In the very center of the quad of Golden Oaks University was the school’s namesake, a huge golden oak tree that had been planted at the university’s founding in 1740. The aureate leaves on the branches swayed slightly in the wind, producing a comforting susurrus beneath the overlapping voices and hoofsteps. Brick buildings marked the perimeter of the verdant quad, stone as old as the university itself watching over the student and faculty members that milled up and down the pathways cutting through the verdant field. The clocktower atop the administration building to the north of the quad displayed the time as a quarter past one.
Professor Daring Do exited Stinking Rich Hall and took in a breath, ruffling her wings in the midday sun; the heat settled comfortingly into her wings, mixing with the faint tingle of flight magic that danced through her feathers. She took flight, flapping a few feet above the ground; after spending so long in the classroom, some flying was exactly what she needed.
“Come on, the library’s this way,” she said to her companion, leading him down the vivid brick pathway. Phillip Finder followed in her wake, his head turning to take in every detail.
“You have any theories?” Daring asked as they passed a gardener that was tending to a bed of flowers, green energy swirling from his sunshine hooves as he restored the wilting flowers.
“Not enough facts yet,” Phillip replied, skirting around a cluster of giggling students.
“Well, we do know that she was doing a lot of research into the Sunken Church,” Daring commented. “Enough to keep pestering the board about it. And she was agitated about something before she disappeared.”
“May be related. May not be,” Phillip stated.
“Have you checked her home yet?” Daring asked, dipping to avoid the low-hanging branches of the trees planted in a row outside the campus center building.
“Yes,” Phillip replied, pausing to avoid colliding with a rowdy coterie of hoofball players wearing the gold and red of the Golden Oak Owls rushed past, laughing and playfully wrestling with one another. “Door locked. No sign of anything suspicious. Neighbors said that they saw her arrive Monday night. Car gone Tuesday morning.”
“Hmm,” Daring mused as they pressed on.
“What car did she drive?” Phil asked.
“A ’39 Chevroneigh 2-Door Sedan with blue paint…no, wait, she had it painted green this summer,” Daring reported. “License plate…” She frowned in thought for a moment. “T73 RE4. She had that car since before she got married, took good care of it.”
Phillip gave her an appraising look. “You’re the first pony who could tell me more than the color. Observant.”
“Part of being an archaeologist,” Daring replied, a thrill of pride nonetheless running down her spine at the praise. “My Uncle Ad told me that archaeologists and detectives are almost the same; we both study clues to try to figure out what happened in the past.”
“Your uncle sounds like a smart pony,” Phillip said.
The pride in Daring’s chest was crushed as immediately and thoroughly as a brick dropping on an ant. The echo of a scream from decades ago sounded in her ears; her uncle’s face flashed before her eyes, twisted in agony.
“Yeah,” she mumbled. “He was.”
Phil studied her, a frown flickering across his countenance. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to–”
“It’s fine,” Daring waved him off, burying the old pain once again. “You didn’t know.”
They rounded a corner, trotted past a three-story-tall student housing complex, and Daring was cheered by the sight of her favorite edifice in Equestria. “Here we are,” she said, gesturing with a wide smile.
The Golden Oaks University Library was as old as the university itself and had grown over time. The original marble facade of great gray pillars was set against a three-story building of vibrant brick that spread across the block like a ruler resting on its throne. Two statues of Faust flanked the stairs leading to the silver doors, each greeting visitors with a kind but enigmatic smile. Over the doors was a great metal shield displaying the university’s coat of arms.
Phillip paused and looked up and down the building with a glimmer in his gray eyes, letting out a low, admiring whistle.
“Just wait until you see the inside,” Daring said, leading him to the great silver doors.
They proceeded inside, their hoofsteps muffled by the lush carpeting. A team of librarians stood behind a long desk to the right. Most of the rest of the massive floor was occupied by huge shelves packed with books. Students milled through the shelves, taking books to desks for study groups.
Daring grinned at her companion, who was hungrily drinking in the sight. “I could spend weeks in here,” he breathed.
“I have spent entire weekends in here,” Daring said, approaching the desk with the librarians. “Hey, Bookmark. Is Twilight here?”
“Yeah, she’s upstairs in the Hippology and History section,” the red-maned hippogriff nodded.
“Thanks,” Daring said, pointing Phil towards a set of stairs.
They ascended two flights of stairs and emerged onto another floor, entering a wing labeled Hippology and History Section. Greeting them was a portrait depicting Captain Sweet Tooth’s historical meeting with a hippogriff delegation in 1826; the picture depicted the bubblegum pink earth pony mare shaking hooves with Admiral Cloudfall in the shadow of Mount Aris.
More bookshelves were organized across the floor, with students flitting in and out of the rows. To their left was another desk with a young purple unicorn mare sitting behind it, nose stuck in a book.
“Twilight?” Daring called.
The mare turned a page but didn’t look up.
“Twilight. Twilight Sparkle! Hello!”
The mare jumped slightly and looked up. “Oh! Professor Do, hello. How can I help you?”
“Phil, meet Twilight Sparkle, assistant librarian, currently working on her doctorate of magic,” Daring said. “Twilight, this is Phillip Finder, private detective. We’re looking into Professor Family Tree’s…” She paused for a moment to decide which word to use. “Absence.”
“She’s missing?” Twilight asked. “Is this about what she was looking into? The church?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Daring said.
“Did you know her?” Phillip asked.
“I like to think that we were pretty close,” Twilight mused. “I liked talking to her about the local history and helping her with some of her research. I even met her husband once.” She sighed. “She turned into a completely different pony after he died,” she said sadly.
“When was the last time you saw her?” Phillip asked.
“Last Monday,” Twilight said. “She returned the books that were overdue and paid off her fine. She seemed…angry. She said something about how if the board wasn’t going to listen to her, she’d have to show them herself.”
“Did she mention what exactly she was looking for in the church?” Daring asked.
Twilight ran a hoof through her mane with a pensive frown. “She didn’t say much about what she wanted to find there, or why it was so important, but…Spike!” she called.
A rolling ladder slid out of one of the aisles with a squeaking. Perched near the top of the ladder was a small purple dragon with green scales and folded wings, balancing a small stack of books on his tail. “What’s up, Twilight?” he asked.
“Could you bring us Truth from Fiction: the Sunken Church, please?” Twilight asked.
“You got it!” Spike declared, sliding down the ladder. He deposited the books balanced on his tail on a nearby cart, spread his wings, and dashed off down another aisle.
Daring turned to note that Phil was staring after Spike, his eyebrows hovering a good two inches above his wide eyes.
“Crikey,” he said. “That’s a dragon.”
“Yup,” Daring replied. “He came in with her.”
“I hatched him as part of my entrance exam into the Royal Academy of Magic,” Twilight explained. “By accident,” she added in response to Phil turning his surprised, questioning stare onto her. “The Princesses helped me take care of him, and he’s been by my side ever since.”
Spike returned with a large book in his claws, passing by a few students that hailed him cheerfully. “Thank you, Spike,” Twilight said, telekinetically lifting the book from his grasp and placing it on a table.
The cover featured an old sepia photograph of a small chapel set on a patch of marshland, the clouds behind it faintly lit by the setting sun casting the structure in an eerie, half-shadowed glow. The steeple was decorated with an upside-down ankh in gold, with an eye set in the loop, the unnervingly detailed pupil set so that it gazed down upon any who passed in and out of the doors. Splashed over the cover in bright green was the title Truth from Fiction: the Sunken Church by Campfire Tales.
Twilight flipped open the book and began to peruse through it, turning it so that her two guests could see the old photographs within. “The church that supposedly contained the Sunken Church was originally the Temple of Precious Enlightenment, founded in 1857 by a unicorn named Eastern Cartographer,” she narrated, pointing to a portrait of a bespectacled unicorn with a coat the color of old parchment, his mane neatly pulled back into a long braid that ran over one shoulder. He wore a metal circlet about his head, embossed with a diadem in the same shape as the upside-down ankh that decorated his church; he stared up out of the pages with a haughty expression, mouth twisted in a slight smirk as if declaring that he knew something that the readers didn’t.
Daring frowned. “Why does that name sound familiar?”
“He proclaimed that he had access to great secrets and started making prophecies and predictions to the locals, passing along messages from dead ponies, telling his followers of other worlds,” Twilight continued. “Pretty soon, the church was one of the most popular churches in Ponyville; at its height, the Temple had over two hundred members.”
“And that’s when the sacrifices started!” Spike cut in.
“Sacrifices?” Daring asked.
“Spike, those are just rumors,” Twilight chided. “There is no evidence that the Temple practiced pony sacrifices or any other ‘dark rituals,’ or anything else like that.”
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” Spike protested.
“That’s not what it…” Twilight puffed out a breath and turned back to the two ponies. “Anyway, the Temple of Precious Enlightenment was known for being secretive: you had to take a vow of secrecy to become a member of the higher-ranking circle. And of course, there were plenty of rumors: that they performed pony sacrifices, or they worshiped the Abominations, et cetera.
“The most popular was the Sunken Church,” Twilight continued. “Supposedly, there was a secret chapel under the main sanctuary where the higher-ranking members of the church would do secret rituals–”
“Like pony sacrifice!” Spike cut in.
“Spike, please,” Twilight scowled and sighed. “And a set of catacombs where they would bury dead members of the church. Naturally, there’s never been any proof of it, and all these years later, no one’s found any sign of it. This book specifically debunks all of those rumors,” she added, patting the book.
“So what happened to it?” Daring asked.
“Eastern Cartography died in 1895. The next year, a fire burned down most of the church when a candelabra was knocked over,” Twilight explained. “It remained abandoned for several years until 1925 when most of the ruins were cleared away. The Church of the Seven Pillars was built on top of the foundation; the basement of the Church is the original from the Temple.”
Daring hummed in thoughtfulness, flipping through the book and running a wing down the text, eyes sweeping over the lines. “So what was so important to her?” she mused, almost to herself. “And why did she take this out with books on Saddle Arabia?”
“Professor Do?” a familiar voice asked.
Daring looked up to see Luster Dawn behind her, the unicorn holding a stack of books on magical history in her magic. The junior’s amber-colored eyes flickered to the book on the table. “Oh, hey, you’re researching the Sunken Church, too?”
“Luster Dawn,” Daring said. “Good, I was going to go looking for you. This is Phillip Finder, he’s a private detective looking into Professor Tree’s disappearance. Phil, this is Luster Dawn. She–”
“Wrote that paper that Professor Tree read last spring,” Phillip nodded.
Luster Dawn sighed and shook her head. “I’ve been trying to erase that paper from my head since freshmare year,” she admitted. “It made sense at the time, but looking back, Dean Paper was right; I was stringing together tangents and coincidences and presenting it as proof.”
“What did you write about?” Daring pressed, aware that Spike and Twilight were both listening as well. “This could be important.”
“It was two years ago, Professor Daring.” Luster Dawn cocked her head to one side. “Why…? Does this have to do with why she’s missing?”
“It could be,” Phillip said. “What was the paper about?”
“The Sunken Church,” Luster said, setting her stack of books on a nearby table. “You know, that might explain why Professor Tree brought it up during my meeting with her at the start of the year…” An unreadable expression crossed her face, doubt and a bit of guilt flickering in her golden irides. “Did I–?”
“It’s not your fault, Luster,” Daring cut in, placing her hoof on the junior’s shoulder. “Just tell us what your theory was.”
Luster sighed, her mouth twisting as she recalled her amateurish work. “Okay, so. The founder of the Temple, Cartographer? He was a member of the Bowsprit expedition of 1855.”
“Of course,” Daring gasped, lightly slapping herself on the forehead. “I knew that name sounded familiar, I just didn’t recognize him with that crown.”
“He was there when Bowsprit found that unmarked tomb in the deserts south of Somnambula,” Luster continued. “Bowsprit mentioned in his journal that they found it buried underneath mounds of sand, as though it had been deliberately covered.”
“Yes, I remember reading this,” Daring cut in. “He said that the walls were covered in chisel marks, like someone had tried to remove any evidence of whose tomb it was. The local help that they hired was all spooked off by the place. The only symbol that was left intact was a sign on the door: a huge black snake with wings.”
“And younger me thought that that meant that there was only one pony who could’ve been in there,” Luster said.
“The Nameless Pharaoh,” she and Daring Do spoke in unison.
Twilight was listening rapturously, scribbling away in a notepad; Spike was staring with wide eyes, leaning in despite the visible fear and awe on his face, unable to look away.
“Of course, they didn’t know it at the time,” Daring mused. “What little documentation we have on the Nameless Pharaoh wasn’t found until 1936…”
Phillip made a noise of impatience. “Is this relevant?”
“I’m getting there,” Luster Dawn answered curtly. “From what little is known, the Nameless Pharaoh’s ascension started when he found this strange rock that they called the Dark Prism. With it, they said, he could see the future, other worlds, even talk to the dead. They say that his reign was so terrible that after he died, his name was erased from history; they scratched out his name from every letter, every fresco, everything. They buried him and the stone in his tomb after scratching out every mark on it, save a warning on the door, then buried it beneath the sand. At least, until Bowsprit found it.”
“And you thought that Cartographer took the Prism with him to Ponyville?” Daring asked.
Luster nodded, rolling her eyes. “That was what my paper was all about. I thought that Cartographer took the Dark Prism himself. After Bowsprit and his friends died–I was even dumb enough to suggest that Cartographer killed them and made it look like they all got bit by cobras–the tomb was sealed back up and reburied. Cartographer came home and founded the Temple, using the Dark Prism for his ‘visions’ and stuff.” Luster shook her head again. “Of course, it was really convenient that no one has found that tomb, or Cartographer’s photographs of the tomb, or the Dark Prism itself–”
“I’ve heard enough,” Phillip cut in. He turned and headed out of the library at a brisk trot.
“Hmm,” Twilight mused. “Your theory is interesting, but there’s still a lot of conjecture…”
“Yeah, that’s what Dean Paper told me,” Luster groaned. “Put a bit of a damper on freshmare year, I’ll tell you that.”
“It apparently convinced Professor Tree,” Daring mused. “Thanks for the help, Luster.”
She followed Phillip out of the library and back out onto the streets. “Hey, wait up!” she called, hustling after the detective.
Phillip slowed briefly to allow her to catch up. “Should check the church,” he said. “Might find more clues there.”
The clocktower in the distance chimed to announce that it was now 1:30. Daring paused and looked back towards the quad, chewing her lower lip.
“What?” Phillip asked, pausing.
“I…” Daring hesitated, considering the students that were probably lining up outside her office at this moment. She looked back and forth between Phil and the quad a few times, then sighed.
“Nothing,” she said. “Let’s try to get this over with quickly.”
“I’m parked in the lot over there,” Phillip said, heading for the nearest parking lot.
“You know, it’s only a few miles. I could just carry–”
“No,” Phillip cut her off.
Daring pouted. “Fine.”
They reached the lot and Phillip made his way over to a burnished red and brown motorcycle parked near the edge of the lot.
Daring let out an admiring whistle. “That a 1920 Bull Scout?”
“Solved an embezzling case for a local auto shop owner,” Phillip replied, swinging onto the bike. “He insisted that the bike be part of my payment.”
He tucked his trilby into the enchanted saddlebags and pulled out a helmet, buckling it on. He stamped the kickstand and the bike roared to life, like a great cat announcing its presence. “Following you,” he declared.
Daring grinned and spread her wings, lifting off the ground. She turned and zipped out of the lot, with the Bull Scout following behind her. They crossed onto Neighbraham Road and headed north, the waving branches of the trees alongside the road waving to hail their progress.