//------------------------------// // Chapter Three - The Panic of the Purple Pony Princess // Story: Starswirl // by Dino Days //------------------------------// The hour following Starswirl’s impromptu teleport was an eventful one for all parties involved. Starswirl, with his many years dealing with spirits and spooks of all sorts, realized fairly quickly that he had only partially returned to the land of the living. It was merely his spirit that had returned, leaving him a noncorporeal entity. Upon realizing this, he hastily stepped into a wall, unsure of whether or not he was visible, and his there while he tried to make sense of his situation. I’m a ghost! What an opportunity! And it was. Towards the end of Starswirl’s life, he had been studying death and spirits in an attempt to understand what made ghosts and why they appeared. I had wanted to do a case study on a ghost for my research, he thought, giddy. What better way to understand the subject of a case study than to become the case study! With that thought in mind, Starswirl got to work understanding himself over the next hour. He pondered such questions as ‘why am I so tired after casting my teleportation spell?’ and ‘why am I hungry if I don’t have a body?’ Meanwhile, Twilight was with Spike in the living room. She had left the broken glass where it was for a more in-depth study later, and was currently sitting on the floor with her dragon assistant and a Ouija board. They had already tried spectral analysis, magical analysis, and more mundane methods of deducing what had happened, and none had bore fruit. When Spike had suggested the Ouija board, Twilight decided to humour him. “Now we just hold the little heart thingy-” “Planchette.” “Swearing isn’t Princess-like, Twilight, and it’s a super good plan. Now, we just hold the little heart thingy and ask a question, and the ghost will answer us! That way we’ll find out what’s going on.” The two placed their claws and hooves on the planchette, Spike considerably more eager than this alicorn friend. Starswirl poked his head out of the wall, looking around for any sign of danger, and upon seeing Twilight with a small dragon, which he assumed was for ghost-hunting, he quickly retreated back into the wall. He tentatively poked his head out of the wall once more. If he were visible, they most definitely would have noticed him by now. With this in mind, he observed the two. “Ghost!” Spike called out. Starswirl assumed they meant him. “We summon you!” Starswirl didn’t feel particularly summoned. There was no tugging on his ethereal soul, no pain, and no compulsion whatsoever. I guess it’s kind of an optional thing, he thought, amused. Nevertheless, he walked over towards the two amateur mediums. “Spirit, tell us your name!” Spike intoned, ignoring the skeptical look on Twilight’s face. The planchette stayed where it was. “Spirit, I command you to tell us your name!” “Well, now that you command it I’d better do what you say,” Starswirl scoffed. “Kids these days need to learn to respect their elders...” The pony and the dragon didn’t hear him, as expected. All three beings in the room were surprised, however, when the planchette started to move. “It’s working! I told you it would, Twilight! Get the notepad!” Twilight levitated the notepad in front of her and took down the individual letters as the planchette highlighted them. On a normal day, her skepticism would have won and, and she might have accused Spike of moving the planchette himself, but today was not a normal day. The broken mirror had defied all explanation, and recent events had caused her to have an open mind about new things. “So, what did it say?” Spike asked, eager. Twilight read over the message again. “I...” she started. “I think the ghost sassed us.” Spike jumped up and ripped the message out of the air, reading it. “Oh, a wise-guy, huh? Starswirl snicked. I guess those things really do work, he thought, amused. Well, I’m stuck here for an unknown amount of time. I may as well have some fun. “I am the ghost of King Sombra! Fear me!” he moaned, raising his hooves in the air. The planchette, with Spike’s claws still on it, started to move once more. Starswirl wasn’t actually sure what was going on with the mad unicorn king. Whether Sombra was dead or alive, he was sure he would get a reaction out of the two. If he didn’t know what was up with Sombra, why would the uneducated masses know? Twilight read the message aloud. Spike jumped up into the air and yelped before running and hiding behind the couch. “It’s Sombra, back from the dead to get revenge on me for saving the Crystal Empire! Run Twilight! Save yourself! He can’t kill us both!” Now, news doesn’t travel very fast in the afterlife. There are no newspaper deliveries, radios, or any other means of communicating with the world of the living. The beings in the afterlife are forced to rely on the slow yet steady flow of new souls for their news, and even then it takes a while for that news to circulate. So you can imagine Starswirl’s surprise upon hearing that the small, immature dragon helped save the long-lost (or recently-lost, by Starswirl’s perspective) city. Is he serious? He sounds serious. Starswirl, for the first time, took a good, long look at his surroundings. The walls were made of blue crystal, and they stretched up high, the ceiling of the room far above his head. Tapestries hung from the walls, depicting various scenes, usually involving six ponies and larges monsters of various types. This is a castle. He took a close look at the purple pony. Her horn was glowing as she held aloft the notepad, a slightly confused expression adorning her face. Her wings fidgeted nervously, as if- Wait. Back up, Starswirl thought. Glowing horn, confused face, fidgety wings- oh. Oh! Starswirl immediately regretted his prank. “It was a joke! A joke! I’m not here for revenge! I’m not here to kill you! I would never try to kill the princess!” he stammered out. Ouija boards are fickle things. They’re used to the slow, ominous speech of the long-deceased, who have largely given up with their unlife and communicate with one or two word answers. Because of this, Spike’s Ouija board was having a rather difficult time keeping up with the ghostly wizard's rapid speech, and so skipped a few words. Twilight read what the Ouija board had relayed. “I’m here for revenge... I’m here to kill you... I would try to kill the princess!” Spike screamed and ran out into the hallway. Twilight screamed, thinking the ghost of a powerful king was trying to kill her. Starswirl, misunderstanding Twilight’s scream and believing it to be a battlecry, screamed as well. Twilight launched herself into the air and flew out the window, shattering glass in her haste to escape. “Aaaaaaaaaaaahhh... wait, where’d they go?” Numerous books were strewn about the library that Starswirl had found in one of the upper rooms of  the castle. It had taken him a while, but he had figured out a way to interact with the physical world. All he had to do was swipe his hoof through whatever it was he wanted moved, and it would slide a small bit in the direction he swiped. With enough swipes, the books could be dropped from the bookshelves to the floor and opened. He’d had a minor setback when he started to wonder about the nature of his intangibility. As he was climbing the stairs to explore the strange castle, he had started to wonder how he was standing on the floor when he passed through everything else. Once he realized how strange that was, he immediately fell straight through the floor. Being the genius he was, it only took him ten minutes to realize that ghosts could fly. And thus the afternoon was spent flying around the castle and reading books on history in an attempt to catch up. He had no need to hide what he was doing- the strange new princess had run off and Starswirl didn’t know where the little dragon went. Now, evening had rolled around and the sun was starting to lower, its light casting a pink glow over the landscape. Starswirl tried to light some candles with his magic, but nearly passed out after lighting only three. With a firm resolution to get to the bottom of his magical troubles, he attempted to light the remaining candles with one of the ones he’d already lit, but only succeeded in knocking the candle off the wall sconce he had found it, lighting an adjacent tapestry on fire. He decided to work in the dark. Unable to cast a light spell for more than a few seconds at a time, Starswirl strained to read each word of the history tome he had opened, a job only made harder as the passing of time saw the setting of the sun beyond the horizon. A knock on the door. Starswirl’s ears perked up as he heard the knocking, as clear as if the front door were right in the same room as he was. An amplification spell. He debated getting up and seeing who it was, but decided against it. He couldn’t interact with the knocker, so the entire exercise would be pointless. He went back to reading. Again, a knock at the door. Starswirl groaned. “It’s bad enough I can’t see anything, now I have to put up with this infernal noise...” he grumbled to himself, floating through walls and towards the large front door. He poked his head through the massive door. He was greeted with a pile of trash. Items of all sorts sat in the pile- sticks of wood, hundreds of small bags, a pony skull, and what appeared to be various severed body parts of creatures indigenous to the more wild parts of Equestria. Behind the pile, the purple pony princess stood, herself laden with similar items as those in the pile. Beside the princess stood another pony, with a butter-yellow coat and a flowing, light-pink mane. She was saying something to the princess in a quiet, demure voice, laced with a slight trace of panic. “I-I-I just d-don’t think this is s-s-something I can help you with!” “Of course you can! Ghosts are pests, right? You’re the best in town at getting rid of pests!” Twilight retorted. “That’s why I went to you! Well, also everypony else was busy, but that’s beside the point.” She knocked once more, her hoof going straight through Starswirl’s face. “Alright, Fluttershy. It looks like nopony’s answering, so the ghost might be distracted. Now’s our chance!” She pushed the door open. “We killed Sombra once, we can do it again!”