Death Be Not Proud

by ShinigamiDad

Relics

Twilight lingered outside the solarium, watching Celestia chat with her secretary and Officer of the Day, as they slowly headed back toward the throne room. She stepped around a corner and peeked out as Luna and Reaper left, heading toward the Gardens.

“Where are those two sneaking off to?” she wondered, as she turned toward the castle’s main entrance, stepping through the main entrance, out into the bright, late-morning sun.

She checked her surroundings for observers, and seeing none, teleported to the base of the High Tower, but around the side, away from the guarded excavations. She craned her neck around a corner and took note of the two guards, a unicorn and a pegasus, chatting together near the hole.

Twilight pulled out a large fragment of parchment, and began running calculations based on her current location versus a spot just outside Grey Thorn’s former study where she had secreted a small, rune-engraved charm.

She closed her eyes and tipped her glowing horn down toward the ground: “Speaking of sneaking…”

A moment later a violet-white flash illuminated an empty tunnel some 30 feet to the left, and around a corner from the entrance to the ruined study. Twilight leaned down and repositioned her homing charm closer to the tunnel wall, in case a guard came that way.

She tiptoed within sight of the study door, and observed another pair of guards, both unicorns, one in black-and-blue, the other clad in Celestia’s white-and-gold gear. She noted they were both standing outside the door, not directly in the doorway itself.

Twilight pulled out another scrap of parchment from her saddlebag, and consulted the guard rotation and work schedule written on it.

“Perfect!” she whispered. “No workers for another hour, and only these two guards until the workers show up!”

Twilight put the schedule away, and squinted at the study entrance, gauging the distance to the room beyond. She bit her lip and held her breath as she conjured a sudden, noisy gust of wind that caught the guards by surprise, and blew the door to the study shut with a bang.

The sound of the slamming door covered the ‘pop’ of her teleporting into the study, and by the time the flustered guards had pulled the door back open, Twilight had scurried into the large chamber beyond, hiding just inside its entrance.

She stood still and quiet for a minute, listening for sounds of pursuit as her heart rate dropped back to normal. She sighed and walked over to a pile of stones against the chamber’s front wall, near its entrance.

“Doesn’t look like anypony’s disturbed these, so…”

Twilight used her telekinesis to move the stones aside and lift out the four books she had managed to drag with her during her flight from the adjoining study. She gently slid them into her saddlebag, and replaced the stones as she had found them.

She squinted into the gloom of the chamber, which was barely-lit by a few work lanterns left by the previous crew, and began slowly walking toward the back of the chamber, when her eye was caught by a glint of light reflected off the mirror in the sheltered alcove to her left.

Twilight tiptoed across the open floor space to the alcove, and stood before the mirror. She took a quill and half-used scroll from her bag, and increased the light from her horn.

“I have a bad feeling Celestia will want this destroyed,” she whispered to herself as she copied down the glyphs and runes inscribed around the mirror’s frame, “so I’d better extract what I can now!”

Twilight was just finishing her transcription when she heard voices approaching from the study. She jammed the quill and scroll back in her bag, and hastily grabbed a drop-cloth from a nearby pile of dig supplies. She barely had time to toss it over the mirror, and drift back into the alcove’s shadows before four ponies from the Royal Archaeologist’s work detail walked into the chamber.

As the workers headed toward the far wall, Twilight slipped through the entryway, returning to the study, just as the guard was changing at the door. She hid behind a stack of crates and supply boxes, and watched the previous guards leave. She timed her teleport back to the nearby tunnel at the peak of the various pegasi and unicorns’ chatter and hoof falls.

Twilight reoriented herself in the dark, then slipped quietly around the corner into the adjacent chamber, then up the long tunnel back to the scaffolding beneath the excavations above.

“Princess Twilight!” exclaimed the startled unicorn guard stationed at the base of the scaffold as the alicorn strode up confidently. “Where did you come from?”

“Oh, I’ve been in and out with the last couple of shifts--I keep forgetting things!” Twilight replied cheerfully. “You just must have missed me during the previous change.”

The guard furrowed her brow, but before she could protest, Twilight spread her wings and rose toward the hole above: “It’s OK--you’re doing a great job! Keep it up!”

Twilight cleared the opening, and sped off toward a side entrance, leading to Luna’s private quarters. She closed the door behind her, and slumped against it with a heavy sigh.

“This sneaking around stuff is not for me! Leave the shadows and skulduggery to the old pros!”

She stood up and walked up a long, winding passageway leading to Luna’s audience room: “Speaking of, I still wonder where those two were going!”

She dropped her saddlebag off next to a cushion, and stepped to the sidetable holding the now-ubiquitous carafe of hard cider, pouring herself a cup-full, before returning to the cushion and her newly-acquired treasures.

She carefully removed the four books, and spread them before her, reading the titles: “Phantasmagoria: Their Creation and Uses,” “Glyphs of Warding, vol. II,” “The Pit: A Dissenting View,” and “From Dream to Death and Back Again.”

Twilight sat quietly for several minutes, slowing leafing through the volumes’ pages--not reading, just absorbing the look and feel of the text and pictures and diagrams. She licked her lips nervously and took another long drink of cider.

Twilight kept returning to the tome on glyphs, with its detailed tables of runes and alien inscriptions. She glanced around furtively, then sent out pulses of dark magic from her horn, revealing hidden notes and marginalia on the stained and dog-eared pages. She furrowed her brow as several symbols caught her eye.

“Those look kind of like Reaper’s cutie mark--or marks, rather…” she mused.

She stood up and paced nervously, glancing back at the book, then at Reaper’s sword, mounted on the wall in its protective crystal case. She slowly approached the sword, chewing her lip. She lifted the long crystal box down from its shelf and returned to the cushions.

“I just need to see the blade--maybe there are markings there. I can pull the sword a few inches from its sheath if I’m careful…”

She closed her eyes and muttered a few syllables as her horn glowed pale violet and threw off faint sparks. The case opened slowly and silently, tipping forward as it did, spilling the sword out onto a pillow in front of Twilight.

She bit her lip, and concentrated on the blade, trying to pull it slowly free from its scabbard. The sword resisted being drawn.

Twilight glared and grunted with exertion: “How is this stuck? I didn’t cast any spell on the stupid sword, just the case!”

She stood up and hovered the sword in its dark, battered, bloodwine-colored scabbard in front of her face, and redoubled her efforts, until beads of sweat formed on her forehead.

Her concentration was suddenly shattered as Celestia stepped into the room: “Twilight! What are you doing?!”

Twilight’s head snapped up and she reflexively grabbed for the sword’s hilt with her right hoof as it dropped toward the floor.

---

The wave of bitter cold that instantly swept through the room drove Celestia back into the hall outside the main entrance to Luna’s chambers. She shook her head clear and dashed back into the room, her ears ringing with Twilight’s unearthly scream.

The purple alicorn now hovered several feet off the floor, her blank eyes glowing with dark blue fire, swirls of smoke and fog wrapping her like tattered black and grey rags. Her mouth was thrown open wide, a piercing cry of agony and anguish rising to the ceiling.

Celestia slowly approached, unsure how to help, if help were even possible, unsure if Twilight was dying or transforming. Twilight’s limp body dropped to the floor, wreathed in a thin, cold fog that quickly dissipated.

Celestia furrowed her brow and leaned down, looking for signs of life: “Twilight! Can you hear me? Are you hurt?”

Twilight stirred and tried to push up off the floor. She retched all over the dark-veined marble in front of her and collapsed.

Celestia used her magic to lift the stricken young Princess to a low couch, and pull a blanket over her: “Why, Twilight? Why did you touch that accursed thing? What did it do to you?”

Twilight swallowed heavily and opened one eye half-way: “Where is the sword?”

Celestia looked around, and located the blade, now free of its scabbard, lying a a couple of yards away: “It’s right over there on the other side of the cushions.”

Twilight nodded weakly: “Bring it to me, please.”

Celestia raised an eyebrow: “Reaper told me not to touch it. Nopony should touch it!”

Twilight smiled wanly as a tear rolled down her cheek: “It’s fine. It’s my sword now…”

---

Luna and Reaper appeared just outside the edge of Canterlot, and began trotting toward the castle, when Reaper suddenly fell senseless to the ground. Luna knelt next to him in alarm, then was also overtaken by a wave of pain and disorientation that left her breathless. She stared blearily up at the tower housing her quarters.

“Twilight--what have you done?”