//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 // Story: The 37th Librarian // by Autumnschild //------------------------------// THUD   Scarlet Letters woke with a start.   Bloody Hearts, what was that sound?   Her eyes darted left, then right in the faint light of the waning crescent moon just outside her window on the second floor of the Golden Oaks Library. She sat there in tense silence, holding her breath.   What had woken her up? Were the changelings back? Was this the invasion that would—   No. Stop that, she scolded herself internally. Her long dormant guard training kicked in and she quickly muzzled the gnawing fear in the back of her mind. She made a mental checklist of things to do, and put panic way down low at the bottom as the last entry.   THUD, came the sound again.   In her mental checklist, she highlighted, underlined, and circled the last entry. At the top of the list read: Breathe. And she did, daring to make noise for the first time that night as she gulped for air. Next on the list was assess her surroundings.   She was still in her bed. Well, technically the library’s bed. Okay, the cloud mattress was hers, but the bed frame was sort of built into the woodwork that made up this particularly peculiar domicile and… she was getting off track. She took another breath and continued her assessment. Bed: check. Changeling Hit Squad Ready to Strike: No check.   Scarlet smiled. So far, she was two for two.   She spent the next few moments going through the rest of her checklist. When she reached the item that was third from the bottom, she frowned. This one was Get out of bed. This did not bode well for Scarlet, as the bed was very comfy. She brought it all the way from Trottingham when she moved here.   And, as ashamed as she was to admit it, even to herself, she felt a child-like sense of safety wrapped in her cloudy comforter. Surely no monsters, ghouls, or ghosties could get her in—   THUD, came the insistent sound once more. But it was softer. And somehow deeper. Like it was coming from the roots of the old living library somehow.   Scarlet watched as the large portrait of the Goddess of Magic on the other side of the room shook with this latest noise, and settled in a wholly undignified and crooked position, as if mocking her commitment to perfectly aligned hanging wires. She’d just dusted that! The nerve of some bumps-in-the-night.   She sighed quietly to herself as she clambered out of the perceived safety of her cloud mattress, and watched it with longing as it floated back up to the ceiling where it bumped softly against the natural wood ceiling.   Out and about, the red pegasus alighted over to the portrait and set about her newly appended highest priority list item: Straighten the Silk Painting of Princess Twilight Sparkle. She smiled at a job well done, and moved on to the next item, the second from the bottom of her hastily assembled mental checklist, just above Panic.   It was the most important item on the list, but truth be told, it was the one she was least excited about. Investigate the thudding sound. Her maroon wings flapped and fidgeted at her side as she toyed with the idea of skipping over this step entirely and jumping headlong into panic. But she learned back in the guard that a Mare doesn’t live by half measures. Not if she wants to make it to the next—   THUD   She grimaced but stayed silent as she fluttered back into the air on quiet, unassuming wings. Whatever awful thing was down there on the ground floor of Ponyville’s second oldest historical landmark clearly didn’t care if it was heard. But that didn’t mean she had to go in wings-a-blazin’.   Scarlet was a librarian now that the war was over. And that meant folks expected a certain amount of grace. Charm. Princess-like elegance. It’d do her no good in the eyes of the citizens of Ponyville if their new librarian was screaming like a demon outta Tartarus at…   She glanced over at the clock on the wall and growled under her breath. Three in the morning. Brilliant. “Well,” she sighed to herself, “Let’s get this over with.”     Keeping to the shadows like they trained her in the guard, she hovered on up and out of the open door that connected her assigned living quarters and the rest of the library. It wasn’t hard to stay hidden, what with how dark it was. It was however quiet a pain in the flank to make out just about anything down at the ground level, what with how dark it was.   She flew clockwise along the ceiling, outside of the dim light cast by the central stained-glass skylight and above the windows the lined the upper walls. It was tricky, but she wasn’t in a hurry. She took the time to do it right.   The thumps and thuds she’d heard previously were gone, replaced by a much subtler shuffling sound coming from a door she could now make out on the first floor of the library.   A door she’d never seen before.   She scrunched up her face in thought. Scarlet was the new librarian here in Ponyville, and she’d only been at her post for two weeks. But the library wasn’t exactly the Canterlot Archives. There were six, maybe seven rooms in the whole place, not counting the living quarters. She knew for a fact that the very door she was looking at had not been there before tonight.   She scoffed to herself. Doors don’t just appear out of nowhere… Do they?   As she was preparing to fly down and investigate, the mystery door began to open. Scarlet frowned tight-lipped as she made ready to check off the last two boxes on her mental checklist at the same time. Finally a form began to emerge from the darkness beyond the scary new door, and Scarlet found herself pressed against the elegant trim that lined edges where the ceiling met the library’s high walls. The red pegasus mare held her breath and waited for something to happen.   The form exited fully from beyond the door and Scarlet marveled at both its seemingly amorphous head and its size. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a changeling. Only a queen could be that large, but Chrysalis was dea—   There was a purple flash and the door disappeared. Scarlet heard herself gasp loudly and she jammed both forehooves into her mouth, but it was too late.   The creature below had heard her.   It turned its massive glob of a head to face her, and Scarlet realized that she was quivering under the creature’s all-seeing gaze. She knew it was looking at her. For an instant, Scarlet felt that it was looking through her. Like it was looking for some unspoken name or unseen face that only it could know.   And then the feeling was gone.   Fully and uncompromisingly terrified of what she’d just experienced, Scarlet Letters, thirty seventh librarian of the Golden Oak’s Library, checked off the last item on her mental check list with a flourish that would make any cerebral calligrapher instantly jealous.   The former guardsmare pushed off the wall as hard as she could and flew for the relative safety of her assigned living quarters. If she could make it there and out into the streets beyond, she cou—   “Wait,” said a voice, softly. Though the tone implied it was not a suggestion.   The librarian didn’t answer, nor did she wait. Though in her fear, she couldn’t help but squeak out a miserable little whimper.   She was only a few feet from the door when a purple aura slammed it shut. Scarlet looked left and then right before opting to angle towards one of the high windows in a nearby wall. She smirked at the sudden recollection of her old combat instructor’s motto: Self-defenestration is the better part of valor.   She flew as fast as her wings would take her. She was never the fastest flyer, but she knew she could work up enough speed to break through one of these old panes of glass. At the precise moment, she angled herself up a bit and folded her wings back. Now more of a faller than a flier, she tucked her hindlegs to her chest and covered her head with her forelegs, and braced for impact.   But the impact never came.   Tentatively, she opened one eye. Then another. Scarlet had found herself wrapped in the selfsame purple haze that shut off her last escape route and removed a door from existence not more than a minute ago.   Her vision was filled with light and she winced, blinking back against the brightness. The creature had lit every available candle, fireplace, and magelight in the library. Then it began to spin her around in her shimmering magic prison. Scarlet struggled to keep her wits about her. There was no way, no how she wanted to see what this creature from beyond looked like. No way, no…   “I’m so sorry, did I wake you My Little Pony?” asked Princess Twilight Sparkle as she turned Scarlet around to face her.   Scarlet’s mind raced a mile a minute, and then promptly went blank. The only other time she’d even seen the Goddess of Magic in the flesh was during The Big Push just before the end of the war. But the smiling and gentle pony standing below her looked nothing like the living weapon she saw on the battlefield that day. Especially in those bunny slippers.   Scarlet had no idea what to do, or what to say. So she did what any Trottingham native would do. She offered Princess Twilight Sparkle a cup of tea.