Twilight quickly withdrew her gaze from around the corner hoping that Cadance hadn't spotted her.
The pink Alicorn was being in Twilights mind exceedingly careful not to be followed, the suspicious act only spurring Twilight on more, as she carefully peered back after a few seconds. Only to find that Cadence had continued back down the hallway.
Wherever it was that Cadance was going she was apparently taking the scenic route, because she had been following Cadance for about a half hour now.
Twilight stopped to think for a moment, was the castle even big enough that only a part of it was taking thirty minutes to reach? Admittedly even with her extensive knowledge of the castle layout even she to this very day found herself at a dead end or stuck in the bowels of this enormous ancient fortress.
Perhaps the same could be said for Cadance she wondered. But that ultimately lead to the other question why didn't Cadance just teleport, in fact why didn't she do that straight away?
She shrugged to herself as she bolted behind another hallway pillar thankful that Cadance didn't turn at that moment and stop her before she could expose her dirty little secret.
She did stop to think about the morality of what she was doing as she trailed Cadance. She was effectively spying on her beloved sister-in-law with little to no evidence that there was truly anything to worry about.
Then again, it had been her hunch back at the wedding those few years ago that had saved the day, and it wasn't so much spying as temporary stalking... For a good cause, yeah she would go with that.
Finally after a few more twists and turns Twilight stopped behind the last corner, just a few metres from Cadance. Flicking her ear up and leaning as far up to the corner without anypony noticing her.
As she suspected, she could hear the other two princesses.
"Cadance, finally, pray tell what took thou so long?" Lunas voice rang through the hallway, sounding more than a little irritated.
Twilight heard a exacerbated huff to the question. "Well I had to go through the long route, like I always do, and while we're on the subject, could one of your please explain to me why you put me in the suite across the other side of castle. I mean what did you expect!?" Cadance harshly whispered. Though her voice still ricocheted back through the halls, making the whisper basically redundant.
"The long route? But we haven't used that in months, why didn't you use the teleportation rune Luna installed in your wardrobe?" The calm and ever motherly voice of Celestia asked.
"Wait... what rune!?" Cadance practically bellowed out before being scolded with a harsh "Shh" from both sisters.
"The one Luna installed, did she not tell you?" Celestia answered calmly.
Immediately the sounds of nervous laughing could be heard from around the corner following a pregnant pause.
"Haha, um, how does thine saying go, our bad?" Luna meekly replied the sounds of her rubbing her hoof over the back of her neck fur confirming her mess up.
"You mean you, I could of, I didn't have to... Gahh!" Cadance finished
with an exaggerated groan, which was the best she could muster whilst trying to salvage any pretence of secrecy or stealth that was still alive in the conversation.
Twilight imagined that at this point Celestia was doing her trade mark head shake trying to remain on topic. "Don't worry, even with Lulu's mistake, we still have plenty of time for CJ."
Twilight gasped, quickly putting a hoof over her mouth, there was that code word again, she was right! They were going to see the thing, or do a CJ whatever that was. Finally she was going to witness the princesses doing a CJ.
"Speaking of time, we have spent more enough of it out here pointing the hoof at one another, let us be going, I am eager to depart." Luna announced with her usual flare of grandiose.
A subtle mumble of agreement followed. "Yes I believe we can proceed before Lulu starts doing her little adorable impatient dance again." Twilight could almost feel the smirk that came from Celestias mouth that followed a light hearted chuckle upon uttering the words.
"Tis a lie! We do not take part in this dance you speak of." Luna retorted back getting a laugh from the other couple of Alicorns.
"Yes you do Luna, we both know you start hopping from one hoof to the other when you’re anxious or excited, Auntie’s right it’s pretty cute." Cadance giggled.
Twilight thought back for a moment, putting a hoof up towards her own lips to subdue any form of laughter that might escape her mouth. As mad and hurt as she felt towards the other Alicorns, she had to give credit where it was due, it was pretty cute.
Luna huffed "Ha, well at least we are not doing some childish dance were upon we wave our posteriors in thine air!"
"Hey, Twilight and I happen to think it’s funny... Though I do need to talk to her about that, as fun as it is waving our plots in the air, doing it during a diplomatic meeting in the empire is a touch too much"
One Time! Twilight yelled in her own head the smile from before flipping into a sulking pout.
Celestia sighed once again "Can we please save it for when we are inside, we are late enough as it is and I do not want to keep waiting any longer. You do know what day it is, correct?" Celestia’s voice suddenly became somewhat firm and almost a little irritated at the constant bickering of her family members.
"Fine, but stay thy posterior for thine husband Cadance." Luna smugly retorted. Twilight heard her move into the room, sounds of her hooves trotting towards the door before any clever retort could be formed against her.
At least that was what Twilight assumed, based upon the sounds of Cadence blowing raspberries back at the lunar princess.
A weary grown leaves Celeatias lips before following them inside. Clopping of hooves on marble and the clicking of the door latch signalled the sound of the last princess finally leaving the hallway.
Twilight waits until the door knob stop jittering around before finally stealing a glance. Flicking her ears around to survey the corridors for any more noise in the hallway, and particularly the doorway at the end of it that her fellow rulers had entered. waiting for the appropriate amount of time to pass she slowly tip toed as quietly as she could to the door.
She once again debated about using her magic in a way that could both stifle the clopping of her hoof steps or at least enhance her hearing. But once again thought against the idea. Having the three most powerful rulers just a few metres away, and only three inches of wood to separate her and them, she didn't want to risk one of them sensing her.
Not when she was so close.
Thankfully the others seemed to be two busy with whatever it was inside, making plenty of muffled noises that masked her approach. Taking her sweet time, she tip-hoofed over towards the door, it was just as she was about to reach the handle she was blinded by a sudden impossibly bright beam of light that would rival the very sun in the sky. It shot from all corners of the closed door in equal force.
A mixture of fluorescent colours that flowed in chaotic tandem beamed around her. Though blinding, Twilight couldn't help but notice the colours mixed in with the impossible white. It was obvious to her as she began to recognise them, they were the princesses magical auras.
Shielding her eyes from the blinding light, she waited for what felt like a full minute before the light died down. The glow quickly left the hallway, before the light teetered into nothing and the hall was once again brought back to the warm lighting of soft glowing touches that hung against the wall.
Twilight gasped in shock pressing a long equine ear towards the door she held her breath and waited. However to her dismay, only silence rained for the better part of a minute. All that could be heard was the soft whistling of the midnight winds blowing through the corridor.
Twilight bit her lip, could she go inside, was it safe? Maybe the princesses had noticed her and were waiting for her to make the mistake of entering.
She shook her head, that didn't make any sense. Even if they could be that coordinated in such a short period of time and would put that much magic into whatever it was she had just witnessed, they would have still have been some sort of noise coming from the door. Plus it was unlike Luna to not get the jump on Twilight as soon as possible, simply just to scare the wits out of the lavender princess.
Yes, it was no secret Luna had become something of a scare prank junkie ever since her first nightmare night. It was mostly why the guards had become so incredibly fearless and unflinching even when being subjected to the loudest and most sporadic of noises in the last year. It had become a form of basic training among the guards mostly to hide the shame of it all. Because before it had been expected of the guards, the filly-esc screams of grown stallions running for their lives could be heard echoing from the castle for over a year during those days. It was all the higher ups could do to keep face in the eyes and mostly ears of the general public.
Twilight waited, and waited, and waited until even her value for patience was beginning to diminish. Slowly, ever so slowly she reached for the door knob, she was still too paranoid to use her magic just in case. She leaned up grabbed the circular polished brass door handle... and promptly fell forward, her flimsy grasp slipping and causing her to slam clumsily into the door muzzle first.
"Ouch, ponyfeathers!" Twilight cursed, rubbing her nose softly, before stuffing her hoofs into her mouth as she realised how loudly she had just screamed that out.
Again no noise was heard that would signal that she had been detected. She slowly brought the hoof back to rub her sore snout.
Twilight sighed, did she really relied on her horn that much that she couldn't even grasp a simple door knob? Sure it was up much higher than the average handle should be, but grasping a simple object with her hooves was something even a new born Earth pony foal had no trouble with, and she was an Alicorn now. Why was her Earth pony magic still so weak?
Twilight snapped the troubling thought out of her mind with a violent shake of her head. One problem at a time, she was going to have to rectify that at some point, but not now.
Twilight's horn lit up and she threw the door open, long past caring if she made any noise even if she got caught, she was beyond annoyed at this point.
The instant she walked into room she gasped loudly, almost falling back on her rump as she scanned the room.
"Oh-no-no-no!"
There on the floor three different cushions centred in a triangle formation was all three princesses. Each one slumped down fully. Their heads resting on their fore-hooves, and their eyes firmly shut.
She rushed over to the nearest one, her sister-in-law. " Cadance, Cadance are you okay, speak to me!" Twilight panicky demanded. Shaking the pink Alicorn by her shoulders. Cadance didn't respond, only slumping to her side like a puppet with its strings severe she lay limply back on the cushion.
Twilight raced over to the next monarch, princess Luna, repeating the process feverishly, only to produce similar results. It was only when she got to Celestia that she truly began to panic. Her breath and heart rate rapidly increasing, her eye sight began to blur slightly as she worked herself into a deep panic. Peering around she looked for the pony or thing that could have caused this.
It took less than a second before she spotted it. Though she did not know how to even describe it. There before her very own eyes was a small finely crafted stone pedestal stained by time and dust, it looked beyond ancient. The small bird bath like pedestal was not what kept Twilight attention however, it was the glowing and gently levitating sphere that acted as the only source of light in the room. That was what captured her attention.
Twilight, step by step, approached the object, stopping only when she was but a few inches away. She ogled the orb her eyes wide and her mouth agape. Try as she might she could not look away, the orb seemed irresistible to her, it called to her and something deep inside her soul called back to it. She wanted to embrace the orb, like a long lost family member or a loved one.
Twilight fought with all her might not to hold the orb close to her chest. Like an addict presented with their greatest vice she struggled to rid the feelings of need from this orb. With great restraint she refused it with help from her ever strong logical side of her mind. Biting her lip hard, almost to the point of drawing blood she stepped away. Suppressing the need to be close to it. But in doing so she felt like she was losing a little piece of herself.
With magic this powerful she knew that whatever it was, this thing was undoubtedly what incapacitated the monarchies.
Throwing a scrutinising glare around it, she eyed the spinning orb. Up close she began to recognise something, mostly blue she noticed but also the plots of green and white that dotted the orb. She came to understand the reason why she had recognised it. It was an atlas.
True as it was she still denied it, even if it was an atlas it was all wrong, watching the orb complete its slow rotation several times she recognised none of its land masses. Nowhere on it could she spot Equestria, nor Bullgeria, nor even Griffonia nothing signified this was a map of Eques.
No, this atlas was all wrong, and something about that made Twilight very uneasy. The mapping, the fine crafting, even the shape of the atlas, it was all too detailed, to finely crafted to be fake. Deep down Twilight new that what planet it symbolised existed, she didn't know how, but she could not dismiss it as a fake.
Removing her glare she looked away from the glowing orb to the podium it suspended itself on, looking for anything that could explain it. Circling the column she spotted something, a dimly shining piece of metal that perhaps, she hoped would give her some answers.
Though rusted and covered in dust Twilight squinted, trying desperately to read the abused and worn metal in what little light was offered to her. She brought a hoof up to in an attempt to wipe away the build-up of time that had layered the sign, she read the writing over and over again.
'De Tellurbibus Interiorem Potential'
Again and again Twilight mouthed the words. Thinking back to her long, long list of books she had sought and explored in her time at the Canterlot Library. She rattled her brain trying to remember if she had ever heard those words before.
The ageing of the rock gave her a better clue though, thinking back to her studies in archaeology, regarding the patterns inscribed in the carvings she remembered that the only other times carvings of this grace and talent were seen was…She shot her eyes up in realisation, it was ancient Eques!
But that was impossible, she thought. The last time ancient Eques was written outside of a lecture theatre, was over fifteen thousand years ago. In fact only two known archaeological sites in all of Equestria had these types of hieroglyphs on them, and only really Luna and Celestia had the capacity to read them in any basic form.
Try as she might, she could only work out one of the four words on the sign 'Potential', meaning 'power'. She subconsciously took a shaky hoof back in awe of the object. If Twilight had a reason to hesitate now, this was her reason. Whatever this thing was it literally had power written all over it.
Looking back to the three fellow rulers she bit her lip, feeling utterly helpless and terrified.
What could she do? This device predated the elements of harmony, it even predated the founding of Equestria itself. What could she do to it, how could she wake her friends, her family, she had literally no idea what this was, or worse yet how to understand it in such a short period of time.
The frustration and fear stirred and bubbled inside her like a cauldron in the pit of her stomach. She felt beyond hopeless, stamping a hoof on the ground she could already feel the tears from her eyes wet the fur of her cheeks.
She looked one last time at Celestia. The mare still lay prone like a discarded doll on the floor, she couldn't take it anymore seeing them so helpless. Letting out a cry of unrestrained emotions, her horn ignited with magic shooting forth with unrestrained power.
Here mind mudded from the trepidation and hopeless anger, she did what came naturally to here in the height of here uncontrolled emotion. She unleashed a torrent of magic at the orb. Not even considering her actions the magic slammed into the orb. But as it struck, the tendrils of her magical energy began to wrap and spin across the globe, like a vortex it spun with horrific speed before latching back onto her horn causing Twilight to scream once more, this time in terror, as her very own magic grasped hungrily back on her horn.
Feeling the magic of the orb married with her own, it rushed through her own body with the power of a thousand lightning strikes, coursing through her from the tip of Twilight horn to the ends of her tail Twilight mouth opened in a silent screech as beams of pure energy shot out of her mouth and eyes.
Only once had she felt this before, back when she had had her magic surge that had earned her her cutie mark all those years ago, and like that time it had felt just as painful, just as torturous and just as right.
The alien blast of the all powerful magic had lasted for what felt like weeks or maybe just minutes Twilight could not say. For before the point that her mind and her sanity could not take no more the world went blank, and so did she.
Twilight felt like she was flying, which admittedly was not a new experience for the mare. She knew the blessing that came with having wings and the experiences she gained from having them. But she also knew quite clearly that she was not flapping her still fairly new appendages.
Feeling groggy but simultaneously full of unfounded energy. Twilight fought to open her eyes, prying each eyelid fully open she immediately regretted it, the tornado of light that encompassed everything around her was enough to make her feel blind, terrified and more than a little nauseous.
Every colour she had ever seen, and some she could scarcely dream of spun and whipped violently around her. it reminded her of water escaping down the drain, or what she imagined the inside of pony made typhoons that Pegasi used to bring water to Cloudsdale would look like. It felt like she was on a painting pallet as it's artist mixed all the colours in it together in their feverish mission to create a masterpiece.
The first couple of seconds were beyond exhilarating.
The next couple of minutes still left her with all the more wonder.
The next half an hour was still invigorating, but if she had to admit it, it starting to lose it's charm some what.
After an hour the experience was being to get in her nerves. Twilight gave a somewhat grumpy huff pushing a rebellious strand of mane from her eyeline, letting her head rest on her hoof as she stared boredly at the vortex she was traveling in.
She was still impresses to be sure, but without anything to record this moment on, or any type of context on which to base her many assumptions and rapidly building questions, she was starting to wonder if this would every even end.
Ever the pony to Jinx's the situation Twilight was once again reminded and reprimanded by the lessons of Sods (or more company referred to as Murphy's) law as the vortex came closer and at rapidly increasing speed to her swallowing her panicked form in a blinding white light.
Once again Twilight felt herself go blank, this time it was instantiations and the after effect's lasted only a moment before she was unceremoniously thrown to the floor. With a loud "uff" she hit the ground body and muzzle first.
"Uhh, how many times is this going to happen today?" She painfully moaned with unrestrained annoyance married in the tone.
It took a moment but she got up on shaky legs, hearing the unpleasant popping and cracking of her joints as she got back on all four hooves.
Again she surveyed her surroundings, what she saw baffled her.
She was in a small yet horizontally enormous hallway that from behind her stretched far beyond what her eyes were capable of seeing. The white and golden walls and onyx coloured marble arches similar yet alien to her.
It was different in some ways, yet others it was almost uncomfortably similar to Canterlots interior. The structure was their but the colours were off, the pillars were all but twins of their Equestrian counterparts but the patterns were as far removed as this place was from said country.
She couldn't help but gasped as she stared at the floor. Nothing was what she saw, A endless darkness that seemed infinite in its descent. It expanded unendlessly and left no clues of a floor or anything at all. The abyss below made her shiver subconsciously never before had she witnesses such pure unending blackness.
Twilight tested the sturdiness of where she stood. Tapping the platform that seemed to save her from the seemingly never ending plummet. She sighed in relief when the invisible floor neither shook from here touch nor cracked.
Bringing a hoof to wipe away a sweat that trickled down her brow, her fears sated for the time being she tentatively began to walk forward.
Each step as slow and arduous as the last, though it became a chore she took her eyes away from the flooring, she turned once more to her surroundings each wall of the hallway had an archway every few meters that surrounded it and in doing so announced each granite gray coloured door within it.
Two enormous braziers flanked every door she passed, each as big if not bigger than Twilight herself. Most were dim and smouldering, it seemed to Twilight that they once burned brightly and with uncontrolled passion, but now they were nothing than dying embers.
The doors near them were no different in this regard. Twilight new with all her knowledge of science and all her basic understanding of nature that inanimate objects such as doors were of course not alive, and never would have the capacity to be. Unless Discord was somehow involved of course.
So why was it that when Twilight looked at the doors she passed she felt the cold calming touch of death emitting from them. Like they had long since passed on. What scared Twilight even more was that there was some sort of long dormant magic behind them, like she had felt with the orb the magic was both alien and yet instantly familiar to her.
Twilight shook her head, she was not here to sate her academic mind. She was here to save her family, her beloved friends, for once the quest for knowledge was only a secondary objective on her mind.
Walking with ever increasing confidence she pushed onwards, passing more and more of these death touched doors. Each brazier she passed still had small embers around them. Yet each one she went by seemed to be growing somewhat, very subtly however, it would have been hard to see from a glance but they were indeed getting bigger and stronger as she pushed on. She took this as a good sign that she was getting closer to whatever it was that had taken the minds of the princesses.
Many minutes passed before she finally reached the end. She had pushed a few doors since, thinking she had reached her appointed spot, but each wrong door she touched sent chills colder than any icy tundra down her spine and that was fair enough warning to the mare that she was not in the right spot. Again there would be another time for such experiments.
Reaching the end of the enormous hallway she turned her head left to a seemingly ordinary door considering the others.
There like all before was a giant marble doorway twinned by two brass braziers. However unlike before these braziers were at the peak of their life, their dancing flames touching the very tip of the doors height in their magnificent glow.
Twilight paused for a moment hoping she was finally at her destination, what gave her pause was when large rumblings shook the thick grey doors. Immediately a massive ominous growl that formed into a blood curdling roar from what sounded like an equally enormous beast shot from behind the door piercing Twilight's ears.
It was all Twilight could do to not bolt away with all her might. with the eruption of the beasts mighty roar finally coming to an end she held a hoof up to her chest catching her breath.
"What in tartarus was that!" Twilight screamed to herself. Maybe she was in the wrong area, she shook her head in amusement at her own though, of course! that was it, it must be the door to the right instead.
Yet as she turned she heard what she feared most.
"Now, strike now, the beast is weak, strike while it is grounded!" A familiar voice screamed.
Another familiar voice argued against it. "No, its rearing up for its next attack, run! Or you'll be caught in its blast!"
"Celestia, Luna!" Twilight screamed out loud, racing back to the door before halting like her body had come straight up against an invisible wall.
"They're in danger, something inside is attacking them!" Twilight panicky yelled, in an attempt to motivate herself. Yet she couldn't bring herself to open the door her hooves felt like someone had placed glue under them. A feeling she had felt physically before from a failed prank courtesy of Pinkie and Rainbow Dash. Which she had noted to herself to get back at with unbiased and unrestrained pranking force.
The monstrous roar of the beast blasted through the doors once more shaking Twilight almost physically. Her nerves almost reaching their end and threatened to take away what little motivation she had left. However before she could reach the precipice of despair, she stomped her hoof against the floor in deviance, steadying her body and her will.
"No!" Twilight bellowed at herself. "The princesses need me, come on Twilight, you fought Nightmare Moon, Discord and even Sombra for pony's sake, you can do this!" Nodding at her own peptalk the lavender alicorn breathed in deep exhaling rapidly to psych herself up before throwing the doors open with her hoofs and magic.
"In the name of harmony, friendship and the sovereignty of Equestria, I demand you release the princesses!" Twilight screamed at the top of her lungs, charging headlong into the room, before colliding with a large midnight blue rear that belonged to a very engrossed pony.
knocking here on here back, Twilight looked up to spot the beast.
However what she saw instead played tricks on her very own psych.
True to her fears there in front of her was an enormous yet almost two dimensional dragon. Its name somehow and for some reason written below it the 'Ancient dragon' it had read looking up from the name she also quickly spotted what looked like an ape like creature brandishing a spear almost its own size and armour so magnificent that it would put the royal guard to shame. The ape creature paused for a moment turning back to the dragon as the giant monster reared up its head, intent on spewing out its deadly flame.
However before she could see the outcome she spotted the three figures she had been searching for all this time. Each with confused and shocked expressions and not a scratch on each of them.
"Twilight!" They all seemed to bellow at once in a thick Canterlot voice.
The enormous volume of their question made the walls around the room shake violently a sudden sound like a heavy object dropping down and crashing on wood echoed through the room.
it was at that moment that the creature doing battle with the dragon stopped and went completely still. Just in time for the dragons fire to engulf it in its enormous orange flame. A sickening death rattle invaded all four pairs of ears and for a moment every pony present turned back to the battle. Just in time to see the words ‘you died’ floating across the battle in gigantic red letters.
It was at this moment also that the walls themselves began to shake and a low growl echoed through them as if it somehow was trying to contain itself from screaming. Before Twilight could once more question the absurdity of what she was witnessing the wall turned.
The whole view of the wall changed, almost like a motion camera Twilight had seem once shooting a scene for a movie, the screen turned a different direction.
What Twilight saw next made everything she held dear in terms of sanity question itself.
There looking back at her through some sort of mirror the ‘wall’ came into view through its own reflection. Peering at itself however was not the wall but was a creature Twilight had never seen or dreamed of before. Tall in comparison to its surroundings the creature was essentially bipedal, arms and legs like some sort of descendant of apes. The lumps on its chest and it's long pitch black mane suggested its gender as a mare but all other similarity between here and it ended at the gender. The skin of the creature was a light chocolate brown and had as far as she could see no fur on it whatsoever besides just above its eyes.
However it was the burning rage in those emerald eyes that left Twilight the most speechless.
"Okay” it said grinding its white teeth together. “ I'm counting to three and one of you better tell me why the fuck you sods decided to scream all at once when I was this frigging close to beating that god damn boss--” the creature stopped mid sentence bringing itself closer to the mirror and pointing a long index finger against the mirror.
”--or I swear to god, I'm gonna’ find a way to jump inside my own mind and shove those horns up your plots so help me god!" It tone giving all present no doubt that their was truth to the treat.
"Holy Pony feathers What in the name of Starswirl beard is that thing!?"Twilight screamed scampering back and causing the creature to grimace in pain, it pulled its hand away from the mirror and pressed it against its ear.
"Will whoever that is please stop fucking yelling!" it bellowed seemingly at itself back through the mirror.
It was the nervous embarrassed chuckle of Luna that finally answered her "Cousin Jackie, please, we can explain."
Twilight mouthed the words silently eyeing the floor in thought before gasped. Her first and foremost question answered in one sentence. "You're CJ!"