Twilight stretched and yawned. Whatever she was laying on was remarkably comfortable. She looked around upon opening her eyes and found herself in a place she hadn't been in a long time: Princess Celestia's room. Scanning the area, she saw her mentor at the balcony, looking over her kingdom, her horn glowing dimly. Twilight's stirring caught the Princess' attention.

"Good morning, Twilight. I trust you slept well?"

She must have. She didn't even remember crawling into bed. Granted, recent events had left her mentally exhausted and emotionally drained. Perhaps knowing she was under the Princess' magical protection helped her rest as well as she did that night. It didn't hurt that the mattress was amazingly soft either.

"Yes, thanks."

"Good. You passed almost immediately after you climbed onto my back last night." Celestia's long horn returned to its inert state.

"What time is it?"

"A little after ten o'clock."

Twilight rubbed her eyes and breathed in the morning air. She couldn't believe she had slept in so late. But, her normal schedule wasn't going to apply until she and Celestia had dealt with Pinkie. She looked at the floor to her left, half expecting to see a basket with a small purple dragon in it, snoring away happily. Hopefully Spike was doing alright.

"Did you get any sleep yourself?" Twilight asked.

"No. I was monitoring you the entire night. Not that I really need to sleep if I don't want to. Go ahead and do whatever you need to get your day started," Celestia said as she headed toward her door.

"What are you going to do?"

"Just going to ask the guards outside to have the chefs prepare us a late breakfast."

"And once we're done, we're heading to the Starswirl the Bearded wing, I assume," Twilight said.

"Yes," Celestia confirmed. "We need to get started as soon as possible."

"Princess, I.. I know you already know the spells we intend to use on Pinkie, but.. well, I'm one of those responsible for her becoming.. what she is." The unicorn hung her head as memories of her friends came to mind. "Teach me those spells. I should be the one to lay her to rest. It would only be right."

Celestia gazed in silent contemplation at her prized student. It didn't surprise her in the least that she would want to fix things herself. That was always in her nature.

"It will take a while. The incantations can only be recited in their ancient dialect. Luna and I are the only ones who would even be able to read them."

Twilight threw the covers off and marched up to her teacher with a sudden, fierce determination in her eyes.

"I can do it. You know I can."

The Princess paused, then nodded. "Very well. But first, we should eat. This isn't something you want to tackle on an empty stomach."

A short while later, roughly an hour and a half, Celestia and Twilight approached the closed gate leading to the Starswirl the Bearded wing of the royal archives. With a thought, the gate glowed a faint yellow hue and swung open. Twilight followed her mentor ahead to the hourglass in the center of the room. Turning right, they walked down the aisle and came to a stop in front of an empty wall. Just to the left and right of the Princess were a set of pillars, standing beside each other against the wall.

"Here it is. I know this spot far too well," Celestia said.

Twilight stared at the wall for a moment, puzzled, until she recalled what the royal mare said. It was magically hidden in plain sight.

Celestia took a deep breath and her horn and eyes lit up brightly. An outline of a doorway beamed from the empty space before them and eventually became whole. The knob came to life and the door swung open. Celestia quickly glanced over her shoulder. Clear. She led the way inside and Twilight followed a step behind. She closed the door behind them and magically hid it from sight again. The half melted candles in the corners over their heads burst awake thanks to the Princess' magic.

Several dozen texts, scrolls and books rested peacefully, free from the influences of time and wear, on four shelves, two on the left and right sides of the small room. On an oaken table in front of them laid their target. It was a thick, bound tome with a red, wordless cover.

"Wow," Twilight whispered. "What are all these?"

"Over the millennia, there have been others who have tried to practice various forms of black, evil magic. Anything we could find about those spells eventually found its way here."

"Why keep them at all though? And what happened to the ponies who wrote these?"

"We needed to hold onto them in case, at any point in the future, a similar incantation would appear and we would need to figure out how to counter or undo its effects. As far as the ponies, most of them were imprisoned or killed at the time. However, the last time I placed a text in this room was nearly six hundred years ago. Anypony who was responsible for these spells is long, long gone," Celestia explained.

Mordrid's book floated off the table and hovered between the mares, surrounded by a soft golden light. It opened near the center and the pages one by one flipped on their own. Finally, after several page turns, the alicorn found what she was looking for.

"Here. This was what I used to seal Mordrid away for good," she said, pointing to the left page.

Twilight squinted at the unusual letters and skimmed through the entirety of the spell quickly. "These words look somewhat familiar. This is ancient Equestrian, isn't it?"

"It is indeed."

"I've seen this type of script in some old history books back at the library, but I never was able to translate it." The unicorn sighed heavily. "And I have to learn how to speak this as quick as equinely possible. Great."

A comforting hoof found her shoulder.

"You'll do fine. I'll be helping you the entire time," Celestia said, smiling gracefully. "Now come, we'll go over this in the privacy of my room. We shouldn't risk being discovered here by any means, accidental or not."

Twilight groaned and rubbed her forehead. Several repetitive hours had passed with little progress. Celestia originally translated the spell and the instructions for how to use it, including where it stated that an object important to the recipient and a sacrifice by the speaker were both required for this particular incantation to work properly. The old complex language was remarkably difficult to speak. How the Princess was able to say it the evening before without any complications, despite having not used such a tongue in a few thousand years, was nothing short of amazing to the young unicorn.

"How long did it take you to learn this, Princess?" Twilight asked.

"You must remember, Twilight, this was common language when I used it against Mordrid all those years ago. Believe it or not, the fact that you've gotten the first portion of it as clearly as you do is exceptional," Celestia praised, smiling softly. "But it comes as no surprise to me. You've always been a wonderful student and an incredibly fast learner. I don't suppose you'd want to take a short break? You've been at this for hours."

"No. I simply can't. Not as long as lives hang in the balance."

"Alright. Just promise me you won't run yourself ragged studying this. It won't help anypony if you wear yourself out so much that you start to lose the progress you've made."

"I promise. I can't deny that this is all rather fascinating despite the circumstances. I.. I just wish we never needed to use it," she said painfully, her ears and her heart sinking. Twilight's thoughts drifted to the day it all happened. Pinkie's pleas for help. Her angry shouts. The cracking of wood. Silence.

A tear fell to the floor. The young mare felt a wing wrap around her.

"I'm sorry. For everything that's happened to you and the others. I felt the same way when I did what I had to do to Mordrid."

Twilight saw the pain in her teacher's eyes and heard it in her sigh. Memories must have started to resurface for her as well.

"How long did it take for you to be able to move on after it all happened?" the lavender unicorn quietly asked.

"Many years. It hit Luna just as hard for obvious reasons."

They sat together in silence for a moment before the Princess cleared her throat and stood up, desperate to change the subject and forget the events of her past again.

"It's getting close to supper. I'll have one of the guards bring us something to eat."

With a nod, the diligent unicorn took a breath and steeled herself for the rest of the evening. There were six phrases to the binding spells and she had only gotten one down so far cleanly. The second was coming along, but there was still so much more to go, and in only a few more hours, she'd likely have to think about heading to bed again.

She wished she could forgo sleep like the Princesses. The one thing that could have easily gotten her killed without Celestia's help was the one thing that was going to slow her down the most. But if she could sleep easy after this whole ordeal was done, it was something Twilight would simply have to deal with.

The following morning and afternoon came and went similarly to the previous day's. Celestia had watched over her student during the night and detected no unusual activity, much to their relief. They had sat together in her royal bedroom, reciting the second and now the third parts of the spell, barely moving aside from stretching their legs and using the bathroom. Even Twilight's personal hygiene was overlooked, as she was too engrossed by learning how to speak the dead language in front of her.

It was mid-afternoon when the monotony was disrupted. Under normal circumstances, both Celestia and Twilight could easily spent an entire day in one place with their nose in a book or going over some royal paperwork. However, this situation had them a bit on edge. The appearance of a simple scroll over their heads made them jump a little, even though it was nothing they hadn't seen a hundred times before. It plopped onto the ground and the Princess unfurled it.

"A letter from Spike?" Twilight asked.

Celestia nodded, reading the note aloud.

"Dear Princess Celestia and Twilight,

I hope everything's going well on your end. It was going rather slowly over here, as we don't have many options, until earlier today. I would have contacted you yesterday myself over something else, but I was so busy writing and sending letters around to the authorities in so many other cities and towns across Equestria that I wore myself out.

Anyway, I have some rather bad news about Pinkie. The other night, she visited me. Don't worry, I'm alright. She told me to tell you that even though she lost track of Twilight, there were other wrongs to be righted or something. I wasn't sure at first, but it sounded to me like she was intent on going after others who she may be have been angry with at some point in her life.

A headline that Private Eye happened to spot in the afternoon edition of the Ponyville Express while he was out seems to have confirmed this. He brought the paper back to his office and we went over what it said. In the international section, it said that two nights ago, in the Griffon Kingdoms, Rainbow Dash's old friend Gilda was found screaming in her sleep and eventually died. According to witnesses, her wing feathers were ripped out and her tail was somehow torn off right in front of them, among other things. There aren't any leads and nopony could explain what happened.

There's no doubt in our minds that Pinkie was behind this. The only reason we didn't hear about anything from the authorities over in the Griffon Kingdoms first is because I never thought to send a letter there. I don't even know if my magic would reach that far away to be honest. But either way, it seems I was right, and we still don't have any real ideas who she may go after next.

We'll contact you if anything else comes up. Good luck.

Your faithful subject,
Spike"

Celestia lowered the letter with a mournful look in her eyes. She didn't oversee the Griffon Kingdoms by any means, but her heart still went out to Gilda. A part of her felt responsible for the senseless brutality since Pinkie used to be one of her most fun-loving subjects. Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do for Gilda or for anypony else the monster had already killed.

"I remember her," Twilight spoke up, sighing. "She was rather mean to us at the party Pinkie threw for her when she came to visit Rainbow Dash a while back. She had a falling out with Rainbow and was particularly nasty to Pinkie the entire time. But that doesn't mean I'd want to see her die over it. I guess Pinkie saw things differently. I just can't believe what she's become."

"All the more reason to learn this spell as quickly as you can."

"Yeah, and then we need to find something of hers that she found important. We can start at Sugarcube Corner, see if the Cakes still have any of her things or if they've cleared it out already."

"We will," Celestia assured her. "But focus on what you need to for now. We'll worry about her possession later. Now, go ahead, from the top."

Nodding, Twilight closed her eyes and recited the first two lines of the binding spell, slightly misspeaking a few of the words. Together, she and the Princess worked on perfecting the ancient dialect and improving upon the third verse until the end of the evening.