//------------------------------// // Chapter 6: Ice Star // Story: The Company We Keep // by Ice Star //------------------------------// Ugh, the one thing I hate about adventures is definitely the absence of comfy beds, I grumbled to myself. After I a moment of recollecting where I was I promptly picked myself up and... threw up... If this ghost doesn't kill me, I don't know what will. Shakily, I walked over to the closest wall. The room I was in now was mostly empty, a stone lectern sat in the middle piled high with dusty papers that did not stir. They looked preserved, and the air in here was stale. On the wall was a circular äerint frame depicting nothing but the wall, as if the actual picture had been kicked right out, with all traces of canvas removed as well. When I felt better I went over to investigate the papers ignoring the growling my stomach was making. Food would come later, though I must admit my time as a princess has gotten me used to not skipping meals. Compared to things like this, princess duties were orderly - but I didn't need to stick to it. I kept telling myself that I could do this, even if I wasn't a genius, divine, master sorcerer... or anything like that. My wings and horn still meant something. I gently blew the dust of the top paper, hoping it didn't crumble. My heart sank when I saw the result: the papers were too aged and faded to make out. All this effort... was it for nothing? No that can't be right, I should at least check these. They had looked preserved! I flipped through all the others using only dark magic despite its effects on my strength, all were neatly stacked on the lectern my face growing hot with each disappointing sheet. There had to be something in here that I could use. To make things worse something in my my rage caused the papers to light up with purple and green fire. "NOOO!" I ran around trying to stomp out the flame when something caught my eye. On the wall, in glowing red letters, were instructions written on how to conjure an aim-able dark fire ball in some sort of old ink that ran so much it had almost blended into the wall, the fire's peculiar being the only thing to draw my attention to this. The writing was large and sloppy - like the pony who wrote complex magic instructions was barely literate as well... which was odd. My eyes drifted over to frame, after all perhaps it was some sort of target. Well, here goes nothing... When the fire ball made impact, I almost collapsed from exhaustion but forced myself to struggle over to look at the results. The magic had burned away another secret nook revealing a undamaged paper and a small item roughly the size of a hoof covered in cloth. I pulled out both and skimmed over the paper, which was a series of scribbled notes written by Sombra all those years ago. He seemed to be figuring out how to use something, but for whatever reason it didn't work... and his writing... gods it was awful. '...called the Ice Star and the Reflector Star. I still cannot figure out how to use them, which is the most useful information ever. All I know is that they are probably connected to the Crystal Heart. Although, there is no way I will activate the thing in order find out. But as long as I cursed that heart I believe these will remain in a stasis as well. Their nature still escapes me, damned light magic. I certainly won't be digging into their nature now. While I have no doubt that these would be useful to whoever could wield them, these silly eyes are in no way the most powerful artifacts, especially when compared to the heart that these ponies seemed to treasure so much. I honestly hope there aren't any more magic organs lying around this place. What next, the Crystal Lungs?' Grasping the parcel in my hoof I unwrapped the cloth holding it. "By Luna, Celestia, and all of Equestria!" Inside was a stone-like item that had a slight teardrop shape to it and glowed with silvery light. Instead of looking like an ordinary glass eye , like I expected, it resembled a very sparkly contact lens and had delicate yet jagged patterns of frost on it, like an ice carving and was a pale blue white. I had no doubt that this was the Ice Star. It began to hover and rotate before flashing brightly, my gaze transfixed by it. It flashed brighter and brighter until for a moment I was blinded... ... Thankfully, I did not pass out although my eyes were shut. I wonder what happened... hopefully nothing terrifying. I've had enough of that just for a little. For a moment I wouldn't open my eyes unsure of what exactly this thing would do. Then, I remembered that I still had to find the other half to the pair. Upon reopening my eyes I gasped. The vision of my right eye was covered with whimsical swirls of frost, like the windows of Canterlot Castle in the winter. It made everything I look at glow with a coat of snow and phantom trails of ice. But that wasn't all it did. Before I had put this magical little contact lens in my eye it seemed to have had a similar effect to the Crystal Heart, glazing the entire chamber in ice. In the reflections of that ice I could see the more impressive changes. My mane and tail were long and and shimmering just like when Celestia, Luna, and I gave our magic to Twilight, but now they also had a pale blue streak, and were much curlier, with the bottom halves as white as snow. I looked like a true goddess now, and it took my breath away. Any hint of the manespray I used before had vanished. Before I had felt like an empty box without my magic. When I performed the dark magic it had felt like I was a hungry pony who had only eaten a slice of bread in weeks, it hurt and I just couldn't stomach it. However, now it felt like I had eaten uncountable loaves of the metaphorical bread, and even though it seemed as if I could now contain this magic due to the Ice Star there was no proof that I could control it. Of course, there was still the problem that my own magic was still gone and Sombra wasn't exactly the poster pony of what I wanted to end up as, even though I'm pretty sure he's too stubborn to be corrupted by anything. Unfortunately I was still unsure of what to do next and sat down slumping, against one of the frosted walls. It was not helping that having one of my eyes overlaid with something that bore too much resemblance too an enchanted greeting card which was giving me a headache. I took a deep breath and blinked, knowing that a couple of minutes were needed to figure out where I should go next considering the ghost in my house. Something flashed behind my right eyelid. "What was that?" I blinked my eye again and held it closed. Something was there, the vision of a snowy mountain, and behind it the rear of the crystal castle. "Oh!," I exclaimed, holding a hoof over my eye to keep myself from opening it. "That must be where the Reflector Star is! Except all the Gemheart Mountains sorta look alike and... I umm... don't remember their names except for Mount Topazora..." ...and since I've never been there before and I don't have any coordinates I can't teleport over there. "That's it!," I exclaimed, jumping up and clapping my hooves, "All I need is coordinates and I don't even have to leave the castle to get the, and those would obviously be... AT THE LIBRARY!" Ahhh! Cadance, you're a genius! ... I snuck down the empty hallways even though the cloak of blurry black dots was visible only to me, conjured via dark magic meant to hide my presence from my unexpected guest made it rather pointless. It felt nice no longer being trapped in the gray corridor although teleporting with dark magic was rather tiresome. There were at least three libraries in the castle, none of them particularly large when compared to the one located in the city. I was planning to head to the smallest of the three, which according to the crystal ponies, should mostly have maps and historical texts. Then again, the crystal ponies hadn't been inside very much since Sombra's rule... and they did talk about one of the libraries being locked. After playing ninja for a bit longer, I came to a purple door, that thankfully wasn't suspiciously large or in the middle of a constantly traveled hallway, instead the door was of a much smaller height suggesting that this 'library' was more of a study. Thinking it safer, I decided to continuing to keep up the veil. I refrained from gritting my teeth as much as I could while channeling what was probably an overkill amount of dark magic on my horn, and all to open a door. I watched as the magic floated away from my horn in purple and green stripes, flowing around the door frame along with runes burning in the signature green and purple. It was so fast it made my head hurt just looking at it so I reached out a hoof and pushed it open. The magic stopped moving but didn't disappear. It didn't seem to be that big of a deal, I shrugged this off and went inside discarding the veil at once. There was already too much magic outside to remain completely undetected for long. I seemed to have been right about it being a glorified study. There were only twelve shelves of polished crystal each of them devoid of books and angled so the faced away from the farthest wall, and while all of them lacked adornment that wall seemed to be polished more than the other three. This was a little odd... maybe the wall is another puzzle? I placed my hoof toward the left side and began to slowly slide it across hoping to find a switch and hoped that it didn't say 'Hi Pink One, Please Insert Magic Here' followed by some sassy remark etched in crystal by Sombra, who I was seriously beginning to think was omniscient, or at the very least extremely paranoid. I really hope Sombra isn't omniscient. When my hoof got to the middle, I decided that magic-activation was more likely and stepped back, accepting that I would have to be using dark magic until my own was retrieved. My hoof wouldn't budge. I tried yanking it away. It still didn't work. "Umm, what exactly is happening here?" No reply, my hoof was still stuck fast. "Okay Poltergeist, you've got me with my hoof stuck to a wall, the joke is over right...? I have the Ice Star and know the whereabouts of the Reflector Star. You can try to take them but don't think that I'll just sit by and let you do it, I've still got three hooves to fight with." All that was true, although it made me sound a lot braver then I felt. Next, it felt like I had been kicked in the stomach, dark fire began to burn around me and flow until it reached my immovable hoof, where it seemed to charge a possible hidden mechanism behind it. It kept extracting magic from me, in a way that made it feel like my blood was on fire. I sunk down onto my knees, finding it hard to breath. Whatever spell this was kept stealing all the magic I had left, and in the next instant I kept producing new magic thanks to the Ice Star but as soon as the new magic was made it too was cruelly ripped out of me all over again. ... It seems that even the spell here - its actual function still unknown to me - was not a bottomless pit. By the time it refused to extract any more I was unsure of how I had managed to remain conscious, somehow despite my closed eyes, I had sensed when it stopped. With a free hoof I rubbed my eyes, blinking them a few times. The room had changed from relaxing blue crystal to gray äerint that caused me to swallow out of reflex. The neat crystal shelves now bore the color as well, yet they could hardly be called neat anymore their orderly formation ruined as some were broken lying in chunks all over the place while others were tipped over. Their shelves were not empty, but did not hold books. Only piles of ashes, swept all over the room undisturbed by any hoof prints. There was no ray of light from the windows, they too had been replaced with äerint. The only illumination came from the light of the Cadance-you-are-not-stuck-in-the-past-with-a-sandwich hallway. Towards the left wall, right past the remains of a demolished bookshelf, I could see a glimpse of an abandoned reading nook somepony had made an old forlorn candlestick tipped over next to a trail of the ashes that were kicked and scattered all over the floor, only the slightest trace of hoofprints left in them, although the looked like no hoofprints I've ever seen. Perhaps the pony who made them staggered and smeared the impressions? Creepy, I thought turning back to the wall where my hoof was still stuck fast. My hoof now rested on patches some old paint of a dark color that was hard to make out. I noticed that my hoof slid to the side a little. I could move it again. "Oh thank goodness," I whispered exhaling deeply, and finally put my achy leg down and stepped back, a candle's worth of dark fire on my horn to allow me to further examine the painted wall. Except... I swallowed when I saw it, my legs shaking. My eye couldn't even see the frost anymore, the sheer horror of it all. ...It wasn't paint at all, it was enormous amounts of dried blood smeared so thickly on the wall that for the sake of whoever bled for this that I wished it was paint. There were tears in my eyes and a scream in my throat. The most terrifying part was that it wasn't just a blood stain, whatever sadist did this spelled out a message in the long-dried blood with bold, thick, capital letters: YOU CAN'T WIN It was too much, my heart racing I let that scream out, running out the door with tears blurring my vision and blood roaring in my ears, whirling around for a moment to kick it shut. Before I could even see it coming or who it was, somepony decked me hard in the head and I crumpled to the floor.