Chimes In the Dark

by Faindragon

Chapter 4: Secrets of a Library

Chimes In the Dark - Chapter 4: Secrets of a Library

NOTE: Grammar not corrected

The chime echoed through the church, finding its ways through hallways and rooms. The sound arrived into a room with a giant throne and made its way to the black mare sitting at it. She smiled, a smile that never touched her deep blue eyes, a smile colder than the embrace of death. She flapped her wing, trying to get it in a more comfortable position. The stitches itched; she wasn’t used to her new wing yet. It had started to change color now, the hideous light brown color changed to her own black. She couldn’t wait until she had the other wing as well, the other part of this memory. She lifted the quill with her magic, making the second line. Two chimes had passed.

^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^

Notharam still had his hooves on the open door, facing into the darkness behind it, when the clock had chimed. He had flinched at the sudden sound, his hooves nearly enough flying away from the door as if the door had burned him. It had taken him some seconds to realize where the sound had come from, seconds he used to look around, eyes big in shook.
“What the hay, I must be really on the edge if I react like that at the chime of that clock.”

He noticed that he wasn’t the only one that had reacted at the sudden sound. Mistrunner had turned around and tried to look in all directions at once, Emerald on the other hand was looking at the clock.
“Hmm, I wonder… Isn’t this day, or night to be precise, the night before the Summer Sun Celebration?”

Zinky was the one to answer, bouncing up and down on the spot.
“Oh, oh, it is. And Celestia will raise the sun in Ponyville. Can we go there? Please can we can we?” She shone up with a happy smile.

Notharam couldn’t say no to the happy filly. He sat it as another goal, that he should take Zinky to the Summer Sun Celebration, if not this year so another.
“I would love to go there with you, and the rest, Zinky. But I don’t know if we can go now.” He turned to Emerald. “Well, it seems like it is, how come?”

“Well, it’s not that hard to understand where I’m going with this. As every filly know is the Summer Sun Celebration a celebration of the longest day of the year. This means that we have less than twelve hour, or ten now, left for our survival. If I don’t remember wrong is this night only 7 hours long, giving us 5 hours to survive.” Emerald said in a lecturing tone.

“Well, that is great news! Then we have a greater chance of survival.” Notharam said, a knot in his stomach, that he didn’t even knew he had, fading away. He let a short laugh slip out. “That really is a relief Emerald.”

“Yes it is…” Emerald said with a worried frown. “But I wonder… No, it can’t be, I’m sure….” He shook his head. “Shall we start to go? We have been standing here for too long I’m afraid. Even if this makes us have more... less time to survive doesn’t mean we should stay at one place for too long.”

Emerald slowly walked up to the entrance, followed by the other ponies, the light from his horn illuminating the door and its book engraving. As he walked through the entrance did the shadows of the room flee to the corners, hiding from the unicorn who walked in and disturbed it. The room bathed in the light from Emeralds horn, a light that was reflected ten times over by an, for Notharam, unseen source.

Notharam waited until the others had entered the room before he himself did it. It was a small room with a staircase in the middle of it, a staircase that was in the shape of a spiral, spiraling upwards to a floor over them. From the ceiling hanged drop shaped crystals, the source of the reflection. Two statues stood at the base of the staircase, shaped as the lightalicorn, Celestia. None had taken care of theses statues as they had the statues at the inner sanctum. These statues had small cracks in them, the white gleaming stone was nearly grey under the dust that covered the twin statues.

The floor in front of the staircase was decorated with a symbol, a sun with eight rays. The rays erupted from the center, five of them ending in a gemstone. The gemstones were in the colors of red, orange, green, light blue and pink. Even Notharam knew what this symbol symbolized. The Elements of Harmony, the great powers of old tales, long since lost in the twists of time.
‘Why was this symbol here, in a temple like this?’ Notharam thought.

Emerald answered the question, as if he had been able to read Notharam’s mind.
“The Elements of Harmony, used more than once in the legends, the last time a thousand years ago when Celestia imprisoned Nightmare Moon in the moon after Nightmare Moon’s attempt to take over the throne and create eternal night over Equestria. Or at least that’s how the old maretale goes. It’s also stated that the Elements of Harmony is the ‘greatest magic power known to pony kind’.“

Emerald took a quick breath before he continued.
“They are said to have been created by the two goddesses during a time of great need. Perhaps this symbol, in a place like this, proves that The Elements of Harmony have existed once. This temple is between one and two, perhaps even three, millennia old, the art style of the statues and pillars, not to talk about the door, is of a very old design. This place must be at least as old as the castle of Canterlot, if not older. I have only seen this kind of style in the old throne room of Canterlotcastle, and I would say that that room was only a copy of an even older piece, copied the day the room was built.”

Notharam slowly walked forward, placing one of his front hooves on the edge of the closest ray, the one ending in a red gemstone.
“I don’t know if the Elements are real or not, and I don’t see how that would help us. We are probably not the first of the ‘guests’ that figured this much out, and even if we were do I not believe that we would be able to use the power of them either way. I don’t know about you guys, but I still don’t want to stand on one spot for too long.”

He started to walk forward, crossing the symbol on his ways to the staircase. As his hoof hit the first step of the stair was a loud rumbling heard. The rumbling was the sound of the door that closed behind them. The sound of the door was followed by another sound, that of metal snapping above them.

The crystals hanging from the ceiling crashed down, splintered into thousands of small shards as they hit the stone floor. It only took seconds before it was all over, thousands of crystals shards filling the floor, reflecting the light that erupted from Emeralds horn in all the colors of the rainbow, reflecting it over the walls and ceiling.

“Is anypony hurt?” Mistrunner called out.

“I’m okay, the crystals didn’t hit me at least, nor did the splinter of them.” Emerald answered from where he stood in the middle of the symbol.

“I’m fine, those big things didn’t hit me.” Zinky called from under Mistrunner.

“Nopony hurt then it seems, I wasn’t hit either.” Notharam said, before turning towards the rest of the group.

As he turned did the door come into his view area, seen over the heads of the other ponies. The door was closed, that he wasn’t surprised about. He flinched at the seeing what happened on the door, the letters that had formed there. The letters was in the same style as the ones that had been on the wall, and in the same red color. A single word was written on the door.

Trapped.

He turned around on the spot, started to walk up the staircase.
“Let’s go everypony, no use in just standing here, let us see what this stairs lead to.” He could hear the panic in his own voice, and tried to calm down, hoping that the rest would follow him. It was enough that he had seen it, no need for the rest to see it and panic. They had heard the door close; he only hoped they didn’t turn around to check it.

Too his relief did they follow him, but he couldn’t see the looks that Emerald and Mistrunner gave each other behind his back. The staircase was pretty wide, three or four fully grown ponies would easily have been able to walk next to each other in it. The staircase ended in a big room, a room as big as the entire lower part they had traveled in had to be.

The room was filled with bookcases, most of them completely emptied. Dust covered the stone floor, and only a few hoofsteps could be seen interrupting the thick layer.
A few statues was placed in the room, statues of pegasi, unicorns and earth pony alike. Most of the statues were of ponies writing or reading, but some was of something entirely different. In the middle of the library was a giant statue of Celestia raising the sun. The sun was made of a yellow stone, and weakly illuminated the room, making the bookcases and statues throw long shadows across the room.

The floor had holes in some places, probably where the pillars of the inner sanctum had collapsed. Notharam reacted on this, how come that they hadn’t seen the light from the sun when they were in the inner sanctum?

He slowly trotted into the room, the others followed him closely, their hooves whirling up dust from the ground. Notharam could hear Emerald talk behind him.
“This library… It must have contained at least thousands of books. And the statues are made with perfection!”
His voice changed, he nearly sounded sad.
“Too bad that the books are long since gone, I’m sure the solution of this puzzle could have been found in one of them.”

The group carefully navigated through the library, making their way to the statue of Celestia. A showcase stood in front of the statue, a book lying inside. The book was old, with a cover made of a dark brown material with golden fittings around the book sides. The characters were written with a swirling style, it was nearly as if they were connected with each other.

Emerald stopped in front of the showcase, looked as in trance at the book lying inside.
“It’s written in a really old dialect but I think I might be able to translate most of it, just give me some time.” He started to search his saddlebags again, casting glances on the book every now and then. “Notharam, could you move that table over there?”

Notharam did what he was asked to, and got help from Mistrunner in moving the table over the floor. It was not a big table and Notharam turned towards Emerald when it was in place.
“Here you go Emerald, but why do you need a table?”

Emerald looked up from his bags, mouth full of different objects, a bottle of ink, a quill and some parchment. He shot a quick glance toward the book before he looked at Notharam with a flat look.
“You didn’t think I was just going to let this piece lay here without me noting it down and translate it, did you?”

He placed the writing equipment on the table and started to slowly read the side of the book he could see through the showcase glass.
“I wished I could take it out of there, but I will not even try. I do believe that it would crumble to dust in my hooves if I tried. Now, leave me alone for some minutes, I need to concentrate on the translation of this text.”

“Let us go Notharam, if somepony can translate that text over there is it Emerald. He knows more languages than anypony I have heard of, it was one of the reasons he got the position as scroll keeper of the royal library.” She looked at Emerald, admiration in her eyes. “Come here Zinky, leave Emerald alone. Let us see if we can find something fun in this place shall we?”

Zinky had stood with the upper half of her body on the table, playfully checking out the writing equipment that Emerald had put on the table. She looked away from the objects, a wide smile on her muzzle.
“Yes Mist, I will go with you. Fun sounds like fun.”
She jumped of the table, carefully not to disturb any of the objects she had looked upon. Slowly did she trot to Mistrunner and Notharam, the smile still on her muzzle.
Together did they walk around in the library, avoiding every hole in the floor. The statue sun illuminated enough light for them to see around them in the library. Notharam couldn’t help but staring wide-eyed at the things around him. He wasn’t a fan of art, but these statues and paintings that filled the library was of another level than anything else he had ever seen.

He saw a painting of a single pegasus clearing a black thunder sky, the details so fine that he could see the confident shining from the pegasus eyes. Another painting was of an earth pony, who carefully planted a seed in the ground. Notharam was surprised over the details in this painting as well; he could see every crack in the seed. A third painting was of a unicorn holding a book as she protected two fillies from an Ursa major, and he could see every star in the Ursa’s fur as if he had looked upon the night sky.

Even Zinky had seen a painting she liked, and Mistrunner stood next to her and looked at the painting as well. Notharam let his curiosity take over, slowly trotting over to them, looking at the painting that hung pretty low on the wall. It was a painting of a rabbit family, standing in the snow outside the small hill that had been their home for the winter. In the background was the snow melting, making room for flowers.
“Look at that rabbit, it is so cute.” Zinky cried out, pointing at the little baby bunny in the middle of the group.
“And look at the details of that flower.” Mistrunner said, pointing at a flower that the baby bunny was holding.

Notharam walked away from the two other ponies, left them to look at the painting by themselves. He admired the statues and paintings in the library, carefully looking at each of the statues in the library.

The other caught up with him, Zinky happily bounced around him. Her voice was full of enthusiasm.
“We saw a bunny, and butterflies, and ducks and and and…” she stopped in the bouncing, head tilted towards Mistrunner.

Mistrunner chuckled, fondly looking at Zinky.
“And snakes and a lot of other animals.” She sounded nearly as enthusiastic as Zinky had.

Notharam stopped, front hoof in midair. He couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.
“Wait, you found ANIMALS in here? Where? How? And those animals doesn’t even live close to each other.”

Mistrunner laughed, a cute sound that sounded like silver in Notharam’s ears.
“Not living animals, filly, the animals on paintings and in the statues. Zinky wanted my help to name them all, and I couldn’t say no to her.”

Notharam looked at her, the truth slowly revealed in front of him.
“Oh, I hopped there was another living animal here, someone who knew a way out.” He said, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
He slowly started to trot again, looking at the different statues. He took a turn around a bookshelf, the other two following him, softly whispering to each other.

He found himself facing a big statue, shaped as a creature of mythical nature. The skull was that of a pony, with two different horns erupting from it. It had a long body, with six limbs, four of them legs and two wings, not a single limb from the same creature as another. Notharam could feel something evil about this statue, as if an evil presence erupted from the statue.

The eyes of the statue slowly turned red.

A scream filled the library.

The light that had been illuminated by the sun statue disappeared.

And the clock chimed.