The Prelude, Illuminate the Shadows Book 1

by SaphireTsuki

13 Fermata

The Swamp that has come to be known has Discord's Swamp among the ponies is large. It is our thought that it was not naturally formed, as it has existed for as long as we have, yet not changed. In our history we have seen ecosystems change, forests to deserts and deserts to mountains, yet the swamp has always been present. There are many threats within it, sufficient to serve as a barrier between Equestria and the rest of the world. They think that the world consists of the Old Country, Equestria, and the Dragon Lands, but the threats they faced within those places were, comparatively, weak. Ponies need fear only those creatures which are capable of being fought against. The swamp is their only window into the world we live in.

Within the swamp are creatures without a physical form, ones which can kill while you do nothing, those that can only be destroyed using fire, and those capable of turning the entirety of your environment against you. One of these creatures is the bunyip, which dwells within the swampwater. Bunyips, like many of the threats we face, act in isolation. Their primary focus is on not having anyling touch the water of it's home, if you approach it will warn first with flung mud, but as one approaches it becomes increasingly aggressive. The Bunyip is animalistic, but there are some creatures within the swamp which are intelligent. The best policy with those creatures is to avoid them, but if you cannot... several of them have some sort of enhancer. Rather than fight the creature, destroy that. It will drive the creature away, though only temporarily.

SE 1015
Once Luna and Twilight were done evacuating their intestines, everyone was sitting in a circle, right next to the cart. Even the guards. "Everypony is present, yes?" Twilight spoke first, looking about the group. She avoided looking at Moonlight, a cold wave of emotion coming from her. Twilight quickly ran down the line of guards, noting the three who were lost, and then rolled up her scroll. "Right then. We have identified what is happening."

"It's a super cool monster, right?" Rainbow shot up in the air, stopping when Applejack, as per the norm, gripped her tail. She looked down, frowning, before letting out a sigh, "I know, I know. No flying." She then dropped down, stretching her wings once she was back on the floor, "But I'm right, aren't I? Twilight?"

"Err, actually I don't know what it is. Princess Luna does." Twilight ducked her head, gesturing with one wing to the Princess. Luna, sitting to her left, nodded and straightened even further than she normally did.

"Indeed, Rainbow, it is a "super cool monster" of a sort." She paused to allow the cyan pegasus to hoofpump, waiting just long enough for a short victory dance. Though her expression remained calm, in her eyes and emotions there was some joy. Once she had considered it long enough to wait, she cleared her throat, "Now then, To answer the question, we are facing an Ijiraq."

"ijiraq?" Applejack let go of Rainbow's tail just long enough to ask, grabbing the still dancing pegasus as fast as possible. "Rainbow!"

"Yes." On seeing their blank expressions, Luna coughed nervously, "Ah, right. It is, or was even at the time of our youth, an old mare's tale." Twilight giggled, "I am aware of the irony, yes. An Ijiraq is an ancient being. According to the elders among ponies a thousand years ago, Ijiraq were ponies who travelled too far from civilisation. They transformed upon entering the realm between life and death. According to an old friend of mine," Moonlight at this point looked directly at Luna, but held her tongue. That had to be her mother, right? "They are creatures of fog and ice. They feed off of the energies of those who enter their territory, trapping them in an impenetrable field, where each attempt to leave the area only serves to further mislead the victim."

Though Luna was not trying to be frightening, her serious voice was perfect for telling ghost stories. Even Rainbow had stopped trying to escape, only flapping her wings enough to stay off the ground. Fluttershy was the first to speak, though her voice trembled in response to her fear. "W-what do we do?" She asked, forcing her wings away from her light blue eyes. "We n-need to get out of here, but we're already lost. I-is there some way out of this?"

Luna shook her head, "That I do not know, I'm afraid." Without even a moment's hesitation, she stood up. "The legends say that you can escape it's territory either through following strict, obvious paths closely or by convincing it to release you. However, it has shown no interest in us, save for watching us. Is this not so, Princess Moonlight?" Everypony's eyes followed the line from Luna's to where she was looking, the young princess.

With a startled yelp, she scrambled to her hooves, "Who, me?"

"You are the only one who has seen the creature."

"O-oh, right." She gulped, before turning to the rest of the group. Right then. "T-the creature has been watching us. Uhm, since we left camp basically." She ignored the gasps and murmuring that broke out, "I, uh, didn't know what it was of course. I thought somepony was following us because they had gotten lost or something." This was nerve wracking, her eyes darted from one pony to the next, until she saw Silent Gaze watching her. Unlike the others, he wasn't murmuring about the conversation, and he wasn't focusing on positive or negative aspects, he was just waiting patiently for her to finish. She took a breath before continuing. "A-as I was saying, the Ijiraq has been watching us. It hasn't tried to enter the, the perimeter I think was the right word. I... see things differently from everypony else."

"What do you mean?" Pinkie, taking the initiative, asked this question after somehow appearing next to the changeling princess. "Oh! I know, are you seeing a giant bubble of air around us that's like, super clear and then the rest of the world is covered in a superthick fog, but it's still light enough that you could get around and not have anything to worry about?"

"Y-yes...?" That was surprisingly accurate from someone who didn't have the ability to read minds. "How did you know?"

"I'm seeing the same thing, silly!" What? "Well, it's not seeing so much as I can tell where it is and I can tell that we're approximately like, at a ninety degree angle from where we were supposed to go, but surprisingly we didn't go that far we went in circles a lot and-"

"Pinkie?" Twilight sounded, and felt, as surprised as Moonlight was. "Are... are you able to tell where we are?"

"Well, of course I can silly. The rocks around here are pretty rare, especially for a swamp. Probably because of the mountain? I noticed each one has a different kind and-OH I should tell Maud about this place! She'd love it!" Twilight shook her head, before sighing. Right, that was it. Pinkie would be Pinkie no matter what. A small smile danced on her lips before she returned to their job.

"So if we can get back to where we started, would the two of you be able to lead us?" Pinkie started nodding her head vigorously, while Moonlight thought for a moment.

"If I have directions," Moonlight began, "I can probably get us out of here. It's just, I wouldn't be able to stop anypony getting lost at that point. M-maybe if we had rope and could tie everypony to each other?" No one answered that there was any, "I'm guessing that's a no. Then, we're going to have to stick very close. Nopony wander off, I don't think we'll be able to find you." The group, after figuring out the rest of the logistics, gathered around the cart and began to move.

Following Pinkie's directions they moved back to the base of the mountain where they had made camp the night before. It honestly took less time than they would have thought, about half the time spent to get where they had been. Moonlight, not in charge for the moment, had kept an eye out for the Ijiraq. She was pleasantly surprised that it was not present, at least for the moment. The bad news was that the already thick fog thickened further, to the point where Moonlight's field of vision was starting to be impacted as well. The next part of their trip would be much slower.

Moonlight and Twilight took to the skies, Twilight with the map and Moonlight, listening to Twilight's directions, directing them. This time they did not enter the swamp, but Moonlight had to focus more on navigating for them, and less on the area. The guards attempted to compensate for this, but without the ability to see what they were guarding against, there were several times where they had to stop a partner from following a random shadowy figure. Each time Moonlight would call a halt, waiting until the affected pony would have their wits about themself once again.

Now there was no doubt that this fog was artificial. It was too late in the day, with the sun probably directly overhead, for there to not be any sign of the fog fading away. Instead, it was still thickening, now so thick that outside of their bubble of space, all was grey cloud. They had slowed so much that their progress was negligible, and Moonlight could no longer trust herself. Their goal, at this point, was to follow the mountain out of the Ijiraq's territory. None of them knew how long it would take, but there was little more that they could do.

"Twilight, darling," Rarity trotted over to her friend, "There is truly nothing we can do about this fog?" Twilight shook her head.

"No," Another branch from a tree they could only just see. She ducked her head, alongside Rarity, "It's magic resistant. I don't think even Rainbow's Sonic Rainboom could disperse it. There must be an amplifier somewhere, no creature would have this kind of effect without one. But we've no means of even analyzing the fog, let alone telling where the amplifier would be."

"An amplifier?" She had heard of them, of course, but had no idea what they were made of. The group stopped, having done so once an hour to allow everypony to rest. It had been very draining just to keep walking through the fog, so several of their number dropped down to sit right away. Even the guards were drooping a bit. "I've not heard of those."

"Amplifiers are objects that can hold magic arrays for later activation." Oh goodie, a lecture. "They can be made from a variety of materials, including wood and cloth, though what material it is would depend on how powerful it was. For something like this, it would have to be very high quality, maybe a large magically-conductive mineral? I'm sure Maud would know if there were one." They both knew that, after all she had known of a crystal that could store cutie marks. Somehow. "It would have to be rare, at best a unique type of crystal. Diamond wouldn't work, but mythril might? Though Mythril isn't suitable for weather manipulation or illusion."

Moonlight, taking a break, was once more playing with her crystal. At her age she only had so much magic she could freely use, and so she had been working only with what she could do without draining her love reserves. As it was still daytime and they might be attacked at any time, however, she was just playing with it. Moving it about so it would catch the light, at least as much as was possible in the fog. Rarity, seeing her playing with it with her hooves, gestured over to the young changeling, "Would a crystal like that work?"

Twilight tilted her head, "I'm not sure. Let me check." It would be easy to just send a scanning spell over to the crystal, or would if it were a simple spell. It was not. Instead, Twilight walked over to Moonlight, asking once close enough, "Moonlight, do you mind if I scan your crystal?"

"Why?"

"Well, we were wondering if it might be close to the type of crystal that's probably the cause of the fog." Moonlight looked at her with a blank expression.

"This is a crystal from the Starsea Forest... there shouldn't be any around here." She knew that it had supposedly been a trade item, but the creatures around here didn't trade with anypony, did they? Still... "If you want to see it you can, I guess?" He held it out to the Alicorn. "Uhm, it absorbs magic though, so it might be hard to... uh, scan you said?"

"Thank you." Twilight lit her horn, slowly wrapping her magic around the crystal. The lightly blue crystal turned purple on the very edges, but the magic was drawn back out as the Princess began crafting her spell. She closed her eyes, a purple disc appearing on one side of the crystal. The disk slowly moved from that side to the other, then from the top to the bottom of it, and it was set back down in Moonlight's hoof. Twilight's eyes opened, "I'll go and look into the results."

"Ok. I hope it helped." Twilight nodded, returning to Rarity.

"How was it?" Rarity asked, leaning in to talk conspiratorially.

"It's not Moonlight's crystal." Rarity gave her a 'well I never said it was hers, just that it might be like hers' look. Twilight rolled her eyes, letting out a sigh, before continuing. "Yes, her crystal could be turned into an amplifier, so if you want to look for another one like it we could try. But the crystal itself has nothing to do with the fog. It's not splitting out magic, and it isn't resistant to being held or scanned like the fog is."

"Well then," Rarity's horn lit up in her light blue colored magic, "I had best find out if it's nearby." She adjusted the spell, not for gems in general but first for one within a short distance of them, which honed in on the crystal in Moonlight's hooves. Once she had the, for lack of a better term, frequency of the crystal, she made note of it, and then adjusted the spell. "Right, it'll take quite a bit more magic than I alone could use. Would you be a dear and cast the spell with me?" Twilight nodde.

The two sat next to one another, Twilight touching her horn to Rarity's for just long enough the matrix could be shared. A few adjustments, an accounting for Neighman's Law of Metaphysics, and the two of them had a workable two-pony spell. No longer bound to Rarity's cutie mark, the margin of error would be larger, but in exchange they could widen the area of effect by quite a bit. "Ready, Rarity?" A nod from the white unicorn. "On three. One, two, three" Two strings of magic, one blue and one purple, extended from their horns. They met and twisted just above the two of them, forming a ball of deep blue magic. It swirled in front of them for a bit, before exploding outward. The two maintained their concentration, magical auras still around their horns, until the shockwave returned.

"Amazing," Rarity, facing a headache from the information, placed a hoof to her head. "I've never had so much information at once. Is this how it always is when you scan things?"

"I don't do it very often, but not usually, no." Twilight shook her head, already going over the information. She stood, her tail snapping behind her in triumph. "Yes, I know largely where it is. Rainbow and I will go and destroy it. Rarity, you stay with the group."

"Of course, but will you be safe with only Rainbow?"

"We'll have to be." Twilight looked at the group, frowning slightly. "I can't afford to bring anypony else. The Ijiraq has been content to watch us so far, but if we go for it's amplifier, that might not be true anymore. Everypony possible has to be present to fight it off. I trust Princess Luna, but the only one able to see it is Moonlight... and she's only one filly." Rarity frowned as well.

"Quite."

---

Fermata -To hold a tone or rest held beyond the written value at the discretion of the performer.

Author's Note:

I confess: I have no idea how to write for Pinkie. This chapter was a challenge to write. I got two chapters into the arc before I realized that I had no way of defeating it yet... well, here we are. I have a way out of the situation, but it'll be two weeks before the conclusion is up.

In the meantime, enjoy the chapter!