Avisus Gaiuni Psychuarere

Avisus Gaiuni Psychuarere

"Y'know, I don't think that would be such a bad idea."

"Pfff, duh! Honestly, Twilight. You should know by now that all of my ideas are awesome."

"Mmmmm yeah, don't push it."

"Hey, just because-"

"Still pushin' it, Rainbow."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," the pegasus said, seeing that as the end of the conversation and thus, the perfect time to fly off and call it a night.

Twilight simply sighed, smiled, shook her head, and opened the door to her library. It was actually pretty clean inside: the books were all put away, the shelves and tables were dusted, and the dishes had been done. Twilight stuck a mental note onto her mental fridge to give her number one assistant an extra large gem or something tomorrow. Or later today, she corrected, noticing how high up in the sky the moon lay.

As she passed the dragon, peacefully asleep in his basket, Twilight gave him a quick kiss goodnight on his scaly forehead before retreating under the covers of her own bed.

"Alright, alright, let's see here..." Twilight said to herself, rifling through a stack of books. "So if that 'super awesome destroyed castle-lookin' thing' Rainbow brought up yesterday- Aha!"

There was a shoddy journal in her hooves now and she opened it excitedly, almost frantically. The rustling of paper shattered the near-silence of the library for a moment, a faint murmuring replacing it soon thereafter as Twilight read aloud an entry.

2274: Methinks this broken tower is now, unfortunately, to forever be my true, final Sanctuary. I shan't know how nor when Failure will dawn unto the shadows hidden in this ghastly, decrepit place, but only that attempting Retreat... 'Tis impossible. To inevitable reader: with whatsoever's been happening here, you let it be widely known just what He have wrongly brought on to me. He have created what mustn't, can never rightfully be deemed true Life: a ghastly leech. Constantly, it saps the

Twilight's brows furrowed and she rubbed at her chin, both out of sheer habit and to combat the slight tingling she felt there. She flipped back a few pages in the journal, plucking a map from its clutch.

"Starswirl's map, there we go. So, if he started here..."

She repeated to herself what entered her mind as she followed Starswirl's written journey, translating his vague travel log into mapanese, since Rainbow's unhelpful directions were... unhelpful. She couldn't exactly translate 'just ride the higher winds for a few minutes and then take a left and then just keep going straight and after a while look kinda to your right and down and it's right there' into any kind of intelligible non-pegasus directions. It took her three hours to mark the general location of where the tower may or may not be, so she ate a quick lunch and shoved a few supplies into her saddlebags.

Her trip out of Ponyville was conspicuously uneventful, for usually when Twilight attempted to set out on some intellectual adventure into the forest, somepony in town would attempt to come with or stop her. Usually one of her five best friends would be up to the task. Yet that day, there was no pony who stepped up to her and for that, she was grateful.

Of course, she had to pass Fluttershy's cottage to get where she was going. And of course, said pegasus happened to be watching a certain other pegasus fly in the air around a nearby hill. And, of course, both pegasi had to notice Twilight when she failed to stealthily avoid their lines of sight.

It took a while for Twilight to persuade Rainbow not to tag along, but in the end all it took was bringing up the scholarly purpose for her expedition. As for Fluttershy, she seemed perfectly fine with not heading off into the dark, spooky forest in search for a dark, spooky tower that may or may not be filled with dark, spooky creatures.

As it turns out, the dark and spooky forest wasn't as dark or spooky as it used to be, Twilight having spent quite a bit of time documenting various species of wildlife throughout her stay in Ponyville. It was actually much like the Whitetail Woods, only more... Everfree-ish, which meant it was just a little bit more dark and creepy than the Woods, but only marginally so, once she got used to it.

Her hikes through the Everfree always calmed Twilight, surrounded by new things to discover and research. She found it hard to believe that an entire ancient tower went undiscovered for over 1,000 years, especially with an entire town situated right along its border, but that may have been due to the nonsensical myths about the forest. Granted, she herself would not have ventured into the Everfree were it not for the fate of Equestria hanging in the balance, but she knew better now.

The sounds and songs of the forest were relaxing in their own dark and mysterious ways. Maybe they reminded Zecora of her homeland; maybe that's why the zebra lived in the Everfree. Twilight really hadn't looked into zebras in-depth, so she didn't know where they lived or what their culture was like. She told herself to remind herself to tell Spike to remind her to add zebras to her research list when she got back to the library.

It didn't take very long for the unicorn to arrive in the general vicinity of where the general location of the tower might've been 1,000 years ago, but the structure was not in sight. It didn't really matter, though: Twilight had a plan.

So, after twenty minutes of searching the area around her general area of where the tower might be, she got sick of trying to find it. That didn't really matter either, though. Twilight had a backup plan.

Opening her saddlebag, Twilight pulled out the map and eyed the circle-shaped sticker she had stuck on it. No point in drawing all over a relic such as that, after all. She took out a larger, clear sticker and stuck it onto the map, very carefully drawing a larger circle around the existing sticker. She could now effectively search a larger area of the forest, which meant a higher possibility of reaching her destination.

About fourty minutes in, she had nearly exhausted the last area of her new general area of where the tower might be. Her patience was running thin; she didn't want to bother with Plan C anymore. She just wanted to get back home and maybe re-read Starswirl's journal to better retrace his steps and come back some other day. So that's exactly what she decided to do.

An hour or so of searching didn't really help with her coordination, and she ended up tripping on a semi-well-hidden root. Twilight being somewhat tired and frustrated, adding on to her natural clumsiness, found her tumbling down a grass-infested hill, skidding to a stop at the bottom.

A groan escaped a small crack in the researcher's lips. She didn't feel like getting up. She just wanted to take a nice, short little nap right on the ground. Her face and hooves and body in general hurting didn't exactly let her doze off in the middle of the forest, though. A quick little fixer-upper spell and Twilight was all fixed up, yet still she couldn't fall asleep. The ground simply wasn't comfortable enough.

Twilight waited a few minutes to see if she could somehow will herself to sleep, only to find her efforts were all in vain. She decided to just go home, plop down onto her bed, and pass out. It was certainly better than doing nothing. Much more efficient, time-wise.

Her plan was immediately forgotten when she finally picked her head up.

Laying right in front of Twilight, as if existing for the sole purpose of mocking her, was a very misshapen, crumbling tower. In fact, the only reason she knew it was a tower was because of the journal. If any other were to happen upon it, it would look more like just a bunch of rocks and vaguely brick-like shapes scattered around a small clearing. There were mosses and grass growing out of the cracks in the bricks, broken planks of wood strewn about the area. How Rainbow recognized the mess around her as tower ruins was a mystery. It was a mess, it was crumbling, it was destroyed.

It was perfect.

Twilight failed to suppress a girlish squeal that would make Rainbow Dash cringe. She bounced up and down as she traversed the wannabe ruins, taking in the sights of a newly discovered discovery. Her mind was bombarded with questions she would try her hardest to answer: What happened? How come nopony ever found this place? What's that over there? Is that a trapdoor? What did this place look like before it was destroyed? Why is that squirrel looking at me?

She stopped bouncing. There would be plenty of time to be excited and hop around later. It was sample-gathering time.

She hadn't really expected to not find any samples of anything. The rocks were just regular ol' rocks; the bricks were cut straight from plain ol' boulders; the wood was just boring ol' oak and pine, with a few bits of maple here and there. There were no remnants of past spells, no magical traps gone un-sprung. It was infuriating.

A thought flickered through her mind: Starswirl had been here. If Starswirl was here, surely he left something behind. Some tomes or scrolls or- Is that- she cut off. There was a very indistinct shape half-hidden underneath a mossy brick.

Twilight lifted the offending brick off of the precious material and ran a hoof over its surface. It was just like the other journal, only more... old. She was half-surprised that it had survived the elements of nature, but then realised she didn't even care. It was Starswirl's journal, he probably just cast a few spells on it or something. It was Starswirl's journal. His last journal.

She couldn't read it right then and there, though. She quickly cast twelve protective spells onto the book, wrapped it in several layers of paper, and slid it gently into her saddlebag. If something as valuable as his journal was left behind, maybe there was something else in the ruin.

With energy and spirit renewed, Twilight began her search in earnest.

Turns out the journal was the only thing there... she thought to herself, returning to Ponyville under the veil of night. Still, there should be plenty of stuff in this for me to read through and learn and research and... she rambled on to herself in her thoughts until she bumped her nose against the library's door.

She opened it wide and stepped in. The library, if possible, was even cleaner than the day before. Everything was spotless, the books were all at near-perfect 90-degree angles with the shelves, everything shined. Oh, that's right. I forgot to give Spike his thank-you gift... Twilight thought, resting her bags against a wall and making her way up the stairs to her room. Maybe he can have two tomorrow...

With her mental promise made, she gave Spike a kiss goodnight and snuggled up under the covers with her new book.

The first thing she had to do, of course, was remove all the protection spells she'd placed on it, and her horn glowed as she did just that. She examined the book next. There were only five pages with writing in them, out of approximately twenty-eight and a half pages total. A few of the pages had sizable tears on them.

The first page was comprised of two short journal entries, numbered 2275 and 2276. That meant, since the last one she had read was 2274, she hadn't missed out on anything from his journey. She opted to read those after she finished a quick skim of the other pages. She flipped the page to study the second and third. They were covered in drawings and diagrams and at the top of the left page, a title.

Avisus Gaiuni Psychuarere: Alicorn Unification