The Greatest Archaeological Find
“Alright, this checks out. Welcome to the Star-Swirl the Bearded wing, Your Highness”
“Thank you, sir.”
It was two hours after Princess Celestia started taking down her younger sister’s nocturnal decorations, and displaying her art gallery in the skies above Equestria, when Twilight Sparkle entered the Canterlot Archives. Normally, this part of the Archives was off-limits to all but Princesses, guards assigned to the wing, or other authorized personnel, and even then it was rarely accessed by members of the first party. Twilight, however, on this occasion had some pressing matters of her own.
She had an old piece of parchment-paper tucked away under her wing, found buried within her own library back at her castle during a routine reorganization. Why she hadn’t found it before was beyond her—she’d already read the entirety of her library within the space of nine moons—surely she would have found it earlier.
Her Castle, however, remained an ever-expansive hall of surprises.
Twilight first headed to the index of the archives. Her horn lit up, a drawer followed suit, opening, and index cards started shuffling about in the drawer. Then the drawer slammed shut, and its neighbor underwent the same ritual. Again dissatisfactory, it too was shut abruptly. This went on for another three or four times, each time with Twilight’s brow furrowing deeper and deeper, before one card was lifted out proudly from its drawer. Her eyes lit up, taking in its contents:
Tree of Harmony Journal
Section 4, Bookcase 23, Shelf 4
And this is where Twilight went.
A vigilant guard on patrol trotted through Section 4, where he noticed the Friendship-Princess accessing one of the various bookcases found in this particular wing. What was it this time—another time-travel spell? Or something new to read up on? Who can tell? In any case, the guard found himself distracted by these ponderings, therefore he returned to his patrol, else be faced with a dock in pay.
Twilight eventually found her prize: an old manuscript, dating back to around the time Discord’s chaos was present before Celestia and Luna petrified him. These yellowed leaves she carefully turned, using only her telekinesis to handle them, as any other means risked permanent damage. Almost immediately into the book, she saw a rudimentary drawing of the Tree of Harmony, captioned:
This crystalline Tree found near our Castle carried within itself a powerful form of Magic. Unlike the Draconequus’ magic, this seems to follow a predictable pattern, having its ebbs and flows exactly and perfectly where one would expect them. Harmonically, even. Several relics were present on the outermost fringes of its main branches, and one relic, reminiscent of a star, within its center.
We took these relics to aid us in our fight against the Draconequus. At least, we think they can aid us. Or it may just be yet another of His devices of Chaos. Only time will tell.
Twilight compared this drawing to the parchment tucked under her wing. The parchment also had a drawing of the Tree of Harmony. The two were near-perfect, if not perfect, copies of one another.
Twilight then went through the rest of the Journal, reading up on analyses of these Relics—which as it turns out, were the Elements of Harmony—the very same Elements of Harmony of which she and her five friends were in possession. She knew the shape of the Tree of Harmony, the crystalline structure, the sun and moon burnt into its trunk for all time, signifying its most prominent visitors, its five or six branches encircling the tree--
She stopped. Was it five, or six?
She asked herself this, since she noticed a second drawing of the Tree of Harmony—it was made at a later date, much crisper and more detailed in appearance, most likely because its artist was not in an urgent state of panic—but there was an odd difference—a certain je ne sais quoi that Twilight couldn’t put her hoof on. She flipped back to the first picture of the Tree. Six branches. She flipped back to the second. Five branches. She glanced at the parchment. Six branches.
“How could this be?” she wondered aloud, after doing this for another two or three times.
“Twilight Sparkle?” An indigo mare stepped around the corner. Twilight instantly recognized her. “Whatever bringst thou to the Archives?”
“Erm. . . it’s these, Princess Luna.” The Journal and parchment were seized in her telekinesis and transported to Luna’s view. With the pages flipping back and forth between the renderings of the Tree of Harmony, and with the parchment in full view, Twilight asked her, “Would you happen to remember anything about this?”
“Ah yes, Twilight,” she replied. Luna’s horn lit up, and between the two princesses a hologram of a six-branched Tree of Harmony appeared. “Once long ago, my sister and I had discovered this Tree of Harmony, hidden away in a cavern near our castle. Six branches were on the tree when we found it; the first drawing is not wrong.
“After Discord’s petrification, my sister and I bickered over who would come into possession of the Elements. She insisted on splitting them; I insisted on collective ownership. And now look!” Her hologram was joined with six hexagonal gemstones and a star-shaped one, and clones of herself and Celestia. “She took three: Kindness, Generosity, and Magic, and I too took three: Honesty, Laughter, and Loyalty.” As she spoke, she moved these corresponding gemstones to their copies.
“The seventh one—we fought day and night over it. It culminated one day, when in our carelessness, we dropped it in a stream in the Everfree Forest.” The remaining gemstone disappeared entirely. “When that happened, one branch fell off the Tree of Harmony, and was buried.” The hologram animated this as she spoke. “We had not heard of it again until your magic duel with Trixie. Once we had the Alicorn Amulet in our possession--” here, a hologram of the Amulet appeared—“we realized that this was the long-lost Seventh Element. But it is so heavily corrupted by dark magic, I feared it would remain unusable for all eternity.” Then she added, with an air of annoyance, “I still do not forgive my sister for this transgression.”
“Hmm. . . .” Twilight put a hoof to her chin. Then she said, “Do you still have the Amulet? I may be able to do something about it.”
⁂
Spike was sitting around in the library back at Twilight’s Castle, reading through the latest issue of Power Ponies. In it, the heroes were pitted against Mane-iac, who was planning on global domination through the means of grabbing shovels and going for a dig, and the Power Ponies were held back further by--
“Wait, wait, hold on!” Spike set the comic down. “What’s going on?”
Twilight started over. “Grab some shovels, Spike—we’re going for a dig at the Tree of Harmony!”
“Hold on, hold on, start over. Why are we doing this?”
Twilight showed her the parchment from before. “See this?” she asked. “How many branches are there in this picture?”
“There’s six. What’s the point?”
“Now here’s a modern-day picture of the Tree of Harmony. How many branches here?”
Spike’s eyes widened at the anomaly. “What does this mean?”
“Princess Luna told me that there are not six, but seven Elements of Harmony!—one long lost in--!”
“Wait!” Spike somehow managed to stop her rambling before it got out of hoof. “What is this lost Element, who represents it, and where did it go?”
“I can only answer the last question, Spike.” Her telekinesis lifted out another object from her saddlebag. If Spike’s eyes weren’t in danger of popping out of their sockets on their own, it certainly was then that they were.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“Yes, Spike. This is the Alicorn Amulet.” Twilight then slipped it back into her saddlebag, before anyone else got a chance to glimpse the forbidden object. “But it’s also the seventh Element.”
“How?” asked Spike. “We’ve both seen Trixie use it for her own gain. We’ve had to trick her into taking it off. How in Equestria does it represent Harmony?”
Twilight took in a breath, in anticipation of a lengthy, roundabout story. “So, as you know, Princesses Celestia and Luna used the Elements of Harmony against Discord. Right?”
“Yes, go on.”
“Well, after they were used, how do you think they would have shared them?”
“Simple. Half and half.” Spike demonstrated this with his hands, pretending to be a scale.
“No, Spike.” Twilight’s telekinesis grabbed ahold of a piece of chalk and a small blackboard. “Seven does not divide by two evenly.” She proved this on the board. “Each Princess ended up getting three Elements, and the seventh was lost, when they were fighting over it. My guess is that at some point somepony got ahold of it and tried to use it for their personal gain.”
Spike shrugged. “So. . . we’re going back to the Tree of Harmony to reunite it with the others?”
“Yep!”
“So why exactly do we need shovels?”
“Because the sixth branch fell off when the Element was lost, and was buried.”
“Alright, then.” Spike headed to the door, towards the cellar. “I’ll go grab the shovels.”
“I’ll go pack some sandwiches,” she returned. “This could take all day!”
⁂
Half an hour’s journey through the dreaded Everfree Forest soon yielded the Tree of Harmony. Arguably a deity in its own right, its harmonious energy was the only barrier actively keeping the forest from encroaching onto Equestrian civilization.
“Where do you think it is?” asked Spike.
“Rarity taught me her gem-finding spell,” Twilight answered. Her horn lit up. “It should be just as useful at finding the branch as it is finding gems.”
“Well, what if you do find any gems?” Spike’s mouth started to water at the thought of any finds of such.
“I may save them for you. Or Rarity.” She winked. “Whichever one you’re more comfortable with.”
That kept Spike quiet as he pondered this difficult decision.
It was about two or three minutes later that Twilight hit upon a spot behind the Tree. “This might be it, Spike!” Her telekinesis kept her head pinned over a patch of ground, rooted there, like the tree looming next to her.
Spike grabbed a shovel. “Alright!” he said. “Dig we must!”
The spade plunged into the ground, under Spike’s force. The topsoil then was flung up—up away to the side—and slowly, yet surely, a hole was bored through the ground. What lay beneath?
About six inches down, Spike found a few gemstones. “Was this it, Twilight?” he asked.
“Nope.” Twilight wiped away a bit of sweat, having been digging as well, so as not to let Spike feel alone in this endeavor. “It was definitely stronger than that.”
Spike simply stashed the gemstones away, then returned to digging. The further he dug down, the more surprises about the cave he came across. Besides more gemstones, he also found fossilized shells—indicating that, some many thousands of years ago—maybe millions—this was underwater. Spike saved these gemstones, and a few of the shells—Rarity would want the shells. If not, she would definitely take the gemstones—there were more than enough dug up for him and her. Perhaps Twilight’s proposition wasn’t so difficult to decide on.
Oh well.
After what seemed like a long time, Spike finally hit something hard—hard enough to dent his shovel, in fact. “Uh, Twilight? What’s this?”
Twilight felt the spot where Spike’s spade struck. It seemed stone-hard—but was smoother than any stone she ever felt. Sea-worn, maybe? No, there were also several jagged edges in it. These the sea would easily wear down. Could it be. . . ?
No. . . .
“Spike. . . ” Twilight’s horn lit up again, as she performed Rarity’s gem-finding spell again. It locked on to that so-called stone. “Spike, this might be the branch!”
“Finally!” Spike wiped off a great deal of sweat from his forehead. “So, how do we get it out?”
“Very carefully.” Her horn lit up to divine its approximate shape. Spike dug up where she directed—she would have liked to help, so as to ease Spike’s burden, but unfortunately, she couldn’t wield a shovel and use a spell at the same time.
⁂
Two hours later, Spike had to put his shovel down, unable to dig any further. “Is it lunch time yet?” he inquired.
Twilight glanced outside, judging by the sunlight. “Yes, I suppose it is,” she responded. Her saddlebags opened up, containing the sandwiches she had packed earlier.
In between bites, Spike asked Twilight, “By the way, have you thought of who could represent this Lost Element? Or even what the Lost Element is?”
“I’ve been running through several possibilities, yes. No good candidates so far.”
“Hmm. . . .” Spike kept chewing and pondering. Then he said, “You think I might be it?”
“Maybe.” Twilight swallowed her bite. “You do have your place in my castle—right next to me, no less. You’ve helped defend Equestria time and again. Don’t get me started about the Crystal Empire--”
“Right, right, I know.” Spike finished his sandwich, and decided to have a few gemstones as a dessert.
“Then there’s Discord. He was reformed by Fluttershy, as you recall. But his idea of fun involved mutating small woodland animals—rabbits, beavers, the like—and causing nonsensical chaos.”
“So that crosses him off the list.” He belched, but with no scroll. “What about Sunset Shimmer?”
“Indeed, what about her?” Twilight put a hoof to her chin. “You remember watching her defeat the Dazzlings at Canterlot High, don’t you?”
“Yeah! There was a rainbow behind you! Six colors, each representing you and the other Elements of Harmony. When Sunset Shimmer joined you, a seventh color joined the other six.”
Her eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets at that information. “So, you’re saying--”
“Yeah. Sunset Shimmer just might be the Seventh Element. I could be wrong, though.”
“This is true. Care to take a note to Princess Luna?”
“Sure!” Spike pulled out parchment and paper in anticipation of dictation. Twilight started:
Dear Princess Luna,
Spike and I have discovered the fallen branch near the Tree of Harmony, and are halfway in its excavation. During our break, we were discussing possibilities as to who may represent the lost Element. Spike suggested that Princess Celestia’s old student, Sunset Shimmer, may be the one, based on an event in the other world that he witnessed. Do you agree with this proposition? Please respond at your earliest convenience.
Sincerely,
Twilight Sparkle
Spike rolled it up, then with a puff of green smoke and fire, it disappeared, en route to the recipient. “That still leaves that one question, though,” he pointed out. “What is the seventh Element, anyway?”
“Perhaps we may find out at another time, once the branch is fully excavated. Ready to get back to work?”
“Eh, sure.” Spike hopped up, shovel in claw. “Why not?”
⁂
Their hard work paid off. After an hour of divining and digging, the duo had uncovered the branch.
Like its sisters, this was crooked, jagged, with a large, circular-shaped growth on one end. This growth had a hexagonal indentation on one side, indicating the place where the theoretical seventh Element was supposed to go.
Twilight’s horn lit up again for the umpteenth time. The flap on her saddlebag opened, and the Alicorn Amulet was lifted out, bathed in a violet aura. Twilight then cringed, grunting slightly as her telekinesis applied extra force onto the necklace. Eventually, the red jewel popped right out of the socket. Then she levitated it into the indentation on the branch. It snapped into place, as though magnetically. It shone brightly, brighter than the sun, for a brief moment, causing Twilight and Spike to cover their eyes—then it stopped.
When they opened their eyes again, they were shocked to find not a blood-red gem, but a yellow one instead, like the Sun.
“What happened?” asked Spike. He rubbed his eyes once more.
“I guess the Tree of Harmony leached out the Alicorn Amulet’s dark magic,” Twilight replied.
The tree flashed briefly, and Spike suddenly belched out a scroll. The parchment was worn and tattered as if it had weathered the millennia, but what struck Twilight was the sympathetic reaction Spike had with the Tree.
“You don’t think. . . ” she started, but Spike shivered.
“That’s freaky. You think the Tree was trying to communicate with us?”
“Impossible. . . ” Twilight murmured, but she trailed off as she took in the contents:
“As dark magic can be clear’d,
So can one’s conscience be;
One wrong deed can make you fear’d
But the right one can set you free.”
“Hmm. . . .” Twilight ruminated over this odd quatrain. “‘One wrong deed’. . . ‘fear’d’. . . ‘the right one’. . . ‘free’—Of course!”
“What?”
“The seventh Element! I know what it is!”
Spike’s eyes widened at the revelation “You do!? What is it!?”
“Don’t you see, Spike?” She grabbed him in her forehooves. “It’s Forgiveness!”
“Well, that’s great! So are we done here?” A bead of sweat rolled down from Spike’s forehead, though not from labor.
“Yes, Spike, we’re going back to the castle!”
Spike looked outside, noting the sun’s position—which was getting lower, and thus was shimmering gold. “And about time, too!” he simply muttered under his breath. Suddenly, he belched up another scroll. This one was much cleaner, and it had an addresser—Princess Luna. Within Twilight’s presence, he unrolled it and read it aloud:
Dear Twilight Sparkle,
In regards to thy letter, I have considered the matter with my sister. She feels that, even though she was impatient in her studies, thine actions in the other world have informed her that she is reformed.
As for the specific Element, I still do not know of its nature, but methinks that Sunset Shimmer may find a way to use it.
Regards,
Princess Luna
“Spike,” asked Twilight, “could you take another note?”
Dear Princess Luna,
By the time we received your correspondence, we had finished digging up the missing branch. When the Element was reunited with the branch, Spike received a scroll from the Tree itself. It was a simple quatrain: “As dark magic can be clear’d,/So can one’s conscience be;/One wrong deed can make you fear’d/But the right one can set you free.”
This riddle told me that the missing Element in question was Forgiveness. Do you still think that Sunset Shimmer represents it?
Sincerely,
Twilight Sparkle
⁂
Once they arrived, Twilight led Spike down to the Crystal Mirror. “Spike, do you know where Princess Celestia’s book is? The one that Sunset Shimmer’s messages appear in?”
“Yeah, I’ll go grab it!” Spike ran out of the room.
Twilight, meanwhile, gave the Rube Goldberg-esque machine that powered it a once-over. Were the wires perfectly secured? Her telekinesis tugged on the connections. They were. Were the antennae still functional? Twilight tested this with her magic. They were. The pistons? The loom? The coils? Check, check, and check. The mirror itself was in pristine condition, too. All that was missing was the book with which to power it.
Then Spike came back into the room, carrying exactly that. “I’ll have to say, Twilight,” he commented, “your new organization system is really efficient! I found it a lot faster than I thought!”
“Thanks, Spike.” Twilight took it in her telekinesis and placed it on the apex of the machine. With only a moment’s hesitation, the machine leaped to life. Magic coursed through its veins, through the pistons, weaved through the loom, coiled around the antennae, and the Mirror opened up.
But before she stepped through, she asked her faithful assistant, “Do you want to stay here, or do you want to come with me?”
“I’ll come,” he answered with a shrug. “It’s been a while since I last saw Sunset Shimmer.”
“Same. C’mon, let’s go!”
And with that, the two stepped through the looking-glass.
⁂
Then Twilight found herself on the ground, fully disguised as a human. Spike was nearby, disguised similarly as a dog. Nothing out of the ordinary here.
“Twilight? Is that you?” A familiar-looking figure started running towards them. It was hard to tell for Twilight, since she was looking in the Sun’s direction—the independence of which was just one more factor setting apart the two worlds.
Then they recognized Sunset Shimmer, as she quickly and firmly embraced Twilight, embraced her with all her might. “What brings you back here to my world?” she asked her.
“Well. . . .” Twilight rubbed the back of her neck. “This might seem roundabout, so bear with me.”
“Take your time, Twilight,” returned Sunset. “I can wait.”
“So, I was reorganizing my library this morning, and I found a drawing of the Tree of Harmony. I noticed that it looked odd. Only after checking in the Canterlot Archives did I find that there was a sixth branch on the Tree—at some point it fell off, and was forgotten. I asked an Archivist about this, and she told me that there were not six, but seven Elements of Harmony. She showed me that the Seventh Element’s quality was unknown, but it was—what’s the word?—corrupted, long ago—when Princesses Celestia and Luna couldn’t agree on whoever should possess it, and it was lost. Have you heard of the Alicorn Amulet, by any chance?
Sunset searched her memory. “Oh! I read about that in the paper a few moons before coming here. It was Trixie, wasn’t it?”
“That’s where it went. So I took it with me to the Tree of Harmony. With Spike’s help—which I’ll add was indispensable--” here she patted his head, showing her gratitude in getting this far in her journey—“we dug up the branch and reunited the element with the branch. Whatever dark magic it possessed was leached away, and then Spike received a scroll—Spike, do you still have it?”
“Right here, Twilight!” Spike dropped it into Twilight’s hand.
Twilight recited the quatrain, much to Sunset’s confusion.
“What does that mean?” she inquired.
“It means the seventh Element is Forgiveness. And I thought maybe you would possess it.”
“You think?” Sunset took the scroll into her hand and read it aloud. Right when she said “set you free,” something fantastical happened: she levitated about two or three feet into the air, as she “ponied up--” to use a phrase used by her and her human companions. Her ears became more equine, and her hair lengthened to a ridiculous length, in imitation of a tail. A golden aura surrounded her, as an unknown power gripped her by the shirt-collar and transformed her into--
Nothing. The aura went away as quickly as it came, and she reverted back into her human form, on the ground. She looked at her hand; small shocks of magic flickered across it. “Twilight. . . am I. . . ?”
“You’re the Element of Forgiveness.”
“Wow! I just. . . .” Sunset Shimmer was speechless. Twilight helped her up. “It’s nice of you, Twilight, but—it’s just. . . you could’ve chosen someone else. Why me?”
Twilight shook her head. “No, it wasn’t my choice—it was the Tree. All me and Spike did was figure it out.”
“Really? How?”
“It was when you took my microphone. When you ponied up. The Rainboom’s rainbow had six colors before. But when you took over, there were seven—your’s joined them, just as you joined us.”
“I-I don’t know what to say.” Sunset teared up a bit. “This could be the greatest gift I ever got since I got the chance to study under Princess Celestia.”
“Then maybe that’s where you can first use it.” Twilight folded her arms. “Forgive yourself.”
Sunset’s eyebrow elevated a bit. “For what?”
Her tone became coldly formal. “For abandoning your studies, for instance.”
Sunset bit her lip and sighed. “Yeah, maybe that was wrong. I should’ve been more patient with Princess Celestia. After all—what’s the proverb?—‘Good things come to those who wait.’”
“Nice!”
“Thanks, Twilight.” Sunset once more embraced Twilight.
“So, shall we get going?” asked Spike. “It’s getting pretty late!”
Twilight looked to Sunset. “Go ahead,” said Sunset. “I don’t mind.”
“Well, alright.” Twilight picked up Spike and headed towards the Mirror. “Guess I’ll see you around, then.”
“We will. Bye!”
And that was the end of the conversation, as Twilight firmly walked through the portal.
⁂
No sooner had Twilight stepped through the portal did the machine ultimately cease to function—not from sabotage, malfunction, or breakage even—it simply ran out of power. Until the next time the book summoned them to the other side, for all intents and purposes it was useless.
Twilight’s telekinesis grabbed the book off the top of the machine, and floated it by her side. “I’ll go put this away,” she told Spike. “Then I’ll get started with dinner.”
“Good!” he replied. “’Cause I’m starved!”
On her way to the library, the tome started vibrating and glowing again—this soon? Twilight opened it up. There was a new passage in it:
Dear Twilight Sparkle,
I can honestly say that having a friend like you is one of life’s greatest blessings. No matter what happens, I can always count on you to lend me a hand, even in the darkest of times.
When you gave me that scroll, I had no idea what was about to happen. Even though I’m all the way over here, on the other side of the Mirror, I can still feel the Element’s magic in me. Someday, if I ever return to Equestria, I hope to see the other Elements of Harmony as well. But for now, though, I’ll be here with their human equivalents.
I even figured out how to use it too; it’s just a natural quality that one has. Like how Applejack’s always honest. So I forgave myself. For abandoning my studies, as Princess Celestia’s student. After this, I’ll be writing to the Princesses, to tell them to forgive each other.
So, from one sister to another, from one side of the Mirror to the other—thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Sincerely,
Sunset Shimmer
Twilight smiled at that note. “You’re welcome, Sunset,” she murmured. She shelved the book in her library. It made no further activity, indicating that whatever use it had was spent, at least for the time being.
