• Published 15th Jul 2014
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Strings - naturalbornderpy



Set ten years after Tirek's brief escape, Discord plots his final scheme with the unknown assistance of a villain thought dead.

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Chapter 19: Home

CHAPTER NINETEEN:

HOME

1

As much as Luna had tried to send Twilight back directly to Baltimare, she had still missed the mark by a good dozen miles. Twilight didn’t mind. She thought a short flight might do her some good. These days she figured she had a lot to ponder.

“I’ll only keep quiet about this for so long,” Shining Armor had said, as they finished their last embrace. “Princess Cadence will have questions. A lot of them, if I know her well. Can she be let in on all this?”

“Only if you think she’ll keep it a secret,” she had said bluntly. Twilight didn’t exactly know how Cadence might react, so she left it in the hooves of her brother to sort. She had business of her own to comprehend.

The few clouds before her parted and the cool wind blew her hair to either side of her head. Only a mile beyond stood Baltimare, each of its tall, glass and metal buildings shinning brilliantly in the early morning sun. Already she could spot the tiny specks of ponies on their way to work or wherever. Already she was envious of them all. What she wouldn’t give to have a normal life. To think about normal things while traveling to a normal job.

Twilight’s stomach rumbled above the cutting wind and the notion of what she’d actually last eaten escaped her. For two days she had been out in the cold searching for her brother. Thoughts of food or personal necessities had never even entered her mind.

She stopped her flight near the entrance of town, remembering a bakery she had frequented during her years there—or Spike had, when her latest book proved too tantalizing to depart from. She landed and surveyed the small street; many ponies trotted to and fro into small shops, she even glimpsed a little fountain at its center. The kind words she had heard the last time she went shopping in the city still held clear in her thoughts—she figured maybe a little polite socializing could ebb some of her overall negative vibes.

“Good morning!” she exclaimed to a mare grabbing a newspaper from a vendor.

When the mare turned to face her, she dropped her paper and her pupils shrunk.

Up off the ground Twilight scooped it up and placed it in her hoof, one that was oddly still hovering where it had just been. It was as if she had been startled stiff.

“Sorry I caught you off guard,” Twilight told her. “It’s still early. Maybe you need a little caffeine.”

Briskly Twilight trotted off, desperate to get to her bakery of choice. But where was it again? she thought. Spike had always been the one to go out and grab things… so—

Out of the corner of her eye she caught a stallion leading his two fillies along the opposite sidewalk. With both forelegs he was pushing his two children backwards, away from the street. “What are you doing Dad?” one said, before the father shushed him angrily. His eyes were nearly as surprised as the mare with the newspaper.

Now Twilight was getting nervous. “Why are you looking at me like that?” She peered around her for another pony of worth but found herself alone on the walk. “Oh, the wings and horn?” She flexed her purple wings, causing the father to grip his fillies tighter. “I’m an alicorn. I guess it might be kinda’ weird but—”

Pleasedon’thurtus!” the stallion shouted in a single blurb. His eyes darted down both ends of the street, perhaps looking for some salvation to come galloping his way.

Twilight pulled back her wings and stepped forward, her throat much dryer than when she’d first entered the city. “Why would I hurt you? What’s happened here?”

The stallion’s eyes finally found someone else to yell to. “There she is! There she is! Do something!” Even in mid-yell he was already scrambling away, whipping both of his kids onto his back to help move them along.

Twilight watched them go. Then remembered he had been speaking to someone down the road.

She turned to find the startled faces of more than a dozen guards. Even so early in the morning, each one looked alert and something more. Terrified perhaps?

Twilight asked them, “What’s going on here? Why is everyone acting like this? What’s happened in Baltimare?”

The center guard licked his lips. “We will not be answering your questions, Princess Twilight. On Lord Discord’s orders you are to come with us to Canterlot. You are accused of attempted murder on a Lord—one count of hericide—as well as the assistance in the murder of Princess Celestia along with hundreds more. You will face trial, but only in Canterlot. And only once you come with us.”

Twilight slowly shook her head, her thought moving far too sluggish for such a wallop of information. Discord had been busy. Discord had been very busy.

“No. No, you’ve got it all wrong,” she stammered. “I’ve never tried to kill anyone—Discord or Princess Celestia. There’s been a mistake and you’ve all been fooled. I loved Celestia. She was my teacher and my friend, and I had nothing to do with her death. You must see that.”

A guard near the sidewalk pointed a hoof at her. “Lord Discord said you would lie! We won’t believe a thing you say, murderer!”

The lead guard said sternly, “Any answers to the contrary can be uttered once you’re in Canterlot. Until then nothing you can say will change our orders.” A slight shimmer found his focused eyes. “I loved Princess Celestia. I had never met her a day in my life but what she stood for changed my outlook on everything. And for some horrible reason you took that away from us. I will see you face whatever punishment Lord Discord has in store.”

“You can’t really…” Twilight wanted to say more—say anything—to clear away these ridiculous accusations. Yet she honestly believed each one of their minds had been made up some time ago. With little conviction she said, “I won’t be going with you. There are much larger things at stake right now that I can’t possibly explain.”

“I knew she wouldn’t come without a fight!” It was the guard near the edge again—this time pointing his spear right at her. “She knows she’s done for! After all those ol’ books we found at her place—what else could she have been doing besides dark magic in there?”

Instantly Twilight wanted to reprimand herself for thinking so selfishly. “What did you do with Spike?”

“Nothing… yet.” Again the corner guard. “But when we find him, he’ll be sent to Canterlot just the same. Accomplices are just as bad as murderers in my book.”

The lead guard viewed the speaker. “No more talking to her. We’ve said all that needs to be said.” Then he faced her again. “Last chance, Princess Twilight. Come quietly and tell your story to Lord Discord personally, or face the second option… which I’m sure more than a few of my garrison would love to administer.”

Twilight swallowed back the lump in her throat. “I’m sorry, but that won’t be happening today. I have a friend to find. Only know that I pity you—each and every one of you. You’re scared and I know you’re only looking for the quickest answer to that fear. But that’s not me.”

Without another word Twilight vanished in a wash of white light, causing more than a few guards to quake in their armor. For two hours more the garrison that had been deployed around the Baltimare business section would investigate the area, only to find not a single hair of the alicorn.

2

Until a ladybug crawled halfway up her leg did Twilight merely sit and watch. Deep in the thick of the woods did she sit, as four ponies in uniform dug around the charred remains of her home. It had been cordoned off—yellow tape created a large square around her abode. Except it wasn’t anything close to that anymore—not at all. All that remained now was the large posts that marked its existence, blackened and ash-covered. Every little while another of the worker ponies would pull out another of her thick texts before adding it to a pile on the nearby grass—they did so with careful delicacy, almost as though afraid of what might lurk inside its ruined pages.

Spike had not been caught, the guard from before had told her. But that could also mean a far more grave possibility…

“Oh Spike,” she whispered, her earlier hunger disappearing as she tasted the fresh tears trickle down her cheeks. “Oh please no…”

A crack from a branch made her duck farther into the bush. She tried to remember a cloaking spell from some years ago but came up blank. It didn’t matter, though. She could teleport away again. Maybe it’s what she should have done minutes ago, instead of sitting and watching the ashy remains of her life’s work become picked apart like so much garbage.

“Twilight?” a voice asked.

She was nearly prepared to sprint away when she realized whose voice it was.

“Spike?” She turned and found Spike lowering himself from a tree.

He landed with a mild thud and approached her cautiously. “Did they try and get you too?”

She lowered her gaze. “Yes. And whatever you might have heard you can’t believe, Spike. It’s all—” But that was when two strong arms pulled her in close, and words lost all meaning.

When both parties felt a smidge better, they exchanged hurried tales, whispering like thieves. Every few minutes Spike would raise his head in search of some nearby wanderer, but it appeared as though this set of woods had interested them little.

“What’s going on here, Twilight?” he asked. “They say you tried to murder Discord and somehow Celestia too. That you’ve been messing with the dark arts for years.” During his time hiding in a tree, Spike had heard many a conversation from the workers digging through their home. Their opinion of the pair left a lot to be desired.

“I heard close to the same,” Twilight said. “Discord must have set up some assassination attempt on himself and pinned the blame on me. He’s trying to push me out of the way so his lie will stand.”

“What lie, Twilight?”

And just like that it had slipped. But sadly Discord had made Spike a part of this without his consent already.

Twilight said carefully, “Discord was the one that brought Sombra back to life. He’s also the one that stopped Luna and myself from ever knowing about the battle at the Empire. And now he’s turned himself into the ‘Lord’ of Equestria and has everyone believing it was just love that saved everyone when nothing else would. He played everyone like pieces on a chessboard and he got away with it all.”

Spike looked away as he took in the news. He handled it better than she thought he might.

“The story did seem a little too good to be true,” he finally said wearily.

“I’m sorry, Spike. I’m sorry about everything.” She peered over the mound of green again, trying to pry her stalled mind from shutting down from the day’s dreadful activities. “But that’s why we need to stop Discord once and for all.”

“You mean turn him back into stone?”

“I know of no other way.”

“But wasn’t it only the Elements of Harmony that could do that?”

Twilight nodded. “Yes. I’m afraid so, Spike. Which is why I came back here as soon as I could—to get my research in check. But now…”—she glimpsed the burnt wreckage of her home; finally noticing the hallowed out dresser and bed near the back; the cracked and discarded picture frames of her parents she’d kept on the counter—“…it looks as though we’ll need to find another way.”

Spike grabbed her head with both hands to face him. On his face was a grin. “Or maybe not,” he said.

3

Twelve hours later and the mix of emotions were still tearing at her insides. The ups and downs of it all—the sudden horrors along with the minute jubilations thrown in, only made the alicorn more sick to her stomach than when the day had begun.

But that night there was still one more thing to do.

“I don’t think they’ll come, Spike. And even if they do, we might find its some trap instead. I don’t know if we’d even given them enough time to properly—”

“You ever try n’ think on the positive side, Twilight?” Spike said with a cocked brow. “They’ll come. They have to come. I’m… sure of it.” Even a dragon could not keep the unknowing luster from his voice.

In the black of night both of them watched with silent fascination the sharp and jutting points of the tower. Atop it all sat a giant star pointed towards the sky; below that, and held by crystal-like branches, was the more normal looking house that had served as her castle.

It was Twilight’s castle. In Ponyville.

Abandoned. Unkempt. Unvisited. And now more of an eyesore to the citizens of her old town. Only tonight did a single light shine through a few windows. The windows of the room where she had held council with all her friends, back when the largest adversary they had faced together was an upcoming bake sale or the planning of the latest Winter Wrap-Up.

“It’s a lot bigger than I remember,” Twilight said weakly, craning her neck to view its final peak. “I had liked my old library better. Ponies didn’t expect as much when you lived in a library. When you lived in a giant castle that could nearly swallow a town whole, I think others expected more from you. More from all of us, perhaps.”

Spike crossed his arms. “We going in or we going to wait until we’re spotted? You know, for all the wrong reasons we’re a bit popular these days.”

During the awkward and appallingly slow flight over (traveling with a nearly full-grown, wingless dragon had ended up being just as tricky as it sounded) Spike had told her how he had recovered her latest book before leaving their burning home. After listening to a few cracks from his back by her latest bear hug, he then told her what he’d been doing exactly with the first few pages of her text, along with his fire.

“I don’t think that was the best idea, Spike,” she had said outright.

He retorted thickly, “But it’s still an idea.”

Using a few berries from the tree he was sheltered in, as well as the fine point from a single claw, he had written a letter to Rainbow Dash, the one address he could remember while glimpsing over the stack of crumpled letters from the chimney. In his hurried script he had asked her to write to the rest of their friends, wherever they might be. It was urgent, he wrote. It was big. And they had to meet in a location everyone would know but still closed off from the rest of Equestria. Spike had picked the spot and left the rest up to Rainbow Dash. That, and a whole lot of chance.

“But why would they believe me over everything that’s been said?” Twilight asked, as she watched Spike stroll towards the front door. “I haven’t talked to them in years—I practically ignored them completely—and now suddenly I want to meet in the middle of the night with no witnesses present? I think if most ponies were to get a request such as that they might rather call the guards than bake them a welcome back pie.”

Spike held a hand on the knob, sourly glaring at her. “Because they’re your friends, Twilight. And they’re also mine. And if I know them as well as I think I do, I think they’ll be up there. And I think they’ll want to help.”

“But this could so easily be a trap!”

Only Spike was already inside.

4

During the last few steps on the winding stairs did she first hear the voices. Pinkie Pie’s shot above the rest, eagerly dishing up all the latest news from work, before loudly bouncing to some other corner of the room to exclaim about another old forgotten item of interest. The voice that came out next was Applejack’s—trying desperately to quell the constantly shifting pink Earth pony. Then came Rarity’s, every little while interjecting about the current state of the castle’s large drapes or rugs. That made three… although Fluttershy had never been much of a talker.

“You still think it’s a trap?” Spike turned to her along the darkened hall, leading her on while not stopping to ponder the possible ramifications this all could entail.

“It could be Discord, you know,” she muttered, not even completely convincing herself. “He could be doing their voices while a whole ambush stands at the ready.”

Spike huffed air through his nose and prepared to push through the doors.

“Wait Spike, I’m not ready. I need to think about—”

But the wash of bright light had already found her, causing her to nearly shut her eyes from it. Directly in place she had halted, before one strong hand pulled her across the room’s threshold, where five very silent ponies stood in wait.

Twilight’s eyes adjusted to the sudden change and she viewed each one of them in painful detail. It had been years since she’d seen them last—even more than that since she’d seen them together. They had grown, she could tell. She had not, as she already knew.

Once she’d entered the room Pinkie Pie’s constant bouncing ceased and she silently joined the rest near the doors. Applejack took a step forward and removed her hat to hold by her chest. Twilight’s heart galloped fiercely and now more than anything she wanted out of that room.

With complete sincerity Applejack said, “We’re awful sorry, Twilight.”

And now Twilight was eyeing each window in the room, curious as to how long it would take to charge right through one and into the night air.

“So it is a trap,” she spoke in a distance voice. “But I can’t blame you.”

Applejack put her hat back on with a quizzical look. “What trap, Twilight? Is Discord plannin’ somin’ else now?”

Twilight still eyed the windows with growing interest. Three seconds. I could definitely make it there in three seconds. Now the only question is whether or not he’s set up archers outside, waiting for me to—

Then she felt something warm against her side. Carefully she turned to find the front legs of Fluttershy wrapped snugly around her neck, her eyes closed and her face nearly buried into her side. She said, “We’re so sorry, Twilight. What’s happened to you is just terrible. None of us can even imagine how you’re feeling right now.”

The acute attention on her immediate means of escape melted away as Applejack wrapped her own legs around her. She rubbed her head into her side and Twilight’s knees buckled from all the pent-up feelings that now welled up inside her. With an awkward fall to the floor she sank with both of her friends, neither of them letting go. As Rarity added herself to the mix, Twilight finally stopped shuddering. As Rainbow Dash came forward—and as Twilight finally came to look upon her bandaged and mangled wing—her latest batch of tears made their debut. Thankfully they were not the only ones. Late to the mass of mares was Pinkie Pie, who in three careful hops, came crashing through the top, pinning them all in place.

“We’re sorry, Twilight.”

“He’ll never get away with it—not while we’re standing.”

The lights adorned on each of the spacious room’s walls amped up until they nearly shattered in their glass cases. The six friends did not notice such an occurrence; only Spike had, who then peered out a nearby window incase the increase of light should arose suspicion.

Each friend offered their own short escape of emotion, before they parted and stood in a circle. All except Twilight, who could barely stand after such an unexpected welcome.

“You mean…” she said in a raspy tone. “You mean you don’t believe I did it? You don’t believe I tried to kill Discord… or Celestia, for that matter?”

Rarity wiped the shine from her cheeks before adding a thin layer of makeup. “Are you serious, dear? Not for an instant did any of us think that. Since word came down from Canterlot, I think most of us were left waiting to hear from you.”

Applejack added, “And no offence, but I recon if you really wanted to kill Discord, you’d have done something just a smidge less obvious. I mean, it was only a knife. Discord’s always seemed a little knife-proof, if you follow me.” She looked at Rainbow Dash. “It’s just a good thing Rainbow Dash wrote to us all once she got Spike’s letter. After that we all raced over here—I’m sure pretty darn curious as to just what the heck’s goin’ on.”

When Rainbow heard her name she rubbed one foreleg against the other, not adding her voice to the rest. Finally Twilight got back to her hooves to move towards her.

“I’m sorry about what happened, Rainbow Dash,” she told her. “If I would’ve known I would’ve been there with the rest of you. What you did was so brave and I’m so proud of you. But it was cowardly of me not to visit you since.” She lowered her head and spoke to the rest. “It was cowardly of me to ignore every one of you, even when I knew you were still reaching out to me. We were friends—best friends—and I only hid away from you all. I had thought… I had thought for the longest time…”

“We know, Twilight,” Fluttershy said. “We know you’ve been having trouble with your new… alicorn abilities. And we can understand how difficult the transition must have been.”

Twilight shook her head. “It’s not the alicorn part that scares me. It’s the living forever part, Fluttershy. It’s always been that. How can I be friends with anyone if they’ll only grow older while I stay the same? It’s just… not fair. How can I ever hope to relate to anyone anymore? Besides other alicorns?”

Rarity said decidedly, “We figured as much, Twilight. Which is why we respected your decision to stay away for a while. We honestly didn’t think it would have lasted as long as it has, but then I guess life found the rest of us. But none of us ever resented you, Twilight. I hope you know that. We were your friends and will always be your friends. Even if we drift apart… even if we age… nothing can change what we’ve been through.”

Twilight regarded her warmly. “I can see that now. Clearly. The fact that you all came—the fact that you all trusted me after everything I’ve done… or haven’t done, I guess. I’m sorry I left you all. But sometimes I think Celestia’s gift was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Fluttershy put a hoof on her shoulder. “I’m sure Celestia wouldn’t have given it to you unless she was sure it was the right thing to do.”

“Heck yeah!” Applejack added. “I mean… who else is gonna stop Discord this time? A protector of Equestria will always be handy, Twilight. Even when the rest of us are long gone, ponies will always need you.”

“But what if I need you all now?” Twilight blurted. “What if I don’t want you all to be gone in a hundred years? What if I want you all by my side forever?”

“Then you’ll just need to love us while you can, Twilight,” Fluttershy said. “And make enough memories to last a lifetime… or two. It’s not like we have the ability to hold onto you forever, either. But that doesn’t mean we’d rather have nothing, over a few decades of friendship.”

For a long time no one said anything. Fluttershy took a step back and now all eyes were on the purple alicorn again.

When the silence spun out for too long, Rainbow Dash finally spoke up, driving right to the point. “So without the Elements of Harmony, how do we turn Discord back into stone?”

Twilight turned to Spike in the corner, her immense tome still held in one hand.

“With that,” she said.

5

In the following week, Twilight read more scrupulously than she had in the past few years (which in itself was quite the accomplishment) and more than likely ate more pink-frosted cupcakes than she probably had in her entire life. But on that seventh day it had all come to an end.

While Rainbow Dash and Rarity left after their first heartfelt reunion (they were the only two that didn’t live in Ponyville anymore), the other three were tasked with bringing supplies to Twilight’s old castle, as well as deliver any such research materials that might have seemed necessary. Sadly, while Fluttershy and Applejack held their own while tracking down information and other, older texts of use, that only meant that Pinkie Pie was left in-charge of food. Which meant cupcakes. Which meant pink cupcakes. And sugar.

“Can alicorn’s gain weight?” Twilight had asked Spike, carefully out of Pinkie’s earshot.

Spike scratched his chin. “I don’t really know. You don’t eat all that much at it is.”

Twilight returned to her book, lips still greasy from frosting. “I think I’m starting to like this sugar stuff.”

On the seventh day, in the pitch black of night, the six friends (Spike was bitterly left at the castle to keep watch) traveled through the Everfree Forest to the tall and bare Rambling Rock Ridge. Years prior—possibly nearing a decade now—a mine had been constructed by its base. From deep within its vast caverns, minerals of every type had been claimed, and for years the dig had proved plentiful. That was until a series of mishaps and dangerous work-practices caused the mine to close for good. Over the years—and perhaps due to boredom over all else—a legend took up residence in the mine. Now it was not a simple runaway handcart that crushed two workers to death—it was the Spirit of the Earth, coming back with a vengeance. Now it was not the simple lack of light deep within its tunnels that sent some poor newbie miner plunging into the abyss—it was the Spirit of the Earth, calling for him to jump.

To most it was the stuff of drunken tales and nothing more. And that is what the six friends were hoping for that night.

“All right. Here’s the plan.”

Twilight gave out four yellow safety helmets they’d found left near the entrance of the mine. While shifting through the pile for two unicorn ones for her and Rarity, she tried to remove the built up layers of dust off each. A futile task. While she searched and prodded, she spoke to them all, the tip of her horn the only source of light in the cavern’s dark recesses.

“Before I left Ponyville—and pretty much everyone I knew—I had found an old book in the Canterlot archives. It had been oddly written and incredibly taxing to finish, almost like a mini test on each page. Overtime I had discovered it had been left by Star Swirl the Bearded, to be discovered and translated by only the surest of learned practitioners. But at the end of each book, another one was listed along with its location. Some were left waiting in the Canterlot library—usually in some old, dim corner—but others I needed to track down with the use of maps and riddle solving.” She found one unicorn helmet and hovered it over to Rarity. Rarity grimaced at its disparaging state, but put it on nonetheless. “Each book also left a single coordinate that fit on the official map of Equestria. At first they had seemed scattershot with no real indication of what it all meant, but when I had enough of them, it triangulated right in the thick of this mine. The last book—the one Spike rescued from our home—gave me the last coordinate; one that fits perfectly over the map of the mine Applejack was able to get from the Mayor’s office.”

Applejack was busily stuffing her cowboy hat into her saddlebag, careful not to bend its sides. “An’ don’t you go thinking they wanted to hoof that over neither! I had to sweeten me more than a few words to get that map. But still… what does this all have to do with us stoppin’ Discord?”

“Halfway through my research,” Twilight continued, “perhaps a year ago or so, all my notes seemed to be leading to a new energy source that had been hidden for years. With the way things had been worded, a new Elements of Harmony felt like the only option. And if anyone could find such a thing and bury it away for hundreds of years, who better than Star Swirl the Bearded?”

6

Twilight headed the group, her horn glowing with an illuminating light. The first tunnel they had entered had been so vast that all six could have traveled side by side with ease. But as Twilight checked her worn map first once and then again in search of what new cavern to delve into, their path only seemed to diminish incrementally.

“The coordinate that my last book gave landed directly on top of the final room in the mine.” Twilight was already feeling taxed from navigating, talking, and guiding their way in the dark. She only hoped the others hadn’t noticed her fatigue. “It must have been the last room they dug into before all those accidents took place. It’s hard to say if whatever Star Swirl left here had those type of untold powers or what… but I intent to find out.”

Twilight was triple checking the latest fork in the darkened road when her current hoofstep landed on nothing. With a scream she fell forward, crashing to her stomach and knocking the wind out from her. She watched as her map floated lazily away, fading into the mine’s deep shadows. Then a light surrounded it and pulled it back up.

“That was close one, Twilight,” Rarity said, bringing the map closer to her glowing horn. “Are you all right?”

Rarity helped her up and brushed away the dirt from her coat. As much as her chest and sides hurt from the sudden fall, Twilight felt more interested by the small collection of butterflies that felt only to expand in her stomach. She took her map back and smiled at her friend, the first time in a long time not shying away from her gaze. “Thank you, Rarity.”

“No problem. Now let’s finish this barbaric and dirty trek. How much further do we need to go?”

Twilight shifted her vision over the last two spots on the map. She had memorized it all only ten minutes after viewing it, but she’d never leave something this important to chance.

She said, “Just a little more.”

7

Because of her clumsy near-spill into the plunging dark, Twilight widened her horn’s glow and tasked Rarity to do the same at the rear of the group. Now instead of tunnels to travel through, they trotted over old and hurriedly created walkways that helped bridge the long gaps between tunnels. The one they went to next—and the last one they’d need to enter, according to the map—appeared the smallest of them all.

Each one of them nearly crawled through the diminished hole.

“Wow! It’s so bare!” Pinkie Pie stretched out the moment she could upon entering the final room. Once both lights illuminated their place, each pony glimpsed the area with nearly the same complete lack of understanding.

“I don’t understand, Twilight,” Fluttershy said, still very near the entrance of the long forgotten room. “I thought there was supposed to be something here.”

Twilight was busily scanning every inch of the rock walls. “So did I, Fluttershy. But not a single one of my books proved an easy read, so if this little excavation of ours ended with just some book on some pedestal, I think I would’ve been a little sad. It’s like Star Swirl always said—”

“There’s a crack in the wall!” Pinkie exclaimed.

Twilight regarded her pink friend. “I don’t know if he ever said that—” But that was when she saw the line of cracks billowing from the middle of the wall. Some group of miners must have been sent in here to clear a way into the next area of the dig, only to find problems elsewhere in the mine that required more immediate attention. Twilight grinned at her. “You’re wonderful, Pinkie Pie! You know that?”

“It’s been said a few times…” The pink pony bounced away from the deep crack as Twilight came to investigate.

The sound of metal scrapping over rock. “Move aside, Twilight. A few good swings and we’ll punch right through.” Applejack came forward with a pickaxe she’d found discarded by the entrance. It one mighty swing she brought it back, before a thin light held it in place. “Uhh…”

With her horn aglow, Twilight faced the breach and said calmly, “I got this, Applejack. I’ve waited too long for this moment.”

Before another word could be said the rock wall in front of her blew inward with a well positioned blast of energy. Thousands of small rocks and pebbles floated safely in the air, before falling to the floor like a million bits of sand. The area just beyond the cracked wall was now open and bare—another immense scoop of earth nimbly cleared away. But this one looked too perfect for anything other than unicorn magic to accomplish. Too smooth and too deliberate for anything else.

“This is it,” Twilight said, as she approached the thin rock stand. Then she said more to herself, “And it’s actually on something close to a pedestal…”

Atop a narrowly carved stand, basking in some unnatural light cascading from a hole in the rock roof, sat a thick bound book encrusted with brightly colored jewels. Its cover bared no writing of any sort, but a large symbol in gold lace Twilight recognized from each and every one of her other tomes. This was it. It had all led to this moment.

With jittery nerves she flipped open the cover, careful of the delicate pages within. She glimpsed a blank page and skipped to the next. They always leave a blank page at the start, she told herself. Every book does that. But not many books contained twenty pages of empty space.

“What? I don’t…” Twilight whispered, ignoring her shaking hooves and instead relying on her horn to quicken her page turning. Only each one read the same—nothing and more nothing.

“What’s going on, Twilight?” Fluttershy asked quietly. “Is it giving us a new location to look?”

Absently she said, “It’s… it’s not giving me anything…”

The blank text must have been close to four-hundred pages thick and she raced to the end in less than a minute. It was easy when all there was were more blank and yellowed pages to skim over. But wait—what was on that last one?

Twilight read the single line and then hitched in a breath. Her jaw quivered.

On the last page in the book were the very finely printed words: BIT BY BLOODY BIT. While she stared at them—while she tried desperately to remember just where she had heard them before—the rest of the page filled with those same four words, over and over again.

Bit By Bloody Bit.

Bit By Bloody Bit.

BIT BY BLOODY BIT.

Each new sentence created looked more hurried than the last—each one appeared redder than the previous. And now the book itself was leaking a crimson fluid onto the stand, small streams cascading down the fissures in the rock. Twilight took a step away from the sight as well as the mess, and then something new came forth. A bubbling laughter, bright and excited, filled their small room. Against the walls it echoed, doubling and then trebling and then nearly turning into some incomprehensible mush. And yet Twilight knew whose laughter it was.

“Oh Celestia! Discord’s here?” Rarity shouted behind her.

The laughter continued and now the dripping book opened and closed itself it time with the noise, like some maniacal mouth made of loose paper. In one swift motion, Twilight scooped the giggling text up and propelled it into the nearest wall, where it burst into dust upon impact.

The laughter died away. And with it Twilight’s slight grip on the situation.

She fell to the floor.

Applejack hurried over. “What’s happened, Twilight? What’s this all mean?”

Twilight felt too deflated to face her, so she didn’t. “It means the research I’ve been spending all my time with for the last several years has been nothing but a ploy created by Discord. It means he was one of the reasons I left Canterlot in the first place, and a strong reason why I shunned you all like I had.” She peered over the small pile of dust near the wall, then to her anxious circle of friends. “It also means we have no way of stopping Discord.”