Author's Note
"And while my eyes saw, they did not see. I could hold my quill in hand and write the words upon the page but only nonsense was my creation. I thought the knife in my hand would free me from my torment, yet all I held was a tourniquet."
- Prose Singer, My Diary (Unknown)
Arrival of A Creature
Twilight sat in her study, staring at her notes. A fist of iron clenched her throat as she reviewed and re-reviewed the runes that were etched upon the yellowed pages. Magical experimentation was nothing new to the alicorn. The candlelit study was freezing, underground below her crystalline castle. Twilight felt her eyes grew weary from the strain of studying. Had it been hours? Had it been a day? She had neglected to bring a timepiece with her, and there were no windows to the outside world to give her bearing on the world around her.
She sighed and leaned back in her seat, staring at the scorched stone wall she'd neglected to clean. It was evidence. Evidence of a terrible mistake. Of a failure. But now that the failure was over, she must learn.
The spell in the book was clear as day. A teleportation spell. Not for the self, but rather for another. The old scroll was buried deep within the private archives of the Castle of the Two Sisters that was kept secret to only the Princesses. Cadance had reviewed the large number of scrolls and determined, like her mentors before her, that the scrolls were so brittle with age and mite-blighted that they were not worth more than a padlock on the door and an illusion to hide them away from the average passing scavenger. Twilight was the first to feel differently. These scrolls were of value, if not for knowledge, then for history. If not for history, then for art.
The runes were old, but Twilight had an endless supply of reference texts scattered open on the floor or stacked high with slips of paper to bookmark a given point of interest to the mare. Twilight read the text and performed the spell with ease two weeks ago. It entertained her that the apple she was thinking of in her pantry suddenly appeared on the bench in front of her. The experiment was simple and a success. She had read the text a few times, but found no other spell that wasn't translated or explained better in a modern text. So she tossed the scroll aside, thinking nothing of its contents.
However, now the pages are folded flat in place and retraced pieces of paper exactly outlining the characters and runes on the page littered the room around her.
There was a sudden knock on her door.
The mare leaped from her seat, gasping at the still air of the room around her.
The door peered open, and her dragon assistant stepped through. His emerald eyes peered through the crack in the door.
"Would you like some breakfast, Twilight?" he asked.
"Is it morning already?" Twilight gasped. "I only meant to be down here for a few hours before bed."
"It's been a full day. I cleared your schedule yesterday for you, but I figured if you were locked up for so long, you didn't want to be disturbed."
A full day? Twilight rubbed her eyes. Surely it had only been a few hours.
"I'm sorry, Spike. Yes. You're right. I'm still trying to figure out what's wrong with my translations."
"You haven't tried the spell again, have you?" Spike asked.
"No, of course not."
"I assumed you wouldn't. Should we let Celest-"
"Of course not," Twilight barked, turning on Spike. "We don't even know if we've done something wrong, let alone if something happened outside of these walls."
A silence fell between the two as Spike stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
"Do you want to talk about it again?"
Twilight groaned and looked to her several stacks of differently translated texts, each with a message more cryptic than the last. Some filled with gibberish. Some outlining a recipe for some potion that would leave even Zecora baffled to their purpose. And one of them, musical notation for a lullaby.
"I don't really see the point."
"Usually when you talk through it, you have an 'A-ha' moment and figure out the problem."
Twilight had sighed and rose to her hooves. She was shocked at how drained and spent she felt.
"I think the first thing on my list is to rest. If I've been awake and translating for as long as you say I have, then I must get some sleep. I'll be no use to anypony like this."
"I think that's a good plan," Spike says softly. "When you wake up, I'll have something warm and rejuvenating waiting for you."
Twilight moved to the door and passed by her assistant without another word. Her muscles groaned with the unrest of autumn campfire embers. Her vision swayed gently as she tried to walk the tightrope of the stone floor beneath her hooves.
"Just," Spike continued. "Please consider telling the sisters. If it's worrying you this much, then we should-"
"No," Twilight said. "Do not bring it up again, Spike."
Twilight laid in bed, the down feathers cradling her form and soothing the ache that clung tightly to her hooves. She closed her eyes to sleep, but quickly found it was no use. She counted as high as her brain could concentrate, sipped water, and even read her bedside novel, but nothing seemed to make a difference. Her thoughts kept returning to warping kinetic energies, and the strange creature that had stepped through the product of her spell gone wrong. The mattress grew damp with cold sweat and the faint odor of ink from her tired hooves.
There was nothing to fear, Twilight thought to herself. I forced that thing back through the spell's energy and shut it tightly. For all I know, it may be broken down into the magic which bore its form and torn into null.
But that did not stop her trembling hooves. The tall creature, nearly double her height, with two long legs and arms as long as a grizzly bear, had dropped something. She stowed the artifact in a drawer, determined to put it out of her mind. But still her mind lingered on that drawer of her desk, bound by lock and key.
She remembered leaping forward, her hooves shoving the creature with all of her might in a sheer act of adrenaline, and then it was gone.
How could a spell that was meant to move items small distances produce such a creature when it was translated?
Twilight growled to herself and reached for her waterglass. But her hooves touched not glass, but metal. Her hoof grasped the object, and she turned in surprise. In her hoof was a small golden ring, and set on it a fiery golden opal. She dropped the object and her breath escaped her. The ring clinked to the floor.
Disbelief escaped her mouth as she peered over the edge of the bed, yet no glint of the jewelry was to be found. She sighed and laid on her bed with a renewed anxiety. Perhaps the lack of sleep was playing with her mind. She had just the thing to solve that.
Two sleeping pills later and Twilight laid back down with renewed exhaustion. Sleep took her quickly and her breathing slowed as her body gave her the rest she so desperately needed.
Twilight's eyes opened suddenly despite the sand attempting to cement them shut. Her breath was quick. Her ears folded.
She pressed a hoof to her head, trying to resolve herself in the present and escape the dream that held her captive. She knew in her dream she had seen that creature, although the more vividly she tried to recall it, the more it escaped her grasp. She shook her head and looked out to see the sky aflame with dusk.
Another day I've wasted, she chastised herself. She moved to the edge of her bed, and as she looked to her bed stand, there was the ring. She eyed it carefully. The stone glowed gently from the light shining through her window, as if filled with its own spark of luminescence. Perhaps it was.
Twilight glared at the ring as if it had insulted her personally. Surely this was Spike's doing. He was the only other who knew of the creature that came through the portal. Surely this is his attempt to poke humor into a subject that left her with more questions than answers.
She grabbed the ring and tore from her room. Her assistant tried to snatch her as she charged through the corridors, but followed behind in haste.
Only once they reached the study door did he have the nerve to speak.
"What is it?"
"The Princesses were right, Spike," Twilight said. "These need to be locked away."
The dragon nodded as Twilight stepped into the studio and pulled page after page from the walls.
"Bring me a folder," she asked.
"Why?"
"So the next poor soul who finds my work may see my notes and take it as a warning. Or, maybe my work will stop them from making the same mistakes I’ve made."
And so Twilight collected her notes, page upon page, journal upon journal of translated scripts, and placed them inside a cardboard box. Before closing it, she threw the ring into the compiled research, so it might finally be gone from her mind. With a flash of purple light, days of research was gone. Teleported to the secret room in the Castle of the Two Sisters.
"There," Twilight said. "It's done."
Spike stepped forward and placed a claw on a hoof.
"It's for the best, you know. Gotta leave something for the future Princesses to discover and learn from, right?"
Twilight nodded, but turned to her assistant with fear in her eyes.
"We need to inform the Princesses."
Spike took a step back.
"Really?"
"Yes. Immediately," she said, turning to her work desk.
"Why now?" Spike asked. "Why not after I found you sobbing, alone in here, with the walls blackened?"
Twilight remained silent, her gaze fixated on her desk. Spike moved forward, concerned about his friend’s lack of reply.
“Twilight?”
Spike looked to the desk, and sitting on an open book was a small, golden ring.
“Didn’t I put that in the box?” Twilight asked Spike.
“I thought you did.”
Twilight took the key to her locked drawer and unlocked the ring’s previous container. She placed the ring in the drawer and closed it with more force than necessary, the slam echoing throughout the lab. She locked the drawer once more and handed the key to Spike.
“Send this key to Celestia,” Twilight said, her voice shaking. And a letter telling her of the creature. “I think… If this ring is any sort of indication, something is horribly wrong in Equestria.”
Spike nodded, and turned to leave.
“And one more thing Spike,” Twilight said softly.
Spike nodded and turned to the door once more. He placed one claw on the door, and opened is closed palm to look down at the key in his hand.
Now replaced with a glinting golden ring.
