“My dearest Twilight,” The unicorn in question started as she settled on the bed, still trying to work out why her teacher’s letter had been wrapped around a piece of the Millennium Puzzle, very specifically the missing piece that she had been frantically searching for right up until she had been shooed out of Canterlot to come here.
“By now you would have arrived in Ponyville and hopefully started progress towards your task,” Twilight rolled her eyes, because making friends was so easy when every pony was crazy, “There’s a lot I wish I had shared with you before today and since I can’t be there myself with the Summer Sun Celebration coming up I thought I’d send you a letter along with something I know, by now, you’re probably missing.”
Twilight paused at that, the Princess had known about the missing Puzzle piece? In spite of the fact she had not even mentioned it when departing Canterlot, certain that her brother, Shining Armour, would keep his promise and find it for her.
“In answer to a question you asked me many years ago that at the time I deflected, yes, I know what’s inside your golden box. Or rather what the pieces inside it make up. A very long time ago, my sister researched something very similar, magic wise, in Saddle Arabia and brought home all the myths and legends attached to it and its set.”
Twilight couldn’t help but be torn between confusion and indignation. Princess Celestia knew how hard she had been looking for something, anything, related to the Ancient Equigyptian puzzle she had spent the greater part of eight years trying to solve and she had been holding information back?
“I know you’re probably annoyed with me,” She could almost hear the Princess’s tone within the words on the page and the almost chuckle she read into the words didn’t improve her mood much, “But I assure you that I buried the information away for a good reason. At least until this morning, when I realised that hiding this from you would do more harm than good.”
By which point Twilight had already been on her way to Ponyville. But what had made the Princess change her mind. Could it be that she was taking the threat of Nightmare Moon more seriously than Twilight had realised and was trying to pass on the information in case something happened?
“A long time ago, before Equestria was founded, there was a land called Equigypt.” Twilight adjusted herself on the bed, setting out her Puzzle pieces and reading at the same time, “The Equigyptians were a proud and noble race of ponies, not unlike Equestrians are today, and they were protected by their Queen and her court. All of whom, according to what my sister found, held an item like the one in your golden box.”
Twilight blinked and glanced at the pieces carefully spread across her bed. They didn’t look like anything a Queen and her court would use, more like shards of a bigger whole but then she supposed that was the point. Her golden box contained the Millennium Puzzle. It made sense that she had to complete it before she could use it.
“About three thousand years ago, if the legends are true of course, the ‘Millennium Items’ vanished after the Queen of Equigypt died while protecting her country. Slowly the Millennium Items have been showing up, one at a time, there’s even one within my court. I’m sure you met Sir Art Nouveau at some point, the gentlecolt who makes the card game you’re enthralled with. I know for a fact he holds one.”
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