Chapter 19: Inside the Temple
“What took you guys?” Rainbow Dash demanded impatiently, tapping her hoof on the ground to show her annoyance to the two approaching siblings. “We could have been in and out by now, if we didn’t have to wait on you.”
Our group had already come to our destination only a moment ago, but decided to linger at the front gates to give Twilight and Shining Armor time to catch up to us. We hadn’t actually had to wait that long for them, but Dash felt the need to voice her disdain at having to remain in one place for any amount of time.
“Sorry, Rainbow.” The purple mare apologized. “We just needed to… come to an understanding.” Twilight said as she eyed her brother, who just sighed at her comment.
“Yeah, whatever, let’s just go inside. It’s gettin’ dark out, and Fluttershy’s scared of the dark.” the speedster stated as she gestured to the shivering ball of yellow pony huddled on the ground next to Rarity. The white mare was stroking Fluttershy’s pink mane in an attempt to calm her down, whispering in her ear that everything was alright and that nothing was going to get her.
“That wouldn’t be wise.” Trixie warned. “There are dark magics inside. It would be safer in the morning when the sun is able to disperse it with light.”
“It’s dark out here too! “ Dash countered as she moved closer to the doors. “It’s the Everfree Forest! Everything is dark here. It comes with the territory.”
“Dash we should probably listen to…” I tried to warn, but Rainbow Dash decided to open the doors regardless of what I had to say on the matter.
The aged wood groaned as it slowly granted us entry. Air rushed out of the newly opened entrance, causing it to howl like a predatory beast ready to pounce on it’s pray. Each of us shuddered at the noticeable drop in temperature, and it made my fur stand up on end.
Dash laughed feebly as she glanced back at us. “See? Nothing to be afraid of.” she said in an attempt to calm her own nerves rather than ours.
The waning light of the fading sunset cast an eerie orange glow through the stained glass windows inside the mausoleum, and reflected off of a few mirrors that sat near the entrance. Most of the shards of glass were either missing or broken from age and neglect, laying about in pieces on the floor before their respective window.
Straight ahead, sitting on a pedestal in the middle of a large room was a dark blue crystal. Surrounding the crystal, prostrate on the ground, were a group of pony skeletons. Each pony in turn lay in the same position as the one laying next to it, forming a complete circle.
“Why would these ponies die to worship a crystal?” Twilight asked more to herself than to anyone around me.
“It looks like they’re praying.” I observed.
“Who cares? Look! Isn’t that what we’re looking for?” Dash shouted. “Let’s grab it, and get out of here.”
“Wait!” Pinkie warned with a shout as she nearly tackled her pegasus friend to prevent her from entering. “Something’s not right here. My Pinkie Sense is tingling.”
“Really Pinkie? Really?” I deadpanned. “You’re going to use that line?”
“What?” she asked innocently. “My back and legs are all tingly, that means something is not right.”
I openly sighed at the silliness of the pink mare. “Fine. Whatever. So, what exactly is not right?” I asked.
“I don’t know! If I knew, it wouldn’t be something. It would be something else, and if it were something else that I knew about, then something would be right instead of not right, so my Pinkie Sense wouldn’t have sensed it, so it wouldn’t matter, but I did sense it, so it does matter.”
What?
I looked at the pink mare in confusion for a moment before turning to the rest of the group. “Did anyone else get that?” I asked. All of them answered me with confused shakes of their heads in the negative. “Good! I thought it was just me.”
Once I turned back around, I found that Pinkie had apparently ignored her own warning, and was inside the temple doors, standing in front of one of the mirrors situated in the entryway. “Oooo, this makes me look all funny.” she stated, shifting her wait around in a sporadic fashion.
“Pinkie, darling, it’s a mirror. It only reflects what is placed in front of it. You look the same as… Oh my!” Rarity exclaimed as she trotted up next to her friend in front of the mirror. Her eyes grew wide the instant she saw her own reflection. “Don’t look at me! I’m hideous!” she exclaimed, trying to cover herself with her hooves. “My mane!? Just look at my mane!”
“What’s wrong with it?” Pinkie asked, cocking her head to the side as she looked at Rarity’s reflection. “You look fine to me.”
“Are you blind!? Just look at me! My mane is disheveled. My mascara is running, and I look positively greasy! What happened to make me so, so… ugly!?”
“What are you talking about? You look fine.” I observed, keeping myself on the other side of temple’s archway. Just in case.
“I warned you. Dark magics.” Trixie clarified.
“What’s happening?” I asked the showmare without looking away from the spectacle that was unfolding before me.
“Trixie is unsure.” The unicorn shifted uncertainly on her hooves.
“What do you mean you’re unsure? You’re the one who’s been here before.” Shining Armor argued.
“Trixie believes the experience is different for everypony and it changes from mirror to mirror.”
“What did you see when you came here?” Twilight asked with a caring undertone, doing what she could to stand between her displeased brother and the showmare.
“The mirrors lie!” Trixie lashed out suddenly with a tremble in her voice. “Trixie is none of the things she saw in those… those things!” she accused with a hoof pointed to the inanimate objects.
“Calm down. We’re all friends here. There’s no reason to start a fight. We’ll just have to ignore what we see in them then.” I reasoned. “It’s just an image and it can’t hurt us. Right?”
“Not as long as it’s just an image enchantment.” Twilight informed me. “If it’s something more malevolent, like a discordant refection for example, things could be a little more difficult.”
Discordant reflection? As in Discord?
“Hmm.” I hummed as I mulled this information over. “Do you guys feel any different?” I called out to the mares sitting in front of the mirror. “Any new disposition on life, or new found hate for anything?”
“Nope!” Pinkie Pie answered with a pep in her step as she shifted to another mirror down the line.
“Other than feeling a little more disgusted than I did a moment ago, I’ll be well enough now that I know that is not what I really look like. Thank you for worrying. It means a lot.” Rarity acknowledged, keeping her eyes as far away from the image of herself as she could. “My only question is why didn’t the mirror change how dear Pinkie appeared in it?”
“What are you talking about?” Pinkie asked. “My mane was all straight like I was all sad and mopey, there were bags under my eyes like I had been partying for a week without sleep, and I was glaring at myself for some reason that I don’t really understand. It made me look funny. Not the ‘ha ha’ kind of funny, the ‘uh oh’ kind of funny, but it still gave me a giggle because I know that’s not what I look like, so I knew it didn’t matter.”
“You mean you saw Pinkamina in there!?” I gasped with a shudder. My fur stood on end for the implications of the revelation that a certain fanfic may have merit to its content.
The ponies looked at me strangely for a moment before Pinkie spoke up. “Of course I saw Pinkamina, because Pinkamina is me, and I saw me. I didn’t know you knew my real name wasn’t Pinkie. You need to tell me your real name so we’d be even. It only makes sense.”
So… these are either windows to other dimensions, or they can show you different parts of your personality. Neither of those possibilities are really a problem, so why would Pinkie’s Pinkie Sense go off if there’s nothing wrong.
“What about you’re warning?” I inquired, ignoring Pinkie’s request to know my real name. “You said something was off.”
“No. I said something wasn’t right. Completely different thing.” Pinkie corrected.
“Never mind.” I sighed, turning to the remaining ponies that were keeping their distance from the building’s interior. “It looks like they’re fine, so I guess it’s safe. Let’s grab this thing and get going.”
Hesitantly, we trotted in, doing what we could to ignore our reflections in the mirrors lining the entryway. Each step we took brought ourselves into the range of more of the reflective surfaces, making it more difficult to ignore what was in front of us.
A few steps in, I caught a glimpse of something big in the corner of my eye that didn’t have the white fur that I had become accustomed to. Letting my curiosity get the better of me, my vision shifted to look at the moving object to my right. The reflection I saw caused my eyes to widen in surprise.
Standing in all of my glory was my human body. It looked the same as when I had left it. I brought my hoof up to my face to verify that I was still a pony, and to my relief, I was.
Huh, it's been awhile since I last saw you.
Twilight noticed that I had stopped to look into a mirror, and paused to make sure I was alright. She trotted up to my side to gaze at our reflection for a moment. Her eyes noticed something on her own visage that caused her to turn to look at her back for a brief moment, but returned to me shortly after. “What do you see?” she asked with curiosity.
“It’s me.” I said, letting those words sit in the air for a bit before continuing. “The human me.” I clarified.
“Oh!” was all the unicorn could say in response.
“It’s just weird to see me like that now. I know I haven’t lived that long in this body, but… I feel like it’s where I belong.” I mused as my eyes met my human counterpart’s. His expression saddened as he looked at me, like he was unhappy for the choices I made for my life.
“I wish I could see what you looked like, before you came here.” Twilight said as she leaned up against me.
“I’ll try to draw you a picture from memory when all this is over. It may not be perfect, but at least I can give you a basic idea.”
“Hay! Look at this!” Shining Armor exclaimed suddenly, forcing all of us to shift our focus onto him, and subsequently the carving on the wall that he was directing us to look at. My breath drew in with surprise at the visage of the pony depicted on that wall, but my mind still lingered on the short time the beautiful unicorn was leaning against my larger frame.
With all that he seemed to detest about me, I am convinced that the redirection was made by the stallion in an attempt ruin the tender moment Twilight and I were having just a few scant seconds earlier.
“My word.” Rarity gasped, bringing a hoof up to her mouth. “Is that who I think it is?”
“Ah don’t see how it could be anypony else.” Applejack answered. “The armor is pretty well recognizable.”
Fluttershy had since curled up into another ball at the hooves of Rainbow Dash in an attempt to hide herself from the pictographs on the wall, clutching onto her legs to keep the flyer grounded with her.
Dash struggled for a bit before giving a sigh in resignation. She knew when it was a lost cause, and she wasn’t about to abandon a friend in need. “Why would there be a carving of Nightmare Moon here?” she asked the question on all of our minds.
The visage of the mare of nightmares was faded in places from age, but it was easy to tell what the image was supposed to be. The mare known as Nightmare Moon was depicted sitting on a throne with her wings outstretched in a threatening manner with the moon rising up behind her. There were even indentations under her wings to indicate stars in the night sky. Around the image was some more of the ancient wording that Twilight and I found in the caves underground.
Twilight unconsciously began to read the words scribed across the wall. Her face drooped as her eyes began to move faster and faster at a frantic rate. “Oh no.” she said to herself as she continued to read a little further. “Oh no. Oh no. This isn’t good.”
“What is it sugercube?” the apple farmer asked.
“Yeah, what’s it say?” I inquired with a bit of worry creeping into my voice.
She turned around to stare at the crystal sitting untouched on the podium in which it rested. “That’s not the gem we’re looking for.” she revealed.
Silence reigned for a few seconds as we took in her words meaning. My ears instinctively folded back against my head. “Oh.” was all I could think to say to something like that, which earned me the attention of the group.
Sensing that she was needed, Fluttershy came out of her protective bubble and shied closer to me to rub my back in a comforting gesture. “I.. It’ll be alright.” she said with more confidence than I thought she would have. “Just because that isn’t the gem doesn’t mean it’s not here. We’ll find it. Don’t worry.”
“Thanks Fluttershy.” I replied with a reassured half smile. “It’s not like we’re going to leave empty handed. Right?”
“Darn tootin’!” the farm pony agreed. “So Twi, does that there wall say where the real gem’s at?”
“Not really.” the librarian answered. “It talks about how the night should be worshiped above the sun, and that the best place to worship is in front of something called ‘The Gateway to Enlightenment’.
“Well, it seems to me that the only thing these ponies worshiped was this crystal.” Rarity stated, motioning towards the skeletons surrounding the alter in the middle of the room.
“That’s silly.” Pinkie commented as she bounced over to her friend’s side to wrap a hoof around her neck. “That’s a crystal not a gateway. Those two things are nothing alike.”
“I’m quite aware of that Pinkie. I was just…”
“If you knew that already, than why did you say it was a gateway? I can see if it was a part of a gateway, but it’s just one shard, and you can’t exactly walk through a shard of crystal. It’s surprisingly hard, you know? Not like pudding which is all soft and pliable and easy to walk through. Mmmm, pudding. Do we have any pudding left? I think I need some Cosby Juice.” the pink mare rambled.
I sighed audibly at the joke Pinkie decided to make. “Ignoring the fact that you shouldn’t even know who Bill Cosby is…”
“Who’s Bill Cosby? Does he make pudding? I bet he makes really good pudding.” Pinkie interrupted me.
I ignored the pink mare and continued on as if she hadn’t said anything at all. “…I think Rarity may be on to something. That Crystal seems to be the focal point to where these ponies were praying to, we just don’t know why it was called The Gateway to Enlightenment.”
Trixie took a hesitant step forward to try to get everyone’s attention. “I… I’ve found that it reacts to magic.” she explained with a wavering voice. Her eyes were darting from left to right in an attempt to see everything in the room at once. Her demeanor had changed to something resembling more Fluttershy than the Great and Powerful Trixie. Clearly she was not comfortable staying here any longer than she absolutely needed to.
I wasn’t the only one to notice the change in her attitude, as Shining Armor sidled up next to the mare. “What’s wrong?” he asked her with a stern tone.
“Thing’s changed when I funneled my magic into that… that thing. Trixie does not know what it is, but it is not normal.”
“Things… changed?” Twilight muttered to herself as she thought. “Of course!” she shouted as she hit her head with her own hoof when the answer dawned on her. “It’s like the crystal above the throne in the Crystal Empire. Focus enough negative magic into it, and it will change the environment around us.”
“You’ve dealt with this sort of thing before?” asked the showmare in a disbelieving manner.
“Once. I never thought that I would ever see another one of these. Let alone outside the Crystal Empire, but I guess Princess Celestia keeps one next to her throne so why wouldn’t Luna keep one as well?”
“Come on then. Do your magic thing, and let’s get moving.” Rainbow Dash ordered, flittering above us in lazy circles.
“Alright. Stand back. I don’t know what’s going to happen when it activates.” Twilight advised as her horn began to glow. She scrunched her eyes closed as she concentrated on the spell she was channeling into the solid object before her. Slowly the aura surrounding her horn turned black, and wisps of the energy she was generating began to leak from her clenched eyes.
With a scream of determination, the powerful mare hurled the negatively charged energy into the crystal sitting on the pedestal, turning it a sickly black color. A shadow crawled from underneath it in the dimming sunlight, moving slowly over its resting place and across the floor. Making its way past the skeletons resting on the floor, it moved over to the wall that depicted Nightmare moon sitting on her throne.
Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash quickly shuffled out of the way of the moving shadow for fear of what it might do if they touched the intangible substance. The darkness climbed up the wall slowly, changing what was written into something new as it progressed. The image of the slender mare on her throne changed along with the words next to her portrait.
It began with her hooves; growing in girth and musculature. Her starry tail turned into a cloak, covering a much more masculine body. As the last rays of sunlight vanished behind the horizon, the shadow had reached the tip of the horn situated on top of the unicorn’s head. Fully revealing the new figure sitting on the throne as the world outside became shrouded in darkness.
“Well Ah’ll be.” Applejack gaped in awe removing her Stetson to press it against her chest for comfort.
“But, but… that doesn’t make any sense.” Twilight said in confusion. “He never made it beyond the Crystal Empire. There is no logical explanation as to why this carving should even exist.” she finished with a stomp of her hoof for emphasis.
“Clearly, there is at least one, because… here it is.” I stated, pointing my hoof at the depicted pony glaring down at us as evidence.
“Well, duh.” Pinkie spoke up. “Who else would be able to trick Princess Luna into becoming Nightmare Moon… Besides Discord… and Queen Chrysalis… and maybe Celestia if Luna really, really made her mad, or something, but honestly that’s not really a possibility now is it?”
There was silence as we all stared at Pinkie in disbelief.
“What?” she asked in confusion. “It could have happened.”
“Regardless.” Shining Armor said. “We should stay on our guard. There’s no telling what’s ahead of us if King Sombra is involved.”
If we had been on guard instead of gawking at the King of Shadows, we would have noticed that the bones surrounding the pedestal behind us began to twitch on their own accord as soon as the sun had completely set.
Stats
Page generated in 0.032 seconds
Total duration
1,072 users online
1,689,642 hits today, 2,004,447 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Wow its been three months?
Cool, welcome back.
This is an interesting turn. Sombra, hey? And some dead bones coming to life.
...Right. Today's one of those days that fourth well gets butt-pounded. I'll go fetch the lube.
Sombra eh?
Maybe he could ACTUALYL GET CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
*deathstares at hasbro*
Mirrors that show different versions of oneself...I was kind-of expecting an Equestria Girls reference to be honest. Good chapter.
Great story. I look forward to reading more in the future.