//------------------------------// // Chapter 6: Rendezvous at Canterlot // Story: A Mirror of many Faces // by Jyuuma //------------------------------// In contrast to the crisis currently transpiring in Equestria, it was a perfectly charming day in Canterlot. Sunny, yet fresh enough to enjoy a stroll outside. This was, not, however, among Twilight’s plans, as she trotted towards the Royal Hall, Spike rushing right behind her, in the hopes of meeting with her mentor, Princess Celestia. Given the discoveries unveiled by her and her friends, and thanks to Princess Luna as well, she was in dire need of a better source of information. And what better place to seek such knowledge, than the Royal Library: a collection of the most important Equestrian works, ranging from cooking and knitting to the most complex political topics and intricate research, including tomes that, by royal decree, were considered of a “darker” nature, only to be perused on the most extreme of circumstances, and even then to be handled with care. These were, indeed, such times. Within the Hall, Celestia and Luna could hear a ruckus happening right outside, as Twilight was being held by the guards, as they had asked them to prevent anyone from interrupting the meeting they were holding with the ponies bringing requests of more missing ones. After struggling for a few minutes, Twilight managed to crash into the Hall, rushing toward the Princesses. “Princess Celestia, I need to talk with you immediately!” For a few moments, Celestia, Luna and the earth pony they were listening to stared at her in surprise and confusion. It was, however, Celestia herself who broke the silence. Clearing her throat, she spoke in a serious tone. “Princess Twilight, my faithful student, while I understand the urgency of your request, I’m afraid I have to ask you, likewise, to wait for our audience to end.” Twilight looked up at Celestia, confused at first, then looked around and noticed that, indeed, they were in the middle of an audience, with several ponies waiting in line at the gates. The very line that Twilight had pushed through without any regard. Seeing that Twilight was getting quite flustered, Celestia continued. “…Please, wait for me at your old place, the library. I’ll meet with you there when we are done.” Twilight nodded, still blushing, and quietly walked out of the Royal Hall, earning some annoyed looks from the ponies waiting for their turn, as she went towards her old library place. She let out a nostalgic sigh out when she arrived at the library she and Spike used to live, even though she was still embarrassed at her small outburst at the Royal Hall. She noticed the place was quite dusty, and wondered if it had even been used since they left it, after all that time when she moved to Ponyville, and her journey began. She couldn’t help but walk around and browse some of the old books of the immense collection, some of them she knew by memory already: Every page, every sentence, every word, and smiled when she thought of the times when she believed all that knowledge was all she needed to understand the world, until she discovered the magic of Friendship. She didn’t notice how fast the time passed as she enjoyed re-reading the tomes, when she heard Princess Celestia entering the place. Before she could begin, Twilight rushed to her. “Princess Celestia, I’m so sorry that I interrupted today’s audience, I didn’t know-” Before she could continue, Celestia raised her hoof gently, cutting her off. “Twilight, don’t worry, I understand your position. My dear sister, Luna, had informed me of your friends’ findings at the old library, and we both were expecting your arrival today. We…just didn’t expect you to be here so soon.” She explained. As Twilight nodded, Celestia continued. “I know that you may be considering browsing the most…secluded areas of the Royal Library and, truth be told, I was VERY reluctant at first when Luna brought up the idea.” “However.” Celestia continued. “Both the fact that you are now a Princess, and that the current situation may demand for it, made me and my sister reconsider.” Twilight remained nervous at her teacher’s pause. “Twilight Sparkle, you now have complete access to the Royal Library and its contents. And while I do trust you, I don’t think I can be clear enough about just using it with the purpose of researching what may be causing this mess. I know of your natural curiosity, but I must ask of you: If anything else catches your attention, you may consult it with Luna or me when this predicament is over, and even then, we may not elaborate too much about it. Trust me when I say there are works in there that we wish we hadn’t found.” Twilight nodded firmly in response. “I understand, Princess. I’d like to begin as soon as possible.” Celestia nodded back. “Then, please, follow me.” She said, before she teleported both of them back to the castle. As they began to walk towards the Royal Library, she remained in silence for a few moments, and then asked Twilight. “By the way.” She began. “In regards to this situation, do you have anything else to report?” Twilight looked up at Celestia. She pondered for a few seconds, then remembered the strange visitor she had the other day, as well as the stallion Fluttershy and Discord had encountered in the old castle’s ruins. They didn’t really say anything about keeping both happenings as a secret, and she felt they both had a connection to the events happening in Equestria, so she felt it right to report this. “Actually, now that you mention it…a strange mare visited me the other day. I think she introduced herself as...Misty Evening. She asked me to pay attention to a particular stallion that could have something to do with this whole problem.” Twilight explained, taking out the copy of the picture she had obtained from Misty and showing it to Celestia. “Likewise!” She continued. “Fluttershy and Discord visited me later that same day, after they were done checking the old castle’s library with Princess Luna. They mentioned a strange stallion attacked them when they were leaving, Discord tried to capture him after he tried to harm Fluttershy, but somehow managed to escape.” Celestia stared intensely at the picture Twilight had shown to her. Something in the back of her mind told her that stallion looked familiar. “This…stallion…” She began. “I’m not entirely sure, but a similar one was in an audience a few days ago. He came asking us to help him find his lost siblings.” She affirmed, as Twilight was now looking up at her, wondering if there would be a connection. As they were reaching the library, they met with Luna right at the entrance. “Dearest sister, dearest Twilight Sparkle, our friend, we were expecting you.” She greeted them. Celestia smiled at her, and Twilight bowed gently before her. “Princess Luna, thank you again for helping my friends at the old castle the other day.” Twilight replied. “If it wasn’t for the 3 of you, we still wouldn’t have any idea of what could be causing the disappearances.” Luna nodded gently. “I’m glad we could help bring out some information to our attention.” Luna nodded. “And even if we didn’t have to deal with our current situation, we knew the day would come when you would feel the need to pursue higher sources of knowledge.” She continued, on an ominous tone. “I know my curiosity can get the best of me sometimes.” Twilight began. “But even I can tell when some knowledge can be potentially dangerous.” Luna nodded again. “As my sister may have told you, we discussed the topic, and we weren’t quite sure about giving you access to the most hidden tomes in Equestria’s collection. Or rather, the ones contained within these walls.” She continued, raising her hoof towards the Library. “We do not really discard the fact there may be works out there that may be perused with great care.” “Still. Our current predicament demands of us to use every resource on our reach, and given that you’ve proven yourself many times in the past, particularly with your ascension to Princesshood, my dearest sister and I agreed to grant you access to this facility at last.” Luna went on. “You may browse the books within at your discretion, and we trust we do not need to repeat ourselves about being careful about what you may find on your quest, for here lies information that could potentially compromise Equestria and its inhabitants, perhaps at the very level we are dealing with right now.” Twilight nodded firmly. “Understood, I will be very careful during this research.” She affirmed. “You may report your findings to both Luna and me.” Celestia said. “And as explained before, any other knowledge that catches your eye may wait until we are done dealing with this situation, and even then, we may not fully disclose it.” She cautioned on a serious tone. “With your permission, I’d like to begin as soon as possible.” Twilight requested. Celestia and Luna nodded, and bowed their heads. Magic began to glow on their horns as the gates of the Royal Library resonated with it, slowly and ominously starting to open before Twilight. As she began to walk into the room, the sisters would speak to her once again. “We shall now return to our duties. May you find what you seek.” Luna said as she turned around. “What we all seek. Good luck.” Celestia finished, the gates now closing behind Twilight, as she nodded towards the Princesses. After the gates had closed, Twilight found herself standing in the dark, being unable to see into the room, and also unable to hear any outside sounds. A bit nervous, she tried her own magic, which immediately interacted with the room, as several lamps began to glow with life on both the walls and the ceiling. Once she had more vision, she realized she was now standing on a balcony with gold railings, with fine details carved on both the railings and the walls. On both sides, there were stairs going up and down, leading to several floors containing immense bookshelves attached to the walls, which reached to the far end of the room. In front of her, looking over the balcony, she could see a large wooden table, also with fine details, as well as more bookshelves lined up in several rows on both sides of the table. Above the table hanged the largest lamp, with sun and moon motifs on it, which also glowed the brightest, giving even more light and life to the place. She couldn’t help but stand there for a few moments, absorbing the beauty of the place, a room that she knew Rarity would have certainly loved, and almost unable to hold down her own admiration for the potential knowledge contained within these walls. Still, she shook her head, quickly bringing herself back to reality, letting out a soft sigh. “Well, I better start now.” There were now countless piles of books all over the table, many of them bookmarked. Twilight was still scribbling on several pieces of paper, when she looked up, rubbing her neck and taking a little break. She looked around, in a bit of a daze. She had been so focused she hadn’t really realized of how long she had been in the Royal Library. The room had no windows so she couldn’t tell if it had gotten dark already or not, though strangely the temperature within remained fresh enough somehow. Twilight just shrugged and assumed it was all due to magic. Before she could continue wondering about the time, she heard the doors opening as the Princesses trotted in. She rose from her chair and walked towards them. “Dear Twilight, our apologies for taking too long.” Luna began. “We hope, however, that your time within this chamber was well spent.” “Please inform us of your findings.” Celestia followed, as the doors closed once again behind them. Twilight nodded. “First things first, I decided to focus my attention on 2 topics, based on your previous findings: The initial experiments with teleportation magic, and their eventual result and connection with the Mirror we used previously for me to retrieve my crown and Element of Harmony from the human world.” Twilight began, gaining the Princesses’ attention. “Upon further investigation based from the knowledge in these works, I managed to figure out a bit more about the experiments, and how they influenced in the creation of the Mirror, as well as knowing a bit more about how the Mirror really works. To begin with, the whole idea of it working JUST under specific conditions related to the Moon is…slightly less ominous than what we all may have thought at first.” Twilight continued, gaining a raised eyebrow from Luna at that statement. “In reality, the connection the Mirror has with the human world is always there.” Twilight clarified. “However, the Mirror, at least up to this point, has always required a special type of magic to power it up; magic that so far has only been available under said Moon conditions. As for the experiments, as we may have expected, they did eventually bring the results we know nowadays: Our regular ways of teleportation via magic, and devices such as the Mirror itself.” “However…” Twilight continued, though now with a slightly worried tone. “I found more about the experiments. They were rather…ambitious.” She clarified, seeing that the Princesses had noticed her worried tone. “Their objective wasn’t just to improve the knowledge we had at that time, but to go further and even opening up the possibility of discovering new worlds, way beyond ours.” She explained. “The details of those experiments are still not fully clear to me, but at this point we can tell this is the part that could be related to the disappearances still occurring in Equestria.” “In other words, we indeed have to consider the idea that some, if not all of the ponies that have disappeared, may have ended up in completely different worlds.” Twilight speculated, much to the Princesses’ dismay. “…Still!” Twilight resumed. “There could be good news. If we consider that possibility, we also have to consider the fact that there have been cases of buildings and other objects reappearing within our Equestria, although not on their original locations. If that’s the case, then it is possible that whatever, or whoever, disappears is still tethered on some way to our Equestria as well, so it’s either a matter of time until everypony who has disappeared returns by themselves. Likewise, we could apply tracking and anchoring spells to try and find them, though the risk still remains as, once again, we are dealing with completely unknown worlds.” She suggested. “At any rate, that’s what I’ve been able to find so far.” Twilight finished. “I just wish I had gotten more conclusive or definitive results…” Celestia placed a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “You’ve done an excellent in such a short time, my dear student.” She assured as Luna would nod as well. “Your new findings have given us more options, and with some luck, we may be able to retrieve the lost ponies sooner than expected. We’ll inform the Royal Guard about our newly acquired knowledge.” “In the meantime, I’m afraid to inform you that it indeed is late in the evening at the moment.” Celestia continued. “You shall stay in the castle for the night, and decide on what you’ll do next in the morning.” She suggested, as they began to walk towards the doors, which opened once again. “Thanks, Princess.” Twilight nodded. “While I’d like to continue this research, with your permission of course, I feel it would be best if I continue at another time, and returned to Ponyville. My friends are returning from their travels and I’d like to meet with them.” She asked, gathering her items and notes in her bag, and following the Princesses. Celestia and Luna nodded, walking with Twilight outside the Library, as the doors ominously closed again. “You may want to get some rest then, as you may have noticed the train station is more crowded these days.” Celestia suggested, guiding Twilight to her room for the night. Just as Celestia had told her the night before, the station was indeed very busy, in comparison to the many times she and her friends had used the service before. She would struggle to just find a seat to wait for her train to arrive. While she waited, she would take some of her notes and revise them, trying to figure out more possibilities, as well as coming up with a way to modify the Mirror so it would be available at any time. She admitted to herself that she missed her friends in the Human world, Sunset Shimmer in particular. She remembered how just a while ago, she had found a peculiar tome in her collection, which she could use to communicate with Sunset in the Human world, as well as a form of battery for the Mirror, along with a combination of other devices. Still, she felt that she could still do better, given the new information she now had. Time passed quickly as she entertained these ideas in her mind, when she heard the loudspeakers announcing the arrival of her train. She quickly saved her notes and grabbed her saddle bags, walking towards one of the wagons. As she found her seat, she looked outside, staring at all the ponies still rushing around the station. And then she noticed one in particular. Twilight blinked for a moment, as she saw a mare in a hood staring at her from the crowd. It was difficult to discern any features from her position, and her outfit didn’t help either. Still, she squinted her eyes a bit, and then she remembered about a similar mare that she had met just recently… “…Misty?” Twilight whispered to herself. The hooded figure nodded gently, as if it had heard her, and proceeded to lose itself among the crowd, leaving Twilight just slightly confused. She knew she would still be around, according to what she implied during her visit in Ponyville, this time however…she couldn’t quite tell why, but she felt as a somewhat different mare. As these new thoughts would now gain her attention, among her current research, the train finally departed, leading her back home, and soon to her friends as well. If there was ever a time when they needed to stay together, it was now.