We had continued conversing with the mare we had met that evening in our chambers. Actually they were less chambers and more 'spare room we took for our own' as we had said we didn't need one when we first spoke with the Princesses. Our conversation with Silver Script was much more enjoyable than we had thought, as her mark had indicated her skill was writing and literature which most would assume would mean that she was an excellent writer and nothing else even we had assumed as such until she had revealed an interesting bit of information to us.

"You. Silver Script. Wrote 'Fifty Shades of Hay'." we replied flatly at her experiencing some difficulty accepting this. The mare in front of us, was apparently the author of what we consider to be the single worst thing short of those news articles writing about Twilight's completely fictional love life to ever be conceived by mortal minds.

"It takes an artist to write good literature dear," she said with a chuckle "but it takes a genius to write garbage. Also I lost a bet and made the most of it," she finished as she took a sip of some wine. Having completely lost the argument our attention drifted to the books and document we had 'acquired' from the royal archives, including a few maps of Draconia, old records on defunct forms of magic and most interesting of all, the sole surviving grimoire in the kingdom on necromancy written by the Dead Queen herself. The tome included many interesting concepts including but not limited to: necromantic spell matrices, reanimation spells and most useful or all.

Phylacteries.

A means of storing parts of or an entire soul within an object, weather it be a gemstone or an oak tree. It did not matter as long as the engravings did not tarnish, if that were to happen then...Unpleasant things would happen, a flawed magical engraving could have an untold number of effects on the spell and in turn the spell potentially twisting its inhabitant into something resembling a tumorous mass fused with a pony. We wonder why the Dead Queen never used one? Probably because she never found a way to sever souls from their bodies in a controlled manner. We set the book aside for when we would have a chance to make some in the event our current plan were to turn out for the worst and picked up a new one. We began absorbing the knowledge presented before us and would have continued if Silver Script hadn't gently pushed the book out of our field of view with a hoof.

She was staring at us with her eyes half lidded again, we slowly turned our eye's to the quarter-empty bottle, a quick bit of analysis magic later we found the alcohol percentage volume of the wine.

First, it wasn't wine. It was absinthe.

Second of all it was sixty percent alcohol. We then noticed a small sticky note attached to the side of the bottle with a short message on it.

'Have fun Annie! -Rainbow'. At that exact moment we swore to Ordina that we were going to blast a hole through her sky coloured head. While we had begun planning out our revenge Silver Script had moved next to us, her cheeks slightly red, most likely from the alcohol.

"So...Animad, that's your real name isn't it?" she asked leaning against leaning. "Are you just going to sit there reading those books all night?" she leaned closer to our face.

"If you don't do something you'll regret then yes, we believe we will," we replied as we lifted up our book again while softly nudging her away from us. She clearly didn't get the hint as she just moved in closer and began nuzzling us.

"So anything you want to say to us Animad?" she asked.

"Don't hate us too much for this,"

"Hate you? For wh-" and her eyes glazed over as she fell over and passed out as we hit her with a mild anesthetic spell, something that would keep her asleep for an hour or so and help with the inevitable hangover that the absinthe caused. She looks so peaceful we thought as we tucked her into the bed placing her dress onto the dressing table along with the bottle of absinthe. We delved into our memories looking for a particular spell and when we had found and cast it we threw the bottle through the mirror and savoured the screams of Rainbow Dash from across the hall. Oh how we loved Astral Magic, too bad the equines and other races couldn't use it, the wars would have been a lot more interesting if they had. Before we had even gotten the chance to laugh at the thought of Celestia summoning Doom Horrors Rainbow Dash had burst through our door with murder in her eyes and alcohol dripping from her soaked mane.

"Why hello young Dash how may we help you this fine evening?" we said with a smug smile. She dashed towards us her muzzle pressing against ours.

"Apologise," she growled.

"For what?"

"For splashing all of me with alcohol you dweeb!" she yelled presenting her world famous maturity.

"And how, pray tell do know that we did it?" we replied feigning innocence

"Because I'm the one who replaced your wine with absin- Oh buck," Rainbow turned towards her friends with am an anxious smile. Her friends didn't. "It was a joke?" she said trying to get someone on her side while floating just out of immediate hoof reach. "Come on guys it was only a joke!" she yelled as she followed the four equines leaving the room. Leaving only us, the sleeping Silver Script and Twilight Sparkle who was looking at the objects we had placed on the central table.

"What are these?" She asked as she picked up one of the crowns. We had made them to appear similar to the Element Of Magic except in the place of a magenta star we had placed a marquis-cut onyx attached to the silver frame that made up the rest of the crown.

"Those are part of a project I'm working on, a magical feedback generator," we explained "a sort of magic amplifier if you will,"

"Then what is this? This is definitely not a feedback generator," instead of picking up on of the books we had written she picked up the one object we had finished. To the common observer it would seem to just be an ornate hourglass held in a stainless steel frame with a small clock held in front of it by two steel bands. But if you were to look closer you would see runes carved into its surface, not the standard runes used by Equestrian mages but in a language not native to the continent, or the world itself. The runes shimmered an ancient silver texture as the sand was fixed in place by its frozen flow of time.

"That," we explained "Is a timepiece that measures immediate danger rather than time, the greater the danger the closer it gets to midnight,", we demonstrated by summoning a dagger and watched as the sand shifted slightly and the minute hand shifted making the time 12:02 AM and watched as it shifted back to 12:01 AM as we made the dagger disappear.

"How did you come up with something like this?" Twilight asked as she turned it over, child-like curiosity sparkling in her eyes at the feat of magical studies in her grasp "I'm not even sure if Starswirl the Bearded could have come up with something like this!"

"Starswirl?"

"Wait you've never heard of Starswirl the Bearded?" she said with a shocked expression on her face.

"We have, It's just that there are...Discrepancies you might not know of. Actually forget I said anything I'd rather not cause you more stress,"

Twilight teleported across the room to stand right in front of us with a huge smile of glee on her face "You have to tell me!"

"I'm not sure if you handle it well,"

"What is it that you can tell us that could possibly do th-"

"Almost everything you know about Starswirl is a lie," we said flatly. The smile never left her face but we could see her pupils slowly shrinking to pinpricks and moving in different directions as the gears in her mind screeched to a halt

"I'm sorry could you please...repeat that again please," mental whiplash apparent in her speech.

"Your understanding of magic is not as complete as you would like to believe Sparkle. There are forms of magic that have been lost and forgotten over the millenia" we explained as Twilight sat down in shock. "Starswirl, the real Starswirl was a practitioner of an arcane art known at the time as Astral Magic, a magic unlike any other, your kind and the kin of all this land draw from a singular source to fuel you spells and enchantments. To use astral magic was to reach out to the void and bend the world to you imaginings for better...or for ill. Tell me, have you ever heard of the legend of the Eclipse War? " The captivated mare nodded slowly as she awaited more knowledge "It was a war like no other, as Lord fought against Princess and dragon against equine at the birthplace of Chaos, and with it's end came the end of an age and with it The Age of Chaos and later what you call The Celestial Era began under the rule of Celestia and Luna, as the memory of the greatest war waned from mortal minds," The look upon her face. The look of a mare who stood before something other as they told her of an age forgotten by all but two. We slowly lead the near catatonic Twilight Sparkle back to her room and watched as she slowly drifted to a trouble slumber.

As we strolled back to our chambers we heard a pained groan from the other side of the door, we looked towards the bed as we opened the door, Silver wasn't any worse for wear but she clearly had a minor though annoying headache.

"Uhhh...." she murmured softly through the mane that she was currently using as a shield against the great malevolence that was indoor lighting. She slowly and gingerly lifted her head from the comfort of her pillow and looked at us in confusion. "Star? Did we-"

"No, none of what you think happened has happened. There was never a case where it could happen.Don't even imply that it could happen," we replied briskly

"Okay, calm down" she bristled at our response. We walked towards our latest project, and with the inscribing done we reached out into the crowns.

It's an interesting feeling imbuing a part of yourself into a phylactery. You feel your very being go liquid as a small part bubbles to the surface only to break free and be bound deep within the grasp of the crown. Deeper within the crowns we could feel the shimmering void twist in on itself as it began to take shape and gain self trapped for now in the ornate prison we had crafted for them. Go my children our thoughts echoed towards the godlings trapped within, and take this world when the time is right. We sent one crown and one book to three so far forgotten locations of historical significance where they wouldn't be found for four to five centuries at least. Then we felt a soft tug on our tail as we were picking up the tomes we had borrowed.

The tug soon became a strong heave that made us drop our books as we were pulled away from the table. Soon after we were in the same bed as Silver Script ."And the purpose of this is?

"I want somepony to cuddle," she said with something standing between faux-innocence and sincerity. She held onto us and quickly went to sleep. Seeing as our plans for the day had been completed we decided we would do the same.

So we let go of our body and cast our perceptions elsewhere.

We looked across Canterlot seeing what things of interest we would find out in the city. Among the many things we found we saw a mare running along the railroad leading to the city with what appeared to be a tome of some sort in her saddlebag. She ran towards one of the houses within the walls of the capital and burst through the door. On the other side of it was an old pegasus stallion who had been in the middle of writing something. The stallion turned in shock as the mare pulled out a needle and stabbed him with it. Not something that would cause serious injury but enough to cause a small trickle of blood to form along his foreleg. The mare took the blood and pressed it against the book which glowed in response and in an instant the mysterious mare was gone leaving both the stallion and us extremely confused.

We began searching for some clue as to who she was when we felt a pressure. A form of prodding just outside ourself like something of someone was trying to ease their ways into what they thought were our dreams. Obviously Luna would be studying us after the incident with her nephew and where else to learn a being's secrets than in their dreams?

If it was secrets she wanted, then it would be secrets she would have. We reached out to her mind and pulled it into our own, she struggled against us but soon she was engulfed by our being.

We could sense her. The soft clopping of her hooves as she explored her new surroundings. The soft sound of her breathing.

And the sound of her thoughts.

The lost goddess wandered across a seemingly endless desert of black sand shifting and swirling in ordered and controlled patterns beneath a colourless void of a sky. She looked to her left and her right, her curiosity apparent to us. She saw across the desert obelisks carved from what appeared to be volcanic glass that shimmered organically under the unseen light of the sky. Each obelisk was part of row and each row part of a greater pattern of straight lines. The obelisks held tomes within them, each tome holding our memories and knowledge. Some described semi-corporeal illusion magic, while others would describe in detail the fall of the Roaman Empire under the rule of the Mad King. We saw Luna flipping through a few as she passed each one seeming to be searching for something in our endless library. She traveled past structure after structure, her search for anything indicating who or what we appearing to be fruitless. Until she stumbled upon something.

An obelisk that dwarfed the others and stood at the nuclear array of the grand library that was this world. Upon it were carving shimmering an ethereal green depicting the rise and fall of civilizations on its colossal faces. Luna reached out a hoof to touch the structure and vanished from this place. We could feel her fear as her wings swung out to stop her fall into what appeared to be a shimmering void only to feel her hooves standing upon a solid nothingness, she walked onward looking for answers.

What she found was nothing like what she had expected.

We could hear what she was thinking about what she saw. She had expected a demon or a malevolent spirit but this...

This was something else entirely.

It hung unmoving in the the forbidding and endless, unfeeling sea of black. She thought she was seeing a starry night sky before her but as she looked further in each direction she realised it was something greater. The points of light and stellar clouds drifted along the breadth of its vast being. She saw titanic constellations and nebulae form and fade before her across the endless sky that was this grand form. To call it draconian was to compare a speck of sand to a continent. To look upon was to know it was the night. It was not an I it was an Us, one made of many who's minds she felt stirring deep within, a being that dreamed from the void and from its imaginings creatures would leap from it as Ursas, Lupas, Scorpios and twisted formations born from the mortal minds below. The creature's thought reached out to the world shielded within its light as inside it shook and tore at the chains placed upon it long ago hungering for the worlds end.

Luna could not look away from the thing to which she was but a pale imitation. Before her was the Forgotten Night and the Dreamer of Death.

Before her was an Ancient Lord.

Author's Note

Luna must make a successful saving roll or suffer D20 SAN loss