The Faults in Our Binding

"What was that?"

Twilight Sparkle jumped, spinning on her hooves in an attempt to find the source of the disturbance. As the purple unicorn spun about, her draconian assistant watched from the top of a ladder with confused amusement. He quickly made his way down the ladder with a book clutched between his claws.

"Here's that copy of- MMMPPHH!" Spike was suddenly cut off as a purple hoof made it's way into his mouth.

"Quiet Spike. Can't you feel that?" Twilight narrowed her eyes and looked about the library, as if trying to see the intrusion.

Spike removed Twilight's hoof from his mouth. "Feel what?" he asked, deciding not to complain about the rude interruption.

"It's as if something is watching us. Observ-"

You quickly shut the book.

"No way," You tell yourself, "That's impossible."

The book is obviously messing with you, the author of this piece of fan fiction must be a complete troll. You attempt to rationalize the coincidence in any way you can, until you recall that the writing itself could be messing with you. To make sure, you thumb a different section of the book later on. But you can't get to the page. You can't open the book. Your muscles wouldn't obey the command and you find your thumb discreetly making it back to where you left off, resting there once it reached its destination. You never did like spoilers.

You open the book.

"Observing us." Twilight finished, and then shook her head. "What just happened?"

Spike looked around him. "What do you mean?"

"You didn't notice anything? It felt as though everything just...stopped." Noticing the confused look on Spike's face, Twilight elaborated. "Me, you...time. It felt as though the entire world was in stasis."

"Um, perhaps you should get some rest Twilight. It seems that you've been reading too much again. Or maybe it's just the lack of sleep that comes from you reading so much." Spike ushered the unicorn towards her room.

"No, Spike." Twilight twisted around to get away from her assistant's pushing. "I have to know what's going on."

Twilight paced around the library before deciding to levitate a book on her shelf towards herself. Surfacing to her consciousness, Spike's belief in the supernatural gave her an idea.

Ever since he had mentioned curses and hexes when Twilight and her friends first encountered poison joke, she couldn't deny that she was intrigued by the notion despite on her insistence that the supernatural did not exist. Of course magic was the force that dictated natural law in Equestria. But what about other territories, such as the Everfree?

If ponies had unsuccessfully attempted to gain control over the Everfree forest for centuries, wouldn't it make sense that it did not abide by Equestrian rule? That meant anything that didn't happen in Equestria isn't necessarily nonexistent, and could actually occur in other places.

So Equestria could be real? Was it like so many other fanfiction pieces suggested? Perhaps your world is in one dimension, and Equestria exists in another. But what could create a link between the tw-

You shook your head. The book was starting to mess with it, feeding you crazy ideas about colorful ponies existing in alternate dimensions. This work of fanfiction must be really well written if it made you believe such things. You continued reading.

"Spike, I need you to bring me 'Orb's Guide to Paranormal Influence',"  Twilight called out.

The dragon shuffled through an old pile of stacked books that were stored inside a cardboard box. When Twilight had moved into Ponyville, they had brought a random variety of recently donated books with them from Canterlot. While the Pineville library had been well stocked, there were still a few empty shelves here and there. Twilight organized as many of the donated books as she could, but was not able to fit all of them on the remaining shelves. So she left the ones she thought were least important (such as the ones on the supernatural and the paranormal) in the boxes, favoring records of ancient magical research over them. It seemed odd that Twilight now wanted to read something from what she considered a work of fiction.

Spike found the requested book near the bottom of the stack. Its pages were old, yellow, and awfully thin. It looked as though they could rip very easily. He carefully carried it to Twilight.

She took hold of it in a magical field and opened it. The pages flipped rapidly as a Twilight skimmed through the book for why she was looking for.

"Twilight, don't!" Spike tried to warn her.

But it was in vain. As soon as he had spoken, several consecutive pages ripped out of the dog eared book and floated to the ground. Twilight looked absolutely horrified. She set down the old guide, and nervously picked up the sheets in between her hooves.

"Oh no, oh no, oh no," She moaned, "what have I done?"

She levitated the six ripped pages in front of her. Quickly skimming through contents, Twilight nodded her head and placed them in a neat stack next to their source.

"I have good news and bad news," she announced.

"Tell me the good news first," Spike requested.

"The good news is that the pages that were ripped out maybe what we are looking for. I would have missed them if they hadn't been ripped out."

"And the bad news?"

"I need to find the rest of the chapter in order to understand the concept clearly. The only problem is, the pages in this book aren't numbered, and this book is string bound, so we can't simply look for ripped sections. It will be difficult matching these pages in the right location."

Spike took another look at 'Orb's Guide to Paranormal Influence. It was very thick, had clearly had over a thousand pages in it. This wasn't going to be easy.

"There is one thing I can safely say. Whatever is watching us, it isn't Equestrian," Twilight said.

You close the book, having reached the end of the chapter. You turn off your miniature flashlight and pocket it. Shifting over in your bed, you open a nearby drawer and place the book inside. You had a feeling you should finish it before anyone else read it. After a few minutes in, you drift off to sleep.