Chapter 3
Twilight Sparkle stumbled from the dumpster she had recorporated herself into and shook a banana peel out of her mane. The alley behind Sugarcube Corner was deserted and dark. She pranced away from the deeper darkness and into the starlit gloom of the main road. Ponyville slept peacefully around her, at complete odds with what she had just left behind at the castel of the Two Sisters in the Everfree forest.
“Wait...what was that just now?” Twilight looked around, her eyes searching the night for any sign of a pony-shaped blot of black. “I saw something. I know I did! I did not imagine all that, I just couldn’t have!”
Something had been there with her in the old abandoned ruins. She could feel it watching as she had entered the room where the Elements had been kept. Twilight looked over her shoulder into the alley for a moment and started trotting away.
“I need to get home...do research.”
Her castle - it didn’t even have a proper name yet - loomed in the distance, just beyond the official edge of town. She kept up a pace that was perhaps just a little fast in the dead of night with no moon to add extra light. Now that she was out of the Everfree, the sky was cloudless and a million points of cold light twinkled above her. The moon was in it’s dark phase, as it sailed through the shadow of the planet. Had she the right sort of telescope, she could still pick out its faint outline, but on the ground and unaided, it might as well not exist.
Twilight turned to her left at the next intersection so she could hit the large thoroughfare that cut Ponyville in two. That would take her straight to her castle and would be the brightest lit path. Her heart wasn’t hammering in her chest quite as hard as it had been, but she was working up a sweat that was rapidly cooling. She slowed to a quick walk as she rounded the next corner and shivered.
She threw a look back over her shoulder again. The road was empty as it had been a moment ago. Was it getting colder or was that just her imagination? Twilight gulped down a fresh lungful of air and broke back into a full gallop. She needed a roof over her head, a closed door at her back and a book in her hooves that held all the answers.
The chill grew worse as she ran and it sapped the energy from her muscles. Her gallop slowed to a trot before she’d passed the clock tower in the center of town. The hands read a quarter after midnight. Had she really been out that late? Had no pony noticed her absence?
Twilight came to a halt in the square and coughed hard, her breathing ragged from the exertion and cold. Her breath came out in a cloud of condescension.
“...”
She jumped and kicked her legs hard enough to spill her on the flagstones. Twilight grunted as her knees took the brunt of the fall, but she didn’t look back. She needed to get to the castle before...whatever it was caught up to her. Adrenaline forced her aching muscles to comply to her demands as she ran.
Her knee started to ache immediately and the pain became a pronounced stabbing sensation before she reached the far end of the town square. She knew her hooves wouldn’t be taking her much farther and spread her wings, beating them in time with the last of her momentum. Twilight pulled up sharply as she reached the buildings on the other side and tucked in her hooves to just barely clear their roofs.
She banked to the right as her climb took her over the chimneys of the businesses around town square. Ponyville still had mostly one and two story buildings but she hardly gained any altitude as she pumped her wings. Balconies and raised attics, decorative weathervanes and lightning rods jumped out at her from the darkness as Twilight turned and weaved. She crossed another block before she climbed well enough above the rooftops to even out.
Twilight looked back as Ponyville swept by below her. “Eep!” At the very edge of her sight in the starlit dark, she could see something darker than the surrounding shadows flowing across the ground like mist or smoke. She flapped her wings faster but it matched pace with her and started to close the distance between them.
Twilight focused on reaching her castle and moments later, her horn flashed just before she crashed into an upper level window. She tucked in her wings and sailed through the now open window until she impacted the carpet runner in the hallway and skidded to a halt. Her knee screamed at her and Twilight lifted herself on three legs as she tried to remember the layout of the castle and where she was.
She rarely went upstairs. All the important chambers were on the main floor, except her bedroom, which was just on the second floor. The rest of the castle’s twists and turns were foreign to her. She and the girls had explored it after the castle appeared and all the rooms were properly furnished with furniture and decorations, but without a staff or true purpose, what use was the rest of the place to her beyond extra bedrooms when she had visitors.
Twilight blinked as her memory kicked in. She hobbled down the hall and turned the corner and yanked the door open as she moved and slammed it shut as soon as she was through. Her new home came equipped with several fireplaces and the room she’d chosen had it’s own, already stocked with enough wood to last until dawn. She threw in a log and her horn flashed again as hit the wood with a simple combustion spell. “That’ll kill two birds with one stone. No darkness, no cold, no ghosts.”
The fire crackled to life and the room filled with light. Twilight took a moment to try and slow her heart and steady her breathing before looking over her injured knee. Blood matted her fur there and further down , running in heavy rivulets to her fetlock. It was already dry and crusty and when she tested the joint, it didn’t feel broken. Her fur pulled and the skin underneath burned. “I think I just scraped it. I need to clean it. Spike will know where the antiseptic cream is.”
The fire in the fireplace spat glowing embers into the air and the flames danced wildly as the log Twilight had set ablaze snapped. The sudden noise made her breath catch and all the effort she had put into slowing her heart seemed for naught as it leapt in her chest. “Calm down, Twilight. It was just the log…”
“...”
That non-noise came again. It was like a void, her mind seemed determined to believe there was a voice, speaking to her while her ears reported no incoming signals. Twilight pressed her back against the wall, her eyes fixed on the fireplace. The shadows it cast grew long for a moment as the fire jumped again before it all but snuffed itself. Twilight eased herself sideways, her hoof feeling for the door handle. The log popped and sizzled as embers drifted up the flume like short-lived fireflies.
Twilight felt the handle under her hoof.
“...twilight sparkle…” The light from the embers died and the temperature of the room plummeted. In the sudden darkness, two white blue candle flames appeared. “...you won’t…”
She pushed the door open and ran. Her leg burned but Twilight ignored it. It had followed her home. In her rush to get away, she had endangered her home, Spike and Owlowiscious. She was still no closer to figuring out what it was and now the few books she had wouldn’t be of any help.
Twilight opened the window at the end of the hall and took to the air again. “I’m going to need the Princess’ for this!”