Chapter 67: Archive
Firefly followed Septum into the Royal Canterlot Archives. With every step, she found herself increasingly nervous. Were those guards watching them? Had that one whispered something to the other? Was a telegram already going out?
There was something incredible about a dangerous mission like this when they had a changeling. There was no need to wander through the city, searching for somepony who might be willing to help get them in. There was no need to break into the building, risking arrest.
Granted, what Septum was doing now would certainly risk arrest, if they got unlucky.
“Don’t get too far, fillies,” said the mare ahead of them. Septum had captured Rainbow Dash’s likeness perfectly, right down to the multicolored mane. Shame he hadn’t met any of Twilight’s other friends in person. If these guards knew what Rainbow was really like...
But nopony did. Nopony tried to stop them from setting their own route through the building, cutting lower and lower as they progressed.
“What are we looking for, exactly?” Firefly asked Lilac, whispering to her. Risk was close enough to overhear too, but there was no way to stop that from happening. However jealous she might be of his relationship to Lilac, if he was willing to risk his own life to join them, then he deserved to be part of decisions.
“Hidden section of the library,” she whispered back. “Probably in the restricted section. If I built it, I would hide it behind as many layers of security as I could. Can she get us in?”
The archive was a busy enough place that they didn’t stand out too badly. Hundreds of ponies were here, most tucked away in reading nooks with a few titles to study. Unfortunately there were also more royal guards inside than Firefly had ever seen in one place. And probably more than she ever would, unless they had to visit the palace.
She nodded. “I think so. If anypony can. But what do we do when we get there?”
Lilac looked away. “They didn’t tell me that, exactly. Hopefully I recognize it when I see it. Something that ordinary ponies won’t notice, but will stand out to somepony looking for them. If you see anything weird, tell me. You’re from the same home I am.”
Firefly wrapped her wing around Lilac’s shoulder. “Sure. But if I was half as smart as you are, we wouldn’t be in this situation. I would help you with all your crazy experiments.” The way Risk does.
She fell silent as they reached the end of a twisting hallway, and a set of heavy iron gates. Through them was more library, not that different from the ones all around them. Only this one had a royal guard standing beside it, with a spear resting against his leg.
He was the only armed pony they’d encountered so far. Firefly’s wings twitched reflexively, as a subtle dusting of light arced along her body. Not bright enough for anyone to notice.
Except Risk. The unicorn gave her a scathing look. “Can’t you keep that under control?”
She stopped as the others did, pawing at the ground. “You try living with this much magic for a few minutes,” she whispered. “Feels like any second I might just explode.”
“Hey!” Not-Rainbow-Dash walked directly for the gate, without even slowing down. “Open it up for us? Got some work to do in there.”
The stallion jerked to alertness, glancing back at Firefly and the others. “M-Miss Dash? You want to go into the restricted section with... three foals?”
“Three of the most talented fillies and colts in all of Equestria,” she snapped back. “Twilight Sparkle sent us. Am I supposed to tell her you turned us away?”
The Royal Guard rocked back and forth, eyeing the fraudulent Rainbow Dash. “How long do you need?”
Septum posed dramatically, spreading both wings. “Have you even heard of me? We’ll be gone before you know it!”
“Right.” He leaned the spear up against the wall, then removed a keyring from his belt. A few seconds later the door was open. He stepped aside. “Please hurry. There are all kinds of forms most ponies fill out when they come here.”
“Thanks!” Septum stepped inside, waving for the others to join her. Firefly was the first to do so, not looking up at the watching royal guard. “I’ll remind Twilight to send all those your way when I get back to Ponyville.”
And just like that, they were through. The guard slammed the gate shut behind them, then locked it. There would be no easy way out if somepony did raise the alarm. They hurried away from the gate, until they were out of sight from the exit.
Firefly felt the oppressive weight of the building overhead. There were hundreds of ponies nearby, yet the sounds of their hoofsteps and quiet conversation died completely. Maybe there was magic in the walls.
“I figure we have until the changing of the guard until we raise an alarm,” Not-Rainbow whispered. “This stallion is going to mention it to whoever replaces him, and word will get around, and they’ll realize something’s wrong. Whatever we’re here to find, do it quickly. We still have to get out of the city.”
Firefly eyed Lilac, expectant. But the mare only seemed confused. “We need a star that doesn’t shine,” she said. “I don’t know exactly what that means. But we should split up and look for it.”
“There aren’t any stars in a library,” Firefly began. “Too bad those fairies couldn’t just tell us what we were really looking for.”
They spread out, scattering across the library floor to look. With every passing minute, Firefly’s anxiety grew. They really needed the information that was hidden here—but if they got caught, it would hardly make the Equestrians willing to hear them out. If Celestia found them, she might have a real reason to think Lilac and herself were enemies of the country.
What kind of dangerous knowledge hid among these old shelves? The books here were much older than in the rest of the library, broken with racks of scrolls and sheafs of parchment. Many of them had the sickening smell of real leather to them. What kind of Equestria made those?
She glimpsed the others searching, just as energetically. Lilac would be the one to figure this out, just like she figured out every other puzzle they encountered. If it wasn’t so dangerous, she might have even found a way to send them home.
Firefly didn’t want to go back to Earth anymore, though. All that dangerous magic no longer served a purpose. They were free.
“Hey, uh... Lilac? Did you see this?” She stopped in place, staring at a strange glass case up against the wall. The books inside were locked away, behind yet another layer of security. She was certain one of them was whispering to her.
But it wasn’t the book she cared about right now, it was the model.
Lilac appeared beside her, squinting up. “What, the moon? Yeah, I saw that. Not a star.”
“Not the moon,” Firefly took off with a few flaps of her wings, hovering beside the top-shelf. “This is what the moon used to look like, when we were fillies. Remember?”
“You do?”
“Not well,” she admitted, tapping against the glass. “There used to be a mare in the moon that used to be Luna, that whole thing... but look.”
She tapped one corner. “There are four stars arranged around it made of glass. Well there’s supposed to be four, but this one is missing. There’s only three.”
“Get me up, I wanna see!”
Firefly considered trying to hold her up—but that would take some intense flying, and make a lot of noise. Instead she landed on the ground, dropping one shoulder. “Climb up. Just try not to put too much weight on me with those hooves.”
While she did, the others reappeared—Risk, wandering down from a neighboring row. “Rainbow Dash” wasn’t far behind, with a book tucked under her foreleg. Was her dad actually interested in what it said, or did she just want to look busy?
Firefly grunted in pain as the pony stood there. Earth ponies were not light, even a willowy one like Lilac. At least she wasn’t a stallion. “Risk, Rainbow Dash—please back up. Get far enough that you can’t hear me.”
“Not her?” Risk eyed Firefly, annoyed. “You don’t have to keep secrets.”
“I’m not,” Lilac said, pleading. “But last time you were exposed to something like this, it messed with your memory. Nothing will happen to Firefly, she’s from the same place as me.”
Septum closed one wing around Risk, backing away with him. “We don’t have time for an argument. Let them work.”
Firefly looked up at her friend. “You think you have to cast some kind of... dark magic on it?”
Lilac nodded weakly. “It would have to be something so obscure that nopony could use it by accident. So it—” Then she froze, and her voice changed. Firefly could still understand her, though it took some concentration to keep the words clear in her head.
She wasn’t even entirely sure her mouth still worked to speak to them, anymore. “Charlie and I have come all the way from Earth,” she said. “Let us in, please.”
As strange as the language sounded to Firefly’s pony ears, she was still just talking, right? What difference could that make?
A lot, as it turned out. The shelf rumbled, then slid to the side, revealing a dark staircase in the wall. Lilac hopped down off her shoulder a second later, looking relieved. “That could’ve gone worse. I was sure it would make me—but it didn’t. Guess Princess Celestia wouldn’t have a sympathetic connection to the void, she couldn’t open it that way.”
“What are you talking about?” Firefly asked. She stretched, rolling her shoulders to loosen them. She just wasn’t built to have the weight of another pony on her shoulders, even a relatively light earth pony.
But her friend was already setting off down the stairs, apparently unconcerned with the near-total darkness within. Firefly winced, waving the others back over. “Come on!”
Not a moment too soon, either. The bookcase began to retract, sliding back almost as quickly as it opened. Septum and Risk barely made it through before it settled heavily into place behind them.
“Can’t believe Equestria has something like this,” Risk said. “There’s a hidden section in the Royal Archive.”
Rainbow Dash vanished in a flash of light, replaced with Velvet Moon. That made her fit better in the tight quarters, but that probably wasn’t why she’d done it. It was so dark down here. “If you think this is the only secret Princess Celestia keeps, you’re a particularly naive little pony. No ruler stays in power for over a thousand years without skeletons in her closet. Where else would she bury them but in her capital?”
Risk lit his horn with a feeble red glow, like the last ember smoldering from a fire. “I know what the Lightless Star says about her—about killing the True Gods. But then they tried to kill Firefly, so... I’m not sure anymore.”
Velvet sighed. “The Lightless Star are a pragmatic hive. They’re prepared to spend any resource that brings them closer to their goals, even lives. The ritual that brought Lilac and Firefly here in the first place—they knew ponies would die. Nopony knew the toll would be so high. But they paid it. Dozens of ponies dead in one night. It was the greatest defeat in our history, until....” She eyed Firefly. “I wonder if we killed the Watcher.”
“I hope so,” she answered. “I didn’t get a good look at him through all those veils, but what I saw—I’ve seen a demon before, and I think he might be worse. Mostly dead, all gross.”
The stairwell wound down into the dark for what felt like hours. Lilac led the way, her tail faintly visible against the gloom. The dark didn’t bother her the way it did Firefly, huddling close to Velvet for company.
But then they came to the end, and an old stone archway. It opened into an enclosed cavern, far larger than any room in the Royal Archives. The walls were made of crystals, each one bigger than a pony, in at least a dozen different shades of pink and blue.
There was only one shelf, at the far end of the room. It held books, but not like Firefly had ever seen them before. They were made of silvery metal, hammered paper thin and held together by more metal rings.
As Lilac stepped into the cavern, light began to glow, as soft as moonlight but stained purple. It came from an opening in the cavern floor, one apparently filled with dark water swirling ever-downward.
“A low-place,” Lilac whispered from its edge. “Wider than anything in Willowbrook.”
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I wonder what they will find in that section of the library. I hope for the fillies that there isn't some alarm they've unknowingly triggered but I highly doubt it.
Oof, another week of waiting to find out what those hidden books actually say?
I have to say though, I didn't expect they'd find another low place in the Royal Library. It kinda supports the theory that the Alicorns are the same kind of being as the 'True Gods', although I wasn't quite convinced of it before.
Also, there's no way the Watcher died in Firefly's storm. That would be way too convenient, and I imagine there's going to be a major conflict with him in the future.
Time to see the truth of everything.
That disguise will certainly get into a lot of secure places but man is it a risky plan.
There's only one shot at this. They'll have to make it count.
Doesn't seem to come from Earth or Equestria. The sisters' (or Lilac's or her demon's) connection to it is at least strong enough to get through, though.
Pretty sure if she kept or built the archive, she would likely have a way to open it.
Whether the lost alicorns were real or not, I'm pretty sure the "true gods" are much bigger things that originated in Abaddon.
Pretty sure that's a gateway. The books probably hold the control spells. Did Saffron screwed them over? If there's anything the sisters have to avoid other than Celestia and the cult, it's probably a gate where demons might pop through.
This is getting interesting (grabs popcorn)
11358420
Given the usual state of Equestrian security, I'd have to agree.
How long till Celestia walks in in them you wager?
So this entire room is one huge portal?
a low place in ore constructed from the canterlot caves, interesting and suspicious.
those could also just be very common and they just don't know it
That was a good chapter goodluck with the next one.
Definitely looks like a portal. I wonder what they'll find within...
Again, so weird that Celestia would choose this kind of security for something the Lightless Star would CRAVE. A key would probably be more secure. Maybe it's a trap?
11359332
Remember, the Lightless Star is terrified of Celestia and wont go near her.
Pretty sure thats enough security
I doubt it. He was expending a lot of power to keep Firefly bound, but I'm not sure if he even can die anymore.
In any case, they've found what they're looking for. Now the question is just what it is... and how they plan on getting back out.
Exfiltration is an important part of the plan, and I don't think anyone thought that part through.
11359850
Technically, a few (former) members of that cult now have access to it. Granted it took some changeling magic and void magic to access it, but unless this is a trap, it's a major breach of security Celestia wouldn't want.
She has fully embraced being a pony.
Celestia got secrets!