Luna sat down in front of the heavy oaken door. When she had seen the arcane runes and protective circles for the first time, about a two thousand years ago, in the deepest caverns under the Canterhorn, she had been impressed. Now she looked at them and couldn’t shudder at the thought that after all this time she had not taken one step closer to understanding them. She looked up to her sister, but she didn’t even need to ask. Celestia had not managed to solve the door’s riddle either.
“Discord, hear us!” Celestia called out. “Show yourself.”
The spirit of chaos appeared next to her. Along with his bathtub. A periscope swiveled around to the the sisters and disappeared under the foam.
“Great, Celestia, now you spooked it. Do you have any idea how long it took me to lure that big boy in!? Are you happy now?” Discord huffed through his nose. “I really hope this is important.” He got out of the bath and wrapped a towel around his head.
“The eternal lock, Discord.” Celestia pointed a hoof at the door.
“Oh, that old thing.” Discord waved his lion paw dismissively. After a second his face turned into a grin. “Don’t tell me. You still haven’t managed to open it?” He started to giggle as Luna looked to the ground and guffawed as Celestia lowered her head too. The draconequus walked over to pad Luna on the head and fondle Celestia’s ears.
“Should uncle Discord open the door for the little big ponies? Hmm?”
Luna could almost see the smoke rising out of Celestia’s nostrils. “Please, Discord,” the younger sister asked, “I have tried everything I could, even the Nightmare failed at it and it had a thousand years to waste on this puzzle.”
“Because you assume there is a right combination. Silly ponies,” Discord shook his head. “Now let me ask you: you have no idea what’s behind, neither do you know who locked it or for what reason. And you still want me to open it, yes?”
Both sisters seemed no longer sure in their decision. Celestia’s voice was unusually restrained when she asked, “Do you know?”
“Of course I know. I was in there the first time around.” Discord’s smugness could have doubled as a low-sugar jam-substitute. “Behind this door you will find the Eternals. Beings so ancient, they were born in the universe before this, and so far beyond your simple immortality, some may not even wake before the next universe starts.” He looked both sisters in the eye. “Are you prepared for that burden?”
“Do it,” Luna said. She nudged her sister.
“Yes, Discord, we are prepared,” Celestia answered. A sudden thought made her hesitate. “You do know how to reseal this lock, do you?”
“Of course I do,” Discord took a little set of keys out of the towel he still wore around his head. He looked at the first key. “Naw, front door, back door, Twilight’s diary, pantry, ...”
“You’re making those up,” Celestia interrupted him. ”I know for a fact that Twilight’s diary has no lock at all.”
As he turned to her Discord’s grin was a mile wide. “Only the diary she lets you know about. Ah, here we are.” He selected a small key that looked like all the others on the ring. Just as Luna was about to ask, it transformed into a crystal, about the size and form of Celestia’s horn. “Every single combination is wrong, you have to use all of them at the same time.”
Discord put the key into the middle of the main rune and inserted it into the keyhole that formed as he did so. “Any last words?” he asked but didn’t wait and pushed one last time. The doors swung open without a sound, not even a hiss or a billow of old, dusty air. The corridor just continued on in front of them as he stretched behind them.
“Ladies first,” Discord bowed. “The secret of the universe await. And even those beyond it.”
“You’ll come with us?” Luna asked as she put a first, tentative hoof across the threshold.
“I wouldn’t miss this for the world!”
After both alicorns had crossed, Discord collected the key from the lock and closed the doors behind them. “Wouldn’t want anyone to enter.” He tapped a claw on his chin. “Or anything ... to leave.”
The three walked down the corridor until it ended at a gateway. “You can still turn back, my dears. But once you enter there,” he pointed ahead. “Point of no return.”
Celestia took a step forward to show her resolve, and Luna followed close behind. Had either sister bothered to turn around they would have seen the grin in Discord’s face, and the deep red glow in his eyes.
The dome was huge. Not “Canterlot Castle”-huge, not Canterhorn-huge. Sky-huge. And in that sky a swirl of little lights rotated slowly, like a very gentle hurricane that had caught the mother of swarms of fireflies.
While both sisters still marveled at the sheer dimensions, Discord slithered to a little platform a few paces away. He touched it with the key and it flickered to life.
“What is this?” Luna landed beside him.
“Inventory,” Discord said, and before them a display appeared in the air. He tapped the key to some pictures that hovered before the.
Now Celestia joined them. “Explain this.”
Discord rolled his eyes and looked at Luna. “Big sis is a little slow, isn’t she? Would you like to take a guess, little Luna?”
For a moment the Princess of the Night looked like she would kick Discord for being so condescending, but she decided otherwise. “He said this is the sleeping place of eternal beings, and that,” she pointed at the images that hovered in front of them “appears to be a list of those beings.”
“Very good, you get an A for that explanation.” This time Luna stepped on Discord’s foot. While he sat on the floor, Celestia looked at the display. “These look like cutie marks.”
“Touch one with your horn,” Discord suggested.
Celestia selected an image randomly and a bigger version of that image appeared. Two blue bolts of lightning on a pink background. Next to it was a list of figures or letters, but neither pony could decipher them. “Can you read this?”, Luna asked the draconequus.
“Don’t have to,” he replied. “Just touch it like you touched that image.”
Celestia did and the strange scripture was replaced with a picture of a pony. A really strange pony: cubby and with short, stubby legs and a face that looked nothing like the ponies she knew. But still a pony. Celestia selected the other two lines of text and new pictures appeared. More pictures of that pony, this time with an orange body and a purple mane instead of pink and blue. But still the same cutie mark. “Who is … or was this pony?”
Discord had opened a new hovering image where he sat. He stopped switching through the cutie marks. “No idea. Can’t read that. Ah, here we go. You might want to look at this.”
The alicorn sisters were at his side in a heartbeat. Among the long list of marks on his image some glowed in a soothing green light, but only a few. Discord touched some part of text in the picture with his key and some of the green glowing images jumped into the foreground.
“I know those,” Luna whispered. “Three apples, three balloons, three smiling flowers, a moon surrounded by stars.” She looked at Celestia with wide eyes. “Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Cheerilee, Moondancer!” With each name the picture of the pony appeared, each with a long list of text, and after Discord touched it, a picture of one of those strange, chubby ponies.
“And now: the one billion bits question,” Discord smirked.
“Don’t do it!” Celestia warned him, but it was too late.
Discord had found a cutie mark. A bright sun. Celestia’s sun. He touched it. And a picture of her appeared, but no other text. Apparently there was no chubby version of her.
“That scared you, didn’t it? Still think you really want to know more about this? Do you want to tell Applejack about this? Or Pinkie? Do you think this will help you become a better ruler?”
“No, I don’t think so. I think we should leave this place and reseal it.” Celestia looked down at her hooves. “I have no idea what we will do with this knowledge, we better keep it hidden.”
Discord waved his key across the images and they faded into nothing. “Then let's blow this popsicle stand!”
The three of them walked down the tunnel, resealed the door and went back up to the surface. Discord was about to continue his bath when a thought made him smile. “I wonder how long until little Twilight asks me to open that place for her. Oh! I can’t wait for her face!”
---
Applejack sat on the little hill behind the farm and looked at the sunset. “You ever had the feeling that somepony just walked over your grave?”
Pinkie Pie took an apple from the basket between them, bit, and chewed thoughtfully. “No, but I had the weirdest Pinkie Sense today.”