“But this is incredible,” Twilight said, every inch her skin fizzing with the thrill of discovery. “I’m serious, Sister Pinkamena. Look!”
Her fellow novice pulled a face, and leaned in. “I’m looking, but I don’t see what’s so special about it. It’s just another lump of rock.”
“No, look.” Twilight grabbed Pinkamena’s sleeve and dragged her up the ladder until she was nose-to-nose with the small stone mares. “That’s the Goddess on the left, right? But who are the other two?”
Slippery as an eel, Pinkamena slithered out of Twilight’s grasp. “It’s wearing some of the regalia, for sure, but we can’t know that it’s meant to be the Goddess. She doesn’t sit with other ponies.”
Twilight stared at the figure on the left. The halo of the sun, the horn and wings, even a crude representation of her glorious striped mane — it was undoubtedly the Goddess. She did not share her iconography with her priestesses. Like Twilight and the other sisters, they all wore simple white robes, unadorned with worldly decoration.
But beside the Goddess were two others. A mare with the moon rising behind her, with dots chiselled into her flowing mane, so like the Empress’. And between the two of them sat a third mare, obviously smaller and younger, with a small heart inscribed where the Goddess’ halo would be.
And maybe, if you were not careful, you could think them devotees or supplicants — but they were enthroned alongside the Goddess, and both of them sported the same horns and wings as the sun queen. It was unthinkable, it was blasphemy, but this altar showed three goddesses, not one.
But Pinkamena was already pushing the altar, her immense earth pony strength sending cracks splintering along the base.
“Pinkamena, stop!” Twilight yelped, seeing a crack bisect one of the carefully carved Roaman letters. Matronis Equestriae, it said, and Twilight’s mind was reeling with the implications of what that might mean. Mothers of Equestria — where there should only be one. This inscription and the carving above it were gold dust. New knowledge, added to the abbey’s archives, and not by a senior archivist, but by her. Still a novice, but not for much longer. Anypony who made a discovery like this had more than earned their junior archivist’s tabard, surely.
“What?” Pinkamena said, pushing back a limp strand of her mane that had fallen loose from her wimple. “Mother Superior said this section needs to be cleared by the end of the day, Sister Twilight. Are you going to start pulling your weight or not?”
Twilight reached out to wrap the huge stone in the glow of her magic, stabilising it. If it fell now, who knows what damage it could incur? She needed time, time to catalogue every detail, absorb every facet. This research paper would be her master archivist’s thesis, she could feel it. There were years of work waiting here for her.
“I am, I am,” she promised. “But what if we left this one standing for a little while?” So I can come back and record every single thing about it as soon as we’re done with work.
“Sister Twilight,” Pinkamena said, laying so much emphasis on the word that it almost sounded like an insult, “We were sent here to do a job. To clear the pagan rubble away so that the chapel can be resanctified in—”
“—In the name of the Goddess, I know,” Twilight interrupted impatiently. “But does this look like rubble to you? Some of this stuff might have actual historical value. We could learn a lot from these inscriptions, the way the Goddess was portrayed. More than what the records say about the history of her worship.”
Pinkamena just rolled her eyes. “If Mother Superior wanted that, wouldn’t she have sent the archivists?”
“She sent me,” Twilight said hopefully. The Mother Superior knew what Twilight wanted, what her Goddess-given calling was. Perhaps this was a test.
“And she sent me to keep you in line,” snapped Pinkamena, before spinning on her heel and flouncing away to the next tumbledown stone. She set her shoulder to its side and it creaked in protest. Quick as a whipcrack Pinkamena spun and dealt an earth-shattering buck, and the monument crumbled. Pinkamena kicked the first fragment towards the distant light of the crypt’s doorway. “Come and find me when you’re ready to work again, Sister.”
Twilight sighed as she watched Pinkamena vanish. The Mother Superior was going to get a full report, and Twilight would be banished from the archives until she had completed her penance — but that could wait. She had until sundown with this glorious piece of untouched history, and she was going to make the most of it.
She stared at the carving again, her eyes sweeping across it in a methodical grid pattern. Committing each and every detail to memory. Three…goddesses, though it felt strange to apply that term in the plural. Three aspects, perhaps, of the great Goddess. The sun, as usual, the moon as its shadow, and the love she felt for all ponies. All sitting as equal on their three thrones, staring out at the viewer over the small crumpled form of — Twilight blinked. What was that? She squinted and inched closer to the relief, until her muzzle was only an inch from its surface. Time had eroded the details here more severely than the rest of the carving, but she was almost sure that was — was that a hoof?
Lying on the dais before the Matronis Equestriae was a body.
Pinkamena muscled past again, muttering darkly about Lent being a time of trial sacrifice, and being saddled with Sister Twilight was a real trial. Twilight let the insult wash over her, ignoring everything but that one word.
Sacrifice.
Twilight looked at the familiar face of the Goddess, the loving smile that she offered all her children shining down over the corpse at her hooves. At three daggers that lay discarded at the base of each throne, so cunningly carved that she had mistaken them for mere decoration.
The dank air of the crypt suddenly felt thick and soupy in her throat. Twilight looked from one goddess to the next, that same smile triplicated in exacting detail, and shuddered.
