Getting Twilight away from the mechanical golem, as she called the robot, was more difficult than expected. Applejack tried with all her force, but as an alicorn, she was just as strong as her friend, and the earth pony couldn’t move her further than two meters. Night Hawk proposed to render her unconscious, and Heart immediately readied a syringe, but that endeavour was stopped by Estoc. He tried to talk with her but was completely ignored. Rarity didn’t even try and called it a waste of time and effort. That lead to Lyra’s big play “Let me handle this,” she declared proudly. “One academic simply understands another.” With those words, she went towards the princess and whispered a few words into her ears, and she was immediately ready to go. Since that moment, Twilight had grinned strangely at Thiemo, something that he, of course, didn’t like at all.

“What did you tell her?” He leaned down to Lyra, who walked next to him through the glowing patch of seemingly endless botanic.

The mint-green unicorn just grinned back at him and waved it off with a hoof. “Nothing special. Just that she should imagine all the tests she could run in the Crystal Empire on a human with a cutie mark.” Thiemo looked at the alicorn in front of him, who was just licking her lips. A shiver went down his spine and into the last bit of his tail. Quickly, he shifted his view away from Twilight and looked to the right where Aura and Applejack were. The filly was resting on her back, forelegs on her head and trying to get her nose as close to the plants by the wayside as she could. What really mesmerized him, however, aside her unintentional adorableness, was the metal that was wrapped around her right hoof. Thiemo could have slapped himself again for overlooking something like that. Aura had touched the staff multiple times, threw it or played with it. Never had it shown any effect on her. The only one that showed a similar reaction was Twilight, but not even the devil himself could bring him to give the brash alicorn his most valuable possession. Who knew what she would do with the staff? He had never told her that it wouldn’t work with her, so nopony wondered why Aura put it on when he asked her to.

This fact, together with her being able to see magic, let him realize something: one of the greatest mysteries he had encountered was his own daughter. “Something wrong, dad? Why are you looking at me like that?” Thiemo shook his head and let go of the thought.

“Nothing, I was just thinking.”

“Well, I would say the path ends here.” And not just the path, but also the moss and the entire jungle around it suddenly stopped at one point of the chamber. It was as though someone had drawn a line with a ruler. “What now?” Hawk turned at Thiemo.

The end of the chamber couldn’t be far. He thought he could even see it in the darkness in front of them already. “It led us here, so we’ll look at it. There is no way back anyways.” Thiemo concentrated briefly, and his view changed again. His right hand found its way in front of his eyes again, only to confirm that magic was still flowing through his body like blood. It was still there, continual and slowly moving, making no signs of leaving anytime soon. Of course, he couldn’t use magic itself to cast a spell like a unicorn. Maybe he should think about making a totem. With one spell of an element, it would no longer be a problem for him. Never again charging gemstones, simply letting his magic flow into the totem and letting the effect kick in. Zarni, his master, used water as his main element. Rainstorms and everything that had to do with water had followed her command. Unlike him, she had to guide the energy from the surroundings through her body first to cast the spell. With an internal magical source, he wouldn’t have to do that as long as he wasn’t recovering from excessive use. Magic, he had realized in the few minutes he had it, was equally exhausting as running a marathon.

Thiemo, followed by Hawk and the rest of the group, took the first step into the darkness in front of them. As nice as it was to walk through the well-lit part of the chamber, everything had its end. Again walking in single file, Estoc reminded them that there could still be traps. If there were any, they were lucky to not find them. Eventually, the ceiling became lower, meaning their target was not far away. Thiemo was eager to discover what they would find. Answers were promised to him, but he didn’t know to which questions. Maybe that was why he was here. But that seemed to be unlikely. These ruins were thousands of years old. Maybe it answered the question of why there was daytime on the entire planet at the same time?

Thiemo didn’t get any further as his foot got caught up on something, and his face met the ground. Hawk next to him immediately ducked, ready to dodge whatever was coming. Aura squeaked, Applejack threw her to the ground with herself, and Estoc galloped to the front. “What’s going on?” Thiemo turned on his back and looked at his foot that had snagged in a bright root.

“False alarm, just a root.” An annoyed groan went through the ponies, and Thiemo leaned forwards to free himself. His hand made contact with a surprisingly hard root as he tried to lift it. Instead of the root giving in, the entire ground was lifted, and before he knew, it he held the skeleton of another griffon in his hands. Everypony stared expectantly at it while Thiemo noticed that it, unlike the others, was wrapped in the remains of clothes and had a bag wrapped around its throat.

Twilight, who rushed with her reignited light over to them, lightened up the scene. “This thing is not alive like those other nasty things, right?” Rarity carefully asked.

“If so, it was more successful in catching one of us than the rest.” Thiemo stood up and lifted the skeleton up. The clothing was shredded, and the bag made up about half of the weight. “Then let’s have a look.” With his left hand, he pulled the bag over the skull of the long deceased. In the process, it got loose and fell with a clatter on the ground before being transported into the darkness by a foot. He simply dropped the rest, causing everypony besides Hawk and Estoc to jump back. Thiemo opened the bag and pulled out a small lamp first. “Could be useful.” It wasn’t magic like his old one. Instead, he heard a bit of oil inside. “See if you can light it up.” He threw it over to Twilight, who caught it instinctively with her magic. His hand wandered deeper into the large back. He pulled out an old map, a notebook, and then something familiar. His hand wrapped around the handle inside the bag, and it actually turned out to be the handle of a knife, just like one he had found already.

“What’s that?” Amy asked curiously. “One of those things again?”

“Looks like it. This is the second one I found.” Without further ado, it was shoved into his pocket. “Then we have an old water bag and a sleeping bag. Both old and moldy, not to mention dirty.” Twilight used the moment to trade the notebook in his hand for the now burning lamp.

“Twilight, darling, please wait until we are out of here,” Rarity said and pushed the levitating book away from Twilight’s nose. “I know how you are with books, but we have no time to wait until you’re finished.”

“I believe she has,” Thiemo heard Hawk’s voice say. He looked around for her, only to find her another hundred meters up front. “This is a dead end, but the most interesting one I’ve ever seen.” Leaving the plundered skeleton behind them, the group caught up with Hawk and saw what she meant. In front of them was the place where the ceiling suddenly made contact with the ground. The wall was not just graced by plain rock, but hemispherical indentations were cut into it. On them were symbols Thiemo had never seen before, together with pictures of griffons, ponies, changelings, and other creatures in armor. “Looks like they are ready to fight, but not each other.”

Next to each picture were a few symbols that formed a short text. Probably the names of the depicted creature. Quickly, Thiemo looked to the left and right of the wall. All in all, there were three indentations. He ran to the next one and looked what stood there. Unlike the first one, there was almost only text in these strange symbols. Since he couldn’t read it, he ran to the next one. Like the first one, there were more pictures again, but this time not of griffons or ponies, but of something that looked like cutie marks, or clan symbols. They were all sorted under a picture at the top. He stepped closer and raised the lamp in his hand. It was a Cerberus, a three-headed dog. He posed in front of what seemed to be a full moon.

Suddenly, Lyra stepped into his field of view. “By Celestia! My father would get a stroke if he could see this. This is history! This is… wow!” Her hooves skimmed over the pictures. “This is everything he ever worked for.”

“You know what this is?” Lyra nodded absently and looked from one picture to the next.

“This is the greatest archaeological find of the millennium! This would confirm every theory of my father. No, it would confirm their existence.”

“Lyra, spit it out. I can see it myself that it is old, but what is it?”

She turned around, jumped at Thiemo and held herself with her forelegs around his neck so they were on the same eye level. The human needed a second to balance himself out. “This is a record of the Children of the Night!” She hugged him quickly and jumped back on the ground. Then she rushed back to the tablet in the middle. Thiemo tried to keep up with her and saw the others were standing around the wordy tablet as well. Twilight, just like Lyra, was taking a good look at everything.

“I know some of these symbols, but they are very old. These are text from before…”

“Before the Sibling War,” ended Lyra. “Or the Alicorn War, as it is named officially.”

“Care to enlighten us unenlightened ponies?” Rarity asked the two and pulled them out of their little world. “Not everypony here can make something out of these old tablets.”

“Rarity!” Twilight shouted indignantly. “This is Equestria’s history or at least a part of it.”

“The Cerberus behind the full moon, the symbol of the Children of the Night. Their tribunal to be more precise,” Lyra began to enlighten them. “Supposedly, they were a group of all species that lived on Albion and followed the doctrine of Princess Luna. Or rather Nightmare Moon as she was called back then. They acted in the shadows and were allegedly largely responsible for the state of war that existed in the first place. With these tablets here, this must have been their base. Just imagine what could be found here? All the artifacts of black magic. All the long forgotten knowledge. What actually happened back then and what even Princess Celestia didn’t know about.”

“Humans were also part of this group?” Thiemo asked as he looked at the picture of a group of humans.

“Like I said, every species of Albion should be represented.” Thiemo scratched over the rills of the picture with his finger. There was something underneath it; it was just covered by a thick layer of dust.

“And what did they do to push a whole planet into war?” he asked while continuously removing the dust.

Lyra stopped for a few moments. “Nopony knows. It is said to have been so gruesome that the princess cut it out of all history books. My father has his theories, but no proof.” She knocked against the tablet. “But now we have it right here. I bet they wrote it all down here. We could finally figure out what they really were involved in and especially who exactly belonged to their secret organization. Who was Cerberus? Which three figures changed the picture of this planet forever?” Thiemo had to think. What did that to do with his answers? All this was interesting, of course, and if they weren’t trapped down here, he would have spent weeks voluntarily to make sense out of these tablets. Curiosity had always been one of his driving forces. He was just somehow disappointed to not learn anything about his own destiny.

Suddenly, his fingers met something soft. He quickly pulled back and saw what was in these rills. Moss. The same moss that was in the rest of the cave. Carefully, he took a step back and looked at some of the other pictures. “What’s wrong?” Estoc asked he squeezed past him.

“I think I’ve got something.” He checked another picture and indeed, the moss was not in all of them, only in a few. Children of the Night, darkness. The moss brought light into the dark, answers to questions. Thiemo pressed his finger with all his force against the moss and let magic of his body flow through it. In a few seconds, it expanded, lighting up, piece by piece, large parts of texts and pictures in its green light. Everyone took a step back to admire the play. Like water that was following a path, the whole tablet glowed for a few seconds. Then the moss changed into a deep blue in some parts. And suddenly the symbols made totally different sense. It was text. An English text. “Together we are strong,” stood above the group of humans who were now also glowing blue.

“You can read that?” Twilight and Lyra asked at the same time.

“It’s English, the language of the humans if you just look at the blue parts.” Without wasting another second, Thiemo ran to the first tablet and cleaned out the rills of the picture of a griffon. Like before, there was moss underneath it. The play repeated itself as the rest had followed him. Again, everything glowed, only to turn blue at some parts. This time it was the picture of a pony, an alicorn to be precisely. The wings couldn’t be seen before, only now the blue light shimmered through the stone. “With great powers comes great responsibility,” Thiemo roughly translated the text for the others. Again without wasting any time, he ran to the third tablet with the many little pictures of cutie marks or clan symbols. Again he found moss in the rills of the Cerberus. This time everypony had followed him immediately and watched the spreading of the light.

“Love will bind us all.” Amaryllis beat him in the translation this time.

Lyra was in deep thought and quietly repeated their principles. “This makes no sense. The Children of the Night were supposed to be conspirators. Using assassins to benefit of the war. Why should such a group represent these values?” Lyra was right. There was more to it. Slowly, he walked back to check everything, but stuck at the middle tablet. Three small symbols had appeared at the lower end of the tablet that definitely weren’t there before. Similar to the wings of the alicorns, they weren’t cut into stone, but shimmered through it.

“I know these for sure.” Twilight stepped next to him. “This is the old symbol for ponies, alicorns specifically.” She pointed at the first one. “In the middle is the symbol for humans. I know it from the books I read through after… our first meeting. The last one stands for changelings.” Three sentences, three tablets, and three races. A chamber with no exit, with nothing besides guards and these tablets. It was clear what they were protecting.

A cough made them turn around. “I don’t want to be the party crasher, but maybe we should look to find an exit,” Hawk snapped at them. “Of what use is all this if we can never tell anypony about it?” Thiemo shook his head. This was recorded knowledge, left there to be found by anyone who came here with peaceful intentions. Humans were part of its construction. If Thiemo had learned one thing from history classes, then it was that humans loved to hide secret passages in old buildings that could be opened by solving riddles. All this wasn’t left behind for three sentences and a few pictures. He looked over to the undecided Twilight, who was fighting with agreeing with Hawk or continue observing everything, then to Amaryllis. A human, a pony and a changeling. All three races were here.

Ignoring Hawk, he turned to the rest of the group. “Amy! Go to the tablet on the right. Twilight, you go to the left. I will stay in the middle.”

“What are you going to…?” the alicorn began before her eyes widened. She confirmed his order with a nod and ran off. Thiemo nodded towards Amaryllis as she looked over to him before disappearing behind the hemispherical tablet.

Eyes on the two meter tall structure in front of him, Thiemo waited for something to happen. “What are you doing?” Lyra asked curiously. He hadn’t noticed that she was behind him.

“Lyra, please step aside.” She needed a second to understand but then did as he told her. The effect came immediately, and the three symbols at the middle tablet went out. The blue text went green again, and other words, spread out over the whole length, lighted up. “To those who swear loyalty to the goddess and her virtuosos. Speak the oath and gain entrance.” A passphrase. This couldn’t be a coincidence. Did Luna know about this place? No, this was no coincidence, neither was it his very moody luck. “How did that damn thing go…” His foot tapped on the ground. “Right! In nights only as dark as your heart, she hunts only those who hide. Stand proud and honest, so she will be at your side. By the shadows that bind us, stay with me night-born.” Thiemo could almost hear Hawk’s eyes falling out her head as he spoke those words, but nothing happened. Of course, this was only half of the oath. “Hawk! Help me quick. You know the rest, right?”

He turned around halfway to see the angry thestral marching towards him. “How. Do. You. Know. That. Oath?!” She bared her teeth, her eyes glowing. She was about to go for his throat.

“Night Hawk.” Estoc came to his help and put a hoof on her shoulder.

“We hear you, goddess of the night.” She shivered with every word. “We are your stars in the sky, always watching over your realm. We give our souls to the night, our bodies to the darkness. For that others see the light of the day again.” She spat on the ground and turned around. “You will pay for this.”

He had no doubt about that. Luna had warned him about her reaction. “In nights only as dark as your heart. She hunts only those who hide. Stand proud and honest, so she will be at your side. By the shadows that bind us, stay with me night-born. We hear you, goddess of the night. We are your stars in the sky, always watching over your realm. We give our souls to the night, our bodies to the darkness. For that others see the light of the day again,” Thiemo repeated the oath in one go. Suddenly, all the lights went out. Not just the moss, but also the magical one from Twilight and in the lantern in Thiemo’s left hand. For a few seconds, it was completely silent, even though he could swear he heard quiet yelping in surprise. Then a beam of light came out from underneath the tablet in front of him. A hissing sound appeared, and a door that wasn’t even remotely visible a few seconds ago began to open. Directly in the middle of the tablet, a passage had opened, the light from whatever was on the other side streaming through it.

The lantern in his hand glowed again, and Twilight’s magical light came back to life. “What was that? I’ve shouted but couldn’t even hear my own voice.” So Thiemo hadn’t just imagined it. Rarity really did scream.

Without waiting for the others, Thiemo stepped forward through the small passage into whatever was behind it. His eyes needed a few seconds to adjust, but his ears were bombarded by many sounds. Buzzing, clattering and beeping filled the normal sized room. It was not an exit, but Thiemo didn’t think it was any less useful. Monitors awoke to life, simply projected into the air. Out of the walls around him, computers he had never seen in his life emerged. Directly in front of him was one gigantic screen. “Wow…” His fingers stroked over the large input console that was below the screen. A seat came out of the floor and pushed him aside as it positioned in front of the console. All in all, it looked like he had run into some new Star Trek movie.

Quickly, he turned around and shouted for the others, but they already stood in the entrance and had the same look on their faces that he must have had a few seconds ago. This was all technology, highly advanced technology, and it was working. It was here for hundreds of years. Suddenly, a flash of light in the middle of the room between them appeared. “How can I be of service?” spoke a feminine, but clearly mechanical voice in perfect English. Thiemo couldn’t believe his eyes. In the room stood a hologram. A women, a bit taller than him, translucent and completely blue. Sure, it was just outlines without textures, but the curves and voice made it clear.

“What are you?” Twilight asked as she curiously stepped closer. The hologram ignored her and turned towards Thiemo. Confused by what had directed her attention towards him, he looked down at himself to see a blue glow coming out of his pocket. He pulled out the handle, and immediately the hologram followed it with her look. It was a mouse, a three-dimensional mouse.

“Who are you?” he repeated Twilight’s question in English.

“My name is Index. I am the artificial intelligence assigned with the maintenance of this facility.”

The next question followed almost automatically. “What is this facility?”

“This is the library of the Children of the Night.” She was of human shape. Humans were on the tablets. The robots were designed after humans. Humans had created this technology. Thiemo could now really understand how they managed to pose a greater threat than griffons.

Author's Notes:

500 thumbs archived: Gain an extra chapter! And fucking appreciate it. I had to beg JBL to finish this.
This ends the rather short act 10. I promise 11 will made up for it. Maybe not in length but in content.
Also, I'm happy about every comment. I read every last one of them.

Thanks to Gron for translating this chapter.
Special thanks to JBL for proofreading and editing.

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