2
"Don't come any closer!" the doctor shouted. Her coat was a shocking blue-and-yellow combination that kind of hurt my eyes. Poor mare. Her voice was shrill. "I'll— I'll call security!"
"Calm down," I said, trying to keep my voice calm. "I don't mean you any…"
My forelegs suddenly turned to jelly and I stumbled. The doctor pony gasped and scrambled away from me. My vision tunneled.
I concentrated and took a deep breath. The world came back into focus.
The doctor's gaze turned from fear to concern in heartbeat. "Are you alright?" she asked.
"I have no idea what just happened," I mumbled in between slow, deep breaths. "The last thing I remember is—"
I paused, suddenly acutely aware I had broken pretty much the only law I had been given, but then realized that they had to have found down there to begin with.
"— tumbling down the side of the pit," I finished.
"Tumble nothing," the doctor said. "We found you stone cold dead… or at least I thought you were. I didn't detect any heartbeat or breathing, and your legs were fractured in over a hundred places."
"I feel fine," I said. "Just a little dizzy."
The doctor's brow furrowed. "I've heard of cases where people who die of hypothermia can sometimes be revived hours later after they warm up, but… I'm certain of your internal injuries. Even if you weren't dead, you shouldn't be on your hooves. Sit there. I'm going to examine you."
I sat, still dazed, as the doctor looked inside my mouth, shined a light into my mouth, and checked my pulse. As the time passed, I began to feel more myself. I suddenly became aware of the golden chair around my neck.
"Hold on," I said. The doctor paused. "Why didn't you remove my necklace?"
The doctor's eyes flitted downwards in surprise.
"I… what? Where did you get that?"
I blinked. "I was always wearing it. I don't think I've taken it off except to shower for the whole time I've been here."
"What is it?" the doctor asked.
"I think it might have had something to do with my survival," I said. "It's a fragment of Tantalus' phylactery."
The doctor took a step back in shock, her eyes going wide.
"I… I think I need to call the overseers. Will you follow me? Can you walk?"
I stood up gingerly and was relieved to find my legs had stopped shaking. "Yeah, I think so."
There were sterile, metal stairs leading up and out of the morgue. For the first time, I realized the walls were solid— not canvas. There was only two permanent buildings in the encampment— the medical clinic and the overseer's office. We must be in the basement of the clinic.
We reached top of the stairs and walked down a narrow hallway before we opened out into the icy wasteland. The sun was down and bands of pale green light snaked their way across the sky. It was kind of beautiful.
The overseer's office was a low, wide, hastily constructed building. Plaster was chipping off the walls, and the few windows there were were cracked or missing entirely. I'd only ever seen it from a distance, but I actually felt sorry for the overseer, having to live in that place.
The door couldn't even slide open properly. As we approached it, the door began a shuddering slide into the wall, only to stop halfway through. We squeezed through it into a dingy, dusty hallway. The lights were off, meaning that I could only see a few feet into the hallway before it faded into darkness. It wasn't even heated. My breath formed a wispy mist in front of me.
"This is really the overseer's office?" I said. I was working hard to keep my teeth from chattering— it felt like the cold had suddenly hit me.
"No," the doctor assured me. "The overseer's office is much nicer than this. They just built this thing way bigger than they needed or something so they only bother keeping a couple rooms nice. "
As if on cue, a door to our right slid open, and light and heat flooded the hallway. The overseer, a minty green earth pony named True North, stuck her head out of the room.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, her voice tinged with irritation.
"You really need to see this," the doctor responded.
I'm getting really sick of calling her "the doctor". I don't even actually know if she was a doctor. Do doctors do autopsies?
I wish I had asked her.
True North looked me up and down.
"Who's this?"
"This is Spectrum," the doctor said. "The one we found… near the artifact."
True North's eyes widened. "The dead one?"
"So they tell me," I said.
"Give me just a minute."
The door slid shut and I could hear the sounds of papers being moved around and drawers opening and closing. When she opened the door again, she was wearing a small saddlebag.
“Come inside, then.”
I followed her through the door into her office, which was bathed in warm, yellow light. And when I say warm, I mean literally warm. The light in the center of the room wasn't the single, bare electrical bulb I'd gotten used to, but a tiny, luminous ball of light and heat, suspended in the middle of three dark blue crystals embedded into the wall. I'd enchanted crystals like that before— they were mostly used for ostentatious wealthy types. I was very surprised to see one here.
The room was decorated modestly but very comfortably. A deep brown mahogany desk sat directly facing the door, and a large bookshelf stood to my left, full of books on the arctic.
"So, how do you feel?" True North asked me, as the door slid shut behind me.
I opened my mouth to respond, but the doctor stepped in front of me and cut me off.
"I examined him in the morgue. He seems to be in perfect health. He doesn't even have any injuries."
"I didn't ask you," True North snapped. The doctor took a step back.
"I… feel fine," I said, confused. "A little bit weak and dizzy when I first woke up, but I feel normal now. Wh—"
I stopped short as the light in the room suddenly flared bright and died.
I heard a sharp exhale from True North, the scratching of a hoof against a wall, and then the yellowish light of an electric bulb flared to life.
"Sorry about that," she said, sounding more irritated than apologetic. "I knew the thing was bound to go out any day now. Nothing magical worth a damn lasts around here anymore—"
True North froze in place and turned back to me. "How's your spellcasting?"
"Fine, I guess," I said. "I haven't really tried anything recently."
"Can you recharge the crystals in the ceiling?"
"Sure."
I focused on the dark blue crystals in the ceiling and my horn began to glow. Resetting enchantments on crystals is always easier than enchanting them for the first time— though the enchantment never lasts as long the second time around.
In a few moments, the crystals flashed and the orb of light flickered back to life.
"Was that difficult at all?" True North asked.
"Not really," I said with a shrug. "I've been doing this a long time."
True North looked at me shrewdly and said, "I think I need to tell you a few things. Follow me."
"You too," she added to the doctor, making her jump.
True North turned towards the book shelf on the far wall and said something in a language I didn't recognize. Probably the old language. I was never much into ancient history. Back then, anyway.
The bookshelf slid to the site like something out of an old movie, revealing a sterile steel cargo elevator. The three of us stepped inside, and True North hit one of the buttons.
The cargo elevator was smooth, but it was going down very quickly. I almost felt as though I was going to lift off the ground. Well, until the end, when I felt like my knees might buckle under the g-forces.
The door slid open, revealing a somewhat disappointingly small room. On the far side was a huge glass pane looking into another, larger room, like an observation room. I couldn’t get a sense of the size of the room because the walls were shrouded in darkness.To our right was a door, which I presumed lead to the lower level.
"Go look down there," True North said, gesturing with her head towards the observation window.
The doctor and I trotted towards the glass. The room was dark. As far as I could tell, there was nothing in it.
"What exactly am I supposed to be looking at?"
“Bring up the lights,” True North ordered. A monitor beneath the glass window flashed green and floodlights illuminated the space beyond the window.
The room beyond was recessed about 30 feet below us. The walls were stark, featureless metal. Evidently, the room wasn’t heated, as ice was forming in patches along the walls.
At least, that was what I thought until I saw what was in the center of the room. As the last of the floodlights kicked on, I could see that, resting on a small pedestal, was the strange crystal that had been my last sight when life had left my body for the first time. The strange symbols were still visible on the surface, but they weren’t glowing. They were rippling slowly over the jet black surface.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” True North said in hushed tones. “We brought it down here after we found you. We’ve run all sort of tests on it, but how it reacts to us is not nearly as interesting as what it does on its own. Follow me.”
She walked over to the door at the right wall and it slid open to reveal a similarly sterile steel stairway.
“What exactly is going on here?” the doctor said.
I jumped. She had been so quiet I had kind of forgotten she was there.
True North froze for a moment before turning to look at us once more.
“As far as we can tell, short-term exposure has no long lasting effects.”
“How can you possibly know that?” the doctor protested. “It was discovered two days ago! You brought it in here less than 24 hours ago! And it clearly had a lasting effect on Spectrum!”
For just a second, I saw a look of confusion pass over True North’s face. I thought for a second she might turn us around right there— but as quickly as it appeared, it vanished, replaced by a small smile.
“Well, I’m fine, aren’t I? she said. “Besides, you won’t believe the things it can do. You’re curious about Spectrum aren’t you?”
The doctor shuffled her front hooves. I saw her eyes dart towards the door, but she eventually trotted to my side.
I don’t remember what color her eyes were.
True North trotted down the stairs, and we followed close behind.
Let me maybe give you some context for why I was following this sinister pony: This wasn’t the first time I’d seen True North. She was my boss.We hadn’t directly interacted, but I saw her in the mess hall getting her meals along with everypony else. The outpost wasn’t huge— 100 ponies, max. She also was the one that gave the pre-recorded announcements— so it wasn’t as though she was a total stranger. Not to mention I was pretty much still in complete shock over, you know, dying. That’s not something a pony just walks away from. Usually. I wanted to know what had happened to me.
Our hooves clanked obnoxiously on the metallic staircase— the room seemed to reflect the sound of each hooffall back at us,
The door at the bottom was thick and covered in rivets. It reminded me of a bank vault.
I guess it wasn’t locked, or something, because True North just pushed it over and we trotted into the viewing area.
The artifact was smaller than it had looked from above. It looked like frozen lightning, if that was possible— all jagged edges. It was just a little bit too large to easily fit in one of those big saddlebags they use for hiking.
It seemed to respond to us when we entered the room. The symbols lining the surface began to glow ever-so-slightly red. If True North found anything unusual about this, she didn’t say anything.
“We’re calling it the lodestone,” True North began, “because of its most obvious property— it’s magnetic. But that’s probably its least interesting property. Spectrum, have you noticed anything odd about this room yet? You should.”
I glanced around the room. Aside from the glowing black crystal, the terrified-looking pony in scrubs, and the imposing, grey-white unicorn standing near her, I didn’t notice anything strange.
Wait. Crystals... that was it! All of the lights— all of them— were bulky, inefficient, incandescent bulbs. Not a single one of my crystals glowed above our heads.
“It’s all electric,” I said. “There’s no magical devices running down here.”
“Good!” True North said. “Very astute. You’re correct. As soon as we brought it down here, our magical devices began to fail. Not just that— watch this.”
True North’s horn began to glow— and then, just a moment later, the glow faded.
“What was that?” I asked, confused.
“Magic just doesn’t work near it. We have no idea why or what’s going on— if its somehow dampening magic or actually absorbing it— but even that isn’t its most interesting abillity.”
She walked right up to it and stared at the glossy black surface of the lodestone.
“There’s something here that I can’t understand...” she said. “You’re connected to it. When you died, it let off a huge amount of energy, the likes of which we’ve never seen before. We haven’t been able to replicate it since.”
She craned her neck around and undid the strap on the saddlebag.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“Just look at it,” she said. “We haven’t been able to get any result out of it, but the moment you walked in, it lit up. We need to study the lodestone, and to do that, we need to study you.”
Her brow furrowed, and with what seemed to be concerted effort, a small syringe floated out of the saddlebag and hovered in mid-air.
“Woah,” I said, taken aback. “I don’t want any trouble, I can just—”
Before I finished my sentence, the syringe zipped through the air, jamming itself into my neck. A burning sensation crept from the injection site and diffused through my body in an instant. My legs began to quiver and spots appeared in my vision. Distantly, as though from the other end of a long tunnel, I heard the doctor gasp.
I don’t remember much after that. Whatever they gave me was strong stuff. I think I drifted in and out of consciousness for a while. I remember hearing occasional snippets of conversations. Bright lights. Something clamped around my horn. The sight of blood snaking up a tube..
The first thing I can remember clearly is taking a sudden, deep breath, and pain. A deep, throbbing pain in my head, as though I’d been smashing my head into a wall for the last twelve hours. My eyes were closed, but i could sense I was lying on my back.
I tried to raise my hoof to rub my aching head, but it felt heavy. So heavy, in fact, that I seemed unable to lift it at all.
I opened my eyes a crack. I couldn't see much— just a sliver of light. My eyes stung.
I blinked. The world came into slightly sharper focus. I could tell I was still in the underground observation room— the lodestone, glowing brilliant red now, was directly ahead of me.
As my senses came back online, the dull pain in my head got more intense, and a new pain appeared in my leg.
I blinked again and the world came into focus. I was strapped to a table— my legs splayed out to either side, held on by leather straps. In my right foreleg was an IV.
In the time I had been out of it, a collection of what looked like scientific instruments had been erected around me. Most of them were pointing towards the lodestone— but more than a few were trained on me. I could tell at a glance they were top-notch equipment— the technology of the Stalliongrad refugees and their children had a distinctive flare to it, clean lines and shiny black metal, and it was the best available.
The lodestone itself looked... angry, if that makes sense. The red light radiating off it was intense and came in pulses about thirty seconds apart. It was bright, too, as though somepony had taken a blowtorch to it and heated it until it was about to melt.
The strange writing swirled across the surface like a swarm of insects, randomly changing direction and speed, making focusing on any one character for a length of time impossible. They also quivered and warped, as though the crystal was full of liquid that the letter were floating on, and something beneath it was disturbing the flow.
I struggled against my bindings, but they were tight, and whatever drug they had given me had really done a number on me. Hell, I felt worse than when I was dead! My throat was dry. My muscles ached. All of them. It even hurt to blink. It shouldn’t ever hurt to blink! Just about the only thing that didn’t hurt was my skin, which felt numb and tingly.
I concentrated, turning my focus inwards. I felt magic well up within me. Maybe I could undo whatever was fastening the straps to the table...
Instantly a jolt shot from my horn and shot through my like I had been struck by lightning. Whatever had been clamped around my horn seemed to inhibit magic.
“Hello?” I shouted, my voice hoarse. “What’s going on?”
I wasn’t expecting answer. To my surprise, I got one.
To my left, out of my field of view, I heard the sound of the heavy iron door scraping along the floor. In my addled state, my first thought was that that seemed like a significant design oversight.
It was the doctor pony. She was wearing a surgical mask, but her rather garish color combination left no doubt in my mind.
“What happened?” I said.
“I shouldn’t talk to you,” she said. She grabbed a pencil off the table near me and began jotting down notes from a monitor i couldn't see.
“Why not? What am I gonna do?”
She looked back to me, and in that moment I saw a glimmer of concern in her eyes.
My brain kicked into action. I knew she was probably the only chance I had of escape.
“I just want to know what’s going on. I don’t feel great,” I said, which was true.
She glanced at the observation window, then shuffled closer. “I can’t talk long. True North is keeping you here to study the lodestone. You have some sort of magical connection. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for a couple of days.”
“What?” I said in disbelief. I did not feel as though I had been unconscious for a couple of days. What the hell did they inject me with?
“The lodestone drains magic,” she continued. “We don’t know how or why, but anything that comes near it doesn’t last long. Pegasi temporarily lose their ability to walk on clouds after about forty-five minutes of continuous exposure, and unicorns generally have extreme difficulty casting even simple spells. I’m amazed True North even managed to hit you with that syringe of paxathol.”
Oh. One mystery solved, I guess. Hooray.
“Anyway,” the doctor continued, “you seem to be a special case. The lodestone tries to siphon your magic, but it’s almost as if it can’t process it. The magic it siphons off seems to just dissipate and you seem to replenish it instantly. In fact, left alone with you, the lodestone seems to actually funnel energy into you, a trait we’ve not observed in any other individual. We—”
She cut herself off and looked at me and I saw shame in her eyes.
“True North ordered me to drain your blood. We did. All of it. You died for the second time in the early hours of this morning. The second you died, the lodestone began to give off huge amounts of magical radiation, the likes of which we’ve never seen before, all pouring directly into you. This continued until a few minutes ago when you woke up.”
Oh. I guess I did feel this bad when I came back from the dead. And I had done it again. I tried to push those thoughts out of my mind.
“You have to let me out,” I said, trying to keep the panic I felt from creeping into my voice.
“I can’t,” she said. “They’ll kill me.”
“Then come with me,” I said. I was making this up on the fly. “We can escape together. They can’t kill me, and my magic still works! I have an advantage!”
The doctor didn’t move. I played my last, desperate card.
“Please, I can tell you know this isn’t right! Something’s wrong with True north. Probably something this artifact did! Letting me out is the right thing to do. I’m scared.”
That did it. She walked over and began fiddling with the straps that bound me to the table.
As they came loose, I felt a rush of relief. I slid off the table and the device fastened around my horn was yanked off with a sensation like a static shock. I was free.
“Is there anyone else down here?” I asked.
“Not when I came down,” she said, “but there could possibly be more in the observation room. True North didn’t want most to know about the project.”
“Let’s get going, then,” I said, making my way towards the door.
“Wait!” the doctor shouted. I froze.
“We have to take it with us,” she said, looking at the lodestone. “we can’t leave it in True North’s clutches. She’s unhinged. But you seem to be immune to it! You can take it and hide it somewhere safe!”
I paused. I didn’t want to take it with me. Just looking at the thing made me uncomfortable. But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized she was right. There was something strange going on with me and that crystal, and I had to figure it out. I couldn’t leave it here.
I quickly trotted over to it and levitated it into the air. Remarkably, it took very little energy to do so— this thing was light, almost as if it was hollow inside.
I gingerly floated it down and onto my back. It was was sharp and cumbersome, but bearable.
“How am I going to keep this thing on?” I asked.
The doctor responded by wrapping one of the straps that had kept me held down on the table around and around my midsection until I felt the lodestone tighten against me and heard the clasp fasten with a click.
“There you go,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
We made our way into the stairwell and back up to the level with the large glass window.
“Are there no stairs?” I asked as the doctor pressed the button to call the elevator.
“No,” she said. “I have no idea why.”
The elevator doors slid open a moment later to reveal a mercifully empty elevator car. I squeezed my way through the narrow door, trying not to bump the lodestone against anything. The doctor came in next and the car shuddered upwards.
When we arrived at the top level, the doctor stuck her head out of the car first, then gave me the all clear to proceed.
True North’s office was a mess. Papers were strewn over the floor and most of the furniture had been moved to the walls— I assume to make room for when they hauled the equipment down.
“Wait here,” the doctor said. “There’s something I have to get.”
I nodded and she left down the dark hallway.
The room was eerie by myself. The crystals that had given off light previously were dark, and the room was lit by a stark, bare electric bulb. Wires hung loosely off the ceiling and walls and snaked out of sight.
A shaped moved at the door.
A young grey pony dressed in a white lab suit walked into the room.
Our eyes met.
I don’t know what possessed me to act. Maybe it was the lodestone, thought I doubt it. More likely it was pure nerves.
I lunged forward as the scientist opened her mouth to shout— to raise the alarm, I imagine. I slammed into him and knocked him into the wall. Before he could stabilize himself, I pivoted on my front legs and brought my back ones up into his face with a sickening crunch.
I didn’t mean to hit him so hard. I didn’t know I even had that strength. He collapsed to the ground, twitching, a pool of blood spreading out from the fissure I had created in his skull.
I backed up quickly, leaving bloody hoofprints on the floor. I couldn’t believe what I had just done!
Suddenly the rush of adrenaline wore off and my body felt as though it weighed a thousand pounds. I felt vomit rise at the back of my throat, but I turned away from the body and pushed it down.
That’s when I felt it.
The lodestone was getting hot. So hot, in fact, that I thought it might burn me. I couldn’t see it, but it was giving off brilliant red light. And then...
A blinding flash of light, and tingling sensation in my back, and it was over.
I looked around to try and see what had happened, but I didn’t notice anything different. At least, until I noticed the body
It wasn’t twitching anymore. Instead, it was lifting itself of the ground, slowly, unsteadily.
For a moment, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. I hadn’t killed him! The lodestone didn’t just bring me back, it brought anypony back! It was okay!
It was at that moment that the doctor came back into the room. Clasped in her mouth was the small, blue crystal shard on a chain that I had been given on my birthday.
“I brought this back for you,” she said, she voice muffled by the chain. “I hope— ah!”
She dropped the chain as she saw the scientist getting to his hooves.
“No, it’s okay!” I said. “He saw me and things got out of hand, but the lodestone brought him back! It’s alright!”
He opened his eyes. They were glassy, unfocused. Dead. For a moment, they trained on me. The gash in his head was still gouting blood.
I’m not proud of what I did next. When I saw that, I knew something was wrong. I knew he hadn’t been brought back. Not correctly, anyway.
I did nothing.
I stood there as he turned to the doctor.
I watched her drop the crystal and scream as she saw the nightmarish face of the pony I had killed.
I watched him bite her neck, tearing off a huge chunk of flesh. He didn’t eat it. it just fell to the ground.
I stood there, paralyzed with fear, as she bled out on the ground.
Another tingly sensation. Another blast of light. She got back up.
I backed towards the far wall as they both turned to face me. I was sure I was next.
Instead, they turned and made their way into the dark, drafty hallway.
This time, I did throw up. Tears began to well in my eyes and I sobbed.
I don’t know how long I lay there like that. Probably hours. The lodestone flashed again every few minutes, though with less intensity every time. I heard sounds of shouting— very faint ones— coming from outside.
Eventually it stopped. The lodestone didn’t flash anymore and I didn’t hear any sounds coming from outside.
I got up slowly. I didn’t want to. I didn’t feel like I deserved to. I had killed that innocent scientist. I had indirectly gotten the doctor that had saved my life killed too. Actually, no— death would have been kinder than whatever they were now. And I had done that. Me.
I trotted over to the necklace on the ground and slipped it around my neck. The gem felt strangely warm— not hot, like the lodestone, but a comforting kind of warm, like a warm fire.
I made up my mind then. I was going to run, get as far away from civilization as I could, and ditch the lodestone. Bury it back in the ice or something. Then I’d figure out what to do with myself.
I made my way down the hallways carefully, but there was nothing there for me to worry about besides the chill blowing in from the open door at the far end of the hallway.
Outside, however, was like something out of a horror movie. Splatters of blood were everywhere, staining the slush in between the tents red.
For a moment, I was mystified at the fact that there were no bodies. Blood everywhere, bits of fur, maybe, but I couldn’t see any carnage.
I heard what sounded like hammering in the distance, over by the pit, and squinted in that direction.
I could see ponies moving around out there, milling about at the mouth of the pit. The hammering sound I was hearing was from one of them smashing his head into the side of a tree over and over. Some of them were dragging sticks around and arranging them in geometrical patterns. Most of them were just milling about aimlessly.
I was too far away to make out any details, which was probably for the best. I had no doubt their injuries were gruesome.
I’m not proud to say I didn’t bother to look for any survivors. I didn’t even head back to my room to try and salvage any supplies. I just ran away from the pit.
It was night out, and the moon was high in the sky, meaning I couldn’t really see anything out in the distance to run towards. There was the road leading out of camp, but I didn’t want to bring the lodestone closer to civilization.
As I made my way through the thin forest that surrounded the camp, I tried not to think about what had just transpired. My brain felt numb. It was like I was walking through a thick fog that blocked all my emotions. I had a profound sense of unreality.
Before too long, I found a small clearing in the forest. In the center was a small pit surrounded by rocks. I guessed it was the remains of an old fire pit.
Of course, this didn’t really help me as I didn’t know how to make a fire.
I curled up on the thin layer of snow, shivering, and attempted to get to sleep. I thought about the doctor who had helped me, and the scientist I had killed. I thought about all the bodies I saw milling about the pit. I thought about the lodestone. What was it? How can it bring back the dead? How am I connected to it?
No, I told myself. It doesn’t do any good to think about that kind of stuff. I didn’t mean to kill anypony.
My dreams were troubled that night.
~~~
I awoke the next morning damp with snowmelt. The sun was high in the sky— I must have slept until at least noon.
I got up slowly and shook the water from my fur. The lodestone sat next to me. The glow was mostly faded from its surface and the letters were almost imperceptible.
In daylight, I could see where I was. I had walked through the forest towards the base of the mountain that was barely visible from the campsite. It was now looming over me, taking up everything I could see to what was, judging by the sun, the east.
I tried to turn back towards the fire pit when I found something tighten around my neck. The golden chain that held the fragment of phylactery was pulling me towards the mountain.
As I turned to follow it, I saw something strange. The crystal shard was floating in mid-air before me, pulling me inexorably towards the base of the mountain. I levitated the lodestone back to me and strapped it on and began to make my way in the direction the crystal indicated.
As the trees thinned, I could make out the features of the mountain better. Starting from its base, a beautifully carved white marble staircase wound up a mountain trail— leading to what looked like the ruined remains of a castle overlooking a brilliant frozen waterfall.
Rubble was strewn about on the ground between the edge of the forest and the stairs. Most of it was uninteresting— stone blocks, scraps of metal.
One piece of debris stood out, however. Near the edge of the forest, a huge golden statue of an alicorn sat, head partially embedded in the earth. Aside from the coating of dirt, mud, and ice, it was remarkably well preserved. There was an upside down inscription on the base of the statue written in the old language.
I didn’t know much old language, but this was one of the words everypony learns.
Inscribed at the base of the statue was one ornate word: “Canterlot”.
End of Journal 2