Year 8 of the 2nd Diarchy, 47th day of the Southward Equinox
Personal Journal, entry 4

I’ve been out of the hospital for a month now, I’m starting to think my fur is never going to grow back over the small circular scar on my forehead. My speech has returned almost completely back to normal and I’ve regained full use of my magic and limbs.

The voice is still with me and continues to intensify, though I haven’t told anypony about it yet; I’m not sure that I should. I’ve decided that it is nothing more than my subconscious mind, but sometimes the things it says… I don’t know, they worry me. I’m afraid that anypony that I were to tell about it would just write me off as ‘crazy’, and that would effectively end my career as Grand Magus before it starts. Not to mention the possibility of being placed in a mental care facility.

I spend much of my time at the Section 5 lab these days; training under Arcana and reading through the technical reports of current and past research. I didn’t realize that the position of Grand Magus would require so much bureaucratic paperwork, in addition to having to know everything about everything that happens in the R&D departments.

Last week I discovered an entire section of the lab’s library dedicated to abandoned research projects, the documents there are fascinating, to say the least. It is obvious that not all courses of investigation would net the desired results, but some of the technical documents and research notes that I’ve found indicated promising results. However, the research was stopped with very vague or no explanation as to the reasoning for such a decision.

Two days from now will be my first day as a research team leader. I’m so nervous, but Fireshade was transferred to the Magical Energy Division to help me out and will be on the team, so that will help.

“Spike, bring me the final report on compound GL-7658a,” Twilight said, not even looking up from the tome she was currently investigating.

Her assistant walked up one of the many rows of metal bookshelves that the Section 5 research library housed. Raising a claw to the shelf at eye-level he pointed to the spine of one of the many books of various size and color and began dragging his finger across multiple volumes. He stopped at a rather small publication and pulled it down from off the shelf. Bringing forth the thin technical document, it skidded across the table as he dropped it. “It’s late, Twi, we should go get some sleep.”

“You go ahead; I have to keep studying.”

“Can’t you do it tomorrow or maybe the next day?”

“With all the things Arcana has me doing for training to be the Grand Magus? No... this is the only time I get to do any of my own studies; after all of my other duties are taken care of.”

“What are you even looking into this stuff for? I mean, seriously, psychoactive pharmaceuticals?”

He can’t know yet.

Shut up, I’m doing this to try to get rid of you.

“Because it’s my job to know Section 5 and the Bureau inside and out.” She closed the book that was currently in front of her and pushed it away, while simultaneously pulling the new volume towards her with her magic.

“Alright. Well, I’m going to go to bed. Goodnight, Twilight.”

“Uh-huh,” was the only response as she pulled the cover of the book open and began flipping through the pages as though she knew exactly where to find the passage she searched for.

Spike slowly made his way to the door, looking over his shoulder at the unicorn. She was alone in the library that dwarfed their previous residence. It was much larger than the Ponyville Library, but lacked the charm of the treehouse they once called home. Completely alone and she didn’t seem to mind one bit.

“See ya later,” he mumbled as he walked through the doorway.

Twilight skipped to the middle of the document and began reading about the clinical trials of compound GL-7658a. As she quickly scanned the pages of the dusty book that had probably never been taken off its shelf since it was originally placed there, she read that the initial testing of the drug showed promising results as an antipsychotic. However, once trials on ponies began, something had gone wrong.

“What is with this report?” she asked to the empty room. Black blocks covered much of the pages, hiding the text behind them. She began flipping through to the back of the book, each page having no more than a sentence or two exposed to view. Once she reached the back cover, the narrow ragged edges of multiple missing pages ran the length of the binding.

Strange...

Aren’t you curious? Why is all that information missing? We should find out. We need to recreate this compound and test it.

What!? No. It’s too dangerous; they stopped this project for a reason.

Twilight stood up and walked back to the part of the library that housed the documents detailing the abandoned projects. She chose a booklet at random and pulled it down off the shelf using her magic and began flipping through the pages. The unicorn didn’t read this one, however, just glanced at the pages in the soft violet glow looking for the telltale signs of someone tampering with the details within.

Huh… This report appeared to be completely intact from cover to cover. Quickly closing the book and turning the front towards herself, she inspected the cover: Real Time Voice Communication Using Techno-Magic Based Compression of Data

This title was not surprising to be found amongst the abandoned research reports. Over the past month of studying she had learned that techno-magic was used with success in machine control and field manipulation, but using it for data storage and transfer had been problematic. Solutions using electronics were engineered for these problems over time, and now the ideas presented in this particular report were almost laughable.

Another book on the shelf glowed as the one she had finished with dropped to the floor. Twilight brought it in front of her face and began flipping through it; again, as with the last, this report seemed to be complete. The lavender unicorn continued this ritual of pulling a book down, quickly scanning it, then letting it fall to her hooves over and over again. Every investigation netted the same result as the previous.

See? They didn’t hide all of them behind black ink and torn pages.

Twilight quietly growled at the voice in her mind as she attempted to push it down and continued her search. Report after report, there were close to twenty books of varying thicknesses on the floor in front of her; she wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but was intent on finding it. The next book was different; she knew it before she even saw the tome due to the extra effort it took to lift it off the shelf.

Compared to the others, this book was massive. The leather of the cover wrapped the volume in a style of binding that had not been in common use for centuries. The spine was mostly gone, rotted away from decades of neglect, exposing the backs of the signatures and the coarse threads holding them together. She moved the book to look at the front cover; on it was nothing more than a number, hoof-written in a stylized script: 105-612718

Twilight hesitated to open the book, apprehensive of what may be inside of the old text. She pulled the cover to the title page; on it was a recognizable, albeit illegible, font:

Ancient Equin? What is this thing? ‘Old’ didn’t even begin to accurately describe the age of this particular volume. The language it was written in long ago would place it at being, at the very least, about 1100 years old. However it could be, very likely, much older.

Twilight closed the mysterious book and took it with her back to the table. As she walked, her mind swam with questions as to what this book was, why it was here and not in a museum or library vault somewhere, or what sort of secrets it held within its pages. She wouldn’t be able to read it immediately, but she could translate the tome as she went.

The feeling of apprehensiveness had disappeared to be replaced by an electrifying feeling of excitement of the possibilities of her new discovery. Twilight delicately placed the ancient book on the table, careful to not damage it any more than it already had been from the years of inattention. Very slowly, she pulled the book open to a point near the middle, the age-dried pages crackling with the movement. She barely caught a glimpse of the diagram of a unicorn’s skull with arrows indicating various points, before it, and all of the words written on the page, disappeared with a dim white flash.

“What?” Twilight leaned in so that her nose was nearly touching the page. Nothing. There was no trace of any ink ever being placed on the ancient paper. The unicorn knew what she had seen and could sense the unfamiliar magic emanating from the book, presumably masking the print from view.

There’s a reason these ones are different. She’s lying to us. She’s hiding things.

“No!” Twilight jumped a bit at her own outburst. She lowered her volume to a whisper now. “I’ll... I’ll ask the Princess about it.”

No… Check the cover.

She carefully turned back to the front page. On the inside of the cover someone had written a Royal Canterlot Archive catalog number.

There are other avenues to pursue before we go to the Princess.

I wonder if we could even recreate it, Twilight thought, her concentration instantly redirected to the other book of mysteries on the table in front of her. She pushed the older book away and brought forward the book she had been studying before her distraction.

Quickly flipping the pages to a point near the front of the book looking for a certain piece of information, she came to the section on the synthesis of the compound. Twilight fully expected it to be covered with the same black boxes, but it wasn’t. The full instructions of creating the chemical were present, with the exception of several key chemical precursors in the list of supplies. Well, it doesn’t seem too complicated.

“But we don’t know what sort of side-effects there may be. I have to ask Arcana about it.”

He will lie to us to protect the Princess’ secrets.

“We’ll just have to figure out what to do about that when we get to that point.”

Fireshade gave Twilight an exploratory poke in the side. The sleeping unicorn didn’t respond in the slightest. “Hey, Twilight... it’s time to get up, sleepy head,” she sang in a soft tone.

“Come on, Twi, you’re going to miss your first project meeting as the team lead.”

A few moments passed by with no response from the obviously exhausted unicorn. A menacing grin flashed across Fireshade’s face shortly before her horn began to glow and she created a large ball of brightly glowing flames near the ceiling. She allowed it to collapse into oblivion, the air around it quickly filling the void left behind. A resounding boom reverberated through the room, shaking the walls and lifting dust all around the two unicorns.

Twilight Sparkle jumped to her hooves with a breathy gasp. “What was that!?”

Fireshade was now rolling on the floor, laughing at the scene that had just transpired. “D-did you pee on the—” She paused to finish chuckling and collect herself. “—on the chair?” The yellow mare snorted as she attempted to hold back the laughter.

“Ha ha, and no, I did not pee on the chair.” Twilight quickly glanced over to the seat to make sure she was indeed telling the truth. “You almost gave me a heart attack, what’s going on?”

Fireshade looked up from the floor at Twilight with a confused look. “Seriously, Team Leader?”

Twilight looked around her in horror, finally realizing that she had been using a book as a pillow and had fallen asleep in the Section 5 library the night before. “What time is it?”

“Don’t worry; we got a good twenty minutes before we have to be there. Spike told me if you weren’t already at the meeting or at your apartment, you would probably be here. So I came to get you.” Fireshade finally stood up and walked to the table that Twilight had been sleeping at. “What were you reading last night that was so important you couldn’t go to bed?”

Twilight ran to the table, wide eyed. “Oh, uh. Noth—”

“Effects of High-Level Magical Energy Exposure on Earth Pony Reproduction,” Fireshade read out loud from the cover of the report she was now holding in her magic. “Heh… A little light reading for bedtime, eh?”

“Uhm, yeah.” The confused unicorn looked all over the top of the table, not locating either of the two books she desperately wanted to find. She didn’t recall putting them away the previous night, but they certainly were not where she remembered leaving them.

“Whatever; let’s get going, don’t wanna be late,” Fireshade stated as she set the spiral-bound report back on the table.

“Yeah… late,” Twilight replied distractedly.

The two unicorns made the short journey from the Section 5 library to the small conference room where two unicorns, a pegasus and a dragon were waiting. The door swung open and they all looked up to see Fireshade and the new project Team Leader enter the room.

Spike walked up to Twilight and presented her with a folder containing the details of her team and their new research project. Having memorized all the details of the contents over the past few days, she set the folder on the table in front of her.

“Hello, my name is Twilight Sparkle, and I guess I’m going to be leading this endeavor.” The lavender unicorn smiled at her new team, but two of them seemed preoccupied with things and the tan unicorn stallion was simply staring at her.

“So, I suppose we’ll get to it, then... We’ve been tasked with the miniaturization of the magic energy storage device. We’re going to take this behemoth.” She paused to point with a hoof to the oven-sized metal box sitting against the wall. Twilight then, with her magic, picked up another metallic box no bigger than a large dictionary. “And put it into a package this size.”

“Really?” asked the pegasus of the group.

“Yes, really, uhmm...” Twilight stared at the pegasus and let the statement hang in the air, trying to silently push her for her name. Although she knew their names, she didn’t know which name belonged to which pony.

“Sapphire,” the dark blue pegasus mare stated dryly.

“And you would be our energy transfer specialist, correct?”

“That’s the rumor.”

“Okaaay... So that leaves us with Fleet,” the mention of his name finally broke him out of his gaze and he looked down towards the surface of the table, “and Glimmer. The two engineers that were responsible for the original storages devices,” Twilight said as she nodded towards the two unicorns sitting next to each other. “Any ideas on where we should start?”

The dusty-tan colored unicorn stallion, Fleet, spoke up, “I think we should start with the storage cells first. The current charge and discharge system can be modified as we go until the cells are ready, and then we can work on fitting the energy transfer systems into the package around the cells.”

“Good,” Twilight said as she jotted a few notes on a piece of paper. “Any other opinions?”

This time Sapphire took her turn to inject her thoughts on the matter. “I don’t think it’s necessary to put all that stuff in such a small box. The discharge regulators, yes, but the charging systems could be external and removable from the storage system. It would save a lot of space in the case that this all has to fit in.”

Twilight began writing more notes as she spoke, “Excellent Sapphire, that is a great idea.”

The lavender unicorn was beginning to feel slightly out of her element. She was a scientist, not an engineer. Building new things was not something she felt came naturally to her; experimentation and observation had always been her forté.

“Well, if there isn’t anything else, I suppose we can move to our work area and get started with the storage cells. I have a few things to take care of, and then I’ll join you in a little while.”

The three ponies around the table stood up almost simultaneously and began to file out the door to find the newly partitioned work area in the main lab. Fleet was the last in the line and stopped where Twilight, Fireshade and Spike were standing.

“Uh, Mage Sparkle?”

“Twilight is fine, Fleet. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I uh...” The unicorn scratched the back of his head with a hoof, looking down to the floor. “I-I just wanted to let you know that I’m really sorry about what happened at the generator test. We apparently weren’t ready, and, well, you payed the price for our negligence.”

Twilight hadn’t realized that this was one of the stallions mentioned in the preliminary accident report. All of the names had been removed from the distributed copies and she couldn’t remember the accident herself. “You don’t need to apologize. From what I gathered in the report there was some sort of flaw in the gem caused by the enchantment process. It was a fluke.” She smiled at the obviously distressed unicorn. “Just a matter of ‘wrong place at the wrong time’ and that’s the fault of no pony but fate.”

“Maybe, but I am still sorry about what happened. Even if it wasn’t my fault.” As he made his way out the door, he glanced back, eyeing the scar on Twilight’s forehead.

Once Fleet had left, Twilight turned to Fireshade. “Could you go with them and keep the group on task?”

“Yep!” responded the yellow unicorn.

“And Spike, if you would please go as well, and help with whatever they need, that would be great. I have to speak with Arcana about a few things.”

“No problem, Twi.”

They left the conference room together; Spike and Fireshade walking across the lab to the work area and Twilight making her way along the stone wall towards the rickety stairs leading up to the offices. She walked carefully up the metal, still no more trusting of their construction than she had been the first time she visited Section 5. When she reached the crest of the steps, the unicorn made a left to the first door and knocked.

The hollow thud of her hoof wrapping against the door echoed in the hallway. No response. She knocked one more time, and again, nothing. Must be in his other office.

Twilight was not excited by the prospect of making the long journey back up to the main lab of the Bureau. She sighed heavily and walked back down the stairs and up the tunnel to the exit. Waving at the guards in the shack to signal her intent to leave, she continued on as the sound of the door ahead echoed through the cool, damp tunnel.

By the time she arrived at the door, it was nearly at the end of its arcing path. The unicorn only had to wait for a few seconds for the slab of metal to come to a stop before she proceeded through.

"Hey, Twilight, checking out?” asked Thunder Hoof.

“Yeah, I’ll be back though. Just gotta go see Arcana,” Twilight said, smiling to the earth pony.

“Sounds good.” He pulled open his log book and wrote down the time next to Twilight’s name.

Fifteen minutes of walking through the corridor with the only the sound of her hooves against the floor for company. Fifteen minutes alone with her thoughts. Thoughts of her friends back in Ponyville. Thoughts of the things that were to be expected of her being the Grand Magus. Thoughts of—

The books.

What about the books? I don’t even know where they went.

Of course you know. We put them there, after all.

Her cryptic subconscious voice went quiet again. Twilight walked in silence waiting for the answer, but none came. What did come, however, was a low rumbling noise from the pit of her stomach. “Oh my, I guess I haven’t had breakfast.”

As the unicorn exited the door into the main lab, she decided then that she would walk right past the stairs to Arcana’s office and continue to her apartment to get some food. It was, after all, a shorter walk at this point than returning to the cafeteria in Section 5.

Another ten minutes of meandering through the halls of the castle brought Twilight to her room. As she walked through the door, a strong sense of panic overtook her mind. The mage’s eyes darted around the room, in a failed attempt to figure out what was wrong. Nothing seemed immediately out of place. What is wrong with me?

She walked slowly into the room, overly cautious due to the sudden onslaught of paranoia and feeling of presentiment. Twilight started walking around her suite looking for anything out of place. She started at the kitchen, poking her head in through the doorway and giving it a quick look, before continuing her search. The lavender unicorn quickly trotted across the main room towards her bedroom and flung the door open with her magic.

She stopped dead. Mouth agape and eyes wide, Twilight very slowly took several steps into the room, assessing the scene before her. Before her, upon her bed, lay a pile of books. Books that most certainly should not have been there; in the middle of the collection rested the ancient lexicon from the night before. “Wha—I don’t understand.”

Of course you understand, you are the one who put them here.

“But they can’t be here.”

But they are...

“This is insane, we could be arrested for having these outside of Section 5! How did they get here anyways? I don’t remember bringing them here and there’s no way to teleport in or out of the lab.”

There’s ways around a barrier.

“Oh no... oh no no no... I’m going to be executed for treason if we don’t get them back to the lab without anyone noticing,” Twilight said to herself while trying to formulate a plan in her mind. “Wait, I only had two last night.”

She walked to the bed to investigate the books. She took the first in her magic and flipped it open; black blocks littered nearly every page. The next book on the bed glowed in a violet aura and began rapidly flittering through the pages as Twilight watched closely. Again, the text was censored from view by the heavy black ink. There’s more of them.

Twilight stopped for a moment. She closed her eyes and began breathing deeply, she needed to maintain a clear head if she was going to get through this. Her eyes opened slowly and the lavender unicorn picked up two of the books to read the covers. She then glanced down at the covers of several more on the bed. The subjects included everything from studies on biological toxins to the development of experimental artillery ammunition.

“I need to find Arcana... after we hide these things.”

Don’t forget the number.

The unicorn went to the bed and flipped open the cover of the largest book there. Reading the number over several times, she quickly memorized it and returned the tattered cover to its original position. “Now where are we going to put these?”

The dungeons.

They haven’t been used for over a century and nopony ever goes there. That’s a great place, but how are we going to get all of these there without anyone noticing, though?

Matter transference.

“I’ve never been there... I'd be teleporting blind, and we can’t risk shooting these books into a wall.”

But you have been there. Just try.

Twilight closed her eyes and her horn began to glow as she dug deep into her memories. A scene began to come together in her mind’s eye. A dark musty corridor of dark orange bricks. Two unicorns... very young unicorns, in their early teens maybe. A door of iron with a small rectangular opening at eye level.

Her eyes shot open as soon as she realized one of those unicorns from the past was her. Twilight concentrated hard on the setting of the long-forgotten memory. She wasn’t exactly sure where it was, but it was obviously the Canterlot dungeon. A soft lavender glow covered the books on her bed and her horn lit up brightly with magical energy. In a flash the books were gone, hopefully making it to their intended destination.

A grey unicorn sat at the large oak desk reading over funding and equipment request forms, quickly denying or approving each with only a moment of thought. Without looking up from his work, Arcana loudly said, “Come in.”

He continued to read request forms, writing a single word and then signing each before moving on to the next. He looked up at the door. “I said ‘come in’, Twilight.”

The heavy door slowly swung open and the soon-to-be Grand Magus entered the office and closed the door behind her. “How did you know it was me?”

Arcana smiled for the first time that Twilight had ever seen. “Has anypony ever told you that you have a very strong and rather unique magical aura about you?”

Twilight thought for a moment before answering. “Well, I guess Princess Celestia has mentioned something about that before... but that still doesn’t explain how you knew it was me.”

“It’s part of my special talent. I can sense magic energy, very faint energy, that most unicorns don’t even realize is there. I can differentiate between the magic that unicorns innately put off to the point that I can identify the pony by their aura.”

“That’s amazing... Is it something that I could learn to do?”

“Possibly, I’ve never met a unicorn before that could do it, but I believe if anypony could, it would be you. I also noticed you left the lab earlier, where were you heading?”

Her mind froze solid; did he know what she had done? “I-I... uh, missed breakfast, so I went to my quarters to get something to eat.” A pain in her stomach presented itself now that she remember that she had forgotten to do what she had originally intended on doing at her suite.

“Spent the night in the library, eh?”

“Yeah, I fell asleep studying. How did you know that?”

“I was once young and eager to learn, as well. I’ve spent my share of nights in libraries or hunched over a workbench in a lab. Anyways, you’re here for a reason...”

“Oh, yes. I was, uh, wondering... Well, it's just that I came across a couple of reports last night in the abandoned research section of the library.” Arcana slightly raised an eyebrow at this statement. “And, well they were... uhm, censored, I guess. A lot of the text was blocked out and there were missing pages.”

The Head Mage sighed deeply and took a moment to formulate a response for this query. The friendly smile disappeared and his voice lost its tone of comradery. “Twilight, much of the research that we conduct here ends in failure. Some of those failures are spectacular... to the point that we abandon the project altogether. And a hoofful of those failures are so dangerous, to the very core principles, that the decision is made that even the information that led us to those failures is a threat to the nation as a whole. Then, the information is destroyed with only enough left to remind us that we had traveled that path once before.”

He’s lying to us.

Stop it, I don’t need your help.

“That doesn’t make any sense though. The report I was reading last night had to do with pharmecuticals—an antipsychotic medication—I mean, there was nothing left of the report of any use. If you wanted to ensure that the same mistakes are not made again, then why would you hide the information? Somepony could try to attempt the same thing again, not knowing that it had already been done before.”

“That is not something that I can accurately speak about, not without knowing the exact circumstances of the experiment you’re referring to.”

He knows exactly what you’re speaking of.

“I said, ‘I don’t need your help!’” Twilight yelled. She froze for a moment, mouth open slightly and her eyes open as wide as they could be.

“Excuse me?” Arcana looked just as stunned as the mare across from him.

“Ohmygosh—I-I’m so sorry. I... I’ll just go now.” Before Arcana had a chance to respond, she turned around and opened the door with her magic as she ran out to the hall and went as quickly as she could away from the labs.

“I can’t believe you, Twilight. You need to get a handle on yourself.” The lavender unicorn was walking at a brisk pace across the square of the Upper District while mumbling to herself under her breath. “It’s just you. It’s your subconscious talking to you.”

It was the first time Twilight had left the castle since her trip home from the hospital. There really was never any reason to leave the castle, everything she needed was there. Now, though, there was an objective that could not be obtained within the castle. The Royal Canterlot Library lay on the opposite side of the district from the castle, and that was the only place she would find the information she was searching for.

Within minutes she arrived at the huge off-white marble building with several statues of some of the greatest scholars that Equestria has ever known set around the front stairs, including Starswirl and Clover the Clever. Large stone pillars lined the front of the building holding up the roof ahead of the front wall. Twilight walked up the stairs and through the front door. She looked around, it was exactly as she remembered. Row upon row of bookshelves, housing millions of books; easily the most extensive collection in Equestria, possibly the world. She made her way towards the back of the library to the reference desk.

An elderly yellow pegasus mare looked up from her work as Twilight approached the desk. “May I help you, darling?”

“Yes, I’m looking for a particular book.”

The librarian waited expectantly.

“Oh, right.” Twilight slightly smiled. “Well, I don’t have the title... uh, but I do have a catalog number.”

The mare on the other side of the desk retrieved a quill and a piece of scrap paper. “Go ahead.”

“0000146.34”

As soon as she had finished writing, the librarian looked up at Twilight. “Huh... an old one. I’ll be right back.” She turned around and slowly made her way to a doorway behind the desk.

Several minutes passed and the mare returned as promised. “We don’t have that particular volume here.”

“Oh?” said Twilight, feigning surprise. “Would you happen to know where one might find it?”

“Yes, but you won’t be able to get it.”

Twilight’s brow furrowed. “Why not?”

“Because our records show that book residing at the castle in Archive Vault Four. It’s a restricted access archive, no pony is allowed in.”

“Oh... Well, thanks anyways!” Twilight left the yellow mare at the reference desk and exited the library.

“Now I gotta go all the way back to the castle... should’ve just stayed there in the first place.”

The Royal Archive was located in a rarely visited wing of the castle that once housed the entirety of the Royal Library. It took some time for her to get to the archives, giving her plenty of time to think about what she had done, what she was doing and what the voice in her mind seemed to be doing to her.

She knew exactly where to find Vault Four. Six metal doors in one of the walls of the archive were being guarded by two unicorn stallions. As Twilight approached they moved to intercept her well before she was able to get to the vaults.

They’re not going to allow us into the vault.

“Can we help you?” asked the guard on the right.

“I need access to Vault Four.”

There’s only two. They wouldn’t last a minute against us.

No! What are you thinking, Twilight?

“Vault Four is restricted access, we can’t allow you to pass.”

Told you so.

“What do you mean, you can’t allow me to pass!?” Twilight was seething, her normally easy-going demeanor gone in an instant at the prospect of not obtaining the answers she so desperately needed.

“I mean just what I said, ma’am,” the white unicorn stallion of the Royal Guard replied.

Twilight growled. In a low, threatening voice she began, “Do you have any idea who I am? I’m—”

The guard cut her off before she could tell him exactly who she was. “Yes, we are aware of who you are, Court Mage Sparkle.” He glanced over to his partner before continuing. “However, we cannot allow you though this door.”

“Well, why in Tartarus not?” she asked forcefully.

The guard smirked before answering. “By order of her Royal Majesty, Princess Celestia of Equestria, this room is to remain sealed, unless the Princess herself opens it. Besides, we couldn’t open the door if we wanted to. It has a sealing spell on it so powerful that Princess Celestia even has a hard time opening it.”

“The information I need is in that room, and I’m going to get it. I’m going to see the Princess and she is going to let me in,” Twilight stated matter-of-factly. “I’ll be back.”

“Good luck,” said the guard as Twilight stomped towards the throne room.