In Reflection, The Same

by Faedelaide

Found

The group walked though the winding hallways for quite a while. Every now and then, there'd be a small barred window that peeked into a dining hall, dance room or private study room, almost all of which were empty, but other than that, the tunnel was devoid of anything interesting. This was something that Rainbow noticed early on, and now that they had been walking for so long, her excitement had now faded into tired regret. She now took up the position next to Gillian, grumpily following behind Twilight and her family.

But things were not any cheerier in the front of the procession. As Twilight relayed her story of the Wall, the brittle star that previously owned the crystal arrow, and the abomination that the three of them had viewed on their way here, Cadance and Shining's faces slowly twisted into dark expressions of horror.

"Celestia knows about all of this?" Cadance muttered.

Twilight shook her head. "I don't think so. As far as I know, neither Equestria nor Griffonstone know about the Wall to the extent that we do. We, and now you, are the only ponies who know what's going on in that ice."

"I can't believe this. Why would Celestia not look into the problem on her own first?" Shining Armor rubbed his head with his hoof in frustration.

"You did tell her about this, right Twi?" Cadance asked her.

Twilice grimaced. "Well..."

Cadance's eyes widened in shock. "You... didn't? You, Twilight Sparkle, Celestia's most faithful and trusted student didn't send her a letter telling her what was going on?"

"I know, I wanted to, but..."

"But you've staying up all night 'researching' so much that you barely remember your own name," Rainbow interrupted.

Twilight turned to her friend. 'What are you talking about?"

"Applejack told me you've been keeping Spike up all night with your weird ramblings about 'being free' or 'destroying the ice' and 'avenging your kin', whatever all that means."

Twilight was thoroughly confused at Rainbow's declaration. "I suspected I might've been sleep talking, but I didn't expect it to be that bad. But the only night I haven't slept was last night."

Rainbow remained skeptical. Great, now Applejack was making the rest of her friends suspicious of her. That was what she needed on top of Twilice's constant badgering and the Wall threatening to collapse any day now, for all of her friends to think she was speaking madness, which apparently she was.

Cadance could sense the mounting tension in the air, and so spoke out loud. "We should reach the royal library any minute now. If there's any place to look for old, obscure historical texts on the Crystal Empire, it's there."

"Just try not to drool on the books when you get there, Twily. They're pretty old," Shining Armor joked.

"Haha, very funny," Twilight smiled at her brother. At least someone around here wasn't constantly on her tail about this whole mess.

Within the minute, the group had found themselves standing in front of a small indentation in the rough crystal walls of the hallway. It was shaped like a door, but there were no buttons, knobs or levers that might open it. Again though, Cadance was undeterred, and walked right up to the door. For a moment, bright pink light emanated from her horn, and in the next instant, the crystal cracked and splintered, slowly crawling into the wall around it until an open doorway presented itself.

"So cool..." Gillian spoke for the first time in a while. Twilight could see that same spark of intrigue in her eyes, though it was heavily faded. Twilight couldn't help but to feel responsible for that dreary, depressed fog that covered her features. This was all her fault. She really needed to message Celestia.

The group entered the library, and Twilight was taken aback at its size. She had already been to the local library in town when she and her friends battled against Sombra, but this glorified study room wouldn't have been able to fill a single row of that library. In the middle of the room sat a small table, and adjacent to it were two sizeable bookshelves crammed with dusty, well aged books. As Twilight walked up to the shelves to examine the small collection of old texts, she feared they might turn to dust if she touched them.

"What is this?" she turned to ask her sister.

"Some of the local historians say it was an old induction chamber for new rulers; a sort of room to study up on the ins and outs of ruling the Crystal Empire. Now it's more of a relic. All the books are incredibly outdated by modern standards, so we kind of just left the room as it was," Cadance responded.

"Then it's ok for me to look through these, right?"

"Of course!" Cadance smiled.

"Well, Cadance and I have to get back to our duties. If you find anything, be sure to tell us right away," Shining armor stated.

The two turned around to reenter the dark hallway, but Cadance paused before she did. "Oh, and Twilight? Don't forget to write a letter to Celestia about all of this, I think she deserves to know about what's going on."

Twilight nodded. "I will, I promise. Thank you, Cadance."

Cadance responded with another smile, and without another word, the two left the small library. The crystal door clattered closed behind the couple, leaving the three of them alone in serene silence.

Twilight cleared her throat. "Alright, I guess we should get started."

"Yeah, you two have fun with that, I'm gonna catch some Zs," Rainbow layed against the wall, intent not to move for the next few hours.

Twilight sighed. "Fine. Gillian, you're still with me on this, right?"

"Yeah, sure... Fine," the griffon spoke in an almost inaudible tone.

With Cadance and Shining Armor gone, the mood of this room changed rapidly, and in a direction Twilight wasn't entirely comfortable with. But none the less, she had to do this, for the sake of Equestria. And so, with her goal set, she walked up to the bookshelf, and grabbed what was going to be the first of the many books she would read today.

Comments

[ponepony]

"Applejack told me you've been keeping Spike up all night with your weird ramblings about 'being free' or 'destroying the ice' and 'avenging your kin', whatever all that means."

Is she ever going to tell Cadance how much her other self loves her?

[TheArchive]

"Applejack told me you've been keeping Spike up all night with your weird ramblings about 'being free' or 'destroying the ice' and 'avenging your kin', whatever all that means."

Eh, at this point I might stop here. It's an interesting premise and pretty well written, but the characterization has just been rubbing me the wrong way. Everyone just seems really callous and kind of mean spirited for no real reason and most of the conflict so far just seems incredibly contrived. It's happened more and more over the chapters, but this is one part that just leaped out at me. So they've all been seeing their best friend (practically family) weirdly rambling about things like destroying and avenging and they just write it off?!

They've dealt with mind control and impersonators and basically a million other things that should be setting off red flags for every last one of them and they just aren't doing anything. At this point when I see them reveal things Twilight has been doing and just antagonize each other all I can do is roll my eyes. There's so much good here and it's interesting, but I just don't really like the execution I guess.

[Giltor]

11326750
Yeah, too many obvious things that no one pays attention to. For example, Cadance, who talk about the importance of send a letter to Celestia. She won’t think of writing it herself, is she?