Aurora looked up in awe as the group of one Pegasus mare, two Pegasus fillies, one Alicorn, and one Changeling stepped off the bridge that lead to the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters. The castle had been going through repairs and so it almost looked brand new, if you excluded the large hole in the ceiling where Nightmare Moon had blasted the roof off during her rampage.
"Yes the castle is quite large and breathtaking during the day, but at night it become a fear-inducing maze of traps." Twilight said with a smile.
Aurora didn't speak, she was too busy flying in circles fast enough to put Rainbow Dash to shame. Suddenly, Aurora abruptly stopped and reddish magic could be seen flowing slightly off her. "Sorry." Aurora said in a shy tone as the group entered the castle
Twilight lead the way through the castle with extreme care, it was decided that she'd have the most knowledge of the traps and so she would be able to avoid most of them and shorten the trip by taken the countless secrets paths. After a while, the group made it to the throne room.
"Now then." Twilight said as she pulled out the first letter from her saddle bag and reread the clue "Hmm... 'within a room hidden by Time' What could that one mean?" she asked.
"I don't know, a clock, the very concept of time, there're are a lot of things that mean time." Rainbow Dash said as she looked over to Aurora.
"Spirit said not to tell you the answer, just to help a bit. Look back at the riddle, it has 'Time' written with apostrophes, which is what Spirit likes putting when she is not meaning the literal form of the word. The 'T' is also capitalized, symbolizing a name." Aurora absently motioned to a room near the throne room, it was the library.
"Oh, so we're looking for a book?" Twilight asked to which, Aurora nodded.
The Library at the castle was huge, though only about one-third the size of the library in Twilight's own castle. Countless books thought to be lost through the ages were present with some depicting the darkest and most forbidden of magics. Twilight took to the air and flew-over to the section about history.
"You wont find it in that section." Aurora said, she had conjured a cloud and was currently resting on it.
"We're looking for something from history though."
"No we're looking for a book on Time. Remember, it's capitalized, so what all is capitalized?"
"Titles, names, spells, magic, aerial moves, some attacks, etc." was Twilight's instant response.
"Exactly. We know we're not looking for a title as I've all ready said we weren't, we're of course not looking for attacks or aerial maneuvers, so what does that leave?" Aurora listed
"Names, spells, and magics."
"We know there is no such thing as Time Magic." Aurora added.
"So that leaves a name or a spell."
"We're obviously not meeting with a pony, since it said that we were looking for a room with somepony in it."
"So it's a spell!" Twilight happily declared as she flew to the magic section and started looking through the books.
"So... I have to reach into and actively feel out my Pegasus magic and channel it through my wings?" Rainbow asked, she had had Aurora start teaching her on the 'active side of Pegasus magic', as Aurora called it.
"Yep, it's not useful for clearing weather though as you can only disperse the whether you created with it and the whether you create doesn't effect the existing whether." Aurora said.
"Wait, isn't the process of using this magic the same as normal Pegasus magic for flight?"
"Almost. When you fly, walk on clouds, or really anything a normal Pegasus does, you're only instinctively channeling magic through you body, not consciously (which is what is needed for this)."
Before Rainbow Dash could try, a green flash nearly blinded them, they both looked to the only possible source and found Midnight.
"S-sorry, but T-twilight thinks she f-found the spell." Midnight said as Twilight levitated the book over to Aurora.
"Yep, just cast it in the throne room." she said as they headed back to the throne room.
Back in the throne room, Twilight was charging her magic to cast the complex spell.
The magic was collecting around Twilight's horn in a large aura. Unknown to any however, there was a faint green tint to her magic. Soon the complex spell was ready and Twilight cast it full force. The magic shot out and hit the tapestries above the thrones, both tapestries began glowing in Lunar and Solar magic respectably before an explosion rang through the throne room.
As the smoke cleared, the group noticed that they weren't in the throne room anymore, in-fact, they didn't feel like they were even alive.
"Ah, Spirit Fire, it's been a while. Of course, you don't remember." a voice said, it sounded female and seemed to be dead in the literal sense.
"H-hi. And it's M-Midnight L-Locus." Midnight said as a unicorn walked into existence, she was completely blue.
"My name is Shadowed Death, it's not my original name, my soul exists inside of the walls of this castle, but enough small talk. You're here to learn what I taught you a year ago, correct?" the unicorn, revealed to be Shadowed Death, said.
"Y-yea." Midnight wasn't making eye contact and was siting down with her mane hiding her face, which once more heavily reminded Rainbow of Fluttershy.
Shadowed motioned for the group to follow her and so they did. She lead them through a wall and out into the library, which looked completely different. All the books that had been there were now gone, each replaced with a different, glowing, book. The walls seemed to pulse with a white light that seemed to whisper, Necromancy. The floor had completely changed to bone.
"What happened to this place?" Twilight asked.
"This is the Spiritual Plane version of the library. What I'm going to teach all of you is a powerful and not-entirely-allowed spell from the books of the ancient Necromancers. As you all know... even though Necromancy is Blood Magic, it's also Spiritual Magic. This spell dispels your mortal body for as long as needed and basically turns you into a spirit, unseen and unbound from mortal limits." Shadowed said.
"But, not even the evilest of unicorn fugitives will dare to use Necromancy. Why are you teaching us an illegal magic?"
"Because there will be times during your quest when you can't get somewhere because physical entrance is blocked by guards or the place you're looking for doesn't exist in the living world."
"Celestia will banish us if she finds out what you're trying to teach us!"
"You're all-ready going to be banished if she finds out that you've been trying to learn secrets so ancient and well-kept that their revelation could shatter Equestria. You've been an enemy to Celestia since you read that first letter, but the secrets she's keeping are far worse than what you might think. I'll warn you though, you may think you know everything about Celestia, but all you know will be shattered as you progress through all this. Now let's begin." without another word, Shadowed motioned for the group to follow her to the barracks.
The Spiritual Plane version of the barracks was made of hardened Alicorn blood, with several remains of pony skeletons lying around in a sort of obstacle course fashion, and a river of blue Dracorn blood flowing just beyond the walls. Etched in the center was a magic binding circle with an eight-pointed star in the center and several ancient runes surrounding the circle, each one written at a point in the star and written in the blood of all eight pony races. The floor bellow the circle and runes was a slightly dark blue color to allow all the runes to be seen.
"What's that?" Scootaloo asked.
"That's a Magic Binding Circle for all ponies. It's used to help ponies master and control highly corruptive magics without running the risk of being corrupted by it during or after training. The way it does that is by-" Shadowed was cut off when Twilight spoke, finishing what was being said.
"Binding the specific magic to the soul and then allowing the soul to adapt to the feel of it while in a controlled environment." Twilight finished.
"Hmm, you know a lot about magic Twilight Sparkle, of course, I shouldn't expect anything less from a decedent of Starswirl the Bearded, you know, you look almost exactly like his wife." Twilight blushed rainbow at that comment, she had always known she was a decedent of Starswirl the Bearded.
"Let's get on with this, um, if that's okay?" Midnight said, Rainbow was shocked that she was still shocked at the similarities to Fluttershy and Midnight.
After three hours in the Spiritual Plane, about an hour in the living world, everypony was use to both using the spell to enter the Spiritual Plane and getting around in their spirit forms, which Shadowed identified as their Ethereal forms.
"Thanks for the lesson Shadowed Death." Twilight said as she fazed back into the living world, followed by everypony except Midnight.
"I see you are expecting another of your letters." Shadowed said as she levitated a letter, this one black with a red seal on it, over to her, then to Midnight. This is still from you, but it was written here and so it has a spell to allow you to take it back with you. The colors are so you can identify it as a letter from 'beyond the grave' according to yourself. With that, Midnight left as well.
When Midnight fazed back into the living world, she motioned for her friends and niece to come over before unfolding and reading the letter.
Hey, it's you again (Wait, is it bad that saying that is starting to seem normal to me?). So, if I've received this letter then I now know the 'Planes of the Ethereal Path' spell, which will be a necessity for a lot of what we'll be encountering. So, I've mostly written this letter to explain what lead me to meeting with Shadowed Death. It's not much of a story as I met her out of shear curiosity, but what started that curiosity was legends of a powerful and barely known spell that only she would teach, I'm not going into detail about how I managed to cast the spell to enter her domain. I would tell us that Aurora Light is not to come to our next destination, but I know her too well and she'll just follow us and then create the strongest tornado in existence to ensure we're unwilling to deny her wishes. So, I hope all of you, including Aurora, are mostly use to your Ethereal forms as you'll likely end up being in them more than your corporeal bodies during this. Now for the next part.
*Where the air is all that's known, where we first began to roam, within the commander's barracks, where the marks of defense burn, lies a room of secrets and weapons hidden by the warriors, to there you must turn.
was that better?
signed you
Spirit Fire
p.s. keep in mind that the room isn't one the living can get to, I just couldn't think of how to word that in the riddle