Identity Crisis
Chapter 1
By
Moonshine The Brony
The Everfree Forest was a beautiful place, especially on a fall night such as this. If only ponies could overlook their biases and paranoia to realize that not everything is as dangerous as it seemed, thought Twilight Sparkle, who was happily trotting through the forest, a sack of food dangling from her saddlebags. She had just finished a rather long shopping list, and instead of teleporting straight home, she felt she had needed some fresh air and decided to walk home. Applejack had tried to convince her otherwise, but Twilight wasn’t fazed. “Silly AJ,” she said to nopony in particular. “There’s no such as ghosts, and I’ve learned more about cockatrices since last time.” She winced at that memory, or more accurately lack thereof. All she remembered was rustling in the bushes, a lizard tail rising from the undergrowth, and then nothing. The next thing she knew, Fluttershy was standing over her, Staring at her and telling her to snap out of it. Then she asked what had happened, and Fluttershy explained. Rainbow Dash didn’t let her hear the end of it for a good month!
Twilight continued on, stopping every so often to make sure her food wasn’t loose, or to check out some odd species of nocturnal animal that had strayed onto the path to see what was out this late. Twilight looked up at the sky as she walked and gasped. The stars glittered overhead and the moon shone brightly, dimly lighting up forest below. With the orange, red, and yellow leaves falling gently from the trees and the moon shining overhead, it was truly a beautiful sight. I really have to bring the girls to this spot sometime! she thought cheerfully. She gazed at the stars as she walked, using her magic to feel for the path ahead. Just another trick she had learned, this one from studying blind ponies and their walking sticks. Her magic poked and prodded in front of her and then jammed into something, causing Twilight to trip and fall forward. She quickly focused her magic and caught her grocery bags, but not herself and fell into a small hole in front of her.
Humiliated and dirty, she crawled out of the hole and inspected it further. “Stupid hole… Better fill it up before anypony else falls in…” she muttered as she started to move to fill the hole. Something small and dark caught her attention, however, and caused her to look closer. It was a corner of something, old and forgotten. She sighed and pawed at the dirt around the corner, afraid to use her magic in case she damaged the thing. As she dug, she realized that it wasn’t just some small thing she had found. Slowly, but surely, she unearthed a small trapdoor, withered from age but still standing. She looked up at the horizon and estimated she had about seven hours until sunrise. She shrugged and opened the trapdoor with her magic, illuminating the way with her horn.
~ ~ ~
Twilight wasn’t a fan of the dark. She’d had some pretty bad experiences with darkness before, and she wasn’t exactly comfortable with a long, damp, dark tunnel to who knows where. As she trotted through the tunnel, her horn lighting up the way with her walking stick spell, she could have sworn that it was getting hotter. She looked up from her hooves at the tunnel ahead and blinked at a dim orange-ish light ahead. “Feels just like DigCraft,” she said, referencing the popular game that had taken Equestria by storm from Wheaton. “Next thing I know, there’ll be a bunch of zombies and Ender Mares at the entrance waiting for me!”
She made her way to the light and grunted as she felt a spike of pain in her head for no reason. “Ah! What was that?” she yelped though she didn’t expect an answer. She focused her magic on creating a light. Her horn shimmered, then fizzled out. Twilight’s eyes opened as she realized why. “Antimagic chamber? I’ve never been in one before!” she exclaimed nervouscitedly. She flinched at her use of Pinkie’s made-up word, but smiled nevertheless at the scenery in the cavern. It was a giant ravine illuminated by various lava pools, streams of lava flowing from cracks in the cavern walls, and the glimmers of countless gems embedded in the floor. “I really need to bring the girls here!” she said quietly, thinking of Rarity’s lust for gemstones. She looked over the cavern and noticed a stone structure in the center, surrounded by obsidian walls and illuminated by white torches. Magic torches, Twilight remembered. She grinned and immediately started to make her way to the structure.
Getting to the building was the easy part, Twilight realized. Getting in without magic would be a little harder. She stood in front of the door and frowned. Then she smiled as she noticed the button on the door. “Wow. Exactly like DigCraft.” She pushed the button and stepped back, expecting some kind of trap, like in DigCraft. When there wasn’t one, she slowly made her way inside the strange building and jumped when the door closed behind her. She tried again to light the room with magic to find that it was working again. Satisfied, she made her way onward.
It seemed like a tomb of some sort. There were small personal belongings such as dolls and toys as well as articles of clothing. There were four rooms, three of which Twilight had looked through with great interest. Some of these clothes and toys, she realized, could be traced as far back as a thousand years! She stood at the entrance of the fourth room, quivering with excitement. She was like a foal in a candy store, lost in the historical richness of this small complex beneath the Everfree. She quietly pushed the door open and gasped as she saw a large room filled with riches. Gold and silver adorned the walls and jewels lay scattered on the ground. Her eyes were drawn, however, not to the shiny rarities in the room, but rather the stone centerpiece. There was a stone container in the center of the room with glyphs and pictures carved in it. “I guess that makes sense,” she whispered. “Nopony would want to go into the Everfree.”
She walked up to the coffin softly and touched the lid gently. The lid remained steadfast, and nothing negative happened. “Huh. Guess there aren’t any traps.” Twilight giggled, thrilled by the thought that she was discovering a tomb for herself. Ancient pre-Equestrian culture thrilled her like that. Her eyes flicked upward, startled by a noise above. It sounded like a trapdoor. She looked up and saw a book floating down, surrounded by a black aura and was immediately nervous. The aura emitted by a Unicorn when they used magic said a lot about their personality and soul. To have a black aura… that generally wasn’t good. She gingerly took the book from the magic and opened the page; she was immediately surprised when she found the book was written in Equestrian. “Well this makes things simpler,” she said lightly, though she was nervous. She read the title and closed the book, fire in her eyes. She ran outside, book in her magic hold, and grabbed her saddlebags. Then she teleported home.
~ ~ ~
Twilight was suddenly in her library’s dining room, much to Spike’s dismay. Sure, he loved Twilight and would do anything for his ‘sister’, but he really hated when she teleported. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any time to chat as Twilight threw the saddlebags in his direction and causing him to dive for them as if he was a professional hoofball goalie (the real kind of hoofball, not the weird Appleoosan version where they just rammed into each other every twenty seconds). Twilight said something that sounded like “sorry,” and ran upstairs. Spike heard the lock upstairs click and sighed. It was going to be this kind of night, he realized with a sigh.
Twilight locked the door and cast a spell so her room couldn’t be broken into from outside. Don’t want to be interrupted, especially now! she thought. She flopped down on her bed and laughed softly. “I can’t believe it!” she squeed. “A book from pre-Celestian times! I’ve got to see this!” She used her magic to open the cover of the book gently and smiled. “‘Identity Crisis: The True Story of The Changeling Invasion.’ The Changeling Invasion?” Twilight frowned. “Wasn’t that just recently?” she asked out loud uncertainly. She turned the page with her hoof this time shakily. Her eyes fell on a warning in the center of the page. “‘What you are about to read is highly confidential. The officials in Canterlot would kill to keep this quiet. They have killed. They killed my friend and ruler Queen Oceana because she wanted to make the truth known. Watch yourself.” The warning was signed simply “S”. Twilight shrugged and ignored the warning, though the name Oceana sparked a faint memory in the back of her mind. It was like a mosquito bite on her back; she knew it was there and wanted to reach it, but she simply couldn’t. She turned the page and continued reading. “It was that time between night and day…”
