Normally, the restricted section of the Royal Canterlot Archives was, well, restricted. But now that Tirek was roaming across the land, stealing magic and devastating towns, Equestria’s alicorns were so scared that they’d seen fit to give Twilight their magic. Why they gave their magic to an alicorn who was a baby compared to them in both age and skill was a mystery, but she intended to use the benefits it gave her to their full extent.
“I need access to the restricted section, please,” Twilight said, giving the trio of guards posted before the hidden entrance her most trustworthy look. It was basically a poker face, which should have made them trust her less, but apparently those in power were expected to look like they were trying to con everyone out of their life’s savings.
The middle guard—a high-ranking one, as he was wearing a piece of armor that turned his mane and coat white—looked around and edged away from her, as if trying to avoid doing his job.
“Me?” he finally asked, when it became clear that Twilight wasn’t going away.
“Yes. I need access,” Twilight said, slowly and clearly. She should’ve tried breaking into the restriction section ages ago. These guards were completely incompetent.
“Uh, I don’t know where that is...if you want to find a certain section you should probably check with the librarian,” he said.
“Look. I have the power of four alicorns right now, and I’m not afraid to use it. Either you let me into the restricted section or I get to see how well I remember that mind-control spell from the last time I got in.”
It was a bluff. She’d only managed to get in for a few seconds before Celestia’s alarms went off. From then on, there were always a bunch of guards in front of the secret entrance.
“Oh. Um, sure. Just let me get the, uh, key...” the guard said, then galloped off, looking behind himself every few steps.
Huh. The restricted section hadn’t required a key the last time she’d been in. Then again, she’d been a filly. Who knew how many safeguards Celestia had on that place?
Twilight waited in front of the bookshelves, tapping a hoof impatiently. When was that guard going to come back? At this rate, Tirek would be halfway to the castle by the time he got back.
With a sigh, she levitated a book from the shelf in front of her.
The Treaty of Fluttershy’s Cottage?
Twilight remembered that. Fluttershy had gone berserk over some pegasus accidentally catching a bird in a tornado, and then flown to Cloudsdale’s weather factory and taken their entire winter department hostage by somehow putting a hibernating bear inside of it. Cloudsdale’s finest had flown out to her cottage and negotiated a treaty. In exchange for her getting the bear out, they put proper safety precautions for flying animals into law. Twilight didn’t remember there being a book about it.
But more importantly, Twilight didn’t remember this book being on the bookshelf that hid the entrance to the restricted archives.
There was only one thing she could do.
“Does anypony know where the restricted archives are?” she bellowed, holding the closest bookshelves in her magic to keep the books from flying into the air. Wouldn’t want to damage them, after all. The spell she used to increase her volume was potent.
Well, time to visit the librarian. Maybe she would know where it was.
“Come on Ink Quill,” Twilight patted the tan unicorn on the shoulder. “Don’t let a little blood coming out of the ears stop you from helping your favorite customer!”
The librarian stared at her uncomprehendingly.
“Okay, so what if I’m not a ‘customer.’ Just because this isn’t a store doesn’t mean you don’t have to help me.”
Twilight sighed.
“Fine. I’ll fix your ears.”
A purple glow surrounded the librarian’s head.
“Thank you! Thank—”
“Great, you’re better, now bring me to the restricted archives.”
A thought.
“Please.”
Ink Quill pranced nervously. “Um, I’m not sure I have the authority...”
“I’m pretty much the only alicorn left. I am the Princesses.”
“Right. Right. But...don’t you already know the library? Like...intimately?”
“That was private!” Twilight glared at the other unicorn, who flinched back.
“I only meant that since you used to visit so often…”
“Oh...yeah, well, you try navigating a place where the bookshelves constantly move in a never ending maze and the Princess won’t fix it because she think it ‘builds character’ to have you scrambling around all the time trying to find the last book you need to complete your magic thesis and then when you find it, it laughs at you and explodes, and then you get a late grade for your work.”
Twilight’s sides were heaving by the time she finished, and the librarian’s mane was blown back from the force of her tirade.
“Not that I know what’s that like,” Twilight said.
“Uh...huh. Anyway. If you would follow me...”
Ink Quill scurried away, swerving around bookshelves as if she were trying to loose Twilight. Which would be silly, because Twilight had a tracking charm aimed at the librarian.
Then the bookshelves decided to move, and a particularly large one blocked off the one between her and Twilight.
Twilight flew up over it and found Ink Quill had stayed in place, panting.
“Decided to wait up for me, huh? That’s very thoughtful of you, but there’s no need. I need to get to the restricted archives as soon as possible. Tirek will be here soon, you know.”
“Ah...oh. Okay,” the librarian said, and darted off again.
Twilight followed. Having the magic of four alicorns really paid off in the physical department. She might even be able to beat Rainbow Dash in a race.
A flying bookshelf knocked her out of the air, sending her to the ground in a sprawling heap.
Then again, maybe not.
She picked herself off the ground and started at the librarian, daring her to say anything. Ink Quill hesitated, hiding her face under her black mane. “Um...we’re here,” she said.
Twilight studied the nearest bookshelf. It looked familiar, but so had the other one.
“Other side.”
“I knew that!” Twilight said, annoyed. “I was just making sure there wasn’t anything I wanted to read here.”
“Right…well you need to pull this book,” Ink Quill said, taking hold of a book titled Book of Dark and Forbidden Magic. All of the pages were blank. Twilight had checked last time she’d been here.
The bookshelf started rotating. Twilight galloped to the other side before it could close on her.
She was met with darkness. Then she lit her horn.
The most books she’d ever seen in one place met her eyes, covering the walls of the room that probably made up the entirety of Canterlot mountain. She wiped away a bit of drool and stepped forward toward the staircase in the middle.
There were more floors. With more books. Many more books. And none of them randomly switched places.
She needed to get reading.
Necromancy had apparently been really popular at one point in time. The section she’d picked to study contained books on necromancy and nothing else. At least they were interesting. All she had to do was keep a certain dark god’s name in her head while holding someone in her magic. Which wasn’t hard to do, seeing as how the name was repeated over and over again. Really, it was harder to stop thinking about it.
She lifted another book off of a nearby shelf.
Tezzena Pethera.
It was an odd name for a dark god of necromancy, but she could roll with it. She held the book in front of her.
Then it tried to bite her face.
Apparently necromancy worked with inanimate objects as well.
“Gah. Uh, go bring me another book,” she commanded.
The book hissed at her and then flew to the shelves and bit another book. Right through the spine.
“No! Bad book!” Twilight shouted, getting to her hooves and galloping over.
“How could you? Treat other books as you want to be treated!”
The undead book wilted where it floated in the air and hissed sadly.
“Aw, it’s okay. You didn’t know. Tell you what: you find another book that you would like to read while I fix this poor damaged one here.”
The book fluttered off anxiously.
Twilight’s tongue stuck out of her mouth as she repaired the damage. There. Good as new. She settled back to read it.
“Night time already? Wow, I’ve been here longer than I thought.”
“That’s what you pick up on? The Princesses are captured, Tirek’s going after your friends, and Discord’s helping, and the thing you comment on is that it’s night time?” Ink Quill shouted.
“Well, yeah. Whatever Tirek and Discord do is reversible. But time is a pain to go back in. I tried it once, and you do not want to know what happened.”
“What? Okay, look. Tirek destroyed your home. You know, your tree house library?”
“My library?!” Twilight shouted.
Twilight stood in the middle of a Ponyville that was surprisingly intact aside from her library. Tirek had probably wanted to rub it in. Jerk. Even indirectly giving her access to the restricted archives and four alicorns worth of power wasn’t worth the destruction of poor, innocent books.
“Tirek! Discord! Get over here!”
The force of her shout caused the ruins of her house to fly in all directions.
Discord popped into the air above her.
“Now now Twilight, don’t be—”
“Fus-”
“Twilight, if you’re not going to listen, you’re not going to get your friends back.”
“Ro-”
“That’s not going to work, you know.”
“DAH!”
Discord teleported away.
“Hah! Joke's on you, I don’t even know that spell!” Twilight said, the magnification spell she had on her voice sending several chunks of rubble into the air where the Draconequus had been just seconds previously.
“Wait! Come back! I need you to fix my library before I destroy you!” Twilight said, kicking at the road.
Now, when dealing with Discord, the thing most ponies have to keep in mind is that he’s basically a god. For any average unicorn, no spell, despite how well it should theoretically work, immediately flickers and dies like a particularly dispirited candle in a tornado in his general vicinity. Twilight, however, was not most ponies.
Having been raised from a very young age with the awareness that knowledge is power, Twilight had made it her mission to know everything. And after reading every book in her libraries, as well as everypony else’s libraries—which, well, she was a Princess. Times four. Technically, all libraries were hers anyway—she knew that due to Ponyville originally being an earth pony settlement, some of the old traditions were still followed even after that stopped being the case. Such as winter wrap-up being completed using only passive magic, or the fact that most ponies were still buried directly under whatever plot of land they happened to drop dead on.
And, given how easy necromancy turned out to be, all she had to do to gain a whole heap of free servants was simply spread her magic through the ground and recite a certain name in her thoughts.
I can give you power beyond imagining, young one…
Excellent, she was already hearing voices. Every mage knew that the forces beyond the veil didn’t bother tempting just anyone—you had to be pretty powerful already to get something old and evil to start whispering in your ear. She’d ask Pinkie to plan a celebration party once this was all over. For now, she needed to focus on raising the dead. By now, she’d pumped enough power into the ground that some of it was seeping into the ambient mana field, which made her job easier. Actually, that much necrotic energy floating around might have some side effects…
Well, now she knew the topic for her next thesis.
Twilight flapped her way over to the nearest source of telepathic wailing and begging, admiring the magic trailing behind her as she did so. Then she settled in to wait beside an innocent-looking patch of dirt, idly flapping her wings and mentally noting down the floaty, sparkly effects that lingered after them. Nopony, no one in history had ever had this kind of opportunity. Maybe Tirek could wait. She’d have to make her stalling look believable though, or Celestia might finally trigger the death curse she’d put on Twilight back when she first broke into the restricted section. Actually, on second thought, best not to risk it. Tirek was a book killer, he needed to die sooner rather than later.
A shower of dirt burst into the air, interrupting her thoughts. It looked like this long-dead earth pony was finally breaking out. And, judging by the screams, so were all the others.
They gathered before her like a shoal of rotting fish, except somehow less appetizing. Sure, there were a few skeletons that had been picked clean before they’d been found and buried, or those that’d been in the ground so long that worms and bacteria had eaten away all their flesh, with only her immense magical power keeping them intact. Those ones were fine.
That left the rest of her little zombie horde, which smelled really bad. It kind of detracted from the impact of having an undead army, not that any of Ponyville’s living inhabitants seemed to agree. She’d already had to zombify three ponies who thought she’d turned evil, which was just unfair. At worst, she was amoral.
“Okay, minions! Listen up, we have two villains on the loose. If you see a centaur, kill him. If you see a noodly-looking creature, kill him too, unless he apologizes and promises to fix my library.”
They stared at her.
“Well? Get a move on. And I want to see more enthusiasm. I can see the skeletons are grinning, but the rest of you look kind of … droopy.”
Slowly, oh so slowly, they started moving out. Twilight frowned. “I thought necromancy was supposed to be powerful. This is just disappointing.”
Right then, a rainbow blur zipped right up in front of her face. “Twilight! Oh, thank Celestia, you’re here! Quick, we need some sort of anti-zombie spell, stat!”
She sighed. “Dash, it’s fine. They’re under control.”
“Wait, you did this?”
Twilight waved a hoof dismissively. “Don’t worry. It’s perfectly legal, given that I was recently given supreme executive power.”
“What—Twilight, I don’t care about how legal it is! Granny Smith spontaneously turned into a zombie and Applejack just said she’s going to murder the pony who did this. Also, Rarity will probably help, seeing as her best customer also got turned into a member of the walking dead.”
“Oh. Oh, I see. Yes, try not to get too badly hurt. It seems one of the side effects of having so much death-aligned magic in the air is that the spell treats anyone who’s too close to death as raw material. I’d say don’t do anything that would land you in the hospital, but knowing you—”
“Twilight! You need to stop this. I won’t tell anyone it was you, mostly because you’re immortal and you’ll probably kill anyone who tries to murder you over this, but you really need to make the zombies go away. And bring Granny Smith back to life, if you can. Her pies are really good.”
Maintain the necrotic field effect for another day, and I will remove the curse of death that permeates your essence, whispered an evil entity trapped outside of reality.
“Deal,” Twilight said, then turned back to Rainbow Dash. “I have to leave it up for twenty-four hours, otherwise something about variables and spell matrices and other babble that sounds vaguely scientific.”
“Did you really just say something about variables? Twilight, I can’t—you know what, sure. I’ll tell them you said you’re working on it, but you think it will take at least another day.”
“Applejack can sense lies.”
“Whatever! I’ll get Rarity alone, and get her to tell Applejack. And do something about Tirek, I know you could have him six feet underground by now if you really wanted.”
The pegasus left an afterimage of herself floating in the air behind her. Twilight drew an illusory mustache on it, then teleported a ways above the town and watched her zombies stumble through the streets.
“Well, at least I’ll know if they find either of them.”
One of them walked into a mailbox. And then kept walking into the mailbox.
“…I think this calls for another visit to the archives. This is just ridiculous.”
