The Choice of Greatness

by ThoriumIsBestActinid

Prologue

The door cracked open, kicking up dust as Twilight Sparkle trotted into the room. Her eyes scanned quickly, taking in the whole of the room with the light from her horn. Not grand in size by any means, yet it had the tall ceilings of a storeroom. Dust-covered mounds of wooden debris dotted the floor and while the unicorn did move rather quickly, she was careful to not accidentally disturb any of the piles. She quickly turned back to the entrance and called out to her companion.

“Rainbow! Come on, I found another room we can search!”

Dash slowly walked into the room, her head down with an expression of exhaustion and annoyance.

“How did I get roped into this?” she grumbled to herself.

“You said you wanted to come!”

“You said it was going to be like Daring Do!”

“I did no such thing. I merely said that I wanted to explore a forgotten building in an abandoned town on the edge of the Everfree forest and asked if anyone wanted to come with me.”

“Oh come on! That’s practically the setup for Daring Do and the Book of the Dead!”

Rainbow sulked the best she could on four hooves. Ordinarily, she would have been hovering and would have crossed her forelegs in front of her, but she didn’t want another fit of sneezes and glares from Twilight. Nopony makes that mistake twice.

“And yet you’re still here,” Twilight teased.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m the best,” Rainbow said, rolling her eyes. “I’ll take this side I guess?”

Twilight nodded and promptly began searching through the nearest pile. While the other rooms were long stripped of any valuables and yielded nothing interesting, this room was hidden in the basement level. The entryway was blocked by a collapsed wall, which wasn’t much of a problem for the duo.

Twilight returned the ceramic shards to the scrap wood stack and moved to the next pile.

Alright, Twilight, no need to worry, there are a plethora of piles to sift through. I mean, nopony is expected to find something culturally relevant, valuable or otherwise interesting in her first—

“Hey, Twi, I found something.”

Twilight dropped the wooden chair leg and raced over to Rainbow’s pile, bumping the pegasus aside. Dash had been dragging what looked to be a metal-bound wooden chest out from under the rubble. Twilight carefully levitated the chest to a clear spot in the room. She summoned a feather duster and lightly cleaned off the front of the chest. A small bronze plaque was placed above the latch. Twilight and Rainbow leaned in to read the tarnished lettering, when Twilight suddenly gasped and turned quickly to Rainbow, hitting the pegasus in the head with her horn. Rainbow groaned as Twilight began speaking excitedly.

“This is Silverspeed’s chest! His collections of Pre-Classical artifacts have helped historians for centuries. Every few decades a chest or box of his is discovered in some old attic or back room that ponies forgot about.”

Rainbow rubbed her forehead and muttered something about warning her next time.

“Here, let me open it,” Twilight said as she carefully unlatched the top with her magic. Inside were smaller boxes with straw around them. Twilight levitated one of the boxes out, and after some inspection, she opened it.

“Hmm, this looks like there are a few intact scrolls. Oh, I can’t wait to see what they say!” Twilight said excitedly.

Carefully unrolling the ancient parchment, she began reading the still legible script.

“Based on the dates, it looks like these are from the 430s B.C....” Twilight commented.

“B.C.?” Rainbow asked curiously.

“Yes,” Twilight began in her lecturing tone, “ Before Celestia. Year zero is when Celestia and Luna began ruling Equestria. There’s actually current debate on whether or not to add Luna to the descriptor, as the nomenclature arose roughly a century after Nightmare Moon’s banishment and I’m sure scholars wouldn’t have wanted to offend—”

“That’s nice Twilight, but what do the scrolls actually say?” Rainbow interjected.

“Oh,” Twilight said sheepishly, “ I haven’t read them yet.”

Twilight scanned the page.

“This looks like correspondence between one of the head servants of the main castle of the Unicorn Kingdom, Bootshine, and the host of a manor house, Holiday Faire. We could learn so much about the day-to-day lives of these ponies. How exciting!”

“Yeah, exciting.” Rainbow said sarcastically while sitting on her haunches. For her, this was even more boring than—

Twilight gasped and turned Rainbow’s head toward one of the scrolls.

“Look! Read this one!” she exclaimed hurriedly.

Dear Holiday Faire, ….