NaNo2014: Shadows of Friendship: Part 12

“My dearest Twilight Sparkle,” The unicorn read out loud, casting a basic ‘flicker’ spell to light the nearby candle, giving her enough light to see the words properly, “By now you will probably be needing the piece I contain in this letter and I apologise for withholding it from you for such a long time.”

Which meant that the Princess had to have had it for a while, though Twilight was not sure when she had taken it. The unicorn was not entirely sure how she felt about the fact that the Sun Goddess had effectively stolen a piece from a treasure that her dam-sire had given her, though she was sure that Celestia had had a good reason for it.

“I have had it since you first showed it to me, back when you first moved into your rooms in the school and I know you will probably be angry with me for not returning it to you sooner.” Celestia’s letter continued, “However, before you put this letter down and refuse to listen to me any longer, please read through why I thought, at one point, that it would be better for you never to complete the puzzle.”

Twilight grimaced, trying to work out why she felt like that was not the Sun alicorn’s decision to make. She was the Ruler of all of Equestria after all. What she said was law. If she had thought it for the best that Twilight did not complete the puzzle, then really the young unicorn should have had no say in that matter. That did not make her feel any better.

“It all starts in a country known as Equigypt, where your puzzle comes from. A country that ceased to exist long before Equestria was ever thought of.” Twilight knew this, Treasure Trove had told her all the tales surrounding the puzzle as a kid. She had committed them to memory, hoping that they would help her solve the secrets of the artefact that she had been working on for going on eight years. “A dark magic destroyed the land thousands of years before even I was born and was sealed away by a powerful alicorn who gave her life to do so.”

That she had not known. Her dam-sire had not told her that part, though it was quite possible that he had not known as nothing she had read on Equigypt had ever informed her of what had happened to ruin the once proud country, only that it had disappeared overnight and become part of Saddle Arabia.

“My sister, Princess Luna, went to Saddle Arabia in order to work her diplomatic magic and came back with reams and reams of notes on the magic belonging to a vizier she had met while there. I allowed her to explore that magic, hoping that it would distract her from me while I dealt with my ever increasing duties, not noticing that slowly and surely Luna was losing more and more face with the nobles as they looked upon the ‘Night Queen’ as a necessary evil rather than understanding the true balance of day and night.”

This was more honesty from her tutor on these matters than Twilight had ever experienced and she was not quite sure how to take it. Celestia had obviously needed to get off of her chest and in revealing her theft to Twilight she had obviously felt that now was the time for the truth. About everything. It was probably easier to do it on paper than it would have been to tell her all of this to her face.

“I did not see Luna’s decent from studying the dark magic that she had discovered, to using it, but I was the cause for her final fall into Nightmare Moon, for I pushed her away and when the nobles came to me, asking why we even needed the night, I did not scold them and defend Luna’s night as I should have done. Instead I allowed them to turn against her and drive her further into the darkness. It was that darkness that finally controlled her and turned her into the demon sorceress, Nightmare Moon.”

Who was due to return tomorrow during the Summer Sun Celebration if the legends were true.

“I had no choice but to banish her to the moon for a thousand years for her own protection and for that of the mares and stallions in our care. I lost my last student, Sunset Shimmer, to that same magic after she discovered my sister’s notes locked away deep within the castle, but unlike my sister, she banished herself to a place from which she could never return and where I could never reach her. I could not lose you the same way.”

Twilight blinked at those words. She had heard only brief rumours of Sunset Shimmer, who had been Celestia’s personal student before she had. The rumours spoke of an arrogant unicorn who had delved too deep into the darker side of magic and had lost her place at Celestia’s side. This was new information about that too. However she had never found the notes of Princess Luna and she did not understand how her puzzle linked to any of this.

“I know you’re probably wondering what this has to do with your puzzle.” Celestia’s letter continued, causing the unicorn to smile slightly at how well the Princess knew her, “Well, your puzzle is an artefact that was once worn by the same alicorn who sealed the darkness away in the first place and since her seal had quite clearly started to fail, I was worried for your safety. After all, the darkness quite clearly held grudges and I was frightened that either you would be lost to the same darkness when your curiosity drove you to investigate it’s properties, just as my sister had, or you would be attacked as the holder of the artefact belonging to that long lost Princess.”

That made a worrying amount of sense. Twilight had trouble bringing herself to be angry when Celestia had stolen the piece from her out of concern for her wellbeing.

“My concerns were not alleviated any when a zebra by the name of Zecora, who held two of the golden relics, a Key and a pair of Scale and came to me not long after I took you on as a student and hid the piece away. She told me that the puzzle granted one wish, but it also gave the wielder power over the darkness and granted them the title ‘Guardian of Shadows.’ Then she warned me of dark days ahead and vanished from my castle. I have had people searching ever since but no one has managed to locate her.”

She knew about the wish. Her dam-sire had told her all about it when he had first given her the puzzle, claiming it was the prize for passing the test of completing it. A test she now knew that the Princess had been preventing her from completing. She had not known, however, about the ‘Guardian of Shadows’ part and she could not help but wonder if Treasure Trove had when he had given it to her. She doubted it. He loved her and she was certain that he would not have willingly put her in any danger, but the part about ‘dark days ahead’ was worrying and Twilight was sure they probably related to what was due to happen tomorrow.

“I believed that I could make the choice for you. That if I took away a piece of the puzzle that you would be safe and I could find some other way of understanding the darkness. However, I was wrong. I have spent the last one thousand years trying to find a way to break through the darkness and free someone from them to no avail and now I have run out of time. Tomorrow the demon controlling my sister will be free once more and I had to make a choice. Allow you to complete the puzzle and claim your place as the Guardian of Shadows, as is your right and risk losing you forever but chancing that if I fall, you will be able to bring Luna back to her senses. Or keep this piece from you and send you far from the danger. I was thinking over those choices when you sent me your letter about Nightmare Moon’s return.”

Which was why it had taken so long to get her reply, Twilight now understood.

“It was actually your letter that helped me decide. That and the tale of an old stallion I once met who I believe is related to you, a Treasure Trove. He knew the Shadows better than any pony alive when I met him and we searched together for a while. He was supposedly doing it to protect his family. Now I know he meant protecting you. We turned up dead end after dead end until finally he reminded me that Unity, the power that we discovered the alicorn Princess had used to seal away the darkness, was another name for Harmony and that maybe the answers I sought were not that far away from home.”

The Elements of Harmony. That was what Celestia was clearly talking about when she mentioned Harmony. Twilight did not know what she meant by the Equigyptian Princess’s Unity, but she understood that her dam-sire had meant the Elements when he had spoken to Celestia.

“Time grows short and you will be pacing your library or perhaps working on your puzzle, waiting impatiently for my reply, but I ask you to think carefully before you make your choice. Do not rush into what seems right for Equestria, do what seems right for you. If you choose not to complete the puzzle and stay out of whatever happens when my sister returns, I will understand. However, if you do choose to stand and fight, I beg that you find the Elements of Harmony. They allowed me to seal her away and may give you, in your role as Guardian, the chance to free Luna where I cannot.

Whatever you choose, I will always be your teacher and support you through any choices you make,

Princess Celestia.”

NaNo2014: Shadows of Friendship: Part 4

The baby dragon was not daft enough to try and disturb Twilight when she was working on the bright treasure that looked edible and delicious to him but had an awful taste that had put him off eating it for life. Instead he found his spare cards and started making adaptions to his deck in case Twilight wanted to duel while they were waiting for the Princess to write back.

Twilight lost track of the time as she worked on the trinket. Her dam-sire had told her a long time ago, back before she had even gotten her cutie mark and started studying under the Princess, that the one who passed the test and completed the ‘Millennium Puzzle’ got one wish and that wish was guaranteed to come true. She was beginning to wonder though, if it was called such because it was going to take a thousand years to complete.

The first pieces went in easily. She knew almost instinctively now which pieces went in which order right up until she was about a third of the way done. Then the difficulty started. She could not insert the pieces by hoof, the puzzle was far too complex and fiddly for that. Instead she had to use her magic to put it together as well as hold it in place. The complex creation was a 3d puzzle, which meant that it would make a statue or something once completed but if she pushed on one piece just a little too hard it would completely collapse and she would have to start from scratch.

More than once she had ruined hours and hours of careful work in such a way and she was extra careful as she started the difficult task of assembling the other two thirds, not that she knew which piece went where or what the end product was supposed to look like.

Spike was surprised when he looked up from his cards to find that not only had it started growing dark, but the puzzle was really beginning to come together in front of the unicorn he looked up to. It looked like an upside down version of one the pyramids that he had seen in a book about Saddle Arabia, which had once been Equigypt. The hoop on the base was new though and looked sturdy, as if you could loop rope or something similar through it and wear the completed thing as a rather large and probably heavy pendant.

“I’ve done it!” Twilight crowed as she slipped the last bar one piece into place, leaving one last space for a piece to go. She knew which one it was, a piece that was, oddly enough, shaped like the main star of her cutie mark and had an eye symbol on it. Twilight had researched it and it was known as the ‘wadjet eye’ or the ‘Eye of Anubis’ who had supposedly been a God in the days of Equigypt. “Just one more piece and…” She froze when she went to use her magic to lift the last piece of the puzzle out of the box and found that it was empty. “Spike!” The baby dragon scrambled to his feet at the panic in her voice, “Spike!”

“What?” He asked as he scrambled to her side, “What’s the matter Twilight?”

“There’s a piece missing.” Twilight panicked, trying to maintain the magic holding the puzzle in place despite the surge of emotions coursing through her.

“Huh?” Spike blinked at her, confused.

“A piece. Of the puzzle. It’s gone! The last piece!” Twilight whinnied frantically, “Please tell me you haven’t eaten it!”

“No way!” Spike protested, even as he lit the lamps with his fire breath and started searching for it, knowing what Twilight’s next question would be. “Tried that once, remember? It was gross. I haven’t seen it lying around either.”

“It might have fallen out when we moved around for a while.” The filly paled beneath her fur at that idea. It was not like she could just buy another puzzle and complete that instead. This one was ancient and one of a kind. Not only that if she could not complete it, she would never pass her dam-sire’s test and that was something she just could not live with.

 “I thought the box hadn’t left the house since Princess Celestia borrowed it? And you had all the pieces then?” The purple dragonet questioned his pseudo-mother as he turned the place upside down to look for the missing gold. Before too long Twilight had put the golden treasure down carefully on the desk and joined him in the hunt which decimated the normally orderly library and left it looking like a surprisingly careful hurricane had hit. One that did not damage anything but did leave absolutely everything strewn across the floors of the multi-storey building.

Despite their best attempts though, the piece was nowhere to be found. Twilight let out a frustrated and despairing whinny as she started getting ready to go look for it outside next, only to pull up short when Spike burped up a burst of green fire and a letter emerged from it, coiled in a red band just like the one she had had Spike send that afternoon, but sealed with the gold wax and insignia of her tutor, Princess Celestia.

“Guess she had a lot to do.” Spike frowned slightly as he opened it, “You want me to read it now?”

“It’s from the Princess, it could be important.” Twilight hesitated by the door, wanting to go and look but knowing that anything from the Princess was more important than her petty concerns even if they involved the puzzle she had poured her heart and soul into for the last eight years.

“My dearest Twilight,” Spike read out as Twilight shut the door and turned to look at him properly, shoulders sinking, “It is of great importance that you join me in the palace this evening.”

“Really?” Twilight blinked, “Tonight?”

“I will be sending a pegasus chariot to pick you up not long after I send this letter to you.” Spike continued, nodding, “Please be ready for a short three day trip before he arrives.”

“Now?” Twilight winced, thinking about the missing puzzle piece and realising that she was not going to have time to search for it outside of her home. “She’s sending me somewhere now?”

“Guess she’s taking your warning seriously.” Spike shrugged, “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Yes but…” Twilight had a sinking feeling. Unless Celestia was going to come with her, she had a horrible feeling that she was going to be sent away for her own protection. It was frustrating. She could help. She knew she could but it did not look like she was going to be given the chance.

“What do you want me to pack?” Spike asked, “And what about the missing piece?”

Twilight did not know. She wanted a little more time to go out and hunt, but perhaps this was a blessing in disguise. She could ask the Princess if she had seen the puzzle piece and try to convince her mentor that she could help. “Maybe we’ll find it when we’re packing.” Twilight sounded more hopeful than she felt, “Get together the books I was reading earlier, my recent school notes, the…”

Spike nodded, starting to grab everything on Twilight’s ever expanding list. Not that anything was easy to find in the mess they had created when searching. Still by the time the chariot arrived their bags were packed and Twilight had carefully returned the rest of the puzzle to the box it had come in and before Spike could take the last of the bags out, she shoved that in too.

It was a short trip to the palace from Twilight’s library. The unicorn had been assigned her home by the Princess so she was not surprised by that fact, nor that it was the same distance in the opposite direction from the library to her school. It was a boon in most respects as it meant that if she was called to see her tutor or to attend extra classes, as she so often was, she could make it there in a short amount of time.

Today however, she was not entirely happy that the trip was so fast. She had not entirely worked out what she was going to say to the Princess when the chariot arrived in the courtyard of the palace and the pegasus pulling it, a white coated, blue maned stallion with a silver shied as a cutie mark, whose name, if she remembered the introduction properly, was Mirrored Shield, helped her down from the chariot.

“Don’t worry about unpacking, Miss Sparkle.” The Mirrored Shield told her with a smile, “I’ll move your things to the bigger chariot, but Princess Celestia was insistent that you go and see her in the great hall immediately.”

And if that was not enough to set the butterflies in her stomach off again, nothing was as Twilight headed into the building that was imposing enough during the day time, but was worse right now by the light of the torches and the moon which seemed to be watching them ominously from above. Its shadow laid heavy on the ground, the castle’s many spires making the form on the ground look like some kind of beast stretching its arms into the skies as if preparing to strike.

“Get a grip Twilight.” The young unicorn told herself, shaking her head and taking a deep breath, before levitating Spike onto her back and cantering in through the main entrance. “You’re being ridiculous.”

Spike, thankfully, did not say anything, probably assuming she was working herself into a nervous frenzy as she often did when her tutor called her before her. It was ridiculous after the many years of being Celestia’s student, but Twilight was no fool. She was fully aware that the Princess could decide that teaching her was too much effort at a moment’s notice. The Princess, who some considered a Goddess, ruled over all of Equestria alone after all. Teaching her young student took time away from that important duty and she never wanted the alicorn to decide that she was not worth the hassle.

She just hoped that bringing up what could possibly be an overreaction to an Old Mare’s Tale was not the final straw for her and she was not about to be sent home for good.

The guards knew her and Spike rather well and they were allowed through the corridors without much fuss. The only real issue came when she was scurrying through the hallways, heading for the main hall where the Princess heard petitions and held grand parties, when she collided with a unicorn gentlecolt who emerged from one of the side rooms and Spike went tumbling from her back. He only didn’t hit the floor because of the fast reaction time of the unicorn she had collided with, who used his magic to catch Spike in an aura of red.

“S…sorry.” Twilight stammered to the gentlecolt. He an odd looking stallion whose rather gaudy red suit covered up most of his coat, including his cutie mark and whose silvery lavender mane hid one eye from sight, though she was almost certain she caught a glimpse of gold beneath the tresses.  

“No problem Twily-girl.” The stallion shrugged it off even as he set down Spike, “I should have been looking where I was going.”

NaNo2014: Shadows of Friendship: Part 3

“No problem Twilight!” Spike nodded, keeping a tight grip on the saddle bag as he returned to Dark Moon’s side.

“Since this is just a demonstration duel and apparently your letter is so important, how about we both start with just a thousand life points?” Lightning asked as he stepped into the red circle on the other side of the grid and stepped on his sigil. His side of the grid lit up in a blue that was so light it was almost white, the same colour that White Lightning’s magic had always been before his horn had snapped. “Mares first, of course.” He gestured to her in a mocking version of a bow.

“One thousand points is fine by me.” Twilight agreed, only to become startled when the box in front of her circle lit up with the number ‘1000’ in it.

“No more having to do life points manually.” White Lightning boasted to the crowd, “The DuelRune grid does that for you.”

Twilight was actually impressed as she placed her deck on the square of solid light that had appeared in front of her. It was hard enough to make runes do anything like addition or subtraction without manually putting in the input, yet alone making them remember things. Somehow he was literally getting the runes within the grid itself to change in order to provide the life point counter and while it would mean that you would have to reset the grid for every duel, which meant a little more maintenance, the purple unicorn could quite easily see the benefits and doubted that many people would object.

“Two cards face down.” Twilight informed Lightning, “And I summon the Coltic Guardian, in attack mode!”

The DuelRune grid shone brightly for a moment, then a young Eath pony stallion appeared before her in a swirl of autumn leaves, with a deep, mossy green coat and long, neatly platted, yellow mane and tail, protected by impressive looking silver and green armour and holding a sword between his teeth, over which he glowered at White Lightning.

“Since my Guardian can’t attack this turn, it’s your move.” Twilight continued, gesturing to her former classmate.

“One move is all I need.” White Lightning smirked at her, “Come forth, my might Blue Eyes White Dragon!”

Twilight gulped as her Coltic Guardian was dwarfed by the huge white scaled dragon that appeared in a blaze of light and a crackle of electricity. The mighty dragon seemed to peer down at the opposing creature as if contemplating whether to eat him for lunch. To her Guardian’s credit, he did not do anything more than peer up at it in reply as if considering the best way to strike the beast down.

Though Twilight did not appreciate the difference, the crowd did and while some outside the ring of spectators were terrified of the dragon, those who knew enough about the DuelRune grids to know that before the monsters had always been kind of static and nowhere near this interactive, were impressed.

“Blue Eyes!” Lightning called, over confident grin plastered across his features as his three thousand attack point beast stared down at Twilight’s fourteen hundred attack point Warrior, “Destroy her Guardian and end the game!”

The huge dragon, which was easily the same height as the nearby buildings reared back it’s great head and opened its maw, building up a blast of light and electricity before loosing it to strike the Warrior below who did not stand a chance.

Or would not have done if Twilight had not called out, “I don’t think so!” with a grin as she activated one of her face down cards, “Magic Cylinder! It negates your dragon’s attack and you take the same amount of life point damage as its attack points!”

The beam of light entered one of the two multi-coloured cylinders and exited the other, shooting straight back at the dragon, who let out a furious roar and shattered into a million tiny, shimmering pieces.

White Lightning’s life points hit zero almost instantly.

“I don’t remember that being in your deck.” Lightning commented, his tone neutral though his expression was anything but. Instead an odd mix of curiosity, anger and excitement featured prominently upon his face as Twilight stepped off of the sigil and packed away her deck.

“I might not have played much since you left school, but I’ve kept upgrading my deck.” Twilight replied with a nervous smile before turning to her companion, “Spike, we need to go.”

“But Twilight…”

“Now, Spike.” Twilight’s tone brokered no argument. The dragonet scurried to Twilight’s side as she settled the saddle bag back on her rear. Before he could climb up the unicorn levitated him onto her back and the crowd parted for her again, this time more in awe than anything. Before anyone could say anything about how easily she had won that duel, Twilight galloped away to somewhere a little more private.

“You know,” Spike commented when Twilight finally slowed down, “We could have done the letter there rather than racing away like that.”

“I didn’t want to cause a panic.” Twlight shook her head, using that as the excuse rather than the fact that she had felt awkward being stared at by that many ponies and that White Lightning had creeped her out a bit. It did not help her mood at all that seeing his broken horn reminded her that while her special talent was magic, it could be taken away from her just as easily as Lightning had lost his and she did not know what she would do if she ever lost it. “Now please Spike, take a letter.”

“Fine, fine.” Spike grumbled, pulling out a quill and parchment and putting it to paper. “Ready.”

“Dear Princess Celestia,” Twilight started, smiling slightly as Spike started scribbling it down, rather proud of the young dragonet who had worked so hard to learn how to write. She had been studying under Princess Celestia for as long as the baby dragon had been alive and Spike had been desperate to help her in any way he could. In the end she had caught him copying her written work in a rather sloppy scrawl and had started teaching him in what little spare time she had. “I have been diligently continuing my studies and have found that we may be on the precipice of disaster...”

“Pre-ci…” Spike looked at her in obvious confusion causing her to sigh and remind herself that he was still learning the language. He was a baby dragon after all.

“The edge?” She tried instead, discarding some of the bigger words she had been about to offer in the place of ‘precipice’ and nodding when Spike wrote that down without a problem. “I have found evidence that the Mare in the Moon is in fact the Alicorn Sorceress, Nightmare Moon and that she plans to return during this Summer Sun Celebration to try and bring an eternal night.” Twilight dictated slowly enough for Spike to keep up with her. “Something must be done before this disas… can happen.” She changed what she was going to say midword, reminding herself that Spike wouldn’t be able to spell it, “I await your reply, your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.”

“Twi...light...Spar...kle.” Spike finished the letter off with a flourish and a grin.

“Alright, Spike, send it.” Twilight ordered, only to frown when her companion hesitated, “What?”

“Now?” The purple dragon asked even as he rolled up the letter and sealed it with a thin red band. “I mean she’s going to be really busy with the celebration, it’s only a couple of days away.”

“I know, Spike, but that’s the point. If Nightmare Moon is returning, then the Princess has to be warned.” The mare replied, frustrated, “I’ve wasted enough in responding to Lightning’s bait as it was and it’s imperative that she gets that letter right away.”

“Imperative?” Spike asked confused.

“Important!” Twilight exploded in frustration, trying not to take it out on Spike but unable to bottle it up much more when she knew she had taught Spike the meaning of ‘imperative’ last week.

“Alright, but you’re allowed to have fun.” Spike objected, before loosing a small green flame that seemed to burn up the letter. The ashes floated in the air for a moment before becoming sparkles that shimmered as they shot upwards, over the rooftops and headed towards the palace. “And I bet she already knows. I mean its Princess Celestia. She knows everything.”

“Even if she does, at least I’ve sent my letter. I couldn’t just find out that without trying to warn her.” The filly replied, feeling a weight lift off of her shoulders as she trotted towards the library that was home. It had not started that way. Originally it had been her and a few books, but over the course of her studies she had steadily built up her own personal library of research texts and copies of books she had found interesting in the stacks of the school and palace libraries.

She always felt more comfortable amongst the lengthy volumes than she did amongst other ponies and after running into the one pony she had both looked forward to seeing again and dreaded meeting once again she wanted nothing more than to return to her beloved books and hide until she was certain he was gone.

Spike seemed to know what she needed and the moment they were through the door, he cleared a space for her on the desk and pulled a golden box down from its hiding place behind a huge text on dragon care that Twilight had memorised years ago when she had first hatched him.

Twilight herself dumped her bag by the door and flopped down on the cushion next to the rather worn wooden desk, staring at the box for a few moments before seeming to make up her mind and opening it.

Spike knew why she had hesitated before opening the golden box. It contained the fragments of an Ancient Equigyptian artefact that her dam-sire, Treasure Trove, had brought home from one of his many trips abroad. Supposedly it was cursed but neither Twilight nor Spike had seen evidence of such a thing. Inside the golden box with its odd eye like symbol were about fifty pieces of an ancient puzzle that Treasure Trove had said was ‘the ultimate test.’ Twilight had been trying to complete it for about eight years.