//------------------------------// // Twilight: Archive // Story: Game of Worlds // by DualThrone //------------------------------// “If you’ve spent any time at all around Chryssy, you’ve run across at least one of the du Dune family.” Thalia said. “Callista,” Rarity said. Thalia smiled briefly. “Lucky you, she’s a really good kid. Anyway, their schtick has always been that they have a sort of insane wanderlust. They wander everywhere they can reach, or spend time looking for ways to get to places they can’t reach yet, and when I first met Daring Do I was fully expecting that she was one of the du Dune scions scratching that adventurer itch. She isn’t, by the way, she’s just a really clever pegasus with the same kind of itch to scratch.” “Now, one of the most significant ways that the du Dunes find places to poke around in is an obsession with mythology and legends, and generally look for the most outlandish claims on the reasoning that chasing down a pipe dream will provide dozens of times the amount of fun that tracking down a legitimate claim would be. It’s a little disquieting how often the strangest beliefs are legitimized by nosy du Dunes, but most of the time the rumor is nonsense.” “Everyone likes their little superstitions and urban legends,” Pinkamena offered. “And believe you me, the du Dunes are happy that those urban legends exist.” Thalia breathed out heavily and grimaced a little. “The issue is that the strangest ones are usually very dangerous and the most strange and dangerous was the Archive.” “Heard that one,” Twilight said, barely needing to think to recall the myth; it was naturally just the kind of thing a scholar would enjoy dreaming about. “Supposedly, a massive library in the middle of nowhere that contains every written work in existence, and you can only find on certain days in certain exotic conditions.” “Oh, it contains written works all right,” Thalia said. “But the reality is not a happy one.” Twilight gaped at her. “It’s real?” “Oh yes, it’s real,” Thalia said. “Looks like an ancient temple from the outside, filled with shelves full of books on the inside, and magically many times as large inside as it is out. Enchanted so that while you are there, you do neither thirst, nor hunger, nor sicken, nor require rest, nor age. Its collection has no known end, and is constantly expanding.” Twilight continued to stare at her, knowing that her expression was one of almost comical awe, but not caring. “A library that has every book, that’s always expanding, and lets you stay forever?” “It has a catch.” Applejack frowned. “Don’t it?” “You wouldn’t think so,” Thalia said. “Especially as it does not contain any outside written work; it does not collect books. What it collects and constantly transcribes is knowledge. If anyone, at any time, anywhere comes to gain a bit of knowledge, it will be recorded in the Archive. It is a font of infinite knowledge; using it, a pony could know everything even as it’s happening. I hardly need to point out what kind of power that represents.” “Penny has access to it, doesn't she?” “If my supposition is correct, she has constant access to it. But that’s not actually the kicker. The big deal is, she has constant safe access to it.” “How the hell is a big library supposed to be unsafe?” Ember snorted. “It’s a bunch of writing, and it can keep you alive forever. What, is there predatory bookworms? Pony-eating scrolls? Living shadows that can strip you to the bones?” “I’ve got a better question.” Twilight was surprised at how incredibly icy and calm her voice was and how the room seemed to get quieter around her as she stared at Princess Thalia. “Why would something like this remain unguarded?” “The same magic that…” “And why would you not use it the moment you became aware of what the Evils intended?” Her tone must have been colder and more menacing than she thought, because her friends actually took a step back, as if trying to clear a line of fire to Thalia. “When Nightmare came to help prepare the changelings and solicit their help, why was this Archive not the first place you went to?” “Ah gotta wonder that mahself.” Applejack looked at Thalia. “Seems ta me that knowin’ everything coulda stopped an awful lot of ponies getting hurt.” There was a moment of Thalia looking genuinely taken-aback and unsure before Ember snorted again. “Are you two morons for real?” All of them, Thalia included, looked at her. “Excuse me, morons?” Dawn said. “Um, yeah?” Ember said, her tone that of someone stating the obvious. “I still think it’s weird that a library can be dangerous but put your brains to it a second. Infinite knowledge? Infinite power? Do either of you seriously think you get infinite anything totally for free?” Applejack looked a little chagrined, and Twilight felt the cool anger vaporize almost immediately as the blue dragoness pointed out the thing that should have occurred to her without Thalia needing to mention it before. “The catch.” “The catch,” Thalia nodded. “The du Dunes are no one’s fools. They’ve run across a lot of legendary stuff, a ton of artifacts, and learned about a ton more that Celestia keeps buried deep and out of even her own reach--and they’ve done some burying too. ‘Infinite’ anything is s giant red flag when your hobby is legend-hunting and for anyone with sense, the first thing they ask is ‘what does it cost?’ In the case of the Archive, it has several constructs that aid seekers but also a single manifest spirit, a kindly and helpful being with the vague shape of a wolf walking upright who answers any question in an extremely literal fashion. The du Dune explorers made several attempts to phrase their questions correctly, but finally managed to get an answer of how it has its miraculous properties.” “Basically, it entrances any seekers that partake of its knowledge, drawing them deeper and deeper into the Archive and into an enchanted obsession that obliterates everything but the hunger for knowledge. They become living shells with their souls imprisoned inside of their bodies, sustained forever by the power of the Archive and in turn give it power to gather every speck of knowledge from every mind and inscribe it. By the manifest spirit’s calculations, as of about three hundred years ago, The Lost numbered around a thousand.” “It begins to seep into the mind and feed the knowledge obsession from the moment someone reads one of its books. We know of no magic that can prevent the Archive from doing this, although we do not dare risk one of our queens to be sure. Nor, frankly, has it ever been safe to warn Celestia because until very recently, she was a desperately lonely soul hungering for the presence of her lost sister, and that frame of mind can easily lead to making a very serious mistake.” She looked at Dawn momentarily, significantly. “As you all know quite well.” “If yer implying that I’m a mistake…” “If it sounded like I was, I apologize, it was not intended,” Thalia said quickly. “But yielding the allure of the nightmare that created Flare in a moment of desperation, grief, and emotional agony was a mistake. And it proves the point: someone whose frame of mind is desperate, in emotional pain, is extremely vulnerable to the lures the Archive sets out and given what it can do with a thousand ordinary souls--sustains life without end, entraps minds, shifts from one physical location to the next--imagine its power if it fed from an extraordinary soul.” “I take it the du Dunes attempted to sabotage its power.” “Not immediately,” Thalia said. “They brought the matter before the queen at the time--Queen Vespa, I believe--and devised a way to make a careful attempt. Like, reading books and taking rests until they’d learned to instantly recognize the beginnings of the entrapment, devising ways to magically augment mental defenses against meddling, that kind of thing. They halted the expedition at the fifth circle, where the intensity of the Archive’s defense against such an attempt--the entrapment--had cracked through their defenses against it. The manifest spirit says that there are fifteen circles, which means that trained soldiers prepared specifically against the entrapment could only get a third of the way to the core, where The Lost are kept.” “So that’s how a library can get dangerous,” Ember said. “So ya think Little Bint has a way passed all that crap?” “Or her ‘Father’ protects her somehow,” Thalia nodded. “I’m willing to guess that with an evil mechanism to maintain its power, the Archive naturally resonates with an Evil and doesn’t even try to entrap her.” “So why isn’t she victorious?” Rarity said. “I know it better than most, darling: if you know your target well enough, they might as well already be dead, you’re so spoiled for choices. So with the power to know everything, the power to know every weakness and how to exploit it, why are we even fighting her? Why didn’t she already win?” “KNOWLEDGE IS BUT A BRICK, GIRL.” Before she was even aware of the voice speaking, the shaking of the ground from the sheer resonant force of it had taken her hooves out from under her and Twilight wince from the sharp pain in her side, even as little filly hooves walked deliberately through her peripheral vision and the diminutive form of Penumbra stopped in the center of the room. She was largely as she was when they’d met her in the eerily empty town, but for one difference: hovering in the electric blue aura of her telekinetic grip was a book easily the size of her entire body, pages fluttering in a non-existent breeze. “VICTORY,” the massive voice continued, “IS A HIGHWAY, LEADING WHERE WE WOULD HAVE IT GO.”