//------------------------------// // Chapter 89 // Story: The Darkness in our Souls // by Black Light //------------------------------// Chapter 89 I walked into the dinning room my notes floating beside me. "Now I just need to find a way to sneak in and find out even more." I said to myself. "Shadow!" I heard. I turned and looked in the direction and saw Twilight standing there looking slightly annoyed. "Hey Twilight how can I help you?" I asked. "For starters how about you don't go and do stupid things like this again?" She told me. "Hmm...nope don't think I can do that." I told her starting towards the table. I levitated out a piece of paper from my stack and began reading it. "There has to be some instructions for opening it. They pony that made it would have to put that somewhere, and whoever used it must have found it. I doubt the princesses would tell anypony by the way they acted." I said to myself while reading over the paper. "Shadow, you went against the princesses. I'm surprised you're not banished right now. You just basically stole secrets from them, how can you be so careless and irresponsible?" Twilight ranted. I turned to look at her looking away from my notes. "When you spend most of your life being called a monster you tend to become one." I told her. Causing Twilight to falter and everypony else to look at me with some worry. "Shadow." Rainbow said to me as she moved in front of me. "I know, I know. I'm not supposed to call myself a monster anymore." I said looking back to my notes. "I've just have a strange combination of excitement and anger." "Why?" Rainbow asked. "That mirror is one of the most astounding things I have ever seen, and I'm so close to finding out all of it's secrets but they keep eluding me. It's like when your trying to think of a word and it's right on the tip of your tongue, and you just get more and more annoyed as you can't think of it." I told them all sitting down at the table and changing pages. "Shadow you shouldn't worry about the mirror anymore." Twilight said. "It'll probably just get you into more trouble." "I know it will. Chances are I might get myself banished for just looking this far into it, but I've come this far and I'm so close to the end. I want to finish." I explained. "Shadow, I of all ponies can understand that, but there are some experiments that just aren't meant to be finished." Twilight told me. I sighed. I heard the door to the dinning room open. I looked and saw Celestia and Luna walking in. They approached me. "Shadow, we would like to discuss today's events." Luna said. "Very well." I responded. "We have decided not to punish you for the incident considering that you have done us many favors in the past, as well as the fact that your reason or doing so was just to learn more about it." Celestia told me. I gave a small smile. "But, we have decided to try and avoid this type of thing in the future we will be moving the mirror away from the castle." I sighed and looked to my notes. "We won't be confiscating your notes either." She added on. I just nodded. "Alright, I suppose that's fair. But don't think this means I've given up on finding out exactly how the mirror is used." I told them. "Shadow, we know you well enough to know that's true." Celestia said with a small smile. "Okay then, I still have access to the royal archive correct?" I asked the princesses. "Yes, you do, but you won't find anything about the mirror even in the restricted sections." Luna answered. "Wasn't planning on it, but I have about ten pages in here of runes and markings that I don't recognize. I figure the library is the best chance to find out what they mean." I said lifting the pile of notes. "Twilight." I said afterwards getting the purple mares attention. "I appear to have a massive study session, all approved by the princesses, ahead of me. I could use your assistance in this manner." I said to her. "Well- I don't- I mean." She responded unsure. "Twilight this is a magic artifact that we have the opportunity to uncover the secrets of. Are you really saying that you don't want to help with that?" I asked her. "Also, I'd probably get lost on my way to the library if I went by myself." I added on rubbing the back of my head sheepishly. "Was this all really just a round-about way to try and get me to guide you to the library?" Twilight responded. "...I'm not going to say no." I answered. Twilight sighed. "I'll take you to the library, but you're on your own for this study session of yours. I don't want anything to do with this mirror." She told me. "Very good. I'll try not to stay in there for a week this time." I said with a smile. "You'd better not." Rainbow told me. "It was a pain having to drag myself into that library everyday to see you." "You didn't seem that against it after you found the Daring Do Section." I responded. "Not the point." She told me. I chuckled. "Anyway, I'm sure it should take that long. I know what I'm looking for this time. Though I'm not sure how much easier that will make it to find." I said flipping through my notes again. I turned to the princesses. "And as a show of good faith I will even report any discoveries I make directly to you...Eventually...I'll probably forget, but I'll try not to." Celestia just rolled her eyes. "You're hopeless you know." "So I have been told." I said with a smile. "Now. To the Library!" I said as I started towards the door. I stopped in the doorway and turned to Twilight. "Well come on, I'm not going to find it by myself...And that's probably not an exaggeration either." Twilight sighed and walked out into the hall, with me following close behind taking any chance I could to look over my notes. 'Don't suppose you have anything to add about this?' 'I don't think any incarnation of darkness would ever take an interest in a mirror. 'worth a shot.' 'Not really' I rolled my eyes reading over my notes. 'Runes I don't understand, blah blah blah, something about the Gaia, incantation that I don't know the purpose of, strange drawing of triangle, filler, Gaia again, more filler...wait a minute.' '...I see it too.' I stopped in the middle of the hallway and started to look at the page closer. "Shadow? Are you okay?" Twilight asked. My eyes were looking over the page and flipping through different pages of notes. 'How did we not notice this?' 'I don't know, with this much about it I don't know how we missed it. 'There are multiple depictions and mentions of Gaia in this.' 'This mirror is considered one of the strongest artifacts in Equestria, you don't think- 'It's too many coincidences, No way that there's not a correlation.' "Shadow?" Twilight asked with some worry. 'You're going to have to dig deep for this one.' 'Only if it was after, if it was before there will be nothing to find.' 'Either it's there and we know, or it's before and we know where to look.' "Shadow!?, What's gotten into you?" Twilight shouted worried gripping my shoulders. I heard the door to the dinning room swing open most likely the others wondering what's happening. I looked up at Twilight with a large smile. "Don't you see, it all makes sense now. Where it's strength comes from. Why there's almost nothing about it." I said excitedly. "I don't understand what are you-" "Gaia! It all comes back to Gaia!" I shouted.