Sweetie Belle awoke with a start, confused and in pain. She looked around in a panic, not understanding why she was not in her bed in Ponyville and not knowing where she was at all- -until the memories slowly started to return. She realized that she was lying in bed, and that she was still in Fleur’s castle.

Time had passed. It was night now, and little light came through her window. To see, she ignited the glow of her horn, lighting the room around her and casting long, deep shadows from the various furniture. For just a moment, she had expected to see a pair of eyes staring back at her, but the light illuminted no other ponies. Just an empty room.

Slowly, Sweetie Belle sat up. She winced as she did, feeling a dull ache in her head. Using the light from her horn, she looked down and immediately gasped. An enormous bruise seemed to have engulfed her entire right side, darkening her otherwise perfect white coat. Even if it was only a bruise, its size was highly unnerving. Just seeing it made Sweetie Belle feel dizzy and lightheaded. Distantly, she recalled that she had fallen on that side, but something else had to have been done to her to create a mark so substantial.

In addition to the bruise, Sweetie Belle also noticed that her right shoulder and head had been bandaged. Whoever had moved her back to her bed had, apparently, taken care to apply what first aid they could. Based on the way the bandages were applied, whoever did it had hardly been sloppy, either. They had known what they were doing, as if they had done it many, many times before.

Confused and still bleary, Sweetie Belle did not bother to think further on this subject. Instead, she slowly and shakily got out of bed and, with some difficulty, processed a better illumination spell. The various candles throughout the room suddenly ignited with pale green fire, providing far more light. This increased illumination was enough for Sweetie Belle to slowly walk to a chair in the far side of the room near the old phonograph.

Just walking there took a great deal of effort, and although Sweetie Belle was slowly recovering she still flopped into the seat with a long sigh of relief. After sitting there for a moment, she looked at the phonograph. It was definitely an antique, but it was well made. Not just even well-made, she realized, but a factor of ten better in quality than the already high-grade one she possessed at home. At least from outer appearance, of course.

Deciding that some music would relax her, Sweetie Belle opened the fancy cabinet below the phonograph. There was only one record in it, unfortunately, but Sweetie Belle decided to risk the possibility of it being bad. With her head propped on one hoof, she levitated the disk out of its package and placed it on the phonograph. She then wound the device, engaged the turntable, and set the needle, all with expert precision. At the same time, she was sure to turn down the volume to its second lowest setting. She knew that Rarity’s room was near Fleur’s on the far side of the castle, but she was not sure where the servants stayed and she did not want to wake them up.

The phonograph immediately began playing, and Sweetie Belle was pleased to hear that it was not especially bad. Having a cutie mark that related to music, she was more discerning than most ponies when it came to that field. Although she preferred more experimental pieces, the light classical music that the phonograph began to emit had certainly been performed with great technical precision. The phonograph was, likewise, of extremely high quality. As far as Sweetie Belle could tell, the only defect came from an odd audio distortion that likely resulted from a defect in the disk itself, either from being pressed poorly or from having been damaged by time and temperature fluctuations.

The sound was calming, and Sweetie Belle began to feel herself falling back asleep. The world was fading again when she was suddenly startled awake by the needle inexplicably running across the record, producing a scratching sound. This caused Sweetie Belle to bolt upright. She looked at the phonograph, realizing that the needle had struck a substantial scratch and been driven all the way off. She had never seen anything like that happen before, though.

More strange, though, was something that she took a few moments to admit to herself. When the record had scratched, she thought she had heard something else. It could have been an illusion, a distortion of the audio from the turntable echoing through the large room. Sweetie Belle knew sound, though, and she was almost certainly sure that she had heard something else. Something outside her room. Something that sounded almost like a voice.

Her heart suddenly started beating quickly, and Sweetie Belle stood up. She looked to the door of the room, which was located so far from the magically lit candles that it was not entirely illuminated. Instead, it seemed to be an inky square in the middle of a wall whose floral patterned paper suddenly looked so very sinister.

No secondary sounds came. There was no sound of hoofsteps, or of breathing, or even more voices. The castle had suddenly gone eerily silent. Not even the wind outside seemed to be making noise. Sweetie Belle found herself wishing for the music back, even if it did have a mild defect- -but then realized that with the music on, she had no way of hearing what sounds had been lurking around her in the dark of the castle.

Slowly, though, she approached the door. Her mind began to rationalize what she had heard. It was not unreasonable that she could have, in fact, heard a pony speaking, or coughing. One of the servants could be awake, and Muguet most likely was. She might even be waiting outside the door in case Sweetie Belle needed anything. The sound was probably just her gasping at the sudden sound of the turntable scratching. Sweetie Belle herself had been jolted awake by it, and this was not an unreasonable conclusion.

Yet, somehow, she was still afraid. Not just a little afraid, but almost desperately so. This was made even worse because she knew how illogical it was. There was nothing dangerous in this castle; it was a castle, after all, and it had been DESIGNED to keep bad things out. Some deeper part of Sweetie Belle’s mind, though, was fixated on the idea that she would throw open the door to find the gray eyes of a tall unicorn staring back at her as he smiled with a grin that looked as though it had been posed in an expensive mortuary.

Despite this, Sweetie Belle could for some reason not stop herself. She grasped the heavy door with her magic, and, bracing herself, threw it open.

Of course there was nothing there. There was no REASON for anything to be there, after all. Just fears left over from the vestiges of the fillyhood that Sweetie Belle was on the verge of exiting. Even in a world of magic, the supernatural was just stories. Sweetie Belle had studied with Twilight long enough to know that there were no ghosts, demons, or any monsters unknown to the wizards who had cataloged and identified all of them in distant antiquity. For some reason, though, she still felt so very afraid.

For some reason, Sweetie Belle felt herself walking forward instead of backward. The hallway was clear and empty. Muguet was not there, nor were Silver or even Snipper. Neither was Rarity, or Fleur, or even the white unicorn who should not have existed. There was nothing at all except for darkness.

Then a loud boom echoed through the hallway, causing Sweetie Belle to cry out and jump. The door to her room had suddenly and spontaneously slammed shut behind her.

“It’s just the wind,” she said, trying to calm herself down. She knew that had to be the case. The window in her room was open, after all, as it normally was. A pressure difference had caused the door to shut, a result of the wind. The wind that she had not heard at all in the several minutes that she had spent in that room, listening with all of her concentration.

At the same time the door had slammed, though, Sweetie Belle thought she had heard a parallel sound. Something from far down the long hallway. She was not sure what it was, though. Perhaps an echo. Or something being dragged.

“Hello?” called Sweetie Belle, taking a step forward. “Is that you, Muguet?”

There was no response. Sweetie Belle turned slowly to go back to her room when she definitely heard a voice. It was distant, but she turned around suddenly, only to just barely catch a glimpse of something white passing out of sight at far end of the corridor.

“Muguet,” said Sweetie Belle. “This isn’t funny! I’m not a thestral, I can’t see in the dark like this!”

Sweetie Belle froze as she heard a response. It was not Muguet at all, though. Instead, it was a very distant whisper, barely audible but clearly identifiable as belonging to a pony. Who, exactly, was unclear, as was the content of the whisper. Sweetie Belle had heard words, but they were not in any language that she understood. It seemed to consist almost entirely of consonants, and was not at all consistent with Alicornic or any dialect of the local language.

Even after hearing this, though, Sweetie Belle found herself walking forward, now more quickly. Even she did not know what was motivating her. Curiosity, perhaps, or a paradoxical fear that she would never be able to go back to sleep without knowing where the whispering had been coming from.

Sweetie Belle did not know how long it took for her to reach the end of the hallway. Time seemed to flow poorly in the dark, or at least to have become imperceptible. It could have taken her hours, or seconds. She had no idea.

At the end, though, there was nothing. No sign at all that a pony had been there, save for an open window creaking almost inaudibly as the slight breeze from outside buffeted against it. Sweetie Belle approached it, thinking that the latch had been improperly secured and that it had been blown open. As she reached up to it with her magic, though, she stopped to look out. The moon was mostly obscured by the clouds above, and the forest-garden outside was dark- -save for the orange glow of a lantern.

Sweetie Belle stopped and squinted into the darkness. Her eyes had already adjusted from the darkness, and it only took her a few seconds to see that the lantern was sitting next to Feathery Snipper. Her body, being white, was highly visible even in the dim moonlight. It also became apparent that she was talking to another white pony.

For a brief moment, Sweetie Belle expected to see a long horn protruding from that pony’s head. Instead, though, she quickly realized that he was just Silver. This made her feel relieved, but only slightly. It still did not explain why the pair of them were standing outside in the middle of the night, talking.

Then, suddenly, Feathery Snipper turned her head sharply, looking up at the window where Sweetie Belle was standing. Sweetie Belle immediately ducked below the window, covering her mouth to prevent herself from crying out. She was not really sure why; she had done nothing wrong by watching them. Something told her, though, that it was best not to be seen.

She waited for what felt like several minutes before the curiosity became too much for Sweetie Belle to bear. She poked her head over the windowsill and looked out again. She only briefly caught a glimpse of the lantern, and of a white flank vanishing into the trees. They had both moved somewhere out of sight.

“What was that all about?” asked Sweetie Belle. No answer came, of course, which she was surprisingly pleased about. She stared out for a moment longer, looking at the gardens from above. Then she turned back to the long, dark hallway.

Once again, though, Sweetie Belle froze. She felt her heart seem to stop for a moment before resuming at top speed. At the far end of the distant hallway, illuminated by the moonlight through a window, she saw a flash of white and pink, and a pair of almost luminescent yellow eyes staring back at her.

Sweetie Belle almost panicked and ran, until she realized that the pony she was looking at had to be Fleur. No other pony she knew was that tall, and the pink mane was a dead giveaway.

“Fleur!” she sighed, having to raise her voice to ensure it would carry the almost sixty feet between them. “You scared me!”

There was no response, even after Sweetie Belle waited for several seconds. Fleur continued to stand there, perfectly still and impassive, save for her unblinking stare. A stare that seemed to hold Sweetie Belle and ONLY Sweetie Belle in its focus.

“Fleur?” asked Sweetie Belle. “Miss…Miss De’Lis?”

There was still no answer, and still no motion. Confused, Sweetie Belle suddenly felt an urge to run, but found that she could not. A second, more practical voice in her head told here that Fleur was not a scary pony, and that if she was standing there like that there could be something really wrong with her. She could be hurt, or be having some kind of seizure. Fleur was Rarity’s friend, and a nice mare, and Sweetie Belle could not just leave her there without being sure.

“Fleur?” she said again as she approached. “Is something wrong? Are you sick?”

Fleur still did not respond. She just continued to stare, blankly. As Sweetie Belle got closer, though, she realized that Fleur was not entirely impassive. Fleur’s eyes were moving, following her as she moved.

“Hello?”

When Sweetie Belle was no more than ten feet away, Fleur suddenly reacted. The shock of it was so great that Sweetie Belle nearly fainted, despite the mildness of her behavior. Fleur simply turned away and started walking silently down a parallel hallway.

“Pas encore, mère,” she said, her voice distant, as though she were still asleep. “Pas encore. Presque…”

Sweetie Belle, now in a state of shock, watched her go. She stared for a moment before hearing a voice again- -but this time not Fleurs.

“Mae hi'n gwaedu,” whispered a voice, speaking clearly and directly into Sweetie Belle’s ear. It was so close that she thought she could feel the sensation of breath across her coat. She also smelled a strange scent. Not the odd, almost musky scent that Fleur had, but something far more sickly, like lilies that had begun to decay.

Sweetie Belle turned sharply, but saw nothing beside her or behind her, save for the empty hallway.

“Fleur?” she said, now wanting to catch up with the older mare. She suddenly did not want to be alone. Even if Fleur was sleepwalking, being with her was better than being left alone in a place that Sweetie Belle was increasingly beginning to believe was haunted.

Fleur, though, seemed to have vanished. Sweetie Belle followed what she thought was the path that the mare had taken, but saw no sign of her. She would of course have left no tracks, but for her to have gotten out of sight so quickly in the long halls would have required her to be moving with almost impossible speed. Even the smell of her perfume was fading, as though she had passed through hours before instead of mere seconds ago.

It only took a few minutes for Sweetie Belle to lose the trail entirely. By this time, she had become completely lost. The castle was enormous, and the floorplan tended not to be consistent or regular like an institutional building of the same size. Within a few minutes of walking, Sweetie Belle found herself in a place that she had never been before. After a few more minutes of trying to find her way back, she realized that in the dark it was almost impossible to find consistent landmarks.

So, she kept moving forward. The house was big, but it was not infinite. Sweetie Belle assumed that by wandering enough, she would eventually come to a place that she recognized. At the very least, she would find a staircase to the ground level. If she could just get outside, it would not be hard to follow the edge of the castle back to its front door.

After nearly an hour of walking, though, she had found no such way out. Instead, the character of the castle had begun to change. The ornate, elegant, modern fixtures gave way to simple unadorned ones, and then finally to bare stone walls. These regions were far colder than the rest of the mansion, and distinctly more drafty. The only light came from small, high windows that lined some of the walls. The ground here was dirty, and in some places stained. In some places, various items- -usually those associated with construction, but in some cases old and decaying barrels or containers- -had been stacked against the walls or into small alcoves off from the main hallways. The whole place smelled as though it had not been occupied in decades.

This made Sweetie Belle even more nervous. In the back of her mind, she knew that if she got lost in this area, it would be a long time before any pony came to find her. Worse, the schematic of the castle became even more complicated in its much larger old section. When Sweetie Belle eventually managed to find a window that she could reach, she realized that her elevation had only increased. Now, instead of just the forest, she could see the top of the crumbling stone, and beyond that nothing but the inky blackness of the emptiness beyond.

She tried not to panic, but it was almost impossible. The wind pushing through the winding, curving stone walls had the effect of filling the darkness with what sounded like voices, and the presence of so much decaying clutter made it difficult for Sweetie Belle to light her path completely. The way the shadows moved was strange, and the feeling of being watched was almost impressive.

Just when Sweetie Belle was about to bolt, though, she instead stopped. Below her were several sets of hoofprints in the dust. Seeing this, she almost fainted, thinking that somepony was now following her. Her rational mind stopped her, though, and reminded her that hoofprints really meant that somepony had been there recently. With this in mind, Sweetie Belle felt a glimmer of hope and began to follow in the direction that the prints were going.

That venture did not last long. The trail was strangely short, and at one point just stopped, as though the pony who had made them had simply vanished. This made Sweetie Belle shiver, but she pressed forward. Just when it looked as though she was about to become lost again, she found herself standing next to a large wooden door standing slightly ajar off of the cavernous stone hallway.

Confused by this, Sweetie Belle stopped. Then, without warning or really considering why, she pushed the door the rest of the way open, causing it to screech and squeal on its rusted hinges. The room on the other side was devoid of windows entirely, and was completely pitch black. A new smell met Sweetie Belle from within: a strange, musty odor of old things in an old place.

Curious, Sweetie Belle stepped into the darkness. Her light only reached out a few feet from her horn, and she saw several objects near her but not clearly. Deciding that this was a room where she could at least wait for somepony to find her, Sweetie Belle sat down and deactivated her light. This left her in absolute darkness, and she could hear things moving in it. Mostly small things- -probably rats- -but also something much more quiet and much louder.

Doing her best to ignore those things, Sweetie Belle focused on composing a spell. Just as whatever the large thing was began to come toward her, nearing her slowly to a distant of mere feet, several blinding white spheres of light erupted from her horn. The room was suddenly bathed in pale green light as the orbs flew out at high speed, arcing and curving before slowing and finally taking their places floating in the high portions of the room.

There had been nothing approaching her, Sweetie Belle saw, as she had on some level expected. Still shaking, though, she stood up and looked into what had formerly been darkness. The spell had not been completely successful, and her lights were still somewhat dim. Adding to their apparent inadequacy was the fact that the room was far more enormous than she had expected. It stretched out to the sides of the door toward two rows of heavy columns, and then forward like a long hall. The walls themselves were made of unadorned stone, although in a few places tattered banners hung that showed what Sweetie Belle assumed was the De’Lis family insignia, the same one that Fleur had for a cutie mark. The floor consisted of rough, long-rotted wood over heavy stone, and the ceiling consisted of high arches that looked like they might once have supported chandeliers.

The room was not empty. Around the edges, construction supplies and equipment had been stacked, although from the look of them they had last been used sometime in the sixties and had since been abandoned and forgotten. Those, though, were only marginally interesting compared to what was in the middle.

Sweetie Belle instantly recalled what Fleur had said: that Feathery Snipper had been constructing a kind of personal museum in an unused hall of the castle’s old section. This was that old section, and this was that hall.

Carefully, Sweetie Belle approached the center. The area that once might have been used for hosting feasts- -or perhaps for extensive dancing back in the medieval period- -had been filled with various articles of various sizes in shape that appeared to have been partially categorized and organized to create several uneven paths through them.

Sweetie Belle entered, staring in mild awe at the diversity of the things that had been collected. Much of it was furniture of various ages and in various states of decay. Most of it was missing pieces, or had experienced severe water damage, but all of it was tremendously old. These wardrobes, dressers, and ornately carved pieces of things whose functions had been forgotten to all the most studied of historians sat amongst rotting and rusted equipment of various types. Sweetie Belle knew even less of what those things were for, save for the simple articles like shovels or the peculiar preponderance of shears and blades that sat propped up against the larger machinery. Some of it was clearly agricultural, although Sweetie Belle saw at least one loom and two spindles.

Sitting amongst these were other, far less mundane things. There were swords and halberds, and a few rusted suits of incomplete armor sitting amongst damaged paintings and stacks of dusty glass jars. Beside those were display cases of tarnished, broken jewelry or of neatly folded, ancient looking garments. Some of the more decayed garments had been placed on a small contingent of moth-eaten, skeletal mannequins. Rarity would have wept at the sight of those clothes; they had become dusty and drab in the long years since their creation, and they gave the rotting mannequins that they had been lovingly placed upon the unsettling impression of being things that had recently crawled free of their graves.

“Creepy,” muttered Sweetie Belle, shivering as she instead turned her attention to an uneven pile of old blueprints and books, and then toward, of all things, an enormous and unexploded Pegasus-borne incendiary bomb from the Second Equestrian War. It was not in good condition, either; its surface was rusted and warped, and in some spots the mud that it had been dug out of was still clinging to it. Sweetie Belle supposed that Feathery Snipper had probably found it in the course of her gardening duties, and then for some less-than-rational reason decided to keep it.

Passing the antique bomb, Sweetie Belle came to the far end of the exhibit. There, the end was demarked by a large and damaged statue. It appeared to be made of some substance that resembled plaster, except harder. Had the statue been complete, Sweetie Belle might even have suspected that it was made of an immense piece of alabaster. Instead, though, she could quite clearly see the rusting framework of rebar emerging from the damaged figures: a pair of life-sized unicorns, one of them reduced almost entirly to a pair of legs, and standing between them a far larger representation of a white alicorn. The alicorn was standing on her rear legs, making her seem hauntingly tall and narrow as she reared up. One of her wings was missing, and the top half of her horn had broken away, but her eyes remained intact. They were almost frighteningly lifelike.

Sweetie Belle’s eyes lingered on this statue for what felt like several minutes. Something about it just seemed so haunting, the way that it had been broken and forgotten- -as well as why anypony had wanted something like that even when it had been complete. Eventually, though, her attention was attracted to a large but very old looking cork board that had been propped against a drawerless dresser beside the statue. Sweetie Belle blinked for a moment, realizing that the board was covered in papers of varying ages. Many were old to the point of yellowing, but several looked almost recent. All of them were small, and had notes written on them in a language that Sweetie Belle was not able to read.

This drew Sweetie Belle’s attention even more than the statue, if only because it was out of place. This was not something historical or old, at least as far as she could tell. It was not a relic, nor had it apparently been found in the castle; instead, somepony had created it. From the look of it, somepony had been planning something extremely complex.

Leaning closer did not help Sweetie Belle to be able to understand the foreign alphabet. Instead, it just made her eyes hurt. When she finally leaned back and allowed her eyes to readjust, she cried out and jumped as she saw a pair of eyes staring at her from behind the cork board.

This shock faded, though, when Sweetie Belle realized that they were not actual eyes at all. Instead, they were the eyes of a painted pony drawn on a covered canvas that the board was leaning against. Confused as to why this would be covered, Sweetie Belle shifted the board out of the way and grasped the dirty cloth that was covering the painting. Then, with one quick motion, she levitated it away.

The painting underneath appeared quite old, although it was difficult to tell. The surface showed signs of having gathered a great deal of dust and oxidation, but that just could have been a matter of its storage. Even more noticeable than that, though, was the fact that it was quite clearly unfinished. The majority of the yellowed canvass consisted of dark sketching where the painter had drawn his subjects before filling in the blocked-out shapes with paint. Only a small portion had actually been painted successfully.

Even with what little had been finished, though, Sweetie Belle recognized at least one of the figures well enough to gasp. The painting was- -or had been intended to be- -a portrait of two ponies. The larger of the two was Fleur, her face painted to perfectly capture exactly how she appeared in life. She seemed to be staring out at Sweetie Belle, not quite smiling. Beside her was a pony that Sweetie Belle did not recognize. He was a colt, probably at least Sweetie Belle’s age but possibly a little younger. Less of him had been completed, but the painting was whole enough for Sweetie Belle to be able to see that he was a white Pegasus with inky black hair and equally black but still glad looking eyes. It had been him who Sweetie Belle had seen staring back at her.

“You shouldn’t be here!” hissed a voice from behind Sweetie Belle, causing her to cry out again and jump. She turned sharply, bringing her lights close to the pony behind her and seeing that it was Muguet. In the sudden bright light, her blue eyes narrowed to a pair of hideous vertical slits. In the harsh glow and sharp shadows, she looked much less genial and pleasant than she normally did. For a moment, Sweetie Belle actually felt afraid.

Muguet took a step forward, her blue eyes never leaving Sweetie Belle. “What do you think you are doing?” she said, continuing with the same aggressive tone as before. She sounded almost like a different pony.

“Muguet, what’s wrong?” asked Sweetie Belle, taking a step back.

“I asked you a question!” cried Muguet, suddenly. Her expression of anger broke, and Sweetie Belle realized that she had been misreading the girl. Muguet’s expression was not one of hatred, but of terror. “Why did you come to this place?”

“I- -I got lost!”

“That isn’t an excuse!” Muguet looked around the room, nearly panicking. Sweetie Belle wondered what her powerful thestral eyes were allowing her to see that she herself could not. “This is the old section! It is not safe! The floors are unstable, and it is very, VERY easy to get lost and…and to not come back.”

“I didn’t know- -”

“And of all the places to come to, THIS place! You had to come HERE! If she finds you- -”

“What’s wrong with here? What is this place?”

Muguet just shook her head, refusing to answer. One of her long, batlike ears suddenly pricked, and what little color she had drained from her face. “She’s coming!”

Now even Sweetie Belle was feeling frightened, in part because she did not understand what was going on and in part because of how afraid her friend clearly was. Before she could try to ask again, though, Muguet jumped at her. To Sweetie Belle, this was quite shocking, and she momentarily wondered if the thestral was attacking her. Instead of feeling Muguet’s teeth, though, she felt her hooves around her. Then she felt her own hooves leaving the ground.

“Turn out your lights!” whispered Muguet, even as she was quite clearly struggling to elevate the weight of two ponies.

Sweetie Belle trusted Muguet and did as she was told. The room once again went completely dark. Muguet, though, was apparently able to see quite well, and the pair of them only drifted through the dark for a moment longer before Sweetie Belle felt her hooves touching cold stone. Since she had not felt herself descend at any point, she assumed she was standing on a high ledge.

Muguet kept her hoof on Sweetie Belle’s shoulder, apparently quite aware that the unicorn was not able to see in the dark. Sweetie Belle resisted lighting her horn, even though the pure darkness of the room was almost crushing. She was not aware how she had ever managed to be alone in it.

The darkness did not last long, though. The silence of the room was broken by the sound of echoing hoofsteps, and then a dim, flickering light came through the door. Sweetie Belle realized that it was from a lantern. She and Muguet both ducked down, peering over the edge to see Feathery Snipper enter the room.

Upon entering, the Pegasus increased the output of her lantern, but it was still only enough to barely light the area in front of her, producing a tiny spot of orange that cast long shadows in every direction as it fell on her collection of relics and curios. Snipper paused, as if realizing that something was amiss. Her dark eyes scanned the area around her, and Sweetie Belle felt her breath catch in her throat as Snipper’s eyes seemed to linger on the high part of the room where she and Muguet were hiding.

That upper corner, though, was still far too dark for Snipper’s lantern light to penetrate. She did not see them, and continued on into the darkness. Sweetie Belle watched as she came to the statue of the two unicorns and alicorn, barely pausing before turning toward the painting. Even at a distance, Sweetie Belle could see Feathery Snipper’s eyes narrow. She knew that somepony had been there.

“This way!” whispered Muguet, tugging at Sweetie Belle. Sweetie Belle looked up, and realized that the extremely dim glow of Snipper’s lantern had revealed the fact that the ledge at the upper corner of the room was continuous with a small opening that seemed to lead elsewhere. Muguet was pulling Sweetie Belle toward it and gesturing for her to follow.

Sweetie Belle, of course, did. She tried to remain as quiet as possible, and only stopped to take one look back. Feathery Snipper was still staring at the painting. For some reason, though, Sweetie Belle though that she could hear the distant sound of quiet sobbing. H^>�?}i