My Little Balladeer

by Ardashir

Chapter 6

My Little Balladeer
Chapter 6

“Rowley Thorne, you said?” I rubbed my chin. “I’ve heard that name afore this, from one-two friends of mine like Judge Pursuivant and Reuben Manco. They said he was a pure down bad man, and that he’d been taken clean away and out of the world entirely by his own doings some years ago.”

I didn’t say then what else they’d told me about him. How he’d worshipped devils and had power, the kind of wicked bad power I’d fought against all my life, and used it to bully and control and sometimes even kill people. Time and again he’d tried to make himself a leader over others and lead them into black magic and witchcraft and worshipping evil spirits. And time and again he’d been beaten by other good men like that other John, Thunstone from New York City. But it wasn’t ever easy to do, and I didn’t look forward to facing such a one even if I had to.

Twilight nodded at what I said. “He’s as bad as they said, and he’s here, and I’ll need to tell you what he did and why we called for help like we did.” And she started to speak, and none of it was what you’d call a pretty story, but I’ll set it down here just as she told it to me.

* * *

“Oh, you mad passionate mare, you!” Captain Thunderbolt of the Pegasus Guard said as he embraced Lady Amethyst Eyes. Her bosom heaved against his mighty withers as she batted her eyes, blushing from the force of her own passion. He groaned out, “My duty demands that I imprison you, yet I cannot! My heart has become your keepsake, and…”

“BLEAH!”

Twilight used her horn to hurl the book onto her reading table. It wasn’t far enough. She could still see the title and publisher over a picture of the most unrealistically done unicorn mare and pegasus stallion imaginable. “I’ll have to thank Rarity for thinking of me, but the next time she offers me something for the shelves like ‘Mad Pegasus Passion’ from ‘Merry Mare Publishers’, I’ll tell her thanks but no thanks.” Twilight walked away from the desk and looked around the library’s stacks. She wondered if she might get away with tossing them out and claiming that she’d lost them. Then she sighed and began to mentally rearrange the fiction shelves again. “Still, I guess it’s better than those Thrilling Wonderbolt Sky Adventure magazines that Dash keeps trying to foist off on me…” She broke off as Spike strolled out from the back.

“Morning, Spike. How’s Equestria’s best library assistant?” He grinned and rubbed his scaly belly with his claws.

“Feeling a lot better, now that I’ve had breakfast. Those diamonds hit the spot!” He walked over to her desk and saw the book where it laid. “Say Twilight, are you going to finish that book that Rarity,” a sigh as he said her name, “Gave you? She seemed to think it was great.”

“Probably not,” Twilight answered. She glanced at it and shook her head, smiling. “It was nice of her to think of me, but our reading tastes aren’t quite the same. And that reminds me, here’s the list of today’s chores.” Spike groaned as she levitated a piece of paper off the main desk and into Spikes claws. He took out a quill and got ready to write as she recited from memory, “First item, make list. Done! Second item, make breakfast…”

“Looks kinda short for one of your lists, Twilight.”

“I expect it’ll be a quiet day, Spike.”

And a knock came at the library door as though summoned by her words. “We’re not open yet, sorry!” she called. “Come back in about an hour, please.” She turned back to Spike and the list. “Third item…”

The knocking came again, louder and insistent. Twilight shook her head. Didn’t some ponies understand Equestrian? She turned to tell whoever it was to come back later, but stopped at a gesture from Spike.

“You’re busy, Twilight. Let me handle this.” She grinned to see him marching up importantly to the door. She turned away and was going back over her daily list for the fourth time that morning when she heard his shriek.

“AAAAAAAAAAAA!”

“Spike! What is it? What’s wrong?” She hurried to the door. Spike staggered back, his eyes wide and pointing his finger at something. His muzzle worked for a moment before he got the words out.

“AAAAH!” He shrieked again. “Twilight, help! It’s some kinda freaky monster!” Twilight was about to ask what kind of freaky monster when she heard a new voice speak, one she’d never heard before.

“Hardly a monster, my little dragon,” it said in a bass rumble, with a hint of either amusement or maybe just mockery. “I am but a wanderer from worlds afar from this, come to greet the most important unicorn in Ponyville.”

Twilight reached the door and froze at what she saw there, standing just outside the library. Spike hurried behind her and hid, peeking around her as she stared.

She first thought that a large and oddly well-spoken Diamond Dog stood there. A second glance showed how wrong that thought was. Her mind ran down what she could see. The being itself stood tall and broad, taller than the doorframe, with a massive build that reminded her of Big Mac and some of Celestia’s Royal Guards. Bipedal. Hands like Spike or a Diamond Dog. No coat, no mane, no hair at all, not even eyebrows or eyelashes. Heavy in the face with a high brow and gray eyes that seemed to burn at her, and a beaky nose that put her in mind of Gilda for some reason. No real ears to see at all, unless those lumps on the sides of that large bald head counted. More clothing than she’d ever seen on anypony, even when Rarity dressed to the nines, covering everything except head and hands, a near-black robe or cape with an equally-dark two-piece form-fitting outfit beneath. Twilight wondered why anypony would wear that to go strolling around Ponyville. It seemed to swallow the sunlight that tried to trickle in around him. It smiled at her, or maybe it just bared its strong white teeth.

And to her surprise and mingled joy and trepidation, in its hands it bore a small satchel of books with old leather covers. Leather, she thought uneasily, From animal’s hides – meat-eater? She tried to get a good look at his teeth. What kind of meat?

“Greetings, Miss… Sparkle, is it not?” it said to her. His Equestrian sounded perfect, with a faint upper-class Canterlot accent. “I am a traveler from very far away, and someone we both know told me to seek you out when I arrived in Ponyville. Please, may I and all I bring with me enter your home?”

“Why, yes, yes of course, sir,” Twilight said to him as she remembered her manners. Something in those last words sounded ominous to her, but she added, “Please come in, Mister…?”

“Thorne, young lady. My name is Rowley Thorne.”

* * *

“I think you might could have made a mistake there,” I interrupted her. Twilight and her friends all looked at me, wondering. I held up my hand and said, “I crave your pardon for interrupting thisaway, but sometimes it can be right bad to let someone you don’t know in your home when they ask for entry like that.”

“How so?” She asked me, and I answered her.

“It’s an old belief in many a place where I come from,” I said, “that you have to go and give wicked things or people permission to do whatair it is they mean to do to you. That’s in stories about vampires, and with the witches in a poem called Tam O’Shanter.” I thought and rubbed my chin. “Even in a little children’s story about the three pigs, the wolf that wanted to eat them all had to ask to be allowed in the door.” She didn’t look any too convinced. Or maybe she was. I haven’t been raised around unicorns, I don’t rightly know what looks their faces have when they believe or don’t believe you.

“Umm, maybe in your world, John, but here in Equestria evil sorcerers don’t ask anypony’s permission before they put a spell on you,” she said with a smile. That smile ran away when Spike spoke from behind her.

“But Twilight, remember what he did next? And what that spellbook of his did to…” He broke off when she shivered. She took a deep breath and went on with her story.

* * *

“Hello, Mister Thorn,” Twilight said, stepping back into the library and allowing him to enter. He did, bowing to fit through the door, moving with the slow heavy tread of a bear. She walked over to the reading table at the center of the room and slid a stool out with her horn. It looked small and low for him, but he managed to sit in it. She looked around for Spike and saw him standing close by, watching with wide and frightened eyes. She turned back to her guest and said, “Would you like some tea? Spike and I just finished breakfast, but I imagine we have some tea and maybe a few oat cakes left.” He waved her offer away.

“Thank you, no. I came here on business and I would like to get down to it immediately.” He smiled at her again and licked his gray lips with an equally gray tongue. Twilight fought down a shudder at the thought that it looked like he kept a large slug in his mouth. He said, “I imagine you have some question as to where I come from, and why I’m here, and who sent me.”

“That would be very helpful to know,” Twilight said to him. She took her cup of tea and put some sugar in it as he spoke.

“As I said, I am Rowley Thorne, that’s Thorne with an ‘e’,” he said.

Not from Equestria then, as though I couldn’t guess, Twilight thought as she remembered her lessons. We don’t have silent letters in our language.

Thorne went on, saying, “And I am not of this world. I am from one like it but also unlike it. For instance,” Twilight fought down brief irritation as he chuckled and tapped her on the nose, “We have ponies there, but not unicorns. And none of them can speak, or come in such interesting shades as you possess.”

“I’ve… heard of things like this. Yes!” Her horn glowed and she levitated a book over from the shelves. Thorn licked his lips again when she did it and his eyes seemed to light up, but the look passed before she could be sure. “Here it is! Hairy Trotter’s Investigations of Parallel Planes and Dire Dimensions. It says, let me see now…” her horn glowed more brightly as she flipped through it to a point about a third of the way through, “Aha! ‘There are no reasons to assume that other dimensions, provided that they actually do exist, have physical laws like those of Equestria. Other forms of sentience, radically different from our own, may rule these worlds’. And here you are, proof of it!” She smiled. “And to think, when I studied his work in Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, I was told that his theory was impossible to prove.” She looked back up at Thorn. “Oh, please pardon me! I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Then don’t do so again,” he said, and she heard a snap in his voice. Just a heartbeat long, he glowered at her, and Twilight wondered if she should run. Then it passed and he smiled benevolently as he said, “You do seem remarkably unfazed to be meeting what is almost certainly something from outside your usual comprehension.”

“Not so much,” Twilight answered. She wondered why she felt vaguely like she’d been insulted. “There are several sentient races here. Some of them, like griffons and Diamond Dogs, have their own nations. And then there are dragons like Spike.” She looked at him. Spike gave her a sickly grin, but his eyes never left Thorn. She looked back at her guest. “So really, you’re not that much of a surprise.”

“I might be more of a surprise than you think,” he said, his voice sounding tight. He relaxed and said, “As I was saying, I am from worlds other than this one. I am afraid that I am a bit of a refugee, for I was cast out by jealous and small minds,” and no mistaking the growl in his voice then or the way his eyes narrowed, “Who failed to appreciate all I wished to do for them. They turned allies of mine against me and sent me out of my own world entirely, into some in-between place.”

“What sort of in-between place?” Twilight asked. She sipped her tea and added, “The book I just mentioned postulates a sort of interdimensional ‘foam’ or glue holding everything together, but it didn’t even try to guess what such a place would be like.”

“How can I even say?” Thorn responded. “I felt no sense of time’s passage. I didn’t grow hungry or tired or thirsty. It could have been just a second there, it could have been a millennium. Who can tell?” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “It is of no consequence. At any rate, someone of great importance from your world, someone you know,” and he looked at her meaningfully, “Found me and asked if I would rather come here than stay where I was. I would have been a fool to refuse, and Rowley Thorne is no fool. So they brought me here and set me down a few miles down the road from your little village, and asked me to look in on you when I arrived.” He smiled and spread his hands out wide to either side. “And here I am.”

“Princess Celestia saved you?” Spike said. Twilight and Thorn both looked at him. He shrank a bit under their gaze, but he said, “It sounds like the sort of thing she’d do, Twilight.”

“I’ve been asked to keep some things quiet for now,” Thorn said – to Twilight, not Spike. A knowing grin crawled up one side of his face as he added, “I will say that this person has ruled here for a very long time, and things more or less happen the way they want them to.”

“O…kay…” Twilight said. She wondered why Thorn acted so mysteriously. For that matter, why would Celestia tell him to behave like this? All he would need to do would be to announce to her that the Princess sent him and everything would be fine. He was starting to sound an awful lot like the Great and Powerful Trixie.

* * *

“Just who-all is this ‘Great and Powerful Trixie’?” I asked her. When a chorus of groans answered me back and Twilight shut her eyes and shook her head, I said, “I imagine she’s no friend and not so great as her name makes her sound.”

“No, she wasn’t, that poor silly showmare,” Twilight shook her head again and sighed, a-sounding right sad. “But I began to think that’s all that Thorne was. I found out different to my regret.”

* * *

“As for what I do and how I occupy my time,” Thorn said to Twilight when she asked him, “Let us say that I am seeker of those truths and such wisdom that lay beyond what most minds care to understand. One small example of such is what permits me to converse with you in a civilized tongue.” He indicated the walls of the library, the carved shelves crammed with books. “I imagine you know something of what it must be, to have knowledge most would never dare to attain to, and yet to have to subordinate your own desires and dreams to those of the ignorant.” He looked out one of the library windows at Ponyville.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Twilight said, trying not to feel nettled at the way Thorne’s speech made her feel like he was patting her on the head, like a Canterlot snob to a country pony. “Ponyville’s not as bad as I thought it would be. Sure, I’d like to be back in Canterlot sometimes so I could talk with some of the other students, but I’ve made some great friends here.”

“’Up to the gallows or down to the throne, he travels the fastest who travels alone’,” Thorn said. At her confused look, he said, “My pardon. I was just quoting a comment made by a poet of some popularity in my world. Rather too easily grasped by ordinary minds for my liking, but that remark of his stuck in my memory. I would urge you to consider it yourself, young lady. Those called to the study of magick often find that they must sacrifice much of what they value to attain greatness. I myself,” and somberness entered his voice, “Lost much when I embarked upon my studies. Those I hoped to call friends turned false. Love, and once I hoped for love, was taken from me. I had properties that were in my family for generations and I lost every last stick and penny of it. My reputation was smeared by lesser men, and in the end I lost even my own world, cast out and exiled.” Grief and fury washed over his face. “So be careful, young unicorn. Never trust anyone so much that you give them power over you.” Twilight wondered if she was seeing something of his real personality for the first time. She reached out and set her hoof on his hand. He almost recoiled at her touch.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” she said. She walked around the reading table and looked up into his face. “Please, you can stay here in Ponyville as long as you want. I’m sure you’ll find some friends here.” It looked as though he smiled at her words, that smile that seemed to go up only half of his face as though it didn’t want the other half to share in it. Her gaze wandered down to the bundle of books he held. “Just what sort of books are those?”

“I got these from the associate who sent me here.” Pride rang in his voice as he spoke. “They are very old and rare grimoires, some of them I had thought lost to me forever. I will not lose them again.”

“Grimoires?” she asked.

“Spellbooks, young lady. I use them in my labors as a karcist.” Twilight wanted to ask him what a ‘karcist’ was, but then he asked almost casually, “Would you be interested in seeing them?”

“Would I? Oh, yes yes yes!” A thrill shot through Twilight as she looked at them. Spellbooks? Of a completely new and unknown type of magic? She could practically feel her cutie mark tingling at the thought. “Magic is what my studies specialized in. Which one may I see first?”

“Firstly,” Thorn said, directing a look off to the side, “Send your servant away. This knowledge is meant for certain chosen individuals only.” Twilight’s gaze followed his to see a very huffy looking Spike standing there.

“Servant!” He drew himself up as tall as a seven-hoof-tall, not-quite-a-baby dragon could. Eyes blazing at Thorn, he began “I’m no servant –“

“Spike?” At Twilight’s voice he turned and looked at her. Anger still showed in his green cat-eyes, but he calmed at her next words. “Maybe we’d better have some privacy after all. Here,” she levitated some of the books Rarity had dropped off over to him, “Maybe you can take these back to Rarity and thank her for the offer, but explain that we have enough romances around right now? That is, if you want to see her.” She fought down a giggle at the smile that spread over Spike’s face.

He grabbed the books and nearly teleported out the door, with only a “Thanks-Twilight-see-you-later!” as he left.

She shook her head and closing the door turned back to Thorn. “Looks like we’ve got privacy now.”

Thorn spread the books out on the table before her. She looked down at them and frowned. The titles were in some alien language. Possibly several, judging by the differing shapes of the letters – fifty-sixty unique characters, instead of the 200-odd of written Equestrian. “So, your written language is alphabetic and not hieroglyphic, like ours?”

She floated the Hairy Trotter book over to show him. He briefly glanced at it and nodded in agreement.

“It would seem so, Miss Sparkle. However, I will oblige you with the titles.” He held one up that looked slightly less battered than the rest. “This is The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, teaching one how to use divine power to command nature and find wealth and love and revenge on one’s enemies.” He set it back down and raised another, this one slightly older and bearing several depictions of very unsettling looking creatures embossed on the cover. “And this is the Lemegeton, sometimes called The Lesser Key of Solomon the King. I received it from an associate of mine who sadly lacked the constancy to be a true friend and ally, something I hope to correct here with you and others like you.”

As he put it back down, Twilight shifted uneasily. Part of her worry came from the binding of the books – leather, instead of the varnished fabric used by pony bookbinders. Griffons and Diamond Dogs used leather and parchment, though they'd stopped using ponies as the involuntary donors when the Princesses came to rule Equestria. And from what she’d seen of Thorn’s dentition his species, whatever they might be, were at least partly meat-eaters. Maybe they just used the hides of whatever they ate in this fashion?

Her bigger worry, however, came from the magic he spoke of. Some of it sounded like very dire magic, the kind that both Celestia and Professor Bastion Yorsets warned her and the other students at school to avoid. She indicated the last book, the oddest of the lot, covered with hide that looked like it’d been taken from some hairy animal. She knew it’d been hairy because the hair was still on the hide, long and dark and lank. Diamond Dogs sometimes leave the hair on… In the midst of it all showed a strange embossed symbol like an eight-pointed crimson arrow that seemed to crawl when she didn’t look straight at it.

“And… what’s that one?”

“Ahhh, this?” Thorn took the book up with reverence, holding it between his hands. “This, Twilight Sparkle, is a book of magick great and wondrous, for which I have long suffered and searched. With it I could have created an age of wonders for any who would have willingly joined me, but enemies of mine took it from me and locked me away in –“ He shut his mouth with a snap. The look on his face warned Twilight against asking for more information. Instead he closed his eyes and almost caressed it with one hand.

Twilight sternly told herself that she’d faced mad gods and full-sized dragons. She was not feeling fear simply because some trick of the light seemed to make the hairs on the cover try to wrap around his fingers, as though returning the caress. But it’s still kind of creepy.

“This,” he said, his deep voice gone even deeper as though it echoed from great depths, “is the Letters of Cold Fire, from the Deep School. It can only be read by those willing to give everything they have and are for the knowledge it contains. But for those special chosen few, it grants powers and knowledge that can reshape the world.”

“I see,” Twilight said, nodding politely, but within she sighed. This “Letters of Cold Fire” sounded like every other read-me-and-I’ll-make-you-the-best phony spellbook that got sold by the cartloads in Canterlot and other major cities. Usually they contained some few minor cantrips, worded just differently enough so you didn’t immediately recognize them, some of which actually worked. If you were lucky, that was all they did. If not, they might well be designed to inflict some embarrassing transformation effect on you or maybe just blow up in your face. Celestia and Twilight’s teachers cracked down on them at every opportunity and warned the students against them, but there was always somepony who just didn’t listen. Twilight winced at the memory of the time she’d been that pony.

“So, what does it look like inside?” Twilight looked closer at it. She noticed one more oddity about the book. “It seems to have three different sets of pages, all in different colored paper.”

“That it does,” Thorn said, “and I doubt you’ve ever seen the like before.” He opened it before her.

* * *

“I reckon I can tell what you saw when he opened that book,” I broke in on her again. Twilight looked right annoyed but she motioned for me to go on. I held up my hand and ticked off on my fingers as I told her what I pure down knew she must have seen. “The first part was all white paper pages with writing on them in red ink, and a-looking to be done by hand. The second part was red paper pages, and the writing on them was in black ink,” and I saw a frightened and fearful look a-starting to go over her face as I spoke, “And the third and last part was all black paper with no words on them you could see, save when Thorne made you hide all the light away and then you saw silver letters come on the page–“

I got no further than that. Her horn glowed brighter than I’d yet seen like someone started a fire. I heard a crack and saw a flash like a lightning strike and Twilight vanished from her chair. Then something bore me down to the floor and on my back. She stood on my chest looking into my face. I think I nair seen air soul as plumb scared as she looked right then. Her eyes were wide and showing the whites all around and her nostrils were flared and her ears were back and down like on any horse frightened into either running or fighting. I heard yells from her friends. She didn’t look at air one there but me. I heard her friends a-moving. Right then Applejack spoke in the slow and steady voice people and I reckon ponies too use when they’re pure down scared.

“Don’t try anything,” she warned them all, “Jest don’t.” Then she spoke to Twilight. “Twi? Remember, honey, he ain’t Thorne and this ain’t that night. You’re safe with your friends now.” She swallowed and added, “That includes John too, sugarcube.”

If Twilight heard them, she didn’t show it. She just looked at me and worked her mouth until she said what it was she wanted to be saying.

“HOW DO YOU KNOW?” Those words were more a scream than anything, and her horn began to glow again. I could feel the heat a-coming from it. It felt like I stood right next to a smith’s forge and the coals were hissing and leaping and hungry for whatair they might could burn.

And I knew that unless I spoke right fast, I might be the next coal in the fire.

“When I was a young man, maybe a sight younger than you are now,” I told her, making sure to speak slow and careful the way you do to air thing that’s frightened this bad, be they a person or a horse or a unicorn that looked like she might could knock me dead with her mind if I said the least wrong thing, “I wandered into a town where they were a-burying a man that’d died and asked for someone to eat his sins and take all he possessed. Like a gone gump, I did just that because I was hungry and looking for a home place of my own.” The heat of her horn began to die down and I hurried on with, “It was a low-down trick. The people who’d offered me the house and all in it meant for me to become a witch with them. They tried to trick me into it with money and then food, and when neither of them worked they offered me a book to read. It was like the one I just described. It almost took me, but I got away and destroyed it and them.” I reached up, slow and careful, and patted her on the withers. “I’m not here to trick you or tole you into air wicked thing, Twilight.”

She looked at me just a moment longer, and then the light of her horn winked out and the fear went out of her eyes. She stepped back from me and gave out a breath like a sob. I heard her friends sigh in relief, all at once. I feel no shame to say I did the same.

“I’m sorry, John,” she said and sounded to pure down mean it. Fluttershy went past me and nuzzled her on the cheek, the way horses will when they comfort each other. Applejack came up and brushed the end of her muzzle against my hand.

It felt like warm wet velvet, like any horse’s mouth will.

“Y’all okay?” She asked me. I nodded her back. She shook her head and sat down aside me. For a little bitty bit nair a one of us spoke.

Twilight looked back up at me, and I could see she’d gotten her fear back under control. I wonder me if many a man or woman I know back home, some of them right brave ones, could collect themselves as well as she did. Fluttershy gave her one last nuzzle and then went back to sitting behind me. She gave me a wondering look as she passed. I smiled at her to show myself to be alright. She returned it and sat down.

“I’m sorry for that,” Twilight said, “but when I tell you the rest, you’ll understand, I think.”

“It’s kindly all right,” I told her. “I’ve been right scared many a time my own self, and sometimes I did worse than you near did right now. Don’t be ashamed for being afraid. You ever meet someone who says they were never afraid, that’s only because they never saw air thing they had the sense to be a-scared of.”

Twilight smiled a bit at that. “That sounds like something Celestia told me once, how a heroine isn’t any braver than any other mare, she just puts off being frightened for three minutes longer than anypony else.”

“There’s a saying kindly like that back home,” I said. “But I’m surprised that Thorne tried a-using that book on you, right then.”

“He didn’t,” she said. “That happened later. Right then…”

* * *

“The only way to see the last part here is to be in complete darkness,” Thorn told her. “If you have a room here with no windows, I can show you. A basement might be even better.”

“Really?” Twilight looked quizzically at the book. She did want to read it, and yet, something about it put her off – the creepy cover? She decided to try out a spell she’d been working on that Princess Luna showed her after last Nightmare Night. Energy gathered in her horn and as it did, the light in the room began to dim. It grew dark, darker, darkest. The shelves and her desk and even Thorn all became nothing more than deeper shadows against the walls, which might have been an eternity away for all she could see. No light showed at all. In her room upstairs, she heard Owlowiscious ruffle himself at the unexpected nightfall.

“You are indeed of no small skill,” she heard Thorn say, and he didn’t bother to hide the admiration and envy in his voice. He spoke again and his voice seemed to echo from all about her. “You truly are worthy to study the things I know.”

“Thanks,” she began, feeling her cheeks burn at the praise. She might have said more but just then she saw a pale glimmer begin to appear on the pages before her. The shine brightened, turned silvery, and began to form letters. Letters she couldn’t read. “Awww.”

“As I told you,” Thorn said to her in a chiding tone that nearly hid the mockery in it, “You must swear to use what you will be taught, and to bring others to this teaching. Do so and the book will become understandable in your eyes.” He chuckled and added, “Do I really ask for too much? And if this is a new magick, wouldn’t you want to bring others of your kind to study from it?”

Twilight shook her head, feeling her mane flop back and forth. This might be a trick, but it was definitely the strangest spellbook she’d ever heard of. It sounded like there was some sort of oddly specific geas on it, which decided her as to its validity. Nopony would try something like that with a truly worthless book.

Oh well, she thought, it’s not like I’d really do anything wrong. And how dangerous can it really be, anyway?

And yet why do I feel so… unsettled?

“How do I do this?” she asked. When Thorn spoke, it felt as though the darkness itself responded to her.

“Swear by the words I said to you, and use your full name when you do, and announce that you do this of your own free will.” Thorn said. “Then all within will be revealed to you.”

“Fine,” Twilight said, fighting down a giggle as she thought, this better not be spells for giving yourself a hoof-i-cure! “I, Twilight Sparkle, of my own free will and without any coercion, do swear to…” And Twilight broke off. For just a second, it felt like a monster from the depths of the Everfree stood hidden behind her, breathing its moist sickly breath down her neck in anticipation. She went on with, “Swear to study and use the knowledge contained within the Letters of Cold Fire and to accept whatever instruction may be required of me.” She mentally added, just so long as it doesn’t involve hurting or deceiving anypony.

“And I,” Thorn said with a sudden eagerness in his voice, “swear to teach you all that I have attained, withholding nothing, calling upon the names of –“

And then the library door hurled open to smash against the door. Twilight’s concentration shattered and the darkness spell fell apart. Light flooded the library. Twilight thought she saw something slither back into the walls. Thorn rose before her like a volcano ready to erupt. He wheeled on the door, his hands claws at his sides.

“What fool dares..?” He began, and Twilight heard a voice she’d been hoping to not hear.

“HE’S REAL! HE’S REAL! Spike told me the truth! Twilight Sparkle, don’t you dare say that this isn’t a human!”

Twilight facehoofed and groaned. It was going to be one of those days.

* * *

“Wait,” I asked her as she stopped, “Just who-all was this who came a-charging in? And what made her so excited to be seeing Thorne?”

“One of the biggest pains in the flank in Ponyville,” Twilight answered me, shaking her head as she did. I heard the others groan behind her. Her horn glowed and she brought a teapot and cup and saucer floating from what I supposed to be the kitchen. By now seeing such didn’t faze me nair bit. “Lyra Heartstrings.”

Comments

[CoastalSarv]

631197
I'm interested! I'm following it.

[Ardashir]

631273 Thank you! I hope you enjoy the future chapters as much as these first six.

[Godiswithus3]

Once again, Applejack intervened and diffused what could have been a serious fight, this time withe implications of death. She really has a cool and level head. I like her. Though John himself did do most of the work to calm Twilight down. Close call.

I may be mean for saying this, but Twilight really lacks common sense here. Inviting someone you do not know in your home carries heavy risks that cannot be ignored. And willingly going along with what Thorin wanted her to do and ignoring the feeling that something is wrong was not very smart of her. Just because she doesn't believe in curses and and what-not (which Is a strange belief since she lives in a magical world), doesn't mean she should have dived into the nonsense and expect to come out unscathed. I would imagine even atheists and skeptics would have been like " yeah, I'm not getting involved in this voodoo crap," especailly if they feel that something is wrong here.

At least Lyra showed up just in time. This should be interesting.

[DualKitsune]

Deus ex Lyra. Who knew?