The unicorn put more energy into her horn so her light shone brighter than before, and I followed suit to help illuminate the larger room we had ventured into.
The room's width was double or triple that of the hallway, in which we could easily walk side-by-side, but the slanted ceiling of stones set halfway upon those under them allowed it to rise ever higher as we made our way into the larger space.
Columns set some distance away from one another and decorated with engravings of the three pony races upon them supported the ceiling.
Spritelight's light swished around from left to right as she took the room in, much like my own, and once Discord had passed through the doorway was soon followed by the lights from April and Cadance as well.
"Wooooooooow," Pinkie Pie's voice called out into the otherwise almost reverent silence. "This is a biiiiig room!"
"Isn't it?" Patty Cannon replied just as loud and clear. "I can almost hear an echo! Echo!"
"Echo!" Pinkie replied.
"Echo Echo!" Patty giggled in return.
"Okay you two, we need to find a way to the mana well and I'm not sensing it here, why don't we focus?" Spritelight suggested, walking over to a tapestry suspended above a doorway in the back wall.
"This is surprisingly well made," she realised as she looked over the cloth.
The tapestry in question showed a number of ponies, two for each of the races, standing side by side and facing forward toward the viewer against a blue background.
A rising sun was located above and behind them, as if to invoke an image of unity, of moving forward together. An image of hope.
Cadance walked by me to join Spritelight in looking over the tapestry, sizing it up with an expert eye.
"You're right, Spritelight. This quality of stitching could easily find its way into one of the royal palaces or a rich homestead," the princess suggested.
I walked over to them as well but used my magic to test the door underneath. "Main door into the temple proper, tapestry above it, this is most likely our best chance to find the mana well."
"There's a door on the right here as well," April noted, having wandered past the pillars together with Rainbow Dash. "There's a symbol like a pegasus resting on a cloud on a plaque next to it?"
"It could be a door leading to their bedrooms? My home in Cloudsdale is made of clouds and I do like sleeping on them," Dash mentioned.
"That begs the question of what's located on the other side," I wondered, walking on over past the pillars to check for doors there.
"Spritelight, can you make out what this sign says?" I wondered, looking at a plaque with scribbles on it. Nothing as easy to understand as a pegasus on a cloud.
The unicorn joined me and glanced at the pictograph in question. "Hm, I think it's food storage or preparation. Either could work in this case."
"Food?" Patty Cannon asked in a burst of excitement.
"Makes sense," I told Spritelight. "We're only in the first area of the temple so having bedrooms and storage near the entrance would allow them to have their immediate needs met upon arriving back home."
"The mana well is most likely beyond the center door in the back of this hallway then, as you suggested," Spritelight agreed.
Cadance chuckled as she walked on over to this door on the left of the room as well. "Knowing Pinkie Pie as I do, and seeing Patty Cannon's response, I'm going to suggest to be the one exploring past this doorway with the both of them. We might find ourselves a kitchen and prepare a midday snack if anything is still edible."
I gave her a smile and a nod. "That sounds great. April, can you take Rainbow Dash and Turkey into the bedroom area?"
As I looked back, April stared at me with a shocked expression. "Me?"
"Yes, you've got the ability to light the area and they both could use a rest after flying us over here," I pointed out. "I know Rainbow can probably fly on for half a day or more, but Turkey is stumbling on her hooves."
"I was bowled over in the hallway," Turkey protested.
"Oh please, you were lagging behind the other two even while in flight," Spritelight threw back. "Go get a nap in. I'll stay with Josey to find that mana well since I can read ancient Equestrian and sense the mana flow."
"And we'll bring Discord with us," I decided. "That makes three groups of three. None of us are left by ourselves that way."
Discord stood idly observing the tapestry, seemingly lost in thought.
"Discord, did you hear me?" I called out, and he snapped to attention.
"What, you actually want me with you?" he wondered in genuine surprise.
"It's not like you to get this discombobulated. What were you thinking about?" Spritelight wondered, walking up to her supposed teacher.
Discord frowned at her. "Why, I've got the strange feeling I have seen that tapestry before, or the symbol on it, but it can't be. That was so long ago..."
"Considering the history on the walls in the hallway, this place is fairly old," I pointed out. "Like centuries... Maybe a thousand years or more."
"It must be," Discord agreed. "This symbol is from my early days of walking across the surface of Equestria. The flag of the First Alliance, if my memory serves me well. To put it in terms your little pony brains can understand; from long before even Celestia or Luna were born."
Silence fell over the room again as those who knew the princesses and their expected ages considered just what those words meant, and those who didn't just looked around in confusion.
"I have never even heard of this first alliance," Spritelight spoke first, looking the Draconequus over with a curious glance. "But you know more."
"Why, of course I know more. I'm nigh immortal compared to the short little lives you ponies have," Discord scoffed. "The First Alliance was around when I was but a teenager, but it was of no interest to me. I was far more interested in the affairs of dragons at the time as they fought among themselves to find their prophesized lord or king or something."
I stared at the Draconequus with wonder. "A dragon king?"
"Lord, most likely. Dragon Lord Torch rules over the Dragon Lands at the moment," Cadance knew. "He has been in power since before I was born."
"Torch, yes. Scrawny little thing, but he did love to prove himself by fighting others," Discord chuckled, clearly thinking back on it. "Oh, the faces of those he beat; they never figured he could take them!"
"I don't believe I have ever heard the Dragon Lord being described as 'scrawny' before now," Cadance offered with a surprised look on her face. "As far as I know he is the largest and strongest of all the dragons currently residing in the Dragon Lands."
"How long has he been in power for?" I wondered, thinking about what I knew of dragons and their supposed lifespan.
"Considering I was locked away in a stone prison for a thousand years, at least that long," Discord posited. "He rather enjoyed it when I skated up the lava flows beside him."
"It sounds like you two had quite the friendship," I realised. "I thought Fluttershy was the first true friend you had."
"Oh, my friendship with Torch was but a short one in the grand scheme of things. A passing fancy, nothing more," the draconequus suggested off-handedly. "He and I fell out when I turned his favourite mountain into jell-o. His loss; it was absolutely delicious!"
"That's more like you, yes," Spritelight grumbled.
"So if that was over a thousand years ago, we can expect this temple to be at least that old as well," I remarked. "A thousand years of it buried under the surface of Yellowstone."
"A thousand years of it draining mana from Earth, collecting it somewhere deeper," Spritelight added, looking at the door under the tapestry. "That should be enough to fix the problem we're faced with... if we can tap into it without getting destroyed by it."
I swallowed at that last sentence of hers and looked up at the light shining from my horn. "According to Celestia and Twilight Sparkle, I should be able to manage that... I don't know how, but the least I can do is try."
"First we'll have to find it," Cadance noted, walking back to the doorway supposedly leading to a storage area, where the two pink earthponies were still waiting. "Let us start our exploring and perhaps we can find some old cake batter which would allow Pinkie here to make one of her famous cakes, hm?"
"And we'll see about that bedroom before Turkey falls over," Rainbow laughed. "That poor filly's been wobbling more and more since we arrived here. She's going to need a nap."
"H...hey," Turkey protested. "I'm still standing, aren't I?"
"Yeah, but you're not flying in my wing unless you take a nap," Rainbow Dash decided. "We might as well figure out what's beyond this door."
"Let me," April offered up, and I could feel her mana release from her as she used it to open the door in front of her with barely a flicker of the light she was still maintaining.
I smiled in her direction. She was getting better at controlling her magic now she's had to keep a light going for a while.
"Then we'll take this central doorway as discussed," I spoke out loud, using my own magic to push the double doors open and ducking my head down so I wouldn't bump my horn against the top of the doorway clearly designed for shorter ponies.
The wall between rooms was thicker than I expected and there was a short passage before I arrived at another double door.
I pushed it open in the hopes to get out of the more cramped space and was glad to find what looked like an elongated conference room, a rectangular stone table with a number of chairs set on either side of it placed in the center.
As I walked around it on the left side, I noticed the last chair on the right was missing; there were six stone chairs on the side where I was walking, but only five on the opposite.
I looked ahead past the table to the opposite end of the room from where we had entered, putting more energy into my horn to shine light on it.
A pedestal was placed opposite the end of the table, shards of reflective glass laying across and around it in a disorganised pattern.
The missing chair was resting on its side in this mess of broken glass, and I realised I had stumbled upon the last of the drawings from the hallway through which we had entered the temple.
"Well, I guess we found the mirror," I threw back to Spritelight and Discord coming up behind me.
Spritelight wandered around the table on the right side, Discord following closely behind.
"A conference room? They must have had contact with the group they sent back to Equestria then," the unicorn realised.
"And yet, the last of the ponies here obviously shattered the mirror here," I pointed out. "Maybe they lost contact with the others or were told something they didn't want to hear?"
"Perhaps they survived until the alliance fell apart?" Discord mused, rubbing the hairs on his chin thoughtfully.
"Maybe you should tell us how that happened, since you were alive when it did?" I suggested. "You may have been more interested in dragons, but you recognized the tapestry, so obviously you took notice of them."
Discord smirked weirdly. I wasn't so sure if it was admiration or regret I saw on his face.
"Oh, the alliance was doomed the moment they started to quarrel among themselves," he explained while walking toward the remains of the mirror and the pedestal upon which it once stood.
"The pegasi were told they could only fly according to the roadmap of their settlement, the unicorns were berated for using magic for everything, earthponies had a problem with humans not watching where they were walking," the draconequus listed. "They didn't need me to sow discord among themselves; they were doing fine on their own."
Spritelight perked up. "It's hard to believe there were humans left on Equestria after the split..."
"The wall paintings did show that," I pointed out. "I'm having trouble believing it myself, but Discord was there to see it."
"See it? I was there when it inevitably fell," Discord laughed. "Oh, what a chaos it was! Certainly drew my attention!"
With Spritelight and me staring him down, Discord quickly defended himself, "I had nothing to do with it, I swear! I was just there to drink in the view! It was a distraction from my affairs in the Dragon Lands, I'll tell you."
"Are you sure?" Spritelight wondered, not trusting her former teacher in the least bit.
Knowing what I knew of Discord from the show, I also had a hard time believing him.
"Quite sure, I will cross my heart and hope to die, sticking a cupcake in my eye, if that will prove it to you? That pink one does love tricking ponies into doing it to prove they are honest," the draconequus suggested with a motion of his feline paw in the direction of the door through which we entered the room.
"No need," I sighed. "We'll trust you for now. But this is obviously not the room the mana well is in."
"No, but I can sense it is close," Spritelight agreed.
"Yes," I offered back with a nod. "It's just a matter of finding the door leading to it."