“Why do I feel like they’re just showing us the cute touristy stuff?”
“Hush.” Snapfast leveled her camera at a grand statue of Princess Celestia, frozen in triumphant victory over a defeated Nightmare Moon. The shutter rattled somewhere between six and ten times.
Chipper wandered to another painting that depicted Princess Celestia flying over an unexplored landscape. Behind her, a swath of light cut into the darkness, illuminating the way for other ponies to follow. Ahead of her, dark creatures cowered in shadows and fled before the coming rays.
Snapfast trotted over to join him. She smiled up at the painting, sighing wistfully. “She’s so wonderful. I wish I could meet her someday.” Her camera chattered again.
“Do you really have to take so many?” he needled, nudging her shoulder playfully.
“You know perfectly well that I do!” She spread her wings and fluttered to the next display.
“No flying please!” the tour guide reminded. “Alright folks, next stop on our tour will be the Banquet Hall, where we’ll be treated to…”
The guide’s voice faded in Chipper’s ears. Another painting had caught his eye, this one of Princess Luna gently guiding a foal through a twisted dreamscape. The information placard said Celestia herself commissioned the painting in 428.
He spent a minute admiring. It was the first thing he’d seen on the tour with a sympathetic portrayal of the once-banished princess. “Wonder why the guide didn’t point this out…” he mumbled. “Hey, Snapfast—”
He glanced around, but Snapfast was gone. It was a moment before he realized why.
Everypony was gone. Chipper Blaze’s entire tour group had disappeared into the depths of Canterlot castle. Silently he chided himself for getting so caught up.
No matter, they couldn’t have gone far. He trotted to the bend in the hall, and stopped.
The hallway split into three separate directions, each one barred by a door.
He tried the one to his left, but the latch only glowed with a faint magic. A locking spell. Quickly he tried the other two, with the same results.
“Horsefeathers.” Chipper dug into his shoulder pouch, looking for the tour map. He hadn’t been paying attention to their path, and didn’t fancy the idea of getting lost while trying to backtrace his steps to the entrance.
He pulled the items out one by one. Quill, notebook, pamphlet, house keys, tour pass —
His concentration faltered. The pouch tipped and spilled, and he swept his magic to catch an inkwell before it hit the carpet. His pass swung into the leftmost door as he spun, and the door latch clicked open. A small chime rang out.
One panicked moment later he stood still, the pouchful of items suspended awkwardly in midair.
The latch clicked closed.
A quick glance told him the inkwell was intact, so he put everything back in the pouch except for the pass. Stepping closer, he tapped it to the door again.
The latch clicked once more and the chime sounded. Hardly daring to believe his luck, Chipper pushed the door open. It led into a small office with an empty but official-looking desk. There was nopony inside. Probably because it was Sun Day, and most of the palace staff was at home avoiding “All Access” tour groups.
The middle door seemed the best option. It was decorated with gold inlays, draped with satin curtains, and opened to reveal a lavishly decorated yet vaguely mundane corridor. In the distance, a few ponies milled about, indistinct voices reverberating off the walls.
Chipper glanced down at the pass, then back over his shoulder at the rightmost door, still unopened. It was simple, unassuming, and nearly blended into the wall.
He bit his lip thoughtfully. “All Access” suddenly seemed a lot more interesting.
A single rash decision later, Chipper Blaze found himself in an arched hallway that curved away into the distance. Tall windows lined the right wall, but the heavy curtains were drawn, leaving the hall dimly illuminated with warm, suffused light.
He took a deep breath to steady the sudden adrenaline making his heart race.
The whole thing had to be a fluke, a single pass mis-enchanted with the wrong access level by a tired secretary. All it would take was one guard in a bad mood to ruin his whole day, maybe his whole week or even month.
Still, he wasn’t breaking any locks. He didn’t have any weapons, nor any criminal record. There was a tour group with his name on the roster, so all he had to do was honestly claim he’d gotten separated.
“I’m gonna get in a lot of trouble for this,” he muttered. Steeling himself, he set off.
Immediately, he noticed there was almost no art lining these walls. The decoration here was far less ostentatious, yet somehow more regal. It was a hallway confident in its own grandeur and didn’t need statues or tapestries to assert it. A shiver went down his spine as he realized this was probably one of the passages the Princess used to reach the inner chambers of the castle, away from the milling tourists and paparazzi in the grand lobby and main government areas.
Without ornate decorations and eye-grabbing art to divert his attention, Chipper found himself finally seeing the subtleties of the castle’s architecture and decor. Sun motifs were the most common. Shining orbs adorned the top of every window arch. But between every window there as a shadow, an umbra where the light couldn’t quite reach, and in every shadow was a moon.
There was something off about the latter, though. Chipper couldn’t put a hoof on it, so he magicked his tour pamphlet from his shoulder pouch again.
… constructed on the cliffs of the Canterhorn… took 40 years to complete… finished in the third century after the fall of Nightmare Moon… thriving metropolis built up around… designed personally by Princess Celestia…
Nothing jumped out at him to explain the moon motifs, and of course the there wasn’t any section on symbology. That would be too advanced in a fluff piece for tourists, apparently.
Putting the pamphlet away in frustration, he almost missed it. A simple door, about halfway down the hallway, partially hidden by a draped curtain. He stopped in his tracks. This was the first door he’d seen in this hall. Tentatively, he tried it.
Locked.
He levitated his pass toward the door and tapped the latch. It unlocked, without a chime this time. He pulled the door open and peered into the darkness beyond.
A spell activated and light spilled from the ceiling, illuminating a large room. An operating theater dominated one corner, surrounded by drawers and shelves packed to the brim with medical supplies. A glass cabinet, filled with swords, spears, crossbows, and other kinds of weapons he couldn’t identify. A reading nook, of all things, with an oversize couch and shelves of thick books. Consoles of buttons and knobs and dark glass panels.
His eyes drifted to doorjamb. Where the outer wall ended, an inner wall began. It was hard to say for sure, but it seemed to be five hooves thick and constructed of solid steel.
A panic room.
Chipper stepped back, heart pounding again. He closed the door quickly but gently, until the latch clicked.
He stood there for a minute, ears perked. He glanced left and right down the hall, expecting a contingent of guards to show up at any moment in response to a silent alarm.
The urge to abandon his brief exploration reared up, but as his heart calmed, so did his mind. He still hadn’t done anything wrong, and if he wasn’t meant to be here his pass wouldn’t have let him.
So he continued, even as his brain kept asking the unanswered question:
Why would the Princess need a panic room?
The double-doors at the opposite end of the hall were more ornate than the one he’d come through, but still tasteful and restrained. On the left door was a crescent moon, on the right a shining sun.
He tested the doors. Both swung open at only a touch.
Beyond the doors, the hallway split in a T-shape. To his right, more windows illuminated another arched hall curving into the distance. To his left a dimmer, windowless hall ran straight for a short distance and bent sharply around a corner.
The right hallway seemed like more of the same, so he turned left.
Immediately he noticed a different feel. The corners were sharper, less rounded. There were fewer adornments. The regular light fixtures in the ceiling were turned off. Dimmer, more diffused lights had been mounted at the corners where the walls met the ceiling.
He opened a door on his right. Inside was a small office in a state of disuse. The desk was dusty, and there were lighter spots on the walls where filing cabinets or shelves had once stood. The other doors seemed identical, so he ignored them.
As he turned the corner, his attention was drawn to the far end of the next hall. An ornate double-door stood illuminated by sunlight streaming through huge windows, casting the rest of the alcoves and doorways into dark shadow.
It looked like a very important door indeed.
Trotting forward, Chipper almost didn’t hear one of the doors unlatch to his left. It was more that his ear twitched, so naturally his head turned toward the source of the sound.
In an instant, he found himself snout-to-snout with a dark-armored royal guard.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!?”
Chipper yelped and instinctively kicked out. One forehoof sloppily connected with the guard’s chestplate. The ringing impact immediately made Chipper realize he’d made a huge mistake.
“I’m sor—!” he started, but the words turned into a grunt as the guard tackled him. His back hit the floor, knocking the wind out of him. A foreleg slammed down across his throat and his head thumped against carpet that felt more solid than it had any right to.
“What is happening?” a female voice cried, dull in Chipper’s ringing ears.
“Intruders! Stay in your chambers!”
“I’m— not—” Chipper wheezed against the leg pressing down on his throat. The white coat and dark blue armor of the guard were blurring into the ceiling.
A heavy trotting beat reverberated through the floor. A darker shape appeared behind the guard, obscured by the shadows under the doorway. “Thou hast caught but one intruder, it seems.”
“I told you to stay in your chambers,” the guard growled.
“Hmph. As if we were a foal in need of a nursing guard-mother.” Blue magic sparkled and the contents of Chipper’s shoulder pouch floated into the air. The dark figure examined the items, then floated the tour pass in front of the guardpony. “What meaneth this, ‘All Access Palace Tour’?”
“Well, it would imply he’s a lost tourist, but he could also be an assassin.”
“Not— aaa— aaa—” Chipper’s vision was rapidly darkening around the edges. He flailed one foreleg weakly.
“We admire thy zeal for our protection, Silent Knight, but it seemeth wise to grant this ‘tourist’ a breath before consciousness fails him.”
The guard frowned but obediently relented. “Yes, Princess.”
The pressure on Chipper’s throat released and he gasped. The tunnel vision faded and his hearing unmuffled.
“Now,” the guard said, glaring down at him. “Who are you?”
“Ch-Chipper Blaze,” he replied, massaging his throat.
“His identification would seem to bear that out,” the shadowy figure mused. She stepped into the light. “Praytell, Chipper Blaze, what hath brought thee to our wing of the castle?
Chipper stared in shocked silence. “P-Princess Luna!” he finally stammered.
“Yes, that is our name.”
Her smile was wry, but the rest of the princess seemed cut from obsidian. Her mane flowed with invisible power, lit by a thousand tiny pinpricks of starlight.
Chipper cleared his throat. “I… I was with my tour group and got separated. By accident, I found out my pass opens every door and…” He chuckled nervously and shrugged. “I figured I’d go exploring.”
“Hmm.” Princess Luna’s eyes narrowed. The shadows around her seemed to deepen. “What dost thou think, Silent Knight? Shouldst we believe this tale?”
“There is an ‘All Access’ tour scheduled for today,” the guard responded. “But I’m not sure I believe the bit about the pass. That seems a little far-fetched.”
“Indeed. We shall test it.” The princess turned back to the door and pulled it closed, then tapped the pass against it.
The latch clicked.
Princess Luna looked aghast. Silent Knight’s eyes widened.
“This is exceedingly irregular,” the princess muttered. “Who could be responsible for—” Her brow furrowed and her magic intensified, probing the card. “Hmph. We shall have to inform our sister to keep her exceedingly-talented protégé occupied with fighting monsters, and far away from matters of palace security.”
“Beg your pardon, Princess?”
“We shall explain later,” she replied, turning back to Chipper Blaze. “In the meantime, we see no reason why this tourist’s story should not be believed. It would be best to return him to his group with expediency, as they are no doubt wondering whitherto he wandered.”
Silent Knight nodded and released Chipper Blaze from the floor.
Chipper sat up on his haunches and rubbed his throat again. “Thank you.” His cheeks were burning with embarrassment. “I probably should get back…” Even as he said the words, they came with hesitation. Now that the initial excitement had worn off, he had questions, and in this moment it seemed that the Princess might be his only chance of getting them answered.
“But…?” Silent Knight prompted.
Chipper bit his lip, eyes downcast.
“Thou sawest something not intended for thee.” It wasn’t a question; the princess had seen through him like glass.
Chipper nodded. “The panic room,” he confirmed, and raised his eyes.
Princess Luna tilted her head. “A… panic room? We have not heard of such a thing.”
“It’s like a bunker,” the guard explained. His voice seemed wary and he kept his gaze fixed on Chipper. “Where a pony can go during an emergency, for protection.”
“Ah.” Luna said, nodding. “A fitting name, we suppose. It is room for when panic comes, indeed— but whose panic?”
She leaned down, bringing her head level with Chipper. Her features seemed softer up close. Her eyes, as deep as the night sky and twice as captivating, searched his own for what seemed like forever before she spoke, her voice soft and contemplative.
“We are more like thee than not, little pony,” she said. “Were there no danger, would we have guards?”
“Princess…” Silent Knight muttered, a tone of warning in his voice.
Luna waved a hoof dismissively. “And yet... such a thing is not only for us. We wield powers both great and terrible, and verily, many have suffered for it. Such a room may protect from panic both within, and without. Doest thou take our meaning?”
Chipper let the words settle on his mind, and bowed his head in a nod of understanding. “Thank you, Princess.”
“Thou art welcome, and we would thank thee to keep our confidence in this.” She smiled and stood tall again. “Now let us return thee to thy friends, ere they miss thee too much.”
“Thanks for escorting me back,” Chipper said. “Sorry for being such a bother.”
“It’s no trouble,” Silent Knight replied, in a tone that indicated he didn’t really mean it.
They came to the end of the hall where Chipper’s adventure had started. The security door opened automatically at Silent Knight’s touch.
“One more question,” Chipper said. “All the moon symbolism in here. Something seemed odd, but I can’t put my hoof on it.”
The guard paused, then pointed to one of the shadowy inlays. “Look closer.”
Chipper obliged, stepping to the wall and peering at the carving. “I’m not sure what I should be—”
“Don’t look for what’s there. Look for what’s not there.”
Chipper sighed and squinted harder. It wasn’t as if the carving was that complex.
Suddenly it hit him, and he gasped. “The Mare in the Moon!”
Silent Knight nodded. “I noticed it myself when I first started. Moon motifs are common in older buildings like this, and they always include the Mare in the Moon. Except here, in this wing.” He pointed to another of the engravings. “In here, the moon is bare, at Princess Celestia’s request.”
“That’s… huh.”
Silent Knight pushed the door the rest of the way open and motioned unceremoniously. “Come on, let’s go.”
They passed into the small annex and through the garishly ornate double doors. The hallway beyond was filled with tour group ponies, all chattering excitedly. Apparently his disappearance hadn’t gone unnoticed for long.
“Chipper!” Out of nowhere, a flurry of feathers overwhelmed him as Snapfast practically leaped into a hug. “I’ve been worried sick!” she exclaimed. “What happened? Where’d you go? We thought you got arrested or something!”
Chipper sputtered, trying to get the feathers out of his mouth. He couldn’t help but smile at Snapfast’s enthusiastic concern. “I got distracted and wandered down the wrong hallway,” he replied. “The guard found me before I got too far, though—”
He turned and made eye contact with Silent Knight, still standing at the open door. The two shared a brief look, and Chipper nodded in agreement to the unspoken message.
The guard disappeared, and the door closed with the faintest click of a latch.
“Well, thank goodness our missing friend is back,” the tour guide exclaimed, speaking above the chatter. She looked frazzled but relieved. “Everypony else please try to stay together! We need to trot along now before we miss the luncheon.”
The tour group quickly reverted back to normal, following the guide into the next room. Chipper waited until the nearest ponies had moved away, then turned to Snapfast with a with a wry smile.
“By the way,” he whispered, “you’re never going to believe who I got to meet.”
