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// 5 - Forgotten Past 
// Story: Dark as Ink at Night 
// by David Silver 
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Raven trotted into the castle workspace. What was once rubble and disorganized areas was now neat stacks of organized stone. In the workspace in the center had been set up a group of boards with maps and diagrams. The list of materials found, the estimates of materials needed, a map of the castle in its entirety, complete and ready for the next phase of the project.

Well, nearly complete, anyway. There were a tad more estimates to go, and the labyrinthine passageways beneath the castle have remained difficult. There were considerably more than she had originally estimated, with secret passageways and trap doors. And behind them were considerably large amounts of precious and fragile artifacts. She would have to arrange for a preservation specialist very soon to deal with those.

Not to mention… that not all the artifacts were clearly safe. Some tunnels were precarious, yes, but some of them contained magical items that may be dangerous. Raven was no adventurer, she was not equipped to handle dangerous items that might shoot rays turning everypony into salamanders or causing ponies to walk on the ceiling.

But Raven was not to be daunted, if there were hidden problems then she would solve them. Or, well, find someone to solve them. This project will be finished.

To wit, it was time to try to find Luna again. If anypony knew how to deal with mysterious objects here it was her.

She scanned the area, hoping to see Luna around the construction site somewhere. Raven's horn glowed a soft blue as she levitated the list of items she had found and what she suspected the purpose of them were. "Princess?" She peeked down a hallway, but it was as empty as most. "Princess?" Another had a few workers, busily fortifying a pillar.

"I'm right here." A deep feminine voice came from just behind Raven, right in her ear.

Raven gasped, leaping in place. "Ahh! How? When? Princess Luna!" She came down facing the ruler of the night. "I'm glad to see you."

"Are you?" Luna considered Raven, with an air of detached curiosity. "I would be surprised to hear it, if that were true."

Raven settled herself back down. "Why, yes. You see, I found something while surveying the ruins for more useful materials." She floated her clipboard of items both dangerous and unidentified, which could be dangerous. "I was hoping you might review this and assist in the safe moving of those that are most certainly magical."

"Is that all?" Luna raised a brow, her expression still unamused. "Or do you have some other use for me?"

Raven blinked. "Other use?" She frowned with thought. "Should we not proceed with the step before us, Your Highness? These items could be dangerous. And if the Princess of the Night does not know what to do with them, then I must fear no creature of Equestria has that knowledge."

Luna was silent and her eyes seemed to bore through Raven, pinning her down and weighing her worth. "Twilight is a clever princess. I'm sure she could figure it out."

“O-of course she could.” Raven withered under Luna’s gaze. “Princess Twilight was–is–” She corrected herself. “--a great hero that definitely could handle dangerous magical artifacts.”

“Then why not contact Twilight Sparkle? If you believe she can, then surely it would be easy to ask.” 

Raven took herself a deep breath, trying to ensure her description . “I could not ask my princess to take on this task. If she intended to help with this part of the project that would have been provided for in my instructions. If Princess Celestia needed to attend parts of the project, that would be part of the project.”

“Surely, then, Twilight must have built some kind of progress reports into the project?” Luna’s words were measured and polite, but her gaze, her posture, the deliberateness with which she delivered these words implied teeth laid behind them. “Simply tell her you are having trouble on a project.”

“No,” Raven nearly blurted, before sharply inhaling at her own conduct. But still she must justify her behavior. “This is my project, delivered to me by Princess Twilight herself. She trusted me with the project and I will sho–” Raven stopped abruptly. She had already said too much.

Luna did not speak, but her posture changed. Her gaze softened, her ears shifted forward and her eyes glittered. A change in subject, a new direction was coming. And she knew that Raven had taken notice.

Raven opened and closed her mouth a few times in aborted attempts to speak. "You've been here." Raven slumped against a wall. "You've been here and I've studied the history and I still fell for it." Her pitch became almost a moan of shame. "I am the assistant of the previous Princess of Equestria and I fell for it." She looked up to see Luna peering at her with a smirk. "I am just like another esteemed royal pony I know, desperate to be validated."

Luna walked around and put a wing over her. "No one would blame you for your eagerness." She sat down, eyeing her assistant. "So you tried to hide your difficulties from Twilight?" She snapped the wing back. "I'm certain sister dear would have had this all under control, but neither of us have her, hm?"

"We do not." Raven gathered herself to her full height. "So it falls on us to figure this out." She held up her clipboard. "Please?"

“Of course.” Luna smiled a small smile. “As Princess of the night it is my duty to protect my ponies in the dark. Whether it be the dark of night, or the dark of mystery.” She stepped back.

Raven sighed in relief. “Oh, wonderful. Do you have any material requirements for this task?” Raven looked down at her clipboard. “I will be sure to acquire what you need.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “I thought it was clear what I require. You already said it falls on ‘us’ to figure this out.”

Raven looked up at Luna, then looked back and forth, searching for the meaning she hoped those words did not mean. “I… did say that.”

“So, there is no time like the present to get started, is there? Let’s go.” Luna turned around and began officiously marching outward.

Raven laid her ears back and made her way behind her, dreading the situation to come.

Luna led the way down the winding corridors. "I've been wandering these halls, searching for things myself. I found some." She glanced back at Raven. "I imagine you and your workers have found others. There was a time each and every trinket was held by 'Tia and myself." She entered a dusty and ruined chamber. "These, however, weren't ours to guard." She knelt to pick up a small item, a glass vial of sorts, sealed with wax.

Raven squinted at the vial. She checked her clipboard quickly. "Ah." She turned it for Luna to see. "We found this room, here is a list of the items we located here."

Luna spared the clipboard a brief look. "Not much more than what anypony can see with a glance." She floated the vial to a dusty table. "If we kept a potion, it was because its effects were quite remarkable. Its seal is intact, meaning that power is likely still available."

“But since this is still sealed it will probably remain sealed?” Raven raised an eyebrow. “This means it is basically safe, right?”

“That is heavily dependent on what it does if it were accidentally broken,” Luna replied. “Quite remarkable would be either a potion that cannot be adequately created again, or has a very important use.” She looked down at the vial on the table “Or possibly it cannot be disposed of at all.”

Raven pursed her lips. “Well, which is this, then?” She leaned over. The label, as observed, was not in ponish, nor any language Raven could immediately recognize.

“Fortunately, it is simply… unique.” She levitated the potion up once more. “A very long time ago, in another country, a stone tree grew in a forest, and that tree threatened to consume the entire forest, turning every tree and denizen to stone with it.”

Raven fell silent, alternating between watching Luna and scribbling down in her notebook.

“When it began to consume the forest, one of its denizens reached out to the other nations for help, and a group of ponies answered the call.” Luna began to move broken items on the dusty table around, the dust of another era being knocked off disassembled and broken pieces of metal and ceramic. “One Unicorn held the samples as they worked to derive a serum, ensuring the terrible petrification could not spread.” Ancient cloth parts wrapped around the vial, held with Luna’s magic.

“One earth pony located the raw materials, having the knowledge about the earth to find enough doses to turn stone to plant.” Luna pieced together a ceramic base formed underneath, decorative with three sides, a wing, a plant, and a star.

“And one pegasus delivered the serum to the center, without having to touch and fall prey to the petrification curse.” Connecting the ceramic base and the held center were a series of wires, so the serum would float above the earth.

“Naturally, they did not create only one dose, but out of all the existent doses only one remains, sealed with wax in case it would be needed again.” The vial now sat, suspended above the ceramic base, on the table. “The three of them were heroes to a civilization that they would never be a part of.”

Luna turned around to look at Raven.

Raven gave the presentation her full attention, writing the names and attributes of the ponies.

Luna was clearly waiting for a question.

Raven finally looked up, the two meeting one another's gaze a moment. "Ma'am? Were you personally involved?"

Luna shook her head slowly. "I was not. But I was present. They were brave ponies, but their time passed." She clenched her teeth faintly. "Their final days, I did not see. I was, as they say, occupied, a whole world away." She leaned in closer. "At least a moon."

Raven caught the meaning with a widening of her eyes. "Oh, I'm sorry." She reached for the vial. "We'll secure this properly. Even displaying it will require extensive security, assuming we even dare to do that."

Luna stood back up, saying nothing, looking at the table with the decorative stand, having fallen back to pieces without Luna holding it together.

Raven laughed a little to herself. “Fortunately, nothing is dangerous here, just precious and in need of care. If that is how all these unidentified artifacts are, then it’s all the better.” She turned around and began trotting out of the chamber. “We’ll absolutely need to figure out more about this mysterious other country, we may even have to find a history specialist for the information.”

Luna looked over to Raven, who seemed undaunted by the situation, now animated, ready to move forward, and shook her head, attempting to clear it. “Well, find a safe location for this one, because the next artifact is not safe.” Her long gait caught up to Raven very quickly. “In a nearby chamber, there is a room there is what looks like a metal dome, correct? Inside the dome is a helmet you absolutely must not put on. Even looking into the eyes of it can be dangerous, and lead to worse issues.”