Author's Note

I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord Mare, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”

Oh, How I Loved to Love Books,

Twilight Sparkle's eyes snapped open. She laid still for many moments, staring at her bedstand. After a little while, she extended her wings, expecting them to connect with somepony who had lain there till a couple minutes before, but they straightened without resistance.

She was not surprised.

She sat up, and the covers slipped off her body.

She opened the curtains, and before her eyes, the moon slipped down and the sun replaced it.

Also, not surprising, and conveniently one less thing to that she personally would have to deal with today.

She donned her crown, as she always did, before exiting the bedroom, and walked down the hall to the room where she spent most of her days. As she passed the kitchen, she magically pulled the cord of a bell, which hung beside the doorway. With the ring, there was an uprising of voices and clattering cookware.

She trudged the familiar path to her desk, as she magically tied up her mane in a knot. Before she sat down, she removed the protective, conjured sphere. She gathered blank parchment, and her quill and ink, setting them down beside her. From the desk, she pulled a thick, black, leatherbound book.

This book was not like other books.

It could appear as an ordinary tome, to those prone to deception.

At first, you might only see it's cracked leather raiment, blacker than the deepest abyss. Your eyes might have read the peeling golden letters, and seen whatever it wished. Your heart might have felt anything, as long it was what it desired of you.

Even the strongest ponies, the ones who could never lose hope, could be broken down into dust by this tome. Even the weakest ponies, the ones whom hope had long since abandoned, could be lifted out of the ashes, if it so chose. Perhaps it does not need to be said, that the latter was the rarer of the two.

Twilight saw the truth. Her, now great, magicks allowed her.

Behind a fog of wickedness, upon the stained leather binding the book, which now whispered dark things in her ear, the golden words read, ‘Marecronomicon’.

Her hoof brushed over the burnt and broken lock on its side, as she opened it.

She flipped to where she had left off the previous evening, somewhere in the beginning. It has taken her many, many moons to decipher what she has, and it will take another many, many moons to complete. In the several life times that have passed since she recovered this book, this is as far as she has gotten.

She fell into a kind of trance, her eyes transfixed on the strange symbols. As she concentrated her energies, the strange symbols shifted and swirled to form new images, decipherable writings. She ripped her eyes from the page, and quickly jotted down from memory, what she had read.

As the last words left her quill, a voice from before her said, "Your Majesty, your breakfast is ready, and I have the list of your tasks you requested,"

Twilight looked up at one of her many adolescent assistants,

"Thank you, just set the list down here, and my breakfast down there," she said, as she pointed to a table piled high with books.

As Twilight rifled through an adjecent pile of texts, the bright blue unicorn set the list down, and then shifted the various piles of books to set down the food. As the young mare was leaving, Twilight called her back.

Twilight levitated the list before her face, her eyes quickly darted back and forth across the page. "I need you to move my meeting with The Master of Bits to a diffrent day, a day that’s not today"

The adolecent swiftly procured a schedualing book and rifled through it,

"Princess, your next available day is in three moons,"

"That's fine, thank you,"

The young mare excused herself, and hurried off to tend to her various tasks.

The voices in Twilight's ear grew louder, their taunts more sinister, their words more wicked.

She shook her head fiercely, before returning to her magickal trance.

It's all your fault...

She shook her head again, breaking her focus, as if she could shake loose the wicked whispers of the tome.

You'll never make it right...

Doing her best to ignore the voice, her focus returned to the symbols. She should be used to it by now, having heard it almost everyday for a few centuries now. But it was a kind of thing, whose strength grows with time. There is a neighing, ‘It is not the mountain which opposes you, but the pebble, which you wear day to day, inside your shoe’. If this book were a pebble, it would be made of needles, and with each step forward, it drove itself deeper and deeper.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

They're dead,

all dead, all dead, all dead,

Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead...

As each word is whispered is whispered from lips, the last minutes of her friends' lives flashed before her eyes.

Applejack...

She grinded her teeth,

Rainbow Dash...

Her eyes narrowed,

Pinkie Pie...

Her lip twitched upwards into a snarl,

Rarity...

Upon the desk, the corners of papers fluttered in a nonexistant breeze,

Even nice little Fluttershy...

She almost cried out, as the tides of blood rolled out from her memories. Red waters washed out from her mind, rolling over the books and her table, trickling down to pool upon the floor.

Almost.

The quill levitating before her quivered violently,

The strange symbols again shifted into words, she then again ripped her eyes from the page, and scribbled down the writings.

The voice stopped.

For a while, she studied the page in silence.

Hey...

Hey...

HEY!

Guess who you forgot? Hmm, somethings never change...

The vision crashed over her,

A dragon's massive body thrashes about, shaking the earth with every tremor. Crimson waterfalls weep down his violet sides. His huge tail knocks aside both friend and foe, but loses momentum with every swing, soon settling to the earth, as the life leaves his body. He gives one final scream,

The sound ripped itself out of the box in her throat, and bounced off the walls.

She slammed the book shut, and violently pushed it away.

When it hit the floor, it made no sound.

But her crown did, when she threw it at the wall.