Resonating Souls

Chapters

Rocks
Discovery
Exploration
Acclimation
Princesses

Rocks

Several hundred feet below the surface, Chris stopped and raised his hand. Rebecca stopped short. "Now, between you and me, you're going to feel strange," he said.

"... What?" Rebecca couldn't make any sense of Chris' warning.

He clarified. "I just walked through 'The Veil'. At least, that's what we're calling it. It's ... hard to explain, because we really don't know what it is. The Veil is now between you and me." He reached his hand back toward her, his arm half extended and holding steady. "Right where my hand is. As you pass through it, you're going to feel a strange, tingling sensation through your entire body."

Rebecca nodded hesitantly, uncertain if Chris had gone crazy or if she just wasn't understanding anything he was saying. She continued her descent, and a few steps later, as Chris had marked with his hand, a bizarre and warming feeling washed over her, as if her entire body had been pelted with fine raindrops during a wind storm. She paused, touching her face with a hand to make sure some strange substance wasn't clinging to her like a spiderweb. Nothing felt out of place. She shuddered. "What ... is it? Does it go away? Do you get used to it?"

Chris shook his head. "I haven't gotten used to it yet. It doesn't bother me, really, but you never stop being aware. As long as you're down here, you're going to feel it." Rebecca wasn't too keen on that thought. "It also makes you feel warm, and you're going to feel that intensify a bit as we go. Saves on heating the place a little bit when you can keep the place a few degrees colder and still stay comfortable."

The two kept walking, the narrow passageway illuminated by their flashlights as they proceeded. Rebecca idly noticed that the walls, like the entryway on the surface, appeared to have been chiseled out by a large machine, but she couldn't figure out exactly what sort of machine it might be. The markings weren't quite like anything she had seen before, and she also couldn't think of a machine that could easily fit into such an awkward stairwell.

As Chris had told her before their descent, her legs were not used to staircases this long. The stairs themselves were inconsistent in both size and depth, and as she continued down the stairs, the staggered spacing was starting to wear her out faster than she expected. Still, she wanted to get comfortable inside. There would be no stopping for a break, so she occupied herself thinking about her new situation.

Her life on the surface had been very routine. Rebecca had lived alone for several years after college, and her previous job hadn't given her any satisfaction. She had a degree in Mineralogy, specializing in physical mineralogy in particular. As it turned out, despite her fascination with rocks, studying them all day hadn't been very exciting. It had become a regular activity for her to scour job postings in her spare time to see what else might be on offer. Edwards Holdings had recognized her achievements however, and had provided her an opportunity for something fresh: First-hand research on a previously undiscovered kind of stone. It wasn't the complete change in career path she'd been pondering, but the pay was good and the potential for something interesting to result from her work was a nice incentive. On the other hand, relocating to an underground facility on a remote island north of Norway was not what she had really wanted, either.

After about twenty-five minutes of the grueling descent, the passage flattened out and began widening into a larger chamber, the walls and floor made of the same smoothed granite she had noticed up above. From the contours, Rebecca guessed that the room had naturally formed into an underground cave, and then someone discovered it and smoothed down all of the stone. Six incandescent lamps mounted on the far wall provided ample illumination, and in the middle of the same wall was another steel door, not entirely unlike the one that guarded the entrance above. A small monitor with several colored buttons was mounted next to it. Chris strode up to the terminal and pressed the green button, and then turned to her. "This will take a moment."

They waited. Rebecca's legs were screaming for a break after all the stairs, and standing around doing nothing was not doing them any favors. After a painful ten minutes or so, a female face popped up on the monitor. "Hey, Chris. It's about time you get here, I was about to start dinner. You have the new girl with you?"

Chris smiled. "Oh, some good news! I'm famished." He laughed, guesturing toward the door. "Yes, I have Rebecca with me. Can you let us in? I'd like to get her set up with a security card as soon as possible." Sarah's projection on the monitor laughed and nodded. After a sharp clicking sound from the door, Chris grasped the handle and turned it, pushing the door inward. Rebecca followed behind.

On the other side of the door the cavern continued, and they clicked their flashlights off as several lamps along the passageway provided just enough light to see. Like the room she had just stood in before, the walls appeared to be naturally shaped, but then smoothed down by tools. As Chris led her through the facility, they passed several other steel-framed doors, each one with a nameplate indicating the purpose of the area beyond, before stopping in front of a door labeled 'Security'. He pulled his black card from his pocket again, and at its touch the door slid open, just as the one at the outside entrance had. A strange thought struck Rebecca. "Chris? What's with all the security?"

Chris smiled. "Two layers of security. I can get down here with my card, but if someone took my card and no one recognized them, they wouldn't be able to proceed any further. If they got inside, most of the important doors down here still have the keycard lock."

Rebecca rubbed her temples and sighed. "I mean, this place is really obscure and in the middle of nowhere; security through obscurity, so to speak. Why spend so much resources on the added security?"

He beckoned her over to the other side of the room where a computer sat. "I know, and I agree with you. I'm paid to run it, though, so I can't really look a gift horse in the mouth. Let me get this all ready to go and we can get you set up with a security card. It'll give you a bit of freedom around here."

<><><><><>

Twilight Sparkle was re-shelving some books when Rarity delicately against the door of Golden Oaks Library. Twilight turned to face her friend, continuing to shelve the books blindly with her telekinesis. "Hello, Rarity. You really don't need to knock, the door was standing wide open."

Rarity's eyes went wide, "Oh no, Princess Twilight. I would be impolite to simply barge in uninvited!"

Twilight frowned. "Rarity, you know I don't want to be called that."

"Oh, certainly, Twilight, but regardless of your feelings on the matter, I will greet you with the respect your position deserves." A sigh escaped Twilight's lips as she rolled her eyes as Rarity continued, "May I have a moment of your time?"

"Absolutely. I was just getting ready to close up. Do you need a book? Or do you need to talk? You know I'm a good listener ... uh, even if I can't always give the best advice about your stallion friends." She grinned awkwardly. Behind her, a small purple dragon coughed. Twilight turned and shot him a sharp glance. Spike was her number one assistant, and though he had gotten over his old infatuation with Rarity after meeting a friendly lady dragon, he still wasn't comfortable listening to Rarity talk about her relationships.

Rarity shook her head. "Oh, no, no, no. I'm just here to ask you a special favor you see, but first I think I would like to just chat. It has been quite a while since last we simply talked." Rarity stepped inside. "I've also brought over a new tea that I found today in Canterlot. It's simply marvelous! I'm sure you'll like it!"

She went off to start the tea while Twilight cleared off books from the central table so they would have a place to sit. When her task was complete, Twilight called over to the kitchen. "How is the tea coming along?"

"Darling, are you worried about my ability to make tea? I'm not Sweetie Belle, you know."

A chuckle escaped Twilight's lips. Sweetie Belle could burn water. Literally. Twilight wasn't sure if it was a magic trick or not, but Rarity had insisted it was Sweetie's natural ineptitude in the kitchen. "So, why were you in Canterlot today?"

Rarity re-entered the central room levitating a tray with three teacups and a teapot on it, vapor softly trailing from the spout. Gently setting the tray down, Rarity started to explain as she poured tea into each cup. "Well, you see, your sister-in-law recently contracted me for one hundred ninety-six sets of matching outfits for your brother's anniversary. So today, I was in Canterlot taking measurements. It's quite wonderful, really. At first, I was completely overwhelmed by the scope of this contract; as you know, their anniversary is only three months away, so I needed to come up with designs I could replicate easily. I spent most of last two months working on the basic designs, and now that the designs have been finalized, I need to actually complete the outfits. Of course, the that all took me much longer than I had hoped, because I needed to have fifty-four distinctly different designs!"

Twilight interrupted, confused. "Fifty-four? Why in the world would she need so many different designs?"

"Well, you see, she wants her anniversary to be a celebration of love, so each pony in attendance will be wearing a design specific to the stallion or mare he or she is in love with. And, of course, with three different kinds of ponies, and three possible pairings of genders, it will take fifty-four different designs to cover all the bases. Or ponies, as the case is."

Twilight stared at Rarity, astonished. "You designed fifty-four outfits in just a couple of months?" She knew Rarity was inspired, but she couldn't imagine that two designs a day, or more, would be an easy feat, even for Rarity.

Shaking her head, Rarity chuckled softly. "It wasn't easy, dear. I suppose I could have taken the lazy, but less costly, route and simply made a single design and then modify it ever so slightly for each each variation I needed ... but that just wouldn't be me!" She drew herself up straight, raising her chin and bringing her hoof to her chest. "I am, after all, a designer," she put her hoof down, "not a tailor. And as such, I would much rather impress my clients by going the extra mile."

Numbers started running through Twilight's head, and her eyes began to wander as she became lost in thought. One hundred ninety-six pairs of outfits meant three hundred ninety-two outfits altogether. The anniversary was about three months away. Three months times fifteen days was forty-five days, which means ... She looked back to Rarity. "Do you really think you can get six outfits completed each day for three months? And if you could, do you even have the materials to do that?"

Rarity laughed nervously. "Well ... you see, that's why I'm here tonight. I need some fabric delivered, but it's scheduled to arrive at my boutique while I will be taking measurements for guests in the Crystal Empire. I was wondering if I could perhaps have it delivered here, instead. That way you could hold on to it for me, and when I return, I can just pick it up here." Twilight noticed Rarity bounced softly on her hooves as she spoke, her curled mane springing up and down in an exaggerated fashion along with her. She suspected that Rarity was either excited or nervous. Or perhaps both; she wasn't normally so giddy in everyday conversation unless something important was going on. Twilight supposed a project this large was worth being excited over and pushed the thought from her mind.

"Well, I don't mind having it dropped off here, but I'm concerned about the amount of material." She frowned, trying to think of a place she could keep a lot of stuff. "The library isn't really that big. What space I have is filled with books, my lab equipment, and my living spaces. I don't really have a feel for how much fabric would be needed for your project, but even after you've trimmed away a lot of fabric in the design process, four hundred outfits takes up a lot of room. And now we're talking about the uncut cloth!"

Spike looked up from his now empty teacup. "Gee, Twilight. I don't think storage is that big a deal. We have that storage closet upstairs that isn't being used. There's a bunch of old junk in there, but we can clean it out."

Twilight nodded. The closet would likely be sufficient. "That is true, Spike. I guess I just never thought of that, because we never use it."

Rarity beamed. "Oh, thank you. I knew I could count on you, Twilight. You are always so helpful to everyone who needs it." She leaned down and pecked Spike on the cheek, causing his cheeks to flush slightly. "And thank you for coming up with an easy solution." Rarity stood up straight again. "I just so happen to have some free time tonight. Why don't we clean out that closet together?"

<><><><><>

"... So we really don't know who originally dug out this place, but we do know that they found some strange stone. But it leaves us with a lot of questions. Why did they dig down in the first place? What happened to them? We don't really have the answers to these questions. What we do know is that the stone we found down here is unique. Its molecular structure appears to be granite, but it's appearance and texture are more like glass. And the physical properties are nothing like any other stone we've seen before." The communications manager, Sarah Earnhardy, was explaining to Rebecca some basic stuff about the lab as the two of them ate a meatloaf dinner together in the lounge.

"You mean Edwards Holdings didn't build this facility?"

"No. Joseph found this place while doing an archaeological survey of the islands in the area. This entire cavern system, even the staircase up to the surface, was already in place when he found it. Originally, it was all stone and completely dark. The company is responsible for all the other additions that make the area secure and livable, but every effort has been made to preserve the original stonework for study."

"That's very strange. Any idea how long ago this was carved out?"

"Well, he found some bones from what he hoped was a new species of animal in here. Sent samples off for testing. The results only raised more questions about this place."

Rebecca furrowed her brow. "What do you mean?"

Talia, an organic chemist who had been listening from the other side of the room, cut in. "You were brought here to research a new stone, but several of us here are tasked with trying to learn more about this long dead creature. For starters, the body had well-preserved tissue that had recoverable DNA. This place isn't really cold enough to preserve DNA under normal conditions, and usable DNA shouldn't survive in a dead body for more than a few days, as it decays rapidly if not maintained by normal biological processes. That would lead you to think it had recently died, but it was just bones; something recently dead wouldn't have already decayed into nothing."

"Well, it's really cold outside," Rebecca offered. "Maybe the veil didn't affect it for some reason, and it froze?"

Talia pointed toward the ceiling. "Up there? The surface temperatures here are below freezing, even during the summer, but here underground geothermal heating keeps the average temperature higher. Even disregarding that, it's not cold enough on the surface anyway. Temperatures cold enough to prevent DNA from decaying over a few thousand years are extremely uncommon, so we were quite baffled by the results. That wasn't all that was strange, though. When the bones were dated, they came back as being over three thousand years old. The DNA sample also had sixty-four chromosomes, and while the remains didn't match that of a typical horse, that's the only known species with sixty-four chromosomes large enough to have bones that size."

Confusion set in. Rebecca shook her head a few times. "So, this place is three thousand years old, at the least? And despite that, appears to have relatively modern stonework? That doesn't make sense."

Sarah chimed in again. "It's possible that the stonework was done in phases, and the bones were just never disturbed. But it's hard to explain why a horse would ever have been down here at all. Three thousand years ago, a horse would have never been anywhere close to this part of the world, and even with modern technology, it's difficult to comfortably keep horses this far north. For that matter, how would a horse have survived to get to this island? We just don't know, and every clue we've found so far makes the answers feel more distant."

Rebecca sat back and tried to process everything she had been told. A new kind of stone? Such things weren't normally found near the surface; these were discoveries typically made in deep oceans or in very deep drilling operations. The animal was clearly outside of her area of expertise. Her brow furrowed as she pondered the reality of this new job. "Can you take me to the excavation site?"

Talia peered at Rebecca through the small, rounded lenses of her glasses. "Well, we were going to do that tomorrow, but it can't hurt. Follow me." Rebecca stood up and Talia lead her out of the lounge and through a winding passageway she hadn't yet been down. The path terminated with a staircase, similar to the one she had descended earlier, leading them down another one hundred feet or so. A cavernous system of narrow passageways shooting off in various directions opened up before her at the bottom of the stairs. For as far as Rebecca could see, suspended electric lamps fully illuminated each passage wide enough for a person to squeeze into, but she couldn't be sure if all of the deeper sections were lit as well. But that wasn't what was really catching her attention.

Sandwiched in the walls between layers of granite and dolomite were strange veins of a black stone. Light was reflecting off the stone in a prismatic fashion, causing the black stone to occasionally appear in all the colors of the rainbow at certain angles. Rebecca reached out and touched some of it, feeling the glassy texture. "It reminds me of rainbow obsidian, but it most definitely isn't. Do we know anything about it?"

"A little bit. Not much yet."

Rebecca was led deeper through the strange cavern, into a widened space where someone had clearly been chipping away at the stone for a while. Small fragments of the stone were laid out upon a white sheet on the ground while hammers, chisels and some larger stone chunks rested on a makeshift table. Talia picked one of the hammers from the table. "While we were chipping away at it, we discovered the stone reacts strangely to blunt force. Thin pieces that you would expect to shatter when struck with a hammer will instead shine brightly at the point of impact for a moment, and it reacts as if all the kinetic force was just gone. We aren't really sure what's going on with that. It goes against all known physical laws. Chiseling at it seems to work just fine, which is probably a good thing, as we probably wouldn't be able to extract it otherwise." She demonstrated by hitting a flat piece of the stone. Where the hammer had struck, the stone glowed with a faint yellow gleam for about three seconds before fading out.

"That's certainly ... strange. But why is this work being carried out here? Why don't you just take samples of the stone and send them to labs outside?"

"Do you remember The Veil on the way in? Did Chris explain it to you?"

"Uh, I guess. I mean, I didn't really feel he explained it very well, but I remember it. It's pretty distinct."

"When you take this stuff out past the veil, all it's unusual properties - the rainbow sheen, the strange reactions to being struck, even the glassy surface - it all goes away. And you know what it acts like? Regular, everyday granite. The only thing it retains is the dark color."

Discovery

Two unicorns and a dragon working in tandem proved to make short work of the cluttered closet. Its contents had consisted of scrapbooks of old newspaper clippings, trophies for various academic events, and other various odds and ends that may have had some sentimental value to somepony at one time. Twilight recalled that the previous librarian had passed away not long before she had moved in, and because she didn't have many personal belongings in the first place, she hadn't ever really needed the space. And so, because he had no next of kin or any other known family, many of his old belongings simply sat there gathering dust. It was all just as Spike declared it: junk. Rarity, of course, had objected to Spike's terminology. As she put it, the stuff had been valuable enough to somepony at some point that they wanted to keep it, so it should be treated with respect.

At Rarity's insistence, they salvaged what few things might still be useful to other ponies - mostly just a few quilts - and boxed it up to be taken to a homeless shelter in Canterlot. They put the rest of the stuff in a large cart and recruited Big Macintosh to haul the cart off to the nearest dump. Rarity was aghast, but couldn't come up with anything better to be done with it, since it truly was junk. Only two items were kept. One was a large mirror that sat against the back of the closet. Rarity had declared her love for it, claiming it would be perfectly suited to her fitting room, so they left it there, as it took very little space for the time being.

The remaining object fascinated Twilight. It was a black sphere that had resisted any attempts to lift it telekinetically, which was the only reason she hadn't simply tossed it aside as more trash. She had studied the curious item for two days, poring through her collection of books about magical artifacts, seeking any insight to the item's nature, but nothing surfaced. Books on artifacts exhausted, she was just settling in to try some experiments when a sharp knocking on the door distracted her.

She jerked her head up and stared toward the door for a brief moment. As the library was currently open and the door unlocked, she found herself pondering if she should call them in or answer the door in person. She rapidly lost the battle to polite societal norms and trotted over to the door, grasping the handle with her magic. The door swung open and Twilight poked her head out curiously. At the door was a familiar gray pegasus mare with a pale yellow mane and a cutie mark consisting of several bubbles. The mare was smiling, her left eye focused on Twilight, and the other pointed somewhere above. Hitched to the mare was a cart about twice the width of a pony and two and a half times as long, stacked nearly twice Twilight's height with boxes bearing the Strings and Things emblem. Twilight put her hoof to her face and sighed. The delivery was nearly three times what she expected.

"Hello there, Ditzy," said Twilight, putting her hoof back down. "Judging from the boxes you're hauling today, I'm guessing Rarity directed you my way?" It wasn't really a guess. Twilight eyed the boxes with mild annoyance.

"I'm sorry, Princess Twilight Sparkle." Twilight grimaced. She hated people using her full title, as she preferred to see everyone as equals. To Twilight, the only true Princesses were Celestia and Luna. Ditzy continued, "I just always try to follow instructions as best I can. Do ...", the mare stopped briefly as she noticed Twilight's expression. "Do you want me to return them to Canterlot? You don't seem too happy about this..." Ditzy's voice trailed off as her head drooped. This had the slightly unsettling effect of having the right eye originally pointed toward the ceiling come down to focus on Twilight instead, as the left eye that had been focused on her seemed to be now studying the floor. Twilight was used to dealing with this eccentricity by now, but it still caused her some discomfort. Ditzy pawed at the ground with her hoof, nervously.

Twilight smiled. "Please, just call me Twilight. And no, you don't need to return to Canterlot, it will be fine to drop Rarity's ... uh, cargo ... here." She paused, levitating a quill over. "Do I need to sign for this?"

Ditzy shook her head and looked up again. Her right eye followed and her left eye again returned to gaze at Twilight. "Nope, not this time!" Ditzy seemed to cheer up suddenly, and bounded happily through the door, rocking the cart and its contents as she went. "Umm ... Where do you want me to put it all at? I have to keep the cart. You just get the boxes. I can't let you have that cart, or my boss will be angry with me. So just boxes." She paused, and then intoned in deadpan. "There's a lot of boxes."

Twilight glanced around the library. The storage closet was on the second floor, and there really wasn't much in the way of room for that volume of fabric to sit on the first floor even as a temporary measure. Twilight also didn't trust Ditzy to fly it up to the second floor with the entire load in tow. Thinking for a moment, she grasped several boxes with her telekinesis. "I will handle it, thanks." Twilight smiled at Ditzy as she floated the boxes, several at a time, up the stairs and into the storage closet. "And that's that. Anyway, I would love for you to stay and chat, but I'm really busy researching something right now, and I would like to get back to it. I'm also quite certain you have more work to get done, right? Is there anything else I can do for you before you go?"

Ditzy cast her gazes about the library and nodded sagely, as if she had found some deep insight into the way the world works just from the way the books were shelved. "No, Princess. That will be all." And with that declaration, she took flight and bolted out the door. The cart, still hitched to her, caught in the doorway. With a loud cracking sound, the harness pulled tight, slamming Ditzy into the ground just outside the library. Twilight winced.

"Are you okay?" she called, walking to the fallen mare. Ditzy shook her head a few times and pulled herself slowly to her hooves. Twilight stepped closer to her and rested a wing across her shoulders. "Does it hurt?"

Her legs wobbling slightly, Ditzy looked to Twilight. Both of her eyes briefly focused together on Twilight before one drifted away again, and in that moment, Twilight could see that tears were forming in them. Her chin was badly scraped from the impact against the hard-packed dirt outside. Ditzy sniffled once, and then stood up straight. "No, I ... I think I'm okay. I'm kinda used to this sort of thing." She craned her head back, readjusting her harness and checking to make sure it was secure and unbroken before limping over to the cart to check its condition. Twilight immediately noticed her limp.

"Your leg is hurt, isn't it?" Twilight knelt down to examine Ditzy's leg. "Are you sure you're going to be okay?"

Ditzy drew herself up straight and thrust her chest out proudly. "I'll be fine. I don't need my legs to fly!"

Twilight shook her head, unable to argue with her, but still concerned. "Okay," she said, hesitantly. "Be careful then ... and fly safe!" Ditzy spread her wings, made sure the cart was clear of the doorway this time, and took flight once again. As soon as Ditzy had disappeared from sight, Twilight shook her head again. "That's why ponies call you Derpy, you know," she spoke quietly to herself. Turning around, she retreated back into the library and returned to the strange orb. There was still plenty of research to be done, after all.

The remainder of Twilight's evening was consumed experimenting with the orb. In addition to resisting attempts to lift it, Twilight discovered that it would also absorb any spell she cast on it, glowing softly for a moment before fading back to it's usual black color. She also discovered that it absorbed the energy of other magical objects it came into contact with. Some of them would stop working permanently. Others would work again after a few minutes away from the ball. Between experiments, she would review her books on artifacts again, trying to find any related behaviors.

It was nearly nightfall when Twilight found an entry that finally lined up with what she was observing. Deep in a book of ancient magical artifacts, in what seemed more like a footnote than a proper entry, Twilight found a description of an object called a 'mana battery' that had properties that matched the orb's description. According to the book, a mana battery could store residual magical energy, which later could be used to amplify a spell or power a magical device. Unfortunately, to Twilight's frustration, the book hadn't gone into any detail whatsoever on how to release the energy in a mana battery. She resolved to go to Canterlot to check out the Canterlot Archives, and perhaps she would also ask Princess Celestia.

<><><><><>

Several days had passed. The strange stone excavated from the tunnel was certainly unlike anything Rebecca had seen prior, and she had already done a fair amount of work attempting to ascertain the stone's properties. Her first course of action was going to be figuring out the strange glow that occurred when striking one of the stones. Very early on, she learned that her co-workers hadn't been joking about kinetic force. She could hammer extremely hard on the stone and it would absorb nearly all of the kinetic energy. Nothing beneath the stone would appear to feel the impact at all; she could set it on her knee and hammer at it without any worries. And no matter how hard she swung, the impact wouldn't vibrate through the hammer to hurt or numb her hand, though it did nothing for preventing her arm from tiring out after a time.

Armed with this knowledge, she began hammering on pretty much every piece they had managed to chip off the walls, taking notes on the reactions each had. While all of them would glow slightly, if briefly, at the point of impact, her experiment lead to the discovery that some of them, when struck enough times in rapid succession, would begin to glow softly with a pulsing, purple light that would fade off over the span of several hours. One of the labs was set aside for Rebecca to work on this phenomenon. She set up a steel folding table, and sorted the stones out by size and shape. With a bit of experimentation, she determined that repeated strikes would eventually stop making the stone glow more brightly, and size and shape affected how quickly and how brightly each would glow.

Today, she was chiseling on the largest piece they had managed to break off of the wall. She had already beaten it with a hammer for over an hour, having pounded on it until it no longer appeared to get any brighter. Now, she was trying to see if she could increase the peak luminosity by manually reshaping the piece. The piece itself was slightly smaller than a basketball, and it was getting closer to a perfect sphere in shape. She'd done some work sculpting stone before, so she understood the general principles well enough, but making a perfect sphere was not the easiest of tasks. As she was finishing up, Sarah walked into the room.

"Becky, I was just about to make some lunch. Would you like anything?"

Rebecca looked up, satisfied with the current shape of the orb. "Uh, sure. A ham sandwich would be nice, I suppose."

Sarah nodded and left the room. Rebecca turned her attention again to the spherical object in front of her. She set down the chisel, and began tapping it with her hammer. Almost immediately, the glowing orb became noticeably brighter. So far, so good. Getting a firm grip on the hammer, Rebecca began slamming it into the orb repeatedly. As she pounded away, putting all of her might into her onslaught, she was reminded of how strange it was that she could hit something so hard with a hammer and not feel a jarring pain in her arm, but she continued to savage the orb. After a time, she decided that, once again, it wasn't getting any brighter.

In retrospect, she realized, this was probably a good thing. This orb was glowing brilliantly, and the color was no longer purple, but a blazing white, far brighter than any of the other pieces she had worked on. It was almost bright enough to be painful to look at. Rebecca grabbed a notepad and started scribbling some notes down. Wondering if it was warm to the touch, she reached out to the orb.

CRACK!

Before her hand even touched the orb, her hand recoiled violently with the shock. It startled Rebecca, and she withdrew her hand entirely, a slight tingle in her finger. "A static shock?" Rebecca asked out loud, to no one in particular.

"That was a shock? Really? I heard that in the hallway!" Sarah had returned with sandwiches. "I've never heard a shock quite that loud. Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, I think. It just startled me, that's all." Rebecca touched the metal table she was working on to make sure she had been fully discharged. "I don't know why that happened though. Not to make a pun out of our situation, but we're well-grounded in this place." She turned to Sarah. "Has that happened to anyone else before?"

"Not that I've heard of, but I'm not here to do the research, remember?"

Rebecca looked back at her most recent subject of abuse and shrugged. "Well, hopefully that will only happen once. It didn't really hurt, just a bit of a scare." She eyed the sandwiches Sarah brought. "I'm getting pretty hungry though. Thanks for grabbing me some food."

As both women sat and ate their lunch, the conversation eventually switched to their hobbies. Rebecca was surprised to learn that Sarah was a musician. "What do you play?" she inquired.

Sarah leaned against the wall, staring at the ceiling. "Let me think." She began visibly counting on her fingers as she listed instruments. "Flute, clarinet, oboe, saxophone, violin, viola, guitar, piano, french horn ... I'm forgetting something ... oh yes, bassoon. I write my own music, too."

Rebecca stared, uncertain how to respond. After a moment, she blurted out, "I can play the triangle." She immediately realized how stupid she sounded, and her cheeks flushed crimson. Bursting into laughter, Sarah slid down the wall and sat on the floor.

When her laughter finally subsided, she looked to Rebecca again. "So yeah, I'm a musician, I guess. What about you? What do you do in your spare time?"

A frown crossed Rebecca's face briefly. "I do some spelunking once in a while, when I have the spare time. In some ways, I guess you could say that it makes this place feel kinda like home."

"That sounds like a lot of fun. Is that what got you into studying rocks?"

Rebecca smiled as she recalled her childhood adventures. "Yeah. My father and I used to go together all the time before he passed. My first trip was when I was 9, and we ran across a geode during one of our trips. I became absolutely fascinated with rocks after that Unfortunately, I just haven't had the time to do much spelunking recently. This is the first time I've been inside a cave in three years."

"So, what have you been doing with your spare time since then?"

"Well, I know some people consider it to be a sign of a simple mind, but I really enjoy just watching television. I absolutely love a good soap, and game shows are as addictive as any drug. Right now, I'm really looking forward to the next season of that new crime drama, The Judgement. How about you, do you follow any shows regularly?"

This time, it was Sarah's turn to frown. "I don't really know any good shows. My parents never had a television when I was growing up, so I guess I just never really learned to like it. I mean, I barely ever touch a television, especially now that we're down here. We can't even get ancient public broadcasting stations on the surface here, much less here underground. And to be honest, now that I'm an adult, I just don't see the appeal."

Rebecca pondered Sarah's answer for a bit. "I suppose it isn't for everyone. So, what about you? What do you do when you're not making music? I can't imagine that's all you do."

Sarah's smile returned. "I also love spending time with animals. My mom worked at a petting zoo when I was a kid, and I really grew attached to all the different kinds of animals out there. My favorite part was when my mom would let me ride the horses, even though all I could really do was go in a circle on them, real slow. Now that I'm an adult, I actually own a horse, and I occasionally go riding when I have the time. Her name is Gemini."

"Oh," Rebecca responded, sedately. Sarah raised an eyebrow. "I, uh ... I don't much care for animals. I'm allergic to cats, and I was bitten by a dog when I was little, which left me terrified of dogs for the longest time. I guess pets have never really appealed to me. I also don't really get the infatuation that so many women have with horses. I guess animals just aren't my thing." Rebecca stuffed the last of her sandwich into her mouth, and turned in her seat to look back at the stone. She shielded her eyes for a moment, caught off-guard because of its brilliance. "Whoa."

"You know, if you don't stop hammering on that rock, it'll be brighter than you are," Sarah teased.

Rebecca snorted. "I'm not sure if I should be insulted or flattered."

Sarah frowned. "No, I'm serious. You're smart. I'm only here to do menial chores, clean up the place, and keep an eye on the front door for when Lance gets back. Sure, technically I'm supposed to be handling communications, but it's truthfully a pretty simple job; I have almost no formal training. I know that what you're doing looks pretty simple ... I mean, how hard can it be to hit rocks with a hammer? But what you're doing is actually so much more than just swinging tools around. I wish I had the even half the intellect to follow along with the sorts of things that must go on in your mind."

"Don't beat yourself up so much. You have plenty of talent." Rebecca stood up. "Playing ten different instruments and writing your own music? That's not something I could do, even if my life depended on it. I also can't cook for beans, while you make amazing food. I've been impressed with pretty much everything you've cooked since I arrived in this place. I don't know how I'm going to survive eventually going home and having to suffer with my own cooking again. Or even fast food." She paused. "And here I am, wasting your talents on a ham sandwich. Sorry about that." Rebecca turned around again. "Meanwhile, I sit here and do exactly what you said. I hit rocks." She rested her hand on the orb.

CRACK!

Her entire body rocked as if she'd been struck with an intense electric shock, causing her to convulse repeatedly. Her vision went white. When she could see again, she found herself lying sprawled out on the ground and she could feel that the entire cavern was shaking. Sarah's screaming pierced through the horrific rumbling noise around her. As her vision cleared, she could clearly see arcs of electric current forking through the air, connecting each and every stone she had hammered on over the past weeks, and the stone she had just touched was also arcing to her hand. She tried to lift her arm, to see if she could interrupt the strange current, but her entire body was completely numb and unresponsive.

Rebecca realized that Sarah had also fallen to the ground, and though she couldn't turn her head, she able to see the doorway from where she was at. She watched as Sarah crawled into her field of vision, heading toward the door. Then, grasping for the doorknob, she pulled herself up, opened the door, and unsteadily fled down the hallway, screaming. As Sarah fled, Rebecca heard shuffling and tumbling followed by loud bone-shattering sound echoing back down the hall. More screaming. Rebecca tried to will herself to follow Sarah and make sure she would be okay, but her body still wouldn't respond, and her vision slowly faded to black.

<><><><><>

As Twilight approached Ponyville, she noticed the clouds below her taking on a dark gray shade and the wind was beginning to whip about unpleasantly. The pegasi had apparently let the weather get out of control, as Twilight could see several of the winged ponies zipping around trying to corral the uncooperative storm front. It was clear that down below the clouds it would be raining hard. Twilight sighed, and began her slow descent, knowing she needed to be under the clouds just to make out where she was going to be landing.

Below the clouds, the rain was coming down in sheets; a rain far heavier than any other Twilight could recall in recent memory. She noted with disdain that she wasn't as close to Golden Oaks Library as she had hoped, but she was close enough that there would be no point in going above the clouds again, so she continued to fly under the clouds. The wind whipped at her wings, making it difficult for her to fly well, and soon after, Twilight found herself being weighed down by the rain soaking into her coat, mane, and tail. Even though she could fly, she couldn't fly like a real pegasus. The strength and stamina of a mare who spends her entire life exercising her wings simply dwarfed that of someone who had only had wings for a short time, so she opted for her more familiar mode of transport, dropping down to earth gently and trotting along the muddy ground instead. Twilight chose to look at the positive side of the situation: she could relax her wings after such a long flight.

As she trotted along, she passed by Sugarcube Corner and noticed the sign on the door read 'Closed', and all the window shutters were secured. Curious, she stopped and rapped on the door with a hoof. Off to her left, the shutter was pushed open. Carrot Cake stuck his head out the window and looked toward the door Twilight was standing in front of, shouting over the din of heavy rain. "I'm sorry, Princess, but we're closed, and Pinkie is out at her family's farm throwing a surprise party for her sister's birthday. Can I help you?"

Twilight perked an eyebrow, unaware that Pinkie was visiting family. "No, that's alright. I was just wondering why you guys are closed up early tonight."

Carrot looked out into the pouring rain as he responded, making it difficult for Twilight to hear him. "All this rain started some floods down-river. Riverlight was forced to abandon the generator down there about an hour ago, so there's no power in the entire town right now. If you really need power, you'll have to talk to her and see if the two of you can make the generator safe again." Twilight wasn't terribly concerned with the lack of power, since anything she needed she could simply emulate with a spell. Carrot turned back to face her, his voice clearer again. "I hope the pegasi can get this under control soon. The whole house is candle-lit now, and Cup is struggling to keep the twins calm with all the thunder overhead." Then, realizing that Twilight was standing there soaked to the bone, he quickly added, "but if you would like to get out of the rain, you're welcome to come inside!"

She smiled at him and shook her head. "No, thank you. I do appreciate the offer, but I have things I need to get done tonight, so I should be getting back to the library. And I'm concerned about Spike." She nodded politely to Carrot Cake, and turned to leave.

Behind her, she heard, "Okay. Travel safe!", followed by the sound of a window shutter being closed.

Twilight stepped back into the street. It was only then that she realized she was the only one outdoors in the pouring rain. She had been so preoccupied with getting home to test out what she had learned at the Royal Archive that she had been oblivious to her surroundings. All of the houses around her were just like Sugarcube Corner: windows either dark or shuttered, and doors closed tight. No sign of ponies anywhere except the occasional weather pegasus overhead. The normally busy town square was muddy and deserted. Twilight found the effect wholly depressing.

She resumed walking. As she walked, she thought about what she learned in Canterlot. According to the books she had found there, mana batteries glowed brightly while charging or charged. The orb she had in the library hadn't been glowing, despite absorbing several spells she had directed at it. Some things just didn't match up. Twilight found herself getting frustrated that the Archive wouldn't let her take any of the books home with her. She had even used the 'But I'm a Princess' approach - something she loathed doing - to no effect. She would have to go back later to finish her research.

It didn't take long before the library came into view, the branches of the great tree whipping around violently in the wind. Twilight breathed a sigh of relief seeing that none of them had snapped off under the stress. She pushed open the door, stepped inside and quickly closed it behind her. Once the door was secured, she fluffed her wings sharply and shook her whole body in an attempt to evict the water that had taken up residence all over her.

Twilight stood still and allowed her eyes to finish adjusting to the dim interior as a few last drops fell to the ground. The library was completely dark, save for a soft purple glow emanating from somewhere upstairs. "Spike?" she called up the stairs. No answer. Was he out? Why was there a light if there was no power? Curious, she created a magical light with her horn and started up the stairs. When she reached the second floor, she could see the light was coming from the door to the storage closet they had put Rarity's fabrics in. Had Rarity special-ordered enchanted fabrics that glowed? Twilight briefly pondered the implications of wearing glowing clothing. She couldn't imagine Rarity, of all ponies, utilizing such a garish design decision.

Peering into the closet, she noticed that the light was reflecting clearly off of the old mirror, and was not coming from any of the boxes, but instead from somewhere behind them. There was little room to maneuver in the closet, so Twilight worked her way to the back slowly, moving the boxes out of the way one at a time, lifting them over her head with her magic and setting them in a stack just outside the door, blocking the doorway. When she was finally had moved enough of the boxes to be able to see to the far back of the closet, she discovered the light was coming from a small stone; about the size of a marble. It had fallen into a crack in the wooden floor, and it glowed with a ferocious intensity; a shade of purple that reminded Twilight of her own magic. She picked it up with her telekinesis.

The mirror reflected the light from the trinket and Twilight got a good look at herself. Her mane was still wet, hanging down off her neck in a most unflattering way. Her tail was limp and lifeless. The color of the glow accentuated her own color in the mirror, making her look almost ghostly against the dim wall on the other side of the closet. Twilight found the overall effect hauntingly beautiful in its own way. She brought the stone down in front of her face.

Examining it so close proved to be more difficult than she had anticipated, as it was bright enough that trying to look closely at it hurt her eyes. Deciding to take it downstairs with her, Twilight turned to the door, but ran snout-first into a wall of boxes. She had barricaded herself in. Still holding on to the glowing marble with her magic, she reached out to lift one of the boxes in front of her also. As she grabbed the top-most box, a sudden shock struck her horn. Twilight had suffered from magical feedback before, but this was an intensity that was unprecedented. Feedback was normally uncomfortable at worst, but this was one of the most intense pains she had ever felt in her life.

Her concentration broke as she dropped the glowing marble to the floor. Striking the wood, it started humming with a low alien sound that Twilight had never heard before. Gripped with pain and fear, Twilight decided she needed to get away from whatever this thing was, and she needed to leave fast. She looked to the door. The boxes were still blocking her exit. She focused, trying to visualize the room on the other side of the boxes.

As she had learned in Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, the first step to teleportation was to visualize where you wanted to go. Teleporting somewhere in line of sight was trivially simple, as you could see the place, but teleporting anywhere else required a bit of concentration, and an intimate memory of the place you wanted to go helped considerably. Fortunately, her mental image of the room beyond was nearly perfect.

Attempting to channel the energy necessary to teleport nearly caused her to black out from the pain. She collapsed to the ground, and the base of her horn, like Twilight herself, was screaming in agony. The pain was so great that Twilight could do nothing but writhe on the floor as a numb, tingling sensation began to spread through her. A foreboding sense of dread fell over her.

Rising in pitch, the humming noise grew steadily louder. Twilight steeled her mind against the pain as much as she could and forced herself to stand. Magic clearly was out of the question right now. She staggered to the pile of boxes, leaning against them, trying to force them out of the way with the weight of her body. They moved slightly, but then stopped, stuck on something. To her horror, she realized that the closet was in a hallway, and the stack of boxes was pushed up cleanly against the wall across from the door. There was no easy escape. She tried to buck the boxes as hard as she could, hoping they would give way, but she was in too much pain to balance properly; her legs flew out behind her and she slammed to the ground. The pain finally overwhelmed her strong emotional barriers.

"Celestia ... please..." she whispered. Twilight began to cry, sobbing into the floor beneath her, and covering her head with her hooves. Resigning herself to whatever fate she would suffer, she turned to face the strange force that had put her in this predicament. The glowing object was no longer just radiating purple, but was now a brilliant white so bright that Twilight was blinded as soon as she turned her head. The searing pain from the light forced her to shut her eyes tightly.

"... Save me ..." She began to wail as she finished her prayer, though she couldn't hear her own lamentations as the humming was suddenly replaced by a deafening roar. Twilight felt something wash over her, carrying an intense heat that made her feel like she was on fire, intensifying the pain even more. She was also fairly certain she had started screaming, but couldn't hear anything over the sound of the roar. Tears began streaking down her face, dropping to the wooden floor below.

A second cacophony, even louder than the first, erupted from within the small room. Twilight could no longer hear anything, her ears ringing and adding to the painful experience, and even though she had no more air in her lungs to scream with, she found herself unable to inhale so she could scream more. A massive concussive force rocked her as a third wave washed over Twilight, and as it passed, she felt a terrible wrenching sensation, unlike anything she'd felt before. And then she felt nothing at all.

Exploration

Dark grey clouds floated overhead, trapping all the rays of the noonday sun as three fillies stood at the edge of the Everfree Forest, arguing about their next course of action.

"I really think we should get an adult," Sweetie Belle insisted, glaring at Applebloom.

Her friend stared back intensely, her fierce aversion to getting outside help burning in her eyes. "Sweetie Belle, Ah've gone to Zecora's place plenty of times, all by myself. We don't need no adult. We're the Cutie Mark Crusaders! If we can't do something together that Ah already do alone, what good are we?"

Sweetie Belle looked over to Scootaloo, who sat off to the side, not getting involved in the argument. Sweetie Belle and her two best friends had been discussing this adventure into Everfree Forest for a week now. Sweetie Belle was stubborn, but Applebloom usually won out in a contest of wills, and Sweetie could feel her resolve weakening.

Under Sweetie Belle's gaze, Scootaloo shrugged. "I don't know why you always try to argue with Applebloom. She just as stubborn as her sister."

Probably the Earth pony farmer in her, Sweetie Belle thought to herself. Of course, it wouldn't be the first time they went into the Everfree alone, but it hadn't always gone without a hitch, and they really weren't supposed to be in the forest at all.

"Besides," Applebloom continued, "how are we supposed to get herbalism marks without Zecora's help?"

Sweetie Belle sat on her haunches, enduring the pressure from Applebloom. "I just don't see why we can't find an adult! It's not like we won't get our Cutie Marks just because we got an escort to Zecora's place. Why are you so stuck on going in there alone?"

Applebloom stomped with a forehoof. "Because we're the Cutie Mark Crusaders! That's what we do!"

Her jump in logic was beginning to agitate Sweetie Belle. "Well, then why is Zecora allowed to help, but not somepony else?"

Scootaloo shook her head and sighed as Applebloom tried to work out a response. "Look, let's just do this, alright? It's getting cold out here."

With both of her friends now against her, Sweetie Belle's will cracked, and with it, her voice. "Fine! But don't say I didn't warn you when something goes wrong!"

The issue mostly settled, the three of them started into the Everfree Forest. Everything seemed the same as it usually did, and the trio of fillies, Applebloom especially, were familiar with the route. Sweetie Belle eyed their surroundings as they walked. Even though it was all familiar, the gnarled trees, dead grass, occasional patches of poison joke, and the lightly beaten trail snaking off into the distance left her with a sense of unease. Normally in the middle of the day enough light filtered through the canopy to keep the surroundings well-lit, but the cloudy skies above cast a dim shade across the ground. Sweetie Belle wondered if her unsettled feeling was the cloudy sky above, preventing the light of the sun from gracing the ground with a small amount of bright cheer. Beyond that, it was eerily quiet, with the only sounds coming from the hooves of the trio as the plodded along. They hadn't seen any signs of the usual forest life they had seen, either.

That, of course, was not always a bad thing. Nothing in the forest was completely harmless, and Sweetie Belle knew quite well about the dangers some of the native creatures could pose. Applebloom pressed forward quickly, following the lightly trodden dirt path that wove around sinkholes, twisted trees, bramble bushes, and the occasional small pond, any of which could house a number of creatures that weren't terribly friendly. Sweetie Belle started to fall behind, hesitant to keep rushing ahead without caution, with Scootaloo only a few paces ahead of her. They continued for several minutes, eventually working their way to a portion of the trail that was surrounded with thick brambles.

Applebloom stopped, turning back to the pair, shattering the unusual silence with her frustrated cry. "Come on, girls. We're never going to make it to Zecora's place if you don't walk faster."

Sweetie Belle swallowed hard, glancing at the bushes on either side. She inhaled deeply, drawing in the air around her. The smell was surprisingly clean, though also humid, as if a storm was brewing above. Reminding herself that this path was frequently used and was one of the safest parts of the forest, Sweetie Belle picked up her pace, catching up to Scootaloo in a few quick steps. Passing her friend, however, all of her confidence building fell by the wayside. Scootaloo was barely walking, her eyes darting back and forth, and her ears swiveling one way and then another, listening intently. "Scootaloo, are you okay?"

Scootaloo's voice trembled slightly as she responded, "Quiet! Didn't you hear that?"

Applebloom walked back to them impatiently. "Hear what?" she asked, not bothering to lower her voice.

"Something is moving around in the brambles." Scootaloo's voice was barely above a whisper.

Sweetie Belle stopped and listened. Pegasi generally had superior hearing to the other pony races, a trait that allowed them to continue communicating during flight even in high winds and loud storms, so it wasn't uncommon for Scootaloo to hear things first. For several moments, the trio sat there, Applebloom scowling as her friends quit walking entirely. Several moments passed, the silence interrupted only by a soft breeze through the brambles.

Applebloom scoffed. "It's just wind. Come on, let's go!" She rounded again, continuing down the trail, but Scootaloo remained where she was, looking terrified. Sweetie Belle looked between her two friends, uncertain of what to do next, when a sudden movement caught her eye. She turned to get a better view, staring down the way they had come. The tail end of something quickly disappeared out of sight perhaps one hundred paces back. Something was following them. Scampering backwards, Sweetie Belle let loose a shrill cry of alarm, setting Scootaloo off into a full gallop up the trail toward Applebloom.

The brambles behind the trio exploded onto the path only a few paces in front of Sweetie Belle's eyes as a howl pierced the air around her. A timberwolf! Sweetie Belle wheeled about with a shriek and bolted as fast as she could, her friends already galloping well ahead of her. The fillies screaming, timberwolves howling, and the breaking of branches filled the air around them, as more timberwolves could be heard crashing through the overgrown bushes on either side of the path.

Sweetie Belle focused on Applebloom and Scootaloo ahead of her as her hooves pounded frantically into the soft dirt. As the path weaved, she could hear the snapping of the bramble branches behind her as the timberwolf paid no heed to the bushes on either side, trying to cut corners and losing ground in the effort. Light rain began to fall, and though it wasn't yet enough to create an impediment to progress, Sweetie knew that even a light rain could turn the surrounding terrain into a death trap after several minutes.

The brambles on either side of the trail stopped, replaced by the dark, twisted forms of forest's trees. As the brambles receded behind her, Sweetie Belle looked back to see four more timberwolves crashing through to join the pursuit, and with no more brambles to slow them down, all five of the dangerous beasts were rapidly closing the gap. Screaming loudly, Sweetie Belle pushed herself even harder.

The trees soon gave way to a wide clearing that Sweetie Belle recognized. They were getting closer to Zecora's hut now, and Sweetie Belle was sure the wise zebra would have a solution to the native creatures that surrounded her home. A short well-maintained grass covered the ground here, the pathway no longer visible ahead. Sweetie looked ahead to Applebloom, trusting that her friend had been here enough times to know the way, but her eyes shot open in alarm as a sixth timberwolf cut in from the side in front of her two friends. Applebloom shrieked with an un-ladylike expletive as she veered to the left, steering the trio away from the new interloper and into a densely forested edge of the clearing. The trees here had low branches that whipped across the trail they were newly blazing as unnervingly low heights. One particularly low branch caught Applebloom's signature pink bow, ripping it out of her mane as several strands of her cherry red hair tore out along with it, and Sweetie Belle had to duck slightly to avoid catching it with her horn as she passed.

Applebloom's new route seemed to have taken the timberwolves by surprise, as the dense branches and numerous trees slowed their pursuit, forcing the wolves to run wide around the difficult terrain and allowing the fillies to gain some much-needed distance. The rain was beginning to fall heavier now, and a rumble of thunder could be heard in the distance. Dark clouds above mixed with the heavier rain started impacting visibility, and Sweetie Belle forced herself to concentrate, providing some additional light with her horn. Ahead, she could see her friends still running along blindly.

Suddenly, Applebloom and Scootaloo dropped out of sight, screaming as they fell. Sweetie Belle tried to stop herself, but the rain had turned the loose dirt into a slick mud, causing her to slide to a precarious halt just before falling. She heard a heavy thump and peered over the side. Far below, Sweetie Belle could make out Scootaloo frantically trying to shake Applebloom back to her senses, both of them covered in mud. Her two friends were in a large, round depression, deep enough that Rarity's boutique could sit comfortably within it without peeking over the side. It was completely devoid of trees, grass, or any other forms of life save the two fillies below, and on the far side a cave mouth yawned darkly into the circle.

Unsure of what to do, Sweetie Belle lingered on the edge of the pit. Her friends below needed her help, but the drop could be dangerous. She was certain that the unexpected nature of the fall had contributed to her friend's unconscious state just as much as the depth of the pit had. Applebloom was also quite tough however, leaving Sweetie Belle with no confidence in her ability to drop down safely. Unbfortunately, before she had a chance to make an informed decision a timberwolf came running at her from between some nearby trees. Sweetie closed her eyes and jumped, the timberwolf lunging after her as she fell.

Attempting to put herself in the crash position that she had seen pegasi use, Sweetie Belle hit the ground and rolled violently to her side, the timberwolf crashing down upon her, flailing about in a panic. Sweetie Belle shrieked in terror as she pushed the confused creature off of her and rolled back to her hooves. The wolf sprang away quickly with a whine before attempting to scramble up the side of the cliff. Claws unable to find purchase, the timberwolf fell back to the ground. It righted itself and immediately renewed the attempt. This exercise was repeated futilely, as the creature seemed to have completely lost interest in the three friends. Sweetie Belle looked on through several repetitions of the act in stark confusion before carefully walking over to her other friends.

Scootaloo was shaking Applebloom profusely, screaming for her to wake up. The rains were torrential now, and Sweetie Belle noticed with alarm that the ground here was not absorbing any of the water, but instead was slowly filling up from the rain above and countless streams and rivulets from the surrounding area cascading down the sides. The rising water was threatening to drown the unconscious filly. Something needed to be done, fast. She galloped over to the cave mouth, the only immediately obvious exit to her predicament. The cave within sloped upward, and Sweetie took several steps inside, her horn shining brightly to let her see. The upward slope went well above the mouth of the cave, and while Sweetie Belle couldn't see any light from outside, she also couldn't make out the top of the slope. Sweetie Belle made a decision.

"Scootaloo! That cave! We'll be safe and hopefully dry in there. Help me move her!"

The two fillies struggled to lift their friend, and the water level on the ground was rising visibly as they worked, causing them to panic. Slowly, however, they managed to lift, pull, push, and drag their unconscious friend to the cave entrance, as the water level reached their knees. The timberwolf that had fallen in with them began to panic in the rising water, and eventually slogged its way over to the cave, perching itself high on the slope as water dripped from the wooden creature. It seemed as though an unspoken truce had been made, as the timberwolf took no aggressive action and seemed to be preoccupied with keeping as close to the entrance as possible without going into the rising water.

<><><><><>

Deep within the Everfree, the zebra known as Zecora looked up to the dark clouds with a grim expression. A strange silence had settled upon the feral creatures of the forest as Zecora stood outside her hut, sniffing the damp air and listening intently for any foreign sounds. The storm brewing above was extraordinary, and the increasing winds carried whispers of ill omens that nearly every creature of the forest could feel. A foul smell on the air betrayed the presence of timberwolves on the prowl somewhere upwind, toward Ponyville. Zecora trotted softly over to a patch of herbs growing nearby, plucked one with her teeth retreated slowly into her hut, intent on completing her latest project.

Her cauldron bubbled softly, a mixture of natural ingredients that was nearly complete. Dropping the newly plucked herbs into the mixture, Zecora began to stir vigorously with a wooden ladle as soft rain began to fall outside. After some time, the bubbling of the mixture began to cease as the surface began to glow with a soft green hue. Humming a tune, Zecora removed the wooden ladle from the new mixture, spooning some into a nearby wooden bowl. She started to pore over her myriad collection of natural ingredients, alchemical bottles, and other assorted jars of substances best left alone and pulled down a large jar filled with firegrass. Firegrass was an orange moss that warmed slightly when wet, making it an excellent base for medical poultices, setting it on the table. Gently, she shook out some of the contents of the jar into the wooden bowl, and began absent-mindedly mashing all of the content of the bowl with a hoof, grinding the moss and mixture together into a thick, gooey substance.

A far away howling from outside tore Zecora's attention away from her alchemy. The timberwolves were chasing something in the distance. Curious, Zecora stepped outside her hut again to listen. The commotion was distant yet growing slowly closer, but something else could be heard amongst the sharp howls, and Zecora perked her ears, trying to identify the noise. After a few moments, an obscenity shouted in a familiar voice cut through the howling and screaming. Applebloom!

Oh no, no, no. Zecora thought to herself. Why must that foolish child be here now? Darting inside, Zecora grabbed a firebrand ointment and quickly doused herself in it, grabbing a second bottle for a possible emergency. Bottles flew from shelves into Zecora's saddlebags as she hastily grabbed everything she could possibly need. She quickly scraped her new creation into an empty container and threw it into her bag as well. No time could be spared if an entire pack of timberwolves were hunting a single filly. She bolted out the door at a full gallop. The rain was already starting to soften the earth beneath her hooves, but her sturdy horseshoes given to her as a gift from the very filly she needed to save now grasped the firmer earth below the muck and propelled her as fast as she could go.

The shrieking and howling was shifting, heading even deeper into the forest as Zecora galloped through concealed pathways that few ever knew about. Time was of the essence as gnarled trees whipped past her on all sides and she pressed on as quickly as she could, leaping over patches of poison joke, blade ferns, and other dangerous plants and terrain skillfully. Her speed, mobility, and superior knowledge of the lay of the land allowed her to close the distance between herself and the wolves, but she was fighting against a late start that was going to be difficult to compensate for.

A few minutes later, a shrill howl pierced the air, signifying that prey had been cornered. Zecora's skin crawled as she realized the sound was coming from the direction of the Dead Shrine.

<><><><><>

Inside the cave, two fillies and a distraught timberwolf watched as the water level was visibly rising to cover the already dim light from outside, rising at a pace that would completely submerge the entrance within just a few minutes. Applebloom, still unconscious, had been dragged several feet up the tunnel, well above where the water level was, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle at either side. The timberwolf, frightened and confused, huddled against the cave wall, trying to keep as close to the water as possible while still remaining as far from the fillies as it could.

Scootaloo was exhausted from the efforts of hauling Applebloom into the safety of the cave and as the adrenaline finally passed, she found herself growing immensely tired. Still, she dared not sleep with a predator so close by, even if it didn't seem to be hostile at the moment. Completely drained of her energy, she laid on the ground, watching the rising water with concern. "Sweetie Belle? How were you planning on getting out of here?"

Sweetie's horn continued to illuminate the cave around them, granting the only source of light they would have when the water level overtook what little light came from outside. "I didn't really think about that. We just needed somewhere to take Applebloom..." A rumbling of thunder above reverbrated through the cave as Sweetie Belle trailed off.

Scootaloo sighed. Sweetie Belle was right; they hadn't had time to consider other options, and the water had flooded in remarkably quickly. Even though they might starve to death, and didn't have any idea how to get out, at least it wasn't a death by drowning. The rising water level was another concern entirely -- depending on how deep the cave went, they might not have anywhere safe to go. Still, that concern was secondary to getting Applebloom up.

Applebloom's still form was breathing softly, a large lump on her head from where she had fallen and struck the ground. Scootaloo had been lucky; her wings helped to slow her fall. She poked softly at the lump on Applebloom's head, prompting the earth pony to groan in agony, her eyes fluttering open briefly. She stirred and slowly lifted her head, eyes unfocused in the dim light. "Scoots? Sweetie Belle ...? Where are we?"

"In a cave, I guess," Scootaloo replied. "After you fell, it was the only place we could find that was safe."

Casting her gaze about, Applebloom noticed the timberwolf cowering at the water's edge. Her eyes shot open in alarm as she scrambled away. "How is a timberwolf's den safe?!" she shouted.

"I'm pretty sure this isn't their den. I mean, look at him! He's even more terrified than we are."

Scootaloo looked on as Applebloom observed the timberwolf. The creature simply whined, staring at the water as if it was debating an attempt to swim out.

"Ah guess you're right," Applebloom agreed. "But how are we s'pposed ta get home now?"

Another clap of thunder rattled their ears as the last of the cave entrance was now submerged. Despite that fact, the water continued to climb, slowly but relentlessly. The trio decided to move further up the slope, putting more distance between them and the timberwolf. They looked on quietly as the wolf poked and prodded at the rising water, but refused to go deeper into the cave than absolutely necessary.

Sweetie Belle's voice broke the silence. "I can't keep this light up forever, you know. We should probably try to find somewhere we can be safe."

Scootaloo didn't like caves. The idea of exploring even deeper into an unknown cave, in the middle of the Everfree Forest, was not one that appealed to her. Still, without Sweetie Belle's light and the water encroaching on their position relentlessly, she couldn't help but agree. "Yeah, we should probably at least look around. You lead the way, you're the one with the light."

Applebloom nodded in agreement. As the trio stood up and started treading deeper into the cave, the timberwolf whined louder, barking a few times before returning its attention to the water, the sharp sound ringing off the cave walls. After a few moments of walking upward, the passage flattened out and then began a gradual decline, spiraling sharply to the right like a corkscrew. Peering into the darkness ahead, Scootaloo winced as another crash of thunder sounded loudly through the passage.

"How far do you suppose this goes?" Scootaloo asked.

"Ah don't have any idea," Applebloom replied. "But Ah hope at least one of us gets a cutie mark after all this."

Scootaloo pondered the events of the day as they walked and began to wonder if this adventure was going to be what earned her a cutie mark. She was fairly certain she would never want to see a cave again after this and the idea of getting a spelunking cutie mark left a bad taste in her mouth.

After several minutes, the fillies came to a wide chamber, with stalagmite jutting up from the ground while stalactices above menaced near them, like teeth prepared to tear the flesh from any intruders. Slowly, the three fillies worked their way around the massive stone spikes. Scootaloo couldn't help but notice that the obstacles were making Sweetie Belle's light cast eerie shadows, and tried to huddle closer to her, while Applebloom took point, trying to find another exit to the massive chamber. Suddenly, Applebloom stopped and raised a hoof, pointing around a nearby stalagmite.

"Lights," Applebloom whispered.

Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle took a few cautious steps closer to Applebloom. At the other end of the room, Scootaloo could make out several bright points of light of various colors.

As the trio inched closer, shadows blocking the various lights started to take clear form.

"Look, there are some ponies over there," Scootaloo whispered, unsure of what to make of the strange lights.

The ponies were all standing in a semi-circle, each one facing the center in total silence. "They're not moving," Sweetie Belle whispered back.

All three fillies remained still and silent for several minutes, waiting to see if they were going to do something when a powerful sound came blasting down the corridor behind them. The trio jumped at the sound, shrieking in terror and fleeing toward the hopefully safe shelter of the other ponies.

As they approached, it became clear that these were not ponies, but statues set in determined poses. Each one was made of an unpolished, jet black stone of some kind that absorbed nearly all the light. With Sweetie Belle in closer proximity to the statues to better illuminate them, Scootaloo could see that there were twelve in all, four of each of the pony races, and each was decorated with numerous golden accessories, each inlaid with polished gems of different colors, and each statue featuring a different color. The gems themselves were the source of the light, radiating their respective colors around the room. The statues all faced the center of the half-circle, where a black pedestal sat low to the ground, perhaps two hooves high and polished to a shine, but otherwise unremarkable. It bore no inscriptions, nor any sign of purpose, but simply being near it left Scootaloo was a strange sense of peace. All three of the fillies stopped, feeling an odd sense of tranquility amongst the colored lights, the loud boom echoing through the cavern forgotten.

Scootaloo stopped in front of one of the unicorn statues and examined the metalwork. The statue's accessories, like each of the other unicorn statues, consisted of a golden crown with a large gem set in the center, a necklace with another gem in the center, and a golden covering on the horn with gemstones worked into a spiraling fashion down the length of the horn. Each of the gems bore a jade green glow. "Sweetie Belle, don't you think Rarity would want to see this? These are amazing."

Sweetie Belle was examining the metalwork on one of the pegasus statues, her eyes wide with wonder. "Yeah..." she breathed. The wings of the statue were wrapped in a loose golden mesh, with a glowing sapphire blue trim along the leading edge of the wings. Gemdust seemed to be woven into the mesh along the largest of the primary feathers as well, giving the wings a strikingly beautiful outline.

Over by an earth pony statue, Applebloom was doing the same. In addition to the necklace worn by all twelve statues, the earth pony statues wore golden leggings with gems set into each of the knees, and a spiraling golden trim that went all the way from the hoof to the knee, a narrow band of color running along the edge, but it was the necklace that had caught her attention. "Girls, don't these necklaces remind you of something? This one looks like one've the Elements of Harmony." She pointed to the statue's neck with her hoof where a ruby red gem sat in the middle of a golden-wrought neck piece.

<><><><><>

Timberwolves were pacing around the rim of the Dead Shrine's entrance, howling and whining to one another as Zecora arrived on the scene, skidding to a halt several paces away. The rain had rendered the entire area slick with mud. One of the timberwolves turned to her and growled, drawing the attention of the rest of the pack. Nearby timberwolves turned away from the flooded depression and began to circle around Zecora instead, sizing up their new prey. Zecora's eyes narrowed as four of them took orbit around her, digging her hooves into the mud for purchase. Her voice came out, low and menacing, "Touch me and regret your deeds, I wear the salve of fire seeds."

A timberwolf lunged at her from the rear, only to be met with Zecora's rear hoof crashing into its face, shattering the beast on contact. The pieces of the timberwolf scattered about the ground, burying themselves into the mud as Zecora firmed up her footing again. The remaining timberwolves growled menacingly, as three more of them left their patrol on the ledge to focus on the new stranger.

Two more timberwolves tried their luck, attacking from both sides simultaneously. The zebra whipped to the side as she reared up, boxing the wolf on the left with a hoof. The second timberwolf sank a fang into her flank, forcing a cry of pain from Zecora as the creature was suddenly immolated in a brilliant blue flame. The timberwolf in front of her scrambled backwards as the brilliant blue flame licked at its face. The blazing timberwolf collapsed into the mud. Steam billowed from the corpse as rain continued to strike it, the flames licking greedily at the the remains. At the sight of magical fire, the entire timberwolf pack scattered, barking and whining to eachother as they ran.

Zecora's flank was in agonizing pain. Though the flame had already cauterized the wound, the burning did nothing to help the pain. She examined the wound. It was a deep puncture that sat in the middle of the spiraling pattern of her Cutie Mark. Digging through her satchel, she pulled out her newest mixture and applied some to her wound. Dampened by the rain, the water in her fur activated the firegrass immediately, providing a soothing warmth that numbed the pain.

Zecora approached the flooded pit with trepidation. The pit which contained the entrance to the Dead Shrine was normally given a wide berth by the creatures of the forest, though the timberwolves were less cautious than most other forest denizens. It was a death trap during dry weather, as the walls were virtually unclimbable by most creatures. It was also sunken lower than the surrounding area, and its poor drainage during the rains caused it to rapidly flood. The shrine itself also acted a deterrent, with the powerful magics from within often repelling the magic-sensitive creatures of the wood.

It was obvious from the behavior of the timberwolves that Applebloom had fallen into the pit. Peering over the ledge, Zecora's eyes went wide in fear. There was nothing in the water; had Applebloom fallen in, she would have to stay afloat to survive. Zecora wasn't sure if the filly could swim, but even if she had drowned in the rising waters, her lifeless body should still float. The pit was lifeless, and shouldn't have had anything for a body to catch on below, either. Only one possibility remained, and Zecora was terrified by it. Had the foolish child gone into the Dead Shrine to avoid the wolves? It was the only answer Zecora could find, and the consequences could be disastrous.

Zebras, like ponies, were not good swimmers. There wasn't any way she could possibly swim to the shrine entrance without drowning; the water would have to be removed somehow. She rummaged through her pack again, pulling out a large vial of black oil with a heavy cork. Walking over to the burning corpse, she set the cork ablaze. The cork hissed and spat with magical energies as Zecora threw the bottle as far as she could toward the center of the flooded pit. The magical fires of the firebrand mixed with the alchemical properties of the enchanted cork caused the water to bubble violently as it sank deeper and deeper into the pit. As each bubble popped on the surface, it belched multi-colored flames into the air, providing any possible onlookers with a eye-pleasing pyrotechnic display.

Zecora wasn't watching the light show however, opting to take cover behind a nearby tree. The Blasting Oil in the vial was exceedingly dangerous and normally reserved for industrial excavation, but it had alchemical uses as well. Half a minute later, a massive explosion erupted from the pit. It launched magically inflamed water into the sky in every direction, and though most of the fluid burned back into water vapor rapidly, some of it splashed against nearby trees, setting the surrounding forest aflame. Zecora shook her head, hoping the heavy rain would keep the fires to a minimum; she didn't have time to worry about the consequences of that right now.

She trotted over to the pit, noting that nearly all the water had been blasted out, and what remained was rapidly burning into vapor again. The Dead Shrine's entrance was easily visible, which meant the water level was extremely low, but the flames below and the dangerous drop weren't terribly inviting. The firebrand she had used earlier should protect her from the flames just as easily as it had protected her from the timberwolf before, but the fall would be another issue entirely. Nothing in her pack would be helpful here; in her haste to leave quickly, she had not managed to grab any Cloudfall.

Carefully lowering herself down over the ledge, Zecora dropped to the ground below. The landing was rough and sent a shock through her rear hooves that might have hurt her legs immensely if the local numbing sensation from her flank hadn't dulled her senses. Sinking to her knees in the muddy, burning water, she slogged to the cave entrance slowly. Zecora's grandmother and mentor, Talua, had forbidden her to ever entering the Dead Shrine, and Zecora was feeling an overwhelming sense of dread as she took her first steps inside.

Acclimation

Twilight's body ached. It wasn't the intense pain she'd been suffering before she lost consciousness, but felt more like a numbness that was gradually fading. The next thing she became aware of was the ground; it was the coldest ground Twilight had ever felt. In fact, the entire room felt rather chilly, and most of her body felt far more exposed than usual.

Her eyes fluttered open and she glanced around. The room she was in was completely unfamiliar. To her recollection, just moments before she had been in the storage closet at Golden Oaks Library, prepared to meet whatever fate had befallen her. Now? She was in a large room carved from stone. The walls of the room were clearly marked with the arcane signatures of magical stonecutting. In the middle of the room was a large, metal table and a similarly large bench. Lamps of some sort ran along the perimeter of the room, granting a surprisingly ample level of illumination, and along one wall was a heavy metal door set into a similar metal frame.

Was this a prison under Canterlot? Twilight thought back to the small object she had been investigating immediately prior to blacking out. Had it been some forbidden ancient artifact? Was Celestia punishing her for recklessly playing with unknown and dangerous things? That didn't seem to fit with Celestia's normal methodology. Even when Twilight had inadvertently done absolutely terrible things to her friends, Celestia usually just gave her a stern lecture. Imprisonment without trial seemed rather extreme in comparison.

Dozens of dark stones littered the floor, prismatically reflecting light from the many lamps. The effect was such that a colorful array of hues were scattered across the walls. They reminded her of the mana battery she had been researching the last few days. Twilight discarded the prison theory. Canterlot prisons were impeccably maintained, even a single stray stone would be removed and scrutinized for magical influences. Besides, the door seemed to be open a crack, and no one leaves a prisoner in a cell without shutting the door. But if she was not a prison, then she had no idea where she might be.

The numbness in her body was slowly fading, and Twilight decided it was probably safe to stand. She stopped immediately, feeling her legs bend in ways that shouldn't ever happen. What was wrong with her legs? She tried to crane her neck around to look at them, only to discover that her neck didn't seem to bend properly, doing little more than swivelling on a fixed point. What had happened to her body? Why wouldn't it behave as she expected? Feeling a sense of panic coming on, Twilight closed her eyes and tried to control her breathing.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

She focused on what she knew. First, she was in a strange place, with no knowledge of how she got there. Second, her neck was acting strange and wouldn't bend around like it should. She opened her eyes, and was immediately struck with something she had overlooked before. She had never really paid conscious thought to it, but now the absence was jarring.

"What happened to my nose?" Twilight wondered out loud to herself. The sound of her own voice startled her; it was louder than she expected and sounded nothing like the voice she normally heard. Shaking off the strangeness of her voice, she returned to focusing on her face. Twilight tried to bring a hoof up to feel for her missing muzzle. In response to the impulse, her foreleg swiftly moved to where she wanted it to go, swinging up in a peculiar fashion. The unnatural motion startled her a second time, and she watched as her foreleg hit herself in the face. After a moment of recovery from the mild impact, she stared at her leg, momentarily confused by the appendage in front of her. It was clearly hers; she had felt the impact in both her hoof and face, but it looked like a minotaur's hand.

She stared at the limb in front of her, turning it one way and then another, trying to understand what she had become. Her eyes followed along the length of her forelimbs, starting at the hairless hands where her forehooves had been. The hands each had four fingers and a thumb, and was attached to a long, slender, and mostly hairless arm. About a third of the way up from the elbow, the flesh was covered in a tight fitting crimson fabric that met up with a larger torso, which was also covered in the same fabric. The torso itself was much flatter than that of a pony, accentuated by two awkwardly placed mounds that made further visual examination of the torso difficult. Beyond those mounds, Twilight could see two more legs. A brief kick confirmed those were, indeed, her hind legs. They were considerably thicker than the arms, and felt much stronger. She also noted that all four limbs growing from the torso were set at bizarre angles, which meant it probably moved awkwardly. Where her rear hooves had been, she now sported strange, flat, clawed feet. She closed her eyes and tried to visualize her current form from a third-person perspective.

...Spike. That was the closest parallel she could imagine. Though the proportions were completely different, Twilight was fairly certain she generally had the same bodily structure as her dragon assistant.

It wasn't the first time she had suffered a full-body transformation. Twilight had been subjected to such magic once before, at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. As Celestia's favored student, the teachers had always singled her out, expecting her to perform better than other students. Due to her standing with both the Princess and teachers, and her consistent placement at the top of her classes, most other students were either frightened or jealous of her. One senior student, trying to get her to quit school, had snuck into the Royal Archive and found a book of forbidden spells, memorized one of the spells, and cornered her during their lunch break and transformed her into a parrot. Twilight had been stuck in that form for two days, and while she was terrified, she had also been fascinated by the experience. The foolish colt had later been subjected to a memory wipe and summarily expelled, but Twilight wondered if she could now apply what she had learned then to her current situation.

<><><><><>

Rebecca lay face down on the floor, eyes tightly closed. Her entire body was in agony, as if it was rebelling against existence, and yet the pain was the least of her concerns. One sensation stood out about the pain; the curious feeling of the veil settling on her had intensified immensely. As the warming sensation of the veil continued to permeate through her body, she found the pain was slowly subsiding; were the two related? She couldn't be sure.

Thoughts of Sarah came flooding back to her. What had happened out there in the hallway? Her mind became occupied with Sarah's screaming, and the horrific crunching sound she had heard outside the door before she blacked out. Even though she'd only known Sarah for a little over a week, Rebecca felt the two of them had been growing closer, and the thought of Sarah having been seriously wounded, or maybe even killed, left her feeling empty inside.

She listened intently for any more sounds coming from the hallway. Would any other residents of the facility come to look for other survivors? The silence betrayed no presence. And that, in turn, left Rebecca herself feeling somewhat betrayed. Had they abandoned her here, deep underground, where no one would find her?

Rebecca pondered her situation briefly. Would they even need to find her? Maybe she could find her own way out; her body was screaming in pain, but she wasn't disabled as far as she could determine.

She slowly opened her eyes. There was nothing but darkness surrounding her. Without any light source this far underground, that was to be expected; the shaking had probably knocked the generators offline. Visualizing the layout of the area in her head, Rebecca decided that if she could just find the door, she should be able to follow the walls cautiously to find the surface. It would be a long walk, and the pain was definitely going to make it torturous, but if the alternative was never getting out of here she was going to suffer through it.

Her arms felt rather stiff as she slowly propped herself up to stand. The tactile sensation in her hands felt extremely dulled, as if the floor wasn't really there, even though it was solid and clearly supporting her weight. The strange feeling in her hands unnerved her. Had she sustained more serious injuries that she thought? She didn't recall any. Without any light, Rebecca couldn't be sure what was going on, but something was definitely abnormal.

She tried to put her legs underneath her to finish the task of getting upright, but they weren't cooperating. Her legs seemed straight, like they should be, but her body felt wrong; her feet were flat on the floor, and yet her torso felt as if it were still roughly parallel to the ground, and her butt wasn't nearly as high as she had expected it to be if her legs were fully straight.

Something brushed lightly against her posterior. She yelped and threw a leg back reflexively, kicking behind her. Her foot slammed into something, and a loud cracking noise filled the room around her, accompanied by the sound of fragments of glass falling to the ground. Immediately, she fell silent, listening for any other sounds. Normally everything in the cavern had some level of echo or reverberation, as the walls reflected sound reasonably well, but the breaking sound had been unexpectedly dry. Furthermore, she couldn't think of anything made of glass in the lab room she had been in.

As she listened intently, somewhere off in the distance was the sound of a rooster greeting the morning. It caught Rebecca completely off guard. Roosters don't belong on arctic islands, and they most certainly wouldn't have been audible this far underground. The sheer incongruity of the situation confused her. "What?" she asked aloud to herself, and then recoiled at the sound of her own voice. "What in the ...?" Her voice wasn't normally so high-pitched or soft. Distracted from the rooster, Rebecca began to talk to herself, trying to figure out what could have gone wrong.

The odd, dry quality of all the sounds around her became clear when a light suddenly flickered to life above her, bathing the room in a soft glow. She wasn't in the now-familiar cavernous lab she had last remembered. Instead, she was in a small, square room that appeared to be carved out of wood. Rebecca was no carpenter, but the lack of apparent seams in any of the walls, floors, or corners was a testament to the skill of the artisan. She glanced around. The lamp above was shaped like a typical gas lantern, though it appeared to be cosmetic. The light within didn't waver like a gas lamp, and the way it had flickered to life was much like power being restored after a storm. A shattered mirror stood against the wall behind her, several of the fragments scattered on the floor, resolving the previous mystery of the breaking glass. Apart from the mirror and lantern, the only notable feature was a door that served as the only exit, filled cleanly to the top with boxes. The boxes themselves sported a company logo and stylized letters that spelled out "Strings and Things". There wouldn't be enough room to squeeze through the door without moving the boxes out of the way somehow.

As she finished looking about the room, she realized she was still poised to crawl around. The position was surprisingly more comfortable than she expected, which probably explained how she had stuck there so long without noticing, but given the height of the ceiling, she was confident there would be room to stand. She tried to push herself upright, but the incongruous feeling in her limbs came back to her mind. Rebecca glanced down to her arms and suddenly became aware of her own condition. A sense of terror began welling up in her mind as she gazed upon the body she was trapped in.

She shook her head and swallowed hard, trying to quell her rising panic. The head shaking movement in the shattered pieces of the mirror caught her attention, drawing her eyes to her reflection. A strange lavender creature stared back at her; its body was roughly the shape of a horse, but with wildly inaccurate proportions. What stood out the most was how its neck was too short, legs too thick, and the head and eyes far too large. A spiraled horn appeared to sprout from its forehead, the same color as its coat, while two similarly colored ears and a darker purple mane sat above the horn. Two adjacent streaks accented the creature's mane just off center, one a lighter shade of purple, and the second nearly pink. Moderately large feathered wings lay dormant on either side of the torso. At the rear, a tail colored like the mane hung limply, the most likely cause of the sensation that had caused her to panic in the first place. Rebecca blinked a few times, trying to clear her vision, but the strange creature was still there. She turned her head to the side, and the creature's head moved with her.

"What ... What the hell?", she asked aloud, an unsettling feeling washing over her. She sifted through her memories for anything that explained the creature in the mirror. A horse with a horn would be a unicorn, that much she could remember, but unicorns didn't have wings. Rebecca frowned, noting the image in the mirror frowning with her. A winged horse? She couldn't recall the name, but there was one of those in some classic mythological story. Was it a Roman story or a Greek one? Mythology was never her strong suit, and she had always confused the two. In any case, she couldn't remember the name of that horse either. She shook her head.

Again, the reflection in the broken mirror emulated her movements, and her eyes widened in recognition. This was really happening. Everything seemed too real to be a dream, especially the pain she had felt. Was she actually dead? Could this be some sick and twisted afterlife? If so, how could she have possibly become some sort of horse? What cruel god would do such a thing?

<><><><><>

It rapidly became evident to Twilight that this body hadn't been designed for quadrupedal movement: The limbs didn't move right, making it uncomfortable and awkward. In hindsight, she also realized the clothing clearly wasn't designed for it either. Whatever body this was, it obviously stood on two limbs, not four. Twilight tried to remember back to her time as a bird; she had walked on two legs then. Would this be the same?

In her short time spent as a parrot, Twilight learned something about bodies that she hadn't known before. A parrot simply knew how to walk and fly instinctively, and while she hadn't done well at first, her body had automatically taken over when she tried. If this body was the same, then maybe bipedal movement wasn't going to be impossible. Twilight concentrated, visualizing Spike getting up in the morning. She tried to emulate the motions as best as she could, but it didn't work; the proportions weren't right, and the range of motion of the limbs wasn't anywhere close to the same.

The table in the center of the room might be helpful, Twilight thought to herself, crawling across the floor. As she moved, she noted a side effect of moving around with this body on all fours: it hurt. The rough ground dug into the soft, hairless skin, and the knees bore the weight poorly, which stung quite badly. Once she was at the edge of the table, she reached up to grab the edge with one of her new hands. The fingers naturally grasped the edge with little effort. Twilight smiled triumphantly; her body was working on its own, she just had to think about what she was doing instead of how she was doing it.

Getting a firm grip on the table, she pulled as hard as she could. As she had hoped, the effort pulled her entire body upward. Slowly and laboriously, she continued to pull herself higher while trying to get her other limbs beneath her. It took time, but eventually she was standing flat on her body's feet, though her weight was still heavily supported by the table. Now standing, she once again stopped to take stock of her situation. The table was covered with more of the stones that littered the floor. A particularly large one rested on the near side of the table next to a hammer, and two chisels.

Looking around, it occurred to Twilight that this body stood extremely high. The ground around her was rather distant compared to what she was used to as a pony, and she was sure that if she wasn't used to flying at low altitudes with Fluttershy since she became a Princess, she probably would be suffering some form of vertigo right now. She closed her eyes again for a moment to relax, getting her breathing back to normal after the effort of pulling herself upright. Could she walk? Due to her height, basic physics suggested that a failed attempt at ambulation would lead to an uncomfortable high-velocity impact with the ground. Probably not as bad as crashing during her flying sessions with Rainbow Dash, but certainly not comfortable.

Twilight steeled her nerves and focused on the far wall. First, she needed to stand without the assistance of the table. She carefully released her grip. The lower legs seemed remarkably strong, and held up her weight without any complaints or issues. Her balance felt off slightly, but she was otherwise staying upright. "So far, so good," she said aloud to herself, once again bemused by the sound of her own voice. Keeping her focus on the far wall, she willed herself to walk, trying not to think about the motions or how comically out of balance her body should be.

As she had surmised, her body understood what to do. Twilight tried not to think about the movements that were occurring in the lower limbs of her body, for fear that she would take conscious control of what she was doing and foul up the process. Her body continued to walk on its own without any input beyond her desire to travel, but the wall she was focused on was approaching far more rapidly than Twilight expected. She tried to will herself to stop, but her shifting weight continued to propel her forward, her body tipping toward rapidly approaching wall and allowing gravity to take over.

She slammed into the wall and hit the floor hard. It hurt.

<><><><><>

The boxes in the doorway hadn't budged. Rebecca had spent nearly an hour trying to find a way to move them, but it was clear that they were jammed against something, and they couldn't be pushed out of the way no matter how she tried. It had also become clear that kicking at them wouldn't help, and the beaten condition of some of the boxes indicated that someone else may have already tried that before. Pulling would have been the perfect solution, but she couldn't find any way to pull on the boxes with her current form.

Trapped.

That was Rebecca's ultimate conclusion: She was trapped. Trapped in this twisted body. Trapped in this strange room that teased at escape but offered none.

Rebecca simply laid down and sighed, awaiting whatever would come next. Over time, she became aware of a bustle of activity off in the distance, muffled, but generally cheerful. Wherever she was, she wasn't alone. Should she scream for help? If she herself wasn't human anymore, who - or what - lived here? She pondered the state she was in, locked in a room with no exit. Was she imprisoned by those outside? She scoffed as she realized she was being held in by an impossibly simple method: a stack of cardboard boxes. Did this pass as a prison here?

As she lay on the bare, wooden floor, she stared at the broken mirror. Most of the fragments in the lower right quadrant of the mirror had fallen out of the frame, scattered on the floor, but the vast majority of the mirror remained in place, held together by the pressure from the other pieces. Cracks radiated from a single impact point, a clear hoof print just right of the center. Rebecca idly wondered if the mirror could have been some sort of portal back home; a portal she had broken on accident. The idea seemed ridiculous, but it crushed what little hope she had left. Tears began forming in her eyes and she put her head to the ground. For the first time since leaving for college, she began feeling homesick.

She wasn't sure how long she had lay there longing for her mother's cooking, but after a while, a voice interrupted her misery. "Twilight?" It was much more clear than the distant voices she had tuned out already, and it sounded like it was coming from nearby. The voice sounded young, almost child-like, and Rebecca couldn't tell immediately if it was male or female.

"Twilight? Where are you? The whole town is outside cleaning up after last night's storm." She could hear a soft patter of footsteps growing closer. Should she respond? If she was a prisoner, would speaking out be bad? On the other hand, it sounded like a child. Perhaps she could get it to help, even if she was supposed to be locked in here.

"Excuse me? Can you help me out?" Rebecca called. "I'm stuck behind these boxes. Can you move them out of the way for me?"

The footsteps pattered closer, and she could see something purple through the crack in the doorway. When it spoke again, it sounded agitated. "Not funny, Twilight. You know as well as I do that you're not trapped in there."

"No, really, I am stuck. I can't find a way to move these boxes. Please, can you help?"

"This isn't the time for games." The voice sounded angry now. "Twilight, we need your help outside, but if you're just gonna sit in there, fine. Use your magic to get out of there, or something. I'm sure you can manage at least that much on your own." The pattering of feet started to grow more distant.

Magic? Rebecca sighed with frustration and worked her way back to her hooves. She walked back to the boxes and turned around, bracing her front hooves against the floor. With a fierce kick, she slammed a rear hoof into one of the boxed in the door. It didn't accomplish anything, but she felt better. Rearing up, she starting kicking at them repeatedly. The kicks were solid and satisfying, and while she didn't feel she was making any progress, it was helping her burn off the irritation that was welling up within her.

It didn't take long for the voice to respond. "Whoa, whoa, Twilight, what are you doing? ... Calm down, alright?"

Twilight. That wasn't the first mention of the name. Who was Twilight? The question bothered Rebecca, giving her even more agitation to channel into her kicks. The child's voice seemed to be growing genuinely concerned. "Twilight ... Are you sure you're okay? You seem really out of it." The owner of the voice was really starting to get on her nerves.

"NO!" Rebecca snapped. "I'm not okay!"

She reared up for one last kick, lashing out angrily, and her hind leg smashed through the side of one of the boxes. Immediately, a flash of inspiration struck. She turned her head to look behind her - an action, she noted, that was far easier with her long, flexible neck than it would be normally - and saw that her foot had broken through the second box from the bottom. Could she hook the side of the box and pull the whole stack out?

Rebecca pulled her hind leg out and turned to face the boxes, shoving a foreleg into the hole, where it was trivially simple to hook her leg to the side. Fueled by her rage, she yanked backwards, toppling the entire stack of boxes into the small room she had been confined to, several of them crashing on top of her own head. As they fell, one box impaled itself on her horn and stuck there, weighing her down awkwardly and straining her neck. The weight of the box on her horn added an immense pressure on her skull, giving her a sudden onset migraine that dwarfed any headache she'd had before.

The footsteps were approaching more rapidly this time. "Be careful with those boxes, would you? Rarity is supposed to be stopping in soon to pick those up."

Rebecca ignored the child, thrashing about underneath the pile of boxes that had just toppled over onto her. Once she finally had freed herself of all the boxes, she cautiously tried to find stable footing, struggling with stray fabrics that gave little purchase against the smooth wooden floor. Once she had managed to get her feet solidly on the ground, she gingerly used one of her forelegs to push the box off the tip of the horn, which was accompanied by a release of pressure that brought her much-needed relief. The offending parcel fell to the ground with a with a soft thump.

In front of her, staring wide-eyed, was a small purple reptile with green spines. It appeared to be trying to hold in laughter, doubled over and shaking, and she could make out a grin plastered across its face. She scowled. "What's so funny?!" she demanded.

The reptile exploded into giggles. Rebecca was not amused.

<><><><><>

"Rebecca, are you okay? We're all stuck outside the security door. Can you let us in?"

Twilight was starting to feel confident with walking when a soft, clearly male voice came from down the hall. It was quiet and distant. If the area hadn't been eerily silent otherwise, Twilight was sure she wouldn't have heard it at all. Still, she needed to find somepony to help change her back to her normal form. Or maybe just contact Celestia; the Princess could probably do it herself. Cautiously, she called out to the voice as loudly as she could, "I'm in here. Can you help me?"

She listened intently, but the owner of the voice seemed to ignore her. Instead, it repeated the plea. "Rebecca, please be okay! If you can hear me, we need you to let us in. All you need to do is go to the Communications room and press the Intercom button to talk to me. I can walk you through everything else."

Unable to rationalize any reason to stay where she was, Twilight walked toward the door, subconsciously pulling it open wider with her magic as she approached. The effort was considerably more difficult than Twilight had expected it to be, but the door slowly swung open. Stepping into the hallway, she found herself in a slightly sloped and curved tunnel hewn from the rock, the arcane signature of magical stonecutting still clearly marked in the walls. It stretched off in both directions, curving out of sight. Off to the left, a blood trail started about fifty feet away, trailing up around the bend. Off to her right, a cave-in blocked the majority of the passageway, though she was fairly certain she could climb over the blockage if she needed to. She looked up and down the hall and listened intently again, hoping to hear the voice.

"Rebecca? Are you there? Oh, why didn't they give me the over-ride code for this door..."

The voice was coming from the left, beyond the curve. She started walking that way, being careful not to step on any loose rocks as she went. The blood trail continued along with her as she walked, pooling thicker in some areas. Every time Twilight came to another door, she stopped and listened for the voice again, which was getting louder and more desperate as she went along. Each door she passed had a strange inscription on it: Drake, Lance, Joseph, Talia, Lab 1, Medical. Twilight wasn't sure what to make of the doors. One was clearly related to dragons, and one was obviously the knight that would fight it. Joseph might be Donut Joe, but that seemed extremely unlikely. What did Joe have to do with dragon slaying? She also had no idea what 'Talia' meant. Lab 1 and Medical seemed self-explanatory.

Twilight continued walking. The next door said 'Communications', and it was standing wide open. She stopped and waited, listening to hear the voice again. When it finally sounded again, it was from within the room. Twilight stepped inside. "Rebecca? Can you hear me? Please come to Communications if you can! Use the intercom button to talk!" The voice seemed to be coming from a control panel on a low, black table in front of her. Many devices Twilight didn't recognize spread out before her on the table. There was also a small reading lamp shining brightly over the control panel, the only source of light in the room.

She couldn't make any sense of anything on the panel. Scanning the various controls and toggles, she found a key that was labelled 'Intercom', sitting right next to a display that showed several figures moving about, whom Twilight immediately recognized them as members of the same species she was now. Something very, very strange was going on. Clearing her mind of the distraction, she tried to poke at the intercom button with her fingers, but realized that fine motor control wasn't something she had mastered yet. Reaching out with her magic, she pushed the button softly. A small light illuminated the 'Intercom' label.

"Yes, yes! You found it! Okay!" Twilight heard the sound of some cheering in the background.

Twilight couldn't figure what to say, so she fell back to her own thoughts. "Who are you?"

After a longer than expected pause, the voice replied. "Who am I? This is Drake. I figured you would have recognized my voice by now. Anyway, we've got everyone out here but you. Talia is seriously hurt and we need to get her to Medical. Can you open the door, please? I can walk you through the process."

She had no other leads to go on right now, and this situation didn't seem like it would be resolving itself. "Okay, what do you need me to do?"

Princesses

Rarity wondered if she had stopped into Golden Oaks Library at a bad time. Spike, laughing uncontrollably, bounded down the stairs as if he were running away from something. He skidded to a stop in front of her, breathlessly. "Oh man, Rarity! You should have seen Twilight - she had one of the boxes stuck on her horn. It was hilarious!"

The purple dragon fell to the ground, flailing his arms about and laughing. Rarity frowned. "One of the boxes? Hanging off of her horn? Spike, please tell me you are not referring to my delivery. I simply cannot afford the time ordering more right now. Cadance would be simply furious if I were late." A stern expression crossed her face. Spike, with considerable effort, calmed himself and took a breath.

"I don't really know what happened. At first she said she was stuck, but that didn't make sense. She had barricaded the door to the storage room with the boxes herself, as far as I could tell, so there's no reason she couldn't have moved them back. I told her to just teleport out if she was having problems, but instead she just seemed to get mad and started kicking them until one of them broke." A smile crossed his lips again as he recalled the memory. "And then, she pulled the entire stack down on top of herself! You should have seen the look on her face when she got the box off of her horn."

Rarity sighed and trotted upstairs to the storage closet. Twilight was sitting there on her haunches, her expression distraught, tears welling up in her eyes. Rarity was immediately taken aback, not only because of the tears, but because her irises were blue instead of the usual purple. Given the circumstances, she omitted her normal formality to not agitate her friend further, "Twilight, dear, whatever is the matter? You look absolutely miserable."

The teary-eyed face that met Rarity's gaze was filled with abject terror. Rarity immediately knew something very horrible had happened, but without Twilight speaking, she couldn't be sure what. Twilight's mouth opened a few times and closed again, but each time, no sound was uttered.

"Speak to me, dearie, what is wrong? Is there anything I can do?"

"You shouldn't talk." The response was quiet, almost a whisper.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You're a horse with a horn. A unicorn. Unicorns don't exist. And you're talking?" Rarity was getting progressively more confused. Twilight was dropping into what seemed like her usual lecture mode, though she was getting unusually worked up, seeming both morose and confused. "Your mouth isn't built for making human sounds. Your vocal cords shouldn't be able to make human sounds. It's not physically possible." She looked herself over. "Then again, it seems I'm now a horse too. This doesn't make any sense."

Rarity was completely dumbstruck. Twilight clearly wasn't joking, but Rarity was sure that she was suffering from some sort of mental manipulation. The Princess was going to need some form of intervention as soon as possible.

"Spike? Go get Fluttershy, please." She flicked her tail harshly to emphasize that this was not a trifling matter. Spike took the hint, immediately hopping to his feet.

"I'm on it!" he called out, as he ran out the door.

Rarity sat down carefully, trying to avoid direct eye contact; she didn't want to be staring at those distracting blue irises. "Okay, Twilight. It's clear something is bothering you. Would you care to talk to me about it?"

"Don't call me that."

"Pardon?"

"My name isn't Twilight. It's Rebecca."

Rarity blinked, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, I don't understand. We've known each other for years, and you've always been Twilight Sparkle. You mean to tell me, after all this time, that was never your name?"

"I ... don't know. You've known me for years? To me, we've only just met."

The strange situation was starting to bother Rarity. Unfortunately, the only pony she could think of that would be helpful was the one standing in front of her. "So you don't you remember?"

"No, I don't. I don't even know what I am. I mean, I'm a horse. But I have wings. And a horn."

"Horse is such a ... crude word, darling." Rarity had to resist the urge to call her Twilight, as she wasn't sure if it would set her off again. She decided it was better to simply answer questions instead of ask them until she had a better understanding of what was going on. "It's unbecoming of a proper pony to call oneself a horse. And you are an alicorn princess, the most magnificent of ponies!"

A perplexed expression crossed Twilight's features. "Alicorn? I've never heard of an alicorn before." She looked up with a hesitant expression. "Wait, princess? Me? You mean to say I'm a princess?" She began laughing nervously. "A princess!" She began laughing louder.

Rarity stared. Twilight was clearly not herself. Quietly, she watched as her friend's laughter shifted from a nervous titter to a maniacal outburst. As Rarity waited for Twilight to calm down, the wood behind her friend began to distort and warp in strange ways, shifting and twisting until it resembled a crude throne. The throne slowly took a more defined shape, not entirely unlike Celestia's throne as a strange laughter permeated the air, and the sound complimented Twilight's own laughter in an strange and unsettling fashion. Fluttershy and Spike popped into existence on either side of the chair as a portion of the ceiling swung open like a door. Discord strode through the door and into the room, walking down along the wall with a wanton disregard for the usual rules of gravity.

Twilight went silent, her laughter catching in her throat as she stared at Discord. She took a few steps backward before falling onto her haunches, her eyes betraying a sense of confusion.

Discord continued to laugh heartily as he strode onto the back of the throne that had formed from the wall and seated himself, his legs jutting into the sky, and his head sticking just under Twilight's chin. "Oh, Celestia, you amuse me so with your old forbidden toys!" His neck then stretched and bent at a 90 degree angle out toward Twilight's muzzle, and having passed that milestone then bent again straight up, his head turned backwards entirely so he could look her in the eyes. "And that, Rebecca, is the best part!"

Twilight recoiled and tried to scoot backwards on her rear, only succeeding in tumbling backwards. She righted herself again and pressed against the wall, trying to keep her distance. After a moment, her voice returned. "What in the world are you?"

Fluttershy gasped. "Discord! What did you do to Twilight now?!"

Discord laughed a deep laugh as the alicorn princess stared at him in a complete panic. "I did nothing, my dearest friend. Twilight did this to herself! Allow me to explain." Two cups popped into existence in front of him. He grasped one in each hand, a torrent of pure blue water pouring from the ceiling. The liquid neatly filled each cup without spilling a drop. "Think of these cups as bodies. The purple one here," he lifted one of the cups, a golden goblet, "is our beloved princess." A grape dropped into it from nowhere, and the water in it turned a brilliant purple as the grape dissolved. He lowered the other cup, a silver goblet, down to the floor. "This one, this crystal blue water is one Rebecca Williams."

He poured the water from the golden cup into the silver cup. As the incoming fluid displaced the blue water below, the blue flowed straight up into the air, pooling into a shining orb that hovered gently, looking like a blue sky. All the water displaced and gathered, the azure orb slowly flowed into the golden goblet. The blue liquid was now in the golden goblet, and the purple was now in the silver goblet. "You see, little ponies, they are not in their original bodies anymore!"

He suddenly disappeared and the cups dropped to the floor, landing perfectly upside down, both orbs of liquid orbs now sitting balanced on the bases of the goblets, defying physics. Discord rematerialized in two places at once, one right in front of Rarity and in the other in front of Fluttershy, putting a claw to Rarity's nose and a paw to Fluttershy's. "And that, my friends, is what makes it so fun." He laughed again, and sat on the wooden throne twice, each body melding with the wood before the entire chair began to reform back into the original wall.

Discord now absent, silence fell upon the remainder of the room. Twilight stood, eyes wide open, her mouth working up and down silently. Rarity sighed heavily. "I think we might have a little problem. I mean, if she's not Twilight, then ... where is Twilight?"

Twilight - no, Rebecca, Rarity reminded herself - shook her head and stomped a hind hoof. "I ... think. I mean, I don't believe anything going on here yet. It can't possibly be real. But I think that weird thing meant that your Twilight is where I am supposed to be."

Fluttershy trotted over to Rebecca and laid a reassuring wing across her back. "There, there, we'll get this sorted out. You'll be back to your old self in no time." She smiled gently. "I promise."

Spike scratched his head and spoke, a sense of doubt in his voice. "What do you mean when you say we're not real?"

Rebecca eyed Spike. "Well, where I come from, magic isn't real. But I'm pretty sure I just saw it. And we all are talking, too, but horses," Rebecca paused, seeing Rarity's raised eyebrow. "... sorry, ponies. They don't talk where I come from." She shook her head. "I'm not sure what to believe right now. None of this should be able to happen, and yet I'm seeing it happen. I don't think I can readily accept all this. Can you give me a bit of time?"

<><><><><>

"Okay." Twilight said out loud. "I've opened the door. I think."

"Yes, you did. Are you alright? It took you forever to get to the Comms room. Is everything okay in there?"

Twilight tensed up. How should she respond? She seemed to be fine herself, physically at least. As far as she could tell, this body was uninjured. But she also knew that she was going to stick out like a zebra socially. She had spent some time dealing with diplomats from other countries, and had once even had the displeasure of being sent to the Grand Roost to renegotiate a trade agreement.

While there, Griffin relations had taught her much of how awkward it could be dealing with other racial customs and mannerisms. That had proven to be difficult for her to adjust to, and in that case she had even had the advantage of meeting griffons and reading up on their society prior to travelling. Conversely, she knew nothing about this species, and Twilight was also fairly certain she wouldn't use this body as naturally as she ought to, which might tip somepony off as well. Should she pretend to be injured, or have some illness? She wasn't confident she could bluff convincingly; it wasn't her strong suit. It was obvious that, whatever she was, she was called Rebecca, so Twilight decided that was how she would continue for now.

"Uh, yes. Everything is fine. I mean, I am fine. There seems to have been some caving in, though. What should I do now?"

"Well, Sarah is coming to the Comms room right now, just stick around there and help her out if she needs anything. We're all coming inside now. I'll see you in a bit."

The voice-producing mechanism went silent as Twilight watched the other figures slowly walk off the edge of the display. As instructed, she simply waited until the one named Sarah showed up. This one, Twilight noted, had a very long, brown mane. She wasn't sure about the body she was inhabiting, but the mane wasn't long enough for her to see anything more than the forelocks above her eyes.

Sarah smiled in greeting. "Well, Becky ... It seems as though our positions are reversed for a bit." Twilight immediately realized Becky must be a nickname, but wasn't sure if it was supposed to be intimate, flattering, or insulting. She opted for a neutral reaction, feeling it was probably the safest approach.

"Hi, Sarah. I have no idea what I am doing here." It wasn't a lie by any stretch, but it surely had deeper meaning than this other creature could possibly know. "You're going to have to help me help you."

The one called Sarah laughed, a rich sounding laugh that Twilight could imagine any upper-class pony in Canterlot making. "I'm just glad you're okay. I thought you were going to die after the stone zapped you. I couldn't believe it when your voice came back over the intercom system. It was like a miracle!" She sat down in a chair and sobered slightly. "But this is a serious problem. We need to get in contact with HQ as soon as possible. You can start by getting more light in here. The switch for the lamps is over there." She pointed behind Twilight.

"Alright." Twilight turned around. In the dim light from the reading lamp, perhaps two pony-lengths away, she could see the word 'lights' on a label underneath a switch. She reached out with her magic and flipped the switch and the room instantly became brightly illuminated by a small assortment of other lamps around the small room. She turned back around, waiting for Sarah's next request.

Sarah's back was turned, hunched over part of the control panel, pushing buttons with a dexterity that surprised Twilight. Sarah flipped up a secondary panel that lit up with white letters rapidly scrolling along the display. Below that second panel was a myriad group of buttons, many of them labelled with letters, numbers and symbols Twilight recognized, though the arrangement was beyond her comprehension. Eventually the display started showing a wealth of brilliant colors and information. Twilight watched, entranced, as Sarah pulled up panel after panel of charts, statistics, numbers. She didn't understand any of them but she was too busy being fascinated by the device itself to be concerned with what the information meant.

Twilight was interrupted as Sarah turned to look at her. "Are you sure you're okay? You act like you haven't seen a computer before."

"It's amazing," Twilight breathed. "How does it work?"

"What do you mean, it's amazing? It's just a normal computer." Sarah's eyes narrowed. "Are you alright? You seem really, really out of it. Maybe all that chaos affected you more than you think."

Twilight realized she might have stepped on some sort of social landmine, but she couldn't be sure what it was. She quickly scrambled for an excuse. "Yeah, I sure am out of it, I guess. I'm not even sure what happened to me back there." It was an honest answer, though it was far from complete.

"Well, truthfully I probably won't need you for much. Why don't you go to your room and lay down for a bit? We can have Drake check you out after he's tended to Talia."

Her room? Twilight didn't know where her room was and she didn't want to risk causing another scene. She forced herself to smile, "No, I'll be alright. I want to help you."

"Well, alright. Just try not to get in the way. There's not a whole lot of space in the room." She gestured around the small room, and then she picked up a strange device shaped roughly like a semi-circle and set it on her head. Now that it was on her head, it strongly reminded Twilight of earmuffs with a small, thick wire extending forward from the earpiece to Sarah's mouth. Sarah leaned forward, punching at some numbered buttons. Twilight assumed it was a coded sequence, but she hadn't paid close enough attention to catch what the code was. They both waited, though Twilight wasn't sure if something was supposed to happen or not.

"We have a situation." Sarah suddenly spoke, leaving Twilight confused. "Yeah, code 164. We aren't sure what triggered it, but one of the researchers got hit by some sort of massive electrical blast right before it happened, and another one sustained injuries as we were evacuating." Was she recording a message? "Rebecca." A brief pause. "No, she's fine. As far as I can tell, she's just a little woozy." Twilight was no longer certain of the nature of Sarah's speech. It was sounding more like a one-sided conversation. "She's right next to me actually." Twilight suddenly had a bad feeling about the direction the conversation was going. "Sure." Sarah took off the earmuffs and extended them towards Twilight. "HQ wants to ask you some questions."

Realizing she had no easy out, she grabbed the earmuffs with her magic and placed them on her own head. It was much heavier than it looked. Sarah gasped. "Hello?" Twilight spoke, unsure of what else to say or what to expect.

A voice sounded in her ears. "Ah, Miss Williams! Can you try to explain exactly what happened? Sarah said you were electrocuted or something?"

Twilight went silent. Williams was clearly a form of address for her, and this was clearly some form of communications device. What was she supposed to say? Was there proper protocol for this? Twilight hated protocol. Sarah, in front of her, appeared to be completely unresponsive - her hands were still extended, her eyes locked on the earmuffs and her mouth was open slightly; no answers could be found there. Was she just being polite, so as not to interrupt the communication, or was this some sort of social ritual?

"Miss Williams?"

Twilight realized she had to say something. "Um, I really have no idea. I can't remember anything before waking up." It was probably the closest she was going to be to the truth anyway.

"You have amnesia?"

This was probably the best opportunity she was going to have to get out of this line of questioning. "I ... guess? I mean, that's usually what amnesia is, right?"

"Uh, alright. Alright. We need to get you looked at. Go over to Drake in medical and tell him to call us. Can you put Sarah back on the line?" Twilight nodded her head, not realizing that the person on the other end of the line couldn't see her. Then, she lifted the earmuffs off her head and floated them back to Sarah. Sarah's hands grasped the earmuffs lightly, but she didn't put them on.

"He wants to talk to you again," Twilight urged, hoping that Sarah would respond in some fashion.

Sarah screamed. Twilight could hear a muffled panic emitting from the earmuffs and a loud pattering of footsteps and concerned shouting came sounding from the corridor. She could feel tears threatening to well up in her eyes as her heart sank. What had gone wrong?

<><><><><>

Rebecca scanned her surroundings as the two other strange horses - ponies, she sharply reminded herself - spoke in hushed whispers at the other end of the room. The building she was in was clearly nature-themed, with every wall, floor, and ceiling carved from the same wood. It was also designed such that it felt as if the entire place was carved out of the inside of a huge tree. The room was also a library; a small school library, she guessed, judging from the volume of books shelved about. According to what she was told, Twilight lived here. But, if she was a princess, why had she been stuck in a small closet in a tiny library of all places? And why would she live in a library? Nothing seemed to fit together right.

The other ponies had seemed kind enough. The white one, Rarity, had a gorgeous purple mane and tail, styled in a way that reminded her of vaguely of popular fashion from a few decades ago. She also noted that Rarity's coat had a strange set of tattoos on either side of her body, just above the hind leg. They were all baby blue diamond shapes, three on each side. She had also noticed the white pony's horn occasionally glowed with a blue aura, though she hadn't figured out why.

Then there was the other one - the yellow one that had appeared with the impossibly strange ... whatever that cryptic monstrosity was. Her mane and tail were pink with a soft wave to them, tapering into a curl at the end. She sported similar tattoos, though instead of blue diamonds, she sported a trio of blue and pink butterflies on either side, each pointed a different direction. Apparently, her name was Fluttershy. It seemed to be an apt name, as the pony seemed rather skittish. Despite the fear, however, Rebecca felt an air of kindness around the pony that put her mind at ease a little bit whenever Fluttershy's blue-green eyes stared into her own.

She had also determined from context clues that the small purple reptile currently perched on Fluttershy's rump was male and went by the name Spike. What kind of creature was he supposed to be? Was he a pet? Her brother's dog was named Spike. Rebecca had a lot of unanswered questions about the creature; not that she had any real answers about anything else yet.

Rebecca cleared her throat. "Excuse me?"

Rarity turned away from Fluttershy and trotted over. "Yes, darling, can I help you?" Fluttershy followed behind her.

"I'm feeling very out of place at the moment, and I have a lot of questions." Rebecca closed her eyes and nodded slowly. "I don't mean to pry, so I apologize if this is rude, but occasionally I've seen your horn light up. What exactly is that?"

"My horn?" Rarity's eyes crossed as she looked up, focusing on the tip of her own horn. "That's normal when unicorns are using magic. It is a rather beautiful effect, if I do say so."

Rebecca shook her head, something she found herself doing a lot of. "You can use magic? I'm sorry if I seem skeptical, but as I've mentioned before, it's hard for me to accept something that isn't supposed to be real."

Fluttershy spoke up. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but ... I don't understand. Magic is everywhere. How can you come from a place where magic doesn't exist?"

Rebecca nodded. "Where I come from, magic is something that only exists in fairy tales. Like in children's stories and stuff like that. But here you ponies are telling me magic is real, and that's hard for me to simply accept at face value. There's certainly a lot of things going on that I can't explain, and I don't know what to think right now. I mean, that weird creature you came in with? I saw him do all sorts of things that should be impossible, but I was so shocked by it that I really didn't ..." She frowned, unable to find words to properly express the way she had felt. "I mean, if magic is real here, can you show me? I'd like to be able to see it with my own eyes again."

Rarity laughed softly. "Certainly." She started walking toward the stairs and added, "Follow me."

Trotting behind Rarity, she was led back upstairs to a modest bedroom. Rebecca wasn't sure what she had expected from a bedroom for a pony, but she was startled to see that it was rather normal looking. "Is this ... Twilight's room?" she asked, cautiously.

"It is." Rarity walked over to the dresser, her horn beginning to glow blue. A hairbrush lifted off the dresser, encapsulated in the same glow as Rarity's horn as Rebecca watched, fascinated. "Come and sit in front of the mirror if you would, dear."

She complied, walking to the front of the dresser. She carefully sat down on her haunches and watched the mirror intently. The hairbrush, levitated in that soft aura, passed gently through her mane. Rarity continued wielding the hair brush with a remarkable dexterity as she brushed out all the messy tangles.

"I admit, I expected something more flashy." Rebecca smiled. The sensation of her hair being fixed up after she had messed it up so badly with her flailing about was wonderful. "But this is quite nice. You seem to be really good at this."

Rarity giggled lightly. "Oh, you have no idea how fun this is. Twilight almost never lets me touch her hair. She's just always so busy."

Another question had been burning in her mind. "Twilight is a princess, right? I know you said she lived here instead of a castle, but why? I mean, this really doesn't seem to be a fitting home for a princess."

Spike responded before Rarity had a chance to speak. "Twilight prefers it here. I mean, she could have lived in Canterlot, but she stays in Ponyville because this is where her friends are."

"Ponyville? That's the name of your village?" Rebecca shook her head. 'Humanville' seemed like an equally silly name for a town.

"Oh yes," Spike continued. "Ponyville is small, but it's very important to us. We get regular visits from Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, and six of the biggest heroes of Equestria live here in Ponyville, so it is pretty important."

"Heroes? You mean heroes - like 'they saved the world' - heroes?"

Spike held up a claw. "Well, I don't know about the world. But the land of Eques..." He cut off abruptly, choking for a moment before he belched a puff of green fire that formed into a sealed scroll. Rebecca stared at where the fire had licked at the air, and then down at the scroll on the floor. Did that scroll just un-burn? Spike picked it up as if it were completely natural, broke the seal on the scroll and started reading out loud.

To My Dearest And Most Faithful Student, Twilight Sparkle,

I have sensed something terrible happening in the Everfree Forest - a great evil has awakened; one that will jeopardize the safety of every living creature in Equestria. Please, gather your friends and come to Canterlot as soon as you can.

~ Princess Celestia

A familiar laugh filtered through doorway to Twilight's bedroom. "As soon as you can? Oh, excellent. I just can't wait to see the look on Celestia's face when she finds her precious student has mishandled one of her forbidden artifacts!" The voice belonging to the creature called Discord laughed heartily. "Oh, it will be simply hilarious!"

"Discord..." Fluttershy frowned at the door, which broke from its hinges, forming into the strange creature that had appeared before. He walked over and patted Fluttershy on the head.

"What is wrong, my dear Fluttershy? I'm just having a little fun with the situation. I haven't even done anything wrong myself, you know. Am I not allowed to enjoy the chaos that happens naturally when I'm not involved?" He laughed again. "Here, I'll even help you."

Rebecca suddenly felt the entire world swirling around her and found herself stuck in a whirlpool formed from her surroundings, including the floor, dresser, bed, the other ponies, Spike, and the strange creature called Discord. It felt as if she becoming submerged in water, and she sensed herself spiraling inward until she reached the center. She began to sink slowly, and without any way to fight back against the current, she held her breath and closed her eyes as she was pulled under the surface. A falling sensation overtook her for a moment, before she splashed into a pool of water. Before she had even oriented herself again, she felt the water drain away and she opened her eyes.

Despite the strange experience she had just had, she seemed to be completely dry. A powerful presence seemed to loom over her as Rebecca looked around the room. She couldn't immediately identify where Spike and Discord had gone. On her left stood Fluttershy, and behind her was a pony whose color scheme could only be described as 'pink'. The pink pony's mane seemed wildly out of control and she seemed far too excited for her own good. Rarity was on her right, and beyond Rarity was an orange pony with a Stetson hat and a long blonde ponytail, a term Rebecca wasn't sure applied in the same fashion here. Beyond the orange pony was a light blue winged pony with a rainbow colored mane, who seemed agitated, confused, and tired. All five of the other ponies seemed to be just as disoriented as Rebecca was.

Her attention was drawn to the room around her. At her feet was a red carpet embroidered with gold trim, sitting on a black and white checked floor that was clearly made of alternating white marble and obsidian, both polished to a perfect shine. The carpet itself led up to two absolutely gigantic doors in front of her, set into a very high wall which stretched around to both sides. Her eyes followed along to the left of the door, where three strange stained-glass mural filled most of vertical expanse of the wall. She continued following the wall with her gaze. After the third mural, the wall gave way to decorative tapestries that made up the backdrop of a dais with two elaborately crafted thrones on it.

Two pairs of guards were posted on either side of the thrones, all four of them certainly alert, but not overtly hostile in any sense. In front of the thrones, however, stood a massive white pony, a long and wickedly sharp-looking horn protruding from the top of her head and large white wings half-extended on either side. She wore gold colored accessories that Rebecca couldn't immediately name on her hooves and her neck, and a bejeweled crown adorned her head. Her mane and tail were stunningly gorgeous, painted in pastel colors and waving as if they were flowing on a gentle yet otherworldly breeze.

The aura given off by the majestic pony was immensely powerful, and it made all of her senses scream out in fear. The great white pony's magenta eyes stared at her, narrowing as if reading her very soul, and Rebecca could sense a fiery hatred burning within them. Rebecca stood trembling, transfixed by the terrifying yet divine beauty standing before her, their eyes locked on one another. After several moments, the regal pony opened her mouth, her pronouncement laden with furious import, yet with hints of a heavy, resigned sadness.

"You are not one of my little ponies. You do not belong here, human."

Rebecca froze in terror. She knew.