Immutable

by Rocinante

3

Twilight’s magic embraced a pile of broken glass, the shards lifted from the snow dusted stone floor and joined together. Slowly a broken window became whole again. A line of restored glass marked her steady progress. But, a latticework of broken windows ran both before and above her.

The snow had been light so far this winter. With a little luck, she would have the room restored before the first hard snow. This wing had once been a beautiful arboretum, the walls more glass than stone; carefully tended plants everywhere. She could remember how they had once looked. While she would never know how much of the vision she had forgotten, much of it was still in the recess of her mind.

It was going to take her a good month to get this presentable. She would rather focus her energies elsewhere. But, she needed a central gathering point for her visitors. The matched pair of life-sized statues of Luna and Celestia made this room ideal. Not to mention it was just impressive. Or, rather it had been. She hoped to get it half as pretty again.

She had been here eight years now. The first five, her only company had been her adopted child Spike: the little dragon’s company had kept her sane. Then the visitors started showing up.

Rumors of lights inside the castle spread fast. When a few pegasi reported doors and windows back in place, the first pilgrims had ventured out on the dangerous trek. The child keeper had seemed a joke at first, a blasphemous squatter on holy ground; the faithful scorned her. When a group decided to chase her out of the castle, they became the first to call her Priestess. The stone walls listened to the young mare. The castle itself obeyed her.

“This is a holy place. Our gods walked these halls,” they were told. The filly mastered them, cornered and captured them. Then, she showed compassion and knowledge. The young mare answered their questions and offered guidance, she knew the histories better than the oldest of them. She became their Priestess in that moment. Priestess of day and night: her name was Twilight.

“Twilight!” Spike yelled walking into the arboretum. “Another pony wants to see you.”

Twilight sighed. The visitors were getting more frequent. They had been novel at one time. But, now she was getting tired of their constant interruption. Yet, they were her duty to counsel. She would be glad when she had this room setup for worship; then she could have a schedule.

Imagining the arboretum packed with devout ponies, Twilight pondered the great glass room. It would be the perfect place to hold the summer sun and winter moon celebrations. Far better that the merger ones that she had held in the ballroom. The large room, with its massive east-facing windows, had worked at the time. But, every solstice more ponies had shown up. The last Summer Sun celebration had almost overloaded the room; a larger venue was required. The arboretum was three times bigger. She could make a fine homage to the gods here.

Twilight sighed at the thought of how much labor this one room would take - perhaps she could talk some of the supplicants into helping her clean and fix the place. They had already taken up the practice of gifting her food. She had encouraged that idea. While she had learned to forage the local plants and grow a small garden, the food the pilgrims brought both tasted better and saved her the time of foraging.

“She’s over there,” Spike sad.

With the clop of hooves approaching and the flap of Spike’s claws receding. Twilight finished one last window before turning to her guest. She had expected to see a pony wearing the all black or white robe of the pilgrim. Instead, she found a stallion in the sharp formal clothing of a young noblepony.

They both regarded each other for a moment, before the stallion spoke up. “Twilight? is that really you?” he asked.

Her murky, over-complicated memory stirred for a moment. The handsome white unicorn with a blue mane looked into her eyes. “Twi-lii?” he asked again.

“Shining!” she squealed. Lunging forward she wrapped her hooves around his neck.

Falling to his haunches he returned her embrace. “We thought you were dead,” his voice hitched.

Twilight pulled back in shame. Her mother, father, and brother; she had forgotten them. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Her brother pulled her back to his chest and held her there for a long while. “How did you find me,” Twilight finally broke the silence.

“We never stopped looking,” he answered. “When rumors started about a filly named Twilight, living in the old Everfree castle, I came to see if it was you.”

Twilight startled at the idea - rumors of her spreading across Equestria. She didn’t know what that meant for her. “They chose me. I’m the keeper of the castle now. I know their secrets.”

“Who did?” he asked

“The goddesses. They let me into their history and allowed me to open doors. I even got my cutie mark!”

Shining craned his neck to see his sister’s mark. “You’re telling me you can’t come home. Aren’t you?”

Twilight nodded with a sad smile.

Shining stood with a heavy sigh, and looked about the ruin. “So. They were real?”

“Are real.” Twilight corrected. Walking towards the statue of Luna, she idly started cleared away the wild brush around it.

“Then, where are they now? Are they really the mares in the moon?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted “Whatever happened after they left the castle... I don’t know”.

Shining pondered the statue for a moment, before helping his sister clear its base. They had cleared most of the weeds when his hoof hit something hard and heavy. Cutting down the grass with his magic, he found two more just like it, three stone spheres with runes carved into them arranged evenly around the statue. “What are these?” he asked.

His little sister walk up and examine one of them. “I’ve never-” Her words froze along with the rest of her when she placed a hoof on one. Magic crackle through the air, he had to look away when her eyes lit up like burning phosphor.

His sister’s voice came out of every stone, “The stars are aligning. The cycle is almost complete. On the longest day of the thousandth year of exile, two gods will fight for the throne of Equestria. Only the Elements of Harmony can erase the stains of hate and bring the new golden age-”

Twilight staggered back from the orb. Her vision cleared, she saw her brother looking at her in slack-jawed awe. He rushed to her side and helped her sit down. “Are you alright?” he asked her.

Spike voice echoed through the chamber “Twilight! Twilight, what was that?” The little dragon ran full speed to her. Stopping just an arm span away from the two ponies. He eyed Shining with an unvoiced accusation. Spike started to speak, but Twilight stopped him.

“It’s alright Spike. This is my brother... From before I came here,” Twilight said. Looking between the two for a moment she smiled, “I guess I should introduce you. Spike, this is my big brother, Shining Armor. Shining, this is Spike.”

Shining gave the little dragon a polite bow, which Spike returned. “So, how did you two meet?” Shining asked.

“She’s my Mom,” Spike answered, leaning into Twilight.

Twilight couldn’t help but snicker at the expression that came over her brother. “He hatched when I found the Sister’s bedrooms,” she giggled. “I’ve raised him like a son though.”

She threw a foreleg around Spike and hugged him, before getting to her hooves and examined the three spheres again. This time careful not to touch them. “I think, I know these,” she said. Trotting across the room she leveled the weeds around Celestia’s statue, with a few well-aimed whips of magic.

Shining found her looking at two similar orbs. He noticed the each of the five had their own rune engraved on them. “Well...” he asked.

Twilight scowled at the two spheres. “I need to go up to the bedrooms.”

Spike hopped on her back as if her statement had been a command for him to do that very action. Before Shining could ask anything, Twilight leaned against him and he felt her magic surround them. The world shifted and with a pop of light and sound, and he found himself in a lavish room. “Where are we?” he gasped. Taking a few steps away from his sister he examined the furnishing. Even growing up in a nobel’s household he had never seen craftsponyship of this level.

“This was the waiting room for the princesses bedrooms. You can’t come into their rooms. So, wait here.”

Looking to Twilight, he saw her command a marble door to open and disappear behind it, with the dragon still on her back. A moment later she emerged with a stack of books in her levitation. Dropped them at his hooves, she crossing the chamber and vanished into the room with the ebony door. Shining smiled, she was still the same old Twilight.

He had just started to examine the books when she returned. Sitting besides him as she added several scrolls to the pile. “Ok Spike. Lay out those star charts if you would,” Twilight said.

The little dragon jumped down and dutifully unrolled the scrolls, pinning down their corners with little gold and silver weights. “I’m going to go take a nap,” he mumbled before lazily wandering out of the room and into the halls of the castle. “Night Mom, night Uncle Shining,” the little voice echoed.

Pushing one book toward her brother, its pages came to life under her power, eventually coming to rest on an illustrated page. “The Elements of Harmony,” she said, pointing to the entry below the image. “The sisters used them to defeat Discord.”

“Discord was real too!?”

”Yea, he’s turned to stone now. He’s in the side courtyard.”

Shining again found himself lost for words. Looking closely he noticed the depiction of the Elements, looked like those stone spheres from earlier. “Then, could those statues actually be Celestia and Luna turned to stone.” It was as good a theory as any. If one god you be turned to stone, so could another.

“No. I remember them being carved.” Twilight closed her eyes and searched her strange memory. It had taken a few years for the statues to be carved. The blocks brought in before the walls had been finished. But the spheres... She had only the vaguest memory of them. She had seen them moved. They had been important. There had been six of them.

Comments

[Skeeter The Lurker]

So, Twilight's a cult leader?

Stranger things, I suppose.

~Skeeter The Lurker

[djthomp]

Okay, this is getting fascinating. I like how Shining showed up, and how quickly he understood that it wasn't going to be as easy as simply bringing Twilight home.

“Discord was real too!?”
”Yea, he’s turned to stone now. He’s in the side courtyard.”

Hah!