Celestia’s eyes narrowed as she looked down from her elaborately gilded throne with an icy-cold gaze. “You do realize that what you are saying is essentially an accusation of high treason?”

With his head bowed, attention firmly focused on the plush red carpet beneath him partially due to respect but mostly out of fear, Arcana answered very simply with a slightly wavering voice. “Yes, Your Highness.”

“And...” The princess stopped momentarily to release a deep sigh. “…not only is it an accusation of one of the most severely punishable crimes in Equestria, but an accusation leveled against my most faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Who happens to be taking her place as the Grand Magus in less than three days.” Celestia stood and began walking slowly down the steps from the dais.

“Yes, Your Highness,” the unicorn stated again, nervously fidgeting in-place. Arcana felt as though he might be banished at any time for this indiscretion.

The princess approached the head mage and stood tall, several feet before him. “Please, raise your head and look at me, Arcana.”

Now sweating with anxiety and fear, Arcana complied with the demand veiled as a request and looked to his princess. The face that met his sight was terrifying. Her features were no less calm or motherly than they ever were, but her eyes held the burning rage of a thousand suns. “Milady, I-I-I apologize for my—”

Celestia raised a gold-clad hoof, indicating that all she required from the head mage was his silence. “You come to me with wild accusations of conspiracy and illegal experimentation levied against my protegé but you have absolutely no evidence except for some coincidentally missing equipment from a storage facility and assertions that Twilight has been acting strange? You know that I hold your opinion and counsel with the utmost regard, but what, exactly, are you trying to accomplish here, Arcana?”

The grey unicorn opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off once again by Celestia’s waving hoof. She turned away from Arcana and made her way to a massive, floor-to-ceiling window at the side of the room with lush, red velvet curtains tied back to either side. The alicorn scanned the northerly scenery. A wide, flourishing valley stretched as far as the horizon with huge open fields, gently rolling hills and isolated stands of trees scattered throughout. Cloudsdale lazily floated above the valley; at this distance all that could be made out was a massive cloudbank with several ribbons of prismatic color carelessly hanging below. Celestia stood for several minutes, gazing out the window, quietly contemplating the ingenuity of pegasus architecture.

“But what about the energy dampening magic, Your Majesty? And all of the times that she is nowhere to be found?” Arcana loudly interjected into the silence.

Snapped out of her respite, Celestia quickly spun away from the window. She could feel the heat of her magic building around her body as her anger increased with every word that Arcana spoke. “That. Is. Enough! Although the dampening magic is not in common use or taught anymore, it is far from being a banned magic. It is a very simplistic illusory spell, and even if Twilight didn’t stumble across it in her studies, she does have the aptitude to design such a spell on her own. And I don’t blame her at all for using it. If somepony was trying to keep as close tabs on me as you are with her, I would likely have done the same thing.”

“But—”

"But nothing, Arcana.” Celestia took several deep breaths in an attempt to calm herself as she walked back to the mage and looked down at him. “Did you ever think to check where Fireshade might be during those times that Twilight came up missing?"

Arcana’s head drooped once again. “I hadn’t thought it relevant, milady.”

The princess pursed her lips and furrowed her brow. “Of course you didn’t. You, yourself, have told me about Twilight’s recent infatuation with your apprentice,” Celestia said with a near-imperceptible grin. “If something like that doesn’t illicit strange behavior in my normally shut-in student, I don’t know what would… Would you like to hear my theory of what is going on here?”

“I would be honored, Your Highness,” he answered, bowing his head lower.

“You may not be after you actually hear it,” Celestia chuckled. “I have, standing before me, the single highest-ranking mage in the service of Equestria. This stallion has been a faithful servant of the court for more than thirty years, but now, a much younger unicorn—with much less experience—has been chosen for a task that this veteran mage has coveted for a very long time. He thinks that he is being unfairly passed over; he believes that he should be chosen to be my grand magus. He is jealous of the younger unicorn… and jealousy is not very becoming on you, Arcana.”

Arcana's head swiftly jerked upward, eyes wide and mouth agape in absolute shock. “Your Majesty, I-I’ve never!”

“It’s alright, Arcana. I understand that this is a frustrating turn of events for you, but there is a reason the position of grand magus has been vacant for over a century. No pony has had the natural aptitude for magic that I require of a grand magus since the passing of Astral Tempest nearly two hundred years ago. Twilight Sparkle is likely the most powerful unicorn to be born in the past millenium, possibly even surpassing Starswirl, and I have the utmost confidence that she will fill her role as grand magus most satisfactorily.”

“Yes, Princess, I am sure she will.”

Turning away from the mage, Celestia started climbing the steps towards her throne. “Now then, Arcana, unless there is anything else you would like to discuss, I must field an audience with my finance minister shortly.”

“No, milady. I will just be on my way, then.” Arcana turned away from the princess and began trotting down the length of the throne-room.

“Oh, Arcana,” Celestia called out before the unicorn was halfway to the exit.

He stopped and turned around to face the princess.

Although Celestia spoke to him in the most pleasant tone she could muster through her seething anger, the words still carried a heavy air of threatening authority. “If you ever want to accuse somepony of this sort of thing again, you had better bring some very convincing proof with you. I will absolutely not tolerate this witch-hunt of yours.”

“Yes, milady.” Arcana bowed deeply towards the floor before continuing his journey to anywhere away from the princess.

The grey unicorn passed through the ornate doors of the throne room. As the guards closed the doors behind him, he exhaled with a huff and began towards his lavish office at the main laboratory facility.

“Proof... If the princess wants proof, I’ll get her proof,” he whispered under his breath as he quickly trotted down the cavernous hallway.

Twilight felt the heavy, low-frequency vibration in the floor through her hooves as the massive steel blast door of Section 5 came to a thunderous, shuddering stop while she signed out at the security checkpoint.

“See ya tomorrow, Twilight?” the gatekeeper asked with a smile.

“Nope, I have lots of things to do before the ceremony on Thursday.”

Thunder Hoof stood from his usual post. “Oh, of course. Well, I suppose we’ll see you next week, Madam Grand Magus,” he responded with a smirk, looking up to Twilight from a low bow.

“Pfft.” The mage turned around and began making her way up the helical hallway. “Knock it off, Thunder, a silly title isn’t going to change anything.”

After trotting up several spirals, a soft lavender glow enveloped her midsection. As the light dissipated, a pair of saddlebags appeared in its place. “Security here really isn’t as tight as it should be,” Twilight said quietly, smiling to herself as she made her way towards the clandestine dungeon laboratory.

Thirty minutes of walking through the labyrinthine castle and she neared her destination. Twilight moved silently through a narrow brick corridor, the only light provided by the magelight spell hanging at the end of her horn. In the distance, another light washed across the dark hallway from her lab.

She dispelled the light on her horn as she approached the doorway. Twilight made the right turn into the short hall attaching the lab and main corridor; she made it three steps into the cellblock before an unseen force threw her hard into the stone floor, taking the breath away from her. Gasping, she attempted to stand, finding it quite impossible to lift her head from the floor, let alone get her legs to work properly. The mage glanced to the floor in front of her face, noting two lines, glowing softly with a dim blue light. She decided to try to dispell whatever magic was holding her to the ground, only being able to prepare a spell for a second before an intense, burning pain shot through her head and she quickly gave up.

Twilight growled. “Fireshade!”

A smiling, yellow face peeked out from the nearest cell. “Heya, Twilight! What’s going on?”

If she could have turned her head to face Fireshade, Twilight would have given her a glare to rival that of a cockatrice. “Fire, why am I stuck to the floor?”

“Neat, isn’t it? I was studying the sigil book… It’s an entrapment sigil!” The yellow mage walked out of the cell and made her way towards Twilight’s crumpled form.

“Yeah, I kinda figured.” Fireshade came into Twilight’s field of vision and sat down, smiling at the prone mage.

Fireshade leaned in slightly. “Well, what do you think? I thought we could use some defenses around here, just in case.”

“I think you had better let me up; I’ve got work to do,” Twilight deadpanned.

Her eyes lit up in genuine surprise. “Oh, right! Lemme get that.” Fireshade’s horn lit up and the blue glow of the sigil died out, leaving behind a white chalk outline.

Twilight slowly stood up and shook her head. “Thank you for taking the initiative, but I really wish you would tell me about these sort of things before actually doing them. What if you weren’t here?”

“Uhm… I guess you would’ve been stuck there until I got back,” Fireshade replied quietly.

“Right. Just be a little more careful next time, okay?”

“I was careful, though. I didn’t use the matter phasing sigil.”

“Well, at least you know better than to mess with magic you don’t understand. Go ahead and reset your trap; now that I know where it is, I can avoid it next time.” Twilight began walking towards her workbench while Fireshade recharged the sigil. The white circle and runes glowed blue momentarily before disappearing completely.

“Uh, what’s with the cloak?”

Turning her head to look at Fireshade, Twilight answered, “Let’s not get into that discussion right now.”

“Oh, okay. Whatev,” the yellow mage stated, slightly taken aback.

The saddlebags levitated off of Twilight’s back and landed gently on the workbench. She reached inside and pulled out a small binder. “So, Fireshade, have you made progress on the task I gave you yesterday?” she asked as she began to read the pages in the folder.

“Heck yeah! Quill’s been taken care of and I already secured the new test subjects.”

Twilight turned away from the bench with an eyebrow raised and began walking towards the two locked cells at the end of the room. “Oh? Where did you get them from?”

“From the lower district industrial sector,” Fireshade stated proudly. “They were selling drugs. I thought they would be perfect, because it wouldn’t be a big deal if someone noticed a couple of dealers went missing.”

The lavender mage approached the first iron-clad door and peeked in the small, barred window. Against the wall opposite of the door sat a dark red unicorn stallion. Twilight smiled. “Hey! What’s your name?” she asked the unicorn.

Fireshade is right, he is perfect.

He looked up to the door with a scowl. “I ain’t saying shit until I have a lawyer here.”

“Typical.” Twilight chuckled softly. “I don’t think you quite understand your situation here. Do you even know where you are?”

“Well, yeah. I’m in a jail. I need to send a message to let someone know I’m here.”

“No, you’re not in a jail, and the rules here are not the same as a jail. There will be no messages to anyone. Now stand up and show me your cutie mark.”

“Buck you.”

A lavender glow enveloped the uncooperative unicorn, lifting him and spinning him around so Twilight could get a look at his flank. A picture of a silver five-pointed star with a golden, arcing tail emblazoned his upper thigh. The glow surrounding the stallion disappeared and he fell unceremoniously to the floor with a thud. “Good enough.”

The nameless stallion jumped to his hooves. “What do you mean ‘good enough’? What is this place?”

Twilight simply turned away from the window and continued to the next cell. Looking through the opening on this door, she saw an emerald-green earth pony mare with a short-cropped silver mane laying on the floor, her cutie mark exposed. The unicorn’s eye twitched slightly at the sight. A stylized pair of apples—one with a bite taken out of it—adorned the mare’s flank.

“Uh-oh,” the mage breathed.

It’s okay, these ponies are bottom-feeders of society. Just stay calm, and disconnect yourself from who this pony is.

The mare in the cell rolled over towards the sound and stood up. “Yer damn right, ‘uh-oh’. Apparently you do have some idea of who I am,” she said, walking towards the door and looking Twilight square in the eye.

Disconnect.

“I can see that you’re a member of the Apple Family, but as far as who you are specifically, I don’t know… nor do I care.”

The green mare stopped moving forward when her nose was an inch from the barred window. “Yer gonna care. I’m Apple Slice, and you’re right; I am a member of the Family. And when I miss my drop, they’re gonna come for me.”

This isn’t good.

No pony will notice them missing, and even if they do, it won’t matter.

What if they send someone to find her?

It will be impossible for them to find her here. Her affiliations are inconsequential. She will be considered part of the cost of doing business and replaced as though she never existed. This is not something to worry ourself about. Remember; disconnect.

“I think you give yourself too much credit, Apple Slice. You’re a small-fry; some street dealer in the Lower. I’m sure the Apples go through the likes of you pretty regularly. No one is coming for you, and even if they did, no pony would even know where to begin looking.” Twilight turned from the iron-clad door and began walking back to her workbench.

“Wait! If you let me out now, we’ll jus’ ferget this ever happened. You can even keep Comet!”

“So quick to sell out your friends?” Twilight asked without turning.

“Friend? He’s a patsy; it’s his job to take the fall!”

“Like I told Comet, this is not a jail. There’s no fall to take here.” Twilight sat on the stool at the workbench and released a spell, containing Apple Slice’s voice within the cell.

Using telekinesis, Twilight dragged three silver boxes to herself from the far end of the workbench. Continuing to flip through the pages of the binder she removed from Section 5, she spoke. “Fireshade, could you please give the unicorn his first dose of the GL compound you made, and then help me with these?”

“Yep! No problem.” Fireshade walked to the supply cabinet and removed a half-full vial of bluish fluid and a small syringe in a telekinetic field. She whistled happily to herself, filling the cylinder of the instrument with the contents of the vial as she walked to the door of the cell housing Comet.

The yellow mage looked into the cell through the window of the door with a grin. “Are you ready, test subject?”

Comet looked up to the steel bars. “Test subject? What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m going to take this gunk,” Fireshade paused as the syringe levitated through the bars, “and put it inside you. Then we’re going to see if it does what I think it will do.”

The captive jumped to his hooves and backed away from the door until he ran into the back wall. “You can’t do that! This is insane, you can’t just take ponies and experiment on them!”

“Actually, we can,” Fireshade said in a low, serious tone.

The syringe floating near the door turned—needle pointing directly at the frightened unicorn—and flew across the cell. In the blink of an eye, the needle had embedded itself into Comet’s shoulder and dispensed its payload into the muscle therein. Fireshade pulled the needle out of his flesh and returned it to herself, turning towards Twilight and tossing it into a waste container near the workbench.

A piercing scream emanated from the cell. “It burns! It feels like my leg is on fire!”

Fireshade spun around to the door once again and looked through the barred window. The unicorn inside was no longer standing, but writhing on the floor of the cell, clutching his front-left leg with his right hoof.

“Aren’t you going to do something!? It hurts so bad!” Comet now had tears rolling down one cheek.

The yellow head in the window cocked to the side slightly. “Huh… Yeah, I’m going to make note of this reaction. Don’t worry, it probably won’t kill you. Maybe I can adjust the pH so it’s not so uncomfortable next time.” She smiled to the red unicorn before turning her focus back to Twilight.

Fireshade walked across the room to stand next to her friend. “So, what are we doing now?”

“You are going to fix one of these things. Hopefully you can get two of them working, but one will do if we don’t have the parts,” Twilight said as she pushed the binder full of technical information towards Fireshade. “And I’m going to work on dispelling the protective magic on the books documenting the study of the princesses.”

Hours passed late into the night with the only sound punctuating the silence a small rattle or clank of metal as Fireshade disassembled and reassembled the boxes before her multiple times. Twilight sat at the opposite end of the workbench with three ancient books and several newer tomes. Flashes of magic brightly illuminated her side of the room periodically as she attempted to view the writings of the three tomes.

“Done with the first one!” Fireshade shouted across the room. “I think… just gotta see if it’ll charge up.”

Twilight looked up from her task. “Excellent, hook it up to the storage device and start the energy transfer.” The mage sounded off with a pouty huff. “At least someone is making progress here. These books are protected by some sort of magic that I’ve never come across before. The energy matrices they’re built from are just… bizarre.”

Take them with you.

Near the entrance of the spacious lab, a cable clicked into place in the side of Fireshade’s metallic box, the other end connected to a large machine designed to store magic energy. The yellow mage turned and began trotting across the room towards Twilight. “What do you mean ‘bizarre’?”

“I dunno. I guess the best way I could describe it is chaotic. There doesn’t seem to be any real rhyme or reason to any of it. The spells protecting the books seem to be very random in nature. What’s more, is that everytime I try to detect the magic in the books, it seems to be changing.”

Fireshade approached the other mage and peeked over her shoulder at the numerous books and pages of hoof-written notes. “It would make sense that it would be extremely difficult to dispell, then. If the protection spells are changing, by the time you have a counterspell figured out, it wouldn’t work with the mutated barrier.”

“Exactly. If I can’t figure this out, we’re not going to get anywhere with Celestia. If we don’t have the proof, she’ll simply deny anything that is brought forward.”

Take them with you.

Take them where?

Think about it; you know where.

Twilight leaned back and looked up to the ceiling, pondering the cryptic musings of her subconscious. Where could I take them that would help to see them?

After several minutes of thinking in silence, the lavender mage’s eyes lit up with a revelation. She stood up, taking one of the volumes she was attempting to view in a telekinetic aura and moving it into her saddlebag on the workbench. “Fireshade, draw out two anchored teleport arrays. Put the sending right next to the receiving.”

“Uh… okay.” Fireshade pulled a piece of chalk from the shelf above the workbench and began drawing the two circles in the middle of the floor.

Twilight placed her saddlebags across her back and buckled the strap around her. She returned to the group of books on the wooden workbench and pulled one close to her. Pulling open the cover of the book Illusion, she flipped through the pages and stopped at a passage, reading it over quickly.

“I don’t have time to memorize this.” The book glowed with a magenta aura, closed, and floated into the saddlebag opposite of where the tome detailing the study of the princesses resided.

Twilight turned to her assistant. “Almost ready?”

The last few runes were being drawn into the second array. “Almost…” Fireshade quickly scrawled out the final arcane rune. “Done.”

“Great.” Twilight walked to the arrays, inspecting them closely to make sure they had been drawn correctly.

“What are you doing, Twilight?” asked Fireshade.

“I’m going to read this book, hopefully,” Twilight responded as she stepped into the circle of the sending array. “Oh! I almost forgot.”

A small stack of blank paper and a pencil levitated from the workbench and gently landed in her saddlebag. “Okay, all set. I’ll see you in a moment.”

An aura of magical energy surrounded Twilight’s horn as she powered the sigil array. In a bright, white flash she was gone. Within a fraction of a second, a second flash of light permeated the dungeon laboratory and Twilight was standing several feet from where she started.

The purple mage stood staring blankly, straight ahead, her eyes glowing bright magenta. “Wow.”

“Geez, Twilight! What’s with your eyes?” Fireshade asked.

Twilight shook her head, breaking her psyche loose from the stresses of sigil travel as her eyes slowly returned to their normal, violet color. “What about my eyes?”

“They’re—uh, they were glowing.”

“Probably just a side-effect of the teleportation; we don’t have time to worry about that right now. This is big, Fire. This is really, really big. Celestia and Luna are no more gods than you or I, and they are definitely not immortal.”

“What do you mean?”

The flap of one of her bags opened and Twilight levitated the ancient book in front of her. “I hope this worked.” The book opened to a page near the middle.

Fireshade moved to a position near Twilight to look at the contents of the text; her head cocked to the side in curiousity. “It’s blank,” she stated flatly.

Twilight sighed deeply as she set the book with the others on the workbench. “Damn it… At least I have my notes.” From the other saddlebag, the stack of paper that she had taken with her floated out and dropped onto the workbench.

Moving to the stack of paper, Fireshade began hoofing through them. Every page had been covered—front and back—with words and diagrams. “Twilight, there must be twenty pages here. How long were you in that thing?”

“I don’t know. It feels like days when you’re in the teleport, but that doesn’t matter. The point is that I can read the book while I’m in there, but I still can’t break the protection spells. Apparently, the spells just don’t work in the void.”

“That’s great! Now we have the proof that we—”

“No! No we don’t,” Twilight cut across loudly. “We have a stack of notes that I wrote, and believe me, this stuff sounds like the rantings of a madpony. We’re no better off now, than we were before, except now I have a little better understanding of how the princesses harness so much power. We won’t have any real proof until I can break the stupid spells on the books.”

Fireshade scratched at her chin. “Well, I suppose we’ll just have to keep trying.”

“Yeah, keep trying.” Twilight levitated the next ancient text in the series to her saddlebag, along with a fresh stack of paper. “I’m going back.”

Squinting suspiciously, Fireshade craned her neck back slightly. “Are you sure this is safe, Twilight?”

“Of course it’s safe. I just wasn’t ready for it that first time I went through. This last teleport was fine, and I’m sure it will get easier the more I do it,” Twilight explained as she stepped into the teleport array once again. “When we’re done here, I need you to go to the research library and get me anything you can find on unicorn physiology. Specifically any research on the biological energy conduits for channelling magic.”

“Okay, Twi. I’ll get them first thing when the Canterlot Library opens in the morning.”

Twilight looked to Fireshade. “I’ll be right back,” she said with a smile just before disappearing within a white flash of light.