Starlight Glimmer sat just outside the circle of light, shivering silently.
It was warm in the laboratory -- the crystal floor felt almost hot beneath her rump, a side-effect of the warding spells she and Twilight Sparkle had spent the past four days carefully inscribing with diamond-tipped styluses, drawing lines finer than the hairs of her tail. Miles of them threaded across the floor, up the walls and over the ceiling. The only part of the room not marked, not glowing with their energy, not heated almost to scalding with the power they contained, was the little circle just feet away, barely large enough to hold the book laying in its center.
Twilight Sparkle stood just outside the circle. They had agreed she would be the one to open the book. As an alicorn, her chances of surviving whatever traps, charms or beguilements it contained were much higher than Starlight’s. Probably. They assumed, at least. You had to make some assumptions when dealing with books like this.
Their other option was to destroy it. They’d tried that once, giving it to the fire, and it seemed to work. Nothing remained but a smear of ashes in kiln. But the book was back the next day, unblemished by its experience with the fire. And now, whenever they brought matches or torches or candles near the book, the flames flickered and died, as though all the oxygen in the room had been evacuated.
It would not be burned twice. More than a thing of paper and glue and binding, the book was an idea. It was immortal.
“The wards are stable,” Twilight said. Her voice was steady, but years of friendship had given Starlight the insight necessary to hear the faint quaver in her breath. “No sign of the book reacting. Moving on to step seven.”
Her horn glowed, and a thin iron rod lifted into the air beside her. She reached into the circle with it, slipped the pointed tip beneath the cover’s leather hasp, and gently flipped the book open. It settled with a faint rustle and nothing more.
Starlight ignored the book. She studied the carved lines beneath her hooves, feeling them with her magical senses. They were as dead as the stone they were carved into.
“No activation,” she said. “Should be safe to touch.”
“Should be,” Twilight echoed, and shook her head. “Of course that wouldn’t set it off. It wants to be read.”
“It’s just a book.” Still, Starlight swallowed. “So… phase two?”
“Right.” Twilight started to step into the circle, paused, then shook her head and committed. She lifted the book with her magic and flipped through the pages, back to the beginning. Something louder than the rustle of dry, ancient paper whispered in Starlight’s mind.
Twilight’s eyes scanned the frontispiece. She turned it, so Starlight could see as well. The characters were ornate, highly stylized, written in the high court fashion so popular centuries ago. But they were legible even still.
“Sarcophagus’s Third Idea: An Exploration and a Proposal for the Good of all Ponies,” Twilight recited. “Dedicated to Her Glorious Majesty Princess Celestia, Long May She Reign.”
“Well.” Starlight found her mouth was dry, and tried to swallow. Again, and again, until finally she worked up enough saliva to speak. “I guess the legends are true.”
* * *
The last necromancers didn’t think they were evil. On the contrary, they thought they were performing a service for all ponies. They had explored the realm of death and come back rich with knowledge and ambition. Soon their research would be complete, the last enemy would be defeated, and ponies would be immortal. The fact that some of their studies were unsavory, their methods morally questionable, and the subjects of their experiments not always voluntary was problematic, but this was an era of wars and famine and magical snowstorms that lasted decades and buried entire countries in glaciers. A few eccentric sorcerers hardly seemed like the greatest threat in the kingdom.
After, ponies questioned Celestia. And that took some courage back then, for Celestia was not always the forgiving, benevolent monarch of these later days. Why didn’t she stop them when she could?
It was simple, she replied. She never thought they would succeed.
* * *
Later, all the princesses gathered around the book. Luna scowled at it with a special disdain. Cadence refused to come nearer than the walls. Celestia’s mouth, so often turned up in a gentle smile, was drawn in a thin line across her muzzle. Her lips pressed hard together.
Starlight stood behind Twilight. She wasn’t part of this assembly, this immortal conclave. But she knew as much about the book as anypony alive, which was to say as much as anypony in the room. She had earned the spot.
“It shouldn’t be back,” Celestia said. “I banished it.”
“Is that your solution to every problem?” Luna asked. Her voice could have etched metal.
“Some problems lend themselves to no other solution,” Celestia returned calmly. “How did you find it, Twilight?”
“It appeared on the Life Sciences shelf in the library yesterday. There’s no record of it ever being entered. It’s not in the catalogues. The only copy was thought to be lost centuries ago. It shouldn’t exist, but… well, here it is.” She paused, then added, “It set off every magical alarm in the castle when I first touched it. It’s more than it seems.”
“Have you read it yet?” Cadence asked. She had to raise her voice to be heard from across the room. “That’s what it wants, you know.”
“It’s just a book,” Starlight said. She was suddenly conscious of the attention of four alicorns upon her. Four oaks weighing the words of a mayfly. “It doesn’t want anything.”
Luna snorted. “Not one of those statements is correct.”
“What do you mean?”
Celestia’s horn glowed, and the book slid across the crystal floor with a chime-like whisper. She lifted it and gently stroked the cover with her hoof. A silence stretched out between the five of them until Celestia finally spoke.
“It does want to be read,” she said. “And it’s not a book. It’s a pony.”
Silence again. Someone retched. Starlight thought it was Cadence, but she couldn’t turn around to check. Her eyes were only for the book. She stared at it, even as the rest of the world went gray and her vision became a dark tunnel. Something buzzed in her ears. Cold sweat dripped in rivers down her coat to dapple the floor with dark flowers.
She drew in a gasping breath, just before passing out. “No.”
“Sarcophagus wanted many things,” Celestia said. “He was a wonderful pony, good in his own way. He wanted to help us all. But he… he sometimes saw ponies as ways, rather than ends. That was the greatest tragedy, in the end. Not that ponies died, though of course that was terrible. The tragedy was that he thought he was doing something so good.” She set the book down, and looked at Starlight. “Have you ever felt that way, Starlight? So certain you were doing something right that it didn’t matter if a few ponies got hurt? That the world would be better in the end?”
Starlight’s heart hammered in her chest, so hard the tips of her ears trembled like flags. She tried to speak, failed, and merely nodded.
Celestia looked away. “That’s how he was. And in the end he was victorious.”
Twilight’s horn lit, and she floated the book back into the circle of light. It opened of its own accord and lay there, waiting.
“So, what now?” she asked. “What do we do with it? We can’t destroy it.”
“Kill it, you mean,” Luna said. She stared at the book through narrow eyes. Her wings rustled at her side, eager for some violent work.
“Bury it,” Cadence offered. “Say it is lost and Sarcophagus is dead and let ponies forget it again.”
Twilight started to speak, but only got a few words out before Luna interrupted her. Celestia tried to come between them, but that only turned it into a three-way argument. Starlight heard none of it. She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing.
In, out. In, out. Finally, her heart calmed.
“I did hurt ponies,” she said. The room suddenly went silent, and she felt their eyes on her again.
“I did,” she continued. “And afterward I’d have given anything to undo all that pain. I was willing to undo the whole world.” Her horn glowed and the book slid across the floor. She picked it up and held it against her chest. It was warm and seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat.
“Maybe he does want to be read,” she said. “But maybe he can change too. Maybe that’s why he came back.”
Silence again. The assembled immortal lords gazed at her, disparate expressions on their faces. Finally, the only one who mattered smiled.
“Maybe,” Twilight said. “Maybe it wasn’t me he came back to. Maybe it was you.”
