I can see you. .

Celestia studied the scroll with academic detachment. “You’re sure this is the right one?”

“Yes,” replied Silver Quill, the court transcriber. “It changed again since I last looked at it. It was full of hieroglyphs and symbols. It didn’t make any sense.”

Celestia tapped her hoof on the floor thoughtfully. “Ancient Equestrian?”

“Not any variation I’ve seen. And the pictures, Ma’am--there were pictures.”

“Pictures?” Celestia looked through the arched windows of Everfree Castle, into the ancient forests surrounding the city. The sun was coming down, throwing the city into hazy orange relief. Perhaps there was something in the castle library to be read about this. Silver Quill started talking again, but the thought of going back to the royal study and settling down for the day pulled Celestia’s attention away. Perhaps a nice book. Some tea. It had been a long week even before Silver Quill had burst into court informing her of this supposedly cursed scroll.

A cursed scroll was troubling on many levels. Chiefly that it was taking time away from Celestia’s allotted break time. There were things to do. Time to waste. The great beasts inside her newest leisure books hadn’t yet been tamed. It would take at least three readings to throw the shadows off their backs. Never one. Always more.

She returned to the present moment as Silver Quill nickered and said, “I can’t bear to think of them. I just can’t.”

Celestia put a hoof on the earth pony’s shoulder. “No need to. So, the writing on the scroll changes on its own. That’s a basic enchantment.”

“There’s something different about it. None of the mages could find the source of any spell. I checked with half a dozen of them.”

“Then we’ll check with a dozen more. I’m sure someone will be able to account for this strangeness. I will admit, the pictures are a bit of a twist.”

“It’s not a twist. It’s a curse.”

“Don’t be silly. I checked the scroll for curses the moment you pulled it out. Nothing of the sort.”

Silver Quill said, wide-eyed, “Did you check it for any other kinds of spells?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

Celestia pursed her lips together. “Perhaps we’ll need more than twelve mages.”

Silver Quill’s eyes darted down the hall, to the corners of the room--anything but Celestia or the scroll. “You couldn’t find any spells either.”

“Miss Quill, if the mages are unable to find anything I promise I will get to the bottom of this myself. There’s nothing to fear.”

“Okay... okay, Ma’am.” Silver Quill took a deep breath and nodded slowly. “And when you’re done, you should burn it.”

Celestia laughed and rolled up the scroll with her magic. “Waste not, want not. Maybe I’ll use it as a shopping list.”

Silver Quill gave her a disturbed look, then gathered up the rest of her engraving supplies and left without another word. She paused at the door and gave a small bow before disappearing.

The sight of her friend so cowed almost made Celestia laugh, though she held it in until Silver Quill was out of earshot. The fear that once accompanied strange happenings had departed long ago. Battles and puzzles had sharpened her mind and steeled her heart. It felt good to be a hero, she thought.

Out of curiosity, she unrolled the scroll again to re-read the message.

But it had changed.

I can see you, alicorn. .

She snapped the scroll shut and made for the mages’ quarters.

That night at dinner, Luna was asking more questions than usual.

“I heard there was an attempt on your life today.”

Celestia nearly spat out her salad. “Obviously not.”

“Obviously? Perhaps it was just a very poor attempt.”

“There was no attempt on my life, Luna. Who told you this lie?”

Luna shrugged, her gaze aimed at a plate of chicken made especially for her carnivorous sensibilities. “My guards told me. They heard it from your guards. They heard it from someone else.”

“Well, it’s not true.”

“Of course.” Luna nodded and returned to her meal.

A moment of harsh silence followed.

Luna continued, “The guards said your transcriber tried to kill you with a cursed scroll.”

“Luna!” Celestia pushed her salad away and glared down the table. “Do you do anything in night court but gossip?”

The jab tripped a predatory smile on the younger sister’s face. “I’m sorry, dearest. I can only say what I heard.”

“Well, it’s not true.”

“Of course.”

“I mean it. It’s not true.”

“Of course,” Luna said, throwing her hooves up defensively. “I will speak no more of it.”

Porcelain squeaked against hardwood as Celestia moved her salad back to her side of the table. She stuffed leaves dripping with bright red vinegar dressing into her mouth and chewed for a long moment. When the leering silence seemed to abate, she mumbled through a mouthful of food, “The scroll is not cursed.”

Dinner was concluded without dessert, and Celestia slipped away to the mages’ quarters under a deluge of laughter and more questions from her sister.

The mages’ quarters were a series of concrete catacombs built beneath the center of Everfree castle. To deter visitors and spies, the quarters were built with only one entrance, a single hallway jutting up from the underground structure and ending three lengths before the castle hallway began. In effect, the castle and the quarters were two entirely distinct structures.

When the princess arrived at the dead-end hallway signaling the start of the mages’ quarters, she performed a quick set of spells and phased through the wall. The first pony she saw on the other side, a new hire from Zebrica, shrieked and swung a book at her.

Once the damage to the book (which, of course, had been impaled on Celestia’s horn) was assessed, and the proper apologies given, Celestia worked their way through the dim and cluttered hallways to the heart of the labyrinth. There, she found the castle’s archmage, Silver Spell, chatting with a clearly terrified Silver Quill. In his mage’s robes, Silver Spell had the vague appearance of a ghost. Silver Quill, on the other hand, looked ready to become one.

“I see you two have been acquainted,” Celestia said, laying a hoof on Silver Quill’s shoulder. She took the cue gladly, and took a step away from the dead-eyed mage.

“Acquaintance is for friends, Ma’am,” Silver Spell said, “and I would rather not.”

Celestia nodded. Silver Spell had a certain way with words. Probably came from studying too many dead languages.

The mage continued, “Silver Quill has provided the remaining details about the contents of the scroll. Its current state remains unchanged.”

“May I see it?” Celestia asked.

Silver Spell nodded and hoofed her the scroll. “Use your hooves. Don’t touch it with your magic in case it feeds off mana.”

“Only cursed objects have that power,” Celestia said reassuringly, but took the scroll in her hooves all the same.

I can see you. .

The message had changed again, but Celestia made no mention of it. “What have you found, Silver?”

Both ponies looked up. Silver Spell spoke first. “We found your initial observations were consistent. No apparent curses. No hint of any spells at all, actually.”

“I’ve already submitted my report,” Silver Quill said, “I think there are other matters which require my attention above ground.”

“I think you should stay,” Celestia replied. “The scroll may have some sort of special attachment to you.”

Silver Quill shot Celestia a pleading look. “Ma’am?”

Celestia sighed and capitulated. “Have one of the lesser mages escort you out.”

Silver Quill shot away from Silver Spell and down the hall.

“She may have a hoof in this,” Silver Spell said ominously, “whether she knows it or not.”

Celestia smiled and gave the scroll back to the mage. “You two share many similarities, names aside.” Her smile seemed to glow in the half-light. “You’re both scared of this scroll.”

Silver Spell looked away, a scowl writing itself onto his already sore features. “If I really feared something, princess, I would let one of the interns do it. I simply fail to see how a frankly unmagical scroll is worthy of so much of my time. Did you know I’m working on a cure for death? Is this more important than that?”

Celestia considered his words for a moment. “Perhaps not. Perhaps you simply haven’t looked deep enough yet.”

Silver Spell sighed and unrolled the scroll.

It had changed again.

I can see you, sorcerer. .

Silver Spell stared at the page, the corners of his robe swaying ever so slightly as he rocked from side to side. “I... think I shall resume testing,” he murmured, and disappeared in a puff of smoke.

The following days were a flurry of study. Questioning the scroll directly yielded nothing other than exasperation from Silver Spell, who Celestia expected was spending more time talking to that piece of paper than he had any pony in years. The other mages were growing uncomfortable around the increasingly agitated archmage, but Celestia let the situation play out undisturbed. Perhaps, she thought, the scroll might respond to anger.

During dinnertime on the third day, a courier trotted into the dining room where the two princesses were having their meal, bearing a sealed letter from Silver Spell.

Celestia glanced at Luna. She was eyeing the letter, her strange-smelling steak forgotten. “Is that--”

“That is nothing,” Celestia shot back, and grabbed the letter before Luna could magic it over to her side of the table.

“It is! You must share the news.”

Celestia made a mental note to keep an eye for Luna’s informants in the mages’ quarters before breaking the seal on the envelope.

A faint buzz of magic filled her ears. Words phased into being on the page.

ma’am--

scroll has changed again

intern has quit due to fright

please have envoy to canterlot courier place an ad in the papers for a new intern and see me whenever possible

--SS

Upon reading the letter twice in its entirety, the words faded to nothing. Celestia nodded slowly before rolling the scroll up again and throwing it across the table, landing squarely atop Luna’s steak.

“Must you be so petty?” Luna asked as she brushed butter and blood off the letter. “I could hear your secrecy spell.”

“Silver Spell’s, not mine. The level of security our archmage chooses to employ falls under his discretion.”

“Perhaps you’ve harmonized your magical frequency to his? The two sound remarkably similar.”

Celestia downed her cup of wine and stood up from the table. “Why don’t you ask your mages?”

Luna’s eyes lingered on her sister for a moment before returning to her food. “I hope I haven’t upset you.”

Celestia’s face softened. “I will be at ease once I learn the secret of this scroll.”

“Silver Spell can handle that. I’m sure he’s delighted, in his own way. Perhaps he’ll simply frighten the curse into leaving.”

As Celestia made her way towards the door, she stopped to wrap a hoof around Luna’s head and squeeze gently.

“Perhaps he will,” she said.

Silver Spell seemed more upset over the intern leaving than the deciding factor in said intern’s sudden career change.

“Who else is going to handle all my paperwork and formal requests?” he asked Celestia as they made their way through the mages’ quarters, towards his office in the lowest levels. “I can’t be bothered to do it myself. The other mages are overworked as it is. I need an intern, Ma’am.”

“We will find you a suitable replacement,” Celestia reassured him. “If it was enough to frighten that poor pony, it must be rather serious.”

The hallway came to another dead end marked by a plaque on the wall which read, “archmage. No appointments. No solicitations. No smiles please.” The last one was a recent addition, probably put on by the same intern that had so recently fled.

They phased through the wall and the plaque, into a dim room with stacks of books in each corner. Silver Spell walked past a folding cot to a drawing desk outfitted with inkwells and nooks for herbs and dried potion plants. On the table sat the scroll.

Silver Spell held it open and frowned. “It’s changed again.”

Celestia saw a new phrase on the scroll, reading:

i have something for you. .

“What did it say before?” she asked.

Silver Spell snapped the scroll shut. “It said, ‘I eat ponies’, Ma’am.”

Celestia smirked. The old thrill peeked out from the corners of her memory. “How interesting.”

“Toothless, but interesting. The intern was trying to talk to it. He tried a logic-based angle, which obviously was a poor decision considering the thing is cursed.”

“It’s not cursed,” Celestia insisted.

“Of course. But if the object was cursed, it must have some kind of intent, even if it’s not a logical intent. Even if it’s just to scare idiots.”

“Who are the idiots here?” Celestia asked.

“We are. The intern thought that if it had some kind of intent, maybe it would want to communicate that intent. He asked it if it wanted anything. No response. He tried writing on it next. The words he wrote disappeared when he looked away. All that was left was the answer.”

“What did he write, exactly?”

“‘What do you want?’”

“And the reply was--”

“I eat ponies.”

Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Interesting.”

Silver Spell sighed and placed the scroll on the table. “If you’d like some time alone with it, feel free to use my office. I need to make another ad for the papers.”

With the final hours of the day fading on the mountainside somewhere far above her, Celestia took to the scroll with her fine magical tools. After a short break to lower the sun, she returned to attack the parchment with ink and quill.

Her question, penned in elegant cursive, was, What do you want?

A minute passed. Then five. The scroll said nothing. Her words remained on the page. It was only when she broke the stare to rub the sleep from her eyes that the cursive disappeared, replaced by an ugly jagged reply:

your undivided attention. .

The scroll said nothing else that night.

So it was teasing her. That much was obvious. It wanted Celestia to be patient. She could be patient. She was the embodiment of patience. She was the sun, the oldest predator in the universe, devouring atoms endlessly for billions of years. She was the grateful princess, the bastion and ear of her people. She could outlast the scroll.

Though this particular day in court was trying all that patience.

It was almost a relief when, in the middle of a speech concerning the eminent domain of golf courses, a scroll of unknown origin appeared in front of the throne with a tremendous pop and an accompanying firework. The magical rocket screamed into the ceiling at high velocity and exploded in a shower of bright red sparks.

The nobles were quickly picked up from where they collectively fell over in fright and were ushered out. Royal guard spilled from the woodwork. It reminded her of the last time someone tried to assassinate her. Though this time no one wound up with spears in their chest.

The scroll, it turned out, was an emergency summons from Silver Spell. It read:

ma’am--

new intern suffered traumatic interaction with scroll. attacked me and my mages before barricading himself in my office.

if scroll has mind degeneration effect, all those who have interacted with it should be quarantined immediately. this includes you. please meet outside my office.

--SS

The royal guard seemed to have the throne room under control. Celestia made her report to the captain of the guard and phased through the floor, bypassing the normal route. The thought of assassinations swimming in her head made her transdimensional plunge all the faster.

When she reached Silver Spell, he gasped in surprise and almost threw a combat charm at her.

“There is a reason we have compulsory horizontal travel rules,” he said, pocketing the marble-sized charm. “You can’t impress me by arriving quickly.”

“You’ve certainly impressed me with your employee turnover rate,” Celestia said, eyeing the wall leading to the archmage’s office.

A small contingent of unicorn guards filed in behind them. Silver Spell waved them off. “The intern was communicating with the scroll when he turned on us. Tried to bite me and the other two mage in the room. When we fought back, he teleported us out. That’s what I get for letting underlings into my office.”

“Triple teleportation. Quite the feat.”

“He was a gifted young stallion.” Silver Spell shrugged. “Not sure if he’s still alive, or if his proverbial egg has been scrambled. Can someone check and see if he’s still screaming?”

Before Celestia could ask what he meant, one of the unicorn guards cast a spell on the wall rendering it permeable to sound. The hallway filled with a scream like bloody murder, lasting much longer than a normal scream should have. The unicorn guards stepped back. Celestia cocked her head.

“Have you tried placing him under a sleep spell?”

“Considering all the stress he’s under, it might kill him. I’d rather you be the one that kills him, if it comes to that.”

“We will not consider killing him under any circumstances,” Celestia said scoldingly.

“He might already be dead. For the record, I think a sleep spell is a fine idea.” He stepped aside and gestured towards the door.

Celestia scowled extra bitterly, considering it would probably just encourage Silver Spell. She reached out with her magic, testing the leylines around her, probing the room for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing. Just a boy and some furniture. And the scroll. She could feel it too. It felt ordinary.

Through the magical energy of the room, she heard the intern whispering something between screams. As she honed her magical hearing, she began to pick out words.

“I’ll stop it. I’ll stop it. I’ll stop it. I’ll...”

She touched the intern’s primary leyline and bade him goodnight. When she opened her eyes, royal guard were already charging through the wall. The plaque fell to the floor with a clatter.

When the room was cleared by the guard, Celestia entered. The office had been torn apart, with papers and broken glass scattered across the floor. The only thing untouched by the intern’s outbursts was the kerosene lamp hanging from the ceiling, swinging slowly like the hanging pendulum of a clock.

Silver Spell nodded slowly. “I’ll need a new intern.”

“Of course.”

“And we both ought to quarantine ourselves. If it could do that to him, it could do the same to us.”

Celestia chuckled. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Her smile seemed to calm the remaining mages in the room. “Someone please clear out a high-danger ward. We’ll study the scroll there from now on. No quarantine is needed.”

“Ma’am, this is ill-advised.”

“I will dedicate my afternoons to studying this scroll myself. You may have time in the evenings. We will stop at nothing to ensure the cessation of any threat.”

Once the poor intern had been whisked away to a medical center, Celestia and Silver Spell transported the scroll to a vault in another section of the labyrinth, which was round at the corners sealed with a thick iron door.

Silver Spell spent the next hour warding the room with every conceivable failsafe. By the time he was through, nothing even remotely magical could move in or out, except through the door. No teleportation. No wall-phasing. No tricks.

Celestia lingered in the room while he went back to clean up the scene of the attack. After a moment of indecision, she took a peak at the scroll.

The silhouette of a fiery crown flashed across the page and disappeared. Another line of text appeared at the top.

your undivided attention. .

Celestia looked around to make sure the guards weren’t looking, then summoned ink and a quill to her side. She wrote, You have it, and walked away.

The more Celestia studied the scroll, the clearer the pictures became. Silver Quill was right to be upset over its contents. As she ran test after test, probing the paper for any sign of answer, it responded in kind with abstract images of gore and chaos. At first the pictures had an almost artistic quality. Smeared and sketchy, yes, but artistic all the same.

Then they got more lifelike.

A week of research yielded nothing except for one short conversation. Celestia and Silver Spell were taking notes together on the details of the scroll’s image (which this hour consisted of four mutilated ponies knotted together by the tails being sat on by one larger pony) when the fog of blurry ink parted and words appeared in the center of the page.

Are you alone?. .

Celestia and Silver Spell shared a look. The former picked up a quill and wrote, We are not alone.

The page came to life once more in a flurry of barely-recognizable violence. Another message appeared beneath Celestia’s reply.

You are wrong. You are very, very alone. .

The pictures disappeared. The messages vanished. Celestia and Silver Spell were left staring at a blank page.

Silver Spell muttered something under his breath and started packing up his tools. “Sounds like it’s done for today.”

“I think I’ll stay awhile longer,” Celestia said, her eyes still on the scroll.

Silver Spell shrugged, gathered up the last of his things, and knocked twice on the metal door. A pale magical glow surrounded his body as he was scanned for malicious energy. The door swung open, and two combat mages stationed outside peered in. “Are you coming too, Ma’am?” one asked. “We have to scan you too.”

“She’s not,” Silver Spell replied for her. “Lock her in.”

The door swung shut. Now she really was alone.

Not even ten seconds after the door had locked behind her, the scroll started talking again.

You are very, very alone. .

Celestia picked up her quill again and went to work. Do you possess this scroll? she wrote. What is your aim?

You are a powerful thing. It insulates you from strife, but it also isolates you. You are not the same as the rest, and they know it. .

Is power your aim? Do you want power?

You surround yourself with friends the way a gardener surrounds herself with flowers. They are all destined to die. .

Celestia paused, then wrote back, If the point of life were only to die, such a thought might upset me.

You think you are fated to plant them. .

That is the price of power. You must plant seeds in order to create a garden.

Your garden is ponies. Your harvest will be blood. .

What do you want?

To eat ponies. .

Why?

Blurry images of screaming faces bubbled on Celestia’s periphery. Or was it the scroll’s edge? She felt something like anger rising inside her. For what? The usual urge to repress was absent, replaced by the pointed desire to direct the feeling into something. Blow it up. Burn it. She could do it. She had the power. She had impunity. She could--she...

This scroll was doing something to her.

They will suffer because of you if you are not vigilant. .

She was powerless to look away. The words continued to swirl and coalesce beneath her.

Even now, the wheels of fate have begun to turn. .

The paper glowed gold as the black ink burned into her mind.

Turn. .

Turn. .

Turn. .

The letters grew angry, darker, like valleys cut into the light. And she felt rage grow with them.

They turn faster each day. There will be violence unlike anything you have ever seen. You will let them all die and I will eat them at my leisure. Listen and you will see. .

The words went away. For a long time, Celestia stared blankly at an empty scroll.

A word floated to the surface, slowly.

Turn. .

From that evening onward, Celestia devoted four hours to the scroll every day. She performed her court duties, ate dinner with Luna (who was now more full of questions than ever), then retreated into the scroll room. Not even Silver Spell could keep up with her.

This went on for about a week. Topside, Silver Quill was feeling her boss’s absence. With the assistance of one of the lesser mages, she made her way to the high-danger ward.

“Ma’am?” she called through the slit in the door. “May I have a moment?”

A raspy, unwatered voice replied, “I’m busy at the moment, Silver Quill. Can we talk tomorrow after court?”

“Well, Ma’am, we were supposed to talk today after court. And the day before. You canceled both to do additional research on the scroll.”

“My apologies. You know how time can get away from me. It’s all so short.”

“Um--right. Ma’am, I need to talk to you regarding the large amount of paperwork that’s been piling up in your absence. There’s a few hundred documents that need your signature. I’ve read through them, and they’re all uncontroversial--”

Celestia’s face appeared at the door slit without any warning. Something was wrong with her eyes. Silver Quill screamed and fell backwards.

“Are you alright?” Celestia asked. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“It’s fine,” Silver Quill mumbled. “I don’t mean to imply you’re neglecting your duties, but these are important records that must be taken care of. I still need your signatures on the last week of court logs as well.”

“Of course. I will get those all tomorrow. A dedicated refresher day for all my little ponies’ concerns.” Her face hadn’t moved from just beyond the slit in the door. Her nose nearly touched the cold iron. “You know I care for you, right?”

“Of course, Ma’am,” Silver Quill said.

“Very deeply. More than anything else in the world.”

“Yes.”

“You know I would do anything to keep you safe and comfortable.”

“Um...”

“And that I would destroy anything that got in the way of your safety and comfort.”

Silver Quill glanced at the guard closest to her, who shot her a nervous look in return. “Ma’am,” she said, “Are you okay?”

“I’m tired, my dear, but hopeful.” Celestia took a step back from the door and added, “There’s a great mystery waiting to be solved.”

“I suppose that horrible thing would be interesting for someone of your power.”

Celestia’s voice began to fade as she continued, backwards, away from the door. “The mystery is only the beginning. I hope you’ll see soon enough.”

The conversation died there. The guards shut the door slit and resumed their post.

Silver Quill could not put the conversation down so easily. “You heard that, right? That did not sound like her.”

The guards shrugged.

“Did you see her eyes? Something’s wrong.”

But the guards continued to say nothing. She stared at the door despondently for another moment before turning around and stomping off towards the center of the labyrinth, to Silver Spell’s office.

To a creature as old and well-traveled as Celestia, nightmares were nothing but a memory.

Celestia’s dreams were easy to remember. She had shocking dreams. Startling dreams. Strange dreams. But in order for a nightmare to truly rattle you, it must expose a part of you that is buried, vulnerable and afraid, in the corner of your mind.

Celestia had no such corner. Wise ponies from long ago told her that trying to carry the burdens of even one lifetime could become too much to bear. Following their advice, she had devoted decades of her astoundingly long life to picking apart each and every horror she faced with generations of dutiful therapists. The beasts of Tartarus resided not in the realm of her imagination but the realm of distant memory, foggy-eyed and dull-clawed.

But when she fell asleep in the scroll room shortly after Silver Quill’s visit, she had a nightmare that shook her to the core.

In her dream, she stood alone in one of Canterlot’s main thoroughfares, just outside the castle. The sun had fallen behind the rows of houses, painting the sky. Tall clouds broke just above the horizon. Not a soul was in sight. The silence was huge.

The sound of hoofsteps drew Celestia’s attention. A figure walked around the corner, her face that of a stranger but her voice that of her long-dead mother. “You were here when this city began. Have you ever seen it this quiet?”

Celestia, feeling small, shook her head. Her mane flopped back and forth, pink and devoid of luster.

The stranger smiled, and in her mother’s voice said, “You might yet.”

Celestia blinked, and they were standing on the tallest balcony of the castle looking down on the city. The street they had just been standing on disappeared under a crowd of ponies milling about shoulder to shoulder. She could feel the energy of the crowd, but the entire city was still blanketed in silence. The sun was below the horizon, but the sky was still endlessly blue.

She heard her mother’s voice again. It said, “Do you love me?”

“Of course,” Celestia replied.

“How can I believe you?”

Celestia frowned. “I don’t know. Do you love me?”

The stranger appeared behind her and pointed west, where the full moon rested on the horizon. “I love you from the sun to the moon and back.” Celestia giggled, and her mother continued in a sing-song way. “I love you in the sun and I love you in the shade. I love you in the night and I love you in the day. I hope you love me back, because love is a duet.” Her mother’s voice split into two, one staying in place and one rising sharp over the other. “I hope you love me back, no matter how bad things get.”

Celestia took a step back. “Mom?”

“Can I give you some advice, sweetie?” Her voice had returned to normal. Celestia nodded, and suddenly she wasn’t really sure what she had been afraid of in the first place. She returned to the balcony with her mother to watch over the city and the silent crowd.

“What kinda advice?” Celestia asked.

“Do you see all these ponies?” her mother asked, gesturing over the city. “They will all rely on you one day. They will trust you with their lives and livelihoods.”

“All of them?”

“Yes,” her mother replied with a smile. “All of them.”

“Why?” Celestia asked. “Why can’t they help themselves?”

“They’re not strong enough. They can’t be trusted with things so important. They will give you their lives in return.” A breeze fell over the silent city. “And you will fail them all.”

The sound of wind hit Celestia with the force of a hurricane. She tried to take a step back, but her mother took her by the leg and held her in place. “Mom?”

“You will fail them all. They will not escape your mistakes alive. Everyone and everything is all going to die.” The sing-song voice returned, rising in pitch as the wind picked up. Her mother pointed at the street.

Celestia looked down and saw pandemonium ripping through the crowd. Ponies surged one way, then another, then into each other. They went down by the dozens and didn’t come up. Then, in one collective wave of panic, they smashed into the gate of the castle. It bent, but held.

Strange lights appeared outside the city, glowing the same color as the sun. Night overtook the sky. Millions of stars and the solitary moon cast light on the terrified throng below. The lights marched closer.

“Look at what you will do,” her mother said. The stranger’s face morphed into her father, then her sister, then a mirror image of Celestia. “In your bid to keep them safe, you have invited the enemy to your doorstep.” She pointed to the lights closing in from far away. “They want to destroy what you’ve built. They do not deserve to share in utopia.”

Celestia couldn’t look away. The stars moved faster and faster, until they were smearing the sky with yellowing off-white--the color of an old scroll. Constellations turned into visions of apocalypse.

Her mother’s voice cut through the wind. “The ponies will forever be children. The others are waiting for you to show your weakness before they strike at your neck. Neither of them are worthy.”

The crows rose up at once and screamed, “Unworthy!” The power of their voices combined threw Celestia back.

“They will eat you alive!” her mother wailed. “I will eat you alive!”

Her mother stood over Celestia as the dream imploded. The stranger’s face melted right before her eyes. It dripped a waxy pool in front of her, droplets hitting the floor with the sound of snapping violin strings. Underneath her mother’s skin was a smile made of jagged teeth and eyes everywhere. The curves of her face became eyes. The reflection in the puddle beneath her was eyes. The puddle touched Celestia’s nose and clung to it. She couldn’t move. The eyes multiplied like cells under a microscope until all she could see were teeth and eyes.

“Why?” Celestia whimpered as she sunk into the puddle of her mother’s remains.

The hundreds of eyes all turned on her at once. Her mother opened her mouth wide and screamed, “BECAUSE YOU TASTE SO GOOD. .”

Everything went white.

Celestia jerked her head off the stone table and looked down at the scroll. In the instant where sleep and wake were blurred, a familiar smile made of jagged teeth and eyes everywhere flickered on the page.

Celestia resumed her study.

After what felt like an hour of walking in circles, Silver Quill found what she was looking for. The plaque was dented from being stepped on, but she could still make out the words:

Archmage. No appointments. No solicitations. No smiles please.

It took five minutes of pounding on the wall before Silver Spell finally finally peeked his head through the wall. “You’re the court scribe, right?” he asked in his dead voice.

Silver Quill jumped. “Transcriber, yes. I just visited--”

“Then you know how to read.” He pointed at the plaque.

Silver Quill thought about punching him briefly, though she was convinced her fist would go right through his ghostly face. “I just visited Celestia. She’s been neglecting her court paperwork, which is very unlike her, and when I went to see what was going on--”

“Stop.” He held up his hoof again.

“What?” she said indignantly.

Silver Spell scanned the hallway behind her, then lit up his horn. “Come inside.”

This was only the fourth time Silver Quill had phased through a wall, and it still freaked her out. Nevertheless, she held her breath and went one baby-step at a time through the wall, keeping her eyes screwed shut until she was through to the other side.

The inside looked like it had just been raided by royal guard--which it had--though the bed was made and the coffee machine in the corner was impeccably clean.

“First they tear my office. Now you. I still don’t have a new intern,” he moaned, gesturing to a pile of unsent paperwork in the corner. “This is what you get when you mess around with cursed scrolls.”

“Wait, you think it’s cursed too?”

“I knew it was cursed the moment you described it to me.”

“But Celestia said it wasn’t cursed.”

“You work in the royal court. Learn some politics, for goodness sake. Everyone on the surface world thinks I’m crazy.”

“Surface world?”

“Don’t start. If the crazy cave-dwelling archmage says a scroll is cursed, no one will bat an eye. If the princess says it’s cursed, the uproar to destroy it before we can get to the bottom of the curse will be too large to ignore. She lied so we could find out what’s going on.”

Silver Quill’s first thought was relief that she had been right. Her second thought was blinding panic. “You’re saying I touched a cursed scroll?”

“If it was negatively impacting your cognition the way you said it was, I’d say you almost had your mind destroyed by a cursed scroll.”

Silver Quill nearly fell over. She wobbled to the bed and collapsed on it. Silver Spell frowned, but said nothing.

After a minute of shallow breathing and staring into space, Silver Quill said, “If it’s possible for the scroll to get inside my head,” she gulped, “do you think it’s possible that it can get into Celestia’s?”

Silver Spell nodded grimly. “No doubt in my mind. We must try to talk to her when she’s away from the scroll. That can be your task.”

“Why do I--”She stood up from the bed, saw stars, and sat back down. “We should do it together.”

“Bad idea. We can’t upset her or make her think she’s being watched. She might develop paranoia and shut us out. We must be careful. While you talk to Celestia, I will continue my work on the scroll.”

Silver Quill turned her attention to the pile of unsent letters in the corner. “You mentioned you still have no intern, right? Back me up when I talk to Celestia and I’ll handle all your intern’s duties for the rest of the week.”

He followed her gaze to the pile of papers. Annoyance flicked behind the glaze in his eyes for just a moment. For Silver Quill, any sign of life would do.

“Fine. I’ll have your tasks sent up to you each day after court. Now,” he said, gesturing to the wall, “if you wouldn’t mind. I still have to finish unransaking the place.”

As Silver Quill walked out, she said, “You know, for being such a recluse, you’re very good when it comes to the way ponies think.”

“As unfortunate as it is,” he replied, “I’m one of you. Right to the bone.”

Two days after her nightmare, Celestia found herself back in court, signing papers and getting her appointments out of the way--appointments which, Silver Quill reminded her, had already been pushed back from last week and couldn’t be rescheduled again. Though her face was professionally blank, she blanched on the inside at the little ponies’ pettiness. If only they knew what she knew. If only they knew all the horrors waiting to devour them. If only they knew how diligently she was working to find a solution. To save them.

Maybe if they knew, they would let her concentrate on the real work. Yes. Maybe. If she could just get them to understand the danger lurking so close at hoof. The danger. The--

Someone set another pile of papers at her side. The head of Silver Quill peaked out from behind them and said, “Last batch, Ma’am. I promise.”

While normally it was polite for Celestia to sign each order individually, just to let everyone know she cared, it was still technically allowable to sign them all at once. Using her magic, she spread out the hundred or so minor documents in the air around her and splashed ink onto each dotted line in the perfect mirror of her signature.

The ponies still in court stopped to stare, then resumed their activities. Silver Quill looked displeased as Celestia returned the documents to her.

“That’s rude, Ma’am.”

“But it’s still my signature. Can you tell the chef I’ll be taking my dinner to go? If there are any other matters to attend to, please organize them and I will tackle them at my earliest convenience.”

“Ma’am,” Silver Quill insisted, “please wait a moment.” She shot a look towards the staff entryway adjacent to the throne.

“I really do have to go.”

“No you don’t,” a voice echoed through the hall. Celestia looked to see Silver Spell making his way towards the throne. His body was covered by a loose black cape with star maps on it, clasped in the front with a pendant of Celestia's cutie mark--also black. He all but glided across the floor to Silver Quill’s side. The court-goers took a collective step back.

“You look ridiculous,” Silver Quill muttered. “Why didn’t you just wear something casual?”

“I don’t have any other clothes,” Silver Spell replied, then addressed Celestia. “Ma’am, it’s been some time since we’ve discussed the cursed scroll, and I would like to present you with some of my latest findings.”

A ripple shot through the courtroom, then died down. A few ponies looked at Silver Spell like he had just cursed them personally.

Celestia, ever the politician, smiled for all to see. “I think we shall adjourn court for the day. The scroll is not cursed, and I wish you all a happy and prosperous day.”

As officials scurried to begin the official closing ceremonies, Celestia motioned for the two to follow her. They left the courtroom through the staff door and made for the dining room.

“The scroll is not cursed,” Celestia said as soon as the door clicked shut behind them.

Silver Quill held up his research. “There’s about forty pages of evidence here to the contrary. If it’s not cursed, then what is it? It’s speaking to us, Ma’am. It’s showing us things. Grotesque things.”

“If the images are too much, I will not force you to continue your research. If you live long enough, you see everything.”

Silver Spell noticed Celestia was walking faster, and adjusted his pace accordingly. “I think you’ve seen too much, Ma’am. You’re not afraid of the scroll.”

“Are you?” Celestia chuckled.

“Yes. Last week it showed me a picture of my own face being ripped in two. It was very detailed. If we’re not careful, we’ll wind up like that intern.”

“Who is out of the ICU, by the way. I thought you would visit at least once.”

“Don’t throw that in my face. Is he banging on my wall asking for his job back?”

“Well, your plaque does say no solicitations.”

“Ma’am,” Silver Quill chimed in, “we’re both worried about you.”

“I’m aware it must be nice to find something you can’t explain after all this time,” Silver Spell said, “but if you’re not careful that scroll will eat you. Just like it ate that intern.”

The wall marking the mages’ quarters loomed before them. Celestia did not slow down.

Silver Quill asked, “Won’t you talk to us? Share research, at least?”

Quietly, Celestia said, “You were right to be afraid, if not for yourself. Engaging with the scroll is dangerous. The intern found this out the hard way. There’s already enough danger outside.”

“What? Please Ma’am, let us help.”

Celestia, now visibly annoyed, lit up her horn and phased through the wall. Silver Spell followed suit a moment later.

“She’s right,” Silver Spell said. “I don’t get why you’re not listening. We need each other’s help--it’s dangerous to study that thing alone.”

Celestia turned on Silver Quill and snarled ravenously, “You don’t know how dangerous things really are.”

Silver Spell looked to Silver Quill to back him up, only to find himself alone. Celestia was already walking away. Realization dawned on him, and he hurried back to the wall-entrance and phased his head through.

Silver Quill sat on her haunches, nursing a bloody nose.

“You can’t phase through the wall,” he observed.

“I didn’t phase through the wall because you forgot to phase me through the wall,” she snapped back. “Remind me never to trust you again.”

“A piece of advice for you--only walk into the walls you can get through.”

“Whatever. Did you get through to her?”

“In a way. The scroll is definitely getting to her.”

Silver Spell got up. “Well then, we’ll have to change our approach.” She shot Silver Spell a sour look. “Now--can you please?” He lit up his horn. After testing her hoof on the stone, she closed her eyes and phased through the rock.

The scroll room was deathly quiet. Celestia cherished the isolation for only a moment before making her way to the scroll and readying her quill.

I’m here.

I know. .

Single-sentence replies soon turned into elegant paragraphs. Celestia took them in ravenously.

The subject matter of these conversations, which initially consisted of the scroll insisting it could and would devour every living pony in the kingdom, moved away from the taste and texture of Celestia’s closest friends and into the realms of politics and philosophy. The scroll was quite knowledgeable in both. In her eagerness to explore the strange monster, Celestia assumed it was a breakthrough.

Empires live like you and I. And just like an end awaits us all, only death awaits empires. They live like warriors and die just as violently, or they grow sick with old age and pass slowly, more naturally. Your society will pass, perhaps of one, perhaps of the other. .

But I can be a warrior. I can stop my enemies.

You are a warrior, but your society is made of children, and your enemies sit like old vultures at your gate. Can you see how they stare at you? Ravenous. .

Celestia pictured hordes of ancient, wrinkled birds of prey sitting on the castle gates. Eyeing ponies as they went about their day. Choosing the best ones to eat. It was all so easy to see.

Yours will die, and if you haven’t killed your ponies through inaction yet they will die soon after. There will always be another threat. One day there will come a power too great for you. It may already be plotting your death.

An endless barrage of pictures, ruinous elegies in black and white. Cities collapsed, a great diaspora of nations. Cruel bombs reducing the world to rubble. The end of history. Riots. Everyone dying. Everyone. Extinction.

The word appeared on the page, as if to mirror her thoughts.

Extinction. .

The word felt so powerful sitting there on the page. It conjured more memories of distant wars and ruin, which were then brought to life on the page. She saw herself in armor, killing by the dozen. She saw great walls of magic fall on cities in the ancient barbaric past. She saw walls far older than Everfree’s crumble beneath horseshoes. She saw the ruin she was capable of.

If she could do all this, imagine what they might do. They. The enemy. The ones without a hundred lifetimes to temper their emotions. The ones who didn’t have enough lifetime to learn. The vultures. The enemies. They. They--they could do it. Could. And would.

Celestia’s eyes welled with tears.

As long as I am alive, I will protect my people.

Liar. .

You are weak. .

Pitiful. .

Rage flooded Celestia. She knew it was true. The tears confirmed it.

I am wise and powerful. More powerful than you.

The sound of vultures screaming in her ears made her deaf to the growl of rage building inside her. She whipped around in search of an an open flame only to find the candles had gone out and she was in the dark.

“Who are they?” she shouted at the scroll. “Who is trying to kill my ponies? Name them. I will not play games with my country at stake.”

They are numerous. And they will deceive you. They will beg and plead for mercy as they sharpen their blades. .

“Tell me!”

They will end your life, but not before they end the lives of everyone you love. .

“Tell me!”

Everyone! They will kill everyone and burn everything! Fire! Hatred! You are. .

Celestia roared, “Tell me!”

The scroll went blank for two full minutes, leaving Celestia panting in the middle of a dark room.

Finally, a few faintly glowing words floated to the surface.

What would you do to save the ones you love? .

Defiantly, Celestia wrote:

Anything.

The pictures faded, until they clung, barely visible, to the edges of the page.

Let the sun stare the demons in the eye, and do not blink, until they die. .

Celestia understood. What it was suggesting was beyond speaking--though perhaps not beyond doing. She said out loud, “Would it really save them?”

A familiar voice replied as clear as day, “You must try. .”

Silver Quill found the archmage in his office the day after their confrontation with Celestia. She stood awkwardly at the wall, looking for a knocker, before banging her hoof against the stone.

“You wanted to see me?” she called out.

Silver Spell’s head peeped out from the wall. “Were you followed?”

Silver Quill yelped. “Gods in hell--would you stop doing that?”

He took her by the hoof and dragged her, kicking and begging, through the wall. Even with the kerosene lantern burning at full, the office still looked unholy.

“So, were you followed or not?”

“Maybe? The mages know I’m down here. You’re like bats. You can sense birds in your midst.”

“She has spies everywhere. So does her sister. They’re always fighting, but this is getting out of hoof. I have lots of other things to do besides keep tabs on their little spy games.”

“Likewise.”

“Good. Before we can figure out how to handle Celestia, we need to figure out how the scroll is reaching her and what it wants to do with her. Seeing as it went after the intern, we can rule out that it’s choosing its targets. This was all in my preliminary report, by the way. I sent you a copy earlier. Please read it if you haven’t already.”

Silver Quill had, in fact, read it earlier. His words still fell like insults at a funeral, though. She said nothing and motioned for him to continue.

“In order to really understand what it’s doing to her, we’ll have to go under the gun ourselves.”

“I don’t know what you’re planning, but my answer is no.”

“In order to determine the effects of the scroll, we should each spend half of my next research block with it. One of us will be outside at all times to get the other out should something go wrong.”

“Go wrong? By ‘go wrong,’ you mean get possessed and try to kill everyone. With our teeth.”

“Yes, exactly.”

Silver Quill gawked at the archmage. “If you thought you might be allergic to chocolate, would you eat a pound of it just to find out?”

“I think a square or two in a hospital setting would be sufficient. I’ll be going in first. Then you.”

Silver Quill got very quiet. “That thing is cursed.”

“And if it gets me, I won’t even be the first one to be cursed by it. Terrible shame. The poor intern had that honor.”

Silver Quill groaned. “I don’t believe you. You didn’t even visit him.”

“You still think I’m nice? I’m not. I have bigger things to worry about than being nice. Are you going to help or not?”

Silver Quill looked around for an out, forgetting momentarily that the door didn’t exist. “For heaven’s sake, maybe. If you get cursed, or if you feel like cursing after it’s over, or if you feel, I don’t know, indigestion while you’re in there, I’m not going in.”

“It would be impossible to find a better candidate than you.”

The strange praise tripped Silver Quill up. “I’ll be outside. I’ll drag your cursed butt out of there if something goes wrong. But I won’t touch that thing again until I’ve seen what it does.”

Silver Spell was about to fire back about the incredible research opportunity she was depriving him of, but held back. “Okay.”

“How much time do we have until your next rotation with it?”

“About four hours.”

Silver Quill nodded to the coffee machine on the table, the only tidy-looking thing in the room save the bed. “May I?”

Silver Spell sighed. “I suppose.”

They spent the next three hours in various states of what might be called conversation.

“You really should clean your office,” Silver Quill said, sipping the cup of coffee Silver Spell had offered her a minute before. Much to her surprise, the drink carried a sweet note in between the bitter front and back. “Is it an office or a bedroom?”

“Both,” Silver Spell shrugged. He sat facing the corner, lost in his notes. A few scraps of paper floated around his head, organizing and reorganizing at a leisurely pace. “I spend most of my time working. This is easier than teleporting up to my room in the castle proper.”

“So you do have a room upstairs.”

“Yes. It’s very large. One big window. Marble and cushions. Probably dusty.”

She giggled. “Sounds like you’d hate it.”

“Oh yes. I’ll take this room over it any day.”

She took another sip of her coffee. “Are these magically enhanced beans or something? I can’t place the taste.”

“It’s not magic. More like alchemy,” he replied. “The secret is aerated chocolate. Add a square to the cup before you pour the coffee.”

Silver Quill smacked her lips together. Yes, it was chocolate she tasted. She tried to imagine a younger Silver Spell trying chocolate for the first time, and failed.

Soft silence took over the office, save for the occasional creak of the bed Silver Quill sat on and the rustling of papers from the other side of the room. Silver Quill quietly wished she was back in court, all bustling and loud and sanctimonious.

“So,” Silver Quill said, “how can you tell when to go to sleep down here?”

Silver Quill shrugged. “When I’m tired.”

“It’s a nice bed.”

He grunted.

“I can’t imagine sleeping down here every night. I guess that’s why you’re down here and I’m up there, right?”

“I don’t feel any difference, above or below,” he said. “I like sleeping. It’s the closest we can get to death without committing to it fully.”

“Oh,” she replied, and changed the subject.

Three hours passed. Silver Spell made another pot of coffee, though only he drank any this time. When the clock on the wall marked the fourth hour, he politely but firmly ushered Silver Quill out of his office and put out the kerosene lantern hanging from the ceiling.

“Is it night outside right now?” Silver Quill asked.

“Doesn’t make a difference down here. But yes.”

She shivered. “Feels like night.”

With only torchlight to guide them, they made their way to the scroll room.

Silver Spell outlined his plan as they walked. A battery of tests, two uninterrupted hours of communicating with the scroll, and then, surprisingly, a nap.

“What good will that do?” Silver Quill asked.

“Dreams are woven with powerful magic. If the scroll can really reach out and influence my mind somehow, it will be easiest to do when I’m asleep.”

“Oh.”

“You’ll need to do the same thing.”

“After all that coffee?”

They arrived at the door to the scroll room. Silver Spell gave her a look, and in a rare moment of levity said, “There’s another secret about the coffee. It’s decaf.”

Silver Quill couldn’t stop herself from laughing, though she didn’t really know why. She kept on laughing all the way up to the moment the two guards locked Silver Spell inside the room. Whatever she found so funny vanished at that moment.

Meanwhile, Silver Spell went right to work. The hour-long battery of magical probes predictably yielded nothing. A notebook and quill floated around his head as he worked, jotting notes and sketching leyline diagrams. The work left him with only one new piece of information: the scroll couldn’t be torn.

Writing at least got a reaction from it. To begin, he drew a faceless stick figure at the top of the page. A moment later, another one appeared next to it. The new one was nearly identical, except it had eyes and a big smile.

Silver Spell made a sound of surprise, then began to write.

We will keep you locked in this room for the rest of time.

Good. .

You failed to escape once. We are better prepared.

You are more vulnerable than ever. .

The scroll said nothing for another hour, but it was far from inert. Silver Spell could almost feel it watching him. Completely irrational--but very real all the same. He was almost ready to give up and move onto the next phase of study when another drawing appeared. This one looked just like the stick figure from earlier, except instead of eyes it had little X’s.

What do you want the most? .

I want to know how to kill you.

Something flashed across the scroll. An image of something twisted up.

No... You’re obsessed with death, but not killing. You want to prevent death. .

That same image from before appeared again for a fraction of a second. Twisted up. Bent unnaturally out of shape.

What would you do to prevent your own death? I know a way, though it comes at a cost. .

I can do it without you.

I can see through you, sorcerer. I see your mind. Death is a storm and you fancy yourself the mountain upon which it will finally break.

Silver Spell furrowed his brow. He moved his hooves away so no part of him was directly touching the scroll. Still, it continued.

Death is a tornado. Unbreakable. Inexhaustible. You will crumble first. And then I’ll eat you. .

The image appeared a final time, flying apart across the page like a splatter of paint against a wall. Silver Spell recognized a face in all the strange markings just before it all disappeared and left him standing in the middle of the room, panting, staring at an empty scroll.

After all that action, he figured he might as well start his nap experiment. With no pillow or blanket for comfort, the room felt cold and indifferent. Still, after casting a mild sleeping spell on himself, he felt his eyes growing heavy.

His last waking thought was of whether Silver Quill was still awake.

He dreamed he was in the middle of a massive cave, surrounded on all sides by a great crowd. He hated crowds. Crowds meant crush and noise.

This was not any crowd, though. Silver Spell recognized the ponies milling around him. First a cousin, then an aunt, then an uncle. Then his mother and father. Friends from his childhood, all grown up. Classmates. Coworkers. A few kind strangers who had held doors or spotted him spare change when he didn’t have enough money to buy a coffee. Every face he saw was another pleasant memory.

The ponies around him buzzed with happy energy. They milled around in little cliques, arranging and rearranging, chatting excitedly amongst themselves as if waiting for a great show to start. There was no sound, though. Aside from the slight rustle of wind, the whole dream was dead silent.

He tried joining a group, but found himself trapped at an arm’s length. The crowd parted before him, never moving away but never getting any closer. Everything amounted to nothing--at least, until someone stepped out of the crowd and addressed him.

The pony had the face of a stranger, though she spoke with the voice of his mother. “Can you feel the weight of the earth above you?”

Silver Spell nodded childishly. “How deep are we?”

“Deeper than the deepest ocean.”

He looked up at the ceiling of the cave high above his head. It staggered his mind such a huge cave could exist without any supports. It should have settled long ago. “How did we get here?”

“It was all you, my dear,” his mother’s voice said. “You created it. You brought us all here.”

A thousand voices rose out of nowhere and swept through the cave. Endless small talk echoed all the way to the ceiling, fluttered in the corners, then came crashing back down. The whole cave shook with the weight of words, then fell silent again. The crowd hardly noticed. Silver Spell fell to the ground with his hooves over his ears.

The stranger placed her hoof on his. “Why did you bring us all here?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Do you love me?”

“Of course I do.”

“How can I believe you?”

Silver Spell considered her question. “I’ll prove to you by never letting anything bad happen to you. Not ever.”

She laughed. “Sweetheart, that’s not possible.”

“Then I’ll make it possible. I’ll... I can...” he looked up at the ceiling, wondering why his words weren’t echoing when everyone else’s were. “I’ll keep you healthy forever. I’ll make a spell so nothing can ever hurt you, and you’ll be happy forever. Then you’ll know how much I love you.”

“Oh, sweetie,” she cooed, locking her stranger’s eyes with his. “You’ll kill me for sure.”

“What?” The word left his mouth and boomed through the cave. It triggered an avalanche of sound from the crowd, whose unintelligible din returned to bombard his ears.

The sound of his mother’s voice cut through to him. “You’ll never save anyone. Least of all me.” He felt a deep rumble through the rock beneath his feet. His mother continued. “Every life you touch has been poisoned. They’re all dying as we speak. They’re dying because you made the choice.”

“No!” he cried, his voice swept away into nothing. Into chaos. “What choice? Tell me. I’ll reverse it.”

“You can’t reverse your choice anymore than you can reverse time,” his mother laughed. “You’ve wasted so much time. You’ll never find a cure before it claims you too. You chose not to save us. It’s your fault. You could work every day and night, and it would still be too late for you.”

The rumble swelled, overpowering the tower of voices around him. The cave shook. Silver Spell looked up just in time to track the first boulder as it fell from the ceiling and crushed a group of childhood friends. It landed like a bomb and dug a crater into the floor. No one else seemed to notice. They kept on talking and smiling, none the wiser.

“Stop it!” Silver Spell cried. “Stop it, stop it, stop it! Please!”

“Imagine how a normal pony would feel.” His mother’s voice was calm again, somehow louder than the impending collapse. “One without a choice. They accept their fate like sheep. But they die, so quickly, so effortlessly. Like it was nothing.”

Another rock fell. It struck two distant cousins, missing his parents by a few lengths at most. Silver Spell cried out and ran to them, but they moved away just like before. Never growing further, never getting closer.

All at once, the entire crowd turned to face him at once. The dream transformed into chaos, with ponies morphing into eyes. Eyes rolling into more eyes, like the division of cells. And between them, rows and rows of teeth. The wind picked up, and earth fell in a torrent around him, cascading grit and bits of ponies into a horrible black mass piling on his chest and shoulders, then in his mouth and nose, making it impossible to breathe.

The voices of everyone he had ever known came over him in a single uninterrupted scream. Bits of dirt coalesced into eyes, then flew apart. Hundreds of them, all around him. Teeth falling all around him, tearing into him. Eyes. Teeth. Faces. Screams. You could have saved us. You could have saved us.

The cave finally gave way. A million tons of rock and earth fell from the ceiling. Just before it hit him, the stranger’s face opened up to reveal rows of eyes and teeth.

It screamed, LET ME TASTE YOU. .

Silver Spell peeled his face off the stone floor of the scroll room. He threw himself across the floor and towards the door like an animal. “Open up!” he shouted as he pounded on the door. “Please!”

A tired looking Silver Quill rushed in and dragged him out. The two guards kicked the door shut behind him, their horns glowing with the anticipation of something awful.

He choked out a sob right there on the floor, a rare moment of weakness for the archmage. Silver Quill shoved a canteen of water in his face, but he pushed it away. He tried to say something, but his voice cracked.

“What is it?” Silver Quill said, brandishing the canteen like a shield. “What did it say?”

“Plenty,” he croaked. “Your turn.”

She took a step back. “I’m not going in there.”

Slowly, Silver Spell rose to his hooves and wiped his eyes clean. “We’ve been over this. You have the most exposure with it.”

“Maybe that means I shouldn’t go in there. Maybe we should send one of the guards in.” The guard cast her a withering glance. “Or no one.”

“But you found it.”

“In the public library!”

They stared each other down. Silver Spell’s face eroded from annoyance to confusion.

Silver Quill groaned. “I don’t believe you. Everything about my first contact with it was in the first briefing. You got it the day the scroll arrived.”

“I was busy.”

“Busy doing what?”

“Trying to figure out the scroll!”

“For goodness sake! I’ll go in there, if you read the briefing.”

“Yes, fine. I will.” He gave her an expectant look. “Well?”

“Go get the briefing.”

Silver Spell scowled, then lit up his horn. A shower of papers exploded into being and grasped for air to float on before falling to the floor. He scanned the papers briefly, then shot them all back to his office, save a thin orange manilla folder. “Now,” he said, and gestured to the door.

The first hour of the shift saw Silver Spell pacing around, levitating the folder behind him so it remained close but out of sight. Around the second hour, his annoyance dropped to the point where he felt he could tolerate the briefing, and got to reading.

The story was much simpler than he expected. Silver Quill, whose taste in literature were more Marechiavellian than her demeanor would imply, had found a large unlisted book on Medieval power politics at the Canterlot Public Library. Though there was nothing so unusual about it being unlisted (it hadn’t been checked out once since it came to the library, and the bar code sticker had fallen off), the inscription on the first page carried some foreboding. Between these pages lie the secrets to power, and the fearsome trials undergone by those who desired to wield it. The first two pages were stuck together. When Silver Spell pried them apart, the scroll fell out.

No other leads came about. For all they knew, the scroll had been stuffed in there a hundred years ago by the book’s anonymous donor, hoping his crack spell would sow chaos in some poor researcher’s life.

Silver Spell almost smiled. Such an unimpressive beginning. Now it was driving the princess of a nation towards calamity.

Three more hours passed in relative silence. Around the middle of the fifth hour, he heard a muffled gasp through the door, followed by hoofsteps and frantic knocking on the door. He nodded to the guards and they yanked the door open. Silver Quill collapsed into the hallway in tears.

She flipped onto her back and stared at the door before scuttling backwards to the opposite wall. “Don’t make me do that again,” she cried. “Don’t make me.”

He stood there in the middle of the hallway, the weightless flow of adrenaline fading from his blood, the weight of tiredness and guilt rushing in to take its place. This was more hurt than he deserved. He was a researcher, not an emotional support. This was difficult work. Lives were at stake. His life. The princess’s life. Her life.

But somewhere far above their heads, in the open air removed from these dingy caves, the sun was rising. They would both be needed at their normal duties in four hours.

He sighed and said, “I won’t make you go in there again.”

She sniffled and nodded.

“Let’s get away from here. Come to my office.”

She held out her hoof. He hesitated, then helped her up. Together they made their way towards his office.

“What was your dream?” Silver Spell asked. “If we can find some common thread between the two of them, we might understand what the scroll is doing to Celestia.”

“I don’t want to say.”

“You won’t embarrass me. I’ve seen magical mishaps more compromising than--”

“I don’t want to say.”

They carried on in silence.

“Okay,” Silver Spell said. “How about this--I have a theory. I’ll tell it to you, and if you think it’s consistent with what you saw in your dream, just nod your head.”

She nodded.

“My theory is, the scroll psychologically manipulates whoever interacts with it. When we talk to it, it’s able to parse us out. When we dream with it nearby, we’re laid bare for it to see. That’s how it gets in. Once it knows us, it plays our deepest fear against us, then offers a solution. We’re so wrapped up with keeping the fear from coming to pass we don’t think about what we’re choosing.” He looked at Silver Quill for validation, but she was staring straight into the floor. “Well?”

She nodded.

They turned the final corner. The office wall with its plaque was just ahead of them. “Our deepest fears and desires are more closely bound than any of us really know,” Silver Spell said. “I think Celestia is already taken in. I don’t have a clue what could make her afraid, but that scroll will make it come to pass. We’re going to stop it.”

Silver Quill nodded. They walked through the wall together without missing a beat.

Once inside, Silver Quill let out a yawn and laid down on the bed. With the kerosene lantern burning softly, Silver Spell tossed the briefing on a stack in the corner and made a cup of coffee. He didn’t bother with the chocolate this time.

“Coffee?” Silver Quill muttered? “Really?”

He raised the cup in a not-so-serious toast. “Decaf.”

He only made it through half a cup before another wave of tiredness hit him. He set two alarm clocks in the corners farthest from the bed. They would need both.

A quick look around the room made him realize there wasn’t enough space on the floor to settle down on. Fortunately, Silver Quill had curled up into a ball on one side of the bed, leaving the other half open. He laid down on his back, with his rear legs hanging over the side, and stared at the flame from the kerosene lamp.

A blue eye and sharp orange tooth flickered on the wick.

He sealed the lantern with his magic and snuffed out the flame.

The degradation and stress had begun to wear outwardly on Celestia.

She sat across the dinner table from Luna, who was mindlessly devouring a quail and its eggs. In between bites, she sprayed bits of carcass and asked, “How was your day?”

Fine, Celestia thought, staring deeply into a bowl of mushroom soup.

“I said, how was your day?”

Fine, Celestia thought.

A bit of quail bone flew across the table and struck Celestia square in the forehead. It landed with a plop in her bowl of soup.

“What is your problem?” Celestia shouted.

“You were looking at that soup like it had cyanide in it. Did you have a rough day?”

“No. Everything was fine.”

“Positively? Because...” Luna gestured with a tri-pronged fork. “You look a little tired.”

“Perhaps you wouldn’t look so composed if you put as much effort into your duties as I do mine.”

Luna threw up her hooves defensively. “I don’t want to fight, dearest! Can I help you in some way?”

“Thank you, but no. I just need more time to myself.”

“Oh yes, about that. A few minor advisors have told me some things recently. They’re all just gunning for promotions, so I didn’t take their words with any weight. They said you’ve been missing day court sporadically and without excuse.”

Celestia looked down again and saw the quail bone floating in her soup. Rows of bite marks lined the joints. The soup was ruined.

Luna continued, “I’m not your calendar keeper, and I’m certainly not your babysitter. I just want to make sure you’re feeling alright.”

“I just need more time to myself,” Celestia repeated with a hint of bitterness in her voice. “Like now, for instance. I think I’m finished with my dinner anyway.”

Luna stood up and grabbed her sister’s hoof before she could leave. “You mean more to me than the entire world. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

Celestia sighed and hugged her sister before slipping away.

What Celestia had been fighting to suppress for weeks had finally bubbled up to the surface. If they could all see it, how much longer did she have before they started to monitor her? The flighty pegasus side of her brain acted up whenever the court trumpets sounded. Foreign delegates were surreptitiously spied on by her order. Her signature became less legible. Despite Silver Quill’s insistence, she couldn’t be bothered to read the documents put before her. The words on the page were dead, and they would all be too if she didn’t find some way to stop this.

Meanwhile, the scroll was getting more specific with its insinuations. Vague notions of apocalypse took shape in the form of endless waves of invaders marching on the capitol. First griffons. Then yaks. Then minotaurs. Then dragons. Then all of them together. Vast nations with even vaster wealth and influence shoving spears into civilians and stepping over the bodies on their way to the throne. They were coming, never ceasing, marching during court, marching during dinner with Luna, marching when she slept. The diplomats tried to lull her with trade deals and recycling accords while they massed murderers beyond her sight. The beasts were ready to strike. It was only a matter of time.

One month with the scroll turned to two. Celestia remembered only parts of it. The lack of sleep and the nightly visions made it difficult to think about anything but the impending doom. The things the scroll showed her were so real, so reasonable to someone who understood the will to power. It had to be true, horrible as it was. The scroll showed every gruesome moment to come without remorse, perhaps in an effort to drive her mad. She would not give it the satisfaction.

So she hatched a plan. She couldn’t speak it aloud for fear of being heard, or write it down for fear of being seen by the spies she was certain surrounded her. This was a plan of destruction on a scale no one but she could understand or impliment.

When the army of her nightmares marched on Canterlot, she would pull down the sun and keep it below the horizon. While Equestria endured the night, the nations on the other side of the world would cook. Only once that half of the world had been reduced to a desert ruin would she allow the sun to rise once again. If the army somehow took Canterlot, they would have no homes to return to. Only Equestria would be saved.

Celestia liked the idea. Nothing burned quite like fire, and she was in control of the great fire, the one that never went out. Fire in the sky, burning forever, the sentinel of ponykind. The eye that watched over them. The teeth that tore her enemies to shreds.

A knock on the door of the scroll room startled her. She turned to find Silver Spell peering through the slit. “Any developments?” he asked.

“None,” Celestia replied, “but I feel optimistic.”

“As do I. It’s almost time for day court. I’ll be taking my time with the scroll now.”

Celestia looked back at the scroll. Already, words were shimmering across its surface.

DO NOT TRUST THE SORCERER. .

“Haven’t you run all your tests already?” she asked.

“Everyday, the scroll says new things. If I can log everything it does, perhaps a pattern will emerge. Please let me in.”

HE LIES. HE IS WITH THE ENEMY. .

“Perhaps the court can survive without me for one day. I’m making significant strides towards understanding it.”

“Like what? You haven’t shared those findings with anyone else.”

I am your only link to what will come to pass. He wishes to destroy me. .

“I command you to leave me, Silver Spell. I need more time.”

“Let me in. Ma’am--let me in. Please.”

“Silver Spell, you can wait your turn. I don’t want to make this an issue of rank.” She paused. “And I certainly don’t want to make this an issue with the guards.”

From the other side of the door, she heard the two guards stir. Silver Spell’s face disappeared from the slit. “I’ll be back tonight then,” he said, and Celestia heard no more of him.

She grabbed a quill and wrote on the now empty scroll:

Why did you say that? He is my most trusted mage.

I can see into his heart. He would rather surrender and preserve the lives of your enemies than endure bloodshed for your nation. If you told him of your plan he would call it genocide. .

What would I call it then?

Deliverance. .

------

Silver Quill returned that night to find the door unguarded and unlocked. Inside, next to the scroll, was a note and a key.

Silver Spell,

Please accept my apologies for my short temper today. In an effort to increase our hours of productive study, I have lowered the maximum security cordon and dismissed the guards. The key on the desk is one of two. I have the other. No one else is to be let in without my direct supervision.

--Celestiia

Silver Spell mulled over what might have caused Celestia’s outburst as he double-checked the magical fail-safes placed on the room. Using runes from his saddlebag, he went over every inch of the walls to ensure not even a single flaw in the system. Without guards or a locked door, he would have to play it extra safe.

No sooner had he sat down at the desk when the scroll came to life.

She doesn’t trust you. She finds you incompetent. .

Silver Spell took out his writing supplies but made no effort to reply.

She took you away from your true mission. The mission more important than all the others. .

Silver Spell continued rummaging through his saddlebag.

She’s in no position to care about your work. Isn’t it strange she’s never tried to duplicate her immortality? Your suffering mortality gives her life significance She’s glad you’re dying. .

Silver Spell pulled out half a dozen crystal vials filled with clear liquids.

Your mortal magic is useless to save you. But I know another way. An ancient way. .

Silver Spell paused in his preparation and waited for the scroll to continue.

The next words seeped onto the page slowly, like from a wound carved into flesh.

Blood magic. .

Silver Spell guffawed.

If you truly fear death, you’ll listen. If you truly wish to conquer death, you’ll listen. If you don’t listen, all will be lost for your cause. .

A series of runes and leyline diagrams appeared at the bottom of the page.

Listen closely, sorcerer. By sacrificing one life and weaving their blood and leylines into yours, you may gain the remainder of their waking years. The spell is not difficult. The difficult part comes in the sacrifice. .

Silver Spell picked up ahis quill and wrote:

This is no cure for death.

But it will buy you time in your old age, when you have yet to discover a true cure for death. When you realize just how distant your cure is, you will use this spell and continue your struggle. It is my gift to you. .

That is no gift. That is a curse.

The words disappeared, though the diagrams remained.

What do you think I am, SORCERER. .

“I’m not sure if you can hear me,” he said out loud, “but I’m going to test you now. I want to see what hurts the most.” He took one vial in his magic and poured a droplet onto the corner of the scroll. “This is pure ethyl alcohol.”

He pulled from his pack a slim book of matches.

The scroll seemed grimly empty as he touched the match to the ethyl. As he expected, if flared up with a pop without any effect. The second vial had no effect either. And the third. And fourth. And fifth.

The final vial was filled with kerosene. Silver Spell carefully placed a drop onto the edge of the scroll To his surprise, the edge of the scroll turned black, as if it were ink. The kerosene seeped across the page in eerie black shoots. Tiny swirls like hurricanes appeared in the black, each one widening at the middle until only hollow-rimmed eyes remained.

“Interesting,” he mumbled, and lit the match.

The walls seemed to contract all at once, as if they had been turned into rubber. The ceiling bent in while the walls flexed out. The pressure in the air squeezed Silver Spell’s head. His ears popped. The match went out. He felt the failsafes shatter from the outside.

Princess Celestia teleported into the room.

“So you could hear me,” Silver Spell said, rubbing his temple. “Very impressive, teleporting through all those barriers. You’ll have to teach me how to do that.”

“What on earth are you doing?” she demanded.

“Testing.”

“Under no circumstances are you to destroy that scroll.”

“I have no intention of destroying it. I’m simply seeing what could damage it should we need to destroy it in the future.”

“Your priorities are severely out of place, Silver Spell.” Celestia marched over and wiped off the kerosene. The scroll was utterly unaffected, while the kerosene smeared all over the table and matted Celestia’s fur.

“My priorities haven’t changed, Ma’am. It seems like you have, though.”

“I’m acting in the interest of scientific inquiry. Of preserving knowledge. You’re talking about burning scrolls. Scrolls filled with... with...”

“With what?”

A tense standoff followed. Only the desk and a glare stood between them. Both placed one hoof on the scroll. The air smelled like kerosine and soot.

“What is the purpose of all this study, Ma’am?”

Celestia fired back, “To understand that which is beyond understanding.”

“The only thing beyond my understanding at the moment is why you put listening spells into the walls to monitor my research.”

“In case of a breakthrough, of course.”

“You don’t trust my note-taking?”

“One never knows when their friends might have a lapse in judgement and forget. Even small mistakes in this realm can be costly.”

“Costly to whom?”

“To all of us. You. Me. The ponies out there.” She tore her eyes away and shook her head. Her voice rang of desperation. The walls seems to close in on her. “Don’t you understand I’m only trying to protect them?”

“That’s why we put it down here. What more protection do you need?”

She snapped, “Not from her! It’s them! Don’t you see them?”

“Them?” Silver Spell took a step back. “Who is them?”

For a moment Silver Spell thought Celestia would lean across the desk and hit him square on the jaw. A moment of rage ceded to guarded frustration, and she drew back.

“I apologize for breaking your spells. This has been a very stressful day for all of us. I’m not sorry for keeping an eye on you, however. It’s become clear that stricter measures must be taken in the future.”

Silver Spell raised an eyebrow. “Stricter measures?”

“Yes. I’m still very sorry about all the spells on this room. I can’t imagine you’ll have any time left to study by the time you recast them all.”

Silver Spell said, “No, I don’t imagine I will.”

Celestia teleported away.

------

After many long hours of repairing the fail safes in the scroll room, Silver Spell scrawled a hasty letter on uncursed parchment, then sent it into the ether. Twenty minutes later, Silver Quill appeared outside his office.

“You wanted to see me?” Silver Quill said, tapping her hoof on the plaque. “What happened to ‘no appointments’?”

“We have to move tomorrow.”

The smile died on Silver Quill’s lips. With only so much as a flinch, she followed Silver Spell through the wall. He stalked around the room while she made herself comfortable on the bed.

“What happened?” she asked.

“She’s bugged the scroll room.”

“She can do that?”

“As of today, she can. No doubt she’ll force us out sooner or later. I won’t wait. We should go tomorrow, when I have my time with the scroll.”

“Won’t she be expecting that?”

“We don’t have any other option,” Silver Spell said. “We won’t get any more chances after that.”

Silver Quill followed the archmage’s eyes to the kerosene lantern hanging from the ceiling by its single link of chain. It blinked at her, wavering slowly from side to side like a floating eye. Watching.

She stood up and took his hoof in hers. It didn’t go through like a ghost’s would, to her immense relief. “We’re in this together. We won’t fail.”

Silver Spell’s seemed surprised, as if he had shared in the illusion of his his own transparency.

Silver Spell said, “No, I don’t imagine I will.”

Celestia teleported directly from the scroll room to the hallway just outside the dining room. She misjudged the power of the remaining cantrips clinging to the wall, however, and the urge to throw up and pass out came over her as she rematerialized. She managed to wobble over to the dinner table, where she promptly fell over and smacked her head on the floor.

Luna, who had taken up her normal perch on the far end of the table, dropped her bloody lamb shanks and ran to her sister.

“I’m okay,” Celestia muttered, leaning on her sister for support. “My mind was elsewhere.”

“Just be thankful your body isn’t elsewhere, too,” Luna replied as she led Celestia to her seat. “You’ve been running yourself absolutely ragged, dearest. Please tell me you’ve scheduled some time off.”

“I’ll have time to rest soon enough. As soon as my work is done.”

Luna gave her a troubled look, but didn’t press the matter. She returned to her seat and ripped her lamb apart without another word. Celestia’s meal of grilled mushrooms remained untouched for some time.

Luna admirably contained herself until her sister was finished with her meal. “So, what do you plan on doing with it?” she asked.

“The scroll?”

“Yes. The one that’s not cursed.”

Celestia scoffed. “Why does everyone insist on destroying it? It’s been so illuminating.”

“Illuminating? How?”

“It’s very difficult to explain. If not the archmage, someone else will surely write a book on it.”

“Ah yes, how is the archmage? Still working on that cure for death, is he?” Luna chuckled. “Mortals. They don’t know how good they have it.”

Celestia made a noncommittal noise and returned to her mushrooms. “It’s better they don’t know what’s waiting for them.”

They paused to let the servers take their plates away.

“Sister...” Luna grasped for words. “What are your plans with the scroll, exactly? If you don’t mind me asking, of course.”

Celestia sighed. “I don’t. It’s everyone else’s asking that I mind. They all want to destroy it. But it’s done nothing but speak to us. Once more, it’s not done speaking yet.”

“So what do we do?”

“We hear it out.”

Luna finished her meal and started picking her teeth clean. She cast her eyes towards her sister and said, “Then what?”

Celestia thought for a moment. “We act accordingly.”

The next day, Celestia attended court like she used to. She smiled when smiling was required and only frowned diplomatically. She welcomed a school field trip and signed some papers. Silver Quill commented on the positive change, though Celestia noticed a somewhat absent look in her eyes. She chose not to comment on it. She felt it herself. Once court was concluded, she bade goodbye to her guests, dismissed the workers for the day, and made for the subterranean layers beneath the castle. She took a pocket watch with her as she descended. She made her way all the way down through the walls to the scroll room, where she locked the door behind her, sat on her haunches in the corner, and waited.

She waited for two days and nights.

Every so often, she checked the pocket watch and moved the sun accordingly. Soon it would sit still in the sky until all her enemies were dust--but for now it had to move.

By the end of the first day, she knew Silver Spell was plotting something. She had expected him to arrive for his study time after only a few hours. What he was doing, she could only guess. All she had to do was keep him from the scroll, lest he destroy it and take its apocalyptic prophecies with it. She had to know when the end was at hand. She had to protect her own. She had to. She had to--

So she checked her stopwatch and waited. Past the point of hunger or thirst. Two days of silence and stone, a lonely vigil over the scroll. The vague thought that she missed court two days in a row passed over her, but if they really needed her they would have gone looking for her. And where was the first place anyone would bother to look? The scroll room. Perhaps they finally understood. They couldn’t possibly know the turmoil about to wash over the world, but perhaps in their own mortal way they understood the importance of her mission and resigned themselves to staying out of her way. They would understand in time. She had to do this.

Shortly after nightfall on the second day, she heard hoofsteps from the hallway. Faint at first, but growing closer. Two sets of them. She sat up straight and cleared her throat.

“Celestia,” came the voice of Silver Spell, “may I come in?”

“Of course,” she said, and opened the door with her magic.

Silver Spell, dressed in his formal mage’s robes, stepped over the threshold and blocked the door from closing with one leg. “They’re mad at you,” he said.

“Are you?”

He shrugged. “You could sit a chicken on the throne for all I care.”

She chuckled. “Are you here to do your usual studying?”

“I am.”

“May I observe?”

“I’d rather you not.”

“Oh?” She stood up, a painful and awkward thing for someone who had hardly moved for two days. “Why’s that?”

“I get anxious with ponies looking over my shoulder.”

“Afraid you might do something I would disapprove of?”

His face, poised on the edge of neutrality, fell into its trademark scowl. “I don’t have any kerosine on me, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“I’m not implying anything. In fact, I’ll just state it instead. I can no longer trust you with this scroll. I plan on calling a general assembly to govern its use until such a time when it can be more fully studied by a collective of scientists, which I promise will include you. Until then, the scroll is now in my custody.”

“It got to you.” Silver Spell tensed. She could see it, even with all his ridiculous-looking robes. “You look the same, you talk the same, but something’s changed.”

“You could say that.” Celestia took a step towards him. Then another.

“I’m not your enemy. But I am obligated to protect you.”

Another step. This one towards the scroll. “And I am obligated to protect you, Silver Spell. You have no idea of the forces at play. No idea of the danger. I am doing what’s right for Equestria.”

“So am I.”

Silver Spell charged a spell. Celestia barred her teeth and lunged, horn ablaze. The dozen spells she cast fizzled the moment they touched the air. She stumbled towards the scroll in a blind rage.

“It worked!” Silver Spell shouted. He scooped up the scroll with his own magic, rolled it up, and chucked it through the doorway, into the arms of Silver Quill, who had hidden in the hallway. “Run!” he shouted, and slammed the door.

Celestia tested the air and found a complicated series of counterspells woven around her. This must have been the cause of the delay in confrontation. It took her all of a few seconds to overwhelm them, but the damage was done. Silver Spell had melted the lock mechanism on the door and was running away, hot on the heels of Silver Quill.

Finesse be damned. Celestia vaporized the door with a deafening whump and gave chase. Though the two mortals had a head start, Celestia was aided in her chase with her own supernatural alicorn physicality. It would not be long before she caught them both.

Silver Spell threw up shields and booby traps behind him, desperate to gain some breathing room. Celestia simply lowered her head and brute-forced her way through them. She noted that despite him surely knowing dozens of lethal countermeasures, he opted only to use mild distractory ones. Nor did she simply shoot them both with lasers. She didn’t want to kill them or the scroll.

She would, however, hurt them a little--as long as it meant the scroll would be hers again. She teleported in front of them and tripped them both. Silver Spell grimaced and teleported himself and Silver Quill further down the hallway. She tried picking them up with her magic only to be foiled by more counterspells. For all his naivete, Silver Spell was an incredibly powerful mage. She opted to run him down on hoof instead.

As the two parties ran through the narrow corridors, the scroll awoke with a vengeance. It seemed to scream at Silver Quill, who was foolishly clutching it in her teeth as she ran. Strange vibrating sensations ran straight into her skull. Vivid and horrifying images filled her brain. It was an onslaught, like being bludgeoned to the abstract notion of death rather than being outright killed.

She cried out and dropped the scroll. Silver Spell scooped it up with his magic. “Don’t stop,” he panted, and pulled her along until she regained her wits. Now the visions were tormenting Silver Spell, but at least he had a buffer, however insignificant it might be.

Careful not to lead them down dead ends, he led them towards the center of the labrynth.

Just when he thought he wouldn’t be able to run any more even to save his life, he saw the dismal plaque of his office just ahead. He risked a look behind him and saw Celestia gaining, her alicorn frame filled the hallway from floor to ceiling.

“Dead end!” Silver Quill shouted.

“I’ll get us through” he shot back, “don’t stop!”

“I can’t!”

“You can!”

Silver Quill screamed and threw herself at the wall. With a final burst of his depleted magical reserves, Silver Spell phased himself and Silver Qill through the wall at the last possible moment. They fell in a tangled heap on the dusty stone floor. The lantern swung manically above them. Shadows flew across the walls.

Silver Spell pushed through the waves of nausia and torment being channeled into him by the scroll and threw up every failsafe spell he could think of into the wall. Blood vessels in his eyes popped. His teeth were barred in exhaustion. For a moment, he looked just as fearsome as any monster the scroll could create.

With the entrance secured, he dropped the scroll and keeled over.

Celestia reached the wall a moment later. In a rage she fired three lightning bolts into the stone, expecting it to burst into a million pieces. The counterspells miraculously held, but the plaque was utterly liquefied. Red-hot metal sprayed the hallway walls and cooled to black.

Inside, Silver Spell and Silver Quill gave each other a look.

“Are you okay?” Silver Quill asked between breathes.

Silver Spell rolled over onto his side and threw up. “Quite okay,” he gurgled.

More muffled spells exploded on the other side of the door, to no effect.

“You know, Ma’am,” Silver Spell shouted, “it was a very good thing you broke though my fail safe spells the other day. I wouldn’t know which ones resisted teleportation the best if it weren’t for you.”

Celestia growled like an animal and ran shoulder-first into the wall.

The spells keeping the two mortals alive were wearing down. Soon she would be through, and both of them would be in a world of trouble if they didn’t destroy the scroll first.

Carefully, ignoring the deluge of death and anxiety being channeled through them like electricity, they placed the scroll in the center of the room, into the middle of a pre-made ritual circle. Silver spell uttered the first verse of the Incantation of Ritual Destruction just as the stone of the wall started to give way.

Celestia roared from the other side. “Don’t you dare!”

They would not be deterred. As Silver Spell recited verses from an old book beside him, Silver Quill took out a vial of kerosene.

But before she could pour it over the scroll, a chunk of rock came loose. It ripped through the air and hit her in the side. She dropped the vial and screamed in pain. Silver Spell looked up just in time to see the whole wall explode, showering him with bits of debris.

Celestia was through. She picked the two mortals up in her magical grasp and flung them across the room. The incantation died on his lips as he flew into his stack of papers left for the intern.

The mortals lay where they fell, gasping for breath and clutching their wounds. Celestia’s rage turned to sickening pity. “Why did you make me hurt you?” she asked, her voice cracked and broken. “Why? I’m trying to save you!”

“Ma’am, ” Silver Spell coughed, looking up at his leader. “with all respects... you underestimate us.”

Silver Spell’s horn ignited with righteous flame. Celestia moved to counter. His shot was wild and high, not even glancing Celestia’s horn.

He wasn’t aiming for Celestia, though.

The bolt of magic hit the ceiling, and the chain that held the kerosene lantern lighting the room.

It fell in a flash. Before anyone could react, the scroll burst into ungodly flame. The images pouring over the scroll lept into the flames. The raw essense of the curse stared them in the eye. Fire and ruin all together, the brutal death of one and a million. Armies clashing. A vortex of ash. Glowing faces reaching out to consume them. The fire reached out, yearning for new fuel. Rising into the air, consuming all it had, perishing on the cold floor. The final jets of flame spiraled into wide grotesque eyes and row after row of teeth.

It screamed, “LET ME TASTE YOU. .”

The scroll burst apart all at once. Light and pure magic flooded the room. Everything went white

Silver Spell awoke first. The smell of sulfur and ash burned his nose as he crawled to Silver Quill, who lay unconscious a few lengths away. Though she wouldn’t be roused, she was breathing steadily. Celestia was the same.

Returning to the mass of papers he had been thrown into, he scribbled a note to the captain of the royal guard and sent it away. The simple dragonfire spell proved too much for him, and he collapsed again before it could be sent.

He awoke in a different stone room somewhere else in the mages’ quarters. Silver Quill was beside him, resting on a military cot similar to the one he was in. Celestia had apparently been moved somewhere else.

Three officers and the captain of the guard huddled in the corner, engrossed in a whispered conversation.

Silver Spell spoke up. “I can hear you, oafs.”

The group flocked to his bedside. “Can you speak?” the captain asked.

“No,” he replied.

“Then you must tell me what happened. Your letter burst into flames the moment it reached me.”

Silver Spell laughed out loud at the thought of the poor captain swatting at a fiery wad of parchment as it landed in his lap. “But you still came.”

“I’m not as much of an oaf as you take me to be.”

“And you knew where to look?”

“It was the only room that had just exploded.”

“Ah, I see.” Silver Spell lapsed into silence, hoping to pass out of consciousness again. The captain shook him awake before he could go under.

“Don’t fall asleep yet. You have much to account for.”

“Just wake me in a few hours. I’ll--” Silver Spell paused as he felt a weight on the base of his horn. He felt blindly for the leylines in the room only to find he had been magically inhibited. “Captain.”

“Don’t play dumb--”

“Why is there an anti-magic ring on my horn, captain?”

The captain took a step back. “The princess lived, you know. Your plot failed.”

“Plot?” He tried to sit up, only to find he had been hoofcuffed to the bed.

“Unless the princess wakes up singing a different tune, I must do my duty and protect her from any harm, foreign or domestic. I’m charging you and the transcriber with attempted assassination with a cursed scroll.”

Silver Spell tried to laugh, but a leather chest strap bit into his hide. He settled down without another word. As the guards resumed their whispered conversation, he strained against his bonds to look at Silver Quill. Only once he was absolutely certain she was still breathing did he close his eyes and fall under the curtain.

His dreams were empty.

Silver spell awoke to his restraints being removed. A remorseful captain of the guard strode over to his bedside. “Celestia has told us the story. On behalf of Equestria, you have our profound apologies.”

Once Silver Spell could stand, he put his hoof right in the captain’s chest. “Oaf,” he uttered, then pushed his way to Silver Quill’s side. She was just waking up.

Her eyes met his, and filled with tears. “Are we dead?” she asked, shaking. “Did we die?”

What once might have been preposterous enough to make him laugh now made his heart ache. He must have looked so tired. She looked the same. He grabbed her hoof and shook his head. “We did it. Everyone’s alive.”

“The scroll?”

“Burned in the fire.”

“Oh, good.” She tried to say something else, then burst into tears.

Silver Spell gave the guards a nasty look and shooed them out of the room. His horn didn’t seem to be working too well, so he pulled up a chair with his hooves instead and stayed by Silver Quill’s side until she stopped crying.

They met Celestia the next day. Officially, they were slated to meet her that afternoon for a public announcement about the whole incident, but Celestia requested they meet for lunch beforehand.

It was an awkward lunch in the royal dining room. Celestia sat on one far side of the table, eating some fruit and holding an ice pack on the base of her horn. Luna plunged her fork into a generous helping of steak tare tare, looking up only to eye the two ponies seated in the very middle of the table. Despite the mountains of food, the mortals hardly ate.

“Just to get this out of the way,” Celestia started after finishing her meal, “you won’t be allowed to speak of this incident to the public. This exposed a tremendous weak point in our national security, and we won’t give anyone else the chance to exploit it. We’re also changing the official story.”

“What’s the new story, Ma’am?” Silver Quill asked.

For a moment, Celestia seemed to show her age. It was there in her eyes, if not her flawless fur and pristine mane. “The story is that a recently hired intern made an attempt on my life with a cursed scroll.”

Luna tried to contain a chuckle, then burst out laughing.

“You’ll both be awarded medals, of course. You deserve that much. And on a personal note... I owe you both so much more than a single apology. When I let my curiosity lead me down a dark road, you were able to save me.”

Silver Spell shrugged and eyed the food coldly. “I wasn’t able to complete the Incantation of Ritual Destruction before you tried to kill us. So the scroll is gone, but the curse is still alive somewhere.”

“Well, when it returns, we’ll know what it is. What it can do.” She looked down. “We won’t make my mistake again.”

Silver Spell nodded. “So, you’re feeling better then? Less cursed?”

Silver Quill hit the mage in the arm.

“Now now, that’s quite alright. It’s a reasonable thing to ask. Whatever control that scroll had over me perished in the fire.” Celestia paused. Something lingered in her mind. “It’s strange--it didn’t feel like any curse I had come across before.”

“What did you see in it, Ma’am?” Silver Spell asked.

“Beg your pardon?”

“Well, when I studied it, when I let it into my dreams, it tried to play on my fear of death and my desire to find a cure for it. What did it show you?”

Celestia looked startled for a moment, then signaled for more food. She dug into a trio of cherry pastries with a vengeance before replying through a stuffed mouth, “Something similar.”

The answer left Silver Quill stumped, but it seemed to satisfy Silver Spell. He picked out the decorative leaves of lettuce from the bottom of a fruit tray and chewed them contemplatively.

Silver Quill wrinkled her nose. “You’re not supposed to eat those.”

“Fruit is too sweet. This is perfect.”

“Still.”

He bugged out his eyes and waved the leaf around, like a ghost flying through the air. “Oooh, let me taste you.”

Silver Quill nearly spit out her juice. “For goodness sake!”

The rest of the lunch was almost normal. The four left for the court presentation together. Silver Quill and Luna took a much quicker pace to the room, leaving Celestia and Silver Spell to drag behind.

“I remember what you said at the end,” Celestia said, breaking the silence forming between them. “I thought I was trying to protect everyone. I forgot how capable a few good ponies can be.”

“You were under the influence of a curse. I understand.”

“You were right, though. I underestimated you. When you’re on the throne, things look different. I treated that scroll like a curiosity, and it took me. You were vigilant and cautious. I was reckless with my power. And it was you that saved the day.” She touched her heart twice. “From this day on, you have my word to never again underestimate the power of my little ponies.”

Silver Spell shrugged. “You’re very kind, Ma’am. Just don’t expect me to cry during the ceremony.”

“I expect you to scare the assembly half to death.”

Silver Spell smiled.

They were almost to the throne room when Celestia said, “One more thing... when it talked to you, did it use strange punctuation?”

“Yes, Ma’am. Two periods after each thought.”

“What do you suppose it meant?”

Silver Spell paused at the door to the throne room, one hoof on the doorknob. The buzz of the assembly came through the cracks. “Eyes, Ma’am,” he said, and opened the door. “They were eyes.”

With all the official ceremonies, explanations, and question-fielding, the day court became an all-day affair. By the time the assembly had left, it was nearly dinnertime. Celestia bade her heroes goodbye as the guard closed the doors for the night. Luna joined Celestia as she finished sorting tomorrow’s paperwork and sending it away to the secretary’s office.

“I’m famished,” Celestia said. “What should we have the chefs make us?”

“Steak,” Luna replied. “Bison. Dragon. Something bloody.”

Celestia turned up her nose. “Salad it is.”

They hugged briefly before Celestia left for the dining room. “Aren’t you coming?” she asked Luna.

“I need to finish some of my own paperwork in my room,” she replied. “They may not care about the night, but it’s night they need.”

Celestia smiled. “The best princess is one who knows her place.”

“Of course, dearest.”

They teleported almost simultaneously.

Luna arrived in her bedroom and immediately smashed a bookcase. She screamed in rage and tore a row of antique swords from the wall, snapped them in two, and hurled them across the room. She moved to rip the curtains from the window, thought better of it, and shredded the ornate rug instead.

Once everything closest to her had been destroyed, she sat on the floor and regained her composure.

“I hate you,” she panted. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.”

Once her anger was spent, she moved into a meditative posture and closed her eyes. A few errant stars twinkled behind her eyes until she pushed them away and pushed deeper into the magical aether, past the physical plane, into the leylines and the purely magical realm. Strands of magic as wide as galaxies, the very sinew of existence, passed her by as she plunged deeper into darkness.

Out of the black, a form took shape. Luna reached out and cupped it close to her, shaped it into a ball. She held it against her chest. Incantations in the ancient tongues soothed it, so she recited the ones she knew.

Outside her body, darkness gathered. The light grew dim. Her meditating body seemed to pull it from the air.

Power, she thought, and so it was. The words took shape around her, furnaced by the incantations. There would be more fire before it was over. Fire and teeth and eyes with snakelike centers.

Power, the word echoed in her mind. I can almost taste it. .