By the time Twilight returned home, the black liquid had produced enough vapor to actually see the vapor. Now in the basement, she uncorked the vial, pouring a drop of the strange liquid onto a small glass plate. Placing it carefully under the lens of a microscope, she recorked the vial, and set it in a rack along with the blood.

She took a look through the lens of the microscope, zooming in on it four hundred times with the weakest lens. The black liquid appeared to be extremely viscous, perhaps even on the level of an amorphous solid, like butter. But the strange thing was the slow decay of the liquid into a vapor. She switched lenses, zooming an additional two hundred times. Each particle was semi-distinguishable from the others. It looked to be like they were biological cells of an organism of some kind. Strange as it was, it almost made sense.

Biological? Some creature attacked, but it sure as Tartarus wasn’t a pony. Ponies don’t drip parts of themselves, and they certainly don’t decay into weird vapor.

She zoomed in another two hundred times, leaving her one more lens to look through. She stared into the substance, seeing that it was, in fact, biological. But stranger still, the cells seemed to be made of more flammable components, like oil and other hydrocarbon polymers. Biological hydrocarbons? That’s weird. Whatever creature this is from was flammable. Highly flammable.

Now distracted from her original work, she went off on a tangent, lifting another glob of the substance from the vial, and placing it in a Petri dish. She set the glass dish down on a fire-proof counter, and struck a match. Setting the flame close to the substance, it caught fire from an inch away. Flames swept over the glob like a tsunami. Now alert but not surprised, Twilight watched carefully for the substance to burn away. After ten minutes, the substance was still ablaze. Highly flammable, but slow-burning. Substance is similar to pitch, and may be used as a source of light, like torches. She mentally noted the discovery. She turned to the rack of vials, and picked up a vial with water in it. She opened it, and carefully applied a few drops of water to douse the flames. However, unlike most fire, the water did nothing to douse the fire. It actually held the exact opposite effect, enraging the fire. It flared for a minute, before dying back down to its original level of activity.

Liquid fire. Will not be doused by water. Use snuffer of some kind to extinguish. She picked up a bucket, and placed it on top of the Petri dish, snuffing the flame. A few moments later, she lifted the bucket off the dish, the flames gone. She then filled the bucket with water, and set it down on the counter. She then levitated the pitch-like substance off of the Petri dish, and set it gently in the bucket with the water. The substance diffused, spreading over the water like oil, making a thin, iridescent layer of flammable substance. Floats and diffuses on water. Not recommended for use near or in water, as water irritates the flame.

She turned around, nearly jumping out of her skin at the sight of Darq standing, leaning against a wall, head down with a smirk on his face.

“How did you get in here? I locked the door twice!” she nearly screamed at the dark unicorn.

“Well. Same way I got behind you,” came his voice from behind her. He walked out from behind her, having teleported with his magic. With this action, her eye twitched. “What have you discovered thus far about this stuff?”

After shaking the shock from her mind, she replied, “Well, it’s about as viscous as pitch, and flammable like pitch. It can catch fire from a match an inch away, and it will stay on fire for a long time.”

“So basically, it’s pitch,” he concluded.

“Not quite,” she giggled. “It really doesn’t like water. Add water to this stuff on fire, and you get a really big bonfire. Put this stuff in a larger body of water, and it’ll diffuse over the surface like oil.”

“That it?”

“Nope. It’s also biological. It’s a naturally occurring part of some creature, the likes of which, I’ve never seen,” she finished. “Whatever creature this was once a part of, it’s never been documented to my knowledge.”

“Well. That sounds quite amazing,” Darq replied with mock enthusiasm. “Now what about the blood there? What’s the deal with that?”

“I was getting there,” Twilight replied with a school-filly giggle. “Patience, Darq.” She lifted the slide of the black substance off of her microscope, placing it carefully next to the bucket of water. She then lifted the vial of blood, placing some on a slide, and replacing it under the microscope. She switched her lens back to the weakest setting, and looked through. In the midst of the blood, there were tiny black specks that didn’t quite fit in. She turned to the second setting; a powerful x600 zoom. The black specks seemed to be slowly attacking blood cells. A group of three white blood cells surrounded a black speck, destroying the speck at the cost of two white blood cells.

She zoomed in to her x800 lens. She looked around for a black speck, curious as to what it was. She eventually came across one, finding that it was a cell of the previous black liquid sample. It slowly attacked a red blood cell, emitting a vapor towards the blood cell. The cell shuddered, and shriveled up like a rotting apple. It sank, dead, to the bottom of the sample. She zoomed in to x1000. There was a stray nerve cell in the sample. A black cell moved slowly towards it, emitting its deadly vapor on all sides, killing several blood cells. The cell reached the nerve cell, spraying its toxic vapor at it. The nerve twitched, and emitted an electro-chemical pulse, sending a firm shock into the black cell. The black cell shuddered, spraying more vapor. The nerve slowly fried itself, releasing relatively high voltage shocks into the black cell, causing the cell to explode.

“That’s a problem,” Twilight muttered. “That stuff is hostile even on the cellular level.”

“So you’re saying that whatever that black goop stuff is, it’s attacking things on a cellular scale?” Darq asked. “That’s a big problem.”

“Yeah. It attacks blood, but targets nerves,” she sighed. “At least, that’s what I could see with such limited sample material.”

“How does it attack?” Darq asked.

“The cells attack with toxic vapor of some kind,” she answered. “Why?”

“Big problem,” he gasped. With a simple nod, Darq teleported out of the library, leaving no trace that he was ever there in the first place. Twilight simply shrugged it off. I’m getting way too used to that. But what does he mean by, ‘big problem’?

Something tells me he knows more than he’s showing.

*

“Well. That’s quite the development,” said the red-coated detective. “I’ll give this to the Bio-Research team.”

“Thanks, Detective,” Twilight replied, walking away. The purple unicorn wandered the streets, with no particular destination. After a few minutes of aimless walking, Twilight noticed that it was nearly sun down. A growl from her stomach confirmed it, as if the low grumble was as clear a statement as ‘It’s dinner time, and you’re hungry, so give me some food.’

She turned into a back alley as a shortcut to her home. However, what she didn’t expect was for Darq to be sitting there, a crystal floating in the air in front of him. Now used to him showing up in the most random places, she made no motion or sound of surprise.

“Oh. Hey. What’s up?” she greeted, approaching him.

“Solving a big problem,” he replied.

“What problem?” she asked, still not understanding him.

“The one involving the almost dead body that somepony found this morning,” he growled cryptically. “I’ve seen this before, and it’s a very big problem.”

“You know what happened?” she inquired.

“Yes, I know exactly what’s going on,” he sighed. “It’s the reason I was in the Everfree.”

This peaked Twilight’s interest, “Care to elaborate on that?”

“Levitate that rock, and hold still,” he ordered politely.

Not bothering to ask why, she floated the rock that he had pointed out. Holding still, she noticed him stand up. He took a step towards her. Time seemed to slow down, as his horn glowed with a spell. A spike of fear stabbed her heart, tempting her to end the spell.

His horn tapped hers, mixing her light purple aura with his dark aura. She flinched ever so slightly, fear gripping her. He grinned, and turned to the crystal that he had been focusing on. He tensed up, forcing all of his energy into the spell. A beam of light shot from his horn to the crystal, illuminating the dark alley. After about ten seconds, Darq’s horn burnt out, the spell fading, leaving a glowing crystal on the ground of the narrow alley. Twilight opened her eyes, her uncharacteristic fear now gone.

“What was that?” she asked, voice slightly hoarse.

“It’s what I like to call a combination spell,” he coughed roughly. “Basically, the spell I did was too difficult to do alone. So I borrowed a bit of your magic, giving that spell I just did enough magic to work.”

“Huh,” she huffed. Combination spell, eh? I’ll have to ask Princess Celestia about those. “So what exactly did you do?”

Darq shook his head, and picked up the crystal. “Say hello to the Light Crystal.”

Author's Note

Well this one was fun. I got some amazing music. This entire chapter was played out to a song called 'Eager Studies' by Woody (YouTube user: JWoodony). If you feel like it, take a listen with some solid headphones at this URL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=oKLs_YF_VeU

You're welcome.