When we got to the door and knocked, there was a sound of things hitting the floor and somepony was talking to herself. The door opened and a purple unicorn was looking at me with a bit of anger in her eyes. "WHAT!" she shouted at me
"I-I um... are you... Twilight?"
"Yes, yes I am" she said calming down a bit
"I was told to come see you..."
A worried look soon filled her face "D-Did the princess send you? I am so sorry about the mess, I-I was reshelving the books, and I lost focus when you knocked and..." she babbled on
"Twilight!" Ditzy shouted snapping twilight of her stupor
"w-what?"
"the princess didn't send us, rarity did." I said to the confused unicorn
"oh... well, what do you need?"
"She wanted me to come by to see if you could decipher my cutie mark, nobody knows what it means..."
At this twilight started to giggle, "You mean, you don't know what your..." she said while laughing "your cutie mark... Hahaha" she was now on the floor she was laughing really hard. "What, did-did it just appear overnight? Haha!"
"Yeah yeah, I know, magic kindergarten stuff." She stopped laughing and froze up at the words. "hey... are you okay?" nothing, she was frozen, she started to shake and whisper to herself. I heard a yawn come from someone inside the tree, it was followed by footsteps and a small purple dragon appeared.
"Did you have to say magic kindergarten?" the dragon asked glaring lightly.
"Why? What did I do?"
"Nothing," he sighed "she must have had a really bad time at magic kindergarten, she doesn't even tell me everything... Anyways, my name's spike" he said extending a small scaly hand "what's yours?"
I shook his hand with my hoof and replied "My name is Derek."
"Derek?" he asked quizzically "Odd, I have never heard a name like that before."
"well, I'm not exactly from around here. In fact, your the closest thing to normal that I have seen this whole time. No offense" I said looking over to Ditzy
"so... If your not from around here, where are you from?"
"it's a long story, can you fix her?" I asked pointing a hoof at twilight.
"yeah, could you levitate me that big book over there?" he asked pointing to an unusually large book sitting neatly on a shelf.
"I can try, I'm still getting used to using my powers" slowly, the book slid off of the shelf and dropped a bit but then leveled out and floated towards the dragon.
"your getting better but it looks like you still struggle a bit, right?" Ditzy commented
"no," I said in a 'matter-of-fact' tone letting go of the book, which fell on top of the small dragon waiting below. "okay, maybe a bit."
"Arrg..." spike groaned "as if twilight didn't drop enough books on me..." I levitated the book again, allowing the dragon to stand up and snatch it from the air. "Alright, let's see..." he mumbled to himself as he flipped through the pages. "Here it is," he said aloud stopping on a page filled with old texts, scriptures and characters that I have never could have even imagined. Slowly spike smoothed out the pages and suddenly slammed the heavy book closed. A loud, and thick 'thud' came from the book as Ditzy and I jumped back in surprise. Twilight's random mumbling stopped and she slowly returned to her hooves.
"Thanks spike, I owe you one..."
"Actually twi, this makes two."
"right," she said turning her attention back to me. "Sorry about that... So you need help decrypting your cutie mark?"
"yes, I thought finding more about it would help me find out what I need to do." she led Ditzy and I inside the library, and amongst the clutter of books on the floor there was one book that started to float in the air. It was surrounded by visibly purple magic and once again I saw that foreign writing. Twilight floated the book over to a nearby table, once the book was propped up she turned to me. "Alright, turn around" I did as she instructed and soon she was off, slipping back into her stupor I allowed her to work. When I craned my head to look at her, two more books had appeared and were being flipped through at a fast pace. Twilight looked up only every now and then to re-examine my cutie mark, she set one of the books down so that a specific page was open, and focused on the other two books.
I don't know how long I was there, but for some reason it seemed like an eternity. Ditzy was flying around looking at the books to keep herself busy, and I was still standing there, bored as ever. Twilight had finished with the second book and was now closely examining both the book and myself. Spike had fallen asleep from the long wait, curled up on the floor in what seems to have been a random place, he hugged the broom he was sweeping with. "Twilight?" I asked lightly "I don't want to sound rude or anything, but are you almost done?"
She sighed heavily "I think so, but I have some bad news..."
"I'm not evil, am I? When I was younger I thought it would be cool to be the bad guy, then I realized they always lose..."
"Well, wether or not you are evil is up to you, but I can tell you the basics of what your cutie mark means." she got closer to me so that she could help explain. She stretched out a hoof to point at my mark "the shield, always means protection, but then there is the type of shield to consider, yours happens to be a kite shield. What a kite shield symbolizes is complete protection, meaning that good or bad you would do your best to see that nopony will come to harm. Then you look at the color, this took me forever to find but, I found it. Blue is an unusual and rare metal color, especially after being smelted and forged into a shield, it means that you are rare."
"Well, I am an alicorn, I heard that doesn't happen often." twilight was a bit surprised to hear this but then she noticed how big I was, how my height was similar to princess Celestia's, she then took notice to my vest which she guessed hid my wings.
"Twilight?" She seemed confused, the only other alicorns she knew were royalty. The origin of alicorns were unknown, something clicked in her head and she bowed down low. "What are you doing?" I liked the respect, as I would from anypony but it was unnecessary.
"Bowing," she said in a respectful and careful voice. "It's customary to do so when you meet royalty. I am so sorry for any disrespect that I may have shown you prince, umm..."
"My name is Derek and I am no prince."
"I-I," The purple unicorn was now completely lost, I had the qualities of royalty, yet I was saying that I wasn't. "I'm confused."
"I. Am. Not. Royalty." I said slowly for her understanding
"So then, how are you an alicorn? When I asked about them to the princess she said that only royalty could even have the chance to be born one." She protested
"I don't know, I don't even know how I got to this world in the first place."
"Okay, now I'm even more confused." she stated flatly
"Nevermind, could you finish explaining my mark?"
"well, okay... As I was saying, the blue kite shield means that you are a rare pony that would protect anypony from the dangers around them. Then, we get into the hard part... Swords are tricky, the exact shape, color, and positioning change the meaning. I wasn't able to come up with anything solid but the downward swords means that, unless you have to, you will not fight, or using your cutie mark as an example, your swords are sheathed and aren't at the ready. Both of the swords appear to be broad swords, those swords were particularly heavy, being double sided and as large as they were, they are meant to cause heavy damage. Then we get to the color..." she got quiet
"They are silver... what does that mean? Twilight?"
She sighed heavily "they aren't just silver, most blades have some silver in them... They are PURE silver, from what I have found then..." she got quiet again
"What? Twilight what does it mean?!" I shouted
"It usually means... Change, not just any change, no I mean change that will effect the world, all of equestria will be effected."
"So let me get this strait... I am a protector, for good and bad either way I will try to avoid conflict, and if I have to fight, then I will be a strong and dangerous opponent who will ultimately bring about change to the land?" She nodded "Wow, this sounds a little too unreal, like something out of a storybook, the hero must go forth and vanquish the evil and unknown threat... Well this is just fantastic." I said sarcastically
"Well, this is all theoretical, it doesn't necessarily mean that will happen but, it might..."
"Great, just in case things go wrong, how hard is it to learn some spells?"
"Well, it depends on the complexity of the spell, but usually they are fairly strait-forward. You memorize the incantation and put some magic into it and the spell should occur."
"In that case, could I borrow some spell books?"
Twilight looked at me curiously "what kind of spell books?"
"Ones that contain incapacitation and possibly shielding spells."
Twilight looked down to the sea of books littering the floor and her horn glowed once again, books sifted left and right and soon three books floated above the others. "Here," she said as the three books floated into my saddlebags, "These contain the spells that you want, be careful though, some of those spells contain very old and very powerful magics."
Before the last book flew into my bag I saw that same writing, "Twilight... I can't read that, I don't recognize the writing."
"I see, well... I can cast a spell on your eyes, it should be able to translate any language, old or new."
"isn't that a brain thing... Being able to translate a language?"
"It is, but you see, the brain recognizes that what you are seeing as a language, and deep in your subconscious you have figured out the language enough so that you can translate it, this is pushing that understanding into your eyes."
"Which then sends the signal back translated?"
"Precisely!"
"Amazing! Simply amazing!" Twilight's horn glowed for the third time and the purple magic invaded my eyes. Slowly the magic faded, and when it did I produced the blue book from my bag and I could read it. The old book had no title, but was filled with spells from fireballs to lightning strikes. "This is so great twilight," I said looking at a sleeping spell. "Could you also teach me how to wipe someones memory for a period of time?" She produced a green book and using her magic, flipped it open to a page which had a temporary memory wipe spell. I stared between the two books and then a thought occurred to me, if I was going to be stealthy, nopony could know that I was here... At least for now. Using the books and my magic I cast the sleeping spell on twilight, I admit I used a generous amount of magic, but I had to be sure it would do it's job. She dropped like a rock, Ditzy gasped in shock as I put twilight out.
"Why did you do that?" She asked tilting her head slightly.
"Because I am going to do this," I said as my horn glowed again and my green magic formed a haze which floated towards Twilight's head and soon dissipated. "There, if the spell worked, she won't remember any of this, now onto spike." the process repeated on spike whom was still sleeping peacefully. "C'mon Ditzy, I think that I'm done here, where to next?"
"Well, I guess we have to go back to rarity's so that you can wipe her memory too." Ditzy concluded
"Alright then, lets go." We left the library and were welcomed by the cool night, off to Rarity's, then to the princesses.