Harmony's Wrath

by hahatimeforponies

Crying Out For An Answer

"Cheerilee! Y'in there? Cheerilee!" Applejack thumped her hoof on the door of the schoolhouse that doubled as Cheerilee's home. Some muffled responses emanated from inside, before a purple earth pony answered the door. Her mane was quite ruffled, and she had bags under her eyes. She blinked a little, her eyes taking a moment to focus in the daylight.

"Hm? Oh, Applejack, Rarity. Is this about Scootaloo?" Cheerliee mumbled blearily. Rarity peeked out from behind Applejack.

"I think that can wait just a second. Darling, you look simply atrocious, is everything alright?" She tilted her head and frowned, leaning forward in concern.

"Oh, this?" The schoolteacher chuckled. "Berry was around last night. So ah, fun night..." her sentence was interrupted with a groan from inside, and her smile slid from her face. "... not so fun morning. So what's Scoots gone and done now?"

"So... they're not here?" Applejack went wide-eyed.

"... no, Scootaloo's been out since yesterday with Applebloom and Sweetie Belle, which is why sis took the opportunity to crash here... why do you ask?" Cheerilee grew visibly concerned, more so by the second.

"We can't find any of them. Nopony's seen them since yesterday!"

"Augh, I thought she was done running away..." Cheerilee muttered under her breath. "This is bad. If the three of them are working together, they could be putting some serious distance behind themselves." Applejack gulped and kicked her heels, nodding.

"How has she been, anyways?" She asked.

"She's..." The teacher sighed. "... doing better. Having the Cutie Mark Crusaders to play with and Rainbow Dash to look up to is helping her come out of her shell, and she's definitely trying to make the most of it."

"Still no sign of the parents?"

"Nope. I... don't think we'll ever find them." Uncomfortable quiet fell on the conversation again. Strictly speaking, neither Applejack nor Rarity were concerned with this matter, but they still felt the need to take responsibility. Some clattering was heard inside, and Cheerilee shivered, brought back to her senses. "You'd better get to it then. I'd come along and help, but..." Mid-sentence, another groan was heard from inside, followed by a thump. "... I've got a few things to take care of."

"That's fine, we can handle it." Rarity said, behind a somewhat forced smile.

---

"Mom, I'm home!" Dinky Hooves called merrily, barging into the post office and casting her Crusader's cape in the general direction of the hat stand in the corner. She knew by the saddlebags hung on the stand that her mother had finished her rounds; this time of year, she made sure to be quick on them. From behind the counter and a few boxes, an equally joyous response came:

"Muffin!" A pegasus pony poked her head up from behind a box. Her soft yellow mane bounced between her ears, grey like the rest of her body, settling over her amber eyes. One eye was trained firmly on her daughter, concurring with her warm smile, while the other gazed vacantly in another direction. Other ponies sometimes thought this was a little odd, maybe even scary, but Dinky just thought it was kinda silly, and thought nothing of it. She leaped excitedly over the counter, spilling a few letters, and glided over to the door to greet Dinky with a loving hug, enthusiastically reciprocated. "How... one second." She leaned her head sideways and tapped it, shaking a few postage stamps out of her mane. "How is?" She smiled, not missing a beat.

"I'm okay. But I couldn't find Applebloom, Scootaloo or Sweetie Belle anywhere..." Dinky frowned, looking at the floor.

"Actually..." The pegasus responded. She turned and bounced back over the counter, knocking one of the boxes off and throwing more letters everywhere. Dinky tilted her head while her mother rifled through the packages and files that made up the mess on the post office's desk. After a few minutes of frantic searching, she disappeared under the counter entirely. Dinky shut the door behind her, only to be startled as soon as she turned her back. "They were here earlier!" She looked back around, and her mother held a letter in her mouth, along with several stuck in her mane and one folded in her ear. Most importantly, the letter held between her teeth was addressed simply, 'Dinky', scribbled in crayon.

"Oh boy!" Dinky bounced excitedly. Putting her fledgling magical abilities to work, she groaned and heaved as the faintest little glow opened the envelope. She pulled out the letter itself with her teeth, and unfolded it on the ground. Her mother turned her back, letting Dinky read her letter in private. Nopony likes it when you read their mail, after all.

Dear Dinky,

We're REALLY sorry you cudn't come play with us yesterday. Being sick is no fun! We left you this note so you coud find us when you get better. Wer going on an advenchur to Canterlot to find Applejack and Rarity and Rainbow Dash cos we cant find them anywhere and we think their there! If your quick you can cac... catch us before we get too far. See ya soon!

Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle

The little unicorn's eyes lit up. She neatly folded the letter up and stuffed it back into the envelope, and rushed over to the hat stand to retrieve her cape. "I know where they are!"

"That's great, muffin!" Her mother smiled, turning back around, just in time to watch Dinky open the door again to leave. "Just try not to be out too late, okay?"

"Okay mom!" With nary another word, she took off into the snow.

---

Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy made sure to stick close together as they explored the ruins. The crumbling masonry was quite unstable in places, and where the roof was open, the ice on the floor was particularly treacherous. Twilight kept her hoof-warming spell running when she could, and the two pegasi kept to the air when possible; however, in the dry, icy conditions, both were quite draining, and before long they opted to just be careful, and save their energy for the journey home.

The castle was a sprawling network of corridors and ramparts, the product of centuries of unplanned construction. The mish-mash of building techniques and architectural styles, some of them completely unknown to Equestrian historians, made identifying who really built the castle and when nigh-on impossible. Twilight had to be reminded on numerous occasions to follow their original objective and not attempt to sate her curiosity on an unusual statue eroded to a smooth lump, or a pillar knocked across the hallway by some violent incident.

The condition of the buildings gradually got better as they entered the deeper parts of the complex, where the ruins were more sheltered from the elements than they would be on the outside. In a few places, there were even remnants of wooden planks, or shreds of parchment.

"Twilight, if this is the library you're looking for..." Dash picked up a flaky scrap of paper in her teeth, most of the writing on it faded to illegibility, and it crumbled to dust on the way up from the ground. "... I think this might be a wasted trip."

"No, no, there's got to be something..." The unicorn huffed and turned through a doorway to the left. The corridor ahead was blocked by boulders, so the doorway was the only way to proceed. "Ugh!" The room was a dead end.

"Give it up, Twilight, we've been trawling these dusty old tunnels for an hour now. There's nothing here." Dash whinged, following her into the room. Tall archways held the roof aloft, and pillars lined the walls. All of the windows on one side were buried in soil, a few of them cracked, and the floor was strewn with rubble and dirt. "I can be ready to fly north in..." Dash beat her wings once, testing how they felt. "... tomorrow." Twilight just grumbled and started another meticulous sweep of the room. Rainbow sighed and leaned against the doorway.

Fluttershy trotted in sheepishly behind the other two ponies. Dash was completely uninterested, and Twilight was too absorbed in her search to make conversation with. She thought for a moment, and sauntered up to the back of the room, opposite the door. Twilight's thorough search would take at least ten minutes to get this far, so she decided to investigate this herself. There were a series of geometric markings on the door, most of them too ornate to make any sense of, but the general flow gave the impression of lines radiating from the centre. In the very middle was a small hole, about neck height, with some plant detritus inside. She pulled it out with her hoof to get a look inside - the hole was conical, with spiralling grooves, almost like an inverted horn. Maybe...

"Twilight, I think you'd better look at this..."

"Fluttershy, I'm trying to concentrate!" The unicorn barked back. Ouch... I don't like your tone, Twilight. I know this is a little dishonest, but if it's the only way you'll calm down and pay attention... Gingerly, Fluttershy lowered her head and sniffed loudly. She closed her eyes tightly, making them tear up a little, and whimpered, pulling her mouth into a deep frown.

"Ugh, now look what you've done, Twilight..." Rainbow Dash groaned, and walked over to the apparently crying pegasus.

"What?" The unicorn looked up, taking a moment to notice Fluttershy's expression. "Oh, for the love of..." She sighed and turned to follow Dash. "Listen, Fluttershy, I'm sorry... I didn't mean to snap. I guess I'm just getting a bit carried away with this..." She looked genuinely crestfallen, and Fluttershy nodded weakly in acknowledgement. She sniffled again, drying her eyes, but still hanging her head meekly. "Dash, you might be right. We should probably just go..." Twilight sighed.

"Actually, I... I thought this might be somethhm..." Fluttershy trailed off, gazing at the floor and pointing a hoof behind her at the wall. Twilight perked up again, her curiosity piqued. Mission successful. The unicorn gazed intently at the markings, first trying to decipher any intrinsic meaning to them, before the general trend dawned on her, leading her to inspect the hole in the centre. Reaching the same conclusion Fluttershy did, she lowered her head to point her horn to the cavity.

"Not sure what this is going to do, but here goes..." Twilight took a deep breath and pushed her head forward, jamming her horn inside. The cold stone lit up in red, recognising an arcane signature in the hole. Unfortunately for her, it also burned red hot, delivering an intense jolt of searing pain to her horn.

The horn is like a tooth, in that it has no nerve endings in the hard outer shell; usually, for pain to be felt, the horn has to be damaged, or the sensation has to be so intense that it propagates through the enamel coating. This pain, however, was different; this was an acute, simultaneous burning and stabbing sensation all along the horn, penetrating through the horn and into her head, generating the most splitting headache she had ever felt. She knew that in this compromising position, she could easily damage her horn if she yanked out. What the... this is... some kind of security mechanism... which means this is definitely a horn-lock... she suppressed her conscious train of thought, focussing instead on sending all manner of signals to different segments of her horn, modifying its arcane signature. There was no telling what signals needed to be sent, nor in what pattern, or even if they needed to be sent in some kind of order...

Wait a minute... Twilight blinked. The pain was gone. Her horn still felt quite tender, but the pain was gone. She backed up, and her horn came free of the hole. Where the stone was lit up in red, it was now blue, and spreading across the wall's intricate patterns. The wall began to shake a little, and slowly, the middle panel of the inscribed wall lowered, the magical trigger bringing an ancient mechanism to life. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy stepped back, cautiously watching in awe; Twilight just gazed at the top of the sinking stone plate, waiting patiently on the room to reveal its secret. In her head, she reeled from the experience. That was a horn-lock! How did I get it open that quickly? The odds of getting it by chance are how many billion to one? I remember reading about how they make them, they're nearly impossible to crack... all modern horn-locks are... wait... modern. Well there we go, this was made at least a thousand years ago... it must be one of the first ever made! Wow... that was... lucky.

As the door finally reached eye level, they could finally get a look at what lay behind. The first glance unveiled pristine wooden panels, and slowly they revealed themselves to be shelves, laden with hundreds upon hundreds of books. Twilight's eyes lit up, starting to fidget excitedly; her elation, however, was quickly dispelled. The door soon revealed something else in the room, and all three ponies gawped in horror as it came into view. As the door sank flush with the floor, a unicorn's skeleton slid forward and clattered on the ground. The skull rolled forward, free of the spine, and came to rest at Twilight's hooves.

"Uhm..."

Comments

[catrianheir]

I love how you include info about stuff like how the pegasi "swim" through the air and how temperature affects unicorn abilities and all that other stuff you actually took the time to explain, and quite well I might add, I'm kinda a nerd about stuff like that.