The Last Librarian of Ponyville
Dear Princess Celestia...
Twilight stares abjectly out the window, waiting for the breeze to blow the daylight through her mane and wash out the dust settled there. "Twilight!" On the desk before her is dinner, hot as fresh ash and just as appealing. "Twilight!" Her heart is a fire that sends flares through her head with every uneven beat and sears the echoes from her ears like a taiko drummer. "Twilight, are you okay?" asks Spike, with wide eyes and a stubborn frown.
Twilight looks to her assistant, and nods. She is okay, that much she knew, but everything else buzzes and swims about in the way only certain thoughts do. She thinks of things that wear the nebulous mask of ambiguity, like inkblots that move only through the mind and stick to the thoughts held closest. Yet for Twilight, the darkness wouldn't stick; she didn't want it to because to do so would be to affirm its form, its reality. Twilight Sparkle is thinking about the beginning of something she wishes never happened, and wishes she could deny it did.
...In the Ponyville library, in the basement, sealed behind a bookshelf, I found a door with no handle, no lock and no way of entering...
This is where the memories begin. It was there. Nopony else would say it was, and neither would Twilight Sparkle had she looked here just two days ago. Now, the knots, the whorls, and the flow of the grain made words which she traced up one side, across the top, and down the other. They told her that the door was present, and as one is accustomed to do at doors, the librarian knocked twice. The door answered hollowly to her inquiry and added, after a beat of her heart, two knocks of its own; reflections sent back as confirmation. The pony retreated, gasped for the air that revelation had stolen from her lungs, and began to trace the wooden flaws that spoke so much with ink. Twilight remembers: she had used the quill.
...it was a rich scarlet, deep as blood, yet edged with shimmering gold. It was beautiful, and etched onto the silver shaft was her name: Dust Hunter. A formidable moniker for a formidable pony...
Twilight Sparkle hated that pen...
Wrapped in dreams of portals below, the screeching and clanging once more haunted the bedroom full of inky air. It slithered up from the basement, wrapped itself around the unicorn and pierced her ears with the poison of curiosity. The wailing dragged her from her visions, and she had to succumb, but the instant she arose the cacophony shattered and left her in empty silence. She moved through what felt like an ocean of space as she trotted downstairs alone. lighting a candle she noticed the pen glinting like fire and leaking ink onto the windowsill by the door. She had left the pen on her bedside, she was sure of it. She had made sure of it.
To Owlowicious it was poisonous, it stank and it would probably bite too. The owl went no where near it, no matter how hard his master tried that morning. She would chase him with it, launch it at him, try to trick him into taking it and try to sneak it into his wing, yet he always avoided it as if supernaturally aware of its proximity. She needed to make him to confess moving the pen, but couldn't. Her dragon friend was in Canterlot on important business, so when the pet flew away out of desperation, the filly was left all alone in a big empty house.
...That's not quite right, actually. I did have some company while Spike was studying more dragon magic with you, which I can not possibly be more thankful for...
"Derpy, stop!" Twilight could keep a fire-breathing dragon in a library but not a pegasus, not this pegasus.
"I'm sorry Twilight! It was an accident!" said the cross-eyed mare from beneath a pile of books. Twilight would have to reorganise this shelf again, along with most of the library. She hesitated at this. Enivisioning the silhouettes of more disturbed secrets leaking from the woodwork; ice began to creep through her veins.
"That's the third 'accident' in as many minutes, Derpy... just... just wait here, okay?" The mailmare disappeared in a cloud of dust when she down slumped into the books. Just like she had been told many times to do, she remained motionless. Her companion left the room for the pleasant silence of the foyer, but it wasn't long before the silence broke.
"Twilight help!" Twilight galloped back into Derpy's room to see what was wrong. She saw Derpy lying under a pile of books, exactly as before. "Twilight, what does this say? I can't read clearly with my eyes,"
"I know, Derpy," the purple mare inspected the book before the pegasus, then directed her eyes to the pegasus herself. "It's a book on magic, it says how important it is to pronounce every syllable in incantations, especially at the end," The librarian left. She had to discern where the books should go -and where they came from.
Twilight trotted into the foyer again. On the windowsill by the door, a kind of spark had landed. It ignited a blaze of written notes that were propagating up the windows and down the walls. Speculations, connections, and equations- scribed and ordered- burnt away the shadows of doubt fortified in the library's dustiest crevices. The notes flared elsewhere too, arranged so delicately that the librarian feared to trot near them. They were consuming a book that had been left open at chapter three: 'Mask Games' and discovered in the morning at chapter ten: 'Leaving Home'. From there they were spreading to a book the mare found in the tree's crown: 'Story of the Blanks', a book Twilight had never heard of. If the signs kept growing worse, the library would become an inferno. Already the notes had engulfed the drawer on the other side of the room where she had found the very first clue. They were the most important ones too, the notes on Dust Hunter, and what she had done with the library long ago.
...it's incredible what you can find in the dustiest crevices of your house. Stuck behind that drawer was where I first found the pen, and discovered the name Dust Hunter. Of course, my first instinct was try find out as much about it as possible...
Twilight trotted back through the darkness to her home. Either side of her glowed warmly with the welcoming light of ponies' houses. The librarian had no time for that, however, since her mind was bursting with town records and historical documents. When she came to the library, it felt a lot larger than before, and trees that large took a long time to grow. Dust Hunter... the name of the Ponyville librarian before Twilight. As she entered, it was like everything was new. Every room seemed to hide secrets, every panel presented possibilities. She took the pen with her to the basement, her best chance of finding a relic of the past.
A tingling hovered in the basement's stale air. Dust had slept, lived, and eventually died of sickness in this room. The shelves, now filled with books, seemed bent out of shape without Dust's strange collection in them, and the old desk seemed misused now that it held Twilight's scientific apparati. The new owner began disassembling the room, searching for any traces of the old. A slip of paper, a button, spare change or anything that had belonged to Dust would have been wonderful, but she found nothing. Visions of a pony working, reading and trotting about still seemed to replay themselves, however, among the swirling grains of upthrown dust.
The unicorn had one more thing to cross off her list. The town archives recorded a building project somewhere within the library. It couldn't have been anywhere on the upper floors or the living structure would show it. Therefore, it must be in here, somehow. The librarian swept her scrutinising eyes across every inch of wall and floor in search of answers, refusing to let the anomaly lie. Exhaustion had almost defeated her when she spotted it; a slight mismatching of the wood, sealed off with magic and hidden behind a bookshelf. She outlined the door with the pen. That night, the noises began.
...From the moment I found it, I knew I had to discover what was behind that door. All the secrets of Equestria could have been hidden in there, and more besides. All I had to do was teleport in and teleport out, but I should have known it wouldn't be that easy. I should've listened to Derpy...
"Let me handle this, Derpy,"
"No, please. Please don't do it Twilight! I know... I know I can't explain it, but we shouldn't go in there, nopony should!" Twilight had to magically wrench the pegasus off herself and place her carefully atop the mountain of accumulated notes; here for this special occasion. She casually rummaged through the saddle bags, checking off the items she thought she might need. For an heartbeat she felt something was amiss, but then it came to her. She quickly levitated over Dust's pen and sat it delicately inside the bag, closing the flaps definitively.
"I've seen the signs. The pen by the door, the books, the late-night noises. Dust Hunter is clearly behind this door and needs us to get her out!"
"I've seen them too, Twilight, but... what if you're wrong?"
"Wrong? Please, Derpy, I am the personal student of Princess Celestia. Nopony comes as far as I have by being wrong. Now, are you coming or not?" Derpy nodded her head, defeated, and Twilight blinked them both out of the room.
...I am ashamed, Princess, to have used my position to belittle another pony, and I am a fool for ignoring this one. You see, Dust Hunter was once the babysitter of Derpy when she was just a filly, and the two were close friends. As Dust had no close relatives left in the world, it is quite likely that Derpy knew her better than anypony else alive...
"She used to tell me never to come into this room..."
"It's just the basement, Derpy, I come in here all the time," As the door closed on the pair darkness consumed them. Shoot, thought Twilight, she had forgotten the candle. Down in the black space below, she heard hooves. Clopclop, clopclop... circling on some invisible stage. The unicorn kept the space dark for just a moment. "Derpy, what are you doing down there already?"
"Twilight, I'm right here..." the clopping stopped. Squinting, focusing, as if searching for the afterburn from looking at something bright, the librarian seemed to see a silhouette. It was watching them. She lit the room with magic, but there was nothing but dust slowly settling in the lifeless air. Derpy hugged Twilight, but was shaken off gently when the bookish mare went deeper into the room. "I don't think she likes us being here, this is where she kept all her things..."
"Derpy, please, there are no such things as ghosts, what we heard was probably water or something underground," the librarian replied dismissively. "Now, tell me everything you know about Dust Hunter. What did she keep in here?"
"Well, I only came in here once, but I got a pretty good look about before Dust chased me out. She had a lot of old stone tablets and things and books written in strange languages. And then there was the weird stuff, like the things she kept in those jars..."
"What things?"
"Weird things, I don't know what they were..."
Twilight contemplated her luck in bumping into Derpy at sugarcube corner, and her ears devoured the information flowing from her mouth. She wrote it all down, and put the notes in the same drawer she found the pen behind. It seemed fitting, somehow, to keep the information in the place it related to; an excellent practice for a library. Eventually the mailmare finished and left, promising to return tomorrow for more. Twilight had looked forward to it, considering her other friends had dismissed this as just another research project.
...At last, it seemed my questions would be answered, my curiosities satisfied and Dust Hunter could finally be put to rest...
Twilight looked behind her. Solid stone. At her side: Derpy looking meek and hesitant. In front of her, stretching downwards beyond the glow of her horn, was a long stone staircase. The air choked on the dust clogging every surface, and consequently felt dead. The corridor was just a little too thin for two ponies to walk comfortably side-by-side, so Twilight led the way, Derpy huddling in the back for protection. Down and down they went, seemingly forever, until dark-stoned corridor was all they could see. Ahead of them they began to hear the sharp clanging of metal on metal echoing endlessly through the dark.
They began to pass their first relics- seemingly random objects from exotic lands like ornate flutes and decorated gourds. They lay dead and fragile in their cradles burrowed in the walls. There were scrolls too, from ancient times that would crumble at a slight breeze. Twilight took it all in, every detail carving itself into her mind, but didn't stop. She didn't know why, but something compelled her to continue. They walked on, and the artefacts grew morbid, featuring fossilised skulls that stared from the walls with empty, shadow filled eyes, and monuments to the fallen from cultures not described in any book of pony kind. And then the objects grew dark. At one time, the librarian could feel the gaze of something in a jar, despite not having any discernible eyes or even any signs of former life. At other times, thick tomes seemed to tighten themselves like clams at the passing of these strangers. Derpy whimpered- some of these things were familiar to her. Still they descended. Still they heard the clanging.
The air stank with echoes, but not of the metal. These were lower, longer and stranger. Finally the corridor peeled away and left them alone in a huge empty space. Every stone here buzzed with stillness, every shadow clawed for escape against the walls, and even though the noise was with them in this very room, it fled the second the librarian's hooves touched the frigid stone floor. There was but one presence in this room that was still active, an echo of something indistinguishable, some kind of droning.
...It was not to late then, we could still have turned back, I could still have realised my folly...
"Twilight, help!" Twilight trotted reluctantly into the room. Not this again, she thought as she observed this wing of the library. She saw Derpy, perched atop the book pile staring- as much as was possible with eyes that pointed in two unrelated directions- shakily at a book before her.
"What is it now, Derpy? I don't need interruptions,"
"It was the ghost! She's rearranging the words!" Derpy pointed emphatically at the volume at her hooves. It was the same one as before, the one about incantations. "You said it yourself, Twilight, she's haunting the books!"
"I never said that," this was a half truth, "And there's no such thing as ghosts!" and this was a blatant lie. Twilight turned to leave.
"No! I saw it Twilight, with my own two eyes! Dust wants us to leave! She wants us out of the library!"
...but I was arrogant, and blind...
The centre had a form of gravity that dragged the mares inwards under their own will. The droning sharpened and defined itself into a swarm of humming syllables that bit, scratched and forced themselves on the mares' ears and into their mouths. They found their tongues stretched to fit sounds not fit for creatures of Equestria, or any other place known to ponies, yet the swarm of echoes drowned out any other option. Twilight heard the jangling again, directly below her, which cut through the echoes like a knife. At her hooves an heavy steel chain entangled a open book on one end and bit into the skeleton of a pony on the other. Twilight stepped over the chain and headed for the book, which lorded over the room from its raised altar.
The sound of a jangling chain cut through the buzz once more, and then once more again, but Twilight ignored it. The book was a flower which the echoes buzzed about, dispersing its filthy power throughout the darkness. It was ready to burst forth with fruit and release its foul progeny into Equestria. This she knew, the echoes made sure of it. The jangling continued. One key factor was missing, holding this terror back in the abyss. The librarian stepped up to the altar, looked at the book, and saw a single word struggling violently to escape. The jangling reached a crescendo then stopped, just for a heartbeat, before Twilight went tumbling to the ground.
She felt something hard jab into her ribs, which sent pain flaring up her sides. All about her, the jangling of the chain screamed and roared, while the rattling of bones chilled her to the core, but still the echoes suppressed her, buzzing now inside her head. She looked up to the piercing black eyes of Dust Hunter's ghost, a ragged coat of dust around a cracked white skeletal frame. It reared up to bring it's hooves deadly hard onto Twilight, but she rolled just enough to feel the jarring force with which they came down. She looked back up to the altar and saw a grey mare with a golden mane and tail staring down onto the book.
"Derpy! read the last word!" Dust Hunter swivelled and stared at the pegasus, desperation plain on her emotionless face. She began to gallop towards her with determination, but Twilight just as quick rose to her feet and tackled the phantom to the ground. "Read it!" She screamed at Derpy while she wrangled with the wiry form of Dust.
"I... I can't" Derpy shouted back.
"You have to read the book, Derpy!"
"I can't! my eyes!"
"Just bucking do it, you..."
...I cannot relate what happened next, as I simply do not know. I can't remember. I assume, as both Derpy and myself are both safe and well, that Derpy misread the final word, disrupting the spell, or even read it backwards and sent the summoning in the opposite direction. I've checked to try find that chamber again, but the space where the door was has nothing but rock behind it now. Finally, my head is starting to clear from this ordeal and I can properly reflect on what I have learned today. I learned that even ponies like Derpy can save the world, and that arrogance and pride make you forget that, sometimes.
Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.
P.S: You may be interested to know that Derpy has Dust's pen now, and has just accidentally flown away with it. I noticed the engraving on the shaft got damaged in such a way that the 'ust' and 'unter' were totally removed, leaving only the initials 'D. H.'
