What Was Found Below

“Twilight, are you awake?”  Twilight stirred restlessly in her sleep as the voice awoke her, along with the soft rapping and tapping that echoed throughout her room.  “I found something,”  Her ears twisted towards the voice before hearing her door creak open and the soft clopping of hooves leave her alone in the moonlight.

Slowly, she turned her head to look towards the ajar passage, watching in silence as the flank of her friend left her view into the darkness.  With a bite of her lip, she found herself stumbling out of bed with a wry grimace as the soft creaking of floorboards stirred Pinkie Pie as she did her best to avoid stepping on the pink mare.  Although she felt a sense of dread as she followed through the abyssal night, she found her curiosity had her convinced into following the farmer.

“Applejack, what did you find?”  She asked quietly with a shaky voice, hearing the cracking noise that her basement door made as usual when it was opened, causing a frozen chill to shoot down her spine as she was reminded of the mess that she had found only the night before.

“Come on,”  She heard her whisper once more before trailing off down into the darkness below, forcing the unicorn to swallow in a mixture of paranoia and doubt.  However, a small voice nagged at her to trust the farmer, and so she found herself lighting up her own horn with her magic.

“What is it?”  She asked again as she slowly made her way towards the door with a grimace as her magic worked to fight off the darkness that seemed to reach towards her with umbral tendrils that threaten to pull her down into the abyss below.  “Applejack, this isn't funny,”  Twilight chuckled nervously and found the world spinning as she tumbled down the stairs with a sharp sting along with each bounce before her face smashed into the wooden floorboards.

“You made it...”  Her attention to her pain was cut short as her watered gaze went up through the darkness towards her friend that was sporting her ever-trusty stetson and what appeared to be a necklace with a rather familiar symbol emblazoned on it, creating a three pointed question mark that almost detracted from the blank expression on her friend that slowly melted away into what could only be describe as a faceless horror.  “She made it...  She made it...  She made it...”

“Applejack?!”  Twilight quickly wiped the tears away from her face, clearing her vision to see the pale mannequin slowly crawl towards her with the creaking of its metal frame before a crude mouth cracked open on the muzzle of the artificial mare, allowing the soft gurgling semblance of a voice echo its observation over and over again.

She made it.

She made it.

She made it.

“What do you want?!”  Twilight screamed and pressed her back against the wall, having her horn light up with raw energy that threatened the crudely animated equine.

What I want.

“Yes, what do you want?!”  She hissed and fired off the unrestrained energy towards the creature, only to have it misdirected towards the ceiling with a bright flash of light, and in that moment, she found the creature standing over her with with a foul smelling yellow ink leaking out from its misshapen mouth as one phrase gurgled out in a choking voice:

The.... King.... Returns....

~*~*~

“I don't know,”  Twilight sat in front of the table with bags clearly showing her rough night as she had been tossing and turning from her bizarre dream.  Although it had felt so real, so accurate, she had awoken without a drop of ink in sight and Rarity's mannequin remaining in its content position as a dressmaker.  “I just think I'm a bit shaken up still from the other night,”  Twilight sighed and took a long drink from the coffee mug that sat in front of her.

“Well, Ah was up all night, sugarcube,”  Applejack reassured for a moment before continuing, “And Ah certainly didn't see nothing like that.  Ah mean, hay, Ah'd probably have beaten that dang thing 'fer taking my hat if Ah had.”

“Even if my mannequin had somehow come to life, I'm sure it would have enough fashion sense to not wear... that,”  Rarity deadpanned and gestured towards the stetson that her friend was wearing.

“What if it was alive and they just pretended not to be because they don't want us to know because they secretly have their own life while we aren't looking?!”  Pinkie chimed in with a wide grin as she took a sip of her own coffee, finally giving her that boost to wake her up completely so early in the morning.

“Pinkie, that sounds like a really bad story in a children's book,”  Twilight deadpanned this time around before letting out a soft giggle at her friend's usual antics.  Although she had been a little more leery about letting Pinkie stay the night initially when Rarity had shown up with her, the idea quickly became an accepted one as the pink mare had brought her usual antics to cheer the librarian up and pull her thoughts away from the possible break in the night before.

“... Or one of those horror ones that you read Sweetie Belle on Nightmare Night,”  Rarity commented with a wry frown before joining in with her own soft giggle.  The memory had not escaped her of the event happening only a few months earlier as Twilight told quite a few rather ghastly tales to the foals around town in order to stir up the fears of Nightmare Night; although it had certain repercussions for the younger of the group.

“I said I was sorry about that,”  Twilight felt her cheeks warm up a little at that memory.  Having five foals literally run from the library screaming wasn't exactly what she would call a fun time, but it certainly was in the spirit of Nightmare Night if nothing else.

“Twilight?”  A voice grabbed the mares' attention as they turned to see Spike standing next to the basement door with a claw outstretched.  “Didn't you clean that?”

“Clean what?”  Twilight blinked for a moment before realizing what the dragon was asking, causing her eyes to widen in shock for a moment before she stood up and almost galloped towards the basement.  “I did, but how-”  She stopped when she noticed the yellow paint splattered across the floor at the foot of the stairs yet again, in the same apparently accidental design and with that same pungent odor that would have been enough to knock even Big MacIntosh over.

“-Did it come back...”  She finished her sentence as the three mares at the table also made their way over to see the artwork that could shake up even the otherwise unshakable unicorn wizard.  Although it still looked like nothing more than your average paint spill, it was hardly what any of them would have expected to see considering the fact that they were all present the night before.

“Twilight, Ah'm beginning to think that this weren't no prank,”  Applejack spoke apologetically as she looked over the basement below.

“Well, I'm not above saying I told you so...” Twilight murmured halfheartedly as she slowly stepped down the stairs, towards the bright yellow symbol that seemed to almost be beckoning her.

“Is there anything down there, darling?”  Rarity asked before following the other unicorn's lead, having her attention drawn to the small book that was enveloped in her friend's violet magic.  “What do you have there...?”  She inquired cautiously, only to have Twilight turn towards her with an unsure expression of her own.

“An empty book,”  She stated uncertainly and turned the book around for all to see, revealing just that; the blank pages of the small yellow book that she had found amongst the mess.  “Just an empty book...”  She restated, as if trying to assure herself it were nothing more and nothing less.

~*~*~

“Twilight, are you okay in here?”  Spike asked as he carried in a tray of dandelion sandwiches for the librarian with a wide smile on his face.  Ever since that night that the girls were over, the weird painting had seemed to stop recreating itself in the basement and Twilight was becoming herself again.  Well, did find a use for the book and started writing down her usual notes in it, so that was new, but it was her usual things though:  Books on magic and science that she always read anyway.

“Hm?  Oh yeah, I was just studying about Starswirl's latest work before his disappearance a few centuries ago,”  Twilight explained as she levitated a quill towards her little yellow book and jotted down a few notes.  “Did you know that he was working on a way to amplify a pony's natural magics?”

“What would he need that for? ”  Spike questioned and sat the tray of food on the beside table with his usual smile not once leaving his face.

“Well, it was more than just what it sounds like...  It was a way to make ponies live decades longer than they should,”  Twilight continued with a smile before levitating a half of a sandwich towards her, taking a small bite from it with an appreciative hum as she realized just how neglectful she was being to her own body's needs yet again.

“Should?”  Spike replied, not really too curious, but wanted to satisfy the mare no less.

“Well, apparently there were some side effects that he was trying to work out, but it usually caused the subjects to go insane,”  Twilight explained with a shrug as she continued skimming over her book.  “It's kind of a weird thought; the ability to live forever...  Starswirl apparently started having all kinds of weird experiments when he got older, but most of his research just mysteriously disappeared along with him.”

“I-Insane?”  The dragon stared at the librarian curiously as he was reminded of the stories that Twilight shared earlier that year.

“Exactly,”  Twilight explained as she jotted down a few more notes,  “It's a shame really; getting so caught up in your work that you lose your mind yourself.   Well, that's the theory anyway; that Starswirl went insane himself before vanishing.”

“R-Really?  I-I'm just going to go... Uhm, clean the kitchen,”  Spike explained nervously as he backed out of the bedroom.  After he read Frankenmare, he had found himself always a little scared of the idea of those kinds of experiments having horrible side effects.  In fact, it surprised him that Twilight had even let him read the book to begin with, and he honestly wished she hadn't in hindsight.

Twilight just giggled a little and shook her head, knowing why the dragon was so nervous about the conversation.  Not that she enjoyed scaring Spike particularly, but she preferred to just be left alone to her studies, food or not.  With a slight smile returning to her face, she continued on her reading through the book on obscure unicorn history.  Although she was interested in the chapter on King Sombra, Starswirl the Bearded always had a special place in her heart.

Although she did make sure to eat what Spike had brought her, she hadn't noticed how the hours had passed for her in her studies.  Seeming as if it were only minutes, she found herself watching the sunset make its way across the horizon.  “I should probably let Spike know that I'm still alive,”  She joked to herself and made her way out of the recesses of her bedroom and downstairs towards the kitchen, noticing a note laying on the table that mentioned he was going to Rarity's for the night and that he had tried to tell her, but she was too busy reading to notice.

“Sorry, Spike...”  She murmured with a soft sigh and set the note back down, making her way towards the kitchen to grab a drink of water, only to find herself floored in surprise at the loud thumping that suddenly echoed from above her, stomping against the floor of her bedroom.

Levitating a knife from her kitchen rack, she gripped it firmly in her magic as she made her way back upstairs as the thrashing only seemed to grow louder and a soft humming noise began to accompany it, forcing her heart to start beating as if it were trying to escape her chest.  Throwing the door open, she launched the knife forward, seeing it lodge itself about an inch into the floorboards right next to the small book that was now laying in the middle of the sunbeams of the fading light, having what was once only covered in her own ink now revealing so many different images.

“What the...?”  She mumbled as her magic slowly levitated the book towards her.  The images were rudimentary at best, and could easily be mistaken as petroglyph-esque with their minimalistic style.  Although her dark ink was clearly overlaying the yellow images, it still made her question as to why it was blank only hours earlier.  “There's no enchantments... No hint of an illusion or a glamor...”  She murmured as she cycled through various identifying spells that she knew off hand, but nothing answered her call.  “Disappearing, reappearing ink?”  She speculated finally, but just settled on levitating the book back onto her bed as she looked around the room for the sign of any intruder that could still be lingering.

That's when she saw it though; a small sheet stabbed into her wall with what could only be described as a crudely carved shiv with an almost serpentine curve to it.  On the sheet, it had symbols eerily similar to the ones that she had found only a moment ago in the book, followed by what she could only assume was a translation.

Awaken, awake, with claws outstretched, his majesty returns with his crown in hand.  The king, the king, rejoice, rejoice, as with it comes the time of Yellow.

“Gibberish,”  Twilight mumbled but tore the page from the wall and turned back towards her bed and levitated the book over, tucking away the translation safe and sound before backing slowly towards the wall and eying the dark corners of her room for anything or anyone that awaited.  With a glow of her horn, she found herself outside of the library with a sprint towards one of her friends'...  Any of her friends' house with her heart threatening to tear itself from her.  “But insane doesn't mean you're not dangerous,”  She whispered shakily as she found herself outside of Sugercube Corner with the mysterious book clutched tightly to her chest.  “Pinkie Pie!”  She called out in hopes that someone would be home.