The Price of a Wish

by Silver Scrolls

Prologue

Twilight stared into the hole. Brown, then a darker brown then an oddly lighter brown lined the walls of the hole, all leading down to a small inconspicuous looking black box. Months and months of research and tracking down false leads and following even the barest hints of its existence had finally lead her here. A dense jungle, home to the same species as Daring Do’s arch rival Ahuitzotl. Sadly Ahuitzotl was the last of his kind so Twilight hadn’t met any others of his species.

She looked up and at the ruins around her and then back down to the seemingly innocent black box. If the rumors were true then what was inside the box is why none were left. A chuckle slipped past her lips as she thought about it. It was a silly rumor but there was credence to it, after all, there were no more Ahuitzotls left. Such lines of thought were flippant at best though, plenty of races and species had been lost to time over the course of history.

A lavender aurora carefully lifted the box from the ground. Twilight’s saddle bags flipped open and the tiny box was nestled in between two books to protect it from anything that might damage it on the way back. The shadows around her were growing longer and Daring Do had warned her not to wander the jungle late at night, opening the box was going to have to wait. Twilight moved away from the excavation site and paused to look around again. Step pyramids surrounded her like mossy hills of stone. Old thatch roofs from sunken homes dotted the area making for treacherous terrain to anypony who wasn’t careful enough and the encroaching darkness wasn’t going to help matters any.

Twilight had been lucky the box had been buried sometime after the fall of whoever had lived here before or she might never have found it. Underneath her hooves were miles upon miles of labyrinth like intertwined tunnels and homes. According to legend the city she stood over had been one giant continuous building. The step pyramids poking up into the trees had been the communal buildings and temples of worship for the ancient gods of those who had built it. If the box had been anywhere inside the maze below the chances of her ever finding it would have been slim to none.

She glanced back at the hole again. Large enough for her to fit in the dirt spoke of having been shifted aside for the box for more recently than that of the earth that had filled in parts of the city. Two Temples rose up on either side of the hole like sentinels watching over a prisoner and Twilight couldn’t shake the feeling that whoever had buried it here knew something about those old temples she didn’t.

Ahuitzotl’s face flashed across her mind as she turned away from the pyramids. Evil as he may seem the fear in his eyes when she had asked him about the box and it’s contents were all too real. He knew more than he had told her, of that she was sure, but why he had told her anything she couldn’t be sure. The ancient city vanished into the treeline as Twilight broke into a gallop, her mind swimming with uncertainty and fear.

This had to be worth it, worth risk. She needed it to be. That city had a wrongness about it and now that wrongness seemed to bounce against her side in the saddlebag. Twilight had to believe her cause was good enough, honest enough to warrant what she was going to risk for it. Her pounding hoof beats echoed around her as she galloped through the forest like vile and haunting laughter.

~ ~ ~

It taunted her, sitting there on the table. All the light around seemed to be absorbed into it’s now gleaming black surface and she swore it was watching her. Twilight threw her saddle bags over it and shuddered. There was something wrong in that box, a presence that felt like Discord but far more malevolent. Could she really do this? She had traveled across the seas and deep into one of the oldest jungles in the world for it but could she really do this.

The bathroom door closed behind her and Twilight slumped against the door. This was wrong, she knew it was wrong. Some princess she was turning out to be. Abandoning her duty and her friends to gallivant around the globe in search of some ancient relic. The twin temples standing guard over the hole swam through her mind and with it the months that had led up to this journey.

The warnings about what lay inside plagued her mind as she remembered everything she had gone through to get this far. Evil, mischievous, malevolent, all words that had been used to describe what lie within that container that taunted her now. Thinking about it now she couldn’t remember a single word that didn’t hint at some horrible consequence for using it. Even Ahuitzotl had told her to stay away from it. He had insisted that some things should lay buried, best forgotten and left alone. Such reverence and fear he seemed to hold the legend of what she had dug up in.

The thunking of her head against the hollow wooden door as her head hit it several times cleared her head and she stood up. This was worth it. Celestia was worth it. Her mind made up she opened the bathroom door only to find the box sitting on the floor just outside it.

Her throat bobbed as she swallowed the lump that had lodged itself there as soon as she saw the box. Maybe it wasn’t worth it, whatever this thing was it clearly wanted to be used. It had to be used, it didn’t deserve to be locked...No this was wrong. She couldn’t do this.

Twilight looked down at the small gyroscope in her hooves, the box sat open on the table. It was so innocent sitting their in her hooves, what harm could it possibly due. “I wish I had a chance to win her heart. I wish that we could be more than student and teacher, that we could be closer, that we could have a chance at love.” The center of the top began to spin and it slowly stood up in her hooves.

Twilight could feel it, something was happening. Magic gathered around the top like a whirlwind, picking everything in the room up. It all whirled around her, faster and faster it went as the top picked up speed. A voice called out through the wind. “Your wish has been heard. A contract to be formed so a due must be paid.” A crack began to form in it as the magic got stronger and stronger and then suddenly everything grew calm. “Do you accept the terms of the contract?”

Twilight stared at the top and the whirlwind she sat in the center of. “I will pay anything, just let me be with her.” The wind began to pick up again, her mane whipped about by the wind and new cracks slowly formed in the top.

“Consent has been given.” More cracks and a strange glowing. “A due will be collected and the wish shall be granted.”

Twilight watched in awe as more cracks began to appear in the artifact, spider webbing through the delicate structure. The wind began to scream and then there was a pulse. Another pulse, and another and then everything turned white. It was a moment before she heard the explosion and her world turned black. A pair of a sinister aquamarine eyes flashed before her and then everything faded away.

Comments

[Rejected Scratches]

Decent start, only real problem is that I personally feel like twilight would have asked what the consequences were before hand. Otherwise, nothing to note