Chapters It was dark. Suffocating so. The box the frustratingly resistant zebra had locked them in allowed no light to reach inside. The soft life energy of surrounding flora and fauna gave them some way of navigation this damnable forest, and the path to the old castle was familiar enough to recognize even without the telltale hum of old magic that surrounded the place, but unfortunately they had passed by the palace without stopping, continuing on to more unfamiliar grounds before coming to a stop far enough away from it to escape the reach of the hum.
Not that knowing their location would be of any use, though, as without a host they were completely helpless. The occasional passing animal was dominated easily enough, but wherever they had been placed was obviously inaccessible to the unintelligent beasts. They could claw at walls and ceilings all they wanted, but it would never lead to the object they were tricked into so desperately desiring.
It was maddening. They were to be traded, stolen or gifted, not locked in some box and forgotten. Their gifts were useless here. They could destroy armies, raze cities, create almost anything imaginable with but a thought, but they needed a host to do any of it. They needed a host to even think.
The sentience they had gained from Trixie was fading by the day, and there was nothing they could do about it. Soon enough, they would become nothing more than a lifeless trinket, doomed to sit in this accursed box till the end of time.
A sudden burst of pegasi magic at the edge of their perception pulled them from their thoughts. It was weak, the pegasus in question obviously not very talented at flying. A child, perhaps? Another burst of pegasi magic, this one much stronger, followed the weaker signature as they grew closer. The weaker signal briefly grew stronger as the pegasus in question pushed themselves to move faster. They were being pursued. Interesting. As the weaker signal grew closer, they realized the pegasus was being driven directly towards them. Very interesting.
The weaker soon grew close enough that their life energy was discernible. Not a child, but instead a young adult, aura tinted with fear. Why was their magic so weak? Was their talent not suited to flying?
The weak pegasus sheltered itself in the boughs of a large tree, burying themselves in the branches until they would have been covered completely. Their pursuer arrived shortly after, an older pegasus whose malice and anger was so strong as to be practically suffocating, softly muttering an angry diatribe to himself. The younger's fear spiked in intensity as the older began to roam around the area, occasionally shifting around the foliage in an attempt to search for his quarry. He steadily grew closer and closer to the younger, until a burst of panic confirmed that they had been discovered.
There was a sharp crack, and the younger cried out in pain. There was a flash of flight magic as the younger tried to escape their attacker, inadvertently drawing closer to where the box was hidden when they fell. The older followed, chasing the younger down from the tree and landing a few feet from them. The younger started scrabbling away, close enough that surface thoughts began to become perceptible.
I'm going to die, he's going to kill me, I shouldn't have tried to run, this is my fault-
Rapid, panicked, pained. The younger soon reached the void in their perception marking the wall separating them from the box. Only a scant few feet separating them from freedom. The older drew closer slowly, anger bubbling even more fiercely than before.
"You little bitch. You got a free room and free food. Was that not good enough for you? I could throw you out on the streets, you know. You're an adult now. I'm not responsible for you anymore. I don't have to spend my money supporting a whore."
A parent then. An unacceptable parent. The younger suddenly fell, a dull thud marking the wall between them opening, triggered by some unknown mechanism. Sounds of surprise came from both parties. The younger recovered quickly, pulling herself away from their tormentor fleeing and into the room. In her haste, she knocked over whatever the box had been resting on, causing it to fly open.
The light was blinding. It took a few moments for them to adjust. The room they were in was empty, save for a toppled pedestal where the box they had been trapped in for who knows how long had presumably rested. A fine layer of dust coated everything, only disturbed by the room's only breathing occupant.
The pegasus was extremely thin, ribs visible through her cream coloured coat. Their mane was light blue, tangled and uncared for. Her wings were atrophied and had markings where they had to have been bound, and she was covered in bruises. Her cutie mark was a musical note.
Beyond the entrance, standing among the lush foliage that surrounded whatever structure they were in, stood a pony that had to be her father. He shared her colouration, but was far taller and much more muscular, his cutie mark a rain cloud. His wings were held level to his body as he stalked closer, sleek and shiny. His mane was lightly dishevelled from his search, but had none of the markings of neglect held by his daughter.
The daughter who inadvertently brushed the amulet that had flown from the box.
Hello.
She jumped backwards, only to collide with the wall behind her. From what they had gleaned during the brief contact, her name was Blue Sky, and the stallion in front of her, Moody Blue, was indeed her father.
Moody paused, glancing between Blue and the amulet.
"Were you hiding this from me? Did you steal it and hide it here so you could pawn it after you ran away?" Moody was shouting now. He stomped forward and snatched the amulet off the ground with his mouth.
Moody collapsed immediately as burning pain engulfed his entire body. He screamed, dropping the piece of jewellery as if it were a hot coal. It landed next to Blue Sky, who was still staring at her father. He was writhing on the ground, still cocooned by waves of pain. He slowly grew still, his breathing erratic.
Blue Sky eventually turned her gaze to the amulet on the floor beside her. After some time, she reached out to touch it again, tentatively prodding it with her hoof, as if expecting it to jump out and bite her.
Hello.
She started, but didn't try to jump back again.
"Did... did you do that to him?" Blue glanced at her father again.
Yes.
"Is he going to die?" They could feel both hope and guilt from Blue as she asked.
Probably.
Blue didn't respond, instead withdrawing her hoof and curling into a ball, very deliberately not looking at the dying form of her father.
Twilight woke with a start. She leapt from her bed and galloped out of her room and down the hall towards her study. She sent papers flying as the door slammed open, scattering her well-organized notes across the room as she frantically pulled open the drawers of her desk until she found the one containing the amulet. Breathing heavily, she relaxed.
"Of course. It's not like it could sprout legs and walk off. It was just a dream." Twilight chuckled to herself. She began to gather and reorganize the notes she had scattered in her abrupt entrance.
"What's going on?" A tired Starlight appeared at the door, mane frazzled and bags under her eyes.
"Oh, nothing. I just had a bad dream." Twilight responded.
"Oh. Huh. You should-" Starlight yawned. "You should talk to Luna about that."
"And we should probably go back to bed," Twilight responded after a yawn of her own.
Wings spread in the corner of Twilight's eye. She whipped around, horn blazing, only to find the amulet sitting in its drawer.
"Are you okay?" Starlight asked, slightly more awake and much more concerned.
"Oh, yes. I'm just fine. No need to worry. I'll just clean up around here and head back to bed." Twilight rapidly replied. Violet magic started to levitate loose papers back into organized piles.
"I can help if you want." Starlight said tentatively as she picked up a few papers with her own magic.
"No, no, I'm fine! You can head back to bed Starlight, I can clean this up on my own." Twilight snatched the papers from Starlight and pushed her out of the door before closing it a bit too forcefully.
Twilight took a deep breath. She wasn't going to get back to sleep tonight, so she may as well be productive. She grabbed a few loose papers and a quill before drawing the amulet out of its drawer, glaring at it.
"What are you?”
By the time Celestia rose the sun, Twilight had discovered two things about the Alicorn Amulet; one; It was a tangled web of complicated and mystifying enchantments seemingly designed to drive her insane, and two, It was working .
On the surface, the thing seemed simple enough. The enchantment to prevent removal by anypony but the wearer was a common spell, used on everything from wedding rings to Twilight's crown. Under that, however, was the single most incomprehensible piece of magic Twilight had ever seen. Or maybe it was the multiple most incomprehensible pieces of magic she had ever seen. She couldn't tell. It — or they — had elements from just about every spell Twilight had ever heard of, ranging from healing to transmutation to actual, literal necromancy.
I can show you what it means.
Twilight shook her head. Her lack of sleep was getting to her. This hadn't been the first night she'd been woken up by dreams like this. The first few had been chaotic and jumbled, waking her up disoriented and panicked. After that, they steadily grew more intelligible until...
They are not dreams.
She should talk to Luna. She'd be able to help. After that was dealt with she could actually focus on studying the stupid necklace.
Sighing, Twilight set the Amulet back in its drawer. It was morning, she was hungry, and she could worry about ancient evil artifacts and bad dreams after she got breakfast.
The sun was being set by the time Moody finally stopped breathing. Cries from the animals in the surrounding forest grew louder as darkness encroached. Soft crimson light had started steaming from Moody's corpse, sending shadows dancing around the cramped room. Blue Sky hadn't moved an inch and was softly crying to herself. Her thoughts were still panicked, but they came more slowly now that she was not in imminent physical danger.
Harmony, he's dead! What am I going to do? Will the Guard think I did it? Did I do it? The necklace said it did it, but necklaces can't talk, right? Am I crazy?
Patience. They could be patient. The mare would touch the amulet again soon enough. They just had to wait.
I hit my head somewhere, and this whole thing is a hallucination. I'll wake up soon, and Dad'll be fine, I'll be back home and everything'll be okay.
They had waited in that box for an age already, they could stand to wait some more.
Everything'll be fine, everything'll go back to normal, everything'll be fine, everything'll be okay-
Perhaps a prompting was in order.
Blue started, jerking to look back at the Amulet as a pulse of magic thrummed through the room, powerful enough to make her mane stand on end. The light seeping from Moody's body flared into a scarlet inferno for a half-second before dying out completely. The shadows on the walls flickered wildly before becoming completely still, held in place by the bright red light coming from the now glowing Amulet.
A whisper tickled the edges of Blue's hearing, clearly audible yet not interpretable. Tentatively, she lowered her head closer to the shining jewelry, seeking a source to the unnerving sound. Gradually, as she grew closer, soft words began to make themselves clear.
- have done naught but claim our rightful place! Our domain-
This close to the Amulet, Blue could see faint movement in the bright glow of the central gem. A bright sea of red, ebbing and flowing to an unheard rhythm.
-unmade by thy hubris, and by her death, thy sins have been made clear-
Dozens of voices overlapped each other, fading in and out. The crimson sea began to stir, waves crashing against each other as the unknown beat quickened.
-empire is ours by right! We will tolerate no interference from-
Blue was nearly touching the Amulet now. She had forgotten her father for the moment, transfixed by the dancing of scarlet waves and harmony of whispers.
-danger he represents was underestimated by our forebears-
Blue could see images flashing across her mind, in time with the whispers and raging sea.
-search everywhere. Whoever has taken it must be found before-
A swirling mass of dark red fog. An imperious face, lit by a horn blazing silver. A pair of alicorns in flight, framed by the sun. Rows and rows of Royal Guard standing at attention.
- have a keen eye. The Alicorn Amulet is one of the most mysterious-
Blue's snout touched the Amulet.
Hello, Blue Sky. Would you like to become a god?
Twilight jerked awake, finding herself curled up on an unfamiliar bed. Her mind raced to find an explanation, panicking until she remembered where she was.
Luna sat to her side, head bowed and horn encircled by glowing white threads. She had taken Starlight's advice and gone to Luna to help with her dreams. Once she had arrived and explained the situation, Luna had her lay on her bed and cast a sleep spell on her so she could observe her dreams.
After a moment, the threads retreated and Luna looked up at Twilight, confusion splayed across her face.
"You were not dreaming."
"What?" Twilight responded, mirroring Luna's confusion. She had been asleep, right? What else could she be doing?
"It is quite perplexing. You were certainly asleep, but you never entered the realm of dreams. I attempted to draw you in, but your mind was nowhere to be found." Luna looked troubled. "Did you see anything while you rested?"
"Yes?" Twilight was very concerned that Luna couldn't find her mind. "Um, It was about that mare, Blue Sky, again."
"Hmm. Perhaps you should search for this mare? My sister and I have had prophetic dreams in the past." Luna considered.
"I don't think I can." Twilight said regretfully, "Between my friends, princess duties, and studying the Amulet, I'm fresh out of spare time."
"The Night Court has been rather quiet lately, and I am quite interested in what could be causing this." Luna rose, signaling Twilight to join her after she got out of the traitorously comfortable bed, "I think I should like to investigate if you have no objections."
"Oh! Of course, Luna." The pair walked through the open door separating Luna's room from the balcony. "Tell me if you find anything interesting. Or If you figure out where my mind is."
"Certainly," Luna chuckled, "good luck with your research, Twilight."
Twilight flapped her wings a few times to shake the stiffness from them before she took off.
"Thanks for the help!" She called back with a wave.
Celestia did not often find herself wandering. Until recently, her schedule was so packed with appointments, meetings, and paperwork that she never had time to wander. It was a nice side effect of three more princesses arriving in the past few years that she suddenly had quite a bit more free time to spend however she'd like.
And so, she wandered. The palace was huge, with more rooms than Celestia was certain there were ponies in Canterlot. She knew all of them by heart. She found it entertaining to walk the halls no less.
The halls in question were abnormally short of ponies, with Twilight having finally been convinced to accept a contingent of Guard as her own and Luna's palace starting construction. It made the palace feel almost as empty as it had been shortly after it was finished.
It reminded her of days she'd rather forget.
Celestia huffed, drawing her attention to the door now standing in front of her. Heavy and ornate, the door to the Canterlot Vault was practically an artifact all on its own. It had enough enchantments to survive a localized fireball and could only be opened by four ponies.
Celestia's horn lit as she cast the well-practiced spell required to open it, and the door swung open without a much as a whisper. Behind, rows of pedestals held the most powerful and dangerous artifacts Equestria had ever seen. Celestia walked into the room, horn glowing to provide light as the massive door cut off the light behind her. She strode down the rows slowly, taking in each object. A set of stone-bound books covered in spikes, one of their number missing. A rusted horseshoe, sitting still in its glass case. A fiddle kept in a soundproof box with a small window. A softly-glowing sword.
Celestia came to a stop at the back of the room. There was a single pedestal there, simple and sturdy. This was the reason the Vault had been built in the first place. To store the most destructive thing Celestia had ever fought.
And it had been empty for almost a thousand years.
They never found the thief. They were almost certainly dead now. Using the Amulet for immortality would have been incredibly reckless, and the aftereffects would have been noticed immediately.
Logically, she knew she couldn't have done anything. The theft had been perfect, not a shred of evidence left behind after the Amulet was stolen. She had been recovering from one of the most intensive battles she had ever fought, and the guard was still in chaos. There had been no reason to suspect a theft was even possible.
She still felt responsible.
Celestia shook herself. There was no use in staring at an empty box and feeling sorry for herself. If the Amulet still existed, it was either resting in some forgotten part of the world or held by somepony who could keep it more secure than she could.
Light flooded back into the room as the door opened again. Celestia turned, surprised. A flash of purple light and the sudden appearance of a miniature sun near the center of the ceiling made the culprit clear.
"Twilight! I didn't know you were visiting," Celestia called as she walked towards the entrance, startling her former student out of the whirlwind of notes and paper that was circling her, "You should have told me!"
"Oh! I'm sorry!" Twilight hastily apologized, notes zipping into her saddlebags, "I was just visiting Luna and-"
"Don't apologize Twilight, I'm just teasing." Celestia chuckled. "What brings you to the Vault?"
"Well, I was in the area and I realized that there might be something here that could help with my latest research project," Twilight answered.
"And what project would that be?" Celestia questioned, curious.
"I recently recovered an old relic I encountered a few years ago. It's obviously cursed, but it has the ability to enhance magically prowess rather significantly." Twilight rambled, pulling a few notes from her bags and running through them quickly.
That was... disturbingly familiar. It was probably nothing, but better safe than sorry.
"Does the relic have a name? I've encountered a few with that description before." Celestia asked.
"The Alicorn Amulet. It's fascinating, really, I could only find a single book that mentioned it..." Twilight continued, but Celestia had stopped listening.
Twilight had the Amulet. Celestia ran through her options, starting with finding where it was and dropping the sun on it. It would probably destroy the Amulet, maybe, but the damage would be catastrophic. That would stay as a last resort, then. Throwing it in Tartarus wasn't an option; if anything there got ahold of it the consequences would be equally catastrophic. Keeping it in the Vault had already failed once, and Celestia didn't want to risk losing track of it again.
"Celestia?" Twilight had stopped talking and was concernedly examining her face.
"Twilight?" Celestia spoke carefully. "Do you have the Amulet with you?"
"Yes. Celestia, is something wrong?"
"Could I see it, please?"
Twilight nodded apprehensively, floating the Amulet out of her bags. It was unmistakable, black steel and ruby gems glittering in the light of Twilight's artificial sun. A slight tug from Celestia's telekinesis was all it took for Twilight to relinquish her grasp.
Celestia looked at the Amulet, waiting for it to try something.
You rejected my gifts.
A sense of vertigo overwhelmed her, and Celestia was suddenly standing on the surface of a tranquil sea of blood.
"I will not offer them again."
Celestia snapped back to reality, seeing the Amulet back in Twilight's magical grip.
"I'm sorry, I just realized I've forgotten something important," Celestia hastily passed her student, headed to the doorway. "Good luck with your research."
"Celestia?" Twilight sounded panicked.
There was nothing she could do here. She could only trust that Twilight wouldn't make the same mistakes her predecessors had.
Celestia paused as she passed the threshold to the Vault, looking back at the Amulet, still held in Twilight's lavender magic. Twilight had turned, hoof raised as if deciding whether to follow her or not. The gem in the Amulets eye glinted, and Twilight lowered her hoof.
"Twilight?" Celestia could warn her. Tell her what the Amulet was capable of. Stop her from walking down the path she had nearly tread.
"Yes?" There was a look on Twilight's face Celestia could not identify.
"Please be careful."
The Amulet had taught Blue many things since her father died. It had told her where she could find shelter from storms when they came, how to get water from the drifting clouds when she was thirsty, what she could and couldn’t eat when she was hungry.
When she had made her way out of the Everfree it had taught her how to disappear into the background, away from ponies. When the Guard had first come it had shown her how to hide, how to sink into the shadows until there was nothing left of her but a soft red glow around the Amulet that it assured her that no one else could see.
She was doing that now, hiding in the shadow of the caravan she had been following for a week. The caravan’s wagons circled a large fire that ponies sat around, laughing and eating stew from the simmering pot resting above the fire. Blue sat behind one of the larger wagons, closer than she would have dared during the day, listening to the hum of conversation and the crackling of the fire.
You cannot join them. They would not welcome you.
They seemed happy. They had warm food and soft beds inside the wagons. Blue had snuck into one once, curiosity overwhelming her fear and the Amulet’s warnings. It was like a bedroom, with a small desk fitted into the wagon opposite a bed. It looked comfortable. She had stayed a long time before sneaking back out.
They are not what they seem. Listen.
The red glow from the Amulet grew more intense, and the hum resolved into distinct conversations, some loud and some quiet. Blue could make out harsh whispers, arguments kept hidden under a blanket of cheerful noise. Parents quietly scolded children, spouses argued in hushed tones. A knot formed in Blue’s chest.
We will stay for now. They can hide us, but only so long as they stay traveling. We will leave eventually.
The red glow dimmed, and the conversations faded back into the hum. The Amulet was right. Blue didn’t know these ponies, and she couldn’t trust them.
Ponies slowly dispersed, leaving the crowd for their wagons until the last pony doused the fire and took her leave. Blue kept waiting until the lights within the wagons had been put out and the noise had subsided before she crept into the circle and scavenged for food.
A bowl was resting near the remains of the fire, a still steaming helping of stew inside. Blue froze. They didn’t normally waste food. Had somepony forgotten?
We have been discovered.
Blue’s ears flattened against her head. She frantically searched for anypony laying in wait to ambush her as she backed away from the bowl.
A door creaked open behind her. The Amulet flashed and Blue’s wings burst into action, beating furiously as they carried her into the sky.
Twilight rolled up the parchment and applied a wax seal, setting it aside to be sent to Luna later. She had requested Twilight record her dreams to help with her investigation, and Twilight had gladly obliged. She could remember them easily enough, much unlike her normal dreams. Though, now that she thought about it, she hadn’t had a ‘normal’ dream for a while.
With that dealt with, Twilight turned her attention to the mystery on her desk. After two solid weeks of probing, she had determined that it did indeed have multiple enchantments. And none of them made any sense.
Twilight couldn’t even chalk it up to chaos magic. Chaos magic didn’t act like this. Chaos magic was energetic and unstable, raw mana without any matrix tearing holes in reality. The Amulet was just the opposite, with layers and layers of matrices without anything to fuel them. Most magical jewelry relied on the users' mana to fuel it, but most magical jewelry only had two or three enchantments. The Amulet had thousands . If it tried to utilize the users' mana, it would drain them of every drop of magic in their system in an instant.
She had seen Trixie use it, and since Trixie wasn’t dead , the Amulet clearly didn’t work like that. Even if Trixie had godlike amounts of mana, if the Amulet had activated even half the enchantments Twilight had identified she would have killed everypony in a ten-mile radius. There had to be a system of choosing which spells would activate, but Twilight hadn’t found anything like that. She had instead found that the Amulet was deliberately designed to disallow the user from using any of them.
There was no access point for any of the spells. They were all missing the crucial connection that allowed a unicorn to pour mana into the matrix. The only way for the Amulet to work was for a unicorn to add that connection into the matrix of whatever spell they wanted to use, and Twilight wasn’t going to stick her horn into that until she was sure it wouldn’t blow up in her face.
Which meant identifying every enchantment in the Amulet.
I can show them to you.
And then there were the occasional pulses of mana running through it with no apparent source, and fading too quickly for Twilight to trace what it had done. She extinguished her horn, pulling out of the confusing framework of the Amulet. She rubbed the base of her horn with a hoof, warding away a headache.
A knock at the door gave Twilight a welcome excuse to abort any further attempts at deciphering the infernal jewelry. Twilight re-ignited her horn, ignoring the dull pain it brought, and pulled open the door.
Starlight Glimmer paced nervously in front of Twilight’s study. She ran through the conversation with Trixie, searching for inspiration for her upcoming… conversation? Apology, maybe? Apologizing would definitely be involved, but did that make the whole conversation an apology? Warning? Harmony, that sounded melodramatic.
Did she even need to do this? Twilight was an alicorn, so she was some kind of moral paragon, right? No, Nightmare Moon was an alicorn and so was King Sombra, maybe, sources were unclear with him, but being an alicorn didn’t make Twilight a good pony.
She was a good pony, of course, but so was Princess Luna. What if Starlight offended Twilight by talking to her about the Amulet and she decided to throw her in the dungeons? What if...
Wait.
Starlight concentrated, sweeping an identification spell across herself. Sure enough, there were bands of emotion magic encircling her, designed to amplify anxiety. Starlight huffed, dispelling the magic with a flash from her horn. No piece of junk amulet was going to trick Starlight Glimmer into mistrusting her friends.
With that settled, Starlight marched up to Twilight’s door and knocked firmly.
Starlight realized, as the door swung open, that she still had no idea what she was going to say.
“Hi, Starlight,” Twilight was surrounded by scattered notes, rubbing the base of her horn. “What do you need?”
Twilight’s normal organizational tendencies had apparently given way to the demands of her study of the Amulet. Books were scattered around in disorganized piles, burying half of the large desk occupying most of the room in an avalanche of parchment and bindings. Crumpled paper and spilled ink covered the other half desk, with the notes deemed acceptable stacked in loosely organised piles.
“Oh! Yes, well, it’s about the, uh, Amulet,” Starlight floundered for a moment, pulling together the half-formed threads of conversation she had discarded. “I may have neglected to mention a few details about it, not on purpose, just, I didn’t know for sure? Anyway, I was talking to Trixie, and the subject came up, and I found out Trixie had actually used the Amulet before! I mean, you knew that, of course, she told me how you got it off her, but that’s not really important right now because I think the Amulet is sentient and I found an amplification enchantment-”
“Starlight, breathe. ” Twilight interrupted.
Starlight cut off, taking a few deep lungfuls of air before continuing at a calmer pace.
“While I was talking to Trixie, she confirmed a few of my suspicions about the Amulet. It was definitely messing with her emotions, and just earlier I found some remnants of an emotion amplification spell affecting me, probably from when I was holding it before I gave it to you.”
“Well, we already knew that it could use emotion magic. It’s worrying that the amplification spell lasted so long, though.” Twilight pulled a few notes from around her desk, wincing when her horn lit up.
“That’s not all. Trixie said it could talk. Apparently she had conversations with it. It’s sentient. ” Starlight glanced at the Amulet, sitting on the desk beside an inkwell with a quill resting inside. The gem in the center glinted in the light.
“Are you sure? There’ve been some cases where a unicorn managed to get a spell to hold a basic conversation before.” Twilight scanned the notes she had gathered, grabbing the quill to make adjustments or annotations occasionally.
“Those only happened recently, and Codebreaker could only get the enchantment to respond with pre-determined statements.” Starlight pulled a few papers from a stack of notes she recognized to the left of the Amulet. “We’ve determined that the Amulet is at least four thousand years old. There’s no record of anyone attempting arithmancy that complicated until after Nightmare Moon’s banishment.”
Twilight looked back at the Amulet, and the central gem glinted again.
“Starlight, if it’s sentient then that just means I need to be careful.” Twilight said resolutely. “There’s a mountain of discoveries to be made with it still, and we can’t just throw that away.”
“I’m not saying we throw it away, but you don’t get sentient artifacts without some really dangerous aftereffects. I don’t think we should be running mana through it anymore.”
“That’s absurd, Starlight. Without a user, it can’t do anything. I’m not at any risk as long as I don’t wear it, and I wasn’t going to do that in the first place.” Twilight was starting to sound annoyed.
“What if it can do something? I never put it on and it still managed to cast an enchantment on me.”
“I’d notice if it tried to cast anything on me, Starlight. I know the risks, and I can handle them. I need to get back to this, okay? See you later.”
Starlight took the dismissal, closing the door behind her.
She should trust Twilight, right? That’s what friends did, trust each other. Some insurance wouldn’t hurt though, just in case.
Starlight trotted down the hall, cultivating a plan.
Luna touched down at the edge of the Everfree forest. She shook her wings a bit, sore after flying for so long. It had seemed improper to use her royal chariot for a personal curiosity.
She started into the dense foliage, walking until she was a way into the forest before coming to a stop. Luna charged her horn, fixing the parameters of what she wanted to find in her mind’s eye before letting the spell loose. An arrow of blue magic shot through the underbrush, leaving a glowing trail behind as it darted between trees towards its destination. A match, then.
Luna poked through the underbrush, following the arrow’s path until it came to a stop not far from where it had started. Lucky. The arrow floated midair in a small clearing, pointed towards a moss-covered tree. Luna poked at it with her hoof, and the false bark slid down rapidly, dropping into the floor with a solid thud.
Inside the tree was a dark, dusty room, holding only a toppled pedestal, empty rectangular case and the skeleton of a pegasus.
Luna examined the skeleton first. There weren’t any readily apparent signs of physical damage to the pegasus’s remains, which lined up with Twilight’s vision. This was what remained of Moody Blue, then. There was a faint magical signature still lingering on the bones, but it was faded enough that trying to identify what had been done to him would be fruitless.
The pedestal was mundane enough not to warrant further investigation. The case had an enchantment designed to suppress magic, but it had been shredded to the point where it was barely recognizable as such.
Luna fixated the tracking spell in her mind again, this time focusing on the faint magical signature the Amulet had left behind in the case. The arrow floating near the entrance spun around, refocused on it’s next target and started to fly towards it before it exploded into glimmering blue dust.
Luna paused, and tried again. The arrow re-formed, only to explode again the instant it started following the target’s trail.
Well, then. Luna charged the spell again, this time with a different target. The arrow formed and zipped back to point at the pedestal. No interference there. Another dissipated arrow confirmed that there would be no tracking the Amulet’s path with magic. Luna huffed.
There was nothing for it. Luna turned her attention back to the pegasus skeleton. A moment of concentration sent another arrow flitting through the sky, away from the Everfree. If she couldn’t find where Blue Sky had gone, she would find where she had come from.
Starlight huffed in frustration, shutting and putting another useless book onto the useless book pile. It wasn’t hard to find references to the Amulet if you knew what to look for, but there was hardly any actual information about it beyond what she already knew. This had been a promising lead, a guide to magical artifacts that directly discussed the Alicorn Amulet, but upon reaching the section in question the author revealed that they had never actually come into contact with it, and twenty-two thousand words of theorizing about such an artifact’s possible nature were promptly wasted.
Starlight got up from her seat and began pacing. This was getting her nowhere. Twilight had probably already exhausted every record with even a hint of information about the Amulet already, so anything about neutralizing the enchantment would already be in her notes. Starlight would just have to ask Twilight how she would go about destroying her latest research project, then. That would go well.
She could just look through the notes while Twilight wasn’t around. Without Twilight’s uncanny organizational memory she probably wouldn’t be able to find anything useful in the mountains of research, though. Attempting to reverse-engineer the Amulet had created a veritable landmass of theory, and was beginning to point in some unsetting directions towards its origins.
Starlight stopped pacing. Had they tried tracing where the Amulet came from before? They’d discussed possible beginnings for it, yes, but that had always been in the larger context of figuring out how it worked. Actually finding out where it came from had never been considered. With the amount of appearances it made throughout history records it should be possible to map out where it had come from. Why hadn’t either of them thought of this before? It was one of the first things she and Twilight should have tried, and...
There were two principle ways of dispelling mind control. One was to notice and actively resist the spell, and the other was to inadvertently remove it while getting rid of a connected effect. The spell cast on Starlight had been incredibly subtle, not actively changing thoughts but instead diverting them away from certain lines of reasoning, making the first option all but impossible and causing the effects to linger afterwards in the case of the second.
This meant that a piece of jewelry had cast an unbelievably complex spell that normally took years to concoct, requiring intimate knowledge of how the target thought, after only a few weeks of being around Starlight. It also meant that said spell had been active and undetected by either of them that whole time, only noticed when it flared in response to Starlight trying to discourage further contact.
This changed Starlights plans. She couldn’t disenchant the Amulet. Well, she could, probably, but Starlight wasn’t fond of the possibility of fighting a berzerk alicorn afterward. Or dealing with a comatose alicorn. Or a dead alicorn. Starlight didn’t really know what would happen, was the point. She couldn’t just remove any spells affecting Twilight, either. Most mind-altering magic required prolonged separation from the source, and Starlight was pretty sure that the Amulet would react poorly to that.
Well, Starlight still had the first steps of a plan. The goal had just changed. She was still going to investigate where the Amulet had come from, and she was still going to keep it from brainwashing her friend. She just had to do that without destroying the Amulet or interfering with anything it was doing.
Somehow.
The house wasn't actually in Ponyville, though it was relatively close. It was small and poorly maintained, crouched in the middle of a group of dry, claw-like trees. Streaks of peeling, grey paint clung to the rotting wood of the walls. The only window Luna could see was broken, a jagged shard of glass filling half the frame.
Cheery.
Luna knocked twice on the rough, unpainted door. After a moment of waiting, it opened until a chain pulled taut on the other side. A tired, bloodshot grey eye peered through, widening when it saw Luna. The door shut for half a second before being flung open to reveal a prostrated blue pegasus, a long white mane covering her downturned face from view.
“You may rise, civilian. Are you the head of this household?”
The mare didn’t move, trembling slightly as she remained fixated on the floor.
“You are not in danger, miss. I simply want to satisfy my curiosity.”
The pegasus mumbled something incomprehensible.
“Ah, could you repeat that?”
The mare took a deep breath before answering quietly.
“Moody’s not home right now, your majesty.”
Unsurprising, considering he was dead.
“Miss…”
“Missus Canary Blue, your majesty” The mare answered quietly.
“Missus Canary Blue, how long has it been since he was?”
Another mumble. Luna sighed internally.
“May I come inside?”
The pegasus stumbled to her feet, nodding panickedly.
“Wonderful.” Luna walked past the mare and into the dilapidated house.
The interior of the building was in as much disrepair as the outside. Old, half broken furniture was scattered haphazardly in the four damp, musty rooms. The kitchen was the dirtiest of them. Stacks of dirty dishes overflowed the sink, spilling over to nearby countertops. The trash in the corner was filled with half eaten food and appeared to be growing mold. The room bordering, separated by a change from tile to poorly maintained wood, held a table surrounded by chairs, presumably used for dining, though it was currently covered in letters and bills. Two doors across from the kitchen marked the two remaining rooms. One of the doors hung open and at an angle, the top hinge having been broken at some point. The room inside held the window Luna had seen. Shards of glass gleamed from inside, dully reflecting light onto the savaged room inside. A bookshelf had been overturned, and the books inside had been ripped into confetti. Fluff from a gutted bed was strewn across the room.
Luna looked worriedly back to Canary, who had been trailing meekly behind her as she investigated the building.
“Missus, is that your room?”
“Oh, no, your majesty. That would be my daughters, your majesty.” The mare answered rapidly.
“Princess is fine. Who is your daughter, then?” Luna suspected she already knew, but confirmation would be helpful.
“Blue Sky,” The name was spat with such venom that Luna nearly took a step back. Canary caught herself, looking up at Luna with a stricken expression and quickly restarting, “I mean, my daughters name is Blue Sky, your maj- Princess. If she’s done anything-”
“Your daughter has committed no crimes I am aware of, Missus Blue,” Luna interrupted, turning to fully face the mare, “Are you aware of where she is?”
“No, Princess,” Canary swallowed, “She, um, left three years ago.”
“Unfortunate. Have you talked to her since?”
“No, Princess.”
“Hmm. If I may ask, why has her room has been destroyed?”
Canary’s mouth opened and closed repeatedly as the pegasus tried to answer.
“Well, Princess, she, um, well, Moody-”
“Moody did this?” Luna gestured toward the room with a hoof.
“No! No, I, um, well, Blue left without telling us, and, um, Moody went after her-” Canary cut herself off, fidgeting nervously under Luna’s unwavering gaze.
“I am aware of that, yes. Moody Blue pursued Blue Sky intending to punish her for leaving.” Canary’s eyes widened.
“Did, um, Princess, did Blue tell you that? Because, well, she, um, she likes to make up stories, and-”
“Do you think it would be easy to lie to me, Missus Blue?” Luna’s voice grew icy as she to a step towards the cowering mare.
“No! No, Princess, of course not!”
“Then why are you trying?” Luna took another step toward Canary as the mare rapidly backed away, “I watch over all ponies dreams, Canary Blue, and I remember hers. Tell me, who destroyed her room?”
Canary backed into a wall, looking up with terrified eyes at the looming Princess of the Night.
“I did,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“She… she disobeyed me. She disobeyed her father, she refused to respect us and ran off with a colt! It’s her fault! She deserved it!” Canary’s voice rose with a desperate, pleading tone, “I only wanted her to do what was best for her! If she had just obeyed us Moody wouldn’t have to hit her, I wouldn’t have to-”
“Enough.” Luna’s voice thundered through the house, shaking walls and rattling glass.
The house was silent for a moment, Canary frozen against the wall with Luna glaring furiously down at her. Luna closed her eyes, breathing deeply. She turned around, not looking at Canary, and slowly walked out of the house.
“The Royal Guard will arrive in a few days, Missus Blue,” Luna called back to the cowering mare, still curled against the wall, “Do not leave.”
Twilight prodded the Amulet with a quill, willing it to make sense. She was slumped over her desk, Amulet inches from her nose, surrounded by notes. She had hit a roadblock in her research. She had made no progress in understanding the Amulet in the past few days, and had no idea how to continue.
There was a knock at her door. She didn’t move. The knock sounded again.
“Yes?” Twilight called, still staring at the Amulet. The doorknob rattled as somepony tried to open the door. There was a pause before Spike’s muffled voice filtered through the door. Somedragon. Whatever.
“Um, Rarity is wondering if you’d like to go with her to the spa?”
This is more important.
“No thanks. I’m busy.”
“Oh. Okay” Spike sounded worried. “Um, Twilight, You haven’t done anything with the girls for a while.”
“Yeah, I’m busy. Spike, I can’t talk right now.” Twilight picked up the Amulet with her magic, trying to find any runes or inscriptions on the metal. There weren’t any. Again.
“Alright, I’ll get going then,” Spike paused. “We miss you, Twilight.” Miss her? She wasn't gone. Just busy.
Twilight spun the Amulet, examining it from different angles. The gem in the middle reflected the growing light from the window into dancing red streaks as she did so. They darted across her walls, flowing into each other and breaking apart. It looked like a red ocean, waves ebbing and flowing as she moved the Amulet.
A shadow crossed her window, cutting off the Amulet’s display. Twilight put it down, rubbing her eyes with a hoof as she straightened up in her seat. She looked down at it watching as the gem lit up as the shadow in her window passed. Even without her, the light inside seemed move. Twilight leaned closer, watching the shifting crimson. Again,she was struck by the image of an ocean, rolling and crashing within the gem.
Listen.
Twilight felt something pushing at the edge of her mind, trying to be remembered. She lifted drew the Amulet to eye level in a cloud of purple magic. The sea inside grew more violent, waves crashing again and again. Twilight strained, trying to listen to the silent sea. She could almost make out faint echoes of a sound at the edge of her hearing.
Hello, Twilight.
Twilight flung the Amulet across the room, pushing back and toppling her chair with crash and sending paper exploding around her. Twilight flailed to her feet, horn ablaze, frantically searching the room. The Amulet lay across from her, nestled in a pile of scattered notes. The gem in the middle gleamed in the light.
Twilight kept her horn charged as she cautiously approached. Reaching out a forehoof, she paused before touching the Amulet.
I’m not dangerous.
Twilight jerked her hoof back. It was talking. Why hadn’t it talked before? What had she done? Was it light?
Twilight pooled mana into her horn, and an inky black fog started to flow from the tip. Soon, the room was cast in complete darkness. Twilight fumbled around for a moment before brushing the side of the Amulet with her forehoof.
It’s okay.
Twilight jumped back, tripping and falling over in the dark. She grunted in pain, dispelling the fog and pushing herself to her hooves. Not light then.
Twilight stopped, considering her options. She could never touch the Amulet again, limiting her possibilities of investigation down to looking at it, or she could try talking to it and risk being turned into a tyrannical monster. Neither seemed like good choices.
Well, just talking to it didn’t seem like enough to corrupt her. She had to actually use it for that to happen. She could just talk to it without using it. It’s not like it would let her do anything she already couldn’t do as an alicorn, right?
Hesitantly, Twilight wrapped her magic around the Amulet, pulling it towards her.
Good.
Blue Sky trailed the caravan, hidden in shadow. Wheels creaked and ponies talked, pulling wagons or walking beside as the elderly and young rode inside. A pink coloured mare walked beside a pair of stallions pulling one of the larger wagons, chatting affectionately. She said something that made one of the stallions, a tan coated pony, blush furiously, his orange friend laughing uproariously.
This is foalish. They know you are here.
Blue didn’t care. They had left a bowl out for her. They didn’t want to hurt her.
It was a trap. They want to lure you in so they can turn you over to the Guard.
Blue could always run before they did that. The Amulet had made her faster.
Yes, I have. But you cannot fly if they lock you in a wagon and bind your wings.
Blue shivered, remembering rough rope bruising her sides and digging into her wings, drawn tight enough to draw blood. They couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t let them do that.
Do not give them the chance.
Blue didn’t want to leave. This felt safe. Safer than her parents, safer than the Everfree. No one here had their wings bound. No one was ever beaten.
This is not safe. We cannot stay.
She could. This was a good place. The trio in front of her were still there, the mare still needling the blushing colt as the third kept laughing.
You do not know that.
Blue stopped walking, letting the caravan draw away down the road. It felt wrong. She wanted to keep following, keep listening to the warm chatter.
There are other caravans. We can follow-
The wagon in front of her had stopped. There was shouting from ahead. Blue felt a jolt of panic run down her spine. Had the Guard found her? Had the caravan noticed her? The Amulet began to glow brighter, Blue’s senses starting to sharpen.
The sharp, coppery smell of blood met her. The ponies up ahead were screaming, and Blue could see the flash of weapons reflecting sunlight. Vague figures dotted the sky ahead, occasionally swooping down and plucking an unfortunate caravaneer from the ground.
We need to leave. They are hunters. They will find us.
There were ponies dying, being slaughtered, in front of her.
You will be found. You will not be able to hide.
The Amulet was powerful. It could make Blue powerful.
You would throw away your protections for ponies you have never even spoken to before? You do not know them. You do not know what they will do to you.
Blue could save them.
Are you sure this is what you want?
Blue hesitated. If she stopped this, saved them, she wouldn’t be able to hide from them anymore. They’d know she was there, even if they couldn’t see her. Her only option would be to leave.
A shriek came from the trio in front of Blue. One of the stallions pulling the cart, the orange coated one, has been torn from the harness by a griffon clad in twisted iron. He twisted frantically in the cruelly hooked talons, cutting into his shoulders and sending droplets of blood raining down onto his companions.
Blue could stop this.
The griffon’s head, clad in a nightmarish helmet, darted down, beak snapping shut on the stallion's throat. His companions screamed louder as a warm spray of blood misted the air.
Blue couldn’t move.
Do you want this?
The griffon dropped the still twitching body and darted towards the mare. Time seemed to slow down as the griffon’s front talons reached toward her.
Blue wanted to help.
Blue felt power surge into her, pulsing hot energy running through her veins. The Amulet was engulfed in roiling crimson fire. The world around her slowed to a near stop. The air around her thrummed, ready to burst into a storm, stoked the magic she held.
Blue flexed her wings, feeling the air around them crackle with power. The griffon was turning towards her, moving as if through honey. Storm clouds billowed and sparks of lightning popped around her. Blue felt a well of power building, begging to be released.
Hold it back.
The clouds grew thicker, stronger. The sparkes grew more violent, arcing off the ground. Blue held firm, keeping the tempest under control. It kept building, growing stronger, the well of thrashing energy pushing against her.
Focus on the target.
The griffon pumped his wings in slow motion, adjusting its course to head towards Blue. The power roared, pushing against Blue’s control. She fixated on the griffon, looking it in the eyes. Grim determination met her, glaring bright through the creature’s helmet. A strand of lightning lunged towards him, thin and blinding.
Release.
The strand made contact, and the griffon's eyes widened. The air around blue was whipped into a frenzy of motion, sending the thick black clouds swirling. There was a deafening roar as the strand exploded into a million arcs of blazing electricity.
The lightning blasted through the griffon and into his airborne companions, a shining wall of light dividing land from sky. For a moment, time seemed to stop, the world cast in shadow by the brilliant light. Those below hadn’t noticed, frozen amidst a battle that was already over.
In a second, everything resumed. The Amulet dimmed into darkness for the first time since Blue had left the Everfree. The clouds around her dissipated, crackling electricity fading with them. Everything seemed dim and quiet. Flecks of ash drifted down from the sky.
The surviving attackers, those who had been below the blast, shouted faintly as the retreated in a disorganized scramble. A ringing silence pervaded the area, smothering the fading sounds of battle. The caravan ponies wandered among the carnage, a strange stillness in the air hanging near the corpses left behind. Fires cast flickering shadows throughout the wagons.
Blue felt the pulse of power in her veins, the humming, electric feeling in her wings, fading with each heartbeat. The noise around her gradually supplanted the ringing in her ears, and the fuzzy, dark filter over her vision slowly faded. Blue suddenly felt very tired.
“Over here!”
The two ponies in front of her were calling out to somepony, gesturing in her direction. Blue’s vision began to swim, sending her stumbling. When was the last time she had slept?
“Is she okay? Somepony get Gentle!”
Blue fell, world spinning around her, black seeping into the corners of her eyes. No, no, she couldn't pass out here, she had to stay awake, she had to stay on guard. Her eyelids felt heavy, closing despite her protests. She saw ponies standing over her, felt herself being lifted, felt something warm being placed over her. When had her eyes closed? She didn’t remember. She was so tired. She was forgetting something, something important.
A warm red glow silenced her thoughts, cradling her into a dreamless sleep.
Tirek threw his head back, bellowing with laughter. Celestia resisted the urge to grind her teeth, maintaining her cool, uncompromising air. If only Luna was here. She was always better at this type of thing.
“I’ll tell you what,” Tirek grinned, turning and grasping the bars of his cage, looking up at Celestia, “Let me out, and I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“No.” Celestia’s flat answer sent Tirek back into hysterics.
This was a waste of time. Tirek was obviously not going to cooperate. Celestia turned around, starting down the stairway that lead up to Tirek’s chamber.
“Why the sudden interest in genealogy? Have you taken up an interest in scrapbooking? I doubt ash makes for good reading material.”
Celestia paused. He was taunting her. A hint of information, enough to whet her appetite, and nothing more. There was nothing to gain here.
“That’s all that’s left besides you and your sister. Ash and dust.” Tirek had lost his mirthful demeanor, shifting to a taunting, cruel tone.
Celestia very purposefully started back down the steps.
“You really don’t remember, do you?” A hint of disbelief edged the question. Amusement began to seep back into Tirek’s voice as he continued, “Did you really forget everything? Did it just slip your mind? Came all the way down here to jog your memory?”
Celestia stopped.
“I was barely old enough to walk. Luna was an infant.” She replied in a quiet voice. “I was too young to remember anything.”
“Really?” Tirek purred, “You remember nothing? Nothing at all?”
It was a lie. Tirek could tell. She remembered being confused, bundled with her sister and carried away from her home. The strange contrast between burning heat and icy cold mountain air when the chariot strayed too close to the city.
“Nothing.”
Nothing important. She had no name for the city. No names for the faces.
Celestia refocused. She couldn’t sulk here, surrounded by monsters that would take any hint of weakness as an opportunity. She started down the stairs again, ignoring Tirek’s laughter.
Starlight had probably over prepared for the expedition. Well, calling it an expedition was probably misleading. Expedition brought to mind images of untamed jungle or scorching desert, not cheap hotels next to appropriated construction sites in the middle of Manehattan.
The pith helmet probably would’ve been unnecessary anyway.
“No, I’m afraid we haven’t found any other piece like it. We’ve recovered coinage with similar symbology on it, though.” Dust Sweeper, head archeologist of the dig, stood beside her as she examined the uncovered mural.
Depictions of alicorns were, unsurprisingly, everywhere. Even before the diarchy, winged unicorns (or horned pegasi) were already a symbolic shorthand for power. The most prolific producers of alicorn artwork had resided in the area that now held Manehatten. There wasn’t actually a name for this civilization, a written language had never been found, so the name ‘alicorn civilization’ had been given to forever confuse and excite conspiracy theorists and armchair historians alike.
Starlight, having only recently become interested in the field of archeology, only discovered this after making the trip to Manehattan. She felt she had adapted to the new information rather well.
“So this mural is unique?” Starlight had been peppering the older pony with questions for the past half-hour now. She would feel bad about that if Dust hadn’t confided in her earlier that he would much rather answer her questions than deal with the mountain of paperwork he had back at the office.
“As far as we can tell, yes. The current working theory is that it’s a highly symbolic depiction of a war the alicorn civilization fought with a neighboring country.” Dust himself was a supremely helpful source of information. “The white alicorn represents the aggressor, probably a group of pegasi. Various nomadic pegasi came into conflict with the alicorn civilization before it disappeared.”
“Hmm.” Starlight had a few theories of her own about the mural. The black alicorn held a striking resemblance to the one depicted in the Alicorn Amulet, even sharing the same pose. The white alicorn was proving harder to identify, and it wasn’t the first time Starlight had seen something like it.
Another pony hurried up to Dust’s side, glancing at Starlight before addressing the archeologist.
“Dust, I’m afraid I have to pull you away from this. The landowner is demanding to speak with you again.”
Dust pressed a hoof to his forehead, groaning softly before looking apologetically at Starlight.
“Sorry, I have to deal with this,” Dust shrugged at an impatient-looking pony standing at the edge of the site, “I’ll be back in a moment.”
Starlight nodded, still examining the mural. It was simple really, but it was the most upfront depiction of the Amulet she’d found. It wasn’t obvious, but whoever had made it had definitely seen the Amulet before. The black alicorn was too similar to not be at least inspired by the design.
Something about the white alicorn bothered Starlight. Wherever she found depictions of the Amulet, there was almost always an opposing force. Something fighting against it, working against whatever it was doing. This was the first time it was pictured as losing.
The mural depicted a black alicorn standing above the fallen body of a white alicorn, one hoof resting on top of its opponents head. In the background the sun was at the horizon, either setting or rising, Starlight couldn’t tell.
Starlight shivered. Something about the mural set her on edge. It was faded, with large parts of it scratched away, but the head and wings of the black alicorn remained untouched, glaring at her with an empty eye.
There was a commotion behind Starlight, but she remained transfixed on the mural until another pony blocking her light grabbed her attention.
“Excuse…” Starlight didn’t finish the sentence. It said something about Princess Luna, that despite being the personal student of royalty, Starlight was still struck dumb by her presence.
“A pleasant surprise. Greetings, Starlight Glimmer.”
The Amulet, as it turned out, was an excellent source of information about itself. Twilight had her misgivings, but it hadn’t lied to her yet. It answered any question she asked about how its inner workings, clearing up quite a few misconceptions while simultaneously making most of her notes completely useless.
It wasn’t a collection of different, intertwined enchanted objects, it wasn’t an attempt at a spell repository gone wrong, and the Amulet was very insistent about not being cursed.
I do not control my user’s minds. I do not force them to do anything they do not wish to. They are able to remove me at any time they wish. I am no more responsible for their actions than you are.
“Every one of your recorded bearers went insane.” Twilight countered.
And staring into the sun will blind you. Is Celestia evil?
“Celestia doesn’t make ponies stare into the sun.”
And I do not make my users cast spells. They do so out of their own volition.
“You still let them use the spells. You helped Trixie use them.”
If I cannot prevent their use, I can at least guide it. Would you rather Trixie had been given access to every spell contained here with no idea what they did? She is an entertainer, not a mage experienced in deciphering magical frameworks.
“She tried to conquer Ponyville.”
I am required to help my users. I cannot question their motives. Trixie’s ambitions are hers, not mine.
“Well, what about Blue Sky? You convinced her the Guard was hunting her down.”
The Amulet hung silent in Twilight’s magical grip.
“Well?”
I do not know who you are referring to.
“Blue Sky? Your last user? The pony you’ve had me dreaming about for the past month?”
I cannot interfere with dreams.
“You can’t? Wait, how do you remember Trixie and not Blue?”
I remember Trixie because you remember Trixie. I can only know what my users know, and must work with that information. I presume Blue Sky was already under the assumption that she was being hunted, and I, with no other points of view, believed her. As for your dreams, I can offer no explanation beyond what Luna has already told you.
It was always a bit disconcerting when the Amulet reference things it hadn’t been present for. Twilight didn’t like the thought of it poking through her memories.
I am compelled to remind you that I am incapable of mind control in any form. I believe it was implemented as a failsafe when I was first created.
“Not what we’re talking about. Do you actually remember what you did while Trixie had you?”
No, but I am capable of making educated guesses as to the reasoning behind my behaviour at the time.
“Then how can I be sure you didn’t make her try to take over Ponyville?”
I am incapable of mind control.
“That’s not what I mean! You could have convinced her to do it without controlling her mind, couldn’t you?”
Theoretically, yes. But what reason would I have to do so?
“So you’re capable of manipulating ponies.”
So is every other sentient being on Equus.
“How do I know you won’t try to manipulate me?”
Even if I tried, what do you believe I could convince you to do? In Trixie’s case, I would have preyed on her pre-existing paranoia and ambition to control her. You do not have these weaknesses.
“There are other ways to manipulate ponies.”
Could you see yourself attempting to destroy Equestria? Kill the Princesses? What reason could I give you to convince you? What reason would I have to try to make you?
Twilight stayed silent. No, she couldn’t imagine herself doing those things. The very ideas were repulsive.
Even if you cannot trust me, how could I make you do something you don’t want to? I cannot control you. I cannot even lie to you.
Twilight released the Amulet, letting it clatter onto her desk. It’s voice went silent, unable to communicate without her magic holding it. She used to have to touch it, didn’t she?
The room was cast in the darkening colours of sunset, tinging the still-messy study in deep red. Twilight stood up. She had been here all day. Her stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten yet. She left her study, leaving the door open behind her as she headed to her kitchen.
As she passed a long mirror decorating one side of the hallway, Twilight considered what the Amulet had said. She didn’t believe it couldn’t lie. But it was right when it said it was incapable of mind control. At least, Twilight hadn’t found any spells like that inside it yet.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a tall figure walking next to her. She spun, turning to face the intruder, only to be met with her own reflection. Her mane was tangled and messy, and her eyes were dark with exhaustion.
You have not been taking care of yourself.
Twilight jumped, jostling the items in her saddlebags. Why had she taken her saddlebags? Her magic darted into them, drawing out the Amulet. Right. She had taken it with her. When had she taken it with her?
It would be easier if you just wore it.
“You said you couldn’t control me!”
I cannot. You took me with you when you left your study.
She had, hadn’t she? Twilight tried to remember why she took the Amulet with her, but came up blank. It had been like muscle memory.
This is concerning. Perhaps there is another party interfering? It could offer an explanation for your dreams.
“I’m not taking advice from you.” Twilight looked at her disheveled, tired reflection. The Amulet had been right about her not taking care of herself. She was a mess.
There was somepony standing behind her. Twilight bucked at the shadowy, tall figure, feeling her hindlegs hit chill air where they should have impacted her attacker.
Twilight, stop. You are clearly sleep deprived.
“Shut up! I’m not listening to you!” Twilight’s heart pounded in her chest. She was breathing too fast, she was thinking too fast, and the figure was standing next to her, glowering at her with baleful red eyes.
A flash of violet light accompanied the sound of shattering glass as Twilight threw a blast of magic into the mirror.
“What are you doing? What is this?” Twilight’s shouts echoed down the empty hallway.
I am not doing anything. Please, Twilight, calm yourself.
It was still watching her. Whatever it was, she could feel it staring at her.
“Twilight?” Spike stood in the hallway, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
Twilight very nearly incinerated him, only aborting the spell once her panicked mind recognized the small dragon.
“Twilight, what’s going on?” Spike took in the situation through bleary eyes, noting the broken mirror and crimson amulet held in a very panicked Twilight’s telekinetic grasp, “Are you okay?”
Twilight focused on Spike, drawing her out of the terrified fugue she’d been slipping into. She took a few calming breaths, settling her spinning head and speeding heart a bit. She ignored the shadow standing behind Spike.
“Yes, I’m okay, I was just... well, um…” Twilight glanced at the shards of broken mirror scattered around her hooves, “I, um…”
There wasn’t a good explanation for this. What could she say? She’d accidentally taken the Amulet with her and started literally jumping at shadows?
Any attempt at explanation will only make him more worried. You’re fine now, that’s all that matters.
What should she do then? She couldn’t just gallop off without an explanation.
You could.
“Twilight, when was the last time you slept?”
No. She couldn’t just run, that was only prolonging the inevitable.
Then admit the truth.
That wouldn’t work either. Her friends were already concerned about her, news of this would just make it worse.
“Twilight?”
You are not a skilled liar. It must be one or the other.
She couldn’t explain right now. She was too panicked, too tired, and the shadow behind Spike wasn’t there anymore.
Twilight ran.
“Are the depictions located in a particular region, or are they scattered across Equestria?” Luna questioned.
They had relocated to Starlight’s hotel room, which had obviously not been built for ponies of Luna’s stature. Or Starlight’s, for that matter.
“They actually seem to have spread outward from multiple different locations at around the same time. I’ve been trying to link them together but I keep running into problems connecting them.”
She was trying not to feel giddy that Luna had taken an interest in her research. Twilight might be in danger, after all. But still, having a childhood idol take personal interest in your project was a bit overwhelming.
“Interesting.” Luna flipped through photos of the mural that had been snapped before they left, examining each carefully, “This mural resembles some works I was gifted a few hundred years before the Nightmare.”
“Actually, I think I have a map with all the locations marked on it somewhere around here.” Starlight rummaged through her bags, which lay discarded at the foot of the tiny desk they were using as a table.
“That could be quite use-” Luna was cut off as the map unfolded, quickly filling the undersized room to the brim with paper. There were a few moments of confused flailing before the pair surfaced, and then a few more while they cleared enough space to properly examine the maps contents.
“It’s a large map…” Starlight said sheepishly after the map had been brought under control. Luna raised her eyebrows as she took in the information spread out before her. Explosions of red dots covered a detailed map of Equestria, each marking a site of interest. They were scattered across the country, ranging from the peaks of the Canterlot mountains to the edges of the Badlands.
Raising a hoof, Luna traced a path from the furthest cluster, sitting at the very southern edge of Equestria, to a cluster sitting atop Canterlot city.
“That’s what I thought, too, but there’s now way the Amulet traveled in such a direct path. It only ever goes backwards once, here,” Starlight poked at another cluster near the southern edge, “If it were being traded back and forth I’d expect to see a much more erratic path.”
“Could a single pony have not made that journey? A pegasus could have visited all of these places.”
“The dates don’t match. A few of these clusters have nearly a hundred years difference in origin.”
“So a single pony could not have made the journey in their lifetime, yet the path does not indicate any trade,” Luna poked at the Canterlot cluster idly, “Perplexing indeed.”
“Yeah. I’ve been trying to visit some of these sites to see if anything there will help, but I haven’t had any luck.”
“Perhaps it was not a pony who made the journey?”
“I don’t know what else could have. Discord was probably around, but this really doesn’t seem like something he’d do.”
“And my sister and I had not yet arrived in Equestria proper. A dragon perhaps?”
“That.. could work!” Starlight pulled a few notes from her bags, rifling through them with her magic, “The Amulet would be an impressive prize for any horde, and the Canterlot mountains used to be a common site for dragon lairs before the City was established. Now I just need to find whichever dragon took the Amulet and trace it from there!”
Starlight refolded the map with the swift efficiency of her magic, packing it into her saddlebags along with the rest of her supplies.
“I assume we are leaving immediately, then?” Luna’s interjection caused Starlights magic to falter for a moment and let a few scrolls drop to the floor.
“I, ah, yes! Yes, we’ll leave immediately! I mean, if you want to, your highness, I wouldn't want-”
“Surely you didn’t expect me to abandon such an interesting project, Starlight?” Luna chuckled lightly.
“No, of course not, I just-”
“Then let us make haste to Canterlot! There is archeology to be done!”
Author's Note
Apologies for the wait.
Strange Times
Celestia stood in front of a huge, wall-sized mirror. It was sparsely decorated, having no gemstone adornments and only a wooden frame. The only truly notable things about it were its sheer size, enough to cover the entire eastern wall of the room, and the ever-shifting web of cracks that covered it’s surface.
The scene inside the mirror showed a younger Celestia, brushing her not-yet-flowing pink mane. A wave of anxiety hit, her past self’s thoughts and emotions bubbling to the forefront of Celestia’s mind. She focused, not quite ready to be pulled into the illusion.
The mirror in front of her didn’t have a name, having been seized before it was finished. It was built to be a trap, throwing its victims in a labyrinth of their own memories and leaving them unaware that they’d been deceived in the first place. Incomplete as it was, it was only capable of maintaining it’s grip for a limited time before the victim’s psyche broke past the enchantment.
Celestia had found another use for it. Due to the unconventional nature of the enchantment, it could recall with startling accuracy memories that had faded or been distorted over time.
It was for this reason that Celestia had it brought up from the vault and placed into a spare room.
The mirror shattered in front of her, sending shards zipping around the room in a whirlwind of broken glass. A single shard, still showing her memory, froze in front of her. Another shard flew from the whirlwind to slam against it, and then another, and other, until Celestia’s vision was completely engulfed. A sense of vertigo ran through her as she fell into the memory.
A knock on her bedroom door startled Celestia out of her odd reverie. She ignored it, continuing to brush out tangles that no longer existed in an attempt to calm her nerves.
The knocking continued, growing more insistent. Celestia continued to ignore it, switching from brushing her mane to checking her reflection to simply standing in front of the mirror, stewing in anxiety.
“Celestia!” Starswirl’s voice, muffled by the thick wood of her bedroom door, barked.
“Coming!” Celestia replied, forcing herself to sound cheerful instead of terrified.
“Good!” Starswirl flung open the door with his magic, grabbing a startled Celestia and floating her alongside him as he began to march toward the great hall.
“Starswirl!” Celestia kicked ineffectually against his magic for a moment before wrenching herself out with a flash of her horn. “I said I was coming.”
“You said you were coming half an hour ago, too.” Starswirl replied, “And now you’re half an hour late.”
“I’m not late! The sun isn’t supposed to rise for another…” Celestia paused as she checked her internal clock, “Two hours!”
“You’re not just raising the sun, Celestia, you’re making an impression.”
“Isn’t raising the sun alone going to make enough of an impression? Why do I have to stand around doing nothing for two hours?”
“You won’t be doing nothing, you’ll be socializing.” Starswirl said as he opened the door to the great hall and all but shoved Celestia inside.
“Starswi-” Celestia hissed before turning to see that Starswirl had already disappeared. “Bastard.”
“Lady Celestia! I am so excited to see your performance. Also, I must say, you look stunning today.” A unicorn noble… Lord Silver Shine of the Confederated Unicorn Kingdoms, right, winked at her. Lord Shine was a recent widower, his previous wife, Lady Starshine, having died of old age about two months ago, leaving her title and substantial fortune to her much younger husband. “Tell me, will your sister be attending?”
Celestia composed herself quickly, pulling herself into a smile as best she could. She might not like it, but until her position was more secure, she couldn’t afford to offend someone like Lord Silver.
“I’m afraid my sister is too tired from her nightly duties to attend, Lord Silver.”
“A shame. Still, this is quite the event!” Lord Silver continued.
She hadn’t seen Luna for almost a month now. They had both been too busy, Celestia ingratiating herself with nobles and leaders across the continent, and Luna watching over the dreams of the common populace, each of them building up support from whatever avenues it could be gained.
She missed her sister. It felt like they had been seeing less and less of each other ever since Starswirl had started work on unifying the disparate kingdoms of ponykind together. It was a good cause, necessary even, but it was still a strain on her.
“Say, is that Lady Malachite? I’m surprised she’s attending, what with that fiasco at the ball last month.”
Celestia tuned him out as best she could while still appearing to pay attention.
The next two hours were exhausting, full of meaningless gossip and transparent attempts at manipulation. It was almost enough to make her glad when the party was moved outside to see her raise the sun.
It wasn’t really necessary; the great hall had windows. Nevertheless, the party was moved to the expansive (and equally unnecessary) front yards of the castle. Several pavilions had been set in a semicircle surrounding a marble dais, engraved with her sun, facing east, with a gap in the middle lined by two columns of royal guard. Celestia suppressed a wince at how long they must have been standing there at full attention.
The guards snapped into a salute as she strode by, perfectly synchronized and very much at odds with the disorganized nobility slowly filling their seats.
Celestia waited a moment for the nobility to settle in their seats before stepping onto the dais, taking the opportunity to try and convince herself that she wasn’t nervous. She had raised the sun before, technically, and it couldn’t be that much harder without Starswirl and the other’s help. She focused, keeping her eyes firmly on the horizon and not the crowd of ponies around her, and reached out to the sun. The world faded out around her as her horn lit up, the boundaries between mind and reality weakening around her. In the distance, she could see a spot of bright light resting below the horizon, waiting to be drawn out by their - no, her power.
There was a moment where she felt nothing but boundless heat as she made the connection. When she had done this before, it had been spread out, diluted among the other unicorns. Now, it was just her, taking the full brunt of the sun’s might. This could kill her, she realized. She had seen what happened to unprepared unicorns who tried to help lift the sun. She was doing this alone .
The heat hit her in a wave, knocking the breath out of her. She tried to inhale, but her lungs wouldn’t cooperate. Her mouth tasted like burning metal. The light around her horn intensified, and Celestia had to clench her eyes shut to protect them.
Light to bright for her to look at, the smell of smoke and burning flesh, screaming-
Celestia couldn’t hear anything over the roar of her blood pumping in her ears. Even with her eyes clenched as hard as she could, all she could see was white.
“Look at me, please, focus on me. You’ll be okay, alright?”
Celestia felt a rush of burning pain at the base of her mane. She thought this was her destiny, that this was what her mark meant, but her mane was burning, she was wrong, she was going to burn-
“You can do this, alright? Just focus on me.”
She had to raise the sun.
Celestia’s legs nearly gave out beneath her. She had to raise the sun. She dropped her head, desperately clinging to threads of magic connecting her to the sun through the burning pain. She had to raise the sun. Every cell in her body screamed as blistering fire engulfed her. She had to raise the sun.
“I love you.”
The pain receded, everything fading but the magic around her. The Sun, as it truly was, hung in front of her, blazing with immortal, primordial light. Threads of it weaved around her, spiralling down her horn and running along her outstretched wings. Her mark pulsed once with the same light, and the Sun responded with a pulse of its own, bright and glorious. The threads of light thrummed and tightened, entwining with her soul and binding her to the Sun.
Celestia opened her eyes.
Her heartbeat drummed in her veins, each beat filling her with light and warmth. Fire of every colour spiralled around her. With a thought, the fire dimmed, letting her see the night sky. She pulled, and the Sun responded, rising above the horizon in a halo of golden clouds.
She turned around, the Sun still rising behind her. Her audience looked on with wide eyes and open mouths. There was a moment of complete silence as the palace grounds brightened around them. It broke then, shattered by thunderous applause as the Sun rose to its peak in the sky.
The mirror broke, pieces rapidly flying back into their frame. Celestia stumbled, reeling as her memories reasserted themselves. She composed herself, and began to focus on another memory as the shards began to orbit her again.
Twilight’s magic snapped, and the Amulet fell to her desk with a clatter. The unpleasant fuzzy feeling of magical feedback crawled down her horn, coupled with lavender sparks spilling down onto her face.
For the last decade, Twilight had never botched a spell badly enough to trigger feedback. She had been precise, measured, and above all careful every time she had performed a spell with that specific danger.
Today she had done so eleven times. On the same spell.
Thankfully, working with the Amulet provided the advantage of having excess mana drained before any of the nastier effects of feedback could assert themselves.
Not to you, at least.
“So you feel the effects then?” Twilight questioned. The Amulet remained silent. It was frustratingly tight-lipped (tight-minded?) about how it’s more esoteric properties functioned.
Which is why you are casting this spell.
Again, Twilight lifted the Amulet, focusing on the core knot of magic at its center. The spell, discovered in the Amulet’s strange ‘library’ of incomplete magic, was designed to temporarily unweave an enchantment so that it’s individual components could be studied. It was utterly unique, unlike any other spell Twilight had seen, employing methods of spellweaving in ways she had never seen before. It would be an incredible opportunity for study on its own, even without the Amulet.
If she could figure out how to cast it, that is.
Again, magical energy began to coalesce, preparing to briefly pull apart the enchantment of the Amulet. Lavender light weaved through the air, spiraling from Twilight’s horn to create a complex web around the Amulet. Once finished, the ethereal lines began to grow steadily brighter as the spell was filled with more and more mana. One of the lines began to distort, twisting in sharp angles.
Control it.
Twilight focused on the line, pulling it back into the correct position. Unfortunately, while she focused on the one, three others began to distort. When she refocused on the new breakages, the one she had just fixed began to distort again. She rapidly lost control of the spell, lines twisting and fading until there was a harsh snapping sound. Her head was knocked back by the force of the feedback and a fresh deluge of lavender sparks spilled from her horn.
Twilight groaned in frustration, trying to will away her growing headache. She wasn’t sure if it was the feedback or the exertion.
“This is impossible. There’s too much to focus on, too much instability. No unicorn could cast this!”
Correct.
“What? Why am I trying to cast it if it’s impossible?”
You are not a unicorn.
Twilight’s head shot up.
“This is a spell for alicorns?” she blurted. Hundreds of questions immediately flooded to the front of her mind. Who had designed it? When was it made? Has it ever been cast?
I cannot answer you.
Twilight stifled a growl. Again, the Amulet dangled a tantalizing piece of information right in front of her before snatching it away.
The spell, Twilight.
She hesitated. If this was a spell for alicorns, would she even be able to cast it?
You are an alicorn.
She was born a unicorn. She still felt like a unicorn, most of the time. What difference was there? She had wings, but she hadn’t grown taller, hadn’t gained an ethereal mane like Celestia and Luna.
There is a difference. You are changed, you simply have not realized it.
What in the world did that mean?
The spell, Twilight.
“Right.” Twilight muttered, focusing for a thirteenth time on the Amulet. Once again, tendrils of magical light weaved from her horn around the Amulet. They grew brighter, and several began to distort almost immediately.
Control the spell. Do not let it waver.
Twilight turned her focus to one of the sharply twisting lines, but before she could fix it another line snapped. Twilight sharply refocused, and with an effort of will the broken line reformed before the spell failed completely.
This was the problem. She had to divide her attention to control individual lines, while letting the others warp. She had to juggle multiple, almost failing component spells for long enough for them to activate.
Two more lines snapped. Twilight almost retreated from the spell, but stopped. This was a spell for alicorns. There wasn’t much time for extraneous thought. Twilight grasped for control of both of the broken tendrils, willing for them to reform. Sweat beaded on her forehead as the spell stilled, ready to shatter at any moment.
Slowly, the broken lines started to reform, connections fading in. Twilight shuddered, the stress of holding two component spells at once manifesting as a growing headache. Another snapped, and without hesitation she seized it, too. The spell flared, and Twilight was forced to brace every component at once to avoid total failure.
The Amulet glowed a deep, intense red. The spell tightened, tendrils of magic weaving together into a single beam. Intricate patterns exploded from the Amulet, each bordered by an intense lavender. Twilight’s eyes were screwed shut, every ounce of attention in her body focused on maintaining the spell.
The strain grew as the spell wound deeper inside the Amulet, pulling it apart piece by piece until it reached the center, where-
There was something surreal about the peaks of the Canterlot mountains. The nearly blinding sunlight and freezing cold created a paradoxical atmosphere, only heightened by the pervading, eerie silence. Starlight felt a sense of trespass, as if she were desecrating some sacred place by treading here. Even Princess Luna seemed cowed by the place, having taken to flying silently a few minutes earlier.
They were following an old trail, only marked by the occasional worn statue. It was the oldest lead they had followed yet, dating back to before Canterlot had been first settled.
Starlight was focused on breathing into her hooves in a futile attempt to stay warm when she lost track of Luna. She glanced around herself, expecting to see that the Princess had simply lagged behind for a moment, only to find herself completely alone.
“Princess?” She called out, voice echoing over the vast expanse of white. There was no response. Starlight began to look more urgently. “Princess?” They were near the top of the mountain. There was nothing but fields of snow for miles around her. There was nowhere for Luna to have disappeared to. “Princess!”
Starlight nearly had a heart attack when Luna appeared out of thin air right beside her.
“Starlight, I’m right here.” Luna stated, confused.
“Where-” and then Starlight saw .
Soaring gates flowed from towering walls, woven from millions of threads of pale metal. The threads moved, twisting and changing, sending patterns of rainbow light dancing across the snow.
Luna waited for a moment before asking “You couldn’t see this?”
“No, not at all. This is incredible!” Starlight prodded the gate with her magic, watching as the threads twisted the cyan light into minute, intricate patterns. “How long has this been here?”
“I have no idea.” Luna motioned towards the entrance. “It gets stranger. Come inside.”
The air inside was warm and humid, a stark contrast from the frigid mountain outside. Starlight's hooves clicked as she stepped through the gate, and looking down, she saw that the pathway in was paved the same pale metal the woven walls were made of.
The remains of an enormous fountain laid in the center of a break in the path, still trickling water from the jagged remains of a pipe. The basin the water should have landed in was split in two, the two halves lying covered in creeping vines, each nearly twice as tall as Luna.
It was the most intact piece of construction Starlight could see. What once must have been spiraling towers of spun gold were toppled and melted in the distance. There were statues of alicorns standing half obliterated every few meters. The path itself only remained intact at the entrance, jutting spikes of stone and massive sinkholes having consumed the rest.
“What happened here?” Starlight asked in a horrified whisper.
“I do not know. It was obviously magical, but I cannot imagine the amount of power it would take to destroy a whole city like this.” Luna replied.
Something crunched under Starlight's hoof. She looked down.
A unicorn’s skull grinned up at her, a hole where it’s left eye socket should have been, courtesy of Starlight's hoof.
Starlight suppressed a scream, carefully removing her hoof from the skull.
She had to suppress another when Luna’s magic plucked it up from the ground for inspection.
The skull turned in her grip, letting her examine every angle. “Is there more, or was it just the skull?”
“What, you, no, it-” Starlight stammered, taking a quick look around herself, “Just the skull, what are you-”
Luna’s horn lit up as a dozen spectral blue arrows shot from it, each following a different path through the ruins.
Luna grinned, much to Starlight’s dismay. “I think we have found our lead. The Amulet's magical signature is everywhere here.”
Starlight paled. Luna gave her a questioning look. “The Amulet did this?” Luna nodded, still confused. “The Amulet that Twilight has right now?”
“I’m certain Twilight is taking every precaution-” Luna started, before she was interrupted by a stricken-looking Starlight.
“I need to get back to Ponyville, right now.” Luna opened her mouth to object, but Starlight was already gone.
