The Happiness and Peace of Mind Committee
Chapter 27: Blood of the Covenant
The picnic went as well as Twilight would’ve expected. She still silently reveled in how amazing it was that she could be with all of her friends again, their personalities so bright and happy. She tried to hold back any signs of her overwhelming emotions, which it wouldn’t have made sense for her to have them in any normal situation.
It was still a bit jarring how her life went from total despair to total hope in less than a day, but she chose to enjoy that fact instead of digging too deep into it. She usually didn’t let a chance for research pass, but she decided to make an exception. Just this once.
Soon the group of friends found it time to end the picnic. Twilight wanted to beg to have it go on longer, but she knew that they could always have one again tomorrow. She stood up to allow Applejack and Rainbow Dash to fold up the checkered red and white sheet.
With a gasp, she soon found herself overtaken with a sudden dizziness. She clutched her forehead, looking down at the ground wearily. The grass beneath her morphed into a mixture of black and purple nothingness. The color rippled outwards in all directions, engulfing everything in its path. With tears vaguely clouding her vision, Twilight reached outwards to her friends, but by the time her eyes had readjusted they had already disappeared. The beautiful and lively atmosphere was crushed by the new desolate landscape.
So all the time she had spent with her friends, it really wasn’t them? It was nothing but a pleasant illusion? An idealized dream world that someone made up? Maybe she was the one that made it up, to save herself from the pain of death in her final moments. But did that mean that this that she was now witnessing was her departure from all existence?
Her eyes shot open. She felt herself in her body again, lying on a cold marble floor. The vague aching all over her body confirmed that she truly was still alive, but she couldn’t be sure yet if that was a relief or not. Cautiously, Twilight raised her head to survey the area.
Her eyes widened. It wasn’t the building that she was surprised to be in, rather the room. If she recalled the area correctly, she somehow had wound up in the entry hall of The Committee headquarters building. The silence was a bit unsettling, considering the size of the room, but she didn’t let that get to her.
Twilight sat up uncertainly, trying to piece together what had happened. Everything seemed to blur together in her mind, and her head soon started to ache. Getting up completely, she decided that her next course of action should be to relocate the throne room. Her thoughts were jarringly interrupted by the faint sound of microphone feedback and speakers crackling to life.
“Hello, hello!” the dreadfully familiar voice of Koishi flowed out of the speakers, echoing throughout the entire building. The speakers seemed to be everywhere, so there was no getting away from it. “Looks like you’ve woken up, so the show can really begin! Well, I guess it’s not much of a show since all you can do is listen, but it’ll be fun just the same!” Twilight clenched her teeth, her vision turning downcast as she listened further, though the constant echoing made it difficult to decipher most of her words.
"I bet you’re curious what the show is, huh? That’s the very basis of human nature, it seems! Well, let me tell you the rules of this little game show! Your goal is simple: to try and find the throne room again before all of your friends are dead!”
“Keep your filthy hooves off of my friends, you bitch!” Twilight shouted, even though she knew Koishi was too far away to hear. Her blood boiled more than ever before, and she took off running down one of the many hallways frantically. She slowed a few moments, then came to a complete stop, realizing that she had absolutely no idea where to go.
“Oh, and I’m not gonna help you this time by making you see and hear things subconsciously! That was really frustrating, you know? Even with my magic guiding the way the whole time. I should’ve just put up a neon sign pointing to the door,” Koishi commented. “Also, I can hear you. You should be nicer.”
Twilight groaned. As much as she loved her intellectual puzzles, she was really sick of having to solve one every three seconds. She backtracked to the main hallway, deciding to survey each one to determine which one she followed before. Why was it so hard to remember all of the sudden?
“I’ll just check for magic and follow down whichever has the highest feedback…” she mumbled to herself. There was no time just to go down each and every path, so a bit of cutting corners was necessary.
“Oh! I promised a live stream of the action, didn’t I? And don’t worry, I upgraded so there’s instant streaming from every room in the castle! Isn’t that awesome?” Koishi added. Twilight waved her off, focusing back on her spell.
Her horn emanated the slightly violet hue she was familiar with, which increased and decreased slightly as she waved it in front of the different passages. Her courage wavered as she moved down the line of hallways, none of them resulting in any spectacular result. So it looked like that plan didn’t work. She sighed, moving her head down in defeat.
What she wasn’t expecting was that the incantation didn’t cancel completely before she lowered her head. There was a sudden surge in the magic flow that was almost enough to make her lose her balance. She raised her head cautiously a second time, and once her horn moved over a rather uninteresting room the reading spiked again. She pursued the direction of the high magical concentrations, even though she was fairly certain that it wouldn’t lead her to her friends.
“Well, there is the possibility that she rearranged everything while I was unconscious,” Twilight observed, moving further into the room. She cast an illumination spell to get a better view. Nothing in the room seemed noteworthy, but she was still drawn deeper into it by some unknown force.
“Oopsie!” Koishi said, though the sound seemed more distant. Twilight supposed that she had no need to put speakers in such an out of the way place. “I keep forgetting to leave the microphone on! Looks like that whole scene was a waste. Let’s get another extra for refilming, then?” There were muffled cries of unrest in the background which were undeniably coming from the other five. Twilight’s sweat ran cold. She needed to hurry, or at least get as far away from earshot as possible.
The room drew her in further, its darkness still vaguely unsettling. She felt something important within it somewhere. A few moments later, Twilight made the most curious discovery. One chunk of the wall was swung outward. The gap leftover looked to be the beginning of a spiral staircase, which led downward to whatever lied in the basements of The Committee building. It seemed to her to be a good place to hide undetected and not be heard, so she gingerly took a few steps downward.
Not a moment later, the most blood curdling screech Twilight had heard in her life forced its way onto her eardrums. Throwing away all sense of caution, she sprinted down the narrow staircase. She was positive that she heard some form of talking even down there, upon closer inspection.
After a few minutes of panicked running and a good deal of tripping, Twilight arrived at the foot of the staircase. The room she found herself in gave off a totally different vibe from the rest of the building. In fact, it gave off a different vibe from the rest of the entire town. It resembled something akin to an underground cavern, and there were in fact crystals embedded into the walls. They softly glowed and illuminated the rest of the tunnel’s darkness. It had a certain serene feeling to it, and having the speakers far enough back to be inaudible was definitely a plus.
She proceeded onwards, not sure what to make of the whole place. Her footsteps echoed off of the polished walls. Why would something like this have been built? Better yet, who else had been down there recently? The entrance at the top of the stairs was definitely an attempt at a secret passage.
Twilight found herself at the end of the tunnel, and the walls opened up to a small circular room. Six lavender gemstones stood poised in the middle, encircling two well crafted statues. She didn’t need to inspect them very much to recognize the figures as Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. But why would they even be there? It was exceedingly obvious how much Emerald Joy hated them, after all. Twilight could only assume the same to be true for Koishi. Did that girl even have the ability to hate people?
Waving those thoughts aside, Twilight stepped closer. She instantly could feel the increase in magical concentration. Had this area been enchanted or something? But why? Hopefully the centerpieces held some answer. Wasting no time, she approached the nearest crystal and scanned it for traces of magic. At first her horn only emitted a moderate shade of violet, but then blues and pinks mixed in with it. She canceled the spell immediately. As far as she knew, magic only changed color when it was corrupted by black magic and turned the appropriate color. Unless... she had just absorbed another unicorn’s magic.
She looked up at her horn again, which was now flickering with multiple colors of magic. Her eyes wandered upward towards the two statues towering above her.
“I trust you know what to do with that, young Twilight Sparkle,” a voice out of nowhere stated simply. It sounded familiar, but it wasn’t one whose owner she could place off the top of her head.
“Yes, we hope you shall prevail,” another voice added.
“I-I will, I promise,” Twilight responded, though she wasn’t sure why she did. She felt something floating alongside her, and turned to see her hair suspended in the air, waving as if she was moving in water. It sparkled slightly. So that was the true power of that much magic…
“For my friends, and for everyone, I will.”
With a spectacular burst of energy that she hardly knew she summoned, Twilight felt herself propelling through time and space. A transportation spell so easily cast was unimaginable, even to someone such as herself.
With another crackle, she reappeared in an unremarkable hallway, which resembled all of the others. She knew its secrets perfectly well, though. She slowly extended her neck, her hair and clothes already rippling from the power of her charged magic. The whole hall lit up a brilliant violet, and in one swift movement the door appeared and burst open, flying into the throne room and effectively startling its occupants.
“Oh, you made it! That’s good,” Koishi greeted optimistically upon spotting Twilight in the doorway. “That whole show was a bluff, I didn’t actually hurt them. I mean, yeah, psychological torture aside.”
“Step away from my friends,” Twilight commanded, her voice slow and steady. When Koishi didn’t immediately comply, she moved forward into the throne room. Or at least, that’s what the plan was. The moment she went past the door frame she was blown backwards and dented the adjacent wall.
“Oh, right!” Koishi added. “I put up an impenetrable field around this entire room. That means that you can’t come in and save your friends. So sad…” She paused, then grabbed Fluttershy off of the ground by her long pink hair. “Let’s begin, then! You didn’t make it inside in time, so as punishment, I get to slaughter all of your friends! Try not to be a sore loser, please?”