//------------------------------// // VIII. Beneath Canterlot // Story: Untitled Journal in Blueblood's Study // by Crowne Prince //------------------------------// Cumber entered the dining hall. “Prince Blueblood, Headmistress Magick is here to see you.” “Very well. Please inform her I shall be ready as soon as I am finished having tea with the Earl of Whinnysbury.” I took a sip from the teacup floating in the air, careful not to let it spill on the open book in front of me. “Shall I point out that you are currently not having tea with anyone?” I set the cup on the table that had only one pony sitting at it: me. “That may be so, but the Headmistress does not know that.” “Or,” Magick’s voice sounded from behind Cumber as she moved around him to enter the dining room, “you thought wrong, and I do know what you think I don’t know.” I should have guessed she would not be bothered to wait for me to welcome her in. After all, I was still her student. A lone sugar cube hovered above my drink. I let it drop into the liquid. “Thank you Cumber. If you don’t mind.” Cumber left the two of us alone in the dining hall. Magick drew up a chair opposite mine and took a seat. Her mane shone in pure silver, pulled back into a tight bun with two hairsticks like it always was. She said, “Because I wasted your time yesterday by not making our appointment, I am coming to you directly today. Did you finish Magical Mystery Cure?” I closed the book on the table, revealing the gem-studded cover. It disappeared in a flash of magic. A white, wavy teacup with a silver rim and star etchings sat where the book had been. I raised the teapot from the table and filled the cup. “There is something I don’t understand,” I said before taking a sip of my own overly-sweet tea. “Why would a pony be so unhappy with their talent as to try and change it with magic?” Magick levitated her cup to her side of the table. “Sometimes unicorns forget the value of hard work. It is not enough to wish a problem away.” She turned her steely gaze to the ripples inside the cup. “If you want to change something, do it.” The mare took a moment to drink from her tea before she continued. “We can discuss Magical Mystery Cure later. I have a more pressing issue on my hooves at the moment. You were at the barracks last week for some practice sparring and you must have seen the Captain of the Royal Guard then. What do you remember about that day?” “I came in through the back way to not draw too much attention and waited for the glamour to take over. The spell’s effect on me has weakened over time, so it requires longer and longer for it to take hold after I cross the border. After a bit I went to put on armor and join the rest of the royal guards.” I sank into the memory of that day. “The Captain is not a flashy pony; I know you know this, but he… she does wear a crest where the armor plates join at the neck. I spotted her giving orders to some of the guards on one of the bridges between the castle’s turrets. She saw me, but it wasn’t until after sparring that she came down to talk. I remember she asked if all of my techniques were still sharp after I’d graduated from private training, and I told her I was fine. Not once has she ever given me more than lukewarm praise, but at least she has the decency to make sure I’m not falling behind or struggling.” There was nothing unusual about the day at all. I couldn’t think of anything that stood out. “I suspected you might not, so now I need your assistance with a task. A Captain of the Royal Guard does not simply go missing. We have no time to waste.” I sat straight up. “But you don’t need to–” All of a sudden I was getting sucked into the center of my being. My magic crammed into one compact ball and my lungs screamed for air. Everything inside me twisted and shifted and jolted back into place and I was whole again, standing in an unfamiliar hallway. It was tilting to one side. I took an unsteady step and the hall tipped the other way. “Urf, Magick, you know I cannot stand when you do that.” “Well I certainly cannot expect you to do it yourself, now, can I?” I grumbled as the room righted itself. Teleportation happened to be in the school of magic that was my polar opposite. The spells were not impossible for me to cast – they were just draining and altogether unpleasant to experience. Tall pillars stretched from the floor to ceiling and a strip of red carpet flowed down the stone hall. I decided we must be somewhere in Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, given the architecture, except there were no windows. It should have been pitch black, but the hall was dimly lit even with no light source I could see. The air was cold, still, and a bit damp. Magick trotted off down the hall with me following behind. She stopped between two unremarkable pillars and put her hoof to the wall. Liquid aura poured from her touch and the stone melted away as if it had never been there at all. Honestly, with this pony I never knew what to expect next. In this case it was not another room behind the wall, but a cavern. The walls of the cave were smooth and shiny, edged in multiple facets like a cut sapphire. There didn’t appear to be any planning behind how the walls were carved, which gave me the impression the area had been tunneled through. Chunks of shiny rock stuck out here and there, but the tunnel was easily wide enough for a number of ponies to walk side by side. It wasn't until we reached the end of the tunnel that I realized what was going on. It opened out into a massive room that stretched deep into the depths of the earth. I stared at the jagged outcroppings of dagger-like gems. "These... Magick, these are all..." "Crystals, yes." Old, broken rails for mine carts went round and round through the tunnels that connected to this open area. The ground before us turned into a cliff that fell into a bottomless pit. Well, I assumed it had some end, only it was not one I could see. I stepped away from the edge. It made me nervous, which was easy to see in the way the crystal outcrops reflected my pale face over and over. I was confused. “I thought there were no more crystals in Equestria. Certainly not this many.” There were dozens of tunnels that I could see. How many crystals had been taken from this place? From the state of the equipment and the newer looking crystal formations it must have been a very, very long time ago. A creeping sense of dread entered my thoughts. “This is dangerous. What if somepony finds out this exists?” Magick motioned for me to go with her down one of the tunnels. “Even if these caves were rediscovered, it would not matter. Much of the knowledge needed to harness crystal magic disappeared, quite literally.” Magick’s hoofsteps echoed in the tunnel. “Canterlot was not always located on a cliff. In their greedy search for powerful crystals, unicorns dug out so much of these tunnels that half of the land collapsed, forming the gorge that you see from your estate every day.” Let that be a lesson in greed. “The tunnels collapsed, and the ponies’ own ambitions destroyed them. So that is how the knowledge was lost?” “No. The avalanche killed many ponies and hid the caves. But back then, a pony with enough crystals had the ability to extend life itself. Crystal is teleportation resistant, so when the citizens of Canterlot refused to dig out the caves after what happened, there was no way to get back inside. The ponies addicted to the crystals’ power fled north. Some became so overtaken by chaotic magic that they could have rivaled Celestia given more time, except they went mad. Whether it was that amount of power or the crystals themselves that drove those ponies to insanity, who can say. And then, just like that, they disappeared. The crystals, the ponies, an entire empire, everything. Gone.” A somber story, and not one I had heard from the Lady de Lis. Yet the crystal caves under Canterlot were still here. The ponies of old did not just forget the caves existed: they wanted to forget. Some tragedies are not worth remembering. One of Magick’s books had said crystals could amplify a pony’s magic to the point their coat glittered with their innermost desires, be they good… or evil. I shivered. “Are you not concerned that somepony could once again uncover these caves and relearn the magic that disappeared?” “Some already know about these caves. No.” “Why?” “Because this is an age of tactics and cunning, not firepower.” Magick held out a hoof to signal a stop. Before us was a single purple crystal no taller than my leg. It was placed intentionally on a pedestal in the center of the room we had entered. “I did not bring you here solely so you would know this place exists. We are here to locate the Captain of the Guard, and this divining crystal is going to help us.” Magick lifted the glass covering the gem and pointed at it. “Place your hoof here.” Without question I did so and my consciousness exploded. I tore my hoof from the gem’s surface, reeling from the images of castles and fields and magical lights spread out in a network over the face of the nation and moments in history lunging alongside that existence, past and present melded into one incomprehensible mass of layers. It was like looking at a map of Equestria, except the landscape was not small and tiny but right there in your face up close, all of it, all at once, over centuries. “What…” I heaved as sparkling towers I’d never seen in my life rolled through my mind over a land of snow suddenly consumed by shadows, which were in turn replaced by sheets of ice. Points of light floated in my vision. Curls of blonde tickled my nose and I pushed my mane back in place. “You keep this here unguarded?” “It belongs to the Princess. She knows when somepony uses it. Now, I need you to touch the stone again and reign in the history recordings while I search Equestria.” The crystal amplified one’s ability to use a tracing spell, except it was impossible to do so alone because the noise of the imagery could not be tuned out. I would have to touch the gem again and contain the images so Magick could find one point of light in that enormous pony maelstrom. I tensed. “How long do you need?” “I have not done this in a very long time. I do not know.” I took a deep breath and let it out. I was good at magic, but this was an excessive request. “I’m ready.” Both of us touched the crystal and whatever I was disappeared in the mass of confusion. I latched my magic to the history and lost track of the points of light representing ponies. I was the air over Equestria. A great castle far more opulent than the one in Canterlot watched over an unknown land from its dusky towers at the same instant it collapsed into ruin and a forest devoured it, devoured the very land the castle once protected and grew and grew while the earth in front of it fell away and a white tower rose out of the remaining cliff: Canterlot. For a few days the sun did not rise. A thousand clouds floated over a mirage of tiny hamlets that were also roaring cities split into two likenesses, some halves familiar and the others ruled over by chaos, flipped over and under and inside out and covered in rainbows that were now darkness and rain made of sugar sprinkles pelting the cupcake-frosted ground. Cloudsdale was nowhere. It was one cloud. It was a billowing fortress of cloud homes. Harsh windigo winds ravaged an uncharted territory lively with forests and lush fields and the hot, grainy desert sands up against cool rocky mountainsides. Furious snow covered everything, burying fields and trees until the place was uninhabitable even for the toughest mountain sheep. For a few nights the sun did not set. Landmarks I’d never heard of, let alone seen, meshed with polished marble statues. The same river flowed next to itself. The Everfree Forest was a forest, but it was also an empire, but it was also a small town. The moon was a white rock. It was a pony. It was a faded patch of spots. “Blueblood!” Magic shouted. As soon as I noticed the sensitive tingling on the bridge of my nose it turned into a burning rash. One of Magick’s sticks floated at the ready. I ducked and covered my muzzle. “Ow,” I whined the second I touched the spot. It burned. “Honestly,” Magick huffed. “You were out for nearly a minute after I pulled you off. It’s done.” Strands of her silver mane had slipped from the bun and her other black hairstick stuck at a lopsided angle. “Every trace of her magical signature is completely gone. I need to report this to Princess Celestia. She will need to find a new Captain of the Guard, or have the Royal Guard choose one for her.” “That’s it?” I said, irritated. My teacher had lost one of her friends, and all she had to say was official correspondence to the Princess. There wasn’t a flicker of emotion in Magick’s response, and I knew it was not because she had any hope that her friend would come back one day. “You’re just going to give up?” “Enough. We are wasting time. Let’s go back.” I wrinkled my snout and tried to rub off the pain. How many times had she tried to snap me out of it with that stick? She could have tried shaking me, but no, she had to use her tiny, shock-infused weapons. Magick said, “Prince Blueblood, I will see you tomorrow in my office when the sun sets.” I barely heard the words. I could still see Equestria. I looked at the gem underneath the plain glass container, and I looked at the mare standing in a long-forgotten place saying things nopony should remember.