The Element of the Mind
by Supint
The thunder cracked outside as the savage storm reigned on. The weather team had really outdone themselves this time — sarcastically speaking, of course. This storm was the biggest and loudest storm Twilight had ever experienced by a country mile. As the story supposedly went, a trio of weather pegasi that were new to this whole thing decided to practice their storm brewing — long story short, it didn't go off at planned.
As a darker section of the storm clouds came over the Golden Oak Library, shadowing it further, it sent a bolt of pure energy though the tree, creating a circus of a rattling furniture all throughout.
Lamps, candles, any anything else that aided in the battle for sight blew out from the lightening shock and everything was enveloped in a black haze — making it especially erie while it was being accompanied by the ominous thunder and the sound of rain smacking relentlessly against the old tree. Inside, the library was utterly silent — except for a loud obvious clunking about near Twilight’s desk as she tried to recover from the blow to her residence. Not being able to see a thing, she knocked down everything in what she hoped to be the path to her desk.
"Rainbow Dash, you liar.” she said, muttering to herself, in a whisper loud enough to be heard a few feet away, but soft enough to be called such. Rainbow Dash had remarked she was going to spare Ponyville this trouble; however, her love for speed and icy winds got the best of her and landed her in bed with a case of the cold.
Reaching in her desk drawer she took out a set of old emergency matches and relit the minute candle, which sat on a stack of old books, that always provided her enough light to see with. Twilight spun around to attempts relighting another light, a lamp this time, wanting to assure herself that Spike was still asleep in his little bed. Striking another match, she lifted it up under the shade until the wick, too, shared the yellow luminescence. Spike, indeed, was soundly sucking on his dragon claw, in a deeper state of slumber than Twilight had anticipated.
Another lighting bolt hit somewhere near the tree, and Twilight winced as thunder again shook the library, sending vibrations through her own self, sending them surprisingly deeper than the previous one. She stood still, with a premonition, as if waiting for something else to happen to the tree — nothing did. Taking one hesitant step after the other in the direction of her desk, she prepared to get back to writing her latest friendship report.
She winced as she looked up at her Canterlot-imported clock, reminding herself that she was, in fact, tired and had to get to sleep if she wanted to have a decent day tomorrow. Twilight slowly sat down on her seat to try to get back to writing.
It was always so fluent — writing to the princess about her latest endeavors in the science and philosophy of friendship; but for some reason, it just wasn’t flowing tonight. Something was bugging her, that nagging feeling that something, somewhere, wasn’t right, and it was more than a simple lack of inspiration. She had to force-think, and proceed to write each individual word onto her paper — it just wasn’t coming. She had the idea, she knew vaguely what to say, but it was just that she couldn’t concentrate — something was pulling her attention away, and she had no idea what it was, but being her usual stubborn self, she intended to find out.
More thunder rang out outside, and Twilight tried to reason that gut instinct she had, briefly leaning back in her chair to try and think — only, she had gotten rid of her chair, and her temporary replacement was a stool — and for a split second, she forgot that valuable piece of information, and despite the numerous times she’s had to remember it, Twilight fell back, legs flying up in the air, thinking to herself, Not again, and hit her head smack-dab on the hard wooden floor. After a few agonizing seconds, realization striking her as to what just happened, she groaned mostly out of feeling immensely forgetful. She shot an angry glare as her stool, as if trying to send a message to an inanimate object.
Despite her immense urge to whimper in pain, she held herself from it so she wouldn’t wake up Spike, that is, if he wasn’t awake already.
Perhaps it is time to get ready for bed, she thought, as she cleaned up her mess, surprisingly admitting defeat against her writer’s block.
Twilight began to clean up her desk in preparation to go to bed, trying to file — despite the lack of light — her splayed-out papers, and tossing aside the ones that either had been used to write a sloppy copy of something she no longer cared about on — or had been accidentally pulled out and crumpled during her little freak-out she had earlier that day about one of her lost important ones — thankfully, it had turned out she had only accidentally filed what she was looking for under “z” instead of “x”. She hated it when she did that.
*knock*
*knock*
As Twilight was finishing organizing the rest of her desk, she heard two frantic thumps on her library door just as she was about to set her ink well back down — startled, she dropped it, sending black ink all over the papers she hadn’t gotten to cleaning up yet. She let out a long miserable “Ugh!” of frustration at her clumsy actions that evening, not even caring if Spike heard — he was bound to wake up sometime at this rate. Not bothering at the moment about the infuriating ink, she made great haste to get the door, chiefly out of annoyance towards recent events.
“Who could it be at this hour?! The library is closed,” she said to herself, this time a bit louder than a whisper.
Spike started talking to himself, arising slightly out of his dragon slumber.
*knock*
*knock*
*knock*
Three more frantic thumps at the door and Twilight opened it with so much force that she swore she heard the sound of screws ripping out of the wood. In that moment, all Twilight saw was a portentous blur of black, as the stranger jumped straight through without so much as a “Hello!” or “Sorry for disturbing you at this hour!”, pushing Twilight out from under her own hooves, knocking her down onto the floor. “Hey! What are you—,” Twilight was cut off as the stranger stormed passed her again, with one swift motion, slamming the door shut and locking it tight.
Back braced against the door he said in a strained whisper, “He’s here! Shhh".
Twilight, frantically began uncontrollably blabbering, like anypony would that just witnessed someone barging into their home, “What? What are you—? Who’s—”
Before she could even begin her wild array of questions that would have liked so much to be heard, the stranger let out another loud strained “Shh!” of a whisper. Who or what in Equestria was happening, and why was he in Twilight’s library after hours? What could possibly be outside to cause this much ruckus?
Twilight closed her mouth, still wide-eyed and without a clue as to what was going on. The stranger wore a black cloak with a hood drooping over his face, revealing only a tight mouth. Twilight couldn’t make out what kind of pony he was, but he resembled a simple earth pony. His coat, from what she could see of it, was a light diluted orange. He was soaking wet, his cloak shedding an incomprehensible amount of water. His back was braced against the door, as if someone was going to be barging in any second, and he was going to heroically hold it in place. He held a hoof up to his mouth, signaling Twilight to be quiet.
Everything stayed quiet and still, not moving even an inch, except for Twilight’s heaving chest. She breathed in, and breathed out numerous times — deep breaths.
Twilight was on the floor, backed up against one of her shelves full of books right next to the door, cowering in fear and confusion. She didn’t dare move or make noise, whatever this intruder was saying, it must’ve been important. Unlike most of the time, she wasn’t going to act as her typical self, and let her inability to know what was going on to prevent her from doing what was probably — hopefully — the most logical decision.
The only noise now, besides the distant thundering every-so-often was the soft murmuring that Spike quietly did to himself every now and then. Twilight had not even the slightest idea why this stallion was here — even though, she tried to stay calm as long as he didn’t hurt anything.
“Turn out the lights.” Everything Twilight had been trying to do to keep her cool had all disappeared at that command. Now the questions banged at her, desperately trying to push our of her mouth. First, this — stranger — thinks he can come in here after hours without asking? Not only that, but try and boss around Twilight Sparkle without event telling her what this whole ordeal was even about?! Enough was enough — now she needed an explanation.
“Tell me what’s going—”
However, she apparently wasn’t going to get one just yet.
“I will! Please, for Celestia’s sake, just be quiet and do what I say,” he said in another strained whisper.
For reasons Twilight hadn’t quite figured out for herself, she wearily complied, making it as obvious as she could that she was unamused and that she hated every second of it. She stood up, shaking some of the dampness off of her that managed to gather on her coat. Twilight walked over and blew out the lamp near Spike, then she walked over to her desk with her flickering candle.
Every fiber of her being wanted her to gain control of the situation, somehow, even though she didn’t know what exactly was happening. She eyed a blue-covered book knocked down from the book shelf that she fell against, Ancient Methods of Equestrian Combat. It was small, but she knew it was heavy from past embarrassing experiences she’d rather not remember. Great for throwing. How ironic, she thought, considering to herself what she was about to do, as her amygdala started to take a deathly hold of her.
Twilight gave the stallion a nasty look, and with a grimace on her face, blew out the last light she had.
They were in utter darkness, and Twilight could hardly see a thing. Any light that was seeping in at all, was coming form the distant lightning strikes in the sky, illuminating Equestria for seconds at a time.
“He’s — right — out — side,” choked the stallion in a hush whisper — his hooves tightening around the door handle, bracing himself for an impact.
Twilight cautiously walked towards the area the book was in, trying to see and feel her way there. She swept her hoof along the ground as quietly as she could, and then she had contact with what she wanted. As soon as her hoof met the book, she grasped it tight.
Twilight brought her arm up and to her side, and hurled it with a side swing after gathering all the strength she could muster. She released it right in the proximity that the cloaked stallion’s head was in.
It all happened in a split second — the stallion managed to wave up his hoof in a swift manner, even in the utter darkness that blinded Twilight, just in time to stop the book from traveling any further. Twilight heard two thumps — one as it hit his hoof, and another faint thump as it fell to the ground.
He looked at Twilight with a stern face — or so she thought, she could hardly see it — and said, “Trust—”. The stallion could not even finish his short but vital sentence, that if Twilight would have listened to in the beginning, could have spared them the trauma that was about to happen.
One moment’s lack of concentration — that’s all it took — and whatever the cloaked stallion was afraid of that was outside that door somehow knew just when to proceed. It rammed into the door, breaking the lock and sending the already-strained door flying open, smashing into the stallion and hurling him against the wall.
Light from the outside lamp seeped in, letting Twilight see what she knew was the unknown creature the stallion had been trying to keep himself from. He was in the shape of a tall pony, perhaps in-between the size of the two utmost royal figures — Princess Celestia and Princess luna. He — or it; whichever one — was like a minatory blacker-than-black shadow, moving forcefully from the threshold of the library directly towards Twilight. The dark figure had a long sleek horn, and two partially-spread wings on either side of him. He had a roughly-styled mane that was just as black, if not more black, as his unusually shadowed coat.
Every step the black alicorn took was graceful — not the graceful steps somepony like Rarity usually took, but graceful in a different way — they were calculated. In fact, every movement the alicorn made, no matter how minimal, looked unusually calculated, like he had some sort of fundamental nature about him that told you he knew exactly what to do, and how to do it.
He had a regal appearance, and at the same time, he looked unbelievably deviant from any royal figure. His build was not overly-impressive, but nor was he thin. His posture was unusually rigid, and his eyes were composed of dark-colored irises with unusually large pupils that felt as if they could crush you simply by settling on you, making him look even more daunting.
With every step he took towards Twilight, under his oppressive eyes, she felt like she was being examined so thoroughly that she wanted to crawl under a thick comforting blanket and hide.
Few seconds passed as he moved closer and closer until he was right in front of Twilight. She wearily backed up, wide-eyed at the mysterious figure that was too close for comfort.
"Wha— Who—", she started jabbering on out of the piling fear and confusion she felt inside her, until she was silenced by an object that effectfully stopped her in her tracks, sending her flying back until she made painful contact with the wall behind her. She let out a squeak as she felt pain shoot and spread out through her left wing. She groaned, again, in pain and annoyance from being so clumsy.
Twilight opened her eyes to see the alicorn-stallion looking directly at her — she made every effort to avert his overpowering eyes. He stayed there for a moment — reading her.
Slowly moving his head up, he cracked his neck as he took a longing look up at the ceiling — it looked as if he wished he was doing something else at that moment instead of barging into Twilight’s library.
The alicorn-stallion looked back down, resting his unamused eyes right above Twilight’s head, almost ignoring her — he looked as if he was in deep thought about what he was about to do next. He took a calculated turn so his gaze was putting all of its power down on the stallion who was clumsily getting back up. The cloaked stallion looked up — Twilight noticed a flash of terror that presented itself on his face as soon as he had realized what was staring at him, but it was gone as fast as it had come, replaced with a solemn look of defeat, and oddly enough, moments later replaced by a look of solid determination.
Twilight’s mind was tripping over itself with questions. What is happening? There’s another alicorn? Why is he here? Who is this black alicorn? Who is that other stallion? What does this mysterious black alicorn want?
And then she asked to herself probably the most important question of all at that moment,
Why do they look like they’re about to kill each other?
...
...
And then all hell broke loose.