"So, how did you manage to break out of Belos' personal dungeon?" Eda asked.
Celestia fought back an irritated sigh. Eda had kept up a stream of such questions as they walked through the woods. "Simple, really. Belos didn't expect anyone to be able to do it, so he wasn't paying enough attention."
"Hah! Classic!" Eda grinned, apparently satisfied with yet another non-answer. Celestia had been struggling to deflect or avoid truly answering every question she possibly could, at least while Twilight was in earshot.
Thankfully, Luna and King were doing a good job of keeping Twilight occupied, largely because King was keeping up an endless stream of comments about how absolutely amazing and depraved Luna was. Celestia would actually find it hilarious if she wasn't getting grilled herself.
"If I may, where exactly are we going?" Celestia asked, interrupting yet another probing question.
Eda didn't seem to mind being cut off mid-sentence. "Bonesborough. It's a city not far from here."
"Bonesborough?!" Celestia exclaimed. "I'm amazed that place is still around!"
"Bonesborough still exists?" Luna asked, looking back in surprise.
Eda laughed at their shocked expressions. "Hey, the Boiling Isles might be dangerous, but we're not that bad. Whole cities don't just disappear overnight. Not often, anyway," she added in an undertone.
The last sentence drew a concerned look from Twilight, but Celestia just shrugged it off. She had spent enough time in the Boiling Isles to have gotten used to such casual horrors.
Trekking on in relative silence, save for Luz' tuneless humming, the group finally emerged from the forest and found themselves at the end of a cobbled road.
Bonesborough looked much the same as Celestia remembered it. Mismatched houses and crooked towers from the fever dreams of a demented medieval artist spread out as far as the eye could see. Many of them were festooned with oversized bones, bloodshot eyeballs, or demonic limbs and tentacles of every description.
"What is this place?" Twilight asked, disgust evident in her voice.
“This, princess, is Bonesborough!” Eda exclaimed loudly, throwing her arms wide for dramatic effect.
Seeing Twilight’s expression flicker between curiosity and revulsion reminded Celestia of how she herself had felt the first time she laid eyes on the town.
“Come on, we’ll give you a tour!” Luz said eagerly. “Just be careful of the fairies. They like skin.”
Luna frowned thoughtfully. “Speaking of skin, I wonder what happened to that cookbook I left in our old camp on the Knee?”
“What has that got to do with skin?!” Twilight half shouted.
Celestia chuckled softly. She had actually hidden the book in question with a glamour in a fit of anger. Assuming that no-creature had found the sisters’ hidden camp in the intervening years, then it had probably mouldered to dust centuries ago.
Nostalgia hit hard as the group wandered into town. Several places had changed since Celestia had last visited, but lots of the buildings, houses, and even some of the shops were much the same as they had been a thousand years ago.
“I wonder if that old cutesy cafe is still around,” Luna mused.
“You mean the one we were banned from?” Celestia asked with a grin.
Luna smirked at her. “About that, it was only you who was banned from there. I had an agreement with the owners.”
Celestia’s jaw dropped open in shock. “Are you serious?!” Her sister’s smirk just grew wider. “Oh that is just rude. I liked that cafe.”
“You just like anywhere that sells cake,” Luna shot.
The little group casually strolled through Bonesborough, with Luz pointing out cute or interesting places she had discovered, King bragging about areas where he had shown off his demonic superiority, and Eda revealing where Emperor’s Coven guards tended to hang out and which spots were best for separating fools from their money. Twilight was shifting from curious to concerned and back again so quickly that Celestia was beginning to worry that she’d give herself an aneurysm, but she was at least being quiet as she absorbed everything.
As the group strolled down a street full of particularly twisted buildings, Luz suddenly gasped and clapped her hands together. “Hey, I know! Why don’t we go and visit Hexside? Then you can really see how much things have changed since you were last here!”
“Luz, you know the faculty would freak out if they saw these two around.” Eda grinned evilly. “Let’s do it!”
Celestia chuckled at the thought. “As entertaining as that sounds, I doubt anyone there would have a clue who we are after all this time.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Eda assured her. “Luz! Lead the way!”
“Roger!” Luz snapped a salute and immediately marched off down the street. Celestia sighed and shook her head, but she couldn’t help smiling as the group followed the young human along.
As much as she hated to admit it, especially with Luna in earshot, Celestia was actually looking forward to seeing Hexside again. It was a shame that some of the old faculty like Bump would be long gone but, on the other hoof, Principal Faust would also be long gone, which could only be a good thing. Plus, it would be nice to see if any of the students had ever found the secret corridors that Celestia and Luna had spent a year installing.
Celestia lost herself in self-indulgent speculation and fantasy as she strode along. She wondered if the old Grudgby pitch was still around, if anyone had ever found her old Blue Snow costume or her Shiny Chariot cards, whether or not Grom was still sealed beneath the school, and, perhaps most importantly, how or if the Detention Pit had been rebuilt after Luna’s last stint in it. There were a lot of things that could change over the course of a millennium.
“And here we are! Hexside School of Magic and Demonics!” Luz called out theatrically.
“Already?” Celestia snapped out of her reverie and was struck by a wave of nostalgia as she saw the building ahead. Hexside was a huge building built entirely out of white stone, with symmetrical towers rising above the east and west wings and a larger belltower dominating the centre above the entranceway, though in place of a bell it had a giant eyeball nestled amongst a messy lattice of oversized muscles and nerves. The entrance doors themselves were sat in a pillared dais reached by a sweeping staircase.
“That’s actually pretty impressive,” Twilight noted. “Creepy, but impressive.”
Luna let out a soft whistle. “It looks almost the same as we left it, a worthy feat in this fell realm.”
“Not just almost the same, it’s almost identical.” Celestia raised an eyebrow, wondering how that could be possible. “I can’t believe it. I assumed that something would have changed over the last thousand years.”
“Thousand years?!” Eda squawked. “Just how old do you think I am?!”
Celestia and Luna both turned to her in shock. “But, it's been a thousand years since we last…” Celestia felt a chill run down her spine as she remembered that time tended to work differently between worlds. “How much time has passed here?”
Eda stared at the sisters as if they were crazy. “You two only disappeared from the Isles about, what, thirty years ago? Pretty much the only thing that’s changed is that we got rid of Faust and they made Bump the new Principal, if you can believe it.”
Shock and horror rooted Celestia to the spot. She looked at Luna only to see the same awful realisation reflected in her sister’s eyes. Their past wasn’t as dead and buried as they had thought, and now Twilight was in a position to find out about it all.
As if on cue, the door to Hexside creaked open and a terribly familiar figure appeared. The Principal met Celestia’s eyes for just a split second before he let out a blood-curdling scream and slammed the door shut.