, let Luna… do whatever she does about nightmares, and then let that be that. I just… don’t know whether Luna can tell the difference between fake issues and real ones, and if she can, then faking would instantly provoke her. So, I just need to steer completely clear of her, in ways that could be coincidence, until I get back home.
Just… another deadline…
A few days later, Lapis opened the saddlebags on the workbench before him and rummaged through their contents one more time. Final check. Is everything here?
“Map and compass: check,” he muttered aloud. “Notepad and pencil: check. Grappling gauntlet, bandages, splints, and ointment, check. Snacks, rope, and bear bell… all check.”
Lapis fished the bear bell out from the pack and tied it onto the side of the saddlebags, where it jingled almost cheerfully as he slung the saddlebags onto his back. “There we go. Alright, Nikki, I’m headed out. Are you absolutely sure you’re coming with?”
Nikki, who was perched at the corner of the workbench, firmly nodded, then perched atop Lapis’ head before he got the chance to argue with her. Lapis still tried, as he ascended the stairs out of the basement. “It’s a long way to the Castle of the Two Sisters, you know. Through the Everfree. I don’t know for sure whether anything in there eats pigeons, but… well, do you really want to take the risk?”
Nikki cuffed Lapis’ ear with her wing, and he sighed as he pushed open the closet door and stepped into the shop proper. “Look, I’m not saying you can’t handle it. I’d just feel terrible if you got hurt, that’s all.”
Lapis pushed open his shop door and stepped into the streets of Ponyville, pausing only briefly to glance at his request board. He still wasn’t done cleaning up after the mana-compressor fiasco, but most of the damage that his Mend-All spells could fix was taken care of. He scribbled an out-for-the-day notice, tacked it to the board, then started for the edge of town.
Somehow, Lapis didn’t have a moment of hesitation until he reached the boundary of the Everfree Forest.
This made sense, when he thought about it. It was early enough in the morning that the streets of Ponyville were mostly empty, and though a few passersby had smiled and waved, nopony had stopped to ask Lapis what he was doing, so he hadn’t really had reason to think about his journey.
Now, though, Lapis had reason to pause. He traced the path into the Everfree with his gaze, standing just a few feet before the place where the dark, dense-packed canopy of the forest cast its shadow upon the dirt road. Somehow, the edge of darkness at Lapis’ feet felt like a threshold, and though Lapis knew he would need to cross it, that knowledge seemed to be preventing him from doing so.
The more that Lapis gazed into the misty shadows beneath the deep-green canopy, the more he began to notice a distinct… strangeness to the Everfree. He could hear birdsong drifting from the trees, and the faint scuffling of animals in the undergrowth, but both seemed off, somehow. The birds’ choruses were unfamiliar, and the rustling didn’t seem to match the patterns of any animals he was familiar with - not the hurried, halting rummage of squirrels searching for acorns, or the slow, persistent scuffle of a badger or skunk trundling along a game trail between foraging sites. And the more obvious noises, like the quiet howling and occasional shrieks far in the distance, certainly did nothing to settle Lapis’ nerves.
Nature, Lapis realized, had a song - and the Everfree Forest was either off-beat and out of key, or it wasn’t singing to the same tune at all.
A warm chuckle came from behind Lapis, and he almost jumped out of his skin. “I see that the Forest has made you quite meek. Is there anything that I may help you to seek?”
“Jeez, Zecora!” Lapis said, holding a hoof to his chest. “You scared the sh- …Yeah, hi. I was actually about to go looking for the Castle of the Two Sisters. You wouldn’t be willing to draw me a path, would you?”
Zecora shook her head, the golden bands on her hoof and neck jingling slightly as she stepped forward to stand next to Lapis, a slightly larger pair of saddlebags slung across her own cloaked back. “Within these trees’ reach, no maps’ lines can guide. It is best if you just go along for the ride.”
“Oh, great,” Lapis muttered, shoving the rolled-up map back into his saddlebag. “Well, do you have any tips for getting to the Castle, or do I just… wander the path until I get there?”
Zecora considered for a moment. “For saying this much, you may think me obtuse, but there is one thing I know that may be of use. Please, do not think I’ve not noticed your bird-”
Nikki cocked an eyebrow atop Lapis’ head, but made no comment.
“But there is safety in numbers,” Zecora finished, “or so I have heard.”
Lapis breathed a sigh of relief. “Honestly, I’d love some help, if you’re not too busy just now.”
Zecora smiled. “You forget, I seek answers within those walls too. Let us stop at my hut, so I may finish my brew. Then to the Castle, we will proceed, assuming we both have all that we need.”
Zecora stepped past Lapis and into the Everfree, and after a moment’s hesitation, Lapis followed her over the threshold.
Stopping by Zecora’s hut took a surprisingly short amount of time. Zecora seemed to have had her “brew” simmering in a cooking pot for the entire time she’d been out, and all she did was remove a few sprigs of mint from her saddlebags, crush them in a mortar and pestle, then sprinkle them into the cauldron. Then, after Zecora had ladled the contents into some flasks, they were on their way.
About half an hour later, Lapis and Zecora came to a place where the path grew slightly wider, and a few rays of sunshine poked through the canopy. Lapis looked up at the gap in the trees, tracing the ray of sunlight to the center of the path, and stopped in place.
Zecora paused, glancing back. “Hm. Your face has grown long. If I may ask ask, is there something wrong?”
Lapis blinked, then snorted. “Nope. Sorry, you didn’t say anything wrong, your word choice was just… It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”
He started forward again, and after a moment’s hesitation, Zecora followed.
“So, um, just to make sure,” Fluttershy said. “You understand that this isn’t going to be anything fancy, right?”
“Yep!” Pinkie chirped, bouncing back across the floor of the Apple family’s spare barn. The room was dark and a little dusty, but jam-packed full of crates, which were in turn overflowing with a variety of brightly-colored decorations.
“And, um, that we’re just going to sit down, talk, and eat our meals, right?”
“Mm-hm!” Pinkie said, picking up a large metal tank.
“And that nothing too exciting, or extravagant, or big and spectacular is part of the deal?”
“Just a casual brunch,” Pinkie confirmed, carrying the metal tank back across the room and setting it gently inside a wagon filled with creamy-white cloth.
“Okay, good,” Fluttershy said. “So, um, if you don’t mind, what are you doing with all the stuff in that wagon?”
Pinkie grinned, shaking her head. “Oh, Fluttershy, dont’cha see? It’s a hot air balloon!” She paused, cocking her head and tapping her hoof with her chin. “Or it will be, anyway, once it’s all filled up with hot air, but that won’t be happening until later this week.”
“Okay,” Fluttershy said again. “And… well, if it’s not too much trouble, why are you piloting a hot air balloon later this week?”
“Uh, duh!” Pinkie said. “We’re only going to be hosting the best, partiest Welcome-To-Ponyville Make-Up-Casual-Brunch that Equestria’s ever seen! Of course there’s got to be a hot air balloon!”
“…Well, if you think so,” Fluttershy said, looking to the side and scuffing the ground with her hoof. “I’m just not so sure, Pinkie Pie. Aren’t you worried it might be a little much?”
“Are you kidding? If anything, I’m worried it won’t be enough!” Pinkie paused, staring at the wagon, then her eyes widened in horror. “…Oh no. I’m right! There’s no way it’ll be enough!” She zipped away for a second, Fluttershy’s mane ruffling in her wake, then appeared with a stack of several multicolored sheets of construction paper. “We’re going to need way more confetti - quick, start shredding this!”
“Oh,” Fluttershy said, as Pinkie set the stack of construction paper on the floor and zipped away again. “…Um, do I need to use scissors? If I shred this by hoof, it might just look messy-”
Pinkie didn’t reply verbally. Instead, she zipped back over with a bag slung across her back, then descended upon the paper with her hooves. There was a sound like a chainsaw as the construction paper disintegrated, Pinkie shoveling hoof-fuls of perfectly-uniform confetti over her shoulder and into the bag with enough speed that none of it had the time to scatter anywhere else.
“Oh,” Fluttershy said again, as Pinkie Pie pulled a rope tight around the opening of the bag, then zipped away. “Pinkie Pie, I’m really not sure how to say this, but I really do think you’re going just a little bit overboard.”
Pinkie pulled her head out from the inside of a large crate, the completely serious look on her face jarringly offset by the clown wig’s worth of streamers draped over her head. “Fluttershy. Your advice is super-duper great, and I’m really, really happy you’re helping me out, but I think there’s a couple little words you’re forgetting: Two. Months.”
Pinkie continued speaking as she jammed her head back into the crate, which seemed to be using various flavors of streamers and banners as a substitute for packing peanuts. “I’ve never, ever, never-never-ever missed somepony’s Welcome-to-Ponyville party for two whole months before. There’s no way I can throw just any casual welcome brunch after that!” She pulled her head out of the crate and bounced back over to the wagon, carrying a massive curved strip of blue fabric in her mouth and spitting it out onto the top of the wagon. “So, I’m not going to!”
“You’re… not?” Fluttershy asked.
Pinkie shook her head, smiling back at her. “Nope! I’m going to throw the best, partiest welcome brunch that Equestria’s ever seen! So yes, we need confetti, streamers, banners, at least forty invitees, two tables of cupcakes, and a hot air balloon for wide-area outdoor confetti dispersal!”
“…Oh,” Fluttershy said, her ears flopping back atop her head as she looked back at the wagon with the hot air balloon. “Oh my goodness.”
“I know, right?!” Pinkie said, her ears flopping back. “I mean, I’d thought that just the regular party cannon would work, but it turns out regular balloons aren’t enough to lift it!”
“Well, um, that is surprising,” Fluttershy said, nodding, then pausing as an idea occurred to her. “…But, well, if you’re going to throw confetti over that big of an area, don’t you think that maybe it’s a good idea to ask Mayor Mare if it’s okay?”
Pinkie Pie gasped, stopping in her tracks. “Oh my gosh! Fluttershy, you’re right!”
Fluttershy stopped, her eyes widening in surprise. “I am?”
Pinkie nodded, tapping her hoof against her chin as she sunk into deep thought. “I’ve got a confetti permit for this kinda thing, but it only covers areas of about six hundred square hooves. If I get the balloon up too high, this is gonna be…” Pinkie paused, then darted over to a nearby chalkboard, where she started drawing circles and squares at high speed.
“Well,” Fluttershy said, gingerly approaching Pinkie from behind, “if it really is going to be big, then we’d definitely better ask Mayor Mare first.”
“Oh, it’s going to be big, alright,” Pinkie said, setting the chalk down at the base of the board and plopping to a seat to survey her work. “We’re looking at an area of at least two thousand eight hundred square hooves, and that’s only if it’s not windy. And even that’s only if the balloon can get off the ground in the first place!”
Fluttershy glanced at the chalkboard, and her eyes widened as she realized that there was only a single number on the board - instead, the rest of the surface was taken up by a large, ornate picture of a pie composed of numerous smaller, overlapping shapes and dotted lines, underneath all of which the number 2,872.75… was scrawled in large, loopy digits. “…Um, are you sure about that, Pinkie?”
“Mm-hm!” Pinkie said, nodding with a grin and waving her hoof at the board. “It’s a circle, silly! Circles are all about pie!”
Fluttershy briefly glanced to the side. “…Maybe we should ask Twilight to check your math.”
The appearance of the Castle of the Two Sisters wasn’t encouraging.
What caught Lapis’ eye first, as he stared across the ragged, rope-bound wooden bridge toward the castle, were the towers at either end of the structure. They were tall, and the cones of their rooftops narrowed to needle-sharp points. One seemed to be made of darker stone than the other - though that could have been a trick of the light. Between them, the rest of the castle’s wreckage seemed almost to drape like a hammock, a cradle of jagged wood and shattered stone.
It rested in the center of a rough peninsula, a triangular spit of land with gorges on both the near sides, stretching out of sight to either side of the castle. The rope bridge across the chasm swayed as Lapis and Zecora crossed it, one at a time. As they crossed, Nikki stayed perched atop one of the posts on the castle’s side of the bridge, staring intently down at the knots of fraying rope that held the bridge together.
Lapis didn’t cross until after Zecora did, and he stopped in place with every creak and groan of the bridge’s worn, damp planks. He wasn’t sure exactly when they’d first fallen silent, but now that they had, he was finding it difficult to break the silence. Even after Nikki touched back down atop his head, all that Lapis could hear as they advanced toward the front gate of the castle were his and Zecora’s hoofsteps, and the wind whispering in the distant trees.
The door was intact, as was the doorframe. The stone wall around that doorframe, however, was toast. Lapis half-expected Zecora to simply jump through some hole in the wall, but instead she pulled open the door and stepped through.
Lapis and Nikki followed her into what seemed like a gatehouse, though as Lapis looked around he saw no remnants of the medieval defensive features he might’ve expected - no arrow slits, no grates for buckets of boiling oil, nothing. Instead, the room appeared to be little more than a hallway, with a series of spade-shaped doors on the walls to either side, connected by smooth stone walkways through a possibly-intentional indoor meadow. At the very end of the gatehouse was the entryway to a pair of staircases, above which hung two pennants - the one on the right was yellow-orange, emblazoned with a white alicorn standing before a sunny sky, while the one to the left was indigo, depicting a blue-gray alicorn standing before a starry night with a crescent moon.
Lapis was briefly tempted to search through all the side rooms before going anywhere near the two staircases, but as Zecora started down the hall, he shook off the impulse and hurried after her. This is a castle, not a dungeon. It was designed to be lived and worked in, not to be fought through.
…Even if this hallway looks like it heads toward a boss room.
Lapis headed up the staircase to the left, beneath the banner of the blue-gray alicorn, and started looking around. To either side, hallway lined with suits of armor, stone busts and stained-glass windows extended out and forward, curving out of sight.
“Huh,” Lapis muttered, approaching the nearest suit of dark iron armor, Nikki touching down on the edge of the pedestal where the armor sat. As far as Lapis knew, the suit of armor was entirely decorative - and indeed, between the multitude of spikes and the section of plating designed to encase the wearer’s tail, he didn’t have high hopes for its actual practicality. Still, it was definitely armor, and - if it was meant to be worn - then that meant it was worth checking over for any interesting sections of artifice.
Carefully, Lapis pulled off the helmet, looked it over - and stopped, as something about the armor’s dull sheen caught his eye. “Well, what do we have here?” he muttered.
“That was quite quick,” Zecora noted, trotting up behind him. “Have you already caught some trick?”
“Not exactly,” Lapis said, showing her the helmet. “Look at the metal this helmet’s made of. I thought it was iron at first, but the sheen of the stuff just isn’t right for that. Between that and the color… well, this is a big leap to make without a chemistry kit, but I’m pretty sure this armor’s made of steel.”
Zecora cocked her head, examining the armor. “An unfamiliar metal, to be sure. But is it not merely iron, impure?”
“Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon,” Lapis said, beginning to dismantle the rest of the suit of armor, looking over each piece for any hint of gems or runes as he went and sketching out each plate. “It’s a lot stronger than regular old iron, and it’s not terrible to get - honestly, you can make it from pig iron alone, as long as you’ve got a big enough heat-proof vat and the means to bubble oxygen through it. Problem is, you need to get that pig iron hot enough to liquefy, and then some, to the tune of two thousand seven hundred degrees Fahrenheit. I don’t think I’ve seen any steel since I wo- uh, since I arrived in Ponyville, so I assumed we didn’t know how to make it.”
Zecora passed the helmet back to Lapis, looking over his shoulder as he sketched. “An ancient metal, demanding heat’s worst ire… I wonder, was this armor forged in dragonfire?”
Lapis frowned, then erased and re-sketched the curve of a shoulder plate. “It might help, but it wouldn’t be required, either. You can make it with the right kind of kiln and regular fuel for a fire, it just takes all day to make even a little bit.” Lapis checked the last few pieces over, finding to his disappointment that they were entirely free of artifice, and sighed as he began to reassemble the armor on its stand. “Still, it’s definitely interesting. Once upon a time, steel was common enough that the Princesses could use it to decorate their halls… but today, it’s nowhere. What happened?”
Zecora stared down the length of the hall. “Perhaps Discord, or Nightmare Moon. To say, it may still be too soon. If we are to glean the truths we need, we had best seek a place to read.”
“Yeah, this castle’s got to have a library somewhere,” Lapis agreed, sliding his notepad back into his saddlebag. “Let’s keep looking.”
He and Zecora stood up, and as they walked away, Lapis thought he heard an extra set of hoofsteps following them, halfway blotted out by the sound of Nikki’s wingbeats. Lapis stopped and glanced back.
The hallway was empty, with nothing but stained glass and shadowed armor breaking up the monotonous stone for as far as Lapis could see. Probably just getting a little nervous, Lapis thought, turning back toward Zecora. It’s a deserted castle, of course it’s going to be a little spooky.
That didn’t stop Lapis from being relieved when, as he went after Zecora, the only thing that followed him was an echo of his own hoofsteps.
“Oh, hello, Fluttershy,” Twilight said, as Fluttershy walked into the library. “I was actually just about to go looking for you! I found this great compendium of mustelids, and I wanted to know whether you’d already read it.”
“What? Oh, thank you,” Fluttershy said, as a book with a weasel on the cover floated over to her side, encased in Twilight’s magic. “Um, Twilight. Could I ask you to help me with something?”
Twilight glanced over toward Fluttershy, and a half-dozen books floated back into their places on the shelves. “What’s the matter?”
Fluttershy scuffed her hoof against the floor. “Well, I’m not so sure how to say this, but it’s about Pinkie Pie. I’ve been helping her plan that brunch we mentioned. She should be here soon, and I’ve been trying to tell her something, but she just won’t listen to me. Do you think you could help me-”
Twilight smiled, walking over to Fluttershy’s side. “Say no more, Fluttershy. I understand completely.”
“You do?” Fluttershy asked, perking up.
Twilight nodded, stepping back behind the counter. “Oh, I do. Honestly, I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had to ask Spike to say something for me.” Twilight paused, cocking her head as a series of index cards began to float in an arc behind her. “Well, actually I can count them, but that doesn’t really matter. The point is… oh, hello, Pinkie Pie!”
“Hey, Twilight!” Pinkie said, straining as she pushed the chalkboard into the library. “Sorry to bother you, but I could use a really little teensy-weensy bit of math help.”
“Math help?” Twilight asked, cocking her head. “What for?”
“Well, I’ve never fired a confetti cannon from up in my balloon before,” Pinkie said, “and my confetti permit only covers areas of about six hundred square hooves. If I want to go any bigger, I need to go get super-duper special permission from the Mayor!”
“Okay,” Twilight said, a frown creasing her brow.
“Bu-ut,” Pinkie continued, “I wanna be absolutely, positively, one hundred percent sure about how big of an area I’m going to cover, before I go ask the Mayor.”
“Oh,” Twilight said, a faint look of concern beginning to grow on her face. “Uh, that’s a lot of math, Pinkie Pie. …Why would you even need to-”
“Oh, no, don’t worry about doing all the math,” Pinkie said, waving her hooves. “I already did it!”
Twilight’s eyes went wide. “Wait, you did?”
“Mm-hm!” Pinkie Pie nodded. “It turns out, if you fire a rotating confetti cannon over and over again, from exactly twenty hooves off the ground, you wind up covering a circular area of about two thousand eight hundred square hooves. But anyway, Fluttershy was suggesting before I came in here that I should have you look over the math, and so I was wondering if maybe you could?”
“Okay, well, if all you’re calculating is the area of a circle,” Twilight said, stepping out from behind the counter and approaching the chalkboard, “and since you’ve already brought everything, I guess it’d be no trouble. …Although, I’m a little curious how you figured out the distance that the party cannon fires-”
“Great!” Pinkie chirped. Then, she spun the chalkboard around. “Okay, so does it look right?”
For a second or two, Twilight didn’t say anything. Instead, she stared at the chalkboard, her ears slowly folding back atop her head as her expression went perfectly flat.
“Pinkie,” Twilight eventually said. “Please, don’t tell me that’s a pie.”
“Okey-dokey-lokey!” Pinkie said.
There followed a few seconds of silence. Twilight glared at the chalkboard, Fluttershy anxiously watched Twilight, and Pinkie stared out the window at a passing butterfly.
“It’s a pie, isn’t it?” Twilight eventually asked.
Pinkie looked back over, then shook her head firmly. “Nuh-uh-uh! You told me not to tell you, and I’m not going to tell you, because I’m telling you, you told me not to tell you!”
“…What?” Twilight asked.
Pinkie sighed. “I saaaaid,-”
“No!” Twilight snapped. “No, no, no, no. That is not math. That doesn’t make any sense. That doesn’t even pretend it makes sense!”
“Oh dear,” Fluttershy said. “Um, Twilight-”
Twilight held up a hoof. “It’s alright, Fluttershy. Honestly, I’m glad you asked.” Twilight took a deep breath, then narrowed her eyes in determination. “Pinkie, could I ask you to bring your party cannon here, along with nine blasts’ worth of confetti?”
“Done!” Pinkie said, wheeling the party cannon out from behind the chalkboard.
Twilight’s eyelid twitched, but she maintained her look of determination. “Great. We’re going to do this math, we’re going to do it right, and that means we’re going to do it from scratch. Fluttershy, take this, and mark the floor by the confetti cannon’s barrel.”
“Oh,” Fluttershy said, as a pencil levitated over to her. “Um, Twilight, this isn’t what I - mmf!”
“Once the confetti cannon goes off,” Twilight continued, removing her magical grip from the pencil now stuffed into Fluttershy’s mouth, “find the farthest piece of confetti from the cannon, and mark the floor next to it. We’ll need to do that nine times total; three times from zero, ten, and twenty hooves off the ground. Once that’s done, we’ll combine each measurement into an average distance for each height, and then we’re going to graph them. And after that…”
Twilight grinned. “Well, that’s where the fun begins.”
“Fun!” Pinkie chirped from behind the confetti cannon. Then, with a boom that rattled the windows, the cannon went off, and a thousand pieces of colorful paper spun through the air to settle on the ground. Some of it landed on Fluttershy, settling atop her ears and mane, and the pencil in her mouth drooped along with her ears as she sighed.
Lapis rounded a corner, peered through a doorway, and stopped in his tracks. “Bingo,” he muttered.
There it was: the castle library, in about half its glory. Dozens of tall rows of shelves stretched toward the ceiling, the halls between them interrupted by long tables with reading chairs, or else by massive, strangely realistic stone busts of equines. The ceiling of the library was mostly missing, and the swirling dust and cracked stone floors almost glowed in the bright sunlight - thankfully, none of the books seemed to be damaged.
And oh, were there books. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, all the way to the far wall of the library, their metal-edged canvas covers dyed every color of the rainbow and then some. Unfortunately, none of them appeared to have any kind of classification system or labels. “…You see any indexes anywhere?” Lapis asked.
“No, I’m afraid, not immediately. Perhaps in drawers is where they’ll be,” Zecora replied. “I believe we seek a history?”
Lapis nodded, and Zecora smiled as she replied. “Then, I will call you, once one I see.”
“Got it,” Lapis said, as Zecora turned and started toward the outskirts of the library. “I’ll just poke around for a bit. If I start yelling, or Nikki comes to get you, that means I’m in trouble.”
“And if you hear something screaming, then please have no fear,” Zecora called over her shoulder. “Its only meaning is that that something drew too near.”
Lapis paused to think though that statement as Zecora rounded a corner and vanished from sight. …So, does that mean that she’ll be screaming because something got too close to her, or that whatever gets too close to her will end up screaming?
Guess I’ll figure that out when I need to. Lapis shrugged, then started down the aisle of the library, scanning titles as he went. Policy, policy, policy, policy… wow, that’s a lot of paperwork. There’s no way this is just a legal library, right?
Lapis crossed to the next row of aisles, glanced down it, and looked over the first book that caught his eye. ‘Uphill Battles: The Complete Guide to Boulder Iconography in 8th-Century Griffonic Stonecarving, by Lord Sissy Hooves.’ Nope, definitely not a legal library. Social sciences, maybe… assuming the distinction between social sciences and normal sciences had even been invented when this library was built. I wonder how magic would fall in?
“You mind helping me look, too?” Lapis asked, glancing up at Nikki. “Anything to do with history, artifice, or magic. Is that enough to work with?”
Nikki nodded, then took off, heading toward the upper shelves and looking over each at random. Lapis watched her for a second or two, then headed to a different aisle and started checking titles again. How would magic classify? Artifice is definitely a science, it reminds me of programming, but regular magic would almost have to be its own special chunk. Like theoretical physics, or something.
Lapis paused as he saw an interesting title, then rolled his eyes as he realized it was only about techniques for painting. He switched aisles again, but stopped to stare as something shone, just for a moment, far down the shelves.
There weren’t many solid patches of roof left, but most of those that remained were at the edges of the building, forming jagged patches of shadow at the edges of the room. One such patch sat far down the aisle from Lapis, casting the space behind a stone bust into darkness - and in that darkness, Lapis thought he’d seen something twinkling, just for a moment or two.
Lapis glanced toward the bookshelves, then grabbed an especially thick, heavy-looking volume off the shelf and began to advance down the aisle, toward the odd patch of darkness. It’s probably nothing, he thought, but just in case…
He raised the book high and rounded the bust, and in that space he found… a scrap of tarnished silver, probably from the corner of a book’s cover, sitting atop the shoulder of the bust. Over Lapis’ head, Nikki called out, and he looked up to see her peering down from what looked like the remains of a balcony.
“Something up there?” Lapis asked. Nikki nodded, then withdrew her head. Lapis looked around for any signs of a staircase, but found none forthcoming - so, grimacing, he reached into his pack and went back down the aisle the way he’d come, turning his back on the piece of silver just too early to see it fading out of existence.
Once Lapis had gotten a good viewing angle, he reached into his pack and pulled out the grappling bracelet he’d made earlier. He slid it onto his right hoof - then, trying to keep his eyes firmly on the wall directly above the balcony, Lapis wrapped his telekinesis around the bracelet’s nub of iron.
The pull-and-weight of the spell slammed into Lapis at once, and he fought to keep his knees steady as a wave of weakness washed across his body, starting from his horn and working its way down to his hooves. Lapis felt his own magic wrapping around his body again, the unfamiliar sensation of being engulfed in warm, flowing liquid catching him off-guard almost as much as rising the first few inches off the ground did.
Then, the spell really kicked in, and Lapis rose toward the balcony at an angle, almost as if he was going up an escalator. Lapis looked down, and regretted it at once - he was ten feet off the ground after only a few seconds, and still rising, with nothing but his own magic to keep him from falling. Whoa… okay, calm down. I did the math, there’s nothing to worry about here. This bracelet’s got enough juice in it to take me fifty feet off the ground, straight up. There’s no way it’ll run out.
…Probably.
Lapis swallowed, and he felt his ears flop back atop his head as he rose above the tops of the shelves. Three long, uncomfortable seconds later, he slid into the air just above the balcony, his hooves knocking against the railing - and then, he continued onward, until he was just a few inches away from the wall he’d been looking at when he cast the spell.
Then, finally, the bracelet’s effect ended, and Lapis dropped to the ground, his knees buckling slightly with the impact. He took a deep breath, and carefully stood all the way up, sliding the bracelet off his hoof just in case as he took a closer look at the spot where he now stood.
The balcony was a semicircle, about ten feet across where it was closest to the wall, fenced off by a simple, crumbling stone railing. The floor was wooden, and mostly covered by a crusty, sun-bleached rug that might once have been red. Near one side of the balcony was a large, squashy armchair with moth-eaten cushions, beside which sat a coffee table that held a pair of books. There wasn’t any doorway leading onto or off of the balcony, which confused Lapis for a few seconds - oh, wait. A third of the population here has wings. Right.
Speaking of winged creatures, Nikki was perched on the railing nearby, a thoroughly unimpressed look on her face. She pointed toward the coffee table with her wing, and Lapis walked over to take a closer look at the literature.
The first of the two books was a slim volume bound in cloudy-white canvas, the image of a single spread wing emblazoned across the front cover in silver leaf. Opening the book revealed several short paragraphs of large, friendly hoofwriting, occasionally broken up by diagrams of pegasi in flight. The positions of their wings were picked out in painstaking detail, and bands of the feathers across the wings were color-coded into sections and labeled. Lapis caught sight of the label ‘banking turn’ scrawled above one of the diagrams, multiple curving lines traced across the wings from front to back, and realized what kind of book he was holding - an introduction to the aerodynamics of pegasus flight. …So, why was it up here? I mean, if someone had gotten up here, then you’d think they already knew how to fly.
Book number two was much thicker, much heavier, and bound in thick, dark brown canvas. On its spine, it bore a small, yellowed label, which read: Imports, MDCXIX, Vol. III. Lapis cracked it open and immediately started coughing as a cloud of dust rose from the tome, his eyes watering as he scanned the page:
Cargo delivered to the R.P.S. Castle, received from HMS Persistence, 1619 autumn visit
- 12 crates woven rope, good condition
- 30 crates mountain berry preserves, damaged
- 256 steel ingots, excellent condition (Pinion forged)
- 2 items griffon stonecarving, perfect condition
- Message for Gara Pinion (delivered directly)
“Griffon stonecarving, mountain berries, and steel ingots, all coming in on the same boat…” Lapis said, looking over to Nikki. “How much you want to bet that boat came in from Griffonstone?” And if it did… honestly, first aluminum and now steel. How come the griffons know all the good metalworking techniques? Is it just because they don’t get the chance to focus on magic, or something?
Lapis considered, then slid the book on pegasus aerodynamics into his saddlebags, keeping the shipping records by his side for the moment. “Good find, Nikki. Zecora’ll be interested to see this.” And the whole question of how pegasi fly has been confusing me, anyway - there’s no way they can flap their wings that slowly and still stay flying, unless either aerodynamics have different laws here or magic is involved. Hopefully it’s just magic, or else future projects are going to be a lot more difficult.
Lapis took a few steps toward the stone railing and looked out across the top of the library shelves, Nikki perching atop his head. He looked back at the book of shipping records, then turned the page - only to find that the rest of the book was blank. Wait. So either that batch of imports from Griffonstone was the last shipment of the quarter… or, if this is the latest book of imports to the castle, then these were the last goods ever delivered here. Which… it probably isn’t, but still.
Lapis looked back up, taking in the tops of the library shelves, the remnants of the stone walls and stained-glass windows and clay shingles, and suddenly, he wondered what the castle might’ve looked like when ponies had lived here. Did it get dark in the library, when there was no sun to shine through those windows? Was there some magical solution, or did ponies have to navigate by lantern-light? Was this place reserved for nobility, or were there students here, too?
He could almost hear them - the hushed hubbub of a hundred voices murmuring all at once, putting their heads together at a library table to crack obscure mysteries, complete assigned research, prepare for some coming test. He remembered disappearing into the stacks, finding a staircase and ascending to a quieter floor, how much relief he’d felt at getting away from all that noise - and now, Lapis wasn’t sure how much he wouldn’t give to hear it all again.
Lapis winced as he felt his heart wrench, and he shook his head clear of those thoughts. Focus. For now, I need to get… down…
Had that third book always been on the table? It was a tall, narrow volume with a blank deep indigo cover, made from a substance too smooth to be canvas and too matte to be leather. The edges of the parchment pages appeared to have been dusted with silver, and the metal’s dull gleam seemed just a touch brighter than it ought to be. Lapis levitated the tome over toward his side, and found it to be surprisingly heavy in his grip.
“…Cursed?” Lapis asked, looking up.
From her perch atop Lapis’ head, Nikki cocked an eyebrow, then shrugged.
Lapis hesitated for a moment, then set the book on the floor at the opposite end of the balcony from himself. Then, after hunkering down behind the chair and pointing the book at the vast gap in the rooftop, Lapis opened the book.
When no sinister charge of magic erupted from the newly-bared pages, Lapis peeked around the chair, taking a closer look at the crisp, pale parchment - and found that the book was blank. He hesitated, then pulled the book over and started flicking through the pages, checking for any sign of actual information, but came up blank - right up until the very last page, where a trio of sentences written in narrow, flowing cursive glimmered with midnight-blue ink.
“Imagine thou art enclosed within a cell of stone,” Lapis read aloud. “Imagine thy magic sealed away, and any doors, windows, drains, and furniture are absent all. How dost thou escape?” He glanced up at Nikki again. “Yeah, this book’s totally cursed. You think I should just leave it here, or…?”
Nikki shrugged, then jerked her head back toward where Zecora had originally gone. Lapis thought about it, then nodded. “Definitely. Zecora should have a better idea than me of what to do with a cursed book.”
Lapis tucked the probably-cursed book into his saddlebags, climbed up onto the edge of the balcony, and was just about to climb down when something else glimmered at the corner of his eye. He turned, looking up and to the right, and saw another ledge mounted to a higher portion of the library wall - this one, however, was wooden instead of stone, and it appeared to have an entire bookshelf to itself, set inside the stone of the wall. Lapis hesitated, glancing between the floor and the second ledge, then made his decision.
Once again sliding the grappling gauntlet onto his hoof, Lapis turned to face the far nook, then engaged the gauntlet. Again, he felt a draining sensation as his magic took hold, and heard the wooden base of the higher reading nook creak as his weight was magically put there, instead.
Lapis rose a few inches off the balcony - and the wooden floor of the reading nook broke off the wall with a harsh, crackling crunch.
Oh, shit-
Instantly, Lapis dropped back onto the balcony, scrambling away from the wall and wrapping his hooves around the far guardrails just as the next portion of the gauntlet’s spell kicked in. At once, Lapis felt the liquid warmth of his own magic wrapping around his body, the tugging current trying to drag him upward - toward the empty air where the wooden floor of the reading nook had been. Nikki cried out in alarm, and Lapis shut his eyes as he felt his grip begin to loosen, proving no match for the relentless pull of the gauntlet’s spell. I’ve got to start putting more safeguards on these things- oh, fuckfuckfuck-!
The stone support that Lapis was holding cracked, and he was pulled backward into the air. The layer of magic enveloping his body vanished as soon as he was over the edge of the balcony, and the wind rushed past his face as he fell toward the stone floor-
And all at once, everything went blue, and Lapis yelped as a far, far stronger current than before roared to life around his body, pushing him upward with such force that he slowed almost to a stop-
He hit the ground just as Zecora came galloping around the corner, Nikki close behind. The back of his head smacked into the cold stone floor, and Lapis shut his eyes as his vision suddenly flashed white, a high whine that he’d previously assumed was unique to video-game flash-bangs filling his ears.
When the ringing in Lapis’ ears began to fade, he opened his eyes, and found Zecora looming over him, shouting a rapid sequence of words he couldn’t quite make out. Either she’s speaking another language, or I’m brain-damaged now.
“I’m good,” Lapis said, and though the words sounded muffled to his ears, they were still entirely comprehensible. Slowly, he rolled over and climbed to his hooves, swaying as his gut lurched. “A little dizzy, but I’m okay.”
“Thank goodness. You gave me a fright,” Zecora said, reaching into her saddlebags, and Lapis couldn’t help but heave a quick sigh of relief. Okay, no brain damage, that’s good. “Here. Drink this, and you’ll soon feel right.”
Lapis took the proffered clay flask and, after a moment’s hesitation, he began to drink from it. The taste was awful - somewhere between banana taffy and burning dust - but after a few mouthfuls, the world stopped spinning every time he blinked. “…Whoa. Much better. Thanks, Zecora.”
“If you wish to thank me, then don’t suffer another fall,” Zecora said, taking the flask back and returning it to her own saddlebags. “Now, tell me what you were doing, if you can recall.”
“Just a second,” Lapis said, sliding the grappling gauntlet off his hoof. For a second or two, he was tempted to throw it through one of the windows, but instead he carefully returned it to his saddlebags. “There were a couple of weird balconies up there. I was able to look over the first one, but getting to the second… didn’t work out.”
Zecora sighed. “I’m surprised that I must explain these things, but high places are best left to ponies with wings.”
“Well, there wasn’t a pegasus here,” Lapis said, frowning, “and I had a way to get up and down. It just…”
“Proved too dangerous. Lapis, you surely must see: the only way to explore here, is carefully,” Zecora said. “If - without gear - a path is unsafe, then you leave and return, no matter how it may chafe.”
“Right, yeah,” Lapis said, shaking the last of the confusion from his head, then pulling the book with the silvered pages from his saddlebag. “Listen, I found a few books up there, and… okay, I’m probably just being paranoid, but I think this one is giving off some major cursed-item vibes. Do you know how to check it over, or something?”
Zecora frowned down at the book, then reached into her own saddlebags. She withdrew a small, simple canvas bag, then carefully sprinkled a small amount of sparkling dust over top of the book. The dust fell toward the cover - then, to Lapis’ surprise, the dust glowed a deep, vivid indigo as it drew within a few inches of the book, floating out to the sides as if it were sliding off an invisible dome.
“No curses are laid upon this tome’s hide,” Zecora pronounced, returning the bag of dust to her saddlebags. “But, there are wards to protect what’s inside.”
“Oh,” Lapis said, frowning. “Thanks.” He stuffed the book back into his saddlebags, and produced the other two. “These were also up on that balcony, though I was only able to make anything of this big one. It’s a record of imports to this castle, from the year…”
“One thousand, six hundred and nineteen,” Zecora said, glancing at the spine of the record book. “A terrible year… And what did you glean?”
“Uh… well, the last shipment recorded in the book came off the HMS Persistence, probably from Griffonstone,” Lapis said. “A lot of steel came in from that boat, and the book mentions it was made with… a Pinion forging method, or something. The thing is, though, the book also mentions a message for some- well, I’m not sure whether they’re a pony or something else, but a message for Gara Pinion was also delivered off that boat. But, wait, what happened in the year 1619?”
“You do not know? It’s anniversary was not past soon,” Zecora said, looking surprised. “On that year fell the banishment of Nightmare Moon. Should the shipment you describe be the last recorded, I expect it was the last before this castle’s splendor ended. Gara Pinion… I fear I cannot say wherefore, but I feel certain I have read the name before.”
“Alright,” Lapis said, snapping the record book shut and turning to the last. “And the other book? It’s about pegasus flying techniques, as far as I can tell.”
Zecora shook her head. “Light reading perhaps, more I cannot tell. You seem unsettled, Lapis. Are you sure you are well?”
“Yeah, mostly,” Lapis said, tucking the books back into his saddlebag. “You find what you were looking for?”
“For one day’s trip, I have found quite enough. Let us be off, to look through all this stuff,” Zecora said, and she started for the castle exit.
Twilight was staring at Pinkie’s chalkboard with a visibly tormented expression. While her brow was furrowed, and her mouth was drawn to a thin, determined line, her unblinking eyes were so wide open that Fluttershy could watch them steadily growing more bloodshot with each passing second.
On one side of the chalkboard, the side that currently faced away from Twilight, was the unicorn’s own hoofwork: an arcane array of curved lines plotted onto graphs. This was accompanied by an imposing block of densely-packed simplification, such that over the course of a long and increasingly sloppy list, a jagged and sharply-outlined exponent, and an initially small add-on with a snaking decimal tail, the numbers plotted on the graph boiled down to a single equation. This final formula then terminated in the number 2872.7467.
And of course, on the side of the chalkboard that was turned to face Twilight, sat Pinkie’s impromptu sketch of a pie’s profile, under which sat the very same number - rounded up to two digits, but otherwise identical. Twilight regarded the number with a stare as cold as thin ice, as if expecting it to reveal some hidden error at any moment, to expose Pinkie’s chalk confection for the nonsense which, by all rights, it should have been.
Pinkie, for her part, was sitting atop Spike’s stool behind the library counter, spinning herself in circles atop the seat of the stool. With every rotation, one of the stool’s wooden legs creaked, and Twilight’s eyelid was twitching in time with the wood’s rhythmic protests.
Fluttershy knew she probably needed to say something. After all, Twilight didn’t seem likely to calm down by herself, and anything that Pinkie said would probably set Twilight off. Fluttershy just couldn’t think of anything to say.
Twilight’s face gave Fluttershy the impression that Twilight was simultaneously on the edges of righteous fury and mindless, shrieking panic. It was an expression that Fluttershy often saw on the faces of baby badgers emerging from their burrows for the first time, who - after spending the whole of their prior lives believing themselves the second-most powerful and dangerous creatures in all their small, dark, and comfortable world - were suddenly confronted with the offensively undeniable sight of an entire adult pegasus, several times bigger than even a very big baby badger.
On baby badgers, this expression would usually turn to a relaxed look of dawning wonder, once they realized that Fluttershy was a friend, and that even she took up only a fraction of the wide, bright world of Equestria. The problem was that Twilight wasn’t a badger. She was much more…
Fluttershy would’ve used the word “determined” if she’d had to explain the difference out loud. After all, saying that somepony was more stubborn than a badger made for very strong words, even if they might be true.
Behind Twilight’s desk, Spike’s stool swiveled as high as it would go. The seat stopped turning with a solid, reverberating thunk, and Pinkie spun off the side of the stool, landing on her hooves and stumbling out from around the corner of the desk with her eyes still spinning in her head. She tripped over her own hooves and careened into the side of the chalkboard, knocking it to the floor with a crash and a billowing cloud of chalk dust.
The cloud of dust set both Twilight and Fluttershy coughing for a few moments. When the dust settled, they both looked up to find Pinkie lying on her back atop the fallen chalkboard, sections of her mane dyed white by the chalk, her diagram almost entirely erased by the collision.
This, luckily, seemed to break whatever trance Twilight had fallen into, because after taking a quick breath, she wasted no time in helping Pinkie onto her hooves. “…I probably should’ve warned you about that stool.”
“Eh, no harm done. I’m just surprised I got as high up as I did,” Pinkie said. “I mean, I knew that stool was for Spike, so I figured it was probably going to get pretty high, but I mean, wow, it really went up there!”
“It came with the library,” Twilight said. “So, I suppose Ponyville must have a history with shorter library assistants. …Anyway, I think I’ve just about wrapped things up, and your mad-”
Twilight paused, her eyelid twitching again, then cleared her throat and took another deep breath. “Sorry. Dust. Your math, is just about perfect.”
“Yippee!” Pinkie said, springing up into the air. “Thanks a bunch, Twilight! I’ll be sure to send you the invitations to Lapis’ Welcome-to-Ponyville-Two-Months-Ago Brunch as soon as I get permission from the mayor!”
“Thanks, Pinkie. I always appreciate…” Twilight trailed off, a frown spreading across her face. “Wait. This is for Lapis’ brunch?”
“Yep, that’s the one!” Pinkie said. “I’ve just about got all the confetti shredded now, and a whole four tables of cupcakes should be ready to serve as soon as tomorrow! All I need is the go-ahead from the Mayor, and the whole show can start!”
Twilight’s eyes widened. She glanced at Fluttershy, who responded with only a small, exhausted nod.
“-Oh,” Twilight muttered, smiling awkwardly. “Um, Pinkie?”
“Uh-huh?” Pinkie asked, standing the chalkboard back up again.
“So, when you and Fluttershy came in here earlier this month, I thought you said you were having a small brunch,” Twilight said.
“Mm-hm!”
“Okay,” Twilight said. “Well, small brunches don’t usually involve covering a two-thousand-eight-hundred-square-hoof area with confetti.”
“Well, that’s because this one isn’t usual.” Pinkie said. “In fact, I’d say it’s downright non-usual!”
“…Right,” Twilight said, with visible effort. “But, Pinkie, we’re trying to show this pony that we’re just normal ponies, remember?”
“Yep!” Pinkie said, bouncing over to the confetti cannon and rolling it back toward the blackboard. “Ya see, nopony’s really normal anyway, because ‘normal’ is the combined average of every pony who’s ever ponied, ever. And nopony is every pony who’s ever ponied, because everypony is their own pony!”
Pinkie wheeled the party cannon behind the blackboard and out of sight, then stepped around it. “So-o, the only way that anypony could ever be a normal pony, would be for that anypony to always be their own pony, just like everypony else! And for me to show that I’m a normal pony, I have to be my own pony - me, Pinkie Pie! And Pinkie Pie would never-never-ever let a two-month-overdue welcome brunch be a regular old welcome brunch. No way!” She turned to face Twilight directly, a wide grin on her face. “You see? This one’s gotta be special! So, I’m gonna go see the Mayor, and then I’ll get you and Fluttershy and everypony else those invitations. Thanks again, Twilight!”
Pinkie stepped behind the blackboard - and then, in a black-and-pink blur, she and the blackboard were through the door and out of sight, Twilight and Fluttershy’s manes ruffling in the wind.
“…Oh my goodness,” Fluttershy eventually said.
“Uh-oh,” Twilight agreed.
“Do you think we can stop her?” Fluttershy asked.
Twilight hesitated, then looked at the space where the chalkboard had been. Twilight knew full well that the party cannon had only just been pushed out of sight behind the blackboard - and yet the fact remained that it was now gone, too, either pushed alongside the chalkboard by Pinkie or else simply vanishing the moment it was out of sight. Twilight remembered how many other times Pinkie had repeated such tricks, either with other objects or with herself; she remembered the existence of the Pinkie Sense, and Pinkie’s near-total lack of fear even inside the Everfree Forest.
“No,” Twilight eventually said. “No, I don’t think we can.”
Fluttershy glanced down at her own hooves, then looked back up at Twilight. "Well... I think that maybe we should try anyway."
Lapis and Zecora rounded a corner on the trail that led out of the Everfree Forest, and Lapis stopped in his tracks, Nikki briefly lurching atop Lapis’ head as Zecora continued ahead.
It was the same place in the path where Lapis had hesitated while entering the forest, a small stretch of space where the dirt trail grew wider, a single ray of sunshine piercing the emerald canopy to strike the center of the stretched clearing. On the one hand, Lapis knew where this spot was, and that meant they were almost out of the Everfree, which was good news.
On the other hand…
“Again, I see new length to your face,” Zecora said, turning to look at Lapis from a few steps ahead, a faint line of concern furrowing her brow. “Why now, as before, did you stop in this place?”
“This is where I woke up,” Lapis mumbled, staring at the patch of sunlight on the dusty earth of the trail. “Two months ago. One second, I was walking through the library at my university, and the next, I was… here. In the Everfree.”
In Equestria. And now here I am, two months and four near-death experiences later, no closer to going back home.
Zecora didn’t speak, instead turning to look at the patch of earth where Lapis was staring. She blinked, and when her eyelids opened, her eyes were utterly engulfed by an eerie yellow glow. For a split second, she looked at the patch of sunlight- then her gaze snapped up and to the side, locking onto a patch of shadow on the opposite side of the clearing.
“What is it?” Lapis asked.
Again, Zecora didn’t respond, not taking her eyes off the patch of shadow. Her ears twitched, and her lips moved as if she were speaking, but she made no sound.
“Hey,” Lapis said, more loudly. “Hello? Zecora? Kinda freaking me out, here.”
Zecora’s lips stopped moving. She remained silent for a few more seconds, then blinked again, her eyes returning to normal. “…Nothing. For your fright, I am sorry. I simply meant to check if there was something I could see.”
“Okay, well, did you see anything?” Lapis asked. “A portal, a magic scar, a runic circle, anything like that?”
Zecora shook her head. “No. Nothing there, at least not to my eyes. Though only for the spirit realm, is my vision made wise.”
Lapis sighed, then he grimaced and flicked his ears back upright atop his head. “Thanks anyway. It means a lot that you tried. I was just… really hoping that the library would have something to help.” He started after Zecora, who resumed walking down the path once he caught up.
“…A record book, a guide to flight. Though unhelpful, not the worst,” Zecora said, after a few moments. “Have you tried at all to check the tome, that you thought might be cursed?”
“Oh, that one?” Lapis asked, and after a rummaging around for a second or two, he pulled it free from his bag, pulled it open, and began flipping through the pages. “Well, that’s the thing. Even if there were wards on it, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything in here to protect but paper. There’s only three sentences in the whole book, and they’re right… here.”
Lapis turned the book around, presenting the page with the cryptic question to Zecora. However, instead of providing an explanation, the zebra only frowned. “…For this question, please forgive me, but what am I meant to see?”
“Uh, yeah.” Lapis walked over to stand next to Zecora, tracing the lines of the book with his hoof. “There’s a couple of lines right here, like a poem or riddle or something-” Lapis cut himself off, blushing as an explanation occurred to him. “…Oh, can you not read the language?”
Zecora chuckled, then shook her head. “For Equuish spoken and written, my knowledge is true. No, if something is written there…” She tapped the page with her hoof, then turned to look Lapis right in the face.
“It is written there for you,” Zecora said. And though the small smile on her face was gentle and reassuring, there seemed to be a faint, almost perfectly-hidden melancholy in the slight furrow of her brow.
Lapis’ eyes widened, and he felt his stomach drop away within his gut. He took a slow, deep breath, then carefully returned the book to his saddlebags. “…How worried should I be?”
“For now? Only a little, I believe,” Zecora said, chuckling and starting back down the path. “The words of the tome are meant more to test than deceive. But, should you seek more within, beware of a cost - in seeking truths so well-guarded, there is much to be lost.”
“…How sure are you that this book isn’t cursed?” Lapis asked, following behind her.
A few hours later, Princess Celestia stepped into her sister’s chambers to find her grumbling by the window. “…eons spent dreaming with the shamans, year after year of ‘the waking mind, so sure yet frail, can never see behind the veil.’ For one millennium we are indisposed, one, and- Ah, Sister!”
“Luna,” Celestia said, smiling. “I came as soon as I heard you’d returned. Tell me, how was your excursion?”
Luna sighed, then looked back out the window at the skyline of Canterlot, her starry mane swirling in the breeze. “More complex than we had hoped. This unicorn continues to prove himself difficult.”
“The one who the Nightmare sought?” Princess Celestia asked, glancing briefly at a corner of the room. There, beside the window, sat a half-completed painting of a cavern of pale stone, shadows full of teeth and numerous legs silhouetted by glowing green crystals.
“Yes,” Luna muttered. “And still, we cannot aid him, for through some sheer stroke of ill fortune, he always awakes before we can approach him. We would suspect him a Dreamwalker, but for the lack of any wards upon his mind.”
“And did you not try approaching him directly,” Princess Celestia asked, walking over to stand beside her sister, “when he was already awake?”
“Such was our intent, Sister,” Princess Luna said, and her ears half-folded back as her tone grew less frustrated, more somber. “But as we found him, he was… setting hoof into the remnants of our original capital.”
Celestia’s gentle smile faded from her face. “I see.”
She sat beside Luna, and again unfurled her wing, draping it over the smaller alicorn like a blanket. Luna half-chuckled, leaning into Celestia’s side. “It was not so bad as that, Sister.”
“And yet it troubled you enough that you didn’t approach him directly,” Princess Celestia said. “I’m sorry you had to see that place again, Luna.”
“We meant to make the wiser choice,” Luna said, her voice carefully steady. “We meant to learn what he was doing, and save making contact for another time. We peered into his mind while he was within the castle. Only once, whilst he was standing in Gara’s old perch. Can you guess what he was thinking, Sister?”
Celestia remained silent.
“He was mourning,” Luna said. “Never before had he seen our capital, nor the library when it was not a tomb, and yet he mourned for how he thought it had been. He had some… antiquated ideas concerning the use of oil lanterns…”
Luna fell silent for a time, and Celestia remained by her side, keeping her wing draped across Luna’s barrel as they stared out the window.
“And did you leave?” Celestia asked.
Luna sniffled. “Nay. We did something rather foalish, instead. …He is in no danger from us-”
“I never worried,” Celestia firmly said, “that he was.”
“Of course,” Luna said, and yet she relaxed, just slightly. “After that and a magical accident, nothing of interest transpired until they entered the Everfree. There, among other things, we learnt that shamans have discovered how to see into the spirit realm whilst awake.” Luna’s eyes narrowed in faint annoyance, and her mouth scrunched just slightly. “Without telling us. A lucky thing they remember the art of discreet speech, else we may have been caught in a rather awkward situation.”
Princess Celestia chuckled. “Don’t pout, sister. I’m sure you’ll have it figured out in no time.”
Luna didn’t speak for another few moments, simply looking around her own room at the black walls, the gleaming silver trim and the deep indigo sheets upon her own bed.
“…Sister,” Luna said. “We seek thy honest opinion.”
“On what?” Princess Celestia asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“Our taste in decoration,” Luna said, gesturing around the room with a brief sweep of her hoof. “Answer us truly: does it have ‘major cursed-item vibes?’”