A Lost Mosaic

by DeathFox4

2. Knock knock

I raised my eye as I heard a knock, putting the quill down and moving to answer the door. Spike had been long gone for the day, fetching supplies and spending time with his friends. The quiet was perfect for me to focus, sorting through these burnt fragments that Lyra had left was a pain. Sentences and fragments everywhere and piecing them together to tell a story was difficult. My only saving grace was that historians of this time period used cursive, and it allowed me to piece together minute differences in order to fit some of the pieces together.

Lyra stands at the door as I open it, quickly rushing in and staring at me. "Twilight, I had an idea!"

I shake my head, moving to lift my coffee from the table as I take a sip, staring at the mare as I wait for her to continue. She sits in silence before realizing I was waiting for her and continuing to speak.

"A lot of these pages are missing, but the ones that we have of those missing have a lot of the same patterns, do they not?"

I frown for a moment. "Yes, they're all written in the same handwriting, which shows that..."

"Not that!" She sits down, trying to articulate her thoughts clearly. "They're all burnt or torn or various other blemishes, but they're all torn."

"Yes?" I answer, unsure for a moment where she was heading for it. "If they were turned to ashes, we would be unable to retrieve more."

"But what if they weren't?" Lyra sits for a moment, pulling the aged book from my table and ripping a page out of the back of it to my horror. I gasp, about to mutter something before she crumbles up the pages and throws it into my coffee.

"LYRA! What are you doing, this is a priceless"

"Shhh, I'm proving a point." She said, pulling the page out of my coffee and hoofing it to me. "If you were to restore this, how much damage would have been done to it?"

"Lyra, you can't just do that to a work of that much value. Even the paper is priceless, a chance for a researcher to understand more about the fields of magic that were used..." I trail off, my horn glowing in a restoration spell before it fizzles, my eyes staring in disbelief.

The paper was torn in a straight line from top to bottom. While it dripped with coffee, I could tell from my restoration spell that the ability to write on the paper had been unchanged. I scanned the paper again, glancing at the book for a moment before quietly tearing another page from the book and examining the edge. It resisted being torn, but when it did tear, it tore on a line to avoid any writing that had been done on the bulk of the paper. "This is amazing..."

Lyra nodded. "The book is clearly enchanted to prevent natural destruction of the paper."

I nodded. "I agree, but we can both agree that the destruction that occurred was not natural. It was pony-made. This, while a great tool if we could replicate it, doesn't quite help with our problems of missing most of over 200 pages."

"It doesn't. But..." She lifted the coffee-soaked page, lighting the fireplace and tossing it into the fireplace. "What if those pages aren't gone, but they're just missing?"

I rolled my eyes, lifting the pages out and extinguishing the fire. "A natural fire won't test that." I frowned for a moment. "It'll need a magical attack..." I trailed off. "I'm sorry", I said, realizing what I had to do as Lyra nodded, taking a step back. I tossed the paper into the air and then hit it with my strongest incineration spell, closing my eyes as I expect to see the worst.

Lyra laughs in excitement, her laugh forcing me to open my eyes again. As my magic faded, the paper comes down, blackened and charred, splitting into fragments as it landed upon the ground. I pressed my hoof to it, pushing on it to test its strength and I gasped as I saw the results.

A spell of that magnitude should have turned the paper to an unreadable ash. Instead, what I had was a piece of paper that was now split into a multitude of fragments, near identical to the ones I had been piecing together. "Lyra..."

She nodded. "That was my theory. The paper doesn't burn, either through natural or pony-made means. Which means, as long as the spell that is cast on this paper still has energy..." She trails off, gesturing for me to finish.

"The words written on it would be safe." I let out a breath I didn't realize I had been holding. "Did you check the room that you found this in?"

She nodded. "The room, the building, the surrounding ruins." She lifted her bag, dropping a few paltry fragments onto the floor. "That's why I had to come to you. They're not in the immediate area as far as I can tell."

I scanned the walls of the library for a moment, frowning. "They wouldn't be...fragments of that size are old...and light..." I lifted the newspaper, checking the weather for a moment before blowing onto the fragments on the floor, watching as my breath picked the pieces off the floor for a little bit. "I don't know where to look..." I admitted after a moment of thought. "But I know where to start asking."

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

Is this an anthology?

[Starswirl the Beardless]

Well, this is definitely quite a unique story, and I don't mean that in a bad way. You have an interesting premise, both in narrative terms and in terms of your format. What you have already is pretty good, but I'd caution you to be careful going forward. The [DATA REDACTED] writing style can make a story very good or very bad depending on how it's used. I've seen too many bad SCP authors who think that deleting random words automatically makes a story more gripping. Just remember to use it in moderation, and only when it actually adds to the experience, and you should be fine.