Twilight was troubled.
Laying on her back in her library, surrounded by the books she once loved but couldn’t bear to love anymore, she fought back tears. These instruments of knowledge, beautiful and deadly information printed on each page, were now a death knell and a suicide pact for those that read the words within.
Of course, not every book was like that. Some were rather vapid, like those detailing what fashions were in and what fashions were out (a book frequently checked out by Rarity); and some were rather harmless, like the foal’s books. This is not to say all books meant for foals are harmless, as there was a certain one about Twilight’s friend Fluttershy going out in the middle of the night to look for her friends, written by a stallion who was now dead, as a gift to Fluttershy. The subject of said foal’s tale had donated the story to the library because she couldn’t bear to remember the horrible memories associated with the book.
Some books in this library, like the ones strewn around the troubled mare currently, were indeed terrible. Some contained recipes for deadly poisons; some contained schematics for deadly weapons; one even contained the mating ritual of the manticore, which while not particularly deadly for those not involved in said ritual, is still quite terrible and somewhat revolting.
Even given all of these horrible things in the library, sometimes it is the books that are innocent at first glance but turn out to be horribly deadly if the information contained is used in the right way that are the most dangerous. Twilight herself clutched such a book close to her chest as she lay amongst the other equally dangerous, if more straightforward, books.
In her grasp she clutched a book on how to tie knots.
There are many things one can do with a book on how to tie knots. You can use the book to beat somepony to unconsciousness; you could use it to start a fire if no other kindling was available; you could use it to get that one extra inch you need to climb up onto a ship deck; the most obvious, and perhaps the most terrible of these options, however, is reading the book and learning how to tie knots.
Knots are very helpful. They can turn a useless length of rope into an escape tool, be used to tie two things together, or used to secure somepony to yourself so you can carry their unconscious form up a mountain. However, it can be used for a number of villainous things as well. Such things include tying up a one of your helpless victims to a conveyer belt that brings them ever closer to the giant saw blade that will most likely cut them in half; tying a group of ties together which you can use to lift a priceless artifact which you are stealing from it’s resting place; or you can use it to tie a noose, which serves the purpose of hanging ponies.
When it is used for the last purpose, knots are a very insidious device indeed. Especially if the noose is to be used for hanging yourself. So a book containing information on how to tie knots can be as deadly as one used to brew the most deadly of poisons. The main difference between those would be that a poison could be introduced to a water supply, therefor hitting a much larger range of victims. Rest assured, however, if knotted noose ropes could be distributed in the same way, they would be just as, if not more, deadly.
Twilight held the book, sobs beginning to wrack her body. This book had been found in the room of the last pony to take it out of the library, a small pegasus filly named Scootaloo. The poor little filly had hung herself when the authorities had come due to a complaint coming from inside the house. Twilight did not know more than this, but this information was still enough enough to crush her. Had she known that the filly would use this book to harm herself in the way she did, Twilight would have never given her the book in the first place.
“But there was no way I could have known, right?” she attempted to reassure herself, smiling a distraught smile one often smiles in the face of a horrible mistake. “I can’t have known that was what she wanted to do!”
But you could have asked what was wrong... a voice in the back of her head whispered. She was obviously distressed, and you ignored her, delivering her means of destruction right into her waiting hooves...
Twilight rolled over onto her side, staring down at the many books whose titles detailed the contents inside, all of them destructive. What could she do with these books? Give them away? There would fall into more trouble that way, there was no way she was going to do that!
She could burn them, destroy their information forever... but could she bring herself to a burn a book? No matter how devious the information held deep inside, there was no way she could force herself to destroy them. No, they had to be another way!
“Hide them,” Twilight thought to herself. “I must hide them.”
She jumped to her hooves, using her horn to levitate as many of the devilish devices as she could over her head. What place could hide all these books?
She looked around at her surroundings. The bookshelves wouldn’t do, she just took the books off of them! Under the desk? No, somepony might ask about them, or be tempted to read them after if they came around while she was gone! Under the desk wasn’t going to work here at all.
Twilight trotted into the kitchen, eyes wild, looking around. The oven? No, then they would have to be taken out when she or Spike needed to cook; otherwise they would be burned, along with probably causing an inferno that would burn down the rest of the house. Libraries that were located in the center of trees generally tended to be very flammable. She turned from the oven. The fridge? Same problem as the desk; ponies would find it far too easily and be tempted! The sink?
Twilight rushed over to the sink. It had a small film of soap suds on the bottom, and underneath that probably lay a centimeter of water or so. A dirty plate and a slightly bent fork sat on the left side. The sink wasn’t big enough to hold more than a few books at a time, in addition to the fact that they would most likely be damaged or discovered whenever the dishes needed to be done.
Twilight groaned, and fell to her rump, floating books sinking with her, coming to a stop so they would all still be in places propionate to where they were when she was standing. Her magic cast magenta sparkles all around them, and she ground her teeth, thinking of a possible way out of this mess. No pony could ever come to harm from these books ever again, there was no way they could...
“Outside,” she whispered to herself. “Out.”
She dashed outside, and began to paw at the dirt, giggling quite insanely. These were not the giggles of an insane pony who had successfully trapped his victims in a school he was about to blow up; no, these were the giggles of a lonely madmare, nervous and failing at reassuring the originator of the giggles that everything was going to be okay. Twilight was not alone in proximity, as you probably know. She was only fifty yards away from the home of Colgate, a blue unicorn with an hourglass cutie mark. No, Twilight was alone in her quest to hide this dangerous knowledge, and as she watched five minutes go by with almost zero progress in digging a hole big enough for these books to go, she began to lose the fragile, faked confidence her giggles had attempted to make.
Giving up on the futile dig, she rushed back inside, tracking dirt onto the hardwood floors of her arboreal home. She was back in the kitchen, wild eyes and scared, looking around with the knowledge that nothing in there would hide the tomes.
“Twilight, I’m home!” came a loud, young voice. Twilight gained a small shard of genuine hope in her fraying mind.
Spike.
She ran from the kitchen, rushed across the floor, and charged at Spike. The dragon, whose back was turned when he shot towards her, was caught completely off guard when she smashed into him and knocked him to the floor. In the collision, a particularly heavy book (which was, fittingly about how to properly use impromptu bludgeoning objects in combat situations) hit Spike right in the snout.
As Spike cleared his fuzzy head, he looked up at the purple shadow bearing down on him. Twilight looked down at her assistant that lay on the floor, her face a mixture of relief and desperation.
“Twilight?” Spike asked cautiously. “Are you okay?”
“I am not, Spike,” Twilight answered, a hair in her mane popping out of alignment with the rest.
“What a surprise,” Spike mumbled, rolling his eyes. Taking a deep breath, he looked back at the mentally ill unicorn bearing down on him and carefully asked “What’s wrong?”
“Spike, there is no time for me to explain what’s wrong,” Twilight told her assistant in the way most ponies do for whatever reason. “All you need to know is that there is something you can do to help.”
“Is it going to hurt?” Spike asked incredulously.
“No.”
“Does it involve heavy lifting?”
“No...”
“Alright, I’ll help,” Spike decided. “What do you need me to do?”
Twilight leapt backwards, allowing Spike to get to his feet. The unicorn levitated a book about poisons towards her assistant. Taking a breath, she asked him a simple, although rhetorical, question.
“You know those friendship letters I send to Princess Celestia?”
“One of those that you haven’t sent in ages?” Spike asked. “Yeah, what about them?”
Twilight took a deep breath, and this time asked a question that she didn’t know the answer to. “Can you do the same thing with a book? Or rather, this collection of books?”
Spike looked over the book floating before him, and then up at the books hanging in the air all around Twilight. After a few moments, he came to his conclusion.
“Yeah, I guess I could. It’d be sorta hard though, I’m not sure how many I could do.”
“That’s fine, any that we can get rid of is fine...” Twilight murmured to herself. Spike gave her a slightly troubled look. No doubt he felt it odd that she wanted to get rid of these books. Well, she couldn’t tell him about these dangerous items. It was dangerous, far too dangerous...
“I need you to do it now,” she instructed him. “Start with the book in front of you.” She released the magic aura around the poison book, and Spike caught it as the book fell neatly into his claws.
“So...” he asked, looking at the distraught unicorn. “Just send them to Celestia?”
Twilight thought about this. Should her assistant send them to Celestia? That was sounding like somewhat of a risk. Celestia would know what to do with them, and they would be safe with her, but they were too much of a temptation for Twilight to risk. She knew that one day, if she knew where they were, she would just beg for them all over again. She couldn’t have that risk.
“No,” Twilight said, holding on to the last fragile thread of sanity and control she had at the moment. “No, I need you to send them somewhere where we will never find them. Can you do that?”
Spike’s troubled expression had advanced to a disturbed and slightly frightened looking one. Twilight repeated herself.
“I said, can you do that?”
“I think,” Spike said. “I’ve never tried it before, though. They could end up anywhere from the Everfree Forest to the dark side of the moon!”
“I don’t care where they go, just as long as I’ll never know where they are.”
The assistant said nothing to this, knowing that the time for action was now, and inhaled. Blowing out a huge jet of flames, he held the fire for longer than he usually did. He held it for much longer, until he face turned blue. After thirty seconds, he collapsed onto the ground, heaving for air. The book, however, was gone.
Twilight smiled, and clapped her front hooves together. Success!
“Alright, Spike, here’s the next one! I started you on a small one to warm you up, let’s have you go on another!” She levitated a very thick tome over towards him, and dropped it on his frail reptilian body. Spike groaned, and shoved it off of him. Taking another big breath, he set to work on the book that lay on the ground before him.
This was very tiring work, as one might expect, and poor Spike was winded only after five books. Twilight was not pleased in the slightest.
“Spike! You’ve still got twenty-something books to go!” she told he desperately. “Don’t give up now!”
“Can’t... any more... books...” the dragon spluttered in incomplete sentences that would give any english teacher the shudders. “Too... out of... breath...”
That last frail thread of sanity and control was snipped, and the entire weight of the situation (mixed with an ample dose of Twilight’s festering mental instability that lurked just below the surface of her mind at any given time) collapsed on her with complete force. She felt woozy, rocking back on forth on her hooves, and gave swoon that Rarity would have awarded a trophy for.
Tumbling to the floor, she let go of the magical aura of the many books that surrounded her in the air. She was lost in a blizzard of papers and leather, completely engulfed in a storm of deadly information. She began to fully sob, letting go of all the emotion that she hadn’t been able to express earlier.
She did not know how long the storm lasted. The books and herself seemed to fall in slow motion, but time itself seemed almost sped up. She collapsed on the floor, wishing the terrible tomes were water so she could drown in them.
She lay on the hardwood, her crying soft now. She gave short little spasmy gasps between each quite sob, cursing herself, cursing the books, and cursing her luck. Yet she was also apologizing; she apologized to everypony who had ever been harmed by the information held in the books, she apologized to Scootaloo for letting her take out one of the books that lead to her harm, and she apologized to everypony who had ever had to check out a book that was recommended by this joke of a librarian who was even unable just to hide a few books.
After some time, a pony trotted up to her. She gazed upward through soggy eyes at her visitor.
It was Rarity.
“They found her,” she whispered. “They found Sweetie Belle.” Twilight gave her an odd look.
“Sweetie Belle?” she asked. “Who’s Sweetie Belle?”
