Rising Night

by StLeibowitz


Chapter 1

The Canterlot Palace archives at night were dark and forbidding to most ponies, so long as the pony in question was not a purple unicorn mare, student of Princess Celestia, widely acknowledged the most promising young magical talent in Equestria, and among the few who could probably give a certain yellow pegasus a run for her money in the national Quiet Game championships. She had never met said pegasus before; Twilight Sparkle, barely out of fillyhood, had never left Canterlot in her life. Had she not been staying at the palace for her studies, she would still be legally required to live with her parents – and likely as not, would still not be out in costume hunting for candy this Nightmare Night.

She lit her horn and trotted down the dark aisles of the book-filled library, glancing purposefully to either side of her as she searched for the section on foreign magic users. She had a report to do for the Princess, and nothing would stop her from completing and turning it in a week early. She hardly even noticed the darkness, much less feared it.

“…Foreign Languages…Foreign spells…untitled ancient scroll section…” She paused. Hadn’t she just organized these scrolls last night? It was shameful, really, that in a library things could get so out of order. Annoyed, she quickly rearranged the disheveled pile of papers and was on her way.

“Foreigners…foreign foods…foreign spellcasters…found it!” She exclaimed. The card catalogue didn’t lie, then. Since she had first been granted access to the Archives as Celestia’s personal student, she had noticed that books went missing without being checked out quite often, to be found misfiled or stacked neatly in corners. The head librarian, Dust Jacket, was as confused as the unicorn as to what caused this phenomenon. Despite these discrepancies, however, it appeared that the section of books on Foreign Spellcasters was perfectly in place. She began to peruse the carefully ordered rows of books.

Where is it? She gazed in puzzlement at the empty spot where Apple’s Archive of Archmages Abroad should have been. This is getting ridiculous.

Of course the one book she needed to find had vanished. It was only one of the least sought-after indexes of foreign spellweavers in Equestria, and had never been checked out by anypony within living memory! Why would it be there when she needed it? From the absence of dust buildup in the space, she could tell that it had only been taken recently. Annoyed, she summoned another charge of magic and cast her locator spell – if the book was anywhere in her line of sight, it would flash brightly.

The flash came from the small reading area down the aisle, just outside of the radius of her light spell. To her shock, it revealed another pony as well – a jet black pegasus, reading the tome intently in pitch darkness. As the book flared violet, she threw her hooves up in front of her eyes and screamed in pained surprise, pitching her chair back and depositing her unceremoniously on the floor.

“Oh! Sorry!” Twilight shouted as she galloped over to the fallen pegasus mare, who was still covering her eyes and curled up into a protective ball on the ground where she had fallen. “I didn’t know anypony else was in here! Are you okay?”

As she approached, the pegasus began to shy away from her horn light. Twilight slowed to a stop. “I’m so sorry! Are you using a night vision spell of some sort? Did I hurt you with the flare?” Stars, she couldn’t live with herself if she’d accidentally blinded somepony who enjoyed reading enough to use a night vision spell to do so after dark!

As she edged closer, her horn light dimming as she approached, Twilight reached out a hoof to help the pegasus back up. “Please, answer me! Are you alright? Should I get a doctor?” Stars, please don’t let her be blind –

“Ouch!” The lavender unicorn leapt back in surprise as the pegasus lunged for her, revealing a pair of piercing blue eyes with slit pupils that seemed to glow with inner fire – in addition to a pair of extremely sharp, stubby fangs that she sank into the unlucky pony’s foreleg. Twilight’s retreat managed to dislodge her, but it was still scary. The pegasus galloped off into the maze of shelving.

“Get back here!” Twilight demanded indignantly, charging after the stranger. The bookshelves were dense and numerous, making maneuvering difficult – especially in the near-absolute blackness – but she was a unicorn on the ground, and her quarry a pegasus unable to use her wings. It should have been no contest.

But where had she gone?

The unicorn found herself in an unfamiliar part of the Archives, lit solely by three floor-to-ceiling windows that gave a spectacular view of the valley beneath Canterlot. The stars in the night sky were beautiful, and the full moon cast deep shadows across the room. The pegasus was nowhere to be found, though the chamber offered enough of a space between the bookcases and the vaulted ceiling that she could have managed a quick jump or two had she needed. As she glanced around, hoping to find the stranger again, she heard the sound of a trap door slamming from the back wall.

When she finally found the well-concealed trap door a few minutes later, she stopped herself; was she seriously about to follow an aggressive pony into an unfamiliar space without telling anypony where she had gone? Shaking her head at her own foalishness, she conceded victory to her opponent and backtracked to safer pastures, wincing as putting pressure on her injured foreleg sent pain shooting up her nerves. When she got back to the reading area, after enduring ten minutes of steadily growing discomfort from the wound, she finally brought the limb into her field of view for examination.

The puncture wounds from the bite had swollen around the edges, turning an angry red and weeping blood. The swelling was a bit abnormal for a pony bite, but it was nothing to write home about. Still, she realized she should probably clean and bandage it as soon as possible.

Floating the book she had sought into her saddlebag, Twilight trotted in the direction of the Archives’ exit, ready for some rest after the chase. An odd night, to be sure.

* * *

The sunlight never shone with quite the intensity it did elsewhere through the windows of Twilight’s bedroom. Her quarters in the palace were a bit opulent, certainly – done in silver and ebony, carpeted in midnight blue, with ceilings tiled with constellations and nebulae – but something about the windows made the morning sun seem dimmer. She didn’t mind too much – there was nothing worse than waking up to a blinding beam of solar fire drilling into your eye – but it had always puzzled her.

So, with the anemic sunlight glancing off her coat like dull arrows, Twilight Sparkle awoke to the smell of pancakes and syrup, courtesy of her familiar, friend, and assistant, Spike the dragon, whom she had hatched herself and earned the undying loyalty of. Had she not known what was on the other end of the scent, she could have laid there all morning; as it was, her stomach rumbled insistently even before Spike arrived to shake her awake.

“Twilight, breakfast!” Spike walked in, shaking her a bit roughly to get her up fully. “Pancakes, syrup, and blueberries.”

“That sounds wonderful, Spike. Be right out.” Twilight answered happily. She swung herself out of the bed as Spike left and promptly collapsed to the floor with a cry of pain as her foreleg gave out beneath her.

“Twilight! Are you okay?” Spike was at her side immediately. “Oh…that doesn’t look too good.”

The bite wound on Twilight’s leg had gotten worse; black streaks now rimmed the inflamed area, darkening her coat in a radius of almost a half-inch. “Ow.” The unicorn added, quite unnecessarily. It was apparent just from looking at it that it hurt immensely.

“What happened?” Spike asked, staring at the injury in awe. Would his bite ever do that kind of damage?

“Something bit me in the Archives last night.” She answered, reluctant to reveal that she had almost blinded a pony and been bitten in turn. “I should have washed it when I got back. Grab the first aid kit, please; I’ll be in the bathroom for a sec.”

Sitting in her room again, foreleg washed, dried and bandaged, Twilight and Spike considered the bite wound, Spike in jealousy, Twilight in concern. In truth, she had washed it when she returned from the Archives. Its condition had degraded rapidly since its infliction; she hoped that the pegasus hadn’t had any combat curses like the ones she had learned about last year placed on her. A necrosis-inducing bite would not be fun to deal with, though she doubted the injury would become necrotic.

Best to just continue on with my day. She decided. It’s nothing, just a bad bite. It’s taken care of and I shouldn’t bother anypony else about it.

The quick meal helped distract her from her injury, and she even got in a bit of practice with her anesthesia spell before leaving to meet with the Princess. She hoped it would be a good day despite the bite; more than that, she hoped she would meet this mysterious pegasus who had attacked her in the library again.