The Equinid (Undetermined Prologue)

"-and then he said 'no, it's a transforming spell'!" Twilight Sparkle couldn't control her laughter at the end of her joke.

Everypony else, with the exception of Pinkie Pie, kept a straight face through the end of it.

"Ha ha ha ! That was funny, Twilight!"

"Wow, you get it, Pinkie?" Twilight asked hopefully.

"Well, no, but it sounds really silly!"

"Oh."

It was their second night in Canterlot's palace, and the six fillies were each sitting on pillows arranged in a circle in the middle of the room, exchanging jokes and stories with one another.

"Ah didn't quite, uh, understand what the joke was about, Twi."

"Yeah, do ya have any jokes that aren't about magic, or books?" Dash asked.

"Alright, alright, um…" Twilight thought, "How about something else besides jokes?" she said, unable to think of any non-magic or book jokes.

"Oh! I know!" Dash smiled evilly. "How about… scary stories!"

Fluttershy let out a squeak at the suggestion, but the rest of the fillies seemed to approve.

"Ah hope ya don't think ya can scare me, sugarcube. I'm like a stone wall in a pasture." Applejack challenged.

"Okay, who wants to go first?" Twilight asked.

"Oh! Oh! I will!" Pinkie Pie waved her hoof in the air.

"Okay, hold on." Twilight's horn glowed as the flame of every candle in the room dimmed. Twilight then produced a lamp filled with fireflies and set it in the center of the circle.

"Go ahead, Pinkie." Twilight gestured to her.

"Okay, okay, I have a super scary one; it's called the Doll! Okay, okay, once upon a time, there was a filly who lived with her mother in the same house, and the basement of the house was filled with ghosts. One day the filly said, 'I'm gonna go and get my doll from the basement.' But the filly didn't know that there were ghosts down there; only her mother did, because she was the one that killed them!"

Fluttershy let out a small gasp and covered her ears with a pillow, while the four other mares groaned and rolled their eyes.

"That wasn't scary, Pinkie!" Dash complained.

"Let me try, dear." Rarity said.

"So; once there was a unicorn who studied at the Canterlot University of Magic. She was at the time researching medicine, and the rest of her classmates found her dreadfully irritating. So, they decided to play a little trick on her: They took one of the severed forelegs from one of the study rooms and put it in her room. But, when they came in the morning, they found her eating it!" She shuddered in disgust at the end of her own story.

"Oh, come on! Fine, let me go." Dash grinned and nudged Applejack. "Get ready, AJ, my turn."

"So there was this stallion who was hiking in Everfree Forest one time; while he was out there, he found a cabin. He decided he'd go in and sleep there for the night. But when he got in, there were these weird paintings hanging all around it. They were terrible, deformed faces of ponies, all looking straight forward at something with hatred. So the hiker got creeped out by them and turned away from them on the bed so he could fall asleep. But when he woke up in the morning? There were no paintings on the wall, only windows."

There was a collection of gasps from the fillies sitting around the lantern, and Dash smiled triumphantly.

"Okay, mah turn. Y'all ready?" Applejack said.

"So they used to put these doohickeys on graves where if a pony woke up in a coffin, and they weren't really dead, they could pull a string and ring a little bell so they could call somepony fer help. So one night, a stallion was walkin' in the graveyard, an' he heard a bell ringin'. He came ta the grave and shouted to let the pony buried there know he was there. 'Let me out, Ah'm alive' he heard a mare callin'. He thought fer a second, and then he said, 'Ah ain't letting ya outta that grave.' She asked him why an' he said: 'Cause yer tombstone says ya died eight months ago. Whatever ya are down there, ya sure ain't comin' up."

Another series of gasps came from the group.

"You wanna go, Twilight?" Dash offered.

Twilight used magic to return the candles in the room to full strength. "I think all of you have already heard the story of the headless horse, and I haven't got any besides that; maybe I can find a new one in this book I brought with me-"

"No more stories? Then I guess that means… PILLOW FIGHT!" Dash swung a pillow right into Applejack's face, knocking her over.

"Why, you little cheater!" Applejack retaliated with a flurry of blows with her own pillow. Soon all of the fillies (except Fluttershy, who was using her pillow only in defense) were swinging, throwing, and levitating pillows in a free-for-all battle.

While they were in the middle of it, the door at the end of the room opened, and a royal guard stepped in.

The fillies looked at the door stopped where they were; Pinkie was about to hit Rainbow Dash, who had fallen on top of Applejack while trying to hit Rarity. Rarity and Twilight, meanwhile, had been using magic to throw pillows at the group and each other. Fluttershy was holding her own pillow over her head. All of them stood in a thin pile of feathers.

The guard eyed them curiously for a moment, and then cleared his throat. "Miss Sparkle, could you please come with me?"

Twilight nodded to the guard and then to her friends to let them know that nothing was wrong, and that they weren't in trouble.

She trotted out the door and the guard followed, closing the door behind them and then walking ahead of Twilight, leading the way.

"Is there something wrong?" Twilight asked.

"Not that I know of."

"What do you mean?"

"We have a letter for you that Celestia didn't want to send through your dragon; we're not sure why."

"Okay; is that all?"

"Yes. Sorry for pulling you away from your friends for a moment, but she wrote on the letter that you must read it as soon as possible."

They had now walked into deeper areas of the palace, places that Twilight hadn't ever seen. After a few more minutes of walking, they came to a simple wooden door.

"Mail room." The guard identified it.

Another guard, this one in silver armor rather than gold, bumped into Twilight as he was exiting the room with a scroll in his mouth.

"Oh, excuse me."

Twilight waved hoof to let him know that she didn't mind.

The guard leading her stepped into the room and motioned for Twilight to follow him in.

They trotted along rows upon rows of shelves, thousands of letters stacked on them. How do they keep track of all of these? Twilight thought to herself.

The guard took a left, a right, and another left when they came to a table in the corner of the room.

There was a small oil lamp above it. An envelope was lying on the table, and as Twilight came closer, she could recognize the wax seal of Celestia printed on it.

The guard motioned to a chair by the table, and Twilight sat down.

"I'll wait by the door if you'd like to read it alone. Just come see me when you're done. And if you can't find your way out, just yell to me; I'll be right there."

"Thanks, that sounds good." Twilight said, levitating the letter.

Twilight watched the guard depart before she turned back to the letter. Rather than break the seal, she used magic to simply lift the wax off of the paper.

The letter itself was folded over a few times within the envelope, and Twilight gently unfolded it, as she did with all of her mentor's letters.

The letter started out as they usually did:

My Faithful Student, I have a message for you, or, rather an assignment.

An "assignment"? that wasn't typical in her letters. However, Twilight would be happy to oblige the Princess if she needed a task done.

And, I'm afraid your friends must be involved as well.

Now THAT was different. Celestia had asked many things of Twilight in the past: to study, to teach a class, and to go make friends, even; but she had never specifically asked Twilight to bring her friends along.

There is a matter I cannot attend to myself for a number of reasons, my current absence being one of them. I'd like you to travel to Appleloosa and remain there for a week or so, and report anything important that happens, or anything you might not expect to happen. Rest assured that nothing is wrong, my student, and that there is nothing to worry about. Please leave as soon as possible. I look forward to hearing from you; and we will meet once again soon enough.

Love,

Princess Celestia

P.S. Please refrain from using a train to travel to Appleloosa. There are many forms of transportation to choose from; I would recommend a caravan of some sort, since chariots do not reach the town.

Twilight had read everything correctly, but she was still confused. Why would Celestia want her to keep tabs on Appleloosa? And why would she insist that the fillies don't use a train? The thing that Twilight was most confused by was the fact that Celestia didn't tell her why she was giving these orders to Twilight.

After about another minute of thinking , Twilight decided to simply go with what the Princess said. She hasn't been wrong before.

Twilight managed to retrace her path through the shelves, and found the guard waiting by the door.

"Oh," he looked impressed, "You found your way out. That doesn't usually happen on the first try. Are you ready to leave?"

Twilight nodded and the guard opened the door, leading her back up a series of staircases until they came back to the entrance hall.

"I can go from here by myself, if that's alright." Twilight said.

The guard shrugged. "I don't see why not."

He departed, and Twilight made her way to the spiral staircase she and her friends had taken before.

She reached the door to the room she and her friends were staying in, and opened it.

Her five friends had all just gotten into their beds, and were preparing to snuff the candles by their bedsides.

"Oh, you're back, darling. What was the problem?"

Twilight's horn glowed as she increased the brightness of the candles around the room.

"Sorry, girls. Start packing up, we've gotta go."