CHAPTER 2

What happened the day before stayed between Sweetie Belle and Silver Spoon. Neither of them said a word about it to their friends, not even to Diamond Tiara who kept asking Silver Spoon what Sweetie Belle was doing in her house. Silver simply avoided the topic.

Sweetie Belle was hanging out around the apple farm with Scootaloo and Apple Bloom in front of the Cutie Mark Crusaders clubhouse. They were building what was meant to be a flying machine out of wood and ropes, trying to get their cutie marks as aircraft engineers. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon were passing by and noticed it.

“Hey, blank flanks!” Diamond Tiara shouted. “What are you doing there? Wasting your time or wasting planks of wood?”

“I mean, what even is THAT supposed to be?” Silver Spoon pointed toward the strange construction of planks that were tied and hammered together. “Is it, like, abstract art or something?”

“Calling it art would give it too much credit,” Diamond Tiara chuckled.

Scootaloo stood up from the planks she was nailing together. “Don't you two have anything to do with your lives besides harassing us?”

“What? ‘Harassing’? Puh-lease! We are merely passing by and stating the obvious,” Diamond Tiara replied.

“Come on, Scoots. Ya ain't gonna get anything but trouble if ya listen to ‘em,” Apple Bloom said, not getting up from the planks she was sawing.

“Well, sorry Apple Bloom, but I still think it's rude that she talks to us like that when we tried to help her yesterday.” Scootaloo sat back down, crossing her forelegs. “You'd think she'd at least say thanks…”

“What is she talking about?” Diamond Tiara asked Silver Spoon.

“Ya were in a very bad mood yesterday.” Apple Bloom answered. “We tried ta cheer ya up, but ya weren’t listening.”

“You hit Sweetie Belle in the face!” Scootaloo interjected.

Diamond Tiara gasped in shock. “Silvy, is what they're saying true?”

Silver Spoon simply shrugged.

“Don't try to sweep it under the rug,” Scootaloo said.

“It's okay, girls. I forgave her.”

Scootaloo looked back at Sweetie Belle in surprise. “Are you sure you're okay, Sweetie?”

“I– I'm fine. It didn’t even hurt that much.” Sweetie Belle continued tying ropes around her planks. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo looked at her with concern, then got back to work on their ‘flying machine’ contraption… thing.

Diamond Tiara looked puzzled. “Wuh– whatever. I'm not hanging around those weirdos. Come on, Silvy.” She took Silver Spoon by the foreleg and trotted away.

While going with Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon quietly mouthed to Sweetie Belle: “We meet at my house later.”

Sweetie Belle discreetly nodded.

****

It was the evening. The CMC said goodbye to each other as they went home for the night. Sweetie Belle however, instead of going home, went to Silver Spoon's house. She pressed the doorbell and waited until a butler let her in. Silver Spoon was waiting for her in the main hall.

“Hi Sweetie.” Silver Spoon looked down, scratching her right foreleg. “Sorry for what I said to your friends earlier today…”

“That was really mean and unnecessary… But this isn’t why you wanted to see me, right?”

“I thought you'd figure it out.”

Silver Spoon waved a hoof, inviting Sweetie Belle to follow her. They went to a living room upstairs. There, Silver Spoon took a photo album from a shelf and invited Sweetie Belle to read it alongside her on the couch.

“Like I told you, my family was a long lineage of exorcists, some of the best out there.” Silver Spoon pointed a hoof to a photo in the album. It was a photograph of a mustached unicorn stallion with a gray coat and a silver mane rather similar to Silver Spoon's. “This is my great-uncle Silver Key,” she said. “He was considered by many as the very best exorcist of his era… and one of the last. He was the one who made and used to own the very silver key I gave you yesterday.”

“…so, what happened to him?”

“Like a bunch of other family members, he just disappeared one day. Many suspect that a demon killed him, along with most of the other exorcists of his time. One of the few things we have left of him is, well, the key.”

“I see…” Sweetie Belle took the key out of her saddlebag. “I didn’t give it back to you yesterday.” She floated it onto Silver Spoon's hoof.

“You should keep it.”

“Why?”

“You'd make better use of it than myself, since I can’t use it at all. So I insist on you keeping it.” Silver Spoon hoofed the key back to Sweetie Belle.

“I don't know… I don't think I could live up to your great-uncle. He was the best, right? Or at least one of them. And I'm only just learning about all these things. I'm sure some novice could do better…”

Silver Spoon placed a hoof on Sweetie Belle's shoulder and looked her in the eyes. “Sweetie Belle, the spell you cast yesterday was in no way a technique some novice could've pulled off. A filly your age summoning the Chains of Tartarus was never seen before in exorcist history.”

Sweetie Belle nodded and put the key necklace back around her neck.

“Also, my family would never allow another member to become an exorcist,” Silver continued, looking slightly downcast. “They burned all the books on the subject that they owned. We used to have an entire library about it.”

“That's why you asked me to get the book from Twilight's?” Sweetie asked.

“Yes, that is why. Before my parents could burn all our books, our butler donated a few of them to the library, in an attempt to conserve them.” Silver Spoon leaned close to Sweetie Belle's ear. “Don't tell mother and father or they’ll fire him.”

Sweetie Belle nodded again and mimicked the gesture of zipping her mouth with her hoof.

“…Sweetie Belle?”

“Y– yes?”

“Do you see yourself with this cape, and this key, fighting demons and locking them in Tartarus when you're an adult?”

Sweetie Belle put a hoof on her chin, thinking. She shrugged.

“Do you want to train your exorcist powers, just in case?”

“Okay. I don't see why not.”

Silver Spoon closed the photo album. “Come with me, then.”

****

They arrived in what looked like a large, empty gym room. There were mirrors across the walls and the roof and floor were silver colored. The two fillies sat in the middle, facing each other.

“Alright,” Silver Spoon started. “Do you remember the chain spell you used yesterday?”

Sweetie Belle nodded.

“Well then, use it again.”

Sweetie focused her magical energy into her horn, making it glow in a green aura similar to her eyes. Another green spot glowed on the ground between her and Silver Spoon, and from it, a gray, metal chain with a shackle on its upper end came out. The chain was floating around, one end still attached to the green spot it came out of.

“This chain and all the ones you can summon with exorcist spells are directly linked to Tartarus.” Silver adjusted her glasses. “With these, you can bind a demon and pull it back to Tartarus. Now try moving it around.”

With a thought, Sweetie Belle started moving the shackle and its chain around for a bit.

“You need to get used to its weight, its shape, and its mobility, so that you know what you can do and what you can't in the midst of the action. Try summoning more and move them around.”

Sweetie Belle created two more glowing spots on the ground, with another chain coming out from each. She moved the chains around, and noticed that they all went in the same direction at the same time.

“Against some demons, you will have to use a lot of chains, so you'd better learn to move multiple of them separately. Now let's talk about the key.”

Sweetie Belle let go of the chains from her magic, making them disappear, probably sending them back to Tartarus. She reached for her necklace with a front hoof and felt the key attached to it.

“There are many ways to push a demon into a portal, but only one to prevent it from coming back. Always remember to turn this key when you're done exorcizing to lock the beasts in Tartarus. If you don't, they WILL come back.”

“Got it,” Sweetie Belle said.

****

Silver Spoon waved Sweetie Belle goodbye as the latter went on her way home. When she arrived at Carousel Boutique, Rarity wasn’t there, and had simply left a note on the counter.

‘My dear Sweetie Belle.
I have been summoned by Princess Celestia to Canterlot for urgent matters, so I probably won’t be home until tomorrow morning. The boutique will stay closed until then. I left you some food in the fridge (don't try to cook it, please). I know you are capable enough to take care of yourself, but I will ask anyway: please take care of yourself.
– Your big sister, Rarity.’

‘P.S. : Don't forget to feed Opalescence too.’

“Meow.”

Sweetie Belle's attention was taken from the note to the meowing of her sister's cat. Opalescence was staring at Sweetie, meowing continuously. Of course she was hungry. The two went to the kitchen, and Sweetie took some fish from the fridge that she placed in Opal's bowl. Opal immediately started eating it.

Sweetie Belle was hungry and tired, but before cooking herself something for dinner, she decided to pat Opalescence on the head, because that's just what you do sometimes when you live with a cat. But as Sweetie Belle reached out her forehoof to pet her, Opal stopped eating and froze in place with a shocked expression on her face.

She was looking at Sweetie Belle's necklace, specifically the silver key, that was dangling in front of her face from the filly's neck.

Sweetie noticed Opal's reaction, but didn’t know what to make of it. She just shrugged it off and went to make dinner for herself.

Opalescence still had the same expression on her face as she kept staring at Sweetie Belle. She was still seated in the same spot in front of her bowl, and her eyes eventually shifted to anger as a name crossed her mind.

‘Silver Key.’

Author's Note

Ayo.

I know this is taking long to make and I'm sorry for it. I don't consider myself as a very good writer, so I take my time to write this story to make it at least decently readable. Don't expect a consistant release schedule.

Despite this, however, I hope that you enjoy reading it anyway. If there are some parts in story-telling for example that you think I could try to improve on, you can tell me in the comments. Please be civil down there, obviously.

Also, I am not 100% sure which tags would be the most appropriate, so you can give suggestions as to how I should update them as the story progresses.

I think that's all I have to say for now. Remember that I am not Shakespeare, and have a nice day.