Soul's Poison: Into the Dark World

Twilight was sitting in front of another riddle. This time the box gave her a simple tic-tac-toe game. She remembered when she played with her mother. Then, she was only three.

When Twilight finished it three times, she was given an advanced version of that game. Now she needed to get five crosses or zeros in a row. This time it was harder, but she still managed to solve it.

The last game. Well, it had the same design, but it was something different. A grid of squares became a grid of hexagons. A single zero was in the middle of the grid and, as Twilight understood, her goal in that game was to surround the zero with her crosses. Zero was making a move into one of the surrounding hexagons but only after she puts a cross. Like other games, three rounds and she was off. The grid became a single sentence, “bring me back to the box.”

This time box was not as quite as it was last times. Soon, there was light which came from the opening on the upper side of the box that was not there before. Quickly that opening started to widen and soon the upper side was gone leaving only a light coming from the box.

A package flew out of this box. The box itself disappeared.

“What it is?” Twilight asked, even though she was the only one in the room. The package, as if it heard her, unraveled itself, showing to Twilight a bunch of items.

A lot of papers were in there and Twilight noticed that all of them were spells. Twilight found that intriguing as box wasn’t giving any spells for a really long time. Now, there was so many scrolls to look at.

When she was looking through them, she found one that had red words on it. It is said, “please cast this as soon as possible”.

She was about to look more precisely at it but then she yawned.

“When will you go to sssssleep?” Twilight heard the voice in her head.

“Venom?” Twilight looked at her table, noticing her snake-familiar next to the single candle. “What are you doing here? If I am correct, Dusk is already sleeping.”

“Dusssk is sssleeping. You are right,” she raised her head. “But I found Owlowiccciousss an interesssting interlocutor.”

“Hoo,” as if admitting it, an owl sitting on perch over the table hooted.

“Go to sssleep,” snake suggested and Twilight had to agree with her due to another yawn. “You have a plenty of time, tomorrow.”

Tomorrow, Twilight didn’t had a plenty of time. Some things happened that day, like return of the showmare Trixie, who was now a way stronger due to an artifact, she wore. It was called “Alicorn Amulet” and it was giving an immense amount of power. Twilight found herself facing an opponent not of her level of power so she was made to use her brains fighting her. She not only managed to won the duel but she also checked something out. She is not going to have any profit soon.

When she got back to the library, it was two hours past the noon. She met Spike there sitting at the counter. She clearly saw that he was outwardly freezing there.

“Would you like to get some warm clothes on?” Twilight asked. He had only the dark cape that she once wore and small little T-shirt with short sleeves. Only thing that was warm were trousers.

“Hmm, well I just got that warm coat from Rarity,” he said looking up at their with Twilight room.

“Then put it. You are not that small,” Twilight rebuked Spike lightly. “I’ll look after the counter.”

“Fine,” he said and headed to their room. Twilight meanwhile sit at the desk. She quickly looked at the register before her. The job of the librarian is quite and aside from her friends, only a certain number of visitors were in the library. In the register, there were only a couple of pages were filled in. “How do I look?”

Spike was in the emerald overcoat, which were the same with his eyes and looked good with his beige trousers. Rarity also added a zip, so Spike could attach a hood from the cape. Unlike her cape, Spike’s cape had hood on a zip.

“They look magnificent on you,” Twilight replied. Right after that, a letter appeared before Twilight. Twilight grabbed it and broke the seal, which she found was Luna’s. She quickly learned what was in there and sighed. Another train trip, another bad guys to beat. She remembered the spell, she was going to cast and suddenly to herself she decided to cast it. She thought that it’s probably not going to take much time, especially when the train is not going to arrive in a couple of hours.

She went down in the basement. After a quick preparation, she started a ritual, which was written in the scroll. It requires a single item, which will keep the magic in it. It is said to keep the item in the safe place, as it will became very fragile no matter the original material the item made from. The item will gain an ability to do the same thing as the box did. There was also a note that the second item created this way will resonate with the first one and both will be destroyed, but on a certain distance. The distance of that effect was colossal, though. Four hundred miles.

When she started the ritual, she admitted that it was a way easier than that revealing spell. Matrix wasn’t really too long, even though she wasn’t recognizing the parts. There was also a feeling as if that ritual was actively consuming the given magic, while revealing spell was taking the magic in unsteadily and reluctantly. Twilight also admitted that this was a full ritual with the circle painted by chalk, so it should use much more energy, but this ritual and revealing spell both took from her an equal amount of energy.

After a minute of spell casting under the look of her snake-familiar Venom, she finally managed to end the ritual. A diamond, which was a part of gem collection that Rarity once gifted to her, didn’t change a bit. Something magical could be felt about it. That feeling was oddly familiar to Twilight.

“Well, I had a lot of trust in you,” an all too familiar voice came from behind her. “As I can see, I wasn’t wrong… Ouch, look after your viper. It spit something on me.”

“How did...” Twilight turned around and was about to ask something but a mismatched creature, which was summoned in the caverns beneath the Canterlot castle put his eagle claw on her mouth.

“Put aside your questions, my dear,” he smiled, but something was in this smile. “It was said that the stone should work like a box. Well, it’s not going to work that way, but let’s make a deal. I will doing what that box was doing. I will suggest a puzzle each time I would come and provide you with information that you need. You meanwhile will allow me to come every now and then via that stone. These conditions are fine with you?... Oh, wait. Before you ask questions, I will tell you the rules. Each time, I appear in this world, I will give you an ability to ask me three questions and I will give an answer. The point here is that the answer is going to satisfy me, so ask a question carefully. Answer to your question must satisfy both of us. Let’s go with first three question, shall we?”

“What? What does this whole thing mean? What do you want?” Twilight blubbered, not really getting his words.

“Well, you want to learn from your mistakes? Fine,” he looked maliciously at her. “This whole thing means that I am going to give you knowledge beyond what you could have imagined. I want to give you some knowledge but only if you show me you are worthy enough for it. One question left.”

“What?… Oh, don’t count that,” only now, she realized it. “Any ques… No, don’t count this either.”

A lot of things were happening in Twilight head. Circuits of her brains were turning and twisting generating tons of questions, some absurd, some obvious and some about universe and existence. Sometimes, a question belonged to all three. This action was accompanied by the sudden feelings of regret, anxiety and fear.

“So,” he looked right in her eyes.

“Can you tell me about Sethra?” Twilight suddenly remembered a snake fellow that had a diary, parts of which were provided to her by box. “No! Tell me about Sethra. Everything you know.”

“Everything? Well, you will learn his whole story in the meantime, as I am going to give you the whole diary, but not now. Now, I’ll just tell you a bit, just not to spoil it when you will be reading a diary.”

“Take a seat, dear,” he suggested, getting an armchair appear behind Twilight. While sitting in the similar armchair, he began, “he was scientist with a keen intellect and warrior with a brave heart. He was also selfish and too self-independent. This was noticed by his father so he decided that his title, the ruler of the nation, will be inherited by the oldest daughter, Asthra. There was also a younger daughter and the middle son Sethra. If Sethra was seeking for knowledge, the younger sister Aspera was looking for satisfaction. She was a wanton and she spent a horrible amount of money on different celebrations and parties. Well, no matter. Sethra since he liked to learn new things quickly got ahold of the whole library and read every book he found there, which is an impressive amount I’ll say. He had little prejudices so he learned almost everything not only different sciences and martial arts but he also knew how to cook and how to sew. If it wasn’t for his father than he will probably even learn how to grow crops and how to look after cattle. Well, since he had such abilities and had a lot of money with him he started to learn the world around. Father noticed that and got him to work as a diplomat. His new job got quickly boring and he started to look for specific knowledge. There was a traveling merchant, who sold him a book and after he found interest in that book, he got a couple more. Those books were not really legal so that merchant quickly got arrested. Sethra helped him escape but he was caught and was sent back to father. He was made to give all books and then they asked him to ask for his return in the previous job. He didn’t do so and instead he started to gather an expedition to look for treasures in different ruins. That what he was saying, but he actually needed someone to protect him while he was looking for forgotten knowledge. In one of his expedition, he found a book on the Void. That’s when he started to learn about Void. After a couple of years, I found him and helped him a bit. After I saw him doing things pretty well, I thought he would find little problem with casting a little spell. He… Well, that spell required specific preparations and he hadn’t done them. I believe you know what happened to him afterwards.

“I can guess,” Twilight replied. “He passed, right?”

“Of course,” he sighed. “What a pity. I had a lot of trust in him. Well, as I can see, you are going to learn all these new spells. I won’t be taking any of your time, then.”

“Wait,” Twilight shouted, but he was gone.

“Who wasss that?” Venom asked.

“A friend of mine,” Twilight replied. “He gave that box since he couldn’t solve a single riddle.”

“Really?” Venom said, not really believing her mistress.

“Well, I’ll just learn from these scrolls,” Twilight turned to the scrolls with spells. Venom only sighed at this demeanor.

Meanwhile, Twilight started to do her favorite thing. Learning spells. Those one were complicated but each had some fantastic effect. The new ray was disintegrating metals. The cloud should cause hysterics or vomit but Twilight couldn’t check that out.

She was about to learn next spell but she heard voice. “Twilight, Luna told us to arrive at Canterlot.”

“Rainbow, how?” She looked at the basement’s entrance and noticed Rainbow descending the stairs.

“Spike told me,” she said. “You are lucky, since I could’ve been up there.”

“Oh, I was just teaching Venom new spells,” Twilight made an excuse for herself.

“Huh?” Rainbow bowed her eyebrow, but when she noticed the snake, she understood. “Oh, will you bring them with you? You’ve been keeping them here for month.”

“Yeah, will do,” Twilight said, casting one of her spells. “Good. Fang is nearby. I’ll bring all three… Where?”

“Girls are on the train station,” Rainbow said as she went upstairs. Twilight meanwhile grabbed leash and collar, which were laying there.

Another stallion was thrown on the streets. He tried to raise, but since he was drunk into a complete mess, the process was taking too much time. Only when he received help from his pals who were with him in the bar. They were also drunk but not in that horrible state which their friend was. They were also kicked out of the bar but unlike their friend, they were talked into leaving from that place.

“Why there are so many of ponies, who likes to lose sense of reality?” Blaze asked a rhetorical question, when he returned to his place in front of bar stand. A rabbit, who was behind the stand smiled.

“Many things happen each day,” Jonathan said. “Not all of them are good.”

“Right,” he said and looked at the crowd. At first, he thought that two rabbits’ bar shouldn’t be that popular in Canterlot, but seeing the crowd in the hall, he started to thought differently.

“By the way,” Jonathan smiled and took a sip of his ale. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Huh… Wait, what?” Blaze looked at him.

“I needed two weeks to spend somewhere,” he said. “Two weeks has passed and my relatives solved some problems and sent letter to me. Now I can return to my home.”

“So, about…” After an instance of silence, he opened his mouth to ask something.

“Your payment is there,” Jonathan pointed at the entrance. When Blaze looked at the entrance, he noticed captain Solar Lance. “Ask him.”

“Fine,” Blaze said and headed to Lance. He noticed Blaze and headed to him, but when they get closer, he made gestures to Bright Mind and headed to the pantry. “So, what’s up?”

“Well, Blaze… I’m not sure how to say that, but your sister is kidnapped,” he said.

“What? How?” Blaze looked at him like as if he saw him for the first time. Then he looked at him with fury in his eyes.

“She just didn’t came one day,” he replied. “I started to look for her and Zip, one of my rivals sent me a letter in which he said that he wanted a lot of money for her. I immediately headed to the castle, but there were only night guards. I asked them, but they started to look for her recently. They found three places, but my pony there told me that they keep all captives in one place. You should be there first.”

“Where?” Blaze abruptly asked.

“Here, but that not really what I wanted,” he said while pulling out a piece of paper out of his pocket. “You see, night guards are going to raid all three places, but you should get your sister first. You see, that detective, who must solve your case and who was going to take place instead your sister hadn’t had enough time to start working when bats started to get everywhere. Bats has all materials on you and they shouldn’t get their hands on your sister… Or, they are going to be very persistent with questions.”

“You can stop there. I understand,” Blaze sighed and looked at Bright. She nodded and Blaze asked Lance, “When?”

“At six,” he replied.

“We will grab our stuff and be there,” he said and they went upstairs. There in one room, they got their weapons. In the hall, they found that Lance already left while Jonathan and May were also gathering their stuff. They said their farewells and they parted.