If one had to describe the defining characteristic that set the current beautiful summer day in Ponyville apart from other wonderful summer days in Ponyville, they would have found themselves at a loss of words.
The weather was, as always, perfect due to the admirable work of the capable team of weather ponies under Rainbow Dash. The sun was shining and the few white clouds only served as an aesthetically pleasing accent in the wide blue sky. It was warm, yet not hot, pleasant and temperate.
The little town itself was relatively quiet, but not devoid of ponies going about their daily business. It was not a day of celebration, much less a national holiday, and the air was filled with the combined noises of the market, ponies walking, talking, trading.
It was also not unusual for Twilight Sparkle to recede to the sheltered environment of the Golden Oak Library, albeit circumstances were a bit different today. The first thing was the fact that Twilight Sparkle was now, since nearly three weeks, Princess Twilight Sparkle. The second thing was that she had returned to Ponyville just yesterday after being absent for her coronation and two weeks of travelling to various diplomatic meetings.
However, while these circumstances were certainly extraordinary, they did nothing to jeopardize the remaining regularity innate to this Tuesday.
Twilight was sitting on a quite comfortable cushion in her study. Her whole attention was consumed by a lengthy tome titled 'Royal Canterlot Etiquette: Volume IV' which was lying open in front of her. She sat almost perfectly still, only her eyes dancing over the yellowed pages. Every now and then, her horn would flare up to turn a page.
True to the narrative, this silent idyll was bluntly interrupted by the harsh exclamation of a stallion standing outside the door of the house-tree.
“Halt! Who goes there?”
The stallion to whom the brash and admittedly strong voice belonged was a pegasus with the great pleasure of serving in Celestia's Royal Guard, a prestigious, well-paid and not exceedingly dangerous job. His and his unicorn colleague's, who was standing on the other side of the library's entrance, current assignment was to protect the Princess Twilight Sparkle. Thus, it was his duty to protect the entrance to her Highness' dwelling to avert potential threats to her safety.
In answer to the steely question, a second voice sounded, its slight childlikeness doing nothing to ease the annoyance that rung with it.
“It's me, Spike. You know, the dragon who came out of this door just half an hour ago? The Princess' personal assistant? Does that ring a bell?”
Spike had been out buying vital resources like ink and flashcards that were in dire need of restocking. Aside from that, he had also acquired some less vital supplies, mainly food.
His sarcasm did not faze the soldiers, whose training had involved ridding them of any conceivable humour. His claim, however, was valid and the unicorn guard responded in kind.
“You may pass.”
Through the opening door, Twilight's personal assistant entered the library in full midget glory, a small purple dragon carrying a tasteful wicker basket filled with various goods. Into his face was etched a frown that told the tale of his resentment about the guardsponies.
“Geez, these guys drive me insane.” He verbalized it. Twilight looked up from her reading matter and turned to Spike while he set down the basket on the clean wooden floor. “I think they do this stuff on purpose.”
Twilight flashed a consolidating smile. “Come on, it's their job to protect me.” She let out a light chuckle. “They don't really get to do anything else than standing at my door or following me around.”
Spike rolled his eyes. “What do you even need them for? I know Princess Celestia has given them to you as bodyguards, but I don't think they could handle anything that you can't.”
Twilight rose from her cushion. A sitting pony couldn't give a lecture about the significance of Royal bodyguards in the modern era, after all.
“Well, given that the Princesses can defend themselves quite well, the purpose of such bodyguards has traditionally been mainly psychological,” she introduced the topic to Spike, who reacted by giving her a blank look instead of an intelligent remark. Twilight didn't mind, though, she had planned to elaborate further anyway. “You see, if a princess looks heavily guarded, ponies with malicious intent are less likely to do anything bad. The presence of the guards is meant to discourage criminals from breaking the law. The guards don't really have to do anything to actively protect their princess. They stand there and look intimidating and by doing that prevent things like what happened in the Crystal Empire.”
Spike scratched his head and nodded slowly. “That makes sense. What did happen in the Crystal Empire, anyway?” he asked, having slept through most of the singular incident.
As Twilight recalled the events, she could help but giggle at their absurdity. “It's actually quite funny, now that I think of it.” She managed to suppress her girlish laughter and cleared her throat. “Apparently, a pony named Sunset Shimmer tried to steal my Element of Magic and use it for her own ends.”
While it explained the hassle at that night, the explanation left Spike somehow unsatisfied. It had a logic gap that compromised its credibility. “But the Elements only work together.”
“I know,” Twilight confirmed. She let out a half grim, half amused snort as she continued. “Nevertheless, Sunset broke into my quarters at night, stole my crown and replaced it with a fake.”
Spike waved a claw to interrupt her. “Wait a moment. Your crown?” The piece of jewellery atop Twilight's head bobbed up and down as she nodded.
“The tiara from the coronation?”
“Yep,” Twilight affirmed.
“That had no magic properties whatsoever?” Spike was quite confused by this thief's behaviour. It didn't make any sense.
“Exactly!” Twilight didn't manage to suppress a grin any more. It was not nice to gloat, but a potential villain foiling her own scheme through sheer stupidity was just too delicious.
“Isn't it just brilliant? She didn't only have an absurd intention, she also stole the wrong thing. That just shows how important proper research is.”
“What happened to her?”
Twilight frowned, mostly because she didn't understand all of the magic involved. Even she, Equestria's leading expert in the magic of friendship, did not know everything about magic, and that slightly irked her. “She somehow escaped by walking into a mirror. Don't even ask how that works. After that, Princess Luna sealed the mirror with a spell and I got a new crown. And that's pretty much it.” A wave of her hoof drew an invisible line to signify her tale's end. “My point is that it wouldn't have happened if there had been a royal guardspony keeping his watch at my door.”
Upon returning to their original topic, Spike remembered his grudge against the very guards whose presence Princess Twilight had just justly justified. “I still don't understand why they keep halting me. I'm the only dragon in Ponyville, so I shouldn't be that hard to remember.”
“I guess they just take their job super-duper-whooper serious,” Pinkie chimed. “By the way, howdy!”
Spike gave a little jump as the Element of Laughter suddenly joined their argument. Double-taking at Pinkie, he whispered to Twilight. “Since when is Pinkie here?”
Twilight answered without really moving her face at all, keeping a stoic, though slightly shocked expression. “No idea.”
“I just came in, silly,” Pinkie Pie explained helpfully, laughing a little at her friends' surprise which was, in her opinion, slightly out of place because she was not throwing a surprise party or playing a prank that involved them being surprised by something.
Deciding not to question this, Spike asked her about the problem which he seemed to be the only one bothered about. “Why didn't the guards stop you, then?”
Happy to give another explanation to an apparently confused Spike, Pinkie grinned wide. “Because I didn't try to get past them.”
Twilight blinked a few times, then, for the sake of her own sanity, shrugged it off as just Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie. “O-kay. Why did you come here, anyway?”
For a moment Pinkie stared at her like she had just declared that Celestia was an evil robot who was driven to consume stars and planets to fulfil her objective of value satisfaction, then her face lit up with her trademark facial expression, which is so obvious that it will not be mentioned here.
“Ah, yeah. It's my Pinkie Sense.”
“Pinkie Sense? Oh, no! What's going to happen? Are things starting to fall from the sky?” Spike panicked. “Will a meteor block out the sun and cause an ice age? Will the sea level rise so high that we'll have to build giant ships to survive?”
“Spike, calm down!” Twilight scolded her assistant before turning to Pinkie, again. “Just tell us what's going on.”
“Well,” Pinkie said, sitting down in thought, “It's gotta be something big. At first it was just my knee being pinchy, but then my ears started flapping and when my tail twitch-a-twitched I got this weird feeling that you get when you know you know something but don't know it right now and you feel like you should know and like you almost remember, but not quite, you know?”
Breathing a few times in and out to calm herself, Twilight asked “Can you tell me what, where and when?”
Pinkie shook her head wildly. “Nope. You see, I never had this combo before, especially not the not-knowing-what-you-know-you-know feeling. All I can tell is that it's gonna happen right here and right—”
“Halt! Who goes there?” The thundering voice of the unicorn guard interrupted Pinkie's ramblings.
The voice that replied was a rather raspy, even dusty one. It was accompanied by heavy, rustling breathing and altogether sounded more like an asthmatic raven or crow than like a living pony. It didn't sound like a dead pony either, because dead ponies don't talk.
“I'm a special delivery service assistant from the special delivery service and I'm here to deliver this special delivery parcel to the Princess Twilight Sparkle as a part of the special delivery service's special delivery service.” The wordy announcement was followed by a slimy cough.
After mentally going through official regulations, the guard reacted with bureaucratic precision. “So you are a mailpony. Put your mail into the mailbox.”
The ponies inside the library had grown quiet, they couldn't help but listen to this peculiar and rather loud conversation that penetrated the wooden door.
“Excuse me,” the special delivery service assistant, who hopefully didn't have lung cancer, said, “But it is part of the special delivery service's special delivery service to personally deliver the special delivery parcel to the special delivery recipient which is, in the case of this special delivery, the Princess Twilight Sparkle. It is my special duty as a special delivery service assistant to personally deliver this special delivery parcel to the Princess myself.” More heavy coughing followed.
For the best of five seconds, both of the guards were stunned. Somehow, this simple mailpony had created a situation that was not accounted for in the rules. None of them knew what to do if the pony who wanted to see the Princess for a good reason refused to not see her. Luckily, regulations accounted for the case that regulations did not account for the case, in which case the soldiers would have to report to the next higher ranking officer. This was why the pegasus guard, being the one higher in ranking of the two, concluded “I'll ask my superior.”
The door of the library opened and a white pegasus adorned in royal guard armour entered, bowing briefly before Twilight, meanwhile ignoring the pink breach of security. “Excuse me, Your Highness, there is a mailpony outside who claims he has to deliver a parcel to Your Highness in person.”
Just as Twilight was about to reply, she was interrupted by a sudden shout from outside, stemming from the second guard. “Hey! Your were told to halt!”
A stallion barged into the library through the open door, ran into the pegasus guard, ricochetted off him due to his fragile stature and his lower mass and skidded to a halt right before Princess Twilight Sparkle.
The unicorn looked pale and unhealthy. According to the stains on his coat, his work in the shipping business had caused him to come into contact with acid, soot, oil, fire, liquid metal and at least seven types of cavernous moss. His original colour of coat was hard to determine, but it must have been something akin to a dull grey.
Instead of a uniform, he wore a very shabby midnight blue cloak that looked like it should have rightfully turned to dust a century ago. Around his neck, however, dangled a small white oblong which read in clear black letters 'special delivery service assistant'.
He stared at her, wheezing, then quickly told her what she had already overheard.
“Your Majesty, I'm your special delivery service assistant and I'm here to deliver you this special delivery parcel as a part of the special delivery service's special delivery service.”
“I've been able to catch as much.” Twilight noticed that while his right eye was transfixed on her, pupil dilated to a pinprick, his left eye lolled around, dancing from the floor to the ceiling to the guard, then to Pinkie, the wall, her, the floor again. It somehow looked like a very bouncy ball in a very small box. “What's wrong with your eye?”
The unicorn's right ear twitched, he gulped. The eye focused on Twilight, quivering only slightly while the pupil alternated between widening and dilating. “It's just a” – he coughed as if he had an especially sticky lump of mucus in his throat – “temporary condition.”
He blinked, though only with his right eye. For almost two seconds, he stared absentmindedly at something a hoof away from her temple before suddenly snapping out of it. “Here is your special delivery parcel. Do not digest it.”
His horn shone in a pale blue as a cardboard box levitated of his back and placed itself at Twilight's hooves. On it, bold red letters proclaimed 'SPECIAL DELIVERY PARCEL'.
Spinning around on his heel, the unicorn made a run for the door and was gone. The pegasus guard took that as his queue to chase the fugitive intruder. “Halt! You are under arrest!” And he left as well.
After making a few helpless gestures, Spike finally managed a “That was weird.”
“I like him!” Pinkie declared, flashing a lot of teeth.
“He's probably just confused and needs professional help,” Twilight reasoned. “I don't think he was actually a mailpony.”
“But he brought you mail,” Pinkie Pie pointed out. “Are there ponies who bring you mail and are not mailponies? Doesn't make bringing you mail a pony a mailpony? Or maybe only mailponies can bring you mail and when other ponies bring you something it's not mail, but a present.”
Twilight groaned and gracefully covered her eyes. She did not facehoof. Princesses don't do such things. It's uncouth. “He wasn't in his right mind, Pinkie. He only thought he was a mailpony, but in fact he wasn't.”
Pinkie looked at her very blankly before embracing the idea without warning in her usual enthused manner. “That makes so much sense, Twilight! He didn't bring you mail, he only thought he brought it while what he brought was not what he thought he brought because he thought he brought mail because he thought it was mail but it is in fact a present that thinks it is mail.”
She gasped.
“Ohmygoodgraciouspandalisciousprincesscelestiaofthesunthedayandequestria! It's mail and a present at the same time!” She bounced up and down, unable to contain her excitement. “Whatsinnit? Whatsinnit? I love surprises! Especially double surprises like mail-present-things. It's like getting a present by mail. Or mail for a present!”
Princess Twilight sighed, knowing this would only end if she opened the carton. Besides, she herself was also curious what this deluded pony might have chosen as 'mail' to the Princess. Apples, perhaps? A chair? Nothing at all?
Unfolding the cardboard was easy enough. It was, of course, within her capabilities to just vanish the box, but there wasn't really a point to that. What was inside the parcel, however, did surprise her.
It looked like a small chest, made of wood. In fact, it was a small wooden chest, but it was more than that. Aside from the six-sided star engraved into the lid, the peculiar thing about it was that its lock featured absolutely zero keyholes and exactly one ring of mystical runes. She knew about this spell, she had read about it somewhere, it was a— “Is that a Marked Box?”
“Let me guess.” Spike smirked in a precocious way. “It's magic, isn't it?”
Twilight interpreted his question as a prompt to explain the principle of this intricate invention of unicorn magic.
“A Marked Box is a magic container that is keyed to a specific pony. This pony is the only one who can open it without destroying it. They are usually reinforced by protective charms to prevent forceful access. In former times, they were used to convey and keep secret documents or precious belongings. It has a lock similar to that to the vault in Canterlot Tower where the Elements of Harmony were kept. I don't think this kind of magic is commonly used any more, not since at least two hundred years. Not many unicorns would know how to cast it, either.”
She walked around it, inspecting it from the other side. When concentrating, she could not only feel the lock, but also hexes that strengthened wood and hinges.
“It's got your name on it.”
“Hm?” Twilight looked up, torn from her thoughts by Pinkie's voice. She and Spike were examining the lid, where a single line of writing was carved into the wood.
Spike raised an eyebrow that seemed strangely misplaced on the reptile. “Huh. 'Contents go only to the eyes of Princess Twilight, Princess Dawnstar or Princess Dusk.'” He looked back at his big sister, ersatz stepmother and autocratic ruler. “Strange. I've never heard of those other two before.”
“That's because they don't exist.” Twilight piqued. “There has never been a Princess Dawnstar or a Princess Dusk. This box is just a prank or a historic attempt at deception.”
“Why would it be a prank? It's not even funny.” Pinkie tilted her head, baby blue eyes sending questioning glances deep into Twilight's soul.
“You see, I was only crowned three weeks ago,” Twilight explained. “Judging by the traces of unicorn magic, this box is at least a century old. So the inscription is older than I am and hence can not refer to me.” She slowly circled the chest, supporting her argument with expressive gestures of her front legs. “Posing this as the belonging of a princess that does not exist means it was either some ploy to confuse a political opponent, or”, she triumphantly placed a hoof on the box. “This box is just some old joke.”
The circle of symbols on the chest glowed and hummed and a spark trailed off it as the bolts sprung aside with an audible click and the lock unlocked.
Twilight spent the next ten minutes effectively panicking, or rather reacting appropriately to a situation of extreme pressure because princesses don't freak out.
After successfully closing and reopening the box several times by herself and after the involuntary attempts of Spike, Pinkie Pie, the unicorn guard outside the door and a civilian who had the poor luck of walking past the library when the agitated Princess came searching for 'volunteers'; after all these attempts to open the box had proven unfruitful, she was faced with the inevitable conclusion that the Marked Box was either marked on her or broken. When she touched it, either physically or magically, it would open; if somepony else did such, it would lock again.
Consequently, she moved it to the basement in order to investigate further using thaumaturgic and technomantic tools for closer analysis.
Spike followed, leaving Pinkie alone plundering the cookie jar, and found Twilight hectically prodding the small wooden chest with complex-looking devices, scribbling down numbers and plotting graphs. “Twilight, calm down!” he attempted to stop her in her furious endeavour.
She, however, seemed to only notice his presence, though not the words he spoke. “Oh, Spike, there you are.” A nervous little smile cracked on her mouth. “Bring me 'Analytical Magic and You', would you?” She turned back to the table of numbers floating before her and muttered to herself. “I must have gotten this wrong. Either my temporagraph is faulty or I miscalculated the mean dissipation rate...”
Her ears perked up and she raised her voice in frustration. “What is the thaumic conductivity of oak wood?” She ran off to consult a catalogue on the magic properties of different materials.
Spike sighed, his shoulders slouched. “This won't end well.”
Nevertheless, he turned around and ascended to the main library again. Fortunately, today the books were at least sorted as they were supposed to. It was not that uncommon for all books to be ripped of their shelves and to be only hastily stuffed back.
Having found the book to sit at least on the correct shelf, he retrieved it as quickly as possible under the handicap of having to use a ladder to access it.
When he returned downstairs, Twilight was already eagerly waiting for her book. “Did you find it?”
Having a sudden idea, he clutched the book tighter. “I'll only give it to you if you calm down, okay? You're really getting worked up about this.”
Twilight pouted. “But Spike, it doesn't make any sense!” she complained.
Knowing he had to be patient, he sighed and went along with it. “What doesn't make sense?” he encouraged Twilight to reflect on her problems so that she could compose herself again. He didn't really want to know what a nervous breakdown would do now that she was an alicorn.
Twilight took a deep breath. “The box is completely intact, it works perfectly fine.”
It wasn't quite the answer he had expected, so he asked further. He had to keep her talking, anyway. “So what? Isn't it supposed to work or something?”
Twilight spun around, starting to pace around him as she explained her predicament.
“This box is a thousand years old. The spells on it have been reinforced and refreshed several times, but the original is still in place. It prevents anypony but me to open it.
The problem is that you can't make a Marked Box for a pony you don't know, and certainly not for a pony that hasn't even been born yet. It is similar to having something tailor-made, as it has to perfectly conform to that pony to recognize it.”
“It's a box tailor-made for you before you were even born?” Spike summed up, trying to make sure he understood what she meant.
“That's only one half of it.“ Twilight continued her artificial orbit that slowly started to make Spike dizzy. “The parchments inside are probably even older, the mean age I measure from the preservation spells is around fifteen centuries. However, I'm getting a standard deviation of six centuries.”
Spike blinked. “And that's bad.”
Judging from the blank look on his face, Spike didn't understand her. “Yes!” she emphasized. “The standard deviation is usually lower than ten percent of the mean. I've never seen such a variance when using this method.” With a wave of her horn, she shoved a piece of paper in Spike's face. “I mean, just look at the data!”
Spike looked at what seemed to be a very squiggly line with a timescale below it. He scratched his head. “It looks like a very squiggly line.”
“Exactly”, Twilight cried, “The spectral lines are diffuse and dispersed over nearly all of the timeline. It's almost like—” She interrupted herself for a gasp and stood frozen, a mad grin on her face.
“Like what?” Spike quickly asked, fearing she might fall back into erratic behaviour.
But Twilight zipped off, rummaging through the neat stack of paper lying on her desk. Quickly, she produced another sheet. “Aha!” She levitated it over to Spike. “See?”
If anything, this line was even more crude and unsteady. “Yes.” He found himself at a loss of words. “Very... Um... Squiggly?”
Twilight looked over his shoulder and smiled, full of joy. “I know,” she squeed. “It's wonderful, isn't it?”
The look Spike gave Twilight was beyond confusion. “Er... So this wobbly line” – he waved the first sheet – “is bad and this wobbly line” – he waved the other graph – “is good?”
“No, no, no.” Twilight shook her head. “They both display an absurdly high variance, and now I know why. I took these measurement from Discord's statue last summer when the Princess could not tell me how old he was. His chaos magic must be what's distorting the data. Do you know what that means?”
“It's a prank by Discord?” Spike offered.
“These parchments that were in the box are from the Discordant Era.” Now, she was positively bouncing. An almost manic, utterly euphoric grin split her face horizontally.
“Until now, there were literally no written accounts of that time. During that era, we lost nearly everything that defined our culture. Our society itself was abolished. The only reason ponies didn't starve in thousands was the abundance of edible matter created by Discord.
You remember the chocolate rain, don't you?
The Hearth's Warming Pageant contains about everything we know of the historical events during the time before. When Discord was defeated, Equestria had to be founded again because nothing remained of the governmental structure and all legislation had been lost. We don't even know how long Discord reigned. Do you have any idea how valuable these documents could be?”
She didn't wait for Spike to reply but instead flew over to her desk.
I write 'flew' because it is the word that most accurately describes the way she moved. Of course, she didn't really fly as she had not yet learned how to manoeuvre with her new wings. Still, she hardly touched the ground so 'flew' is probably appropriate.
On the desk laid the documents that excited her so, a small wonky pile of yellowed parchment, partly torn and sometimes singed. Truly, she hadn't paid much attention to it when she had measured its age so it was only now that she noticed a small note pinned to the topmost sheet.
Your Royal Highness,
My sincere apologies for the poor state of Your vital documents. I would have preferred to pass them to You unscathed, but the civil war hath not been easy on us.Yours most faithfully,
Goodwyrm Doo, the 4th of Snow, 12 years after The Nightmare
Twilight was quite astonished. “I think these are the first historical documents to apologise for not being optimally preserved.”
Spike climbed on her back and looked over her shoulder. Glancing at the sheet the note was pinned to, he remarked the drawing of a unicorn with a “Is that Rarity?”