Chapter 19:
B.B.B.F.F.
Time stood momentarily still for Twilight Sparkle, embracing and embraced by her brother. He’d thrown a leg over her back, their necks were rubbing against one another and the tips of their horns clashed as if they were fencing. For a moment Twilight only sensed the joy of a long-overdue reunion, but then details about her brother started trickling into her awareness. The way his voice cracked as he laughed, the way his legs shook and the manner in which he looked at her through half-lidded eyes.
Shining Armor had to be close to fainting, judging by how tired he seemed. Twilight pulled out from under his leg and backed away so they were face to face. She studied him intently, still wearing a half-smile, concern flaring in her eyes.
“Big bro, are you all right? You look like you’re about to drop.”
Shining meant to flick his head in a gesture of nonchalance but the small movement caused him to lose his balance and stumble. When his legs regained equilibrium he stood for a moment, blinking dazedly, before half sighing, half yawning.
“I haven’t had much chance to sleep, Twily. Less than ten hours in the past four days... or was it five? It doesn’t matter. I sleep when I get the chance, but we’ve been so busy lately.”
Twilight noted the slight fumbling in her brother’s speech. She recognized it all too well: she had plenty of experience with the underlying state of mind. A sort of waking sleep, when you’d pushed your consciousness past breaking point and continued on until it seemed like a good idea again. In Twilight’s case this usually involved studying or nursing one of her paranoias. But her brother was the captain of the guard. She felt sorrow at his worn-out state and let it show on her face.
“Shining, you need sleep. When do you have to leave?”
Shining Armor sighed, not having the strength to meet his little sister’s gaze.
“Before midnight. Less than six hours, give or take.”
“And even though your whole body cries out for rest you come find your little sis?”
Twilight crooned her affection while she nuzzled his cheek. Then she pulled back and put a hoof under his chin, raising it until their eyes met. Her gaze held steel.
“B.B.B.F.F, you are going to get some sleep right now. You can crash on my bed; it’s closer than the barracks.”
“Aww but Twily, I wanted to talk to you! There’s so much—”
Twilight shushed him with a hoof over his lips and a grin on her face.
“Shining, just this once we can both have our cake and eat it. Trust me, will you?”
~~~~~
“Sis, this is amazing!”
Shining Armor looked around, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, at the familiar vista of Twilight’s favourite hilltop on a perfect summer day. Twilight simply grinned back at him and continued shaping clouds into historical figures.
“So, do you know this one?”
Armor squinted at the cloud. It showed an earth pony clutching a scroll and a telescope.
“Ummm, hang on, I got this... Tycho Bray?”
“Ooh, good guess but no.”
“Umm... Harness Stepler?”
Twilight gasped.
“You guessed it! Was it the telescope? I tried to make it as historically—”
“It’s because my little sister has lectured me on her favourite subject until I knew stars and astronomical figures better than the back of my eyelids.”
This made Twilight blush and stutter.
“I – I didn’t bore you, did I?”
“It was fun, honestly. Fun and oh so adorkable, Twily!”
Armor lay down in the grass and rolled onto his back. Twilight was giggling and blushing too much to speak so he used that to gain a moment to just think while gazing up at the gallery of cumulus astronomers.
“I keep thinking I should feel tired, but here I don’t feel sleepy at all. It’s weird.”
“Your spirit never sleeps and doesn’t need to rest in any normal sense. Isn’t it great? You’re getting a good night’s sleep while we’re having fun here in the spirit realm. I’ve got plans, you know: if I could design a spell that allowed me to take a couple of books with me to here then I could study while I slept! No more Twilight the Red-Eyed!”
Shining raised an inquisitive eyebrow at this, making Twilight chuckle and blush.
“Err yeah, my eyes get bloodshot sometimes, and the nickname was given by my friends. It’s their fun way of needling me when I go overboard with the studying.”
Shining gazed up at the clouds and smiled.
“I can see it now: Twilight the Red-Eyed! The greatest mind since Starswirl the Bearded! Inventor of the somnophobic spell! One for the history books!”
A hoof jabbed his side, making him cringe and laugh. Twilight harrumphed.
“Yeah, very funny.”
“No, seriously, Twi. Already this spell is great. If you actually manage to create a spell that lets you study while you sleep then scholars and magicians will likely sing your praises for all time.”
“Awww you think so? Well it’s true that the potential applications are very appealing. I just wish I could figure out why all of this magic has been kept in the Embargoed Texts.”
Shining Armor’s eyes flew up and he rocketed to a standing position, staring at Twilight.
“Did... did you say this magic came from Luna’s secret library?”
“Um... yes.”
He walked up to her and nuzzled her lightly on her forehead.
“Twily, please be careful. That library has a very bad history. I’ve read a log of all the ponies who’ve been granted access to it and it seems there’s something there that turns good ponies bad really quickly. Over a third of the names refer to classified documents in the palace guards’ archives.”
“There’s a log of visitors? I’ve never seen one.”
“The Princesses maintain it.”
Twilight narrowed her eyes and gazed into the distance, past her brother.
“Shining, would you mind if I read that log?”
“Huh? No, not at all. I guess you could—”
Twilight concentrated and a book appeared in front of her with little fanfare. It was quite plain, being smallish and black, though obviously of high quality. She looked down at it and then up at her stunned brother.
“This is the log, isn’t it? You see, I can fetch items from your memory if you are thinking of them. They’re not real, of course, but they are identical to the real thing.”
“Whoah.”
Twilight opened the book with her magic and started to page through the book, skimming the pages. Shining watched this for a while before clearing his throat.
“So, Twily.”
“Mmhm?”
“This library business. Can it have anything to do with the rumours I heard about you?”
Twilight’s ear twitched but she didn’t look away from the book.
“Twily, it seems the palace guards are frightened of you.”
That made her look up and let out an explosive, disbelieving guffaw.
“What?! Why?”
“Just rumours. It appears you and your friends were quite emotional when you first arrived. The rumours say your friends are dealing with it somehow, but you just went from a wreck to being totally calm. They say that at night you stalk the palace hallways with glowing eyes.”
“That’s ridiculous. You know me, Shining. Why would the palace guard be afraid of a pony with bad sleeping habits?”
“It’s mainly the thing with the eyes. I dismissed it as typical embellishment at first but there were some pretty insistent rumours about that.”
Twilight sighed and looked down at the book again. “I guess I’ll have to do something about the glow then.”
“I – hey – what. You mean your eyes do glow?”
This produced a snort and an irritated tail swish from Twilight.
“Yes! It’s annoying, but since it’s also apparently harmless it’s way, way down on my to-do list.”
“Well, why are they glowing?”
“I don’t know for sure. I haven’t had time to do much more than a little search in books of magical ailments and there’s this thing called eyefire that sometimes occurs when powerful mages stop maintaining some big enchantment and don’t cast any magic for a while; the magic that would have gone to the enchantment leaks from the eyes for a time before the body readjusts its intake. I don’t know what I’ve stopped maintaining, and I’ve been casting spells as usual, so it’s not a perfect match, but it’s all I’ve found.”
Shining thought this over in silence while Twilight continued reading. Suddenly her ears perked and she laid a hoof gently on a page.
“Shining, who’s Silver Gavel? I’ve never heard of that name. Only... This is Celestia’s handwriting, and she calls her ‘my faithful student’. There are also a lot of references to case files.”
“Yeah, that wording rang some bells for me too, so I checked out the references. She doesn’t exist anymore.”
“What do you mean ‘doesn’t exist anymore’?”
“I mean that the files in the palace guards’ archives are missing. I asked the archivist about that and he looked at me like I was holding a mageblade to his throat. I asked Princess Celestia about that and she looked like I’d shoved a spear through her sternum. Then she ordered me not to speak that name ever again. She’s been erased from history, Twilight.”
Twilight turned and looked towards Canterlot, deep in thought. Shining Armor sat down and watched her. Eventually she roused herself and turned to Shining with a smile.
“I haven’t even asked what you’ve been doing!”
Shining chuckled.
“I’ve been organising the rescue and evacuation efforts. Making sure the weather teams have cloths for their muzzles and goggles for their eyes. Sorting the train schedules. Making sure the ill and wounded are prioritized.”
“That has you so occupied you don’t have time to sleep?”
“Well, the situation keeps changing. Every so often the chaotic weather by the ash column makes a big push that the weather teams are unable to deflect, meaning another area becomes uninhabitable and another scattering of villages need immediate evacuation. Then we’ve discovered that some really, really small specks of ash have travelled over all of Equestria, carried on winds higher up where the pegasi can’t fly. There’s not really any place left now that hasn’t got at least a small amount of alien ash, which means I’m coordinating medical responses everywhere.”
Shining sighed before continuing.
“All of this I’ve actually delegated pretty efficiently to my lieutenants. Then suddenly a train of evacuees gets raided and many of the passengers are taken.”
“Moon and Sun, that’s horrible! Did they see what kind of creature it was? Griffon marauders? Changelings?”
Shining turned and stared into Twilight’s eyes.
“Ponies did it. Ponies attacked a train filled with tired and scared refugees, taking as many as they could before disappearing.”
“What? What kind of pony could do such a thing?”
“Witness accounts are pretty incoherent: most are simply too shocked by the event to be objective. But even then, when you try to dispel all the exaggerations and the inaccuracies, you are left with a few details. First, all of the raiders appeared to have ash-born injuries. Second, they were shouting battlecries referring to an ‘ash queen’ or to being reborn into eternal life. All it means is that over the past days I’ve had to scramble an actual military action to search for the missing refugees and post guards with every train so it hopefully doesn’t happen again. ”
“Hold on, Fluttershy ran into a pony raving on about ash and rebirth right here in Canterlot!”
Shining nodded.
“They’re probably connected. All of the major cities have reported ponies disturbing the peace by shouting frankly treasonous claims. It looks like there’s some sort of hostile cult out there that worships the ash, for some strange reason. After hearing what they’re capable of I’ve given standing orders not to try to apprehend them, but to chase them out of town. I still get reports from guards who try to play heroes and pay the price. I can’t fully blame them either. I’d love to get my hooves on one or two and ask some serious questions.”
“What about Lavender Leaf, the patient at Canterlot Hospital that tried to escape?”
“I read her file this morning. Claims not to know anything and isn’t very eager to talk anyway. Frankly, I’m tempted to ask if you could somehow use this spirit magic to interrogate ponies!”
“Well it—”
Twilight’s head snapped down at the black book lying in the grass. She blinked a couple of times, staring slack-jawed at it.
“What is it, Twily?”
Twilight lay down on the grass and covered her face with her forelegs. She groaned. “Stupid, stupid, stupid—”
“Hey, easy now, Twily. Don’t say that. What’s wrong?”
She removed her hooves and looked at her brother through watering eyes.
“You ask if spirit magic could be used to basically fetch information from ponies’ spirits! It’s a perfect idea, because the spiritual memory doesn’t forget! What’s worse, such a spell exists! Because I made it and just used it on you. I didn’t even for a second stop to think about the possible misuses of such a spell! Fetching knowledge from unwilling ponies would just take more magic! They wouldn’t even necessarily know it happened!”
“Um. I think we might have found a slight sliver of a clue why this magic is embargoed, Twily. I think it would be best if I didn’t ask for it after all. In fact, I’d ask you not to write it down anywhere.”
Twilight nodded and groaned again. Knowing the innermost secrets of everypony around you shouldn’t be so deceptively easy. Then she became aware of the grip of a magic aura around her and she opened her eyes just as she was thrown onto Shining Armor’s back.
“Enough worry! Time to play with my lil’ sis!”
“Hey mister! In case you haven’t noticed I’m no longer—”
There was something wrong with Twilight’s voice. It was pitched too high. In fact, she sounded like...
“—a foal?”
She looked down with creeping realisation at Shining’s suddenly huge back and her own stumpy legs, bouncing against his side as he galloped down the hill at break-neck speeds. She giggled and squealed from the thrill.
Here, in the spirit world, she could be the little filly Shining loved to play with – if he willed it and she let it happen.