Sunny had just gotten home from her job at her smoothie stand. She was still sticky and sweet-smelling when she heard an exasperated yell from somewhere inside the Brighthouse.
“Zipp?!”
She put down her spare smoothie supplies and cantered rapidly to Zipp’s office—where Sunny found her friend gently banging her forhead against her desk.
“Zipp, what’s going on? Did Izzy get her horn stuck in the faucet again?”
“That would be at least easy to figure out!”
“Well, yeah, now that we know we can use the butter...if one of us holds her down and stops her from trying to lick it off...”
“No, I mean this!” Zipp leaned to one side, gesturing to the contents of her desk—which consisted of a variety of wires, meters, devices, and scientific equipment—some of it smoldering—as well as a sight that immediately brought Sunny’s mood back down to an unpleasantly dark place.
The skull was staring back at her, connected to a variety of electrodes and sensor’s on Zipp’s workbench, almost seeming to smile for having caused her such distress through its sheer stubbornness alone.
“What’s the matter?” asked Sunny, approaching the desk. "It seems...happy, at least."
“I’ve been trying to figure this thing out all day,” snapped Zipp. “And this little fudge-muncher, every time I figure out one thing, it opens up three more lines of inquiry. Look at my thread-board, Sunny! I’m almost out of red thread! RED THREAD!”
“I think Izzy might have more. Also, try not to swear. It she learns another bad word, we'll never hear the end of it.”
Zipp groaned. “Yeah. I know. Sorry.” She took a breath. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m just a little excited. Check out my results!”
She produced a detective pad filled with various scribbles.
“I’m not exactly sure what you’re looking for, Zipp,” admitted Sunny. “I mean...I guess it is a type of mystery, but...” She looked back at the skull and shivered. “I wouldn’t even know where to start with this.”
“Observation. That’s always the way to start. You have to gather enough data to ask the question before you can even pose a hypothesis, let alone start reasoning and running experiments.” She gestured excitedly toward the skull. “And I’ve been running tests all day on this thing.”
“Like what?”
“Well, for one, check this out!” Zipp sifted through her various test probes and wires and produced, of all things, a large diamond ring. “Pure diamond. Moh’s hardness of ten. Hardest thing we know of.” She flipped it over in her grasp and scraped it down the side of the skull. Sunny almost leapt to stop her, lest she damage the artifact—only to question why she felt such a sudden urge to protect it. She paused long enough to see Zipp pull back the diamond, its surface marked with a deep gouge while the skull was utterly uninfected.
“It’s almost indestructible,” said Zipp. “Harder than diamond. And don't even get me started on the Brinell results.”
“But your diamond is ruined...”
Zipp shrugged. “Eh. I’m a princess, I have so many diamonds. I mean, for my sixteenth birthday, my mom got me a diamond pony. As in, like, made of diamonds.”
“You mean a statue of a pony.”
Zipp scrunched slightly. “Sure, let’s go with that. Anyway, what am I even supposed to do with a ring? I mean, if I was a unicorn, I could put it on my horn...and I’m a mare, so...”
“What does being a mare have to do with it?”
“Anyway,” continued Zipp. “I tried heating it. Putting it in the oven, in the fridge, in the freezer. And do you know what’s weird?”
“The oven...Zipp, we make food in that oven!”
“And I also sometimes use it for SCIENCE.”
“That explains why my last batch of cookies tasted like...um...”
“Contact explosives. Yeah, sorry about that. I’ll clean it out later. Or it'll clean itself out if somepony turns it on. But guess what happened when I heated this?”
“Um...nothing?”
“Less than nothing!”
“How can you have ‘less’ than nothing?” Sunny paused. “Wait, are we in debt?”
“Only if you look at how many bits Izzy’s spending on glitter. No. The temperature. It doesn’t change. It’s always sixty four degrees Marenheit. It doesn’t ever go up or down. Freeze it, cook it, it’s all the same temperature.”
“That’s...certainly an observation.”
“And then there’s the density. That one was easy, the old triple-beam and a really big graduated cylinder. As near as I can figure, it’s an alloy. The density is somewhere between mareidium and horsmium. Assuming it’s solid.”
“Solid?”
“It probably has to be. Because I don’t think anypony could carve it with modern tools, let alone hollow it out.”
“So...you think it’s some kind of statue.”
“It has to be. And it has to be solid.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because if it was hollow, the volume is all off. The material itself would be almost eight as dense as the densest known pony element.” She paused. “Except a mareidium-horsmium alloy isn’t harder than diamonds. It’s not even that hard, honestly, it’s just super heavy. And incredibly expensive.”
“Not to mention,” said Pipp, descending from above and—as per usual—holding her phone. “The thing messes with my reception. So. BAD.” She groaned, throwing her mane back. “Look at my poor phone! I can’t get a connection and she’s all glitched out! I mean, look at my watch-history on GlueTube!”
She shoved the phone into Sunny’s face. Sunny pulled her head back, squinting.
“‘Vessy Pressure’s Complete History of the Naval Boiler, a Seven-Hour Documentary’?”
“Oh, OOH!” cried Zipp. “Vessy Pressure has a new video out already?! Don’t tell me any spoilers, I haven’t seen it yet!”
“Neither have I!” protested Pipp. “What pony in their right mind would watch a seven-hour documentary on boiliers?”
“I friggin love boilers,” said Zipp. “Boilers are cool. Or hot, depending!” she nudged Sunny’s shoulder. “Huh? Huh? Boiler puns?”
“Yes, Zipp, we get it,” groaned Pipp. She groaned. “My algorithm is completely broken. I haven’t watched ANY of these videos, and...look what it’s recommending! Fun Gus’s guide to exotic toadstools? Who would even...” She paused, staring at her phone. “Actually, I mean, no cap, but that’s a really pretty mushroom...huh...I’m actually kind of in to this.” She looked up. “But STILL!”
From the far end of the room, Misty trotted into the area, levitating several books.
“You got them?” said Zipp.
“Sure did. Had them at my dad’s house so it wasn’t hard to find them.”
“What did you get?” asked Sunny.
“And more importantly!” groaned Pipp. “Misty! Is your phone all messed up too?”
Misty seemed confused. “Oh, I don’t have a phone. Opaline said it would be a distraction from serving her various needs. Also I think they confuse her. She was never really good with technology.”
“You don’t—have a—how are you even alive?!”
“If we’re being totally honest? The power of friendship, mostly.”
She set the books on the table and Sunny picked one up. It was immensely old and dusty, and bound in a strange form of material that was smooth and slightly pinkish. She flipped it open and felt a rush of nausea and confusion as the unholy text within etched itself deep into her mind. Fortunately, being an earth-pony, she had very little comprehension of what she was looking at and the blast of text-based magic missed her brain entirely.
“Oop,” said Misty, yanking the book back. “Probably not a good idea to do that without the right incantations.”
“These are magic books,” said Sunny. “Misty, I had no idea you were studying magic. Where did you even get these?”
Misty blushed. “Well...Opaline has a really big library, so I figured while I’m there I might do something useful. So I’ve been doing some reading. I mean, I don’t understand all of them, and some are a little bit cursed...mostly cursed with boring...although I really enjoyed this one by somepony named ‘Glim-Glam’, it was really informative, even though I think that’s a pseudonym...it’s like a manual for all sorts of cool tricks—”
“Are any of them useful for fixing phones?” groaned Pipp. “Or for figuring out what that weird thing even is? It’s creepy. Like it’s looking at my bones. I feel naked.”
Zipp frowned. “But you...”
Pipp pointed to her tiara. Zipp turned to Sunny, who gestured to the bag on her side. Misty held up her bracelet.
“Oh,” said Zipp. “So it’s just me. I'm the naked one.”
“Yeah. We noticed,” whispered Pipp.
“We’ll unpack that later,” said Zipp. She grasped one of the less-cursed textbooks. “Did you find anything about it in here?”
“No,” admitted Misty. “But these are only the books I had stocked up in Bridlewood. I can cross-reference with Opaline’s library when I go back. But I managed to set up a few test spells.”
“Did you find anything so far?” asked Sunny.
Misty shook her head. “Only that it doesn’t really do what it’s supposed to. When you shine magic on it, I mean.”
“What does that mean?”
Misty stared at Sunny. “I guess it doesn’t happen to you because you’re only an alicorn some of the time. But for unicorns, when we use our magic, even for picking something up—we feel it. Like you would with your hoof...but also really different. It’s hard to explain. Like...like seeing something, but not with your eyes.”
“Like an extra sense we don’t even have? Fascinating...”
Misty nodded. “That thing...it’s like it’s slippery. Like magic can’t touch it. But the part that does feels...wrong. Like...sticking your hoof elbow-deep in a sink drain and feeling fingers tickling your hoof.”
“EEW!” cried Pipp, shuddering. “SO GRODY, no! I need brain bleach!”
“There’s a recipe for that in this one.” Misty pointed at a book. “And I think a spell in the Luciferian Grimoire? But that one’s super creepy. The last four translators went insane, you know. It’s in the preface. They argue with each other because I think time collapsed in on itself? Or they got trapped in the pages and forgot who they were...”
“Or maybe it’s just one guy having a laugh,” commented Zipp. She descended back into her chair. “Still...this thing is weird.”
“No kidding,” Sunny shivered. “But what does this thing have to do with Twilight Sparkle?”
Zipp fell silent. They all did—and it was clear that none of them knew.
“Did she...make it?” Sunny turned to face the skull—which she now understood to be some kind of advanced sculpture, or a piece of one—and frowned. “And what for?”
“That’s the fun of it I guess,” said Zipp, even though for a moment she seemed to be having no fun at all. “Maybe it’s linked to the crystals somehow. Or the warning.”
“About Opaline,” added Misty.
Sunny nodded, although she was not so sure. The crystals that powered the Brighthouse—and that had brought all magic back to Equestria—were ancient. They had been created before recorded pony history, back in the age of Twilight Sparkle and her friends—but the warning recorded in them had never contained a name. Only mentioned that somepony was coming.
What the head of a metal statue had to do with any of it, none of them knew. And the skull was certainly not about to tell them.
That night, as Sunny lay in bed, she had difficulty falling asleep. This was unusual for her, as her attempts to live every day to the fullest usually left her drained—but on this particular day, she did not feel tired. The slight stirring of her friends in their own beds kept pulling her back from the threshold of sleep, wrenching her back to a reality that did not differ appreciably from any other day.
She sat looking up at the ceiling, illuminated by the slight rainbow glow of her lantern. She stared for what seemed like hours, only to sit up and check her phone to see that only minutes had passed. She sighed, groaned, and sat there in the near silence.
Across the room, something caught her eye. The skull was sitting on a desk, connected to a variety of machines and sensors with various blinking lights. Sunny did not know exactly what they did, but it was something Zipp had built to take overnight readings. Tearing her away from the thing had been hard enough, but she still insisted on learning more. It was part of her endearing curiosity—but the fact that she had left it there, in the corner, staring at them all was unfortunate.
Obviously it could not see. Not in a literal sense; its eyes were just somehow carved into it. Still, it was like how the glassy, empty eyes of stuffed animals always seemed to be staring at night—and it was disturbing enough for a teddybear or a crocheted pony, let alone for an already creepy and ominous artifact.
Sunny sighed and stood up. She walked across the room, being careful to not wake her friends. They were all asleep, Pipp still holding her phone—although for some reason the phone was on, shining a variety of flashing lights as if someone were watching sped-up videos at an incredible speed. Sunny ignored it and crossed to the skull.
It seemed to smile at her, seemingly very pleased with itself, and for a moment Sunny felt her heart beat suddenly as she thought she saw a glint in its eyes. A slight glow from within. She quickly realized, though, that it was a reflection. The eyes—or equivalent of eyes—where hollow and filled on their inside surface with a nacre-like iridescent substance. Something that would have been pretty on a nice necklace but that was profoundly unnerving for this purpose.
“Sorry about this,” she whispered to the skull. “You’re just too creepy like this. You can go to sleep too.”
She produced a small hoof-towel and covered the skull with it, doing her best not to interfere with Zipp’s machines. The oppressive atmosphere in the room almost immediately seemed to vanish, and Sunny smiled in relief.
She returned to her bed and lay down—and almost as soon as she did, she was asleep.
In the dream, she did not walk. There was none of the up and down motion of normal forward progression, no sensation of taking hoofsteps—and yet she was still aware of a gait. A strange, floating version of normal walking. As if she were drifting forward on her own unnoticed will.
The temple stretched out before her, and in the dream, she almost wept at its beauty. The dark stone had no name, although the minerals contained within it did—and she knew all the arcane terms that described their nature. The stone had been uplifted, pulled forward from the planet’s surface not by geology but by the sheer force of unfathomable magic. A spell of unimaginable power and precision, beyond anything any mortal being could hope to accomplish. In a single minute, the execution of a single vast work that would have taken generations of wizards lifetimes after lifetimes simply to create the blueprints for.
The impossible architecture seemed to drift and float, massless and at once infinitly heavy. Inviolable, permanent—and forged in a single piece. Carved out with a spell that could cleave the the unbreakable and bend adamantine crystal to its very will.
She was not alone. Others stood with her. Sunny beheld them, and saw them in different forms—although understood them to be identical. Derived from a single point-source.
Alicorns. All of them were alicorns. They looked exactly as her mind told her alicorns should look. Impossibly gaunt and pale, with massive unblinking black eyes without whites.
Some wore strange armor that gave their forms strength. It covered the whole of their bodies, to the point where their wings could not be seen through it. Black armor, marked with the Sigil. Others, though, were allowed exposed faces, their physical support systems shrouded beneath ornate robes of purple and red.
She alone stood different. She, Sunny, the alicorn—black. Of a different origin than them all, a deviant point—but she did not fear them. She understood them. That they were her friends. She knew that origin had no bearing in this place. Only competency. Only service, dedication, and loyalty—and above all, achievement.
They stopped, and Sunny almost collapsed in tears at the sight of her.
She was so much smaller than any of them, her body a relic from a bygone age. Stocky and firm, muscular and healthy, her genetics devoid of biological impurity. A violet pony. An alicorn, clad in jewelry of obsidian-black iron and gleaming amethyst inlaid into its molecular structure with shimmering semiconductor nanochains.
She looked to them with eyes that horrified Sunny—how bright they were, and how old. How ancient and how very tired. And yet she smiled to them, kindly.
The support structure that Sunny’s body shifted, in unison with the others. They bowed before their goddess, their princess, and the most beloved pony of all—the Goddess of Magic and Technology.
Then, in unison, they spoke, their voices speaking a language that consisted only of high vowels. “Praise be unto the One True Princess. Hail Twilight Sparkle.”
And, though her own unblinking eyes, Sunny saw the smile fade from the princess’s face.
Sunny lifted her aching head, dizzy and confused. Confused as to who she was, and where—and why she was sitting in a chair.
She winced in pain. Her mouth was dry and tasted like metal, and she very much had to use the little pony’s room—but she quickly realized that she was downstairs, on the couch in the common room.
She had slept walked before, but only when she was a little filly—and back then, usually her father had brought her back upstairs.
Sunny blinked, then looked around—and in the darkness, she saw the skull. It had been disconnected from Zipp’s machines and set neatly on the coffee table—and was staring up at her almost expectantly. Silent, and waiting.