Ponemurdered IX
“Canterlot Library,” Rainbow Dash announced loudly. Given, though, that the five friends from Ponyville were standing in front of the great library’s clearly marked front entrance, the declaration was a touch superfluous.
“You will never find a more illustrious trove of scrolls and literacy,” Rarity added, then shrugged. “So I’m told.”
“Well, this ain’t no time for pleasure readin’,” Applejack said. “Let’s quit yammerin’ and get to lookin’ for Twilight. Accordin’ to Spike, this was the last place she was headed to afore she disappeared.”
Without further ado, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy purposefully trotted through the heavy doors and into the main hall of the library. A single staircase wound from the first level up floor after floor around the perimeter of the atrium, to the highest level seven stories above. Featureless darkness could be seen through the glass at the top of the dome. At this late hour, the vast repository of literature and knowledge was nearly empty, save the most dedicated of patrons and a few diligent librarians.
“Alright! We’re here! Now let’s let our Elements do their thing and find Twilight! Woo-hoo!” Pinkie Pie shouted jubilantly.
“Quiet!” Rarity hissed, even as she cringed from a half dozen stern glares aimed in her direction. “This is a library!”
“Oh yeah, right,” Pinkie Pie replied. “Shy, care to help me out here?”
“Yay,” Fluttershy demurely cheered.
“Perfection,” whispered Pinkie, smiling.
“Well, I don’t know about you ponies, but I’m gonna go around the perimeter and see if I can get any kind of a sense from my Element that Twilight’s been here,” Rainbow Dash said. “Princess Celestia said we’d be able to track her with these babies.”
“Rarity and I can ask these here library folk if they’ve seen Twilight here recently,” Applejack volunteered.
“Um, Pinkie and I can search too,” Fluttershy said. “If we find anything, we’ll come find you.”
“And we’ll do it quietly,” Pinkie added, screwing what looked like an oversized metal drum onto the end of the blue party cannon she had procured from … somewhere.
“What in tarnation is—”
“Party silencer,” Pinkie explained, cutting Applejack off. “Designed for library and memorial service parties.”
“Let’s not tarry, Applejack,” Rarity said, and proceeded to drag the orange earth pony toward the information desk. The others set off in their own directions, and soon everypony was searching on high, on low, on high again, and then on low further still. Nopony could any trace of Twilight Sparkle.
That is, nopony found anything until Fluttershy began investigating the astronomy stacks. While perusing a polemic on pulsars, she noticed a faint glow emanating from the butterfly-shaped jewel on the necklace around her neck—her own Element of Harmony. As she moved further and further down the row of books—on to quasars, then redshift, the light grew brighter. Excited, Fluttershy took to the sky and summoned her friends to the section where she was searching.
“You think Twilight was here, Fluttershy?” Rarity asked.
“My Element reacted when I got to this section,” the butter yellow pegasus replied. “And it glowed brighter and brighter as I kept moving down the row. I’m sure she must have been here!”
“Twilight’s always reading books about space and stuff,” Rainbow Dash said, rolling her eyes. “How’s the fact that she was being as big an egghead as usual going to help us find her?”
“Well, for one thing, the book she was reading doesn’t sound very ‘Twilight Sparkly’ to me!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed, tapping a hoof against one particular tome that was protruding slightly from the shelves, as if it had been hastily replaced. As she did so, the others noticed that the blue balloon-shaped gem on her necklace was glowing brightly.
“Hey, that’s some fine detective work there, Pinkie,” Applejack declared.
“Written in the Stars—Popular Myths and Legends of the Cosmos,” Rainbow Dash read aloud. “Huh. Twilight almost never goes for that mythology stuff. I guess that is a little bit weird.”
“Maybe we should open the book and try to found out what she was reading about?” Fluttershy volunteered.
“Good idea!” Pinkie replied. She pulled the thick, dark blue book from the shelf and eagerly cracked it open. “Hey! This page has been nag-eared!” She declared, pointing to a corner of one page that had been folded down in order to mark a place. “Callously mutilating a page? Now that is really not very Twilight Sparkly!”
Pinkie Pie turned to the marked page. “The Curse of the Star Bargain,” she read. “What’s that? Ooh! I bet that star turns out to be not such a bargain after all, and this is like a consumer watchdog report or something.”
“C’mon, Pinkie,” Rainbow Dash grumbled, forcibly pulling the book out of the pink pony’s hooves. “Be serious for once. This is what Princess Luna was telling us about, and what Twilight must have been investigating. It says anypony foolish enough to make a pact with the stars shall gain terrible power, but at a great price: inch by inch, the stars will consume a pony who cannot fulfill the bargain.”
“Oh my goodness, that must be what Octavia did,” Fluttershy stated. “And Twilight tried to stop her! We’ve got to find her before it’s too late!”
Rarity, standing alongside Applejack a few steps away from the trio of Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Pinkie, who were clustered around the book, was the only one to notice a strange chill suddenly sweep through the library, and she was the only one to notice the book beginning to glow with a dark purple light.
“Get away from that book!” She shouted, but too late. The three ponies closest to the book appeared to squash, and stretch, and shrink, until they were suddenly pulled into the book, the pages of which were flapping madly. As the book fell to the library floor, Rarity and Applejack raced forward toward the spot where their friends had stood. Rarity felt a strange feeling coming over her, and before she could completely grasp the situation, her vision distorted, a wave of nausea strucki, and all went black.
********************************
When Rarity came to, the first thing she noticed was that the ground—rather, floor —actually, upon further consideration, deck, was rolling and shifting beneath her hooves. The next thing she noticed was the massive, barbed harpoon she levitated in the air next to her. Finally, she noticed off to port, a great ugly beast traversing her field of view. The Whale. For some reason, Rarity really hated that whale, and she was determined to kill it. She also felt like expounding, loudly, upon just how much she hated that blasted whale, and using particularly dramatic terminology to do so.
“Behold, the damnable thing, this hulk, this uncharitable leviathan. We shall lance it through, and close the lamentable chapter that marks its fiendish reign o’er these skies.” Rarity looked around her. “Harpooneers, where be ye?”
“Um, Rare?” Applejack asked, prodding her side. “Somethin’ is very wrong here.”
Rarity took in the brazen nakedness of the savage planted on the deck abeam her, exposed orange coat a challenge to the curse of shame and humility that all ponies must bear. “Ye speak to me, eh, and in mine own tongue?” Rarity asked. “The trappings of civilization you do wear well o’er thy barbarian hide. Nay, though, now is the wrong moment to find your voice, savage. Now you spill blood as thy heathen sisters do, as you were raised on the Celestia-forsaken atoll that spawned you! Find your courage and slay the beast! Make its celestial blood your ablution!”
“Whoa Nelly!” Applejack proclaimed, taking a few steps backward and away from Rarity, who was practically frothing at the mouth as she pranced madly across the rolling deck.
Applejack had many reasons to shout her mild epithet. For one, she was standing on the deck of an airship, thousands of pony lengths above the security of the earth below. For another, some sort of immense flying monster, that looked very much like a whale, except for much larger and seemingly made of glimmering, twinkling lights, was circling the ship. Finally, Rarity was acting as if she was out of her mind, more so than usual.
“I shall cast my harpoon into it’s black heart and watch until the last drop of life escapes its carcass!” Rarity shouted. “So it shall be my legacy, my epigraph!”
“Is this … aw, horseshoes,” Applejack muttered. “This is that durn curse’s work, or I’ll be a fruit bat’s auntie.”
It was pretty obvious that Rarity was pretending to be Captain Hayhab from the classic novel by Mareville—after all, Applejack had just lent the unicorn her much-loved copy of the book last week. On the other hoof, Applejack was entirely certain that the whale in the book did not fly, and was, in fact, a whale, and not an airborne cosmological leviathan. This thing reminded Applejack of one of Twilight’s stories, about the furious sea monster that became a constellation. Could it be that the curse sent them into a story from the book of star legends, and put a twist on it based on what literature Rarity was thinking of?
As she ducked under a flying harpoon, Applejack noted that, while she didn’t know much about evil library magic, she did know a little something about Rarity and overacting, and she thought she had better figure out a way to get them both out of here, and fast.
Applejack called out, “Rarity, I think I figured out what happened! Hey, Rarity!”
“Is Rarity, Rarity? Is it I, Celestia, or who that lifts this arm?” Rarity cried out. “If the sun does not move itself, but is but an errand cob, set about its way; how then can this one heart beat, and this one brain think, unless Celestia does that beating, does that thinking, and not I? Are we not turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Celestia the handspike? Who does put this cutie mark on my flank, and condemn me to these endless leagues, these empty skies? Who?”
Applejack just stared, slack-jawed, as Rarity raced over to the rail and hurled another harpoon at the enormous celestial whale.
The flying whale-like monster, for its part, was clearly beginning to get riled up. Electricity arced, sparked, and crackled along its length, and the winds were picking up as it grew more agitated. The airship was being tossed about like a leaf in the wind, and it was all Applejack could do to keep her balance and avoid being pitched over the deck rail.
“Towards thee I gallop, thou bloated and most-unfabulous whale!” Rarity yelled. “To the last. I buck at thee. From Tartarus’ black heart, I stab at thee. For hate’s sake. I … well, I wouldn’t spit, really now … anyway … just die already, okay?” Rarity pulled another harpoon from a rack and loosed it into space.
“Rarity!”
“What, savage? Why do you not fight? Are you some tremulous thing, some coward, and not the great warrior I was promised? What? Speak!”
Applejack had had enough, and slapped a forehoof over Rarity’s left cheek.
“Snap out of it!” she shouted. “This is Applejack talkin’, Rare. I ain’t no harpooneer, and you ain’t no vengeful captain. We’ve been cursed!”
Rarity blinked, and raised a foreleg to touch her smarting cheek. “Cursed?” She looked around, eyes wide. “What in the world is going on, Applejack?”
“Rare!” Applejack lunged forward and squeezed the unicorn. “You’re back, as sure as I’ve got apples on my flanks!”
“Was I gone?” Rarity asked. “Why are we on an airship in the middle of a lightning storm, and what is that thing out there?”
“Right. Okay, brace yourself. Octavia set a trap, and now we’re stuck in a cursed fantasy conjured from the legends in that there star book Twilight was lookin’ at, and I s’pose from your thoughts too. Now we need to get outta here.”
“Aha. Of course. And do you have any thoughts on how we might accomplish that feat?”
“Um, well, this is like a story, right? Let’s just make up a happy ending.”
“A happy ending, to this?” Rarity asked, gesturing to the maelstrom and monster.
“I dunno, improvise!” Applejack exclaimed, rearing back and throwing up her forehooves in exasperation. “You’re the creative one. You fix this!”
At that moment, the star whale fired a bolt of lightning at the airship, and a stack of extra balloon-cloth stored on the deck caught fire.
Rarity swallowed nervously. “Alright then. It seems we are about to learn whether desperation is the mother of inspiration, Applejack.”
********************************
“As Daring trekked through the densely-forested taiga, the intense cold of the high latitude sapped her strength and slowed her every hoofstep … wait, is this how all of these start? Ugh, boring! I’m going off-script. What? You’re telling me I have to read this? My contract? Oh, come on! This is the worst magical curse ever!”
“What’s going on? Are you narrating, Pinkie Pie?” Fluttershy asked. “And are we in a Daring Do story? Oh my gosh! That sounds really dangerous.”
“Oh, hi Fluttershy,” Pinkie said, her voice seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. Then, Fluttershy heard the sound of rustling paper and pages being flipped. “Um, well, I’m just looking ahead here. Okay, got it. The script says the curse picks one of us and uses that pony’s thoughts and dreams to create a hallucinatory prison from which there can be no escape. There’s something about incorporating monsters and stuff from the star legends book too.”
“M-m-monsters?” Fluttershy asked, addressing the jungle around her as she shrunk down and covered her face with a wing. “What kind of monsters? Where’s Rainbow Dash? I need Rainbow Dash!”
“Well, if you’ll let me continue,” Pinkie said, then cleared her throat loudly. “Ahem. If Daring was ever going to have a chance at getting the star chalice back to its rightful place in the museum, she was gonna have to get past … whoa … the dreaded Ursa Major guarding it!”
“Aw. yeah!” shouted Daring Dash, zooming down from somewhere high above and landing heavily in the clearing next to Fluttershy. “Time to kick some astronomy!”
“Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy exclaimed, and threw her forelegs around the other mare.
“Whoa there!” Dash exclaimed, forcibly extricating herself from Fluttershy’s embrace. “I hired you as a native guide, Betelnut, not because I wanted to get all touchy-feely with somepony.”
“Who?” Fluttershy asked. “What’s going on?”
“It says the curse makes whoever’s mind generates the environment believe they are a character in the story,” Pinkie explained. “Anyway … thanks to some quick thinking on the wing, and a couple of well-timed barrel rolls, Daring Dash had managed to return from her scouting trip in one piece, and with quite a story to tell about the beast she had seen.”
“An Ursa Major, can you believe it?” Dash asked. “This thing is huge, Betelnut! I mean, it’s like a walking mountain or something! I saw the entrance to the Chasm of Trials behind it, though, and it’s so big I bet we can fly past without it even seeing us! Then we can pick up the star chalice and I can get some well-deserved R&R. Now, let’s go get that cup!”
“Um, I really think we should try to find a way out of here first,” Fluttershy offered meekly.
“Out of here? What? Are you going yellow on me or something, Betelnut?” Dash demanded, then carefully looked Fluttershy over from snout to tail. “Oh, well, whatever. Anyway, we’re going.”
“But I don’t-—eeee!”
In one swift motion, Dash ducked under Fluttershy’s hindquarters and lifted the other pegasus up onto her back, then took to the sky with a single powerful beat of her blue wings.
“Pinkie PIe, do something!” Fluttershy shouted. “I don’t think even Daring — mean Rainbow Dash can fight an Ursa Major!”
“What can I do?” Pinkie Pie asked, from nowhere.
“How should I know? You’re the narrator! Skip ahead, make something up, whatever! Quick!”
In the distance, the Ursa Major loomed enormous, a great mass of purple starstuff towering over the frigid landscape. Daring Dash did not deviate, but flew straight toward its maw.
********************************
“So I just crossed out the word “Ursa” in the script, and wrote “drum!” And then we had a big parade down main street!” Pinkie bounced up and down with glee.
“Wow, that there was a nice bit o’ thinkin’, Pinkie Pie,” Applejack said.
“Thanks! It was pretty much the best Daring Do story ever.”
“Uh, you know what just happened is totally not canon with the real Daring Do books, right?” Rainbow Dash asked, eyeing Pinkie suspiciously.
“Did you say cannon?” Pinkie Pie asked excitedly, and before anypony could stop her, she had pulled out party cannon and depressed the firing button. To everypony’s surprise, rather than a loud bang a burst of confetti, the only effect was a small flag with the word “hooray!” printed on it that silently emerged from the barrel.
“Oh yeah, party silencer,” Rainbow Dash observed appreciatively. “Neat.”
“What about you and Rarity?” Fluttershy asked. “How did you defeat the curse and get out of the book?”
“Really, I’m not sure the story is even worth telling,” Rarity offered with a forced smile. “Once dear Applejack came to understand the nature of the curse, its power was broken.”
“It was kind of a blur,” Applejack added. “I remember clickin’ my hooves together and whisperin’, ‘there ain’t no place like home’ a few times.”
“I was envisioning my own twist ending to the tale,” Rarity said.
“And I guess the whale was wishin’ he was someplace else to, because next thing we knew the three of us was in a giant mud puddle back at Sweet Apple Acres, and those twins from the spa were there givin’ us all facials.”
“For a semitransparent space oddity, I must say that astral whale really had lovely pores,” said Rarity. “At any rate, I believe some end titles rushed past, and then we appeared back here in the library. As I said, not much a story. Oh, and I believe I’ve found something interesting here. If I am not mistaken, there is a second marked page in the book.”
“Whoa! Put that thing down!” Rainbow Dash shouted, and swatted the book out of Rarity’s hooves. “It’s cursed, remember?”
“Nonsense,” Rarity replied, and used her telekinesis to lift the book to a comfortable reading elevation. “That spell is broken, and thus, dissolved. It is perfectly safe now.”
“Fine, but if you get sucked back in there, I’m not going after you.
“Me neither!” Applejack said, shaking her head.
“What’s it say?” Fluttershy asked, moving to peer over Rarity’s shoulder.
“It’s another entry, about a legendary haunted castle,” Rarity said, and read from the entry: “It is said that the Heavenspire, sacred castle of the ancient priestly caste of unicorns, still stands at the edge of the haunted shore of the Sea of Sorrow, far from present-day Equestria. In the olden times, dreadful sacrifices were made there at the Altar of the Sun, Moon, and Stars, in order to maintain the unicorns’ dominion over night and day.” Rarity gasped. “Dear Celestia, how horrible! It says that it was in that very castle that the very star bargain was struck, which almost led to the downfall of ponykind!”
“A star bargain - just like Octavia’s,” Rainbow Dash said, gritting her teeth.
“Twilight must have marked this page for us to see,” Applejack said. “I bet bits to bridles that Octavia’s holed up in that there castle, and that she’s got Twilight as her prisoner. We need to find this place, and fast!”
“How are we ever gonna find some legendary castle, especially one that isn’t even in Equestria?” Rainbow demanded.
“We could try this legendary map!” Pinkie Pie proclaimed, bounding over with a tattered and yellowed papyrus scroll balanced on the tip of her nose. “I found it in the cryptocartography section.”
“Goodness, Pinkie Pie, you’ve done it!” Rarity exclaimed, after unrolling the scroll and levitating it for all to see. “We can set off at once to rescue Twilight!”
“We’d better get a move on,” Applejack said. “Y’all heard what Princess Luna said before we left: a star bargain exacts a terrible toll on the pony who makes it, but it also grants terrible power. Octavia’s maybe even stronger’n Twilight herself right now, and if she’s got our friend, there ain’t no way to know what she might do to her.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Rainbow Dash broke in. “Let’s go get our Twilight back!”
********************************
With a soundless flare of light, Octavia appeared in an empty storeroom in one of the lower levels of Canterlot Castle, her cello in its case beside her. Only the light of the moon, shining through a few small windows, shed any illumination on her mundane surroundings. This forlorn vacant chamber was the perfect place from which to launch a coup.
In the dim moonlight, Octavia looked at her extremities with distaste, at the hooves that used to play such beautiful music. Now, barely visible, shimmering with captured starlight, they were instruments of pain and torture. The effect was spreading faster now, creeping up her legs to her body. The more she did to uphold her part of the bargain, the more the voice from the stars seemed to be taking control. If she did not complete her part of the pact soon, the proof of the fate that awaited her was becoming more clear by the day.
A thousand leagues away, Twilight Sparkle lay where Octavia had left her, restrained on the altar in the star chamber, thrashing and turning as she fell from one nightmare realm of Octavia’s conjuring to the next, all the while unaware that her physical body was held by nothing more than a few flimsy restraints and knots that she could have used her magic to undo in a second, if she were conscious of them.
The unicorn would never have a chance to escape. The power of the star bargain was too great for anypony to challenge. Even Celestia herself was soon going to bow in the presence of a more awesome and terrible force than she could hope to overcome. Then, it would be time to complete the ritual.
Octavia opened her case and examined her instrument one more time, to be sure. She rosined up her bow, and plucked a single string just to hear the sound resonate against the bare stone around her. Perfect pitch. Perfect tone. Practice had made perfect, and now Octavia was prepared for the performance of her life.
***