Seeking Answers

When Twilight awoke the next day, the first thing she did was check on Dayspring.  He was still asleep in his room, but she was shocked to discover that his bed had a second occupant.  A small bunny had nestled up against Dayspring and was sleeping next to him.

Twilight almost decided to wake Dayspring up to ask him about this, but a part of her said that it was too cute to interrupt.

“Maybe I should find myself a good book for now,” thought Twilight.  She left the room to do just that.

Before she even reached the shelves, there was knocking on her front door.  She quickly ran to it and opened it.

Behind it stood a very red eyed Flutteryshy.  As soon as the door had come open, Fluttershy wailed, “Twilight!  You’ve gotta help me!”

Twilight was astounded at her friend’s attitude, but she asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Well,” said Fluttershy, calming down a bit, “I noticed it last night.  When I was doing headcount for the bunnies, I turned up one short!”

Her tone changed to despair.  “I don’t know where the poor thing could have got to!  They’re never gone for this long!  I have Rainbow helping me look, but everyone else is too busy.  But would you please help?”

“Fluttershy,” said Twilight slowly, “You probably won’t believe it, but it just happens that I think I know exactly where the bunny is.”

“Oh!” squeaked Fluttershy.  “You do?”

“Wait here,” said Twilight.  She closed the door and went into Dayspring’s room.

Neither occupants of the bed had stirred.  “When this is over,” thought Twilight, “I’m going to have to have a talk with him.”

She tried to carefully scoop up the bunny, but it woke up anyway.  It didn’t struggle much.  She carried it back to the front door.

The door had barely swung open when Fluttershy threw her hooves around Twilight and said, “Thankyou thankyou thankyou!”

Fluttershy quickly released Twilight, suddenly very embarrassed.  “Well, I would love to stay and chat, Twilight, but I’ve been up all night and I need to get the little guy home.  Everyone is so worried.  Oh, and I have to find Rainbow Dash and tell her the news too.”

Fluttershy ran off before Twilight could think of a response.

“Well,” thought Twilight, “Time to go wake that colt and find out what that was all about.”

Before she went inside, she noticed something white in front of the library.  She trotted over to see what it was.  It was Dayspring’s melting pile of snow, but he had made a kind of face on it and given it stick arms.  The whole thing was drooping as it melted, as though it was being pulled into the ground, but one arm was reaching up, as though begging for help.

“Ok,” thought Twilight as she turned away, “that’s kind of creepy.”

“Dayspring, wake up,” said Twilights voice.  Dayspring groaned and eventually sat up.

“Would you care to explain how one of Fluttershy’s bunnies came to the library?” asked Twilight in a firm, though not quite stern tone.

Dayspring was still groggy from being forced awake.  “What?  The bunny?  Oh, um, you probably won’t believe this...”

As Dayspring’s voice trailed off, Twilight recalled how she had said the same thing to Fluttershy.

“Well, the truth is, I found him inside my hat.”

“What?” asked Twilight, confused.  “How could it have gotten there?”

“I... cast an enchantment on the hat,” said Dayspring with difficulty.  “But not to find bunnies inside...”

Twilight didn’t say a word.  Instead, she walked over to the table where the top hat was laying and lifted it up, examining it.  She cast a spell to reveal the magic of the hat, but she found that she could make no sense of the enchantment Dayspring had placed on it at all.

“What did you do to it?” whispered Twilight as she set it down.  “I don’t know what you were trying to achieve, but experimenting with magic almost always has unintended side effects!”

Dayspring said nothing, but hung his head.  He walked over to the hat.

“I’m really sorry,” he said as he picked up the hat.

“It’s alright, nobody was hurt in the end, but next time you should-“

Twilight cut herself short as she saw what Dayspring was doing.  He had stuck a hoof inside the hat, and it had disappeared far deeper into it than the space inside ought to allow.

“What in Equestria!  Dayspring, stop!”  Twilight shouted.

Her warning came too late.  Suddenly, Dayspring was struggling against the hat, as though it was pulling him in.  In an abrupt movement too quick for the eye, the hat swallowed Dayspring whole.

“Dayspring!” shouted Twilight desperately.  There was no answer.  With wild abandon, she dove into the hat, which somehow managed to eat her whole as well.

“Well,” Twilight thought to herself, “I don’t think I’ve fallen unconscious, or I wouldn’t be thinking right now.

“Dayspring?” she asked uncertainly as she illuminated her horn.  This revealed Dayspring to be standing right next to her, but her light failed to penetrate the darkness any further.

“Are we inside your hat?” she asked him.

Dayspring shook his head.  “No, I think this is it!  Everything is... hiding, I think.  We’ve been trying to figure out how to get here all this time, and here we are!”

“What?” said Twilight, taken aback.  “Why would jumping into your crazy hat take us here?”

“Well, actually I don’t know for sure,” said Dayspring uncertainly.  “It was supposed to just bring the snow to life.  It did too!” he finished proudly.

Twilight was utterly bewildered at this.  “Hang on, what?  You brought snow to life?  That should be impossible for a pony, especially one with as little knowledge as you!”

“Well, it didn’t work the way I thought it would,” replied Dayspring sadly.  “I thought he would play with me, but it just walked off and got run over.”

“Oh...,” Twilight said in a low voice.  She recalled the disturbing scene left in front of the library.  “I’m sorry you don’t have anypony else to play with you, but you do have to remember that the plain fact of the matter is, most everypony is scared of you after you made... Luna upset...”

“Oh...” said Dayspring slowly.  He thought to himself, “Can’t I do anything to show them I’m sorry?”

“I tell you what, when we get back, I’ll help you do just that,” Twilight said to him.

“If we can get back,” she finished more ominously.

“Ok,” replied the colt confidently.

“So,” said Twilight.  “How do we make this big, scary land of yours come out?”  The question lacked sarcasm.

“Oh!  Um...”  Dayspring knew that Twilight wouldn’t like this.  “Last time, it came out of nowhere when I released a whole lot of magic into the air.”

“Oh,” said Twilight.  “Well... I guess you had better do it again, but don’t let it hit me!”

Dayspring backed away from Twilight a bit before releasing the magic.  When he did, Twilight gasped.  She had believed everything Dayspring had told her about this place, but it was still unbelievable to see it with her own eyes.

The land was barren and dark, with not a sun, moon, or star in the sky, although, she noted, it was still inexplicably lit enough to see.  She saw the big building that Dayspring had undoubtedly been referring to.

“Oh Celestia...” she said in awe.  “Dayspring,”  She turned to him.  “That big building.  It looks very much like the royal castle in Canterlot, only it’s as scary as you had said.”

Dayspring vaguely knew what she was talking about, having once been shown Celestia’s castle by Mentor.  “What can that mean?”  He asked, feeling very confused.

Twilight wandered over to the same lone tree that Dayspring had discovered himself the first time he had arrived here.  Twilight knocked on it with her hoof.  “Why is there a statue of a tree out here?” she asked.

She scanned their surroundings again, and something caught her eye on the ground not far away.  She ran to it to discover it was a small patch of lone grass, also made out of stone.

Twilight looked toward the sky and gravely realized the significance of the missing sun and moon.

“Something horrible happened here,” Twilight said in horrified awe.  “Come on, Dayspring.  We need to get inside that castle.”

Twilight and Dayspring had been walking through the castle for about a long time without speaking a word.  There was no light in the castle, so Twilight and Dayspring were both casting light from their horns as they explored.  Eventually, Dayspring broke the Silence.

“Twilight?”

“Hmm?” she responded, grateful for a distraction from the hurried thoughts running through her head.

“Where are all of the ponies?”

Twilight lowered her head.  Maybe it wouldn’t be a distraction after all.  “I don’t know Dayspring.  I have a dreadful feeling that something horrible happened to this whole place, but I can’t find anything here that gives me a clue!  All I know is that there is probably nothing left alive without the sun.”

“Do you know where we are going?”

Twilight nervously looked to Dayspring.  “I have certainly never been her before, and It isn’t the same layout as Celestia’s castle.  So, no, not exactly”

She had no idea if they would find anything important in the strangely empty castle.  All of the rooms that they had looked in before were empty.

Suddenly Twilight cried out, “Aha!” and trotted over to a large door in the hallway they were walking through.  She couldn’t get the door to budge.

“Dayspring,” Twilight said slowly.  “Can you... see if you can get this door open?”  She flung herself against the wall.

She was expecting the door to fly apart.  She did not expect the door to ease itself open for Dayspring, which is what it did.  Feeling a little silly, she got away from the wall and led the way inside.

There were a few book shelves in the room, and Twilight eagerly plucked one from a shelf, but was quickly discouraged by the foreign title.  She opened the book and confirmed that none of it was Equestrian.  She tried another book, but had identical results.

Besides the book shelves, this room was as empty as the others.  Grumbling, Twilight led Dayspring out of the room.  Instead of checking another room only to doubtlessly end in nothing, she walked straight to the end of the hall and looked up at giant double doors.  She tried to open it.

“These are locked too,” she told Dayspring.

Dayspring took a look at the doors, then magically tried opening them.

He felt an unusual resistance.  He pushed harder.  The door held, although a loud, deep creaking could be heard.  Dayspring started to worry.  If he pushed much harder, the very wall the door was embedded in might come apart.  He glanced over and saw that Twilight had taken cover again.

Without warning, there was a roaring ‘SNAP’ followed by a loud crash.  The doors had violently flung open, bashing against the wall on the other side.

Twilight had been thrown off of her feet from the unexpected momentum of the doors colliding with the wall she had thrown herself against on its opposite side.  Feeling embarrassed, she quickly scrambled to her feet to investigate.

There was no indication that anything had been bracing the door on the other side.  “That had to have been magic,” she thought.

Suddenly there was a loud, horrible noise.  It seemed to be a combination between a roar, growl, and a moan.  Twilight instantly thought of a huge monster waiting to devour them.

Neither pony had moved.  “Twilight,” asked Dayspring, fear in his voice, “what was that?”

Twilight quickly thought up an explanation.  “It was probably the castle... settling.  Actually, we should move, it might collapse on top of us here.”

“Oh!” said Dayspring as he ran after Twilight into the room he had opened.

It was fairly big, and circular in shape.  It too was almost bare, but it featured six short pedestals around its center, spaced out in hexagon fashion.  Twilight approached the pedestal closest to her and saw the object it was displaying.

“Oh no...” she said in miserable and loud, yet restrained voice.

Dayspring rushed over to see what she was looking at.  “What is that?” he asked Twilight in an anxious tone.

“This can’t be...  It’s not right, how could...” Twilight turned away from the pedestal and looked Dayspring in the eye.

When she didn’t say anything, Dayspring repeated, “What is it?” urgently.

“It can’t possibly be...  I think... it’s an element of honesty!  But... its dead!  It hasn’t a shred of power left!”

“What?” asked Dayspring, confused.  But Twilight had already shot off to one of the other pedestals.

“Yes!” she cried in horrified voice.  “And this here is an element of generosity!”

She turned to Dayspring, who was still expressing strong confusion.

“This place must have had its own whole set!” she shouted.

“I don’t know-“ Dayspring started, but she shot off again.

“They are all here,” thought Twilight franticly.  “And they are all dead!  What HAPPENED here?”

She stopped at the last pedestal.  It was empty.  Her head flooded with suspicion.

Her horn lit up.  “Dayspring!” she shouted to him.

“Yes Twilight?” he asked uncertainly.

“This wall here?  Knock it down.”

“You want me to knock it down?”

“Yes!  You don’t have to knock the whole thing over, just make a hole big enough for us to get through.”

A moment later, bricks went flying.  After Twilight heard everything  settle on the other side, she came to the new opening in the wall and peered through.  She couldn’t make out anything important, so she scrambled through, Dayspring close behind her.  She stopped and gasped.

It seemed that as far as her eye could see, there were stone statues of ponies.  Every single one of them was dressed in a strange, foreign armor, and they all had a posture of attention.

She started walking again, examining the statues.  There were subtle differences in them all, but almost all had some degree of fear upon their face.

It turned out that the statues were not stretched out much farther than about one hundred statues per row.  However, Twilight had already forgotten the statues in favor of one last statue in the in front of them all.

The statue itself was not actually particularly impressive.  The alicorn it depicted wasn’t wearing any armor, and Twilight thought that its face was a little sad.  Twilight checked it to see if it bared any resemblance to Dayspring, but to her disappointment, it did not.

“What’s wrong with that weird hat it’s wearing?” asked Dayspring.

Twilight did not turn to Dayspring.  She kept her gaze where it was and said, “It’s called a crown.  It contains the last element.  But it is entirely out of balance.  While all of the rest where dead and drained of power, this element of magic is utterly engorged with it.

She finally turned to Dayspring and said, “It’s yours.  I don’t know why, I don’t know what your connection with all of this is, but I can tell you with certainty that it is yours.”

“Wh... what?”  asked Dayspring.

Twilight sighed and asked, “You don’t even know what these are, do you?”  Dayspring shook his head.

Without warning, there was a very loud noise, as though it was coming from the room they were in.  It was the same horrible noise that they had heard earlier.  Both Twilight’s and Dayspring’s magic lights went out.

Both ponies screamed.  Twilight started to run away from the noise, but then more noises came from all around.  Twilight felt sure that she could sense something coming at her.

She felt a sensation of magic, and her eyes were flooded with blinding light.  As her eye’s adjusted, she saw that she and Dayspring were safe in the library.  Dayspring was on the verge of tears.

She embraced him and simply held him without saying a word in effort to calm both Dayspring and herself.