//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: Why Is The Rum Always Gone? 
// by Forgotmyusername 
//------------------------------//

	For many centuries, the Everfree Forest never been regarded as the safest place to venture. Only recently had it begun to give up its secrets, and then only to the few ponies brave or foolhardy enough to venture under its dark foliage. It had never been fully mapped, though not for lack of trying. Several times had the pegasi had a crack at this task, flying safely above the treeline and noting where the paths they could see led, but each time the maps had been different, the many paths through the woods seeming to change to confuse and entrap the unwary.

Ironically, this had made places already within its borders some of the safest places on Equus. Many an old doomsday weapon, held in lost bunkers now far beyond the reach of even the most daring archaeologists and adventurers were lost forever. Know where something is, and you can take it. If you don’t know where your treasure is however, how can you ever find it?

This fact was not lost on Princess Twilight Sparkle, Grand Magus, Element of Magic, Knight of Harmony, Master of the Grand Library at Ponyville, and several other titles besides (none of which she would ever call herself by), as she made her way back home from the most well known structure in the Everfree Forest – The Castle of the Pony Sisters. At her side, one of her greatest friends, Applejack the Honest, walked, straining under the weight of the cart full of books, tomes and grimoires.

Under advisement from both Celestia and Luna, Twilight was carrying out the task of emptying the ancient bookshelves from the ancient ruins. As some of the books held there were probably incredibly dangerous, possibly outmatching even some in the Forbidden Archives in the Starswirl The Bearded Wing of the Royal Canterlot Library, all three alicorns agreeing that Twilight should take possession of the old archives, lest some enterprising soul run the risk of finding and reading something that could summon a Thing that Should Not Be.

Applejack sighed in gratitude when they finally entered Twilight’s castle courtyard and she was able to unhitch herself from the cart. “Lemme tell ya Twi, ah’m glad that’s the last of them. I think my back might break if I do any more heavy liftin’ today” she groaned, slowly rotating her legs one by one to get the blood flowing again. “Ah think I’m gonna have a nice long bath when I get back to mah house.”

No sooner had the words left her mouth that a small and very localised rainstorm suddenly fell on her from above. Applejack suppressed the startled jump she felt, and would have begun to blame Discord and his peculiarly good sense of comic timing if she hadn’t recognised the barely suppressed sniggering coming from somewhere above the cloud. Thankfully, the rain wasn’t too cold and was quite refreshing, so she just chuckled and called out “Or Rainbow Dash could jus’ do that.  Thank you Rainbow!”

“You’re welcome!” replied Rainbow Dash, as she peeked over the edge of the raincloud, her signature grin plastered all over her face. “I saw you coming back and figured you might be wanting a shower!”

Twilight chuckled at the antics of her friends. “So long as you know you’re cleaning up the mess, Rainbow Dash.” Rainbow pouted at this. “It isn’t fair to leave everything to Spike, especially since he’s going to be busy helping me organise all of these.” Twilight gestured to the immense pile of books.
“Yeah, I’d rather be outside than helping with all that” Rainbow replied. “No offence, but I think I’d go mad if I had to help with sorting out all those boring old things”
“I wouldn’t be so sure” Twilight smiled. “There are some adventure stories in here as well.”

Rainbow’s ears twitched at this. She quickly stopped the rain shower and moved it out of the way of Applejack, allowing the warmth of the sun to begin drying the latter off, before zipping over to the cart. She picked one off the cart at random. “Ooh, are there any Daring Doo books here?” she enquired, quickly glancing at the title, sticking her tongue out at it and tossing it back on the pile.
“No, Daring Doo wasn’t around a thousand years ago!” Twilight groaned at her friend’s obliviousness of history. “There might be something like that though, just let me organise all of these and then I’ll find you a good story to try.” No sooner were the words out of her mouth however than Rainbow let out an excited little squeak. She was holding a book with an odd looking skull and two swords crossed underneath it motif.
“Look, I found one!” She glanced at the title. “Set Sail and Conquer. It’s about pirates!”

Twilight grabbed the book in her telekinetic grasp, blew the dust off, and opened it at a random page. She flicked through it, then, with a quick nod, passed it back to Rainbow. “That’s fine. Just don’t take any others until I’ve had a chance to make sure they’re not dangerous.”
“Fine, fine” replied Rainbow, already chuckling with excitement. She’d already read all the Daring Doo books and another wasn’t scheduled to be out for a few months at least.

As Spike trotted out of the castle and began to assist Twilight in organising the books for shelving and Applejack trotted off towards Sweet Apple Acres, Rainbow flew towards her cloud home, book in hoof, ready to read stories of adventure on the high seas.


~


It had been a hard afternoon for Spike, but he wasn’t tired. He was shelving new books, something that he only rarely got to do – he was usually reshelving the entire library due to a whim of his big sister’s. As he turned a corner on his way to get some more books off the cart, he ran into a cyan blue wall. He looked around, past the mare in front of him, and around the room. He gasped.
“What?” asked Rainbow.
“You came in through the door! You didn’t use a window, or the wall! Who are you and what have you done with Rainbow Dash?” Spike replied, with as much sarcasm as he could muster.
“Har har” Rainbow laughed. “I’m looking for a book, can you help me out here?”
“Sure. What are you looking for? Have you finished that one Twilight gave you already?”
“No, but it’s given me an idea for something I wanna try. I need a book about drinking.”
Spike looked quizzically at her. “What do you mean?”
“The book kept going on about something called Rum. I want to try some.”
“So why do you need a book?”
“ ‘Cos I want to make some! Why else do you think? I need a recipie!”

Spike gave Rainbow a sidelong look. He thought for a moment, then asked “So why do you need a recipie? Just get some from somewhere.”
“Well I tried that” Rainbow replied. “Problem is no one in Ponyville has any. I even asked Berry Punch, but she only stocks that fruit cider of hers. And she’s never really happy to part with any of the fun stuff.”
“Well...” began Spike. “Can you keep a secret?”
Rainbow looked interested. “Sure! What is it?”
“You’ve got to Pinkie Promise not to tell anyone! Especially not Twilight, I really don’t need her finding out about this.”
Rainbow was getting really excited. “Sure I can! Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!”
“Good” Spike looked hard at her, then pulled her ear close to his mouth, then whispered “I’ve got some.”
Rainbow pulled back and looked at Spike in surprise. “You’ve got some? But you’re only a kid! How have you got some?”
Spike chuckled. “Well, do you know what rum is?”
“Yeah” replied Rainbow, “it’s this alcoholic drink made from sugar isn’t it?”
“Correct answer! Next question, do you know how we dragons breathe fire?”
Rainbow thought for a minute. “No” she answered slowly.

Spike went into lecture mode, something he very rarely got the opportunity to do. “Well, we dragons have a special organ that collects fuel to power our fire breathing. For most dragons, they stock up on lava when they go on the dragon migration. It’s why so much fighting happens during the migration, everydrake is trying to get rid of the last of their fuel reserves so as to fill up with fresh stuff. However, I don’t go on the migration, use my fire more often than most dragons do and need to keep my flames small, so I don’t burn anything down. So when we were still in Canterlot, I came up with a solution to my problem with Princess Celestia – a rum flavoured solution. Basically, since alcohol is flammable, it can be used as fuel, and therefore dragons can’t get drunk! So with Princess Celestia, I tried loads of drinks and settled on rum as the drink that I like best that gives me the most fuel. I get several bottles every month to keep myself fuelled up.”

“Cool! So why do I need to keep this a secret?” Rainbow asked.
“You saw Twilight after two mugs of hard cider” Spike replied with a deadpan face. “Do you really want to deal with her further gone than that?”
Rainbow laughed. “I get it. I completely understand. So can I get some please?”
Spike nodded. “I’ll give you one bottle. If you like it, you can keep it. But one bottle only, you’ll have to get your own after this.”
“Thanks Spike, you’re the best!” cheered Rainbow, a grin plastered all over her face. “Can you go get it now? I’ll be out of your scales before you can say ‘drink’!”

Spike nodded, looked around carefully, and led Rainbow into the castle, looking out for a certain purple pony princess all the way.


~


It was with a certain amount of resignation that Twilight looked at the form of Rainbow Dash looking guiltily up at her.
“I really should have guessed that you’d end up spilling something all over the book, I really should. Why do I let you get away with these kinds of things again?”
“Because we’re the bestest of friends?” Rainbow replied hopefully.
Twilight sighed. “So where did you get the rum from anyway? I didn’t see any alcohol the last time I was at your house”
Rainbow had planned for this. “I got some from Canterlot?” Twilight seemed mollified by this. “Look, I said I was sorry. I mean, it’s not as if it was one of those big spellbooks, right?”
Twilight nodded. “You know what? I’m glad it wasn’t. Who knows what might have happened if you’d done that. You might have set fire to the library, given yourself another head, or released something the princesses locked away for a long time.”
“Yeah” laughed Rainbow, “At least nothing bad can happen with a storybook”.

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Now, had Pinkie been nearby, she would have mentioned right there and then the way her right ear twitched and revealed that somepony had said something they’d later come to regret. On this information Twilight would have thought over the preceding conversation and started looking in more detail at the book that was currently soaked through in rum. She might have noticed the way the ink from the pages had not just soaked into the paper but had seemingly drained right out of the book. She might have sent a letter to the Royal Sisters asking about the book and what might have happened, and the sisters might have taken steps to stop the events that unfolded.

But Pinkie was nowhere near Twilight’s Castle at the time, she was up in Canterlot hosting a birthday party for Fancy Pants, and so put her ear twitch down to one of the nobility saying something whilst drunk. And so nopony even thought to head into the Everfree one last time that day.

Luna’s old tower room in the Castle of the Royal Sisters has four windows, each facing the cardinal directions. The east-facing windowsill is of no particular immediate significance. Like all the others, it held objects from a bygone age, relics of past adventurers who found themselves at odds with the Sisters and fell against them. However, upon this particular windowsill rested two nondescript items that differed from all the others in that room. To anypony who were to see them, nothing about them screams that they are from another world. They lay there, safe in their inconspicuousness, silently waiting.

The ship in a bottle and the tricorn hat sat on their windowsill, from which can be seen, with an extremely good eye, the city of Baltimare and Horseshoe Bay. And on that particular evening, with the moonrise shining through the east window and the sunset shining through the west, a hand reached down and picked up the tricorn hat.