Twilight poked her head into the kitchen of her parents’ house, a white-cupboarded compartment presided by a massive stew pot. They were mopping their brows amidst the detritus of peels and opened packages as condensation rolled down the walls with the rapidity of hourglass sand.
“Mom, Dad, I’m here,” Twilight said into the steam.
“Do you think this will be enough carrots?” Mr. Sparkle asked his wife through the haze.
She put down the celery she was washing in the sink and darted over to the chopping board for a quick inspection. “Hmm… maybe a couple more,” she surmised. “Do you like pea soup, Twilight?”
“It’s okay.”
Her mother nodded. “Good. When your father and I learned you were going to be staying over for a while, we wanted to make something that would last all week. Plenty to go around!” she said, indicating the gigantic pot.
Twilight felt her hair mat to her forehead as she ambled in. “I wanted to thank you guys again for being so understanding. Usually when Princess Celestia summons me to the castle I’m allowed to stay there as well. But I guess there’s something special going on so there’s no place for visitors.”
Her mother gasped. “Oh boy. What did you do to piss her off?”
“Mom! It’s not like that. I didn’t do anything to make her mad!”
A coy smirk blossomed across Mrs. Sparkle’s face, and she nodded again. “Are you hearing this?”
Presently Mr. Sparkle was teetering over the bubbling pot with a mound of chopped carrots larger than his own head, and could only manage a grunt for a reply.
Twilight started pacing in the adjoining living room. “The last time Princess Celestia asked me to come to Canterlot my friends and I wound up saving an entire empire—er, city—from the clutches of a malevolent apparition. And before that, we saved her kingdom from an alien invasion. Don’t you remember Shining and Cadence’s wedding? The doppelganger?”
Another nod, the same, teasing smile. “We believe you, dear. Don’t we, honey?”
Suddenly there was the sound of a crackling burst, as though Mr. Sparkle had leapt into a bowl of hollowed-out peanut shells as a method of reply to the inquiry. With a motion unbroken from her gentle cajoling of Twilight, Mrs. Sparkle whirled around on her husband and cried hysterically, “Look at that Goddamned mess! I just cleaned that!”
Mr. Sparkle, and a small area of the stove and floor next to him, were bespackled with green blotches from where the massive carrot batch had landed in the stew. He stood stiffened and glared back at his wife in child-like defiance.
“It’s just a little strange to me, that’s all,” Mrs. Sparkle resumed as she fetched a bottle of surface cleaner on behalf of her pouting husband. “You said that you are one of Princess Celestia’s star pupils, right?”
“Yes.”
“So she’s told you that?”
Twilight hesitated. “Well… not exactly. But I’ve been venerated in at least three stained glass windows in the past year or so. …And she tells me she loves me a lot.”
“That’s great Twilight,” Mrs. Sparkle panted as she concentrated hurriedly on the stove. “Sounds like you have nothing to be stressed out about.”
Twilight took a seat as her parents beavered in the kitchen. “I’m not stressed out. I just don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. And something strange is going on with my Ponyville friends.”
“Well that’s understandable. Have we met them?”
“Probably. They were at the wedding.”
No reply.
“One of them has rainbow hair.”
Mrs. Sparkle stopped her work. “Oh! I remember her, I think. …She’s the one that kind of stinks, right?” she asked furtively.
“No, that’s Applejack,” Twilight replied. “Or Fluttershy.”
Mrs. Sprakle became quiet for a moment. “I see. Well, it would be a shame if you’ve done something to make the princess upset. Not that I don’t believe what you’ve told me about your relationship with her—I believe every word of it. It is odd that she wouldn’t have a room for you at the castle, though.”
“Hmm,” Twilight replied, gazing at the ceiling.
“Hmm,” her mother returned.
Then Mrs. Sparkle turned to her husband and cried nearly in astonishment: “Oh! You know what it is, now that I’m thinking about it?”
He gaped at her.
“It must be the Cider Festival that’s taking place in Canterlot next week! The one they’ve been preparing for the last few days downtown. Am I right about this?”
He thought about it for a moment, then acquiesced. “Mmm.”
“Cider Festival?” Twilight rejoined from the living room. “What are you talking about?”
“That’s the reason there’s no room for guests in the castle, I’ll wager.” She turned to Mr. Sparkle again. “The notices only started to appear about a week ago. I tell you, they’ve been putting a tremendous amount of work into it. Haven’t they? When I went to Stop & Trough for groceries yesterday it was a nightmare. Lines everywhere, Twilight.”
“But the Cider Festival is a Ponyville tradition,” Twilight said. “Why would Princess Celestia want to hold one in Canterlot?”
Mrs. Sparkle shrugged. “Dunno. But we are quite looking forward to it.”
“It seems… unnecessary,” Twilight observed.
“We used to love going down to the country during harvest season. But eventually with kids and the way our careers were going up here in the city… We just didn’t have the time anymore. It’ll be nice for something like this to be happening closer by. Hopefully if it goes well they’ll make it into an annual tradition.”
“Hmm… Well, the princesses might need my assistance helping to organize the festival,” Twilight mused aloud. “But it still doesn’t explain why I wouldn’t be able to stay at the castle. And it doesn’t match up with the somber tone of Princess Celestia’s letter… Something weird is going on.”
“Keep that on a low temp,” Mrs. Sparkle instructed her husband. “Let it cook for a while. Then in a few hours… BAM! Best pea soup you’ve ever had. Hearty, delicious… It’ll be a work of art, Twilight.”
Twilight turned to go upstairs.
“And the best part is it will last forever. Your father and I won’t have to cook all week.”
“Right. Well, it was a hectic trip, so I think I might retire to my room for now,” Twilight replied over her shoulder as she stopped on the landing. She added a smile. “Maybe I’ll have some soup later.”
Her mother held her gaze in silence for a moment. “That’s fine, dear. You know where to find it, if you get hungry later.”
That night, Twilight did not sleep easily. She had hoped that her parents would provide reassurance to her misgivings about Celestia’s strange bequests; or, at the least, that familiar surroundings would allay the anxiety which the tumultuous relationship of the girls back in Ponyville had cast on her. But the interview had only brought confusion; and, when nightfall had made it hard to see the whale classifications displayed on her drapes, or the award ribbons chronicled on shelves above her reach, she became fitful again, and was caught in a half-sleep.
She dreamed herself lost in the Everfree Forest, searching for a trail in the encroaching underbrush. Her heart leapt when she saw a light, which came, inexplicably, from the cupola of Carousel Boutique. But as she approached she was startled by a horrific noise: a cloaked figure standing on the balcony was making a wailing reproof of her presence; and she saw with a thrill of terror through a cloud of running mascara that it was Rarity retreating ghoulishly into her chamber. Twilight tried desperately to apologize—for what she didn’t know—but she was stopped by another sight: Rainbow Dash, perched in a tree branch abutting the balcony, rainbow tears dribbling down her hollow features. Twilight was unable to move, gripped by her visage, and worse still, unable to speak. But Twilight was not alone. She sensed that her constraint was not merely psychological, and traced out a shaggy orange arm which was wrapped irrevocably around her shoulder: it was Applejack, wearing a stupid smile and tossing around a flagon of cider. Twilight tried to ignore her, but could not—
“Good things are better when they’re… a Rarity! A’hyuk!”
Twilight shot up out up bed with a yelp, disoriented to find herself back in the company of youthful accouterments. But such was the phantasmagoria of her thoughts.
She took out a notebook. “Gotta remember to talk to Applejack about her drinking problem.”
The next morning as Twilight stepped out onto the front porch of her parents’ hillside flat, the view of Canterlot she took in corroborated her mother’s strange reports from the previous night. Around the city gate a clearing had been made which marked the beginning of a very long line of the most unlikely assortment of ponies, nearly a quarter of the way around the perimeter of the city, all of whom were awaiting their turn at a tiny, empty kiosk near the drawbridge; a smaller team scurried around them like ants, occupied with the construction of a concomitant split rail fence. Inside the city the castle gate was closed off, with throngs of ponies mustering around the business district of town. A few of the main streets were shut down as well, being used as delivery passageways for porters rolling in gigantic barrels of (what Twilight could only assume was) Equestria’s finest cider. The entire cityscape seemed to be reeling as though it had been mortally struck by some kind of apple-themed meteor.
Twilight didn’t know how best to proceed at such a vision, but there would be little time for her to tarry about.
“Twilight! Look out!” came a voice.
“Huh?”
Charging down the path on which she was walking came the buffoons, Lyra and Bonbon, in a heated argument; the former schlepping a shattered hornet’s nest on her head like a Cossack, and both being swarmed by a cloud of stinging insects. Twilight leapt into the roadside grass to avoid a collision.
“I told you there were no zap apples in season during this time of year!” Bonbon shouted. “How are we supposed to win the princess’ favor now?”
“Just keep running!” Lyra hollered as the two disappeared over the horizon line.
Twilight blinked. “What is going on around here?”
“Forget those opportunists, Twilight. There is much I need to explain to you.”
It was the same voice that had called out to her before. A tall stallion with sharp features stepped onto the path. He had a fair coat and an impressive flaxen beard which drew attention to the distant—but perhaps vacuous—expression of his face; his cutie mark was a volcanic battledore.
Twilight soon recognized him as her old classmate, Virgil Expositor. She was not relieved to see him.
“Thank you for that, Virgil,” Twilight said as she brushed herself off. “I haven’t seen you in so long… I didn’t know you were still in Canterlot.”
“Yes,” he replied gravely, “and in the recent weeks I am not sure whether I am still in that venerable city. I presume you have just arrived?”
“Yes, last night. I was summoned by Princess Celestia to the castle yesterday morning.”
Virgil nodded sagaciously. “I see. There is much for you to learn, young one. I sense that it will be a difficult trip for you down through the city, but I can guide you through its terrors. I will take you all the way up to the castle—but there you will be on your own, for my criminal record will prevent me from going farther into that hallowed place.”
Virgil Expositor had been one of the top athletes of his class around the time he was in school with Twilight, until a notorious incident involving a stray shuttlecock at a badminton game left him incapacitated with head trauma. During his hospital stay one of his friends had been foolish enough to leave with the sophomoric and patently obnoxious Virgil the first book of Hu Dunnit’s adolescent crime-solving series The Foalsitter’s Club, and from then on he became a “stallion of learning”. He shirked his promising athletic career for the chance to roam the streets of Canterlot, asking his fellow ponies questions they could somewhat easily answer, or getting into scandalous semantic disputes which would get him tossed out of taverns and, famously, banned from Canterlot Library where he had been working on his revisionist national epic poem, the Aeneighid.
Regarding that execrated work, the love-spreading Princess Cadence is reported to have said of it: “I would rather get a pap smear than read this atrocious trash.”
Although Twilight had always thought him insufferable (she was, contrary to his understanding, nearly a year older than him), she decided that Virgil’s penchant familiarity with the gossip and backdoor political murmurings of his environs would prove useful to her purpose.
She managed a wan smile. “Okay. I would be grateful for any help you can offer. Let’s go!”
The two made their descent down the wooded foothills to the gate of the city where a queue of ponies was obstructing the drawbridge. It was the same one that Twilight had observed at the vista before; but now up close, she began to recognize many luminaries of the Royal Offices amongst the idling line-goers. There was Slippery Slope, one of Celestia’s advisors in the Department of Foreign Affairs; Malthus Fizzlesticks, a sour unicorn of the old guard who believed that an abundance of cutie marks had “dissipated the economy through the creation of the most absurd occupations and in turn adulterated the friendship process”; not far from him she spotted Swift Gallop, a nephew of Celestia’s (she called him “Little Boot”), who was known for his ability to scout the best ponies as candidates for important government positions; Florentine Mint, the wry-grinning Equestrian nationalist (her magnum opus, The Princess, for all the bitterness that had brought about its creation, had—owing to its acuity in dealing with practical affairs arising in the daily life of royalty—become a touchstone and heavily circulated volume between all three princesses; it contained advice, for instance, on how best to use one’s phoenix for political advantage; and how to maintain the appearance of magnanimity whilst a census designated place under one’s rulership is being eviscerated by parasites); and The Great and Powerful Trixie.
Twilight looked down the line which trailed along the city wall; then, over at the vacant booth where an unfortunately geriatric-looking pony, first in line, gazed hungrily into space; then back at the line.
“Can you believe it?!” Florentine Mint shouted to no one in excitement.
“Virgil,” Twilight began, “why are these ponies here? I recognize so many of them. Why are they waiting in a line that goes nowhere? Don’t they have more important things they could be doing?”
“These ponies,” Virgil intoned, “have been ordered to stand here by Celestia herself. They are the most honored officials of her Royal Service, and she has entrusted them with an important task.”
“And what task is that?”
“Theirs is the job of simulating the long lines for cider that form in Ponyville during harvest season,” Virgil explained. “When ponies gather in this way, the princess believes, it is a sign that an important event is taking place and a symbol of communion amongst the townsfolk.” Virgil pointed a hoof toward a team of laborers that was busily putting a fence together along the shoulder which ran between the line of waiting ponies and the city wall. “Fearing that Canterlot is too large and heterogeneous in its citizenry to manage such a show of bonding, Celestia has decided to recreate the scene from Sweet Apple Acres as best she can remember it.”
“Isn’t this exciting, Spork?” said one of the ponies in line. It was a frumpish lavender unicorn with a slightly melon-sized head and a face filled with acne. “Opening day of cider season!” she announced.
“Spork” was a toad-like biped with bluish skin covered in green spots; he stood with a smile at once suggesting profound ignorance to any imminent danger he might be in, whilst inviting imminent danger.
“Si Senora,” he replied, “I hope one day to prove that I am, eh… your ‘number one’ assistant?”
“Truly disturbing,” Virgil remarked dizzily. “I think I’m going into a swoon.”
Twilight pondered to herself. “None of this adds up. Why would Princess Celestia go through the trouble of holding a cider festival in Canterlot just for show? She already has the admiration of ponies from all over Equestria. Is she trying to prove a point?”
“Hark!” grunted Virgil from where he had collapsed on the ground (Spork was fanning him as he struggled to collect himself). “Through the gates…”
Twilight listened. An eerie chant was echoing through the city, like the echo of a damned race serving out an ironic punishment. The pulsation began to take the form of words:
Cider… Cider… Cider…
“Let’s go!” Twilight said grimly. She galloped into the city where she met with the throngs of ponies she had seen from the view in front of her parents’ house, all locked in a rhythmic trance. She pushed her way through a thicket of gleaming faces until she came upon a berth that was formed around one of the city squares. There she found what had captivated the massive audience: two twinkle-hoofed elderly mares in pinstripes were dancing fiendishly around the entrance of a nearby Star Bucks. One of them—a squat, dollop-shaped old crone—began singing:
Well lookie what we’ve got here sister of mine, it’s the same thing every year
Ponies with silver tongues, bright ideas and “progress” that is never very clear!
Maybe they’re not apprised that to mess with what works is really not advised
To which her sister rejoined…
That contempt of generations is a social pony’s suicide!
...With a crowd-winning croon (no doubt reminiscent of the kind of melodic embellishment popular during their days a fillies). The whole square then chimed in for the chorus:
Oh we’ve got importunity to see some regularity
She’s Hem!
She’s Haw!
They’re the local flavor Hem Haw sisters!
Parochial mainstays unparalleled!
Virgil Expositor, Spork, and the lavender mare from the queue wandered into the square where Twilight was trying to get the attention of one of the dancing ponies.
“Virgil!” she barked as she was knocked about in the crowd. “Mind explaining what’s going on here? Why is half of Canterlot getting so worked up over the antics of a couple old curmudgeons?”
Virgil looked absolutely terrible. His impressive beard was now dark with sweat, and he had gone into another swoon upon entering the city. With trembling limbs he struggled to prop himself up for an answer, but sunk with a painful heave back down to the pavement.
“Dude are you okay?” Twilight asked, breaking away from the mob.
“I… I… the damned souls…”
“I think we need to take him to a doctor,” the lavender unicorn said in a quiet but firm voice.
Twilight made a quick glance at the singing mob. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. I know where there’s a walk-in a couple blocks away.”
The three hoisted up the enfeebled Virgil Expositor to carry him down the street. “But Twilight! Don’t you want to get to the bottom of your strange experiences in the city?” asked the lavender unicorn.
“I’ll just ask Celestia or something when I see her,” Twilight replied airily. “Come on, we’ve got farther to go. Stay with us, Virgil.”
As they departed they were accosted by a voice above the din of the crowd. Twilight turned to see that it was a pegasus who had surreptitiously broken off her part in the street performance to come and speak to her. This mare had evidently been one of the Hem Haw sisters biggest “marks”, flitting about the square in sallies of ravenous ecstasy in time with the music; but now she appeared contrite, and spoke with the lilting tenor of a beleaguered ravioli chef:
“My friends! Take time for the pity of a passion-swept pegasus!
“I am Francesca Itch, and long has my love for cider kept me ever-lusting for—“
“Excuse me, Francesca,” Twilight interrupted as Virgil went into a hacking fit. “We have a sick pony here. Maybe some other time.”
A short while after depositing Virgil Expositor at a local clinic, Twilight made her way to Canterlot Castle. It was too bad he was not allowed in the castle, she thought; for what she saw there would not have given him such hysterical fits of anxiety (or at least, would only have made him slightly physically uncomfortable):
The castle was, for all the commotion happening outside, more populated by cleaning servants than by guards. Twilight had made her way in without anyone taking notice. The only activity she encountered was the quiet bustling of attendants who were polishing floors, clearing out chambers, vacuuming carpets, and trimming lawns. Twilight was greeted by a scent of lemon as she entered the main foyer; all of the stained glass windows had been cracked to allow a pleasant summer cross-breeze to air out the corridors.
The canteen was the only room which could be described as disordered. In it an unfamiliar group of laborers and a cadre of more formal-looking associates were gathered, all eating sandwiches out of brown bags. There was an arrangement of these bags on a table against the long wall of the room, along with a display of fruit and packaged beverages on ice. The kitchen was closed to outsiders and emitted an aroma of strange spices; within its walls, Twilight could discern a great fury of cooks railing at their assistants.
But the strangest thing of all was that there was no sign of Princess Celestia. She had not been in her throne room, and Twilight could not suppose her to be pruning a hedge or preparing a guest bed. As she wandered cautiously through the immaculate hallways, Twilight realized that she had never felt like such an intruder in a place she had formerly considered to be like a fourth home; when suddenly someone called to her from behind a statue of armor:
“Hail, Twilight Sparkle! It is good that you have finally arrived.”
Twilight glanced about circumspectly but could not find the source of the hailing.
The voice again: “You take with you two companions—an eagle and a serpent. You have asked your eagle for the answer; but you must look to where the serpent lies.”
Twilight looked down at the floor and noticed beside the mount of one of the statues a mouse-sized hole, through which she was being watched by a protruding blue eye.
“Princess Luna?”
“Yes, it is I!” Luna returned, somewhat muffled by the wall which separated them. “Or shall I say, ‘we’? Not the royal ‘We’ but the Royal ‘we’, for my sister and I, like hens that would roost at the break of dusk, have taken succor in a secret chamber to allow work on the castle to continue in a natural way.”
“I’m so glad to have found you,” Twilight replied. “I have to admit, it’s very strange coming here and seeing so few of the friends I’m used to greeting me. But maybe,” she added thoughtfully, “this is another test—another lesson I need to learn on the path-“
“I cannot hear you, Twilight Sparkle,” Luna said.
Twilight sighed. “Can you tell me how to get inside the secret chamber, Luna?”
“What?”
Twilight bent down to the mouse hole. “Can you tell me how to get in?” she asked loudly.
“Oh, yes,” Luna replied. “But the chamber has been a place of refuge for us for many years. We often come here when we say we are going to the store. It is very important that no one but us know of its secret whereabouts.”
Twilight glanced to her left at a team of cleaning servants polishing one of the pieces of armature. One of them was up on a stepladder while the others worked the legs and feet; a younger assistant was evidently returning from the canteen with some orange juice for the ponies who were at work. To her right, Twilight saw a pony in a tie discussing something with some porters whose coats were sullied with dirt and sweat. One of them nodded amicably at her.
“All clear,” Twilight reported.
“Very good,” Luna replied. “Now, look behind you across the hall. You will notice an heirloom shield bearing the insignia of the Royal Sisters. Remove it from where it hangs!”
Twilight trotted over to the imposing artifact and attempted to move it. It was very large and finely crafted from tempered steel; it was only through a concentrated effort that she was able to move it up off its hanger, where it fell to the ground with a floor-shaking thud. Some of the other ponies glanced up at what had happened, but returned as quickly to their conversations and work.
Behind where the shield had been placed was a slab of stone that formed a part of the wall which looked untouched for centuries. It was engraved with a dizzying array of small hieroglyphs, of an origin with which Twilight was not familiar; above the glyphs, chiseled into the wall, read:
“A master of languages will… ? It’s unfinished!” Twilight declared.
“A puzzle,” Luna explained, “to prevent those who might discover our lounge from entering without permission. Now, listen carefully as I provide the clues for the correct sequence of symbols:
"Begin with where the man exalts
Shy not from where his face finds fault
The shortest distance halves the squares
As eagles glide the rarefied air!”
Twilight stared at the ocean of pictographs on the wall. “That doesn’t help me at all.”
“Don’t give up, Twilight Sparkle! I know you can do it. Trust in the blessing of your ancestors and let destiny guide you!”
Twilight gave an uneasy sigh and approached the wall. “Uh… this one kind of looks like a man-“
“No!” cried Luna. “If you activate that button, it will open a trap door to a pit filled with slimy, non-venomous snakes.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Can you just tell me what the buttons are, Princess Luna?” she said with control. “I really have no idea where to begin.”
“Think carefully about the riddle I have given you. In them, you will find all the clues you need.”
Suddenly there was a sound of shuffling from behind the wall, and the blue eye at the hole in the wall was replaced by a violet one.
“Twilight, it’s me,” said Princess Celestia. “I am sorry to have to do this, but I am going to break with tradition and tell you the order of glyphs that will grant you access to our chamber of mystery. There is no time to lose!”
“Okay,” Twilight replied weakly.
“Do you see that button directly under the end of the word ‘will’ in the puzzle?”
“Yeah.”
“Three down from that…”
Twilight followed the instruction.
“And two over to the right.”
“This one?” Twilight asked as she pressed the indicated figure.
“Yes. Wait, no!” cried Celestia.
As the button depressed itself, a small bamboo straw poked out of an aperture in the stone slab and sprayed Twilight with a barrage of calcified legumes.
“Ow… Hey!” she said, wincing under the assault of peas. “Was that really necessary?”
“That is what we get for parting with the ancients, my impetuous sister,” came the blue eye, intervening.
“I see,” replied the violet eye warmly. “Perhaps if Twilight were to take a nap you would be able to visit her in a dream, where your wisdom is best understood.”
“If only I could reciprocate her with the pleasure of visiting my dream,” Luna returned, “a world free of alicorn sisters that clangor incessantly like ducks.”
“Oh, here it is,” Twilight said flatly as she pressed a button just to the right of where Celestia had indicated. The glyph receded into the slab and became fixed in place; but nothing happened.
“Hooray!” cheered the sisters in unison from behind the wall.
“You have raised the hopes of all of Equestria with your discovery of the correct first symbol, Twilight Sparkle,” Luna said.
“Indeed,” Celestia concurred. “It appears that your time spent in Ponyville has not been wasted. I am very proud.”
“Yes, proud,” Luna returned. “But all glory is fleeting, my dear sister, and it is not without sorrow that I recall the many ‘pupils’ that have been witness similar triumphs.”
Celestia gave a painful sigh from behind the mouse hole. “As always, the Prophecy weighs heavily upon you, Luna. But I assure you of my faith that Twilight is ready to take up the role which has been lain before her—to claim her birthright as the heiress of the Ancient Magic. May her actions in the hallway today shine light upon her bravery and purity of heart!”
“Perhaps it is fate that we are bound by blood, sister,” replied the blue eye in resignation, “like two prospectors sent from the land of our birth into the unknown reaches of the world; you with your pious optimism, and I with sluice and sickle, toiling on the banks of an ever-wandering rill.”
“Your words belie the hope which I have seen shining in your eyes, Dark One, and singing in—“
“Ahem.”
Celestia and Luna turned to discover that Twilight had taken a place between them in the secret chamber.
“I came in with the kitchen aide,” she explained with a tired expression before there was a chance for rebuttal. At the round table in the center of the room a young stallion with squishy-looking cheeks was arranging silverware next to two steaming bowls.
“Pea soup!” he announced.
“I thought the chamber was a matter of the utmost secrecy,” Twilight remarked, as much to herself as to her royal hostesses.
The princesses exchanged a glance, and Celestia took up the gauntlet. “Yes, well… Luna and I dislike being in the kitchen so much that it’s worth the small compromise in security, so that we don’t have to go there.”
“Right.”