To Chase The Shadows of Redemption

Celestia led Twilight up the stairs to the deeper part of the tower which very rarely saw any pony activity anymore. The door itself was even a little dusty.

Celestia looked back and simply smiled, "it seems to have been a little bit neglected as of late, hasn't it? You'll have to forgive me. Some cleaning is order, me thinks." She stuck out her tongue.

"I wouldn't have it any different, princess. We always needed to get this place ready before starting. This shall be a worthy challenge!"

They both had a good little chuckle as they entered the room.

Indeed, the insides were no better than the precursor they had just seen. Dust coated the surface of almost anything visible, but boy was it a feast for the eyes. Twilight guessed there must've been upwards of a thousand books total in this small little getaway, and she was sure that even after helping Luna however they could, she would ask to return here just for the privilege of getting to see it all later.

They began work using magic to move things around and luckily they had come prepared with feather dusters and some cloths. They began by opening the window and sending the dust into a frenzy with the dusters and out the window with some magical mini gusts on Celestia's part. There was lots of coughing, but they made it through.

It was around half a hour later than they had finally started to make some serious progress, now going through books individually by lifting them up with magic and also doing the same with the cloths to wipe them down while reorganizing the room. To do something so mundane proved calming in the end. It didn't matter what it was, this was precious time spent with Celestia, and their light chatter over the course of it all put her at ease.

An hour later, and they finally dug in on the big ole pile.

"I think I'll start over here, the vast majority have no legible titles anymore, so it may as well be a guessing game."

"We can only hope our best that the pages themselves are still in fine condition. Around a decade ago I had done a run through in here and most were fine based on my memory, but I still worry. No matter, let us begin Twilight. Please, let me know if you see anything interesting right away. Anything related to the soul or life energy will do."

"Absolutely! Now what do we have here..."

Several hours had gone by, and Celestia had begun to get a bit sleepy, despite herself. She had forgotten just how obvious some of this old knowledge had become, and many of the works had not aged well over time. That didn't mean she wasn't thorough in her search, but the amount of skimming had been astronomical. She had gotten her hopes up once on a book that read 'Magical aspects of life that avoid common knowledge" on the first page, but alas it was too good to be true. It simply got into what she boiled down to as a bunch of magical fun facts that were loosely related to life in general.

She wanted to be upset over the lack of progress, but she'd be lying if seeing Twilight having the time of her life didn't warm her heart which had been left out to freeze far too much lately. She had left after a few hours to get the servants to bring them tea, and they had enjoyed it carefully in a cleared spot that was not near any books lest a spill happened. They drank and read at the same time. Silence was good too.

They had also underestimated the amount of books here. While looking for more, they had found a few hiding in hard to spot places in the cramped room. Unfortunately, this had not been designed as a library type setting in the first place. It had served more as a makeshift solution. The actual room she was supposed to have converted by now had been neglected far too long, it seemed.

Celestia put down the book she had currently just finished skimming and let out a small sigh.

Cracking her neck, she almost suggested a break to Twilight when something caught her eye.

There was a book that stood out just barely against the rest, most of them being quite brown or black with the white of the pages, if you could even see them depending on the thickness of the book. This one, it seemed, had not completely lost all color. The slight tint of auburn was what gave it a unique contrast against the sea of greyness.

Intrigued, she lifted it out from the pile it was in the middle of, the books making a small sound as they all fell down in one big thump, since the speed at which she had pulled it out had prevented them from being pulled in a manner that could cause them to also be pulled and make the entire thing fall. It was something you practised over a long life.

Leering at herself, she knew that it was most likely too good to be true that she had found anything special, but she always had some small hope.

Opening it up, she quickly saw that it was part of a nine book series, "Marshal's guide to", detailing different topics of magic. Going top from bottom in the index she saw... Enchantments, Projectiles part I and II, Transmutation, Illusion, Spiritual magic, Divinati—

Spiritual magic. Those words right there, she put her hoof over them as if the confirmation of her eyes wasn't enough. She checked which book in the series this was she currently held and quickly found disappointment that it was only transmutation.

But then it sparked a thought in her so insidious it almost hurt. Surely... surely her younger self had collected the entire collection. She had always done that. It was basically a personality trait of hers. What made her bit her lip was the fact that she knew a significant chunk of her books had been lost in the Everfree conflict over a thousand years ago. Many of them she still had no idea what happened beyond that, not even being related to that topic for crying out loud.

She got up and walked over to where she had found 'Transmutation'.

"Find something finally, princess?"

"I really do hope I'm getting on the right track here Twilight, I'll let you know in another few minutes if I do."

"Alright, I'm going to carry on."

Grabbing a pile of them from that spot in her magic she piled them beside her seat so that she could quickly run through them. She promptly sat back down and restarted the process, only this time only checking titles so it was a lot faster.

Her heart had nearly jumped out of her chest when 'Projectiles I' and 'Divination' came up quickly, and quickened her pace. Just as she was nearing the end of the pile and getting ready to get more from where she came from, the second last book made her do a double-take. She had been going a little too fast in anticipation, so that when the words finally registered she had to slow down and look again.

Right there. It said the words. 'Marshal's guide to spiritual magic'.

She really hoped that this wouldn't be some lame material like she had seen earlier. She should've had checked the previous instalments to see what kind of quality she was dealing with.

So it came a pleasant surprise that the material content was actually quite heavy, and the terminology made Celestia's brain hurt a little in trying to remember what certain words meant, that were no longer being used.

If she was being honest, this was one fascinating read. She couldn't help but wonder who this Marshal had once been. How had such an amazing academic not cemented his way into her memory? Especially one of which she seemed to own the majority of the series, possibly all of it.

The book had examples of several magic beasts being tested, and it was no surprise to her to learn how the variability of a soul did indeed exist. By chapter two, she had all but confirmed that they could have unique abilities that stemmed from the soul and into the body. This was looking promising.

Her heart skipped a beat when she got to chapter seven. The chapter had a warning attached to it, as the material was considered potentially triggering to some. Apparently the moral content would not be easily accepted for most. Now that she thought about it, regulations didn't really exist at all back in those days. Ponies had done the craziest of things in experiment and few had ever batted an eye.

What mattered was what this was all about: Damaged souls.

The chapter explained it quite clearly, actually, and it only meant that Celestia feared all the more that this was the case with Luna. It read: "A wounded soul is a nigh inescapable death sentence if the damage reaches a certain point, depending on the soul. Minor damage, and the soul will be able to slowly mend itself. There comes a point where this is no longer possible, and the due process of life energy leakage begins. After enough energy has leaked, the soul approaches collapsing quite quickly, and by that point there is almost nothing you can do to save the individual. Only comforting them as they near the end.

This was seen before in the "Scholar's war", one in which two schools of magic had entered an unlikely feud. Several ponies had actually managed to cast spells that later damaged their opponents souls, and I was there to personally witness one such case. While there have been extremely rare cases of recovery beyond the point of no return as they call it, I personally have my doubts around them. I will go over these methods in the next section with as much detail as I eventually was able to gather about them."

Celestia flipped a few pages to get to that point. After about two minutes of reading, she tore five pages out of the book quietly and folded them carefully into her bag that she had brought with her today. She then continued to read the section.

She had to slow down at this point. There was another section that stood out greatly, and it lifted her spirit with more hope than she had in ages.

"While I have never been able to verify the existence of these sacred artifacts myself, there have been several testimonies over the years of ponies in higher positions who claimed to have either owned or seen them. What I speak of are the five "Inner World Sanctuaries", legendary Amethysts that had been discovered in the deep north in ancient times. The rarity of them is extreme: only five of them exist to my knowledge, a quintet that were all found in a similar location in one vein. They had stood out right away for their fantastical and perfect designs straight from the rock, but it wasn't until later that the depth of that statement had been fully confirmed by a magical analysis done by one of the colleges of wizards. Apparently my peers had all but confirmed through one of crystals making its way into their possession at the time, that these crystals had a truly magnificent design, one which could house a higher tier of magic than any other item usually could.

The reason for this is the internal structure of the crystal, which provides a perfect balance in its matrix for storing any spell. It is said that a spell thought impossible like a "life essence density amplifier" could actually exist within this and function due to the stabilizing nature of the thing it was being stored in. Well, it was not entirely impossible with a more questionable approach, but it may as well have been true. But it is the fact that spell could theoretically be combined with some form of channel healing spell for the soul that all contemporary scholars dismissed as useless now. Under normal circumstances any kind of healing spell trying to use an application of life energy fizzles out before it can reach the necessary density that was required for the soul it was to repair to have any effect at all, but with the crystal that limitation could be removed while the spell was sealed inside with untold energy."

She snapped out of her trance that she didn't realize she had been in.

"Twilight! You must come see this at once."

Twilight let out a little yelp as it had surprised her, but she quickly recovered and headed over.

"Read this entire section and tell me what you think. This is the best thing I've seen so far. I dare say it's a breakthrough."

Twilight followed suit as Celestia had done and took her time going through the same passage. After a similar passage of time, it was Twilight's turn to be shocked.

"This is unbelievable! Have you ever seen or heard of one of these "Inner World Sanctuary" amethyst's before?"

"I... do not think so. But there is definitely something about it that rings a bell. Still, I'm going to look into the manner. The fact that they were rare even then is concerning, but we need to hold out hope. What came before that troubled me far too greatly to make this an entirely positive outlook, but we have something now."

"Of course... princess."

"I am truly satisfied with this today Twilight. I will do good to pass it along to my team quickly. I do hope you enjoyed your time here, as I know you may want to stay longer but I will need to be leaving quite soon."

"More than satisfied princess, as long as you promise to allow me back in here sometime."

"I'm sure I will Twilight, I'm sure I will..."