Twilight and Starlight made their way to the only other door they had seen in the library aside from the entrance, both assuming that was the door that had been unlocked.
Eventually they reached the brown maplewood door itself, but rather than immediately enter, they both hesitated, eyeing the door with some trepidation.
"So... this is it, huh?" Starlight asked, not taking her narrowed eyes off the somewhat unassuming door, "this is where leaving got me. Getting thrown in jail, jerked around by some mysterious... jerk, and crazy evil visions from a stupid crystal ball."
"It could be worse," Twilight tried, staring at the door alongside Starlight, "we could've been captured by ponies who wanted to hurt us... or worse."
"We still don't know if they're planning to do either," Starlight pointed out, "you said it yourself, Twilight. We don't know anything about this mare, and it's too soon to trust that she won't hurt us or do... something worse."
Twilight swallowed nervously.
She knew Starlight was right, and hadn't forgotten that they couldn't relax just yet. She just didn't want to think about the worst case scenario right now -- not in a library of all places.
To Twilight, any library was a sanctuary where she could gain insight and peace of mind -- where the filly could lose herself in a good book no matter the hardship she was facing. This library had been no different... up until Starlight had activated that terrible orb.
Now, standing before the door of the one who was probably the cause of all this, all of Twilight's worries came rushing back. Starlight was likewise worried, but there was an undercurrent of desperate curiosity when it came to the light pink filly.
When she left home, she had taken a lot of unanswered questions with her -- questions she hadn't yet shared with Twilight. She had hoped she would be able to get the answers to her questions when... if she reached the mysterious town she was never allowed to go to.
Now she wasn't sure if this was the place she had been looking for or not. The library was impressive to be sure, but it wasn't what she was looking for. In the end, she could only hope this mare could give her the answers she sought.
"Well... there's no point in just standing out here," Starlight finally said, moving to open the door, "that mare might yell at us again if we wait any longer."
Twilight nodded silently and Starlight pulled the latch on the door with her magic before pushing the door open.
For as impressive as the library itself was, the room the two fillies entered had wonders of its own. It wasn't as large as the library obviously, but it was a fairly big room. Twilight didn't get that impression at first due to the sheer amount of odds and ends, both large and small, that were packed into every nook and cranny she could see.
Her first thought was that the room was a mess, but upon closer inspection, she noticed that everything was placed just so. Items were neatly packed, folded, stacked, and pushed into and on top of shelves, drawers, tables, corners, and more. This was all done in such a way that it left several clear paths throughout the room.
Another thing the fillies noticed were the countless pictures and paintings covering the walls. There were pictures of mares and stallions both young and old, wearing all sorts of odd clothing.
Ponies weren't the only creatures that adorned the walls either. Several different pictures featured all sorts of creatures Twilight and Starlight had never seen before. Large creatures with horns, some with big muscly arms, some with a big coat of shaggy fur, and some with largely feline features.
There was even a large painting of what looked like a cross between a big black bug and an alicorn mare as tall as Celestia herself -- two big differences being the insect-like wings and the long jagged horn. The bug pony thing was reclining lazily on what looked like a shiny black sofa wearing a smirk that could only be described as saucy.
The painting was so odd the two fillies stopped and stared at it in bemusement for a good minute before moving on.
"What is all this?" Starlight wondered aloud as she looked about the room, "some of this stuff is pretty... out there."
"There's so many things I've never seen before," Twilight commented, a hint of excitement making its way back into her voice, "I don't even think a lot of this is from Equestria!"
"So... this mare is some kind of... treasure hunter or something?" Starlight replied, dubiously eyeing yet another glass orb sitting atop a shelf -- this one smaller and filled with shifting black smoke, "what does she even need it all for?"
"Maybe this is some kind of... archive?" Twilight guessed as she curiously scanned a row of books on another shelf, "maybe she's an archivist," Twilight suddenly gasped and turned to Starlight, "maybe this is some kind of castle!"
"How do you figure?" Starlight asked, looking back to Twilight with a raised eyebrow.
"Well, think about it," Twilight explained, "everywhere we've been so far seems to mostly be made out of stone, judging by the shape of the room and the stairways leading up and down, the library is probably part of a tower, there's dungeons," she gestured to everything around her, "and then there's this place!"
"What about this place?" Starlight asked in confusion.
"In most places in Equestria, archives are kept in large and important buildings," Twilight continued, straightening up and raising a hoof, "if this is an archive, it would only make sense for it to be in a castle given what else we've already seen since we woke up. I mean, what other place would have both a dungeon and an archive?"
"Well, I guess that makes sense?" Starlight replied uncertainly, "you might also be jumping to conclusions though."
"Well we can always ask that mare... if we can find her," Twilight responded before looking around in confusion, "where is she anyway?"
"Waiting for you two idiots to notice that I've been here the whole time."
The fillies jumped and cried out in surprise before snapping their gazes upward. Sitting comfortably on top of a large shelf with her muzzle in a book, was the same mare they had seen in the dungeon.
"The both of you are severely lacking in spatial awareness and common sense," the mare said, idly flipping a page in her book, "that can and will get you killed out here," she gave the fillies a side glance, "I'm honestly surprised it hasn't already.
"I mean, one of you had the brilliant idea to gallop headfirst into what could very well have been some Hell Fog that had escaped the Black Mires of Tartarus and found its way into the outer reaches of Equestria."
Starlight glared at the mare indignantly but said nothing, knowing full well how stupid she had been to do just that. Twilight however, was stuck on what the mare had said about the fog.
"What's... Hell Fog? And you said it came from Tartarus?" Twilight asked incredulously, "but... Tartarus isn't a real place! My mom told me... she told me..." Twilight's heart sank in her chest as she remembered her mother, "she told me Tartarus was just something that existed in old pony tales..." she finished quietly.
"Oh no, Twilight," the mare replied matter-of-factly, her eyes still glued to the book, "Tartarus is very real, and it's not even that far from here in fact."
"WHAT?!"
"We get to see all sorts of interesting things because of that," the cobalt mare continued, unfazed by the fillies' cries of shock, "things like that fog I mentioned earlier. You pass through that fog, and the only thing coming out of it is a skeleton picked clean of all its flesh... nasty stuff, that Hell Fog."
"But... but... that's not..." Twilight sputtered, staring at the mare in horror, "how can you just... that can't be true! Celestia wouldn't let a place like that exist! There's no way--"
"It's true."
Twilight whipped around to face Starlight and saw that the filly's eyes had gone distant and cloudy.
"S-Starlight?" Twilight asked worriedly, "you... you can't be serious..."
Starlight said nothing and Twilight stared at her in disbelief -- neither filly noticing the mare giving Starlight a knowing smirk. The mare chuckled softly and closed her book before floating it back into the shelf below her. She stood up and hopped off the dresser, landing right next to the fillies.
"As fun as this idle banter has been, we have things to discuss," the mare exclaimed, before turning around and trotting deeper into the room, "Twilight, snap your friend out of her traumatic flashback and both of you follow me."
Twilight looked from the mare to Starlight who hadn't moved an inch.
"H-Hey... Starlight?" Twilight asked tentatively as she prodded the unresponsive filly with a hoof, "come on, we gotta go..."
Starlight shuddered and blinked a few times before looking at Twilight as though she had only just realized the filly was there.
"Huh? What -- oh!" Starlight replied, "right, yeah... let's... let's go then."
She quickly trotted past Twilight who stepped back and watched her with a worried frown. Twilight didn't know what had happened to Starlight before she arrived at her cabin, but from Starlight's reaction and what she herself had seen in that cabin, she could tell it was at least as bad as what had happened to her own family.
Twilight gave a violent shudder of her own as she remembered her family's fate. She let out a shaky breath before following after Starlight and the mare, desperately trying to put those morbid thoughts behind her.