Horsetangled: Act 0

by dawnbreez

==> Coalesce knowledge.

There are only so many ways a story can end, and only so many of these endings lend themselves to a new beginning. Such things are beyond the ken of mortal ponies, of course; their story always ends with the same abrupt stop, and only ever begins with the sudden cry of an infant.

But that is only true for mortal ponies. Some ponies have a destiny beyond even the edges of this universe.

Consider this oddly-purple winged horny horse, for instance. Her name is Twilight Sparkle, and she is 24 years old as of today. Today, as it turns out, is the fourth of June, or 6/4, which is particularly interesting because six times four happens to be 24 as well. Twilight greatly enjoys mathematics, as well as any scholarly pursuit; and she often has massive piles of books everywhere, which her friends tell her is very weird indeed. She speaks Like a perfectly normal equine, with proper capitalization and spelling, thank you very much.

Today, Twilight received a package that will completely shatter her understanding of the universe. It was actually due a week ago, but a young pegasus mare accidentally dropped it into the trash chute instead of the mail chute, and it took quite some time to clean the gunk off.

"Perfect!"

"What's perfect?" Spike said, hauling yet another stack of books across the room. Despite being a ruler now, Twilight still had a nearly infinite appetite for organizing her book collection.

"The enchanted crystal disc that Cadance found in the Crystal Wastes just got here. And I have my schedule clear for the whole month!" Twi clapped her hooves eagerly. "I'm going to have a whole month all to myself to study it!"

"Wow. Fantastic. Maybe I'll get to have a day off," Spike muttered.

"Of course not! I'll need you to send my notes to Celestia and Luna. I'm sure they'll love to read about it while they're sipping Appletinis on the beach."

---

Let us now consider the other horse. The one who is large, white, and glowing all the time.

Her name is Celestia, and she is thousands of years old. Plus or minus twenty-four years. Coincidentally, today is also her birthday, though only she and her twin sister remember it. All anypony else remembers is 6/21, the Summer Solstice, during which the ponies of their kingdom would celebrate their glory entirely willingly during the Summer Sun Celebration. Celestia has even taken to having piles of Summer Sun knicknacks lying around her bedroom, to show how goofy and relatable she is. As an extension of her efforts to be relatable, she speaks with a certain amount of irreverence, and quite a few of those new-fangled :D emoticons :D.

At this moment, Celestia was settling into her morning routine: a Tequila Sunrise and some water on the side. Sometimes she swapped the water out for fire-water, because that's the same thing, right? On those days she often had especially fun adventures.

However, in the middle of mixing her Sunrise, a letter appeared by dragon-smoke in front of her, ruining her concentration and making her drop the cherry syrup. The bottle promptly shattered, spreading cherry syrup and bits of glass everywhere. What a mess.

She groaned, and sat down to read the letter...

Dear Princess Celestia,

I have just recovered a brand new artifact from the Crystal Wastes! And by "I", I mean Cadance. She did a wonderful job, and the disc came back in top form. I'm simply not sure how to decipher it, though. I have found that light bounces off of it in interesting patterns, but the patterns have no inherent meaning to me. Spike says he's getting tired of holding the disc while I shine lights at his face, so I'm sending this letter now before he gets too upset to use his fire. Maybe you can shed some light on things, since you're the princess of the Sun?

Thanks again,
Twilight Sparkle

Damn that purple menace. Not only is she interrupting Celestia's vacation, she's also gone and pulled up a piece of history that was once thought banished to time immemorial. Celly hasn't seen those discs since before she banished Luna. Those were interesting times.

She sits down to write a letter...

---

We should consider the purple one again. Just in time to see her receive the letter, in fact!

twilight,

you don't have any IDEA what you just found. this shit is, as they say, off the hook. it flew off the hook like rainbow dash doing a heccin rainboom, then flipped turnways and landed right on my doorstep DX

these discs are from this game 'entertainment' just think of it as a ritual for now

and i will tell you right now, in no uncertain terms, that the ritual destroys the universe, but also creates a new one

this is not something to be trifled with

that said, i can't stop you :o

in fact, even if i did stop you, the damage is already done, and you'll only have a day or two before meteors start falling on equestria

so, uh, sorry i guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i'll be sending over a device with which you can use the disc--just stick it in the front and follow the instructions, you'll figure it out, you're a smart pony

toodles

-- cellybean

"...well, buck."

"What happened?" Spike asked, balancing a massive stack of tomes.

"Wait. How is she going to send the device?"

"What--" Spike suddenly started coughing, hacking up brilliant emerald smoke. He at least had the presence of mind to drop the books before they started to burn, but in the process he sent them flying everywhere. He coughed up a flat board covered in buttons, then burped up a massive square chunk of plastic and glass, and finally--in a belch of deep green embers--he vomited up an odd little oblong of plastic with a long cable attached.

Last, but not least, he spat out a small booklet labeled "USER MANUAL".

Twilight stared at the equipment as Spike tried to catch his breath.

She grinned. This was a puzzle. Twilight liked puzzles.

"Spike? Take a letter."

"twilight i'm dying"

"No you aren't, don't be silly."