Crossing over a millennia with a sigh, Celestia's mind returns to the present as her golden hoof armour traces the stone's engravings. Remembering she isn't alone in the vault, she turns her eyes onto the crowd stood behind her.

"It wasn't until after my sister succumb to the spirit of Nightmare Moon, and I was confronted with the reality of my sister's situation, did I remember about the being's warning." Celestia admits, walking towards the group with the tablet remaining in the golden aura of her levitation spell.

"He knew Luna was being ignored by the ponies at the time?" Twilight asks her mentor, the alicorn giving a silent nod in response.

"I was ignorant of my sister's plight." Celestia says solemnly, looking over to her sister's silent gaze. "Had I treated my sister's concerns seriously, perhaps this could have been avoided." She finishes, tearing her eyes from Luna's to look back at the tablet before her.

"Maybe he didn't want Luna to become Nightmare Moon?" Questions Twilight, sitting down on the stone ground with a hoof to her chin. "If the words you remember are correct, then it sounds like he was trying to warn you about Luna's treatment." She finishes, causing the group to murmur in agreement and questions.

"Perhaps, yet his motives will forever escape us. They are yet to return." Suddenly speaks Luna, startling the others with her slightly harsh tone.

"Recently, me and Luna have been thinking over this warning. As far as we can tell, the creature shown on this tablet would only appear if we did not meet whatever requirements the figure wanted." Celestia tells, letting her hoof trace the engraving of the bipedal beast.

Although the conditions were never stated.

"Is that why we were asked to imprison that beast?" Speaks up Shining Armor from the group, the group turning to look at him as he sweats nervously.

"Shining?" Asks Cadance, looking at her husband curiously.

"Princess Celestia ordered the guard to apprehend a creature that had appeared in the market square. The princess said that it had started to attack the nobles browsing in the market, before a lone guard had knocked it out. So when we arrived, it was unconscious." Explains Shining, turning from the princess and to his wife.

Cadence looks back at the royals, and Celestia nods in confirmation. But Cadence had a question that left her feeling uneasy, almost to where she didn't want to hear the answer.

"Why did the creature look so set on killing my husband?" She whispers, remembering the look it gave Shining with a shudder. It didn't even look at the other guards that had been trapped in the Changeling's slime.

Shining Armor's brow sweats, and his heart stops. If she knew what he'd done...

Before he could mumble a reply nervously, Celestia walks firmly to stand before Cadence. The group looks nervously at each other and the much taller alicorn stood before the shorter pink one.

"I personally took your husband aside and asked him to interrogate the creature. I tasked him with finding out the motives it had for appearing and any other relevant information of an invasion force." She says flatly. "But the creature refused to answer the questions. We're not sure it can even talk, as it was only ever silent in its cell." Celestia finishes with the flatness of her voice never ceasing.

Applejack, watching the princess as she speaks, starts to feel uncomfortable. She shakes her head slightly to free herself from just a passing thought.

"Except one day, a guard had to report to Shining Armor about something. He called him by his rank: captain. The creature's entire demeanour switched." Celestia says, her eyes moving over to the captain in question. He wipes the sweat from his forehead with a hoof.

"It went feral. Jumping around whilst leashed by chains, it attempted to scratch and bite at the captain. Shining Armor had to stumble back or have the creature tear into him." Finishes the white alicorn, magenta eyes turning back to Cadence's shocked ones.

There was that feeling again. Applejack started to sweat a little as the thought came back. It must have been all the stress of being away from the farm and the invasion.

"When I heard the report, I figured the creature was some sort of pet. Similar to a familiar. Sent here to kill the ponies in high-ranks to weaken us for an invasion." Adds Luna, finally coming to stand beside Celestia. "It didn't seem to show any higher intelligence." She says, noticing an uncomfortable Applejack with a raised eyebrow.

Turning away from the farmer, she looks back at Cadence as the alicorn in question opens her mouth to ask more.

"This tablet isn't carved on just the one side." Luna states, gesturing a silver-armoured hoof at the object. The group looks back at the levitating stonework, as Celestia turns it over in her golden aura.

With the same quality as the already inspected side, the effort put into engraving the back was immense. With almost magical precision, the stone had been scraped out to give an image of the many known races that the ponies had met. Except here, the races each bared weapons and teeth at a single pony cowering on the "ground". With the braziers burning, the lighting makes the horror etched on the pony's face almost lifelike.

"It has been at least a millennia since this image has cursed pony eyes." Growls Luna, startling the group. "This image was abhorrent, so I personally cast it into the river running outside of the castle." She finishes with a scowl. But not one directed at the group, but at the tablet itself.

Twilight visualises in her mind where this river was, and then she realises that the river could possibly be the ravine outside of the Everfree castle. But then why is it a ravine now and not a river? Her question goes unanswered as she listens intently to the millennia old tale.

"By the next month, however, the damned thing was found. A pony that had gone fishing had somehow netted it." She sighs, light blue eyes turning to her sister. Noticing her sister's gaze, Celestia turns away from the levitating tablet and to the group stood before her.

"When the pony that found the tablet saw the side we see now, they were obviously shaken. They took it to their village, and that's where the trouble began." Tells Celestia, going back to the old days of her rule. "The ponies of old saw it as a threat by an unknown kingdom. And when these natives started to walk Equestrian soil, armed citizens forced them from their villages. Things sometimes turned violent." Celestia speaks, a hint of shame in her tone.

The ponies in the group are shocked to hear about this, and figured their ancestors had lived as harmonious lives as they had under the sisters. But thinking back to Zecora, they at least feel a hint of what perhaps their ancestors did. But Zecora was feared for where she had came from: the Everfree Forest, not just because she wasn't a pony.

"Looking back, it makes sense to think this was where the stigma against creatures that weren't ponies began. The pony herd-mentality did not help slow this ideology." Admits Celestia with a sigh, walking away from Cadence to address the whole group.

"It took years of damage control with the foreign nations to prevent attacks on Equestria. I did my best to convince my ponies that the foreign arrivals meant no harm. It was too late, as whispers of that same stigma still creep in even today." She says, head lowering slightly before Luna's hoof rests on her sister's back. They look at each other knowingly whilst smiling faintly. Celestia had always felt failure for the past sins of her citizens.

"My old frie... ex-friend Gilda used to get in trouble for little things at Flight Camp." Speaks Rainbow Dash with her scratch voice, making the groups eyes look at the fiery soul hovering in the air. "The teachers never spoke up when the others called her names. It was only me who stood up for her." Finishes the blue pegasus.

"I'm sorry." Starts Luna, eyes cast downwards. "Maybe had I not thrown away the cursed thing, her mistreatment may have been avoided." She apologises, finding the stone floor very interesting.

"Thankfully, being royalty meant the ponies didn't dare to question giving the tablet back to us. We assured them nothing would befall the nation. We ended up sealing the tablet away in the bowels of the castle basement." Luna states, eyes looking up from the ground and to the group.

"But when I left that castle to rot, I took the tablet with me. And under my orders, the architects built this vault. I then sealed this tablet within, never to be seen by pony eyes." Celestia adds, gesturing with a hoof to the vault they stand in.

"The pony who found the tablet in the river, how could they have done so? The tablet would have had to float up to go in their net by mistake, right?" Asks Twilight suspiciously.

"Hence the many enchantments. We figured that the being that gave us the tablet wanted to punish us for casting it away. So the vault was enchanted to combat outside magic, to prevent the being freeing it to be used against us once again." Answers Celestia, gesturing her hoof once more to the glowing engravings of mystic symbols.

A sudden thunder of armoured hooves on marble echoes down the hallway beyond the vault doorway, making the group turn around to face the opening. Rushing around the doorway is the typical guard pony, decked out in golden plates but with visible sweat dripping across the exposed fur between the plates. He starts to speak, but stutters and coughs from the extensive sprinting.

"What's the trouble, guard?" Demands Shining Armor, entering his typical firm stance whilst addressing guards.

"The missing patrol has been found, sir!" Shouts the guard, raising a foreleg into a salute.

"Officer Iron Horn's squad?" Asks Shining, knowing the squad led by the well-known officer had not been heard since the guard had been ordered to find the creature as it attempted an escape.

The guard, letting his foreleg drop from its salute, nods silently. The mares behind Shining start to feel uneasy, concern running through their hearts. Shining Armor simply watches the ground in response, not looking up for a tense moment. In the silence, his voice returns to him.

"They're dead, aren't they?" He finally asks, the ponies behind him gasping as the guard solemnly nods.

"Take me to them." Shining whispers, just loud enough for the guard to hear. His voice is low yet firm, the guard nodding under the captain's piercing gaze as he turns and starts to walk. The captain follows the nervous guard with firm, solid steps, his fury at the damned prisoner seeping from his body.

Reluctantly, the group of mares start to follow him also.

Author's Note

Two chapters in one day? Hope I'm not annoying anyone with spam uploads. But at last, this section is over. Looking at the word counts for each of the three parts, you can see why it would be too long as a single chapter.

Lets get back to the action, and less of this tedious exposition. That's why we're here, right?

Thanks for reading!