1001

I'm stressed out, journal.

Rarity and I made it off the mountain somehow. We're back on the airship and headed for Manehattan, but I can't relax. I finished what I set out to do. The Red Crystal is gone, but it doesn't really feel like a job well done. I almost messed up and unleashed something that would've probably turned all of Equestria into a burning wasteland... for fun. On top of that, we left without ever having found Mister Yeti.

I'm tired and I'm hungry and I'm cold and I'm freaking out and I want to get some sleep like Rarity suggested. I'd love to sleep the rest of the day away and forget all about this horrible mission but I can't. There are so many thoughts and questions bouncing around in my brain that I feel like I'll never be able to sleep again. After the entries I just read that I didn't write, I feel like I should just burn these records to ashes and be done with it to save my own skin, just in case.

But I can't bring myself to do it. I need this journal, I think now more than ever. If I can't write my thoughts out onto these pages I might just literally go insane. Clearly, somepony's been keeping closer tabs on me than I realized because somehow, despite how careful I thought I'd been up until now, I've been compromised. Well, no I guess that isn't entirely true if the Princess is to be believed, but still...

I mean she and the boss evidently gave the okay for me to keep using the journal and I can't bring myself to let it go, so I guess I'll keep writing. But then there's the fact that Sunset somehow stole my journal from right out of my own personal dimensional pocket. If she can do that, then who's to say somepony else won't figure it out? What if I slip up and the wrong pony catches on?

I'd really rather not find out what the consequences will be, but it should be fine. Maybe. I mean, Sunset is a genius mage. The odds of anypony else managing to do what she did are astronomically low. It should be fine if I'm just more aware of what and who's around me when I start writing. Yeah, it'll be fine. But then there's this whole thing with Spike and what happened with the other Twilight. The alicorn me.

The entry Sunset wrote in my journal actually explains a few things about what I saw and what I heard in that place, but it doesn't explain why I saw her there. I saw her, but I don't how she got there or why she was there, to begin with. What was Celestia trying to do? What is she trying to do? Is she really planning to give me and Sunset all the answers or is she just going to reflection deflection us all to keep her plans from getting out?

Was she really just trying to prevent those nightmares from escaping out into Equestria by having me destroy that crystal or did she have another purpose? Some other ulterior motive? And what about Spike? What is she going to do with him? I know it hasn't been that long since he hatched, but that little dragon already feels like another part of me—almost literally. I honestly don't know what I'd do if she hurt him in any way.

Too many questions, not enough answers. I don't want to think about any of it but I can't help it. All these weird events in my life are messing me up. I know I haven't been working for POUT that long, but I already need a vacation. A long one. Maybe take a trip out to the countryside. Visit Ponyville or something. I hear it's a pretty relaxing little village out there when the Everfree Forest isn't acting up.

Is this getting incoherent? I feel like this entry is getting incoherent, or maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm probably just getting ahead of myself. I need to calm down, focus my thoughts. Breath in and out slowly. Deep breaths and start from the beginning. Right, that's done, so now where exactly do I start? If I look at my last entry, Rarity and I got held up in a large cavern near the top of the mountain because of that blizzard.

Right, it seems like forever ago now, but I do remember asking Rarity about her talent. All she told me was that she'd been able to detect gemstones and the like with her magic ever since she was a foal. Evidently, cases like hers do pop up on very rare occasions—unicorn foals whose magic affects their innate talent in weird and unexpected ways. When she explained that, it did bring to mind something, some small article I'd read years ago on cutie marks.

She claims she didn't really know much more than that, and that she never quite managed to fully control it. I could tell that just from what I'd seen as we made our way deeper into the cavern. We waited for a while for Mister Yeti to come back. We waited for I think something like an hour, but he never showed up. So instead we decided to get a bit of rest before we went on my 'impromptu' spelunking adventure with Rarity and her weird gem sensing talent leading the way.

Actually, now that I look back, I don't think I ever actually mentioned the actual excuse I gave to Rarity about why I was traveling to the Crystal Mountains in any of my previous entries. Basically, I tried to tell her I was a tourist who wanted to go out and try something new. I told her I just wanted that authentic hiking experience, but somehow—at some point during the interrogation conversation—the explanation turned into something about a discreet business trip involving the surveying of rare gems for some sketchy transaction.

Yeah, I don't know how it got to that point, but anyway...

There were a lot of long and winding paths and we got lost a few times, but honestly, the trip itself was rather uneventful. Uneventful... and quiet. It was weird, the further we went the quieter Rarity seemed to get. She struck me as a fairly garrulous mare and for a good while she kept going on and on, asking me all kinds of questions about my 'dubious dealings with the diamond dogs'. But after a while, she kind of just... stopped talking.

I asked her what was wrong and she told me it was just nerves. I could completely understand where she was coming from. After all, our guide was missing and we were wandering around a dark and labyrinthine system of caves that stretched Celestia knew how far into the mountain. It wasn't exactly an enviable position for either of us to be in, but somehow I got the feeling that wasn't the entire reason for the silence.

I wasn't fully buying it, but I didn't push the issue. I was sort of beginning to hope the truth about what was bugging her would come out naturally. It never did, but as we got closer to the heart of that ridiculously maze-like cave system that issue became the least of my worries. No, what was really starting to bug was the silence. It had gotten so quiet that I starting to think I was hearing things. Voices. Whispers specifically.

It started so subtly that I didn't even register it at first. When I did finally notice it I initially wrote it off as just some—I don't know, just a gust of wind that blew in from an opening somewhere in the cave. Then it got louder and I couldn't write it off anymore. I couldn't make anything out at first—just incomprehensible mumbles and murmurs it sounded like.

It didn't even sound like it was coming from inside my head like what you would usually get from this kind of thing. It sounded like it was coming from somewhere up ahead of where we were going. It was strange. It was as if Rarity could hear the voice and would follow it. Like if the voice came from a path to our left she would turn in that direction. The problem was that when I finally brought it up she just looked at me like I'd gone crazy.

I can't hear a thing, darling.

Are you feeling alright, Twilight, dear?

These caves are so dreadfully dismal and horribly confounding. Perhaps all this speleology is getting to the both of us? Perhaps we should turn back?

Naturally, I was the only one who could hear the voices whispering in my ear because of course, I was. Par for the course, really. At least she claimed she couldn't hear the voices, but I wasn't so sure that was the case. I know she was using innate magic to follow the path to the crystal I was looking for, but we'd made more than a few wrong turns and dead ends up until now.

Now though... now she was marching along with confidence like she knew exactly where she was supposed to go. She had to be hearing the whispers on some level... or maybe something had taken hold of her thaumic senses and was pulling her along without her even realizing it. Either way, I knew it was affecting her somehow and I got the feeling those whispers were leading us somewhere.

The further in we went, the louder the whispers got, and I had my suspicions about where they were coming from so I just pretended nothing was wrong and told her to keep going. We continued onward and eventually, the cave changed. The walls so far had been just dark and damp stone with not a single crystal to be seen. The freezing winds from earlier had given way to a chilly atmosphere that got warmer as we traveled deeper into the caves.

Now the caves were getting colder again, but this wasn't the same kind of cold as before. This wasn't the kind of cold you could keep away with a warm coat or a steamy bowl of carrot and onion soup. No, this was a chill that seeped into your mind and made you see things that weren't there. It made you shiver not because of any actual change in the temperature, but because it felt like something was slowly and softly raking its icy claws against your skin. It was an unnatural chill, all in the mind.

There were physical changes too. The cavern walls, though still made of dark and wet stone, now had small crystals jutting out of them. There weren't many and they only appeared every so often, but they were... wrong. The Crystal Mountains were supposed to be home to all kinds of different precious gemstones, but these were different. The crystals embedded in the walls were all as black as the void.

They shouldn't have given off any kind of light and yet every single one of those unearthly black crystals lit up our path in an eerie purple glow. The things were practically oozing dark magic, which was a bad sign if I ever saw one. As if that wasn't creepy enough, the whispers had also grown more coherent and the voice I heard was starting to sound like a mare begging for help.

I didn't think about it at the time, but I guess this was how Spike felt when he was talking about how he kept hearing my voice back at HQ—though now we both know the truth. I asked Rarity about the voice again, but she still denied hearing anything. Though given the foreboding atmosphere she no longer blamed me for hearing anything. I expected her to try and talk me into turning back, but oddly enough, she didn't say a word about heading back the way we came.

She looked just like I felt—a nervous wreck that wanted nothing more than to leave this place far behind—but she kept going regardless. We both just kept going, the two of us as silent as the grave, and then we found it. Past a series of narrow tunnels, tucked away within the smallest cave we'd seen yet, was the Red Crystal. And that's exactly what it was. A large red crystal.

It was about twice the average height of an earth pony stallion and emitted a soft violet glow similar to that of the smaller black crystals we'd seen thus far. I was also able to determine that—yes—this crystal was indeed the source of the desperate voice asking for help. The feminine voice was bouncy, pleading, almost foalish in tone. I didn't like it. It's like it was trying to lure me in—trying to play on my maternal instincts.

Rarity must've felt the same because she'd taken a few steps away from the thing with a look of... disgust? Anger? I'm not really sure, but there was definitely some vehemence in her gaze. She was eyeing the crystal like it had personally wronged her somehow. When she noticed I was watching her though, she just cleared her throat and shook her head, saying she wasn't really comfortable here.

I was torn.

On one hoof, I wanted to tell her why we were really here, but on the other, I realized then and there that things were probably going to get both very strange and very dangerous in a moment. It might've been best to just have her leave while she still could. Unfortunately, before I could decide what to do about Rarity, the filly-like voice spoke again, introducing itself as Rabia.

What followed next, didn't exactly surprise me at first. The creature, Rabia, started spinning a tale about how she'd been waiting for millennia for somepony to free her and her species from their imprisonment. She told me they had been oppressed and sealed away within another realm simply because they were creatures born of darkness. They hadn't asked to be born that way and it was all a misunderstanding and that they hadn't even been given a chance and you know the spiel.

Long story short, Rabia wanted me to free her and her own from their wrongful and eternal imprisonment and I wasn't buying a word of it.

I'd never heard anything about these 'Umbrum' personally, but then again it was SMILE's job to keep tabs on those kinds of things. Come to think of it, somepony in SMILE might've already known about the Red Crystal if it was meant to be a seal of some kind. I didn't think to ask because I hadn't expected to stumble across a magical prison. That little tidbit hadn't been explained in the slightest.

Go figure.

In any case, given the bad vibe I was getting from the crystal and just the atmosphere in general, I'd pretty much decided to destroy the thing and be done with my mission. Even if Rabia was telling the truth, I was highly doubtful that she wouldn't be harboring a powerful grudge after several millennia of banishment. I thought about explaining the situation to Rarity, but she had apparently decided that she'd rather not be involved after all.

On a side note, I wouldn't find out until later that destroying the Crystal outright from the outside would've been a VERY bad idea.

I was relieved when she turned tail and left back the way we came, but for some reason, I was also a bit disappointed. I knew I couldn't realistically expect her to help in any way, but the moral support would've been nice to have. Still, I didn't let it get to me and tried to go about my task, but—seemingly sensing my intentions—the creature called Rabia spoke yet again, and what she said next actually did surprise me.

What she said next shocked me so much in fact, that I canceled the spell I was charging to vaporize the crystal altogether. The creature calling itself Rabia had dispensed with the foalish facade, but the shrill and icy voice that replaced it was still calm, albeit sounding somewhat irritated that its ploy hadn't worked. Instead, she tried another approach. She called out to me by name, saying she knew of me.

She knew of Twilight Sparkle, and I couldn't help but ask how. That was when she laughed and told me it was because she'd stumbled across a pony matching my name and appearance. She said that a Twilight Sparkle had been wandering around that realm, lost and maddened by grief and rage. Needless to say, I was completely floored by the news.

Naturally, I didn't want to believe it. I couldn't believe it, but then again, how would she know about the other Twilight? Why would she know? Against my better judgment, I stopped the spell and asked her about it. She confirmed that yes, the Twilight Sparkle she was referring to was indeed an alicorn. A very sad, very angry, and very insane alicorn.

Questions I'd never even begun to consider starting popping up one after the other. What in Tartarus was my alicorn self doing there of all places? How did she get there? I still don't know. I never had the chance to find out, but you better believe I tried. I should've just ignored the voice and did what I came there to do. I should've walked away, but after hearing that, there was no way I would've ever been able to.

Not with the kind of curiosity that got me this Celestia damned job in the first place. I couldn't let something that mind-blowing go, so I asked more questions. Like the villain Rabia was, of course, she wouldn't tell me more unless I met her face to face, which I could evidently do by simply walking into the giant crystal. Somehow, the thing acted as a sort of gate that could let any curious idiot in but still kept the Umbrum from getting out.

So what did I do?

Well, like the curious idiot I was, I took the bait and went in... but that'll have to be an entry for another time. This is a very long story and after writing this much I actually feel a bit better—good enough to actually get some sleep anyway, and Celestia knows I need it.

Celestia.

That mare definitely has some explaining to do. Here's hoping she won't just wipe my mind and be done with the issue. Of course, if she does end up using the reflection deflection spell on me, either she or the boss will probably seize and destroy my journal. She said that wouldn't be the case, but after everything I've seen, I'm not so sure I believe her.

Well, at any rate, I'm going to try and get some shut-eye. I'll be in Manehattan for another day or so with nothing to do until my scheduled train back to Canterlot so I'll finish up this entry then.

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The Unofficial Records of a Mare in Black - the7Saviors

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