Twilight stretched as she woke up. Despite putting several wards that were suppose to awaken her if Matt tried to rob her, hurt her or Spike or simply leave the library, she slept without being disturbed the whole night, and now she felt bad about not trusting the strange stallion.
She got up from her bed and looked at Spike's which was empty. Guessing he either was doing some of his chores or went to Rarity's, she headed down to make some breakfast for herself and Matt.
"Good morning." she heard, surprised. Matthias was already awake, lying on her spare bed and reading one of her books. Several others were lying on a small table next to the bed. "I hope you don't mind that I'm reading these - Spike said its okay, but..."
"No no, it's quite alright." she answered quickly. "This is a library, after all. I didn't know you like to read, though."
"Well, it's not that I like it, but I wanted to get to know Equestria." Matthias said pouting, at the same time blinking with one eye, as if to show her he meant it as a joke.
Twilight looked at the titles he picked. 'A millennium of Celestia's rule', 'The land, towns and cities of Equestria', 'Customs and everyday live of ponies', and 'All about dragons', which he was currently reading.
"Dragons from Azeroth are different than Spike" he said, noticing where sha was looking. "I was curious if all dragons here are like him. Unfortunately, this book doesn't have much information in it."
"Yes, ponies know close to nothing when it comes to dragons." Twilight said, a little ashamed. "Dragons tend to keep to themselves, and ponies are too scared to properly study them."
"I guess that's understandable" Matthias chuckled.
"How different are dragons in your homeland?"
"To make it short, they're the most intelligent and ancient race on Azeroth, and they are guardians of it. There are five dragonflights: red, green, blue, bronze and black. Well, there are others beside those, but they are not natural, so I skipped them."
"Not natural? What do you mean by that?" asked Twilight, intrigued.
"Trust me, you don't want to know" he said, not looking at her.
Twilight, even more intrigued now, frowned. She remembered how dragons where in Equestria: selfish, brutal, and greedy. "Well besides Spike, of course." she corrected herself. To think of dragons as guardians of some land...
"How do you know so much about them?" she asked, baffled; she didn't know much about dragons, despite her love for studying and living with a dragon.
"How should I put it... I learned few thing about them during my work." he said, and almost immediately winced on his own words.
Twilight knew better by now and didn't ask what was his work.
"Speaking of dragons, do you know where is Spike?" she asked, hoping to distract him from his thoughts.
"He mentioned something about helping Rarity at her boutique."
"Of course he did." she muttered. "Do you want something for breakfast?"
"Thanks, but Spike already made me something, as well as for you. Quite the helper you've got." he said, smiling.
"Yes, Spike is a great assistant." she answered, feeling pride in young dragon. "Well, I better eat whatever he made me."
And with that she turned to the door, thinking how to get Matthias to be more open; after all, Princess Celestia sent her here to study the magic of friendship. What kind of friend she would be (for she already thought of herself as Matt's friend) if she couldn't help him deal with whatever was plaguing his mind?
So engrossed was she in her thoughts, she didn't pay attention to anything when she entered the main room of her library. Only after few paces did she noticed something was off.
Her jaw dropped.
When Twilight left, Matthias turned his attention back to one of the other books. He wandered how long he could put her off with his half answers.
The more he studied Equestria, the more weird this world seemed to him. The fact that the Princess Celestia was at least a thousand years old wasn't strange to him (after all, there were those in his world much more older than that), but that she banished her own sister to the moon after she was corrupted by dark powers born out of her own bitterness and jealousy amazed him. He thought this world to be peaceful, and its inhabitants innocent. He was impressed by what Celestia did, and could identify himself with Luna, even if what happened to her was more similar to the work of the Old Gods .
He thought back to Stratholme. At the time, he really believed that what he was doing was right. Even now he wasn't sure what would happen if he didn't slaughter everyone there; the number of dead from that city could have been enough to destroy Lordaeron, or maybe they wouldn't. He would never know, but what he knew was this: that day, he did not only killed his subjects, but himself as well.
"Did Princess Celestia feel the same after she banished her sister?" he wondered. He thought about his own sister, Calia, who disappeared during the fall of Lordaeron, and was probably dead. At least Celestia got her sister back; according to the book, which was quite new, being printed barely six months ago, Princess Luna returned from the moon more than year ago, and was purified of her dark self by something called the Elements of Harmony, and now ruled alongside her sister again after a thousand years. "Why don't we have those back on Azeroth?" he smirked at his dark humor.
No less surprising was to him the fact that they had essentially the same celebrations: Azeroth's Love is in the Air for Equestria's Hearts and Hooves Day, Winter Veil and Lunar Festival for Hearth's Warming Eve, Hallow's End for Nightmare Night, Midsummer Fire Festival for Summer Sun Celebration, and apparently, Apple family (which he guessed must be Applejack's family) had something called Applebuck Season, which was more or less same as Harvest Festival, as well as Cider Season for Brewfest. While there were some differences, it was still weird for two worlds to have similar celebrations in in the same time.
Despite Matthias concentration on ponies related subjects, he managed to learn something very useful: what kind of other creatures were intelligent in this world, such as griffons, Diamond Dogs, mules, donkeys, zebras, minotaur, buffalo, cattle, sheep...
"Hey Matt?" his train of thoughts was interrupted by Twilight's voice. "Would you mind coming here for a moment?"
"Sure, no problem." Matthias answered. He could use a break anyway. He never understood how Jaina could read for hours without one.
Wondering what was it that Twilight wanted from him, he opened the door.
"SURPRISE!" greeted him a fairly big crowd of ponies, which were surrounded by balloons and colorful pieces of paper.
His jaw dropped.