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Chapter 112,250 words

Chapter 10

The Generation That Even Time Has Forgotten

Chapter 10

“Hm, I know that that book is around here somewhere...” Spike mumbled to himself while he paced back and forth in his dormitory.

“Come on, Spike! You’ve been saying that for the past half hour!” Minty whined.

“Well, why don’t you make yourself useful and help find it?” he asked, “It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do by yourself.”

“Fair enough,” Sunny Daze replied, followed by her cartwheeling over to a shelf of books.

“Hey, you guys! Fwee- I think this might be it,” Thistle Whistle offered, placing her hoof on a brick in the wall. It was engraved with six jewels arranged in a circle. The stone recessed into the wall a little under the pressure of her hoof, causing her to yelp and yank her foreleg off of it in fear. The block creeped back into its original position.

“Oh, yes! How could I have forgotten?” Spike smiled. He walked over to the brick, disregarding the shaking pegasus, and placed his hand over it. The stone sunk into the wall as before and, after a few moments, finally made it to the very back. There was an audible clicking noise as a mechanism was released, dropping a book into the recently revealed gap in the wall.

Spike extended his arm into the crevice and stroked the binding. “It’s been a very long time,” he whispered, partially to himself. He gingerly grabbed the book and teetered over to his bed, haphazardly dropping it on a cushion do to its weight. It landed in a puff of dust.

The ponies gathered around and inspected the cover, which depicted two alicorns, who Twilight recognized as Celestia and Luna, harnessing The Elements of Harmony. She tried her best not to be annoyed when the others identified them as ‘pegacorns’, for the term was only used by fillies and even they were quickly taught the proper word.

“Oh my,” Rainbow Dash gasped, fawning over the rainbow of color flowing down the middle of the vibrantly engraved picture, "That’s the most gorgeous rainbow I’ve ever seen, darlings!"

Spike nodded and reached out to open it, but soon realized the poor condition of the paper it was made of. It could possibly break if he applied too much pressure to it. He quickly tried to think of a way to read the fragile text.

“Allow me,” Twilight said with a small hint of a playful smile tugging at her lips as she realized his thought process, "Don't worry, it won't break. If I recall correctly, important books like these are always protected by magic, so even the oldest paper won't break." She effortlessly formed a gentle glow around her horn and surrounded the book cover with a similar aura, easily pushing it open to reveal the intricately decorated title page.

"Um, could you give us a bit of background knowledge on The Elements of Harmony first?" Wysteria asked, "None of us here know anything about them."

"Oh, of course!" Twilight smiled, lifting the book off of the bed sheets and closer to her face. "Let me just find the page quickly..." Twilight flipped through the book's contents, skimming any pages that looked promising, before finally locating the information she was looking for.

“Thank you, darling,” Rainbow Dash replied as the book was levitated over to her. She cleared her throat a little and put a hoof on the starting sentence, tracing it along as she went. She subtly bobbed her head along with the sentences. “‘The Elements of Harmony are an embodiment of the magic of friendship. When activated by the Element Bearers, they can create one of the most powerful bursts of energy known to ponykind, stronger even than the power of the princesses themselves.’” Rainbow lifted her head from the text. “Princesses? You mean like Rarity and Wysteria?”

The lavender mare’s face turned bright red. “I’m not really a princess,” Wysteria argued, “That was just what Spike thought back when we first found him.”

“Oh, yes, and I must apologize for that,” Spike replied, “I had just woken up from a thousand year nap, and I was still a bit woozy from it.”

“So who are these princesses?” Sunny Daze asked, “And what are these ‘Element Bearers’?” Twilight waved a hoof, indicating for them to continue reading. The ponies turned back to the book.

“‘The Elements of Harmony were first discovered by the princesses themselves,” Minty read, picking up where Rainbow left off, “Now Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, on top of having to raise the sun and moon respectively each day and night, had to keep the balance between order and chaos. However, when Princess Luna was turned into Nightmare Moon and was locked away by her own sister, their connection to The Elements was broken.’ Wow, talk about drama, huh?” Thistle Whistle kicked Minty a little.

“This is serious! Don’t go making jokes about it-fwee!” she scolded, “Let me read the thing!”

Twilight hesitantly brought the volume up to the hovering pegasus, not exactly sure whether having her read from it was such a great idea. The sentences might be butchered up because of her speech impairment. Luckily she was able to restrain herself from whistling long enough to read a fair portion of the text.

“‘Fortunately, The Elements of Harmony weren’t needed until 1,000 years later, when Nightmare Moon returned to make her revenge. She was soon vanquished and returned to her normal self by six ponies who had rediscovered The Elements. They inherited the task of being the Element Bearers, each representing one of the six Elements. Applejack represents Honesty, Pinkamena “Pinkie” Diane Pie represents Laughter, Fluttershy represents Kindness, Rarity represents Generosity, Rainbow Dash represents Loyalty, and Twilight Sparkle represents Magic.’”

“Woah! Twilight, you’re famous!” Sunny cried, “That’s like, so awesome!”

“I’m afraid that I’m not exactly ‘famous’, but I’m glad that you think so,” Twilight said with a smile, her cheeks turning a lighter shade than normal, “So, um, is that all of the information that you need? Because I really need to start digging in that book for some answers.”

“I think that we get the gist of it, darling. We wouldn’t want to keep you from getting back home,” Rainbow Dash answered, nudging the floating volume back over to the lavender unicorn. It drifted lazily back over and stopped in front of Twilight’s face, who only stopped to give Rainbow an appreciative smile before turning her complete attention to the book.

“Now let’s see,” she mumbled, skimming the paragraphs. After a few moments, she gasped in surprise. “There’s something in here about you guys!”

“What?” Minty asked, trotting over to Twilight’s side. She inspected the line of words that Twilight pointed to. “Oh my gosh, she’s right!” The others made an audible gasp.

“Let me see that,” Spike said, swiping the book out of Twilight’s magical grasp, somewhat forgetting about the book’s fragility. “It says, ‘Technically, The Elements were used before they were consciously discovered. One such incident is when the tradition of the Rainbow Celebration was started. The two princesses believed that it would be fitting for the unicorns to create the rainbows instead of just rely on nature for them, as it might heighten their appreciation for the multicolored phenomena. Therefore, the sisters used their magic combined with The Elements of Harmony to create the wand used for the celebration.

“The unique thing about this specific event, however, is that this decision was made after that world was ascended, so The Elements had to be used to temporarily create a breech in the barrier to allow the change to be made.’ Why yes, I remember that! I believe it was just before I was to begin my nap.” The dragon sighed as he recalled his memories.

“What does ‘ascended’ mean?” Wysteria asked slowly. Twilight scrunched her face in thought.

“It’s kind of like, um, where an area is placed in its own dimension,” she answered slowly, “However, I’m just going on what I’ve collected so far, and that definitely isn’t much...”

“So The Elements can go into other dimensions?” Sunny inquired, “That’s pretty radical.”

“Yes, but they were princesses after all,” Spike added. After a couple moments of pause, he concluded that nobody had anything left to say and began to turn the page.

“Hold on,” Twilight suddenly said, causing the dragon to freeze, “Read the last sentence again.”

Spike nodded, set the page down, and warily reread the line, “‘The unique thing about this specific event, however, is that this decision was made after that world was ascended, so The Elements had to be used to temporarily create a breech in the barrier to allow the change to be made.’” He lifted his head at her sudden silence, and saw that her face was blank. She put a hoof to her chin and tilted her head in all directions, as if trying to find the answer to whatever she was thinking of somewhere in the room. After a few moments, her face suddenly lit up and an audible gasp escaped her lips.

“That’s it! I know what to do now, everypony!” she shouted, bouncing around the room in her glee, “I know what to do! I’m going home, I’m going home!”

“Oh, darling, that’s fabulous!” Rainbow cheered. The rest of the group rejoiced in the lavender mare’s happiness. It really was the first time they say her genuinely ecstatic since Minty found her on the hill a few short days ago.

“So what are you waiting for?” Thistle Whistle inquired, “Tell us, tell us-fwee!” Twilight stopped her little fit of happiness and began awkwardly kicking the ground a little.

“Well, it’s a bit complicated, and to be totally honest, I’m not even sure it’ll work,” she confessed, “You see, because I’m the student of Princess Celestia, maybe I’ll be able to send a spell over to my dimension to communicate with the others. Maybe that’ll be able to activate The Elements to wear the barrier down enough for a short amount of time so I can walk through it.” She paused, and remembered that the group of ponies before her didn’t know how magic worked, and therefore had no clue how this would be dangerous.

“If anything goes wrong,” she clarified, “Something terrible might happen. Maybe once my spell hits the barrier it sends a shockwave back to me for trying to interfere. Or maybe the barrier could completely shatter and our worlds would combine together. No, this is not a good thing, even though it may sound like it to you all, because Equestria--where I’m from, if you didn’t catch that--is going through a terrible ordeal right now that I really wouldn’t want any of you to go through.” She sighed. “The only way to save Equestria, unfortunately, is with me there. The Elements all need to be present to vanquish the kind of foe we’re up against, and with every passing minute things are getting worse.”

The five native ponies pondered the possibilities for a moment. It was a little on the risky side, but they were willing to go through anything to help their new friend make her way back home.

“If you plan on getting back to Ponyville by tomorrow, I recommend that you leave as soon as possible,” Spike suggested. Twilight smiled and momentarily nuzzled his cheek.

“Thank you, Spike. You really are my number one assistant,” she said gratuitously.

“Glad to be of your assistance, M-Miss Sparkle,” he replied, trying to keep his formal composure but eventually failing. His face flushed crimson red.

“Come on, everypony, we have to save Equestria!” Twilight shouted triumphantly, managing to hold back her giggle from the blushing dragon who had now lost his balance and was sitting on the floor. She led the group out the large doors of the library, hoisting up the saddlebags she had strewn outside, and galloped down the Unicornian roads. Due to the general casualness of the rest of the bystanders, Twilight didn’t anticipate crossing paths with another pony going at a similar high speed. However, she met head on with a familiar unicorn, the two toppling backward with a thud.

“Cheerilee?” Twilight asked, “Is that you?” She helped the other mare to her feet.

“Twilight Sparkle!” Cheerilee cried. The two shared a quick friendly embrace, for they had grown rather fond of each other’s company after their discussion the day before.

“What are you rushing so much about?” Twilight inquired casually. Cheerilee hoisted the magical wand used for making rainbows out from a bag.

“Princess Rarity was fooling around with this earlier,” she sighed, mindlessly waving it around, “She ended up chipping its paint. Now I have to go find someone to fix it.” She pointed to the tip of the wand, which was shaped like a star, and Twilight could see that the pink paint stopped a great deal before the top point, revealing a shimmering gold color underneath.

“However,” Cheerilee went one, inspecting the point, “If she wrecks it again, I’m just going to peel the rest of the paint off.” She ripped off another small chunk of paint. “I’m growing quite fond of this golden color.” She subconsciously picked at the paint flecks for a few moments longer.

“Well, I’m sorry to say it, but we must go our separate ways now,” Twilight said.

“Separate ways?” Cheerilee asked. Twilight nodded.

“I need to go back to Ponyville, and Equestria in that case. I’m afraid I probably won’t be able to see you again...” Twilight trailed off. Cheerilee, instead of breaking out into tears, held her hoof out.

“It was such a pleasure to know you,” she said, “You were one of the most interesting ponies I’ve ever met.” Twilight grasped her hoof, but then opted into holding the other unicorn in a tight hug, forcing herself not to cry.

“If I ever find a way to come back, I promise I will,” Twilight exclaimed, her voice slightly wavering.

“It’s a deal,” Cheerilee replied. She stepped back. “But you must be on your way now! You have a dimension to save!”

Twilight nodded bravely and began to gallop away. When she looked over her shoulder a few moments later, she saw that Lily Lightly had walked up to Cheerilee. They were talking about something that she couldn’t hear, but she inferred that she was telling Lily about her departure.

“Shine on, Twilight Sparkle, shine on!” they both shouted in unison just before Twilight was out of earshot.

On that note, they once again entered the dark forest to begin their journey back to Ponyville.

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