//------------------------------// // Crossing Paths // Story: Trinity // by Freescript the Bard //------------------------------// Cloudlight landed with a deep WHOOSH of air as massive wings caught his momentum and lowered him the last few inches to cobblestone ground of the garden courtyard. The unmoving ground felt strange on his hooves after being in the air for nearly an hour. A slight disorientation came over him without the free movement of flight, and his legs felt awkward as he walked. He decided that flying would take precedence over walking any day. From the ground, the castle seemed to impose its lofty towers on the speck of white below. Not that Cloudlight really cared. Height to a pegasus was less negligible as horizontal distance was to earth ponies; flying ten meters vertically had the same plausibility as walking five on the ground. Vertical distance was a conquerable thing to a winged creature, and thus did not intimidate as it did his earth-bound friends. The pegasus glanced about the vacant courtyard, lingering for a moment on the tall statue of the moon alicorn before moving on. Two of the four garden sections were on either side of him, bisected by the wide cobblestone path that led to the north gate. The gardens were unkempt, and the plants in them were colored the same odd teal that coated the rest of the plant-life in the castle grounds. It was unnerving, but Cloudlight didn’t mind. What could plants do to him? ”I’m at the gardens, guys,” Cloudlight reported to the other stallions. “Any luck on the food situation?” Another rumble from his stomach reminded the pegasus of how hungry he was. “No such luck, I’m afraid,” Rowan’s soft baritone voice responded. “We’re searching within what appears to have been a marketing district. All the bakeries and other restaurants are clearly marked with wordless signs, so finding places that had food isn’t hard. The issue is...” There was a pause in Rowan’s dialogue that made Cloudlight anxious. ”The issue is that any food that was left is now piles of ash or other such matter,” Blaze finished. ”Any food that may have survived is gone, too. Probably either rotted away or eaten by pests. Likely the former; I haven’t seen any kind of animal life since we came here.” Cloudlight groaned. Then again, did I expect any less? he asked himself. ”Alright. Tell me as soon as you find something please? Hunger isn’t exactly pleasant.” ”We noticed.” Cloudlight chuckled as he put his mental tie to the link into dormancy. While he enjoyed the feeling of having his friends at his side at all times despite the distance between them and himself, he didn’t want to distract them from their task. Food is important, after all. Silence dominated the courtyard. Only the sound of Cloudlight’s hooves striking the pavement rang throughout the ruins as he trotted closer to the fountain at the center of the citadel. Again, he felt an odd tugging at the corners of his mind, sparked by the figure of the alicorn below the stone moon. Why this one? he pondered again. Why does this specific statue make me feel so... strange? His large wings fluttered irritably at his sides, stirring the dust on the road. Something about being unknowing bothered him, his curiosity as hungry as his body. Don’t let it get to you, Cloudlight. Just look away, and keep soldiering on, he told himself, steeling his constitution and shaking his head to clear it. The thoughts were still there, but lessened when he broke visual contact with it. I need a distraction, he decided, Something to take my mind off that... statue. “How could there be NOTHING!?!” Twilight shouted exasperatedly. The unicorn scholar had found the maze with very little difficulty; just by tracing the discolored grass around the north side of the castle, then following a faint trail north through the forest. It wasn’t long before she came upon the very tomb mentioned in the spellbook. Its construction was definitely consistent with the castle to the south, matching in architecture and style. However, instead of the gray stone masonry of the ruined castle, the tomb was constructed of marble and black slate. Twilight was curious as to why the tomb’s architect didn’t conform the building material to the larger structure, or why it hadn’t been built closer or within the castle itself. The unicorn searched the surrounding area, but found no evidence of any graves or other burial sites to suggest that the ground had been used normal as a place to lay the deceased to rest. Twilight began to wonder if the tome was even originally intended for that purpose, and if the spellbook’s use of ‘tomb’ was actually correct. She made a note in her field notebook to study the construction’s history, or ask Princess Celestia the next time she saw her. Then, reminding herself that the subject of study wasn’t the actual tomb, she proceeded through the entrance, casting a simple illumination spell from the tip of her horn, casting a bright lavender light down the slate stairway. She made a mental observation that the tomb was deeper than it initially appeared, possibly intentionally. At the bottom of the stairwell was a perfectly round room, four meters in diameter and a two-meter-high ceiling. Twilight found that none of the exterior white marble appeared in the room, the walls and ceiling above her constructed from black slate. The floor was the most interesting part; to Twilight, anyway. It appeared to be a solid face of polished black crystal that she could not identify, and hazily reflected the unicorn’s lavender image in the magical light. But otherwise, the room was completely devoid of features. No sigils or lingual characters, no inscriptions or artifacts... not even a coffin or place where a body would be kept, as would be characteristic of a tomb. The slate wall and ceiling were one seamless piece surrounding the room, and the crystal didn’t even carry any tool marks to suggest it had ever been cut. “That doesn’t make any sense!” Twilight continued to shout at the dark stone. “The book said that Starswirl found the spell in this tomb, so there should have at least been some kind of writing somewhere!” She levitated the book out of her saddlebags, opening it to the page she had marked. ’Discovered in empty tomb, approximately 150 paces--’ But where!? There isn’t anything in here! The unicorn scholar growled in frustration. Something was there in Starswirl’s age that allowed him to extract a spell from the tomb that wasn’t there currently. Maybe some kind of spell erased it when Starswirl found it... or it could be something to do with me casting the spell that had been found here. Whatever the reason, Twilight was not going to find it in the tomb, or anywhere else it seemed. Downcast that her risky venture through the Everfree Forest had rewarded nothing but inconclusive information about the tomb itself, which was insignificant to her research anyway. All she gained from the expedition that the tomb even existed, and remained standing many centuries after Starswirl had encountered it. Twilight stared dismally at the ground as she left the dark of the tomb and extinguished her horn-light. Perhaps she had her mood to thank for her next discovery, for if she had not been looking at the dirt path beneath her, she would have missed the three sets of hoofprints leading from the tomb. Huh? Twilight investigated the side-by-side trail of prints, made by ponies that were going toward the castle the castle. They definitely weren’t hers, and no matter how hard Twilight searched, she found no evidence of anypony besides herself having approached the tomb. Why are there a group of hoofprints going from the tomb, but nothing but my own going toward it? Still puzzling over it, the curious unicorn followed the tracks toward the castle, up to the border of teal grass. Twilight stopped, looking at the three tracks. One of the sets had split off and continued for a few meters before disappearing. So one of them is a pegasus... she deduced. Deciding that following an airborne trail would be next to impossible, even for her pegasus friend, Rainbow Dash, she trailed the other two into the blue grass, feeling a shiver go up her spine as she crossed the border. The two earthbound ponies had trotted up to the wall, then turned east along it, to the north entrance of the ruined citadel. Losing the trail on what remained of a cobblestone road into the castle, Twilight bit her lip. It was obvious where they went, but the unicorn was unsure if she should follow them, and go through the gates. Princess Celestia had warned her of the dangers, of strange magic and remnant spells from the War of Sun and Moon, and of things that were meant to be forgotten. If I go in, I’ll be taking a huge risk. Even bigger than going into the Everfree Forest... She looked up at the raised portcullis. On the other hoof, these ponies could know something about the Trinity spell and the tomb. Twilight groaned. “Forgive me, Princess...” Cloudlight pushed the massive wooden door ajar. Despite its size, it was surprisingly easy to open. Alright, let’s see what we have here... It was a large, open room, perfectly elliptical in shape. To Cloudlight’s surprise, he found that the roof of the building had been torn completely off, with no signs of debris within the room itself; the only real significant damage to the entire castle that the pegasus had encountered yet. Around the room were six large pillars that once supported the ceiling, but have since become useless stone obelisks. There must have been a pretty big party here, Cloudlight joked to himself. But I think they took ‘raise the roof’ too literally. He turned his attention to the center of the room. A statue, not as massive as the one in the courtyard, but large nonetheless, posed in the true center of the room. It’s base was the lower half of a four-sided pyramid, supporting a wide circular base, with a large masonry orb resting atop a marble pedestal. Six marble arms branched out from the pedestal, each ending in a base that Cloudlight suspected once held something, but they, like the roof, were missing. Cloudlight flapped his wings, hovering up to the large orb. Aside from a generous coating of blue moss, the stone was featureless, and sat on the pedestal with nothing but a small indent and a dab of mortar keeping it from rolling off. “Hmm...” the white pegasus hummed to himself, then began to smirk maliciously. I’d be an absolute shame... He pushed his hoof closer to the stone. ...if somepony were to push it over... An enormous amount of noise roused Rowan and Blaze from their scavenging in an alley. The two stallions looked toward the source of the sound- something akin to thunder that was being drawn out over a long stretch of time. Both their jaws fell open. Across the link, they heard Cloudlight’s panicked voice. ”I didn’t do it I didn’t do it I didn’t do it I didn’t do it!” Twilight’s jaw dropped. She had barely made it three meters past the gate when she heard the noise. A noise that came from the top room of the palace. The room where she and her friends had found the Elements of Harmony. The room that was now emitting a deep purple glow from its sundered roof. “Why me...?” she groaned to herself.