Arcane Equilibrium
by Prane
Chapter 3
The next day it stopped raining. The sky was clear, the sun was shining brightly and only the puddles in the streets were reminding of the recent downpour. It was a brand new day for everypony, but even brand newer for the azure mare.
‘…and I can be once more!’, Trixie said to herself as she was brushing her mane. ‘I will be!’
Long sleep, shower and motivational monologue once again proved to be the best remedy for one’s problems. It was a temporary solution, but highly effective.
‘I will just treat this as a regular assignment.’, she continued, trotting from one side of her apartment to the other. She glanced at herself in the mirror and grinned, content with her appearance. ‘I excelled at dozens before and I will do so now. I shall amaze everypony with my talent and efficiency, and… what’s that?’
Trixie’s pet raccoon just jumped on the cupboard. He was holding some kind of scroll with his tiny teeth. The mare reached for it, taking out a cookie from a jar, but the grey pet didn’t let it go.
‘Oh, I see.’, she rolled her eyes and passed another cookie. ‘You furry exploiter.’
The raccoon threw the parchment on the floor, then took his spoil and scurried away.
‘Thanks… lazyball.’, she said, then pondered. ‘I swear, if I don’t find a proper name for you, I’ll run out of nicknames.’
Trixie unrolled the scroll. It was a letter from Sunseeker.
Trixie,
You were hard to catch yesterday, so I took the liberty of briefing Twilight Sparkle on our mission. We are at the library in the Archives – join us as soon as possible.
Stay great and powerful!
Sunseeker
PS: I think your pet stole my muffin.
The azure mare looked at the raccoon and giggled, but after that her good mood was gone. Who was she trying to lie to? It was obvious that the assignment was not ordinary and she clearly had some personal problems. But too much was at stake to let those issues cloud her judgment. She’ll just hide them under the mask. For now.
Trixie was, after all, a showmare by heart.
She ran to the Archives district and climbed the ivory stairs up to the library tower, where she found Twilight Sparkle sitting on the floor. She was surrounded by stacks of tomes and scrolls, some of them placed to resemble walls and towers of a miniature book castle. There were also a few lifted by the unicorn’s magic, opening and closing as the purple mare was reading them.
‘I thought it’s closed on Tuesdays.’, she said.
‘I spend most of my youth here.’, Twilight replied, still concentrating on the levitating books. ‘Librarian pony owed me for saving the day more than once. At least we won’t be interrupted.’
Trixie came closer, slowly navigating between a pile of Equestria maps and a rotary blackboard on a stand. She pointed at the labyrinth of stacked books.
‘And what’s that?’
‘Oh, it’s just the way I do my research.’, the purple mare answered. ‘Spike calls it the Book Fort Alpha.’
Suddenly, the movement of books and scrolls ceased.
‘So… uhm,’, Twilight began. ‘How are you, Trixie?’
Focus on the mission now. Deal with yourself later.
‘I’m fine.’, the azure mare answered, but because she was unable to look straight at the unicorn, she started looking around the room. ‘Where’s Sunseeker?’
‘I’m up here!’, a voice was heard form over a bookstand.
The white stallion was balancing at the top of a step ladder. He reached for an old tome from the top shelf and grabbed it, causing several other books to fall down on him. Then he fell on the floor with them.
‘I got the book, Twilight.’, Sunseeker said proudly as he stood up and shook most of the books of. One of them was still lying on his back, covering his torch cutie mark. The other, one on his head, served as a hat. He turned at Trixie and saluted overzealously.
‘Good to see you, agent Trixie, glad you could make it.’, the stallion said, keeping a straight face.
The azure mare laughed, to which Sunseeker smiled widely. He passed the tome to the purple mare. Twilight glanced at it, then expressed her disappointment.
‘Really? I ask for the Greedy Garret’s Gemstone Guide and what I get is… Creepy Carrots Cultivation Compendium?’, she said. ‘At this rate you’ll never be my Number Three Assistant. Besides, I’ve already read it.’
‘Oh, give me a break!’, Sunseeker replied, taking the Compendium out of Twilight’s hooves. ‘Seriously, I don’t know how Spike manages to keep up with your requests.’
He then returned to the bookstands and started picking up the scattered tomes.
‘Trixie, uhm…’, Twilight began once more. ‘Is there anything you would like to talk about?’
Avoid difficult topics. Stay professional.
‘Probably about how far you are with your research.’, the azure mare replied coldly.
Twilight noticed that Trixie became gloomy again, even if she was laughing a minute ago. The last time Twilight had to reach her friends in order save them from a self-destructive pattern, a simple memory spell had sufficed. But that required pointing at few moments of happiness from their lives, and to the purple mare’s knowledge, Trixie didn’t have too much good memories. Well, an extra careful approach was needed in this fragile case, as well as creating the atmosphere of trust and caring.
‘Well, Sunseeker told me that Moon…’, the purple mare abstained. ‘…that the cult had stolen some kind of emerald from the Royal Vault, setting up a coup against Princess Celestia as a diversion.’
‘Not just any emerald.’, Trixie said. ‘Remember that Diamond Dog we met in the Everfree Forest?’
Twilight blinked.
‘The emerald? I thought we got rid of it!’
‘Nothing is ever simple, is it?’, the azure mare sighed. ‘Anyway, try to cross-reference it with Star Swirl the Bearded.’
‘Star Swirl?’, Sunseeker broke away from the picture of a pony-sized carrot. ‘Why?’
Trixie told them about everything she found out when she was questioning the prisoner. Omitting everything about how she found that out, of course. Plain pieces of information about cult’s leader, the unicorn hatred and, most importantly, the ghost from the past were enough to leave the ponies stunned and silent for a while.
‘Do you think that he really is back?’, the white stallion asked. ‘Aren’t the dead supposed to stay… dead?’
‘I don’t know.’, Twilight answered, confused as never. ‘It’s not scientifically possible, but on the other hoof Star Swirl was one of the most powerful wizards… I don’t know.’
‘But what is the connection between the long gone wizard and a cursed, unstable magical emerald?’, Trixie threw a question but received no immediate answer.
For the next couple of hours, the three ponies have searched high and low, learning everything from gemstone types to the pre-Equestrian history. There were many discarded quills and parchments lying around, as well as empty coffee mugs, all showing the huge amount of work done, as opposite to the results obtained.
Around midday Trixie volunteered to go out and pick up something to eat, leaving Twilight and Sunseeker on the library’s balcony.
‘So,’, the stallion asked. ‘What do you think?’
‘She’s definitely not the mare I remember. And I’ve seen her many faces – Trixie the boasting showmare, Trixie the secret agent, Trixie seeking shelter, Trixie having fun at the Ponyville party… but that’s new.’
‘Just as I told you: distant and withdrawn.’, Sunseeker stated. ‘What can we do to help her?’
‘Trixie blames herself for that incident with Moonwarden. She needs to regain a positive self image to confront him, if – or rather when it’ll come to this. All we can do is… be there for her.’
‘Be there for her. Got it.’, he said, then trotted back to the room.
Twilight Sparkle looked at the stallion, puzzled. It seemed that there might have been more in this than a care for the fellow agent.
* * *
‘I found something!’, Sunseeker shouted with excitement. ‘Who’s Number Three Assistant now, huh?’
‘What is it?’, both mares asked simultaneously.
‘It’s an excerpt from the diary of Clover the Clever.’, he explained, then cleared his throat. ‘Although both my teacher and I knew it was coming, I still find it difficult to accept that he is gone... I buried him with his personal belongings, according to his will. My only regret is that I didn’t recover the energy source from his prized staff. That emerald couldn’t absorb more magical energy than it had already stored and was probably destroyed in Star Swirl’s most noble sacrifice.’
Sunseeker raised his blue eyes and grinned.
‘Probably not, Clover.’
Twilight felt a sudden surge of energy, which happened always as she was on a precipice of a breakthrough. Or a threshold, or a brink. She teleported to the blackboard, although it was only a few steps away from her. She telekinetically grabbed a piece of chalk and started furiously drawing and writing something, turning the board back at Trixie and Sunseeker.
‘There is more, listen.’, the azure mare spotted something in the book. ‘I have sealed the tomb of my teacher, so that pegasi and earth ponies wouldn’t interfere.’
‘That makes sense.’, Twilight’s head popped from behind the board. ‘Star Swirl lived before the exodus of three pony tribes and founding of Equestria.’
‘Does it mean that only the unicorn can open the tomb?’, Sunseeker asked. ‘That’s why Feldora needs Moonwarden for!’
Trixie staggered.
‘Sweet Celestia!’, she said. ‘Moonwarden’s specialties are deception, illusion… and some other dirty tricks. It’s obvious now!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You see, there was never any pony wizard resurrection!’, the azure mare explained. ‘It has to be Moonwarden posing as Star Swirl!’
‘That sounds reasonable.’, Twilight agreed, pulling another piece of chalk from the nearby box.
‘Wait a minute!’, the white stallion said. ‘They got the gemstone, right? Clover said that the emerald was part of the staff that was able to absorb magical energy. What if they want to recreate the Staff?’
Trixie walked a few steps backwards.
‘Could they use it against the unicorns? No, impossible.’
‘Yes, possible!’, Twilight’s head popped again.
Sound of the chalk hitting the blackboard went silent.
‘Okay ponies, let’s think it through.’, said the purple mare, pushing the board and rotating it to the other side. ‘Let’s assume that… what?’
Trixie and Sunseeker were both tilting their heads to read Twilight’s notes.
‘Oh! Excuse me!’
She grabbed the blackboard with her magic and turned the whole thing, with the stand included, upside down. It probably wasn’t the best way, but the purple unicorn was far too excited to notice the confusion in the audience.
‘Feldora wants equality for earth ponies, pegasi and unicorns.’, she said, first pointing her hoof at a silhouette of a pegasus with a bubble speech ‘I’m evil’ over it. She then showed little drawings of the different kinds of ponies, with equals signs between them. ‘The thing that makes us, unicorns different from her is that we can use magic. So Feldora says no to magic.’
Twilight crossed out the drawing of a six-pointed star, which strongly resembled her cutie mark.
‘Since opposing unicorns while being a pegasus is too radical, everypony would consider her crazy. So she uses a respected figure from the past, Star Swirl the Bearded’, the purple mare said, encircling the bearded unicorn silhouette.
‘So that Feldora’s followers hear that unicorns are evil, straight from the horse’s mouth. Swell.’, Sunseeker added.
‘Precisely! Now we’re getting to the tricky part.’
Twilight pointed at the blackboard again, going from Star Swirl to the drawing of the stick, labeled ‘Ancient Staff’.
‘Remember what you’ve told me about your first meeting with Zaeer? About bringing balance to all of us? And what’s more, the prisoner’s confession, again about balance and reducing the role of the unicorns in society?’
‘What is your point?’, Trixie asked.
‘Feldora probably wouldn’t try to destabilize Equestria if she wasn’t capable of doing so. And if by mine ‘destabilize’ she means equalize…’
‘You’re joking, right?’
‘Listen, it’s just a theory…’, said Twilight slowly. ‘But I think that the cult wants to use Moonwarden to break into Star Swirl’s tomb, steal the Staff and…’
‘And what?’
‘Strip all unicorns of their magic.’
It was very intense for everypony in the room, so after Twilight put down the blackboard, they all sat down in silence.
‘Woah. That’s bad.’, Sunseeker said after a while.
‘That traitor.’, Trixie shook her head. ‘Not only to the Conclave, but to his own kind…’
‘The question is: how do we stop them?’
‘We cannot infiltrate the cult’s ranks, Moonwarden shall discover us the moment he sees us’, Twilight said. ‘And we’re unicorns, the cult enemies by default.’
‘And we can’t catch him either, because he mastered elusiveness…’, the azure mare added.
‘But he carries the gem, so maybe finding it will…’, the stallion came up with an idea.
‘Forget it.’, said Trixie. ‘We do not have enough horsepower to do it.’
‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’
‘I got it!’, Twilight jumped for joy. ‘I think I know just a pony for the job.’
‘A pony?’, Trixie asked. ‘We’re talking about searching the whole land for one particular gem. How can one pony do that?’
‘Trust me,’, the purple mare winked. ‘She’s a natural.’