Azil

She lifted her head slowly, a heavy sigh falling upon her lover's most sacred, private treasure. She looked upon her dearest's form, watching her body heave for air, her eyes wandering over her sweat-shining fur. She took in every curve, every soft nook and every delicious cranny.

She was hers....she belonged, to HER.

She lowered her head once more, unwilling to give her any moment to breathe, to recover. Her ears twitched, perking this way and that. She listened to the sounds of her surroundings carefully, from the soft patter of rain, to the heated mewls of her dearest beloved. Words floated from below, muffled and unimportant. Words like 'Storm' and 'Evacuation' barely striking a nerve or interest in the mare.

Though...deep down, she knew she should have been more attentive to such things. It didn't matter to her now, however...all it mattered was the delicate movement of hooves, the squirming of fur against fur, the wrinkling and dirtying of sheets. THIS was her world...one she could escape to from...what was it called?

Equestria.....was it? Why didn't she....surely she remembered where she was, didn't she? What a peculiar thing to forget...or did she forget? Was she simply choosing to ignore it...was she-

The window nearby opened with a loud bang, the mare lifting her head up quickly and darting her eyes towards the opening. A howl reached her ears, deafening all other sounds as the curtains whipped about in a gust of fury. She felt a tender touch upon her cheek but did not turn her head to gaze upon her lover...instead choosing to keep her eyes rooted to the window.

"My dearest....my beauitful lavender flower....what is it? What is amiss my love?"

"Nothing....it's nothing. It is just.....it is just, I...."

Her eyes widened....though she did not know why. She saw nothing but the overcast...the sky and everything beyond. It was as if something was there....watching her, she could feel the eyes of some presence upon her...but it was a feeling that quickly came to pass. With a slight narrowing of her eyes, in a dreary, sleepy way, she turned her head back and down into her lover's most private sanctum, and re-threaded the needle of their most sensual and delicate of practices.

"It is just the wind."

"Azil...?" Twilight repeated, raising an eyebrow slightly at the Librarian. "What...do you mean this place? This...prison, is Azil?"

The Librarian merely chuckled, looking down upon something resting on the desk that Twilight could not see form her angle. The unicorn could only hear a light rustling of papers before it was quickly drowned out by The Librarian's voice "Azil...is not a prison Lady Sparkle. Azil is in and of itself....well, it is just itself." Twilight frowned, a look of pure confusion etched upon her face. Ditzy Doo, in her usual mannerism of 'Air-headed-ness', had already taken to patting Twilight gently on her uninjured side, turning to help herself to browsing one of the massive bookshelf towers lining the circular room. The Librarian watched Ditzy carefully out of the corner of her eye, her smile still lingering upon her face as she went on "You cannot truly understand what Azil really is...all you can do is understand what you already KNOW."

"You're...not making any sense Librarian." Twilight interjected, holding a hoof up to her and presenting her with a tired glare. "What do you mean Azil is...'itself'? What is it that I already know?"

The Librarian smiled, giggling as she looked up to the almost endless ceiling above, waving a hoof about gently as she said in her mysterious language "Ah frumusețea adevărata cunoaștere, rezolvarea pentru noi misterele tânjim pentru a se descurca de separarea ceilalți." Twilight blinked, cocking her head slightly as The Librarian looked back down upon the broken mare, smiling. "Well...what do you know my dear?" She paused to flip the page of something before her hooves before moving on "You know you're not in Equestria....and you know you are not safe in this place...but you ARE safe here within Cunoașterea, or 'The Knowledge', which is what they have come to label my little sanctum." She smiled a bit wider, giggling "Oh ho...now that is one more thing you know, isn't knowledge just the greatest thing to obtain?"

Twilight looked down, rubbing her face with her hooves as she sighed, her form trembling. She was starting to seriously wonder if The Librarian herself was any sort of sane...though if operating, living, or...whatever it was the Librarian actually did here in Azil was any sort of indicator...she wouldn't doubt that the aging mare had lost her marbles years ago. She pondered her words carefully...what, DID she know? Beyond what The Librarian already told her...she didn't know much else. She wasn't in Equestria, she was not safe, and she was here in Azil. When she looked up, she could see the eyes of The Librarian peering deeply into hers. "So," Twilight said, frowning "Finding out exactly what Azil is...is only possible by finding out the answers to other questions surrounding this place...surrounding my circumstances, surrounding everything."

The Librarian grinned, letting out a snort and a tiny whinny of a laugh as she nodded "Ah, Twlight Sparkle! You are very, very intuitive and wise! Indeed, this is what you must do!" She pointed a hoof out to the doors surrounding them, a total of twenty in nature it seemed, each of them their own color of wood and what appeared to be intricate designs carved into the upper half of their structure. "What happened to you, where are you friends, why is Ditzy Doo here with you, are there other ponies you know here, how and why did you find yourself here in Azil....what is the last thing you remember before coming here...?"

Twilight suddenly blinked, the last question drawing a panicked breath and a sudden chill to cascade through her, her body shivering for a moment as she thought about it. What...was the last thing she remembered before waking up in Azil? Where was she, what was she doing? Were her friends worried about her? Was....was her true love...? "I..." she whispered, eyes wide "I do not remember...."

"Ah," The Librarian peeped with a light, casual smile "It is THIS you must discover. Knowledge is something that cannot be simply learned by the word of mouth...it is something we must hunt for, yearn for, be willing to venture forth beyond the safety of our most treasured sanctums to find." She reached behind her desk, and pulled out what appeared to be a necklace with a tarnished, bronze-looking chain. Upon the end of the necklace was a small red stone set within a tiny bronze ball of wiring. Twilight held out her hooves and watched as the Librarian dropped it within them. "You cannot reach me through this stone Twilight Sparkle," The Librarian said "But in moments where needed, necessary, or otherwise to help you in your growth and pursuit of knowledge...I, will reach YOU." Twilight nodded slightly, taking her words with a grain of salt as she slipped the necklace over her head, minding her snapped off horn.

"So...where do these doors lead?" Twilight asked, looking out across the Rotunda "And what about Ditzy Doo...will she be coming with me?"

The Librarian merely giggled and shook her head "Ditzy Doo will be safe here...what is out there, beyond those doors, is for you and you alone. And as for the doors..." She said, her gaze softening as she looked upon her library's many entrances "They are...everything. Everything you were, or will be. The peepholes into the lives of others like you, maybe even lives that do not belong to you, or ones that stretch beyond your own personal reality, maybe even your universe. There are countless and endless numbers of lives, answers, realizations, and otherwise beyond those doors...but they all share one thing in common." She looked towards Twilight, a motherly smile widening upon her face as she whispered "You..." With that, she waved the unicorn away, her gaze shifting downward to her open book.

Twilight opened her mouth to say something, but...deep down she knew The Librarian would acknowledge her no longer. The time for questions and talk was over...it was finally time to get some answers for herself. She turned away from the front desk, and trotted over to Ditzy Doo who had already accumilated quite a number of 'Muffin Baking' recipe books around her little grey body. "Ditzy..." she breathed, the muffin mare putting down her book and turning to look at Twilight, her eyes blinking a few times. "It's safe here...as long as you stay here in this library, nothing can hurt you, alright?"

"But..." Ditzy Doo muttered, looking at Twilight's new necklace then up at her "What about you...? Where are you going?"

Twilight looked up at the door to Ditzy's right, sighing. "I'm going to go figure out what exactly is going on here, and to figure out what exactly Azil is."

To this, Ditzy Doo responded by immedietly throwing her front legs around the lavender mare's neck, pulling her into a tight hug and whimpering in protest "B...but the monsters are out there! T-Twilight it's too dangerous! Your wounds are still healing, you might not come back if you go out-"

Twilight pulled away slightly, pushing a hoof against the mailmare's lips and shushing her before whispering "Ditzy...I wouldn't care even if I had broken legs right now. We need to know what we're dealing with...we need to know what this place is, how we got here...and how we can leave. Please...please wait here for me, I'll try not to take too long out there." Ditzy looked into her eyes for several moments before nodding solemnly and pulling Twilight into another firm hug. They held each other for several moments before they pulled apart, Ditzy going back to her books and not glancing any more upon Twilight's form. With an affirmative nod, Twilight turned her gaze towards the door nearest to her, approaching it with a limp.

The dark-cyan colored door appeared to be...cracked, at first glance. There was a carving of what appeared to be a cracked mirror designing the upper half of the door, and upon peering closer, Twilight could see what looked like a rainbow. With a delicate turning of her hooves upon the doorknob, Twilight pushed the door open, the wood retorting with a loud creaks and groans. Blackness met Twilight's anxious gaze, a veil of utter darkness resting just past the threshold. The lavender mare gulped, peering her head through the doorway and looking about. There was nothing but emptiness all around her, not even the light of the Library was doing anything to permeate the void that was stretching out before her.

She gulped, extending a shaking, trembling hoof forward and stepping through. Although...stepping WOULD have been what she had done...if her hoof had actually hit something solid instead of the open air. With a gasp and a panicked scream she tumbled forward, her weight already shifted in the wrong direction. She turned in midair, extending a hoof upwards and just barely catching the edge of the floor as her body dangled in the dark nothingness. She panted, a panicked set of breaths exhaling from her lungs as she struggled to reach back up towards the safety of the door. As she set her other hoof up on the ledge, readying herself to pull her body back up into the doorway...The Librarian put two gentle hooves upon hers. Twilight looked into the smiling Librarian's face, the grey mare cooing gently "La revedere, Twilight Sparkle."

And with that, she pushed Twilight's hooves off of the edge, the Lavender mare letting forth a high-pitched, blood curdling scream as she sailed down through the inky blackness, the light of the Library quickly fading out as The Librarian closed the door behind her. Twilight looked around in a mad state of panic, the wind from the free fall whipping her mane about with wild force. She couldn't see the ground, if there was any. She couldn't tell how far she had fallen already. Thoughts began to race through her strained mind as she tumbled effortlessly through the void. Had the Librarian tricked her? Had she just sent Twilight to her doom? She had only just met her, it was of course foolish to have trusted her so soon! What about poor Ditzy Doo? Was she now at The Librarian's mercy? Was she going to be killed, or maybe even tortured?

The mare had little time to reflect upon it as the air beneath her suddenly started to turn a sickly gray. Twilight gasped as what looked like clouds rapidly approached her, a never-ending stretch of them forming to look like some kind of puffy floor. For reasons unknown, rather it be instinct or otherwise, Twilight braced for impact, expecting to crash violently into this layer of gray and becoming nothing but a red smear across its unwelcoming surface. She hit the surface with little resistance stopping her, the mare tumbling onwards through the clouds and bursting forth into an open sky.

Twilight looked frantically about, seeing cloud structures rapidly fill her vision. A bleak landscape stretched out before her, a village dotting the horizon surrounded by a thick circle of trees. A mountain could be seen with a flowing river circling down its side and towards its base, and beneath her rested what looked like a neighborhood of cloud homes...and a large, empty section of plains right underneath them. She screamed, her lungs aching as this new, VERY real-looking ground started to rapidly rush to meet her. The earth reached upwards, its maw opening as it made itself ready to accept Twilight into her deepest, darkest grave. Just as she shot past the cloud-house neighborhood, a flicker of movement reached the corner of her eye. Before she could turn her head to see what it was, a heavy weight crashed into her, the lavender mare grunting as something knocked her roughly upside the head. Her vision blurred and stars twinkled before her eyes as blackness crept upon the outer ridges of her sight.

As the blackness swirled about and swallowed her up once more into its comforting, loving embrace, only two, muffled words reached her drooped ears.

"...GOT YA!"