The two mages trotted around aimless for what felt like hours, isolated in the uniform stone corridors lit by flickering torch light time lost all meaning, just as hope started to fade Starlight spotted something "Hey, Twilight a door!" They cantered up to the ebon archway; a black wood door held in a carved arch sculpted into sinuous claws that clutched the entrance in its grip, above them a great beastile head grinned down over the doorway with sharp teeth. It's beady eyes glittered like an opal as Twilight approached.
There was a rumble as the door frame spoke in a menacing baritone "I am the door keeper, if you wish to pass you must solve this riddle. Meen told his wretched bookworm to never open the basement door otherwise he would see that which he was not meant to see, but the foolish bookworm did. My question is this; what did the bookworm see?"
The two mages shared a withering look, "You know, this would be harder if Meen hadn't just told us his goal is to imprison anyone who he considers a bookworm" remarked Starlight unenthusiastically.
Twilight sighed heavily "Outside; Meen clearly has locked the bookworm in the basement so if he opened the basement door he would see outside, thus going against Means wishes." Immediately there was a low rumbled that grew into a tremor and beyond as their prison shook: floors, walls and ceiling alike from the force of the quake. The two friends were thrown off their hooves as the earthquake showered dust and lose stones on them, the sealed portal gave way with the grind of stone and the tortured crunch of twisted wood. After the Labyrinth settled down beyond the pile of rubble that had once been a door they spied a sandstone stair leading up.
"That seemed needless" grumbled Starlight as she dusted herself off.
Twilight flapped her wings sending up a cloud of dust that did little to improve things "your right, if we are truly inside a book then the spell may be similar to Heycart's method, usually there is nothing to contain your magic and stop you from teleporting out of the pseudo space. Perhaps these puzzles are metaphors for the binding matrices that are holding us here?"
The unicorn smiled to herself as she started climbing over the fallen bricks "Now who needs to write a paper?" This got a chuckle out of the Princess "we can be study buddies..."
Her thought went unfinished as she was interrupted by the fizzling of untamed current, blasts of electricity heralded the materializing of I.M.Meen half way up the stairwell. His shrill voice rang out "Why hello, little bookworm. I do hope you're enjoying your whirlwind tour of my labyrinth?"
Twilight rolled her eyes "we get passed one rather simple obstacle and you feel the need to drop by and gloat, you really are a cheap imitation of Discord"
Ignatius didn't respond to this barb instead, tutting theatrically, he cantered jerkily round towards Starlight "...and you my pet, what have you to say of Meens labyrinth?"
Starlight looked and sounded bored, she buffed her hoof on her coat in indifference "the design is repetitive, the clues obvious and the puzzle, as there has been only one this whole floor, was piece of cake."
The sorcerer dropped all pretense of civility and took on an infuriated leer "piece of cake? Well you arrogant brat let's see how you like this little slice!" He pointed his horn and a burst of tricoloured chaos magic zipped between the two mares into the darkness, Ignatius promptly unraveled back into direct current as a deep growl came from the base of the stair.
A rhythmic thumping accompanied a sinister grinding echoed out from beyond the fallen arch: bent double a massive figure squeezed into the base of the stair well. To Twilight's eyes it look halfway between a diamond dog and a chimp from the tropics; it wore an iron helmet with two steers horns welded into the sides, a rotten leather jerkin hung over its greasy tan hide and with a shifting of rubble it hauled half a massive tree trunk studded with misshapen metal chunks behind it. Its piggy eyes swiveled in its scrunched face to look up at the two mages and it's jaw hung slack as slobber dribbled between its tusks "Uuuurrrrgh!"
The two mares shared a look of alarm and bolted up the stairs as the creature let loose an angry bellow and began stomping after them dragging it's club as an awkward burden. When they reached the flat Twilight leaped into the air flying backwards to keep pace with her student and gritted her teeth, the second the beast's stupid face appeared over the lip of the stair she hit it with a force lance, the creature growled in annoyance and continued unhindered. "That won't work!..." Called Starlight "...Haven't you read the bestiary of the highlands!? Ogres are so tough they could withstand a sonic rainboom, magic slides off them like oil and they are too stupid to influence mentally! There's rumors of certain poisons working but no one's lived long enough to find out!"
Twilight barked through gritted teeth throwing every spell she could think of at their assailant "well unless you've been jogging with Applejack in secret us two shutins can't out run this 'ogre' thing!?"
Starlight bit her lip, she had only read about ogres in passing and had no idea how one would kill them, after jerking her head in signal to the cruising Princess she dived round the next corner. Inspiration hit her and she skidded to a halt; her hooves scraping up a cloud of dust on the sandstone floor. Monumental stupidity was a great advantage to the creature, it made any attempt to confuse it pointless and controlling or dominating the beast was frustrating but it came with a drawback: it was still stupid. The unicorn mage's horn lit up, time to test just how dumb this thing really is.
Inside the Ogre's simple mind it was fixated on following its dinner; it came stumbling up the corridor with it's club taking chunks of wall, floor and ceiling with it as it's lanky arm flapped about like a rope. The dinner disappeared round a corner so the Ogre grinding it's impossibly durable soles against the porous rock in a cloud of dust and friction smoke came to an abrupt stop. With a monumental clang the club under its own momentum glanced off the creatures helmet causing the monster to grunt at the annoying ringing, as he gazed down the hall he could not spot his dinner, but instead was a red brick wall. "Uhhhgh?" The Ogre scratch it's flabby face, checked under his feet and shuffled about, this was truly a mystery: dinner had run round the corner and had now vanished.
Teacher and student held their breath as the hulking moron stared slack jawed at the simple illusion, slowly the gears turned in its hateful eyes and the creature sloped away down to corridor to continue the search. "Please tell me that didn't work, how did you even come up with that plan?" Twilight giggled.
Starlight patted her on the shoulder trying to keep the grin off her face "well you may be the princess of friendship, but you can't hold a candle to bugs bunny...", the Alicorn shook with barely contained laughter that was cut off by another quake.
Back in the the Crystal Library The Diarchy had just arrived; one stressed looking Celestia and one grumpy Luna with her coffee mug in tow. "Greetings my little ponies, I came as soon as I could" breathed The solar Monarch, the Goddess of the night yawned and gave a little wave.
Rarity curtseyed "Good morning your majesty, sorry for dragging you out of bed Luna. If you follow me Discord has set up a safe testing zone for the object in question, he was getting ready to examine it" Celestia nodded and they were lead away.
In one of the empty rooms the Lord of Chaos had setup a picnic table as a work bench and blast shields made from stain glass windows depicting a family skiing holiday. He was wearing a tartan lab coat and his protective goggles had one red and one blue lens, he was busy with some indescribable device. Rainbow flapped over throwing a lazy salute to Celestia "Your highness..." then nodded respectfully to Luna "...S'up"
The midnight monarch slurped her beverage "Just getting going at this unholy hour Rainbow Dash, then I feel a round of the 'butt kicking' may be in order"
Celestia strode forward suppressing a smile "Well said, if a little course; gather everyone as I have some information to impart..."
There was a happy squeal and Pinkie stage dived with a cushion in front of the two Alicorns "Yay! I love story time", the rest of the gang gathered except Discord who asked the sun Goddess to shout before returning to his tinkering.
"Ignatius Mortimer Meen was a moderately talented unicorn in terms of magical strength but woefully bad when it came to essays or research projects and his hoof writing was almost illegible, my school for gifted unicorns has certain standards and when his grades fell below those standards with no sign of improvement he was let go. Rather than seek an alternative path in life Meen dedicated his time to revenge against the academics who he ascribed a level of domination and oppression that would make Sombra green with envy. After disappearing for five years he seemingly returned having mastered an art I had not seen in over a thousand years..."
"Oh Celestia please..." Discord cut in "...hardly mastery; he could manage little more than petty evil, hardly the point of chaos and even that killed him..."
"...in any case he had become adept enough to cause several incidents and murder two very promising children, he was finally cornered in the Library and was destroyed by the forces he employed...."
"...Ponies are beings with a strong affinity for harmonious living and thought, as deranged as this bloke was he lacked the capacity for true rebellion needed to accomplish his goals. I mean look at his final plan; write a book. How boring can you get..."
"...Discord is correct, ponies by nature are fundamentally harmonious even in dissent, creating this book which is basically contained chaos must have finally torn him apart."
Luna slurped loudly "Most interesting, however; how does this help us retrieve Twilight?"
There was a honk of car horn and all eyes swiveled to Discord "Ah ha! We're ready..." the Draconequus stowed his device behind him, cracked his talon and paw, drew himself up to his full height and gently knocked on the cover.
"...What do you mean 'who is it?'; it's Discord Lord of Chaos!...well it's not as if I'm easy to miss, I'd think I'd be easy to spot in a crowd...I'm a Draconequus you fool! How many pony/dragon/lion/Griffon/goat hybrids do you know!?...unless you open up lickidy split I'm going to get creative with you and trust me when I say you can't imagine the things I can do to you!".
The book slammed open its cover, the Lord of Chaos produced some reading glasses "better, now let's see..." a blast of chaos light lit up the room which Discord dispelled with a firm thump of his talon to the page "...cut that out, don't you dare try to pull a cheap trick like that on me; I wrote the guide to dirty tricks!" He pried into the book seemingly reading some hidden script "hmm, this appears to be a simple capture rune that absorbs anyone foolish enough to read it and this page appears to be a pseudo reality, this one I suspect is Meen, odd the whole thing is one long diatribe so you can't pick at one part without the rest unraveling." He flicked through the next few pages and back to the beginning "ah ha! Of course, these two pages i have no idea who they are but this one is Twilight and this one is Starlight. Meen appears to be welded completely into the spell but these four prisoners are spot welded at points so you can't dismantle the spell without dismantling them but they still remain autonomous, maybe he likes to play with his pets."
Luna strode forth despair and fury twinkling in her eyes "So there is no saving them chaos lord?"
Discord waved her off glancing over the rim of his glasses "oh I didn't say that, you can see here that Twi and Spi have started severing her connections to the book, once she does I can have her out in a snap." The room heaved a sigh of relief, Luna collapsed a little and smiled "what can we do to aid them?"
Discord grinned dangerously with mischief in his eyes "good question, I'll ask" taking the eldritch tome in both hands he shoved his head into the page.