Teros

When Scootaloo awoke, it was still dark. Or at least it was still night.

There were more stars in the sky tonight than Scootaloo had seen all her life. They covered the world, gleaming and twinkling as she blinked, seeming to dance as she moved her head. Most of them were dim pinpoints, but some shone brightly like candles. And in the center of the sky, rising up from the valley between the two mountains, a shimmering column of blue starlight rose. It thinned out the further it stretched from the horizon, so that the stars that made it grew dimmer and dimmer until Scootaloo couldn’t tell where they ended and the rest of the sky began.

Once, many years ago when Twilight Sparkle had first moved to town, Scootaloo and many other ponies had gone to watch a meteor shower. While she remembered it primarily as the first night Rainbow Dash asked her for something, it had also been the first and only time she had seen what Twilight called a galaxy. It had been the brightest night of Scootaloo’s life, and in the weeks after she’d often wondered why she never saw such beauty when looking out her bedroom window. Her aunt had explained it as Princess Luna having just recently returned from her exile and needing rest, and Scootaloo never questioned it again. But now, seeing this magical display, she couldn’t help but wonder if some beauties were beyond a goddess’s control.

Rising up, she stretched all her limbs and buzzed her wings for good measure. If she started back on the path soon, she would likely make it to the spot marked on her map by sundown. If it was indeed a town, as having a road to it would indicate, then maybe she would even get to spend the night in a real bed.

The thought of pillows and sheets had Scootaloo smiling, even after having so recently given up her own. Once she found the town, her plan was simple. Ask anypony and everypony about Caldrath and Chorus, and if that didn’t work, dig through every last inch of every building for a clue. Whatever she found would surely be enough to point her in the right direction, and from there she could improvise. Growing up near Rainbow Dash taught a pony many things about making things up on the fly.

First things first, though. Following Rainbow Dash around for years taught her more than just improvising skills. One tended to learn the life of an athlete, and one of the most important rules was never skip breakfast. Scootaloo opened her saddlebag and snatched a few of the flowers from within, but as she went to close the pocket, the map container caught her eye.

Something about the scroll was captivating. It was never far from her thoughts, its cryptic symbols and bizarre words always in the back of her mind. As she chomped down on the first blue petal, she pulled out the container and popped it open, spreading the map out before her.

Immediately she spat out the flower and gasped. All across the paper, white words shone faintly in the starlight. Though the night was silent save for the rustling of wind through grass, Scootaloo could swear she heard a low humming emanating from the map.

Even more alarming than the hidden words was the wheel of symbols in the map’s corner.

One of the black and white circles on the inner ring glowed hot white, forming a pale crescent that looked like it would burn right through the paper. Numbers were drawn in or next to the circles. There was 19, 235, and many others. The spaces around the wheel were noted with various equations and fractions, few of which Scootaloo could make sense of. Beneath the wheel was a drawing of Princess Luna’s cutie mark, accompanied by the number 6,940.

The rest of the wheel held secrets as well. The star in the center twinkled like those in the sky, its six points seeming to shrink and stretch as Scootaloo tilted the map in her hooves. The innermost ring and its four symbols were dimmer than the rest of the lit markings, save for the one symbol on the top left, beneath the glowing crescent. The symbol of half-circles above the wheel didn’t just glow, it shimmered and flickered like a flame. And both left and right of the outside ring, where two identical symbols were drawn, the same word was written, once forwards and once mirrored.

“Teros...” she said aloud. Her hoof slid over the glowing word, expecting to feel a heat that wasn’t there. She turned her gaze to the column of stars, then back to the wheel and its word, then back to the map.

There were more words she could pronounce now. What had been a previously unlabeled sketch of sand dunes to the south was now marked as Shal-Harai. Within that same stretch of land, the words Urador and Varos were written. Over an eastern continent previously described with unreadable text, the words Alatun and Caelos were penned in radiant light. There were more words too: places, names, things Scootaloo knew were important but couldn’t decipher. Astaes, Tondraes, and Rosaes to the west, Lusanis to the south, and more.

And written and circled on nearly ever margin of the page, next to or overlapping the darkly inked Rujejm, was another word. “Valari,” she whispered quieter than the wind. It was brighter than everything else, and repeated all over in various hoofwritings. Scootaloo couldn’t help but wonder if she was the first to discover this map buried somewhere, or if she would be the last.

Her stomach growled at her suddenly, pulling her attention away from the map. As much as she wanted to stare into the scroll's light until dawn, she had to get moving now if she wanted to make it to her destination before dark. With one last glance at the words, she rolled the paper up and put it back in her bag. A few flowers to fill herself up, and she was back on the road, with only the wind in her mane for company.