It was against all odds that the book containing Starswirl’s soul fell on the head of that particular pegasus. Of all the ponies in all of the world, the chances of the book falling on the courier making her way to Ponyville were astronomically low.
“What the hay?” the mare muttered as she bent down and caught the book before it could fall further from her reach. She held it up to her face and read the words on the cover.
“The Journal of Starswirl the Bearded?” she wondered aloud, scratching her head. “Who’s that?”
She looked up, searching for whatever it was that dropped the book, but only saw clears skies, not a pony in sight. After a few minutes of searching for the journal’s owner, she gave up and tossed the book in her messenger bag, intent on skimming it later. With that business finished, she took off towards Ponyville.
The quaint little hamlet of Ponyville isn’t the sort of place you’d expect to find a large castle. Numerous cottages with thatched roofs surrounded a small town hall, and ponies milled about lazily in the hot summer sun. A short walk north from the town hall would find one in the market, where all sorts of ponies hawked their wares to the jumble of ponies on the road.
In fact, the town was so small it didn’t even have its own guard post. Apparently, nopony bothered to inform Twilight Sparkle of that when she decided to make her large, sun-blocking castle in the town, the humble homes of many other ponies living in its shadow.
This castle was the destination of the courier. She flew over the thatched rooves, market stalls, and upset sun-bathers and towards the crystal castle that was home to the town’s resident Princess.
The castle itself was a tall building- very tall, in fact. It was made of crystal in all the colours of an aurora, and was shaped to resemble a tree. To the pony inside, it was a pleasant homage to the Tree of Harmony, which helped keep Equestria safe from the dangers of the Everfree forest. To everypony else—who didn’t know the history of the castle and believed it to simply have been built overnight—it was evidence of the sentimental nature of the princess inside, who was unwilling to let the idea of her tree/library rest in peace after it was destroyed by a demigod.
Yes, this quaint little hamlet was much more exciting than the thatched cottages would lead you to believe.
The courier lowered herself to the ground and trotted a few steps forwards before knocking on the massive door of the castle. She briefly wondered if anypony would even hear her knocks in the large building, and was about to fly up to a window when the door slowly opened up, a violet alicorn struggling to push the heavy metal door.
“I really need to fix this-” the alicorn wheezed, trying to catch her breath. She took a few deep breaths before greeting the courier. “Good morning, Ditzy. How are you today?”
The courier—Ditzy—rubbed her head. “A bit dizzy,” she admitted. “I got assaulted by a book on my way here.”
This elicited a strange look from the alicorn.
“Anyway, I’ve got mail for you!” she exclaimed, stuffing her muzzle in her bag and bringing out a large stack of letters, many of which were covered in small drawings of hearts or scribbled on in foal’s hoofwriting. “I fink itch mostly fan ‘ail.”
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
Ditzy spat out the letters, and the alicorn caught them in her magic. “I said, I think it’s mostly fan mail,” she repeated, pointing to the numerous letters.
The alicorn blushed. “Yeah, I’ve been getting a lot of that lately,” she admitted, embarrassed. “You said you... got assaulted by a book?” she inquired.
Ditzy nodded. “Oh, yeah! It just fell out of the sky. I have no idea who it belongs to. Here,” she said, digging through her bag once more. She pulled out the purple-covered book, and the alicorn held it in her magic. “It’s a journal. Do you know anypony in town named Starswirl the Bearded? I want to return it if I can.”
The alicorn made no comment, instead choosing to stare at the book in silence, her mouth slightly agape, eyes wide.
“Um, Twilight? Are you okay?”
The alicorn—Twilight—slowly nodded her head. “Do... do you not know what this is?” she asked, her voice hushed. Ditzy shook her head, confused.
“Isn’t it a journal?”
Twilight just nodded. “It... it is. Trust me, Ditzy, you won’t be able to find the owner of this journal. Not in a million years.”
Ditzy’s ears drooped. “No?” she asked. “Well... you like books, so I guess you can have it. I don’t need somepony’s old journal.”
Twilight just nodded once more. “Okay, thanks!” she shouted, slamming the door.
Ditzy shook her head.
“What a silly mare.”
Twilight slammed the door shut, holding her prize close to her chest.
“I can’t believe it,” she muttered. “I can’t believe this. This must be a dream.”
She repeated herself multiple times as she made her way to the large living room of her castle, the book held close to her body as though it were a newborn child in need of protecting.
“Ponies have been searching for this for years. Hundreds of years. And it just falls out of the sky?” She dropped down on the couch. “No. No, that’s simply not possible. Obviously it’s a fake. That’s definitely the case.”
She examined the royal purple cover of the journal. Twilight lifted a hoof and traced it along the flowery script, possibly written by the great Starswirl the Bearded himself. If this were the real journal of the great wizard, then hidden inside of it would be all sorts of magical breakthroughs and spells that hadn’t been seen in a thousand years.
“I have to make sure it’s real. If- if it’s real, I’m the luckiest mare in all of Equestria! Alright, Twilight, let’s do this!”
She stared at the book for a few long minutes.
“Okay, Twilight, don’t give up now. I can do this. It’s only the most amazing discovery in the past thousand years. I’ll open it in three... two... one!”
The book remained closed. Twilight sighed.
“Calm down, Twilight. You just need a minute to calm down,” she told herself, closing her eyes and taking a few deep breaths. A few minutes later, she finally felt herself calming.
The patter of dragon feet on the ground distracted Twilight from her meditative exercise, and she opened one eye to glare at the intruder. Spike, her dragon assistant, was standing beside her, one eyebrow raised.
“You’ve been sitting there with your eyes closed for like, half an hour. What are you doing?” the dragon asked. He glanced at the book in her arms. “And what’s that? I’ve never seen that book before.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “I was meditating, Spike, but it looks like I’m done with that for now,” she answered him. “And how would you know if you’ve never seen this book? We live in a library. There are lots of books.”
Spike’s face adopted a deadpan look as he surveyed the living room with its numerous, pristinely-organized bookshelves. “I don’t know, Twi. I’ve shelved these books lots of times.”
Twilight rolled her eyes and levitated the journal in front of Spike’s face. “This is a very, very rare book. It might be the personal journal of Starswirl the Bearded himself! I was just about to examine it more closely, to see if it’s the real thing.”
Spike grimaced. “Sounds boring. I’ll stay out of your mane.”
Twilight turned onto her back as Spike left the room, muttering something about Twilight being the Princess of Eggheads, a comment he likely would have regretted had Twilight heard.
“Alright, Twilight. You’ve been training for this your whole life. You can do this.”
She took a deep breath.
“It’s time to read.”
The world around Starswirl was a darkness unlike any he had ever seen. It was much too dark to be considered black— no, it wasn’t blackness, but an emptiness, as though someone had taken a knife and cut out the world around him, leaving him suspended, alone, and very confused.
“Hello?” he called out, his voice trembling. There was no echo, and it something about the way his voice sounded in the nothingness was wrong. He didn’t call out again. The strange quality of his voice made him uncomfortable.
His soul was bound to his journal, he realized. Was this what the inside of a book was like? An empty nothingness for as far as the eye could see? Lonely, silent, maddening in the isolation?
He hoped not. That would really suck.
Starswirl tried paddling his hooves in the air in a vain attempt to ‘swim’ forward. He quickly gave up once he realized he had no way to tell if it was working, with no visual markers to guide him.
Not to worry, he thought to himself. An intellectual pony such as I will have no problems entertaining himself in this abyss. I may have had all external stimuli stolen from me, but I still have my mind!
With that thought comforting him, he relaxed and allowed his body to float aimlessly in the wretched emptiness, attempting to entertain himself with thoughts on magical theorems and proper demonic summoning techniques.
Five minutes later, he was curled up into a tight ball, his hat pulled over his eyes.
“I can’t stand this any more! This silent nothingness is driving me mad!”
Now, readers, don’t fret. Starswirl’s situation did, in fact, improve.
Not immediately, but it did improve eventually.
After what felt like hours to Starswirl but in all reality was likely to only be a few minutes, a small point of light appeared in the void, catching Starswirl’s eye in the darkness. He moved his forelimbs as though swimming, and to his surprise, he moved forward, towards the glowing blue light.
He swam faster and faster towards the light, his actions spurred on by a mixture of impatience and a growing feeling of cold on his limbs. The nothingness had started to become painful on his exposed skin, and he feared he was in a place where no creature, living or dead, was meant to inhabit. These fears pushed him to swim faster and harder.
He hurtled through the void, faster than his legs were moving, and he belatedly realized that at some point during his swim, he had stopped moving under his own power and had begun flying through the nothing as though being pulled forward by the still distant blue light, caught in its gravity. As he neared it, faster and faster, he let out a yelp of surprise and covered his face with his forelegs, his eyes closed.
Even with his eyes shut, the bright blue light nearly blinded him as he passed through it, an electric tingle on his skin accompanying his return to the world of the living.
Twilight flipped a page that was yellowed with age, utterly absorbed in the purple-covered journal she was reading. No doubts in her mind remained- the work detailed in the journal was so perfect, so utterly exquisite, that the journal could belong to none other than Starswirl the Bearded himself. Twilight imagined unveiling the hidden knowledge in the tome to the world, forever being hailed as the mare who uncovered the hidden mysteries of the past, revealing the hidden truths of thaumaturgy as Starswirl saw it. She would forever be hailed as a hero in the magical community.
A loud noise shocked her out of her reverie. The sound of shattering glass. Her first thought was Rainbow Dash. It would not have been the first time she’d crashed through one of her windows.
Twilight used her magic to remove a first-aid kit from underneath the couch she was lying on. If there was one thing Pinkie had taught her, it was the advantages of being prepared for any sort of emergency, especially the kind that happened as often as a broken pegasus, and she had begun keeping first-aid kits throughout her home in case of a medical emergency.
She noticed how light the kit felt as she made her way to the source of the noise. She’d need to restock it soon. It was the third time this week alone that Rainbow had crashed into her home.
“I wonder what Rainbow broke this time?” she thought aloud. “Whatever it is, it can’t be worse than the time she broke the sink in the library and flooded the place. I still can’t believe she ruined an entire shelf of books.”
She entered the hallway. “Rainbow, I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again. You really need to be more careful when-”
Twilight stopped short upon seeing the mess in the hallway. Shards of a glass mirror that once hung proudly on the wall were scattered on the floor throughout the hallway. Rainbow Dash was nowhere to be seen.
“What in Equestria...?”
The shards were strewn across the full length of the hallway, and Twilight was unable to tell what exactly had caused the mirror to shatter. She carefully made her way closer to the mirror’s frame, making sure not to step on any glass shards.
The frame was empty, the wall behind it untouched. Whatever had happened to the mirror to cause its destruction wasn’t enough to even scuff the wall.
“That’s not right... anything that would hit the mirror with enough force to do... this... should have damaged the wall...” she told herself, attempting to piece together what had happened. “So why did it break?”
She was too busy investigating the mirror’s frame to notice the shards near the end of the hallway rising, as though an invisible being was rising up from the ground, carrying them along with it.
That wasn’t a simile. An invisible being was rising up from the ground, the glass shards being risen along with it. They outlined the general shape of the being- a pointed hat, a flowing robe, average height, by pony standards.
A glass shard fell from the top of the being and onto the ground. The crystalline noise it made as it clinked against the ground echoed in the silence of the hallway. Twilight whirled around, just in time to watch the glass shards all fall back to the ground as though the being holding them up had suddenly disappeared.
Twilight stepped back, mouth slightly agape for the second time that day. She came to her senses much quicker than before.
“Spike!” she called out. “Get down here!”
Starswirl rose, feeling weightless. Glass shifted as he moved, shards covering his entire body. He didn’t feel them. When he got to his hooves, he stopped and looked around.
He was in a hallway, the walls made of blue crystal. Shards of glass were everywhere, and a mare stood, facing away. As he moved his head from side to side, a piece of glass dislodged itself from atop his hat and plummeted to the floor.
Clink
The mare quickly turned around, horn lowered as if to strike. Starswirl gasped, having a less than perfect track record with combat scenarios. The lowered horn, glowing horn startled him, reminding him of numerous childhood beatings, and he panicked, casting a teleportation spell.
He appeared on the other side of the castle, half of his body lodged in a wall. A terrible possibility when teleporting blind. He walked out of the wall, his body noncorporeal.
A voice from across the castle. “Spike! Get down here!”
