Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

C Mi

"You wanted to see me?" asked Starlight, closing the door behind herself.

Still turned and looking out the window, Twilight answered, "Yes. Please take a seat."

Starlight did as she was told. "What is it?" Her eyes fell on the squared shape covered by a tarp on top of the table, but she didn't say anything about it.

Twilight finally turned around. "First, I'd like to offer my congratulations for the progress made here. You've been handling the new lab's construction excellently."

Starlight smiled. "I'm glad to hear that."

Twilight smiled too, but then her expression hardened a bit.

"That's not all, right?" asked Starlight, and again she looked towards the thing on the table.

Twilight's eyes also went in the same direction. "Right." She stepped a bit closer, and placed a hoof over the tarp. "This comes from the Crystal Empire. Shining came across it while patrolling the tunnel system inside the Wall. I want you to analyse it here in the laboratory."

Starlight's gaze didn't move. "What is it?" she asked, her tone cold and serious.

Twilight's magic locked the door, and then she slowly pulled off the tarp.

Underneath was a glass container with a wooden base, visibly reinforced with magic. Inside the container was something that took Starlight a moment to properly make sense of. It looked like flesh in places, but not of a colour flesh should be. Yet those were undeniably muscles, even as dark as they were, and therefore the almost rock-like or metallic looking surface on one side of the object had to be skin.

Starlight looked at Twilight, then back towards the contents of the glass case. "Does this... Did this belong to some animal or creature that lived inside the Wall?"

"It did belong to a creature," Twilight replied, "though not one originating from the Wall. It came from elsewhere, as far as I could tell."

Starlight leaned to the side to get a better look at the thing. "What happened to it?"

"A run-in with some crystal lizards, or potentially something bigger. They got off worse than it did, considering what else Shining found there. Whatever this thing fought against is a pile of debris now."

Starlight swallowed. "Crystal lizards usually only inflict lacerations and similar wounds. What happened to make it look like this?" She eyed Twilight's face, already suspicious of what answer she would receive.

"Whatever it was, if it was something, it happened long before this thing got anywhere near the Wall." Twilight leaned forward to give the piece of flesh a better look. "This isn't an infection of some kind or a local mutation from what we've been able to gather. It's just how the creature is currently. And judging by the traces left on the crystals, it seems like what you can see here is not all there is to it." She briefly looked at Starlight as she said, "We have those here for analysis as well."

Starlight took a deep breath. "This doesn't look natural. And it doesn't look like the kind of unnatural the Behemoth has produced either. Whatever this thing was, something changed it. Something dark."

Twilight nodded. "I want you to figure out how, and everything else you can figure out about it along the way."

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Ah, we've got plotlines meeting. Starlight studying this particular bit of magic could be very good or very bad indeed. Though I doubt she'll ever want to replicate the spell.