Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria…
…there came a period of conflict, when the forces of light flickered against an unrelenting, rapacious shadow. The Princess of the Night, Luna Oneiroi Nyx, took up arms against her own sister, Celestia Sol Invictus, in an attempt to wrest control of the daytime from her. Jealousy had wormed its way into her heart, and behind jealousy came the darkness of hate, giving rise to the terrible entity known as Nightmare Moon.
Long was the battle, fierce their clash, until, finally, only the Dark Princess stood. Laughing, she took in the moment, relishing her victory...
...and in that moment, victory turned to defeat. Celestia, in a last-ditch effort, summoned the Elements of Harmony to her side, even those which had once aligned themselves to her sibling, and let their magic flow through her.
Joy, Kindness, Loyalty, Honesty, Generosity, and Magic came together, brought to bear by the Princess of the Day’s near-indomitable will, and combined their strength in a mighty maelstrom of colors. Nightmare Moon, in shock at the sudden turning of the tide, attempted retreat, but to no avail.
With a final scream of terror, she was banished from the realm, sealed into the moon to await the end of her imprisonment.
But even in the peaceful years afterward, with Discord forever singing his silent opera, Sombra adrift with the tides of Time, and Tirek locked in his fiery prison deep in the bowels of Tartarus, there was an air of tension throughout Equestria.
There were three reasons for this. The first, and most obvious, was the lack of a second Princess to complete the Diarchy. Without their liege-lady, the Thestrals, the quiet, bat-like, oft-misunderstood Pegasi guardians of Luna, felt cast adrift. Seeing no purpose in the absence of the Night Princess, they left in a slow trickle, swearing to return when their protector did. Culture began to stagnate; Luna, who often disguised herself as a small Unicorn called “Muse”, was an affluent patron of the arts, and without her guidance, the musicians, poets, and painters slowly laid aside their tools. The economy suffered, outward expansion into the Wilds ceased, and a feeling of fear began to infect every aspect of society.
The second was Celestia herself. For many years after the battle with her sister, she refused to be seen, delegating several tasks to her advisors, eventually appearing only to raise her sun and Luna’s moon. While Luna’s punishment was to watch the world go by beneath her in solitude, Celestia’s was to live with the knowledge that she had sent her sister away for something she felt could have been prevented. If and Only became her bywords, sleep ceased to have rest, and her appetite faded away. There was nothing she could have done to help her people, for she had failed her own sister…and more.
For, by her actions to preserve the world from night eternal, Celestia had robbed Equestria of its greatest weapons.
The third reason for the underlying stress in Equestria was divided into six colorless spheres, lying in repose within the ruined palace of the Twin Pony Sisters, deep within the Everfree Forest, which grew untamed and unchecked without the care of the Diarchy.
Eventually, however, Celestia’s black depression passed, though never completely. The Ponies of Equestria had built a new city for her, upon a mountain called Canterlot, and she resided in the shining white palace at its summit. They had done this act of love and devotion in the ten years that she had sequestered herself away, and Celestia, touched in her heart of hearts, repaid their kindness with her own gifts.
Schools, land grants, military expansion, tax breaks, paved roads, trade routes to distant lands…she did everything she could in her power to empower her people, to make sure they knew that, though Luna was gone, their Sun Princess would never abandon them.
But it wasn’t enough.
The years passed. One hundred...two hundred…five hundred years after Luna’s Fall, and still, the miasma of unease remained in the very earth of Equestria. Petty squabbles between the three races of Earth, Unicorn, and Pegasus Pony kept erupting, a handful of them even threatening to turn into all-out civil war. The other creatures of the world, the warlike Griffons in particular, made repeated little slights to the sovereignty of Equestria, from “mistaken” border incursions to ambassadors being extraordinarily rude.
Celestia, troubled by these events and with no clue how to remedy them, wracked her brains to come up with a solution. Finally, with no other avenue to turn to, she went to the one entity who would know, the one creature as old as Time itself.
Discord.
Predictably, he proved to be little help; the capricious creature, locked in his stone prison, only laughed at her, the psychic echoes ringing in her mind for days afterward. The only thing he would tell her was to “look for what is missing”.
For another year, Celestia worried at the problem of her crumbling kingdom, even as she sensed the foundation wasting away bit by bit.
If the current rate of decay kept constant, she hypothesized that Equestria could last for perhaps another few centuries, perhaps even until the prophesied return of Nightmare Moon…but in what shape would it be?
Discord’s riddle mocked her, in his voice, no less. “Look for what is missing”? All Celestia had to do was look to the empty space at her side and see what was missing, see the lack of laughter, of honesty, of loyalty in her life—
Revelation struck her.
The land’s troubles had not begun until after the defeat of Nightmare Moon. The Elements of Harmony, the very things that defeated both Discord and Tirek, had turned to stone, their power undetectable to even her own senses.
Was their power even more intrinsic to the very land she walked on and flew over than suspected? Could they be what kept the ponies of Equestria tight-knit and friendly to one another, what kept the other races from being aggressive?
Summoning the greatest minds of the time, Princess Celestia set them on the task of researching the Elements, to find out if they were, indeed, as necessary as she thought, and, if so, how to revive them.
Alas, Starswirl the Bearded had disappeared many, many years before, and nopony in this forum had proved to be one-tenth his equal; Celestia masked her disappointment in their failures with grace, giving those who gave their all in this endeavor commendations that led them to new heights within their fields.
Another decade passed, and still Celestia ruminated upon the problem, posing it to genius after prodigy after wunderkind, but to no avail. Time after time, she gave this issue to the brightest sparks she could find, under the mask of hypothetical problems.
Time after time, they returned to her, crestfallen at their failure.
Time after time, she would nuzzle them and send them on their way with her blessing.
And then, 527 years after the Breaking of Harmony, a small orange unicorn came to Celestia. He stood in front of her, looking up at her with wide, red eyes half-hidden by a smile, and bowed.
“I know how it can be done, my Princess.”
And so was born Restoration…
The Royal Library of Canterlot is a large place, as anyone who is familiar with the Castle Canterlot can say. Of course, the Castle itself, not counting the grounds, is a massive building, easily half the size of Ponyville in floor area; the majority of that space consists of servant’s quarters and guest rooms for visiting dignitaries and the like, along with random ballrooms and storage spaces.
The largest chambers are the Grand Entryway, where the Grand Galloping Gala is held annually (due to its easy access to the rest of the Castle, including the Gardens and Menagerie), the Kitchens and Common Room, a necessity due to the sizable number of creatures living under the Diarchy’s wings, and then the Royal Archives, which naturally include the free-to-all Canterlot Library. The Library takes up only a small portion of the Archives proper, however; the Archives themselves are considered “Off-Limits” to those without the proper clearance.
Even the Princesses themselves observe this ironclad rule (though it took some getting used to for Princess Luna; the concept of “no, not even Royalty allowed without express permission” was rather foreign to her, and it took near two hours of explanation by one of the Librarians to her to get the message across to the Princess. The majority of this time was spent repeating her quiet arguments as Luna insisted upon using the Royal Canterlot Voice, despite the universal “Quiet-in-the-Library” rule observed worldwide), and ask for access from the Head Archivist, Dusty Tome, or her assistant, Scroll Scrivener…
“Ah-CHOO!!”
…the latter of which was busy dusting off the shelves of his little corner of the archives with a wing, humming to himself.
“TCHEW!!!”
And sneezing.
Of course, it wasn’t what the average pony would call sneezing in the fact that it was only half as loud, if that, of a regular sneeze; Scroll Scrivener had long ago perfected that most arcane of Librarian arts: Doing Everything Quietly.
He was of average size for a Pegasus, which is to say a bit smaller than the average Earth or Unicorn pony; his coat was a pleasing shade of brown, closer to tan than most, with a well-kept black mane and tail, both cut short in last season’s style. His eyes, a quiet shade of green, were shielded behind a pair of square-cut reading glasses, and he blinked owlishly at the world around him.
Well, specifically at the shelf he had just finished dusting. Scroll Scrivener frowned slightly at the thin patina of dust already settling back on to the varnished surface of the oaken plank, huffing slightly through his nose.
His right wing ruffled itself irritably, and its mate did so as well, albeit in a rather stiff and muted fashion. If Scroll had told Dusty Tome once, he had told her a thousand times: “We need to get the shelves cleaned up, or all that dust will be a nuisance in the future.”
Of course, what with him being a mere young stallion of 23 and the Head Archivist having had the advantage of decades of experience over him, the old Unicorn had merely given him the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head and a nudge on the rear toward the play area (which was happened to be the infernal, never-ending stack of scrolls and books to be recatalogued).
Scroll Scrivener shook his head as he brandished his good wing and once again tried to clear the dust, albeit a bit more carefully than last time. It wasn’t as if he disliked Dusty; he loved her, he really did! She just had this bad habit of wanting to put off little things again and again until they piled up into a big thing.
Take today, for example; Dusty Tome had known her Telekinesis License had to be renewed for the last six months, and waited the day before she was to be slapped with a hefty fine to go and get the new tag saying she was allowed to use levitation magic in public and on the job. It wasn’t that Scroll Scrivener really minded, at all; he rather liked being left in charge of the Archives…not that he did anything really important, per se, it just felt good to be in a position of trust was all…but it had to be the same day that a letter appeared in a bright flash of magefire inside her desk’s In-Box that informed him of an impending Royal Visit, and would the Head Archivist be so kind as to bestow permission upon Princesses Celestia and Twilight Sparkle to access the Royal Archives at three this afternoon, it is a matter of supreme importance, thank you very much, HRH Princess Celestia, Scion of the Day, Diarch of Equestria, etc etc et al.
Of course, this letter had appeared five minutes after Dusty Tome had informed Scroll Scrivener of her departure and promptly left.
Which left Scroll Scrivener in a pickle; the shelves needed dusting, the floors needed sweeping, the windows needed washing, the pencils and quills needed restocking, and that infernal, never-ending pile of scrolls and books needed cataloguing, but none of that could be done until the shelves had their much-needed dusting, and that was more than a lone, lame Pegasus could handle!
Scroll paused momentarily to shoot a cross glare at his left wing, lying flat against his barrel; granted, this job would be difficult even if he had use of both wings (there were over 250 shelves, each twice the size of a fully-grown Bull Minotaur, which was tall), but he would have had much better headway if only…
Heh, he thought. If only…
He shook his head at his own foolishness, turning his attention back to the dust flying around his head and dancing through the mid-afternoon light. The letter had arrived at around eleven this morning, which had given him some four hours to do what he could…which hadn’t been much. So much dust had accumulated over the years, even before he had come to work under Dusty Tome, that it would have taken nearly a week for the entire Castle Canterlot Cleaning Crew to get it back in shape.
All Scroll Scrivener had managed was three shelves, top to bottom, and those now looked only marginally better than they had this morning, what with all the dust flying around as he cleaned.
Of course, if Dusty had only let him ask for the CCCC, this all could have been avoided. But, such was her nature.
Sighing, Scroll Scrivener sought out the clock on the wall.
2:57 Day Time.
Nodding, the Archivist gently flapped his good wing twice to get the excess dust out from between the feathers (while also trying not to stir up the dust bunnies…they tended to get upset when their little nests got moved, poor things) and quietly trotted over to the main entranceway into the Archives. Scroll Scrivener did not bother to sit when he got there; when the visitor was the Sun Princess, and when the Sun Princess said she would be there at three o’clock, then one could expect the Sun Princess at three o’clock, and if she was a second late or early, then your clock was wrong and you needed to reset it, by gum.
And, sure enough, just as the clock hand twitched over to hit upon 3…
Poof!
Immediately, Scroll Scrivener bowed low. “Your Highnesses. Welcome to the Royal Archive.”
Smiling, the tall white Alicorn received his bow with an inclination of her own head. “Thank you, Scroll Scrivener. A pleasure to see you as always.”
As Scrivener straightened back up, he looked to the younger of the Royals and bent his neck in respect. “Princess Twilight Sparkle, a pleasure as always.”
The familiar face of one of Equestria’s six national heroes beamed brightly back at him. “Hello, Scribbles! It’s good to see you, as well!”
The Archivist smiled broadly; Twilight Sparkle was one of those privileged few to call him by his colthood name…he had spent just as much time in the Library as she had, when his parents were in the Castle on military business. While their tastes ran differently, they had always managed to be cordial to one another, which had blossomed into a friendship after she moved to Ponyville and sent him letters for book and scroll suggestions to stock Golden Oaks Library.
“And you as well, Twilight.” Cutting the pleasantries short, he looked toward Princess Celestia. The Princess of the Day looked as resplendent as ever as she smiled beatifically down at him. “Your Majesty…Do you wish to enter the Canterlot Royal Archives?”
Her smile grew a fraction. “I do.”
“Do you promise to respect the rules of this place during the extent of your visit?”
“I do.”
“Do you promise to use the knowledge you find within only for the good of Ponykind, Equestria, and the world?”
“I do.”
Nodding, Scroll Scrivener stood aside to allow them passage. “Then welcome!”
Celestia and Twilight sat at the table. They were currently within the “Break Room” of the Archives, where those who were employed there (all two of them) retired to eat, drink, or take a nap, such as the case may be.
Scroll Scrivener, or Scribbles, stood at the counter, extracting several donuts from the box before him with a pair of tongs. “M’forry we ‘on’t haff ennyfin’ be’er,” he mumbled around the instrument as he placed six of the confections upon the plate before him. Spitting out the tongs into the sink beside him, he grasped the edge of the plate in his teeth and trotted over to the table, carefully setting it on the surface. “Being over-glorified Librarians tends to limit what we can eat on the job to the quick and easy spectrum.”
Princess Celestia waved away his excuse with a hoof. “Nonsense, Scroll Scrivener; we appreciate your hospitality. Don’t we, Princess Twilight?”
Turning to look at the named mare, Scribbles and Celestia were amused to see Twilight Sparkle already opening wide for a cake donut she had grasped in her magic. Red-faced, she hurriedly put it back upon the plate. “Oh, um…yes…yes we are…thank you, Scribbles…”
“Not at all.”
Twilight managed to recover a bit by levitating the pot of fresh coffee to the table, along with three mugs, and cream with sugar. “Uh…so…how are things in the Archive, Scribbles?”
“I think,” said the Solar Diarch, face uncharacteristically serious, “that we should perhaps dispense with the customary small talk, Twilight.” She snagged a coffee cup, filling it with a copious amount of sugar and cream before mixing the coffee in. “This is a matter of utmost importance, and time is of the essence.”
Scroll Scrivener looked troubled. “Well, I suppose I could go out and find Dusty Tome…she’s in the middle of getting her license—“
“Dusty’s presence will not be necessary, Scroll Scrivener; you are who I wish to speak with.”
“Oh…” Scribbles, taken aback, blinked at her. “Um…okay?”
“Excellent.” Celestia’s horn glowed, and a stack of newspapers appeared upon the table beside her. “Tell me, Scroll Scrivener…what have you heard about the disappearances across Equestria in the last few months?”
The Archivist sighed, shoulders slumping. “Not much…but enough.” He trotted over to the stack, hoofing through them as he talked. “Some…what, thirty fillies? Taken from their homes in the night…most of them Unicorns, but some Earth and Pegasus fillies…there’s even two who were snatched from Cloudsdale, and one from the Crystal Empire.”
“It’s thirty-six, now…” said Twilight Sparkle sadly. “Each one was taken at night, somewhere between the hours of two and three. No evidence was found at the scenes, except for obvious signs of forced entry…and some hoofprints…”
Scroll Scrivener looked up from the newspapers he had been scanning, a confused look on his face. “Hoofprints? I haven’t heard anything about hoofprints…”
“Unfortunately, we’ve been forced to ask the press to leave certain facts unmentioned…” said Celestia. “Admittedly, it isn’t something we usually approve of…freedom of the press is guaranteed, after all…but we do not wish to cause a panic among the populace.”
At Scribble’s curious look, Twilight summoned a folder from empty space and levitated it over to the table, opening it as it landed. “Take a look.” As Scribbles perused them, she go up and walked over to his side. “At almost every location, except for Cloudsdale and a few others, we’ve discovered the hoofprints of a single…um…well, they look to be pony hoof prints…but they’re…um…”
“Enormous…” muttered Scribbles, reaching an absent hoof up to nudge his spectacles. And truly, they were; Princess Celestia could easily fit her own hoof within the imprint with room to spare, and she wasn’t exactly dainty. He leaned in closer. “And these were at nearly all of the locations?”
Celestia nodded. “Yes. The only exceptions were where the ground was not soft enough to leave a print, and in Cloudsdale, where it is impossible to leave a mark.”
Shaking her head, Twilight Sparkle sighed. “Whoever has been taking these fillies…the depth of the impression and the sheer size indicates a giant of a pony, more than likely a stallion…but I’ve been going back and forth over the census records, over and over again…nothing in Equestria’s records show that a living pony of that stature or weight—”
“The last known stallion that would even come close to the hoof size of this one was from the Earth tribe, named Bright Hill…but he’s been dead for eighty years…” Scribbles looked up at the Princesses. “Not to mention his height would have drawn attention to him…”
"Indeed." Princess Celestia sipped her drink. "And I had the pleasure of meeting Bright Hill; his size was due to a defect of his bodily organs. He was in constant pain, much the same as those who I've met over the years with the same condition. Anypony with the same issues would more than likely be unable to take fillies in the dead of night, let alone be quick enough to do so unnoticed."
Twilight Sparkle nodded. "That's right." She shuffled some newspapers around, gazing at them helplessly. "I've looked through every record I could get my hooves on, even asking Cadence and Shining Armour if they could find me any lead in the Crystal Depository...but nothing turned up...no mention of over-large Ponies of any kind, mare or stallion, Earth, Unicorn, or Pegasus..."
"We tried to keep this out of the media," the Solar Diarch said softly. "Normally, I am adamant against any infringement against the freedom of our press, but there is just so much we do not know or understand about this...the last thing I wished for was a panic, what with fillies disappearing at such a prodigious rate. A few Royal Decrees were issued, requesting that parents take a few precautions and that a general eye be kept open for anything suspicious, but we tried to keep the majority of this at least quiet..."
Scroll Scrivener looked to the most recent paper; it bore the date of the middle of last week, and the headline boldly proclaimed the disappearance of a small filly from Appleloosa. “It hasn’t worked, has it?”
Celestia merely closed her eyes.
“I see…” The Pegasus stallion shifted on his hooves. “Well…I can sympathize with you, Your Highness, but…what does this have to do with me? I’m no criminologist…”
“Your cousin is Daring Do, correct?” The Princess took a sip of her coffee, eyes still closed.
“Uh…yes…yes, she is…” said the Archivist, taken aback by this change of subject.
“She came to you some time ago, asking for information.”
Scribbles considered this carefully. It was true that Daring Do often came to him; being his second cousin gave her a way to access information in her treasure-hunting that few others had. For a cut of the profits, usually involving any scrolls or books and such she found on her journeys, he allowed Daring was allowed near-unlimited access at any time to the Restricted portions of the Archive, provided she take care of what she found there.
He distinctly remembered the event in question. “Yes, ma’am. Daring came around about a month back. She had some sort of Royal Warrant with her, stating she was on official Crown Business.”
Nodding, the Princess of the Day opened her eyes again. “And what did she say she was looking for?”
Scroll Scrivener shrugged. “Daring wanted as much information as I could find on some project or other…” He frowned, thinking back. “Something called ‘Restoration’.”
Twilight and Celestia exchanged a look. “And what,” asked Twilight Sparkle, “did you find on it?”
“Nothing. Or, almost nothing, rather…the most I could uncover was some documentation that it was, indeed, a project commissioned by Princess Celestia some five centuries ago. When I told her that I couldn’t find anything else, she got all huffy with me and left. That was the last time I saw her.”
Celestia sat back and took another sip of her coffee. “Very well, then,” she murmured. “It seems things have begun to spin out of my control.”
“Uh…I’m sorry…?”
Setting the cup of coffee down next to the untouched plate of donuts, a serious-faced Celestia clambered to her hooves. “Scroll Scrivener, I am afraid I must be the bearer of bad news.
“Your cousin, Daring Do, while acting as an agent of the Equestrian Throne, has gone missing, and I believe her disappearance is in direct relation to the disappearance of so many of our people’s fillies.”
Twilight Sparkle, conspicuously silent, merely watched as Scribbles stared, open-mouthed at Princess Celestia.
And then she watched as he passed out into a heap on the floor.
Celestia stared at her little pony lying supine, and then looked at her protégé. “Well…he took that better than I expected.”