I’ll Bring You Home
Chapter Six; The Endless Library
“So, this place we’re going-”
“The Halls of Knowledge,” Hurricane supplied distractedly, squinting at the sky. “What about it?”
Rainbow nodded. “Yeah, right. Just what exactly is it? Like you said it was some kinda library but-”
“The Library,” Gale corrected.
“Yeah, a library, I get it, but like-”
Hurricane stopped abruptly, forcing Rainbow to do the same. She turned and their eyes met. “No, you really don’t. It is not a library. It is the library. The Halls contain every book ever written. All the collective knowledge of every sentient being that ever lived. Or possibly ever will live, depending on who you ask. Some think it’s infinite. The Halls are the ultimate collection of information.”
Rainbow nodded. “Yeah right, sure; that’s totally where Twilight is. Books are kinda her thing. But you said something about a curse?”
“It’s… complicated…” Hurricane trailed off, glancing around. They were in a field that looked like any other, but the sun had started sinking towards the horizon, bathing the lush green grass in a fiery orange light. The purple flowers that seemed to be just as plentiful as the grass itself grew brighter as the sunlight diminished. They’d been walking - seemingly aimlessly - for hours now, and Rainbow Dash was starting to grow impatient.
“Well apparently we’ve got time.”
Gale rolled her eyes. “We’re almost there. I think. It’s been a while since I’ve been there…” she lapsed into silence again, and the pensive frown on her face made it clear something was on her mind.
“You’re not telling me something,” Rainbow noted, glancing down at her pendant. “Is Twilight in danger in this place? Should we be hurrying?”
“No, no; she’s fine… for now…”
Rainbow frowned. “You’re not exactly filling me with confidence here, ‘commander’.”
Despite herself, Gale chuckled. “If you were under my command you’d be really regretting that, you know?”
“You’re changing the subject.”
She sighed. “It’s… hard to explain. I’ve only been inside once, but it’s like… it’s like the Halls don’t want you to leave. There’s this… feeling, you get, when you try. It’s not that you can’t, it’s that you don’t want to leave. Many never do…” Again there was that melancholy look in her eye.
Rainbow swallowed nervously. “You think Twi isn’t gonna want to leave?”
“It’s a possibility you need to be prepared for. If it’s how I think, it gets worse the longer you’re in there and the deeper you go. I was only inside for a few hours near the entrance, and it took me nearly twice as long to get out between the maze-like hallways and how hard it was to convince myself that I needed to leave. If she’s been in there for over a year, and if she went deeper in…” her silence said what she didn’t, and Rainbow’s brow knotted.
“I’ll figure out some way to snap her out of it,” she said confidently. “I’m not leaving without her.”
“We’re here.”
The announcement was sudden, and Rainbow nearly bumped into the other pegasus, too distracted to notice Gale had stopped. She looked up, but instead of some large, grand building or… anything, really, there was more grassy field. “We’re… where, exactly?”
Hurricane pointed with a hoof off into the distance, and Rainbow Dash had to squint to make out what she was supposed to be looking at. It was… a gate? It looked like the gate one would see at the entrance to a walled city; large and grand with stone pillars on either side and a triangular top. Except… it didn’t lead to anything; it was just the gate, sitting out in the middle of a field.
Before Rainbow Dash could ask the question brewing in her mind, she snapped her muzzle shut. Was a gate that didn’t lead anywhere really the strangest thing she’d seen? “That’s the entrance, then?”
“Well, more like a portal, really, but yes; that’s the entrance to the Halls of Knowledge.”
They approached the gate as the sun set beyond the rolling green hills, and Rainbow found herself watching the stars starting to shine in the sky. Then she looked to the star around her neck. She smiled at her guide. “She’s in there. I know it.”
Hurricane nodded. “I don’t doubt it.” They came to the base of the entrance, and its size became apparent; it was easily taller than an average house, and just as wide. It was composed of large, red wooden doors with brass studs in a grid. On either side were stone pillars stretching up and supporting a triangular roof that overhung on all sides. There was a small flight of a half dozen stone steps that lead up to the doors, raising them off the ground.
Marveling up at the structure, Rainbow did a full circle around it, making sure it really was as simply as it seemed. When she concluded that it was, indeed, just a door in the middle of a field, she looked back to Gale. “How do we open it?”
Hurricane nodded towards two large, gold rings attached to each door. “Manually. But, before we do, I need to tell you something; I’m not coming with you.”
“What? You said-”
“I said I’d help you find her.” Hurricane gestured at the door. “I brought you to where she is. But… I can’t go in there again. After the last time… I’m sorry; I barely made it out. I can’t risk going in again. Too many have gone in there and never come back out.”
Rainbow growled. “We had a deal! I promised to tell her how I felt, and you’d do everything you could to help!”
“This is your journey, not mine,” Hurricane answered solemnly, ignoring further argument as she flew up to one of the golden rings. “Come on; you should get going. It’s getting dark.”
Rainbow’s glare didn’t relent, but she did as instructed and latched onto the other ring.
“On three!” Gale shouted. She did the count, and in unison they pulled. At first the doors seemed to hold fast, but after a couple seconds of grunting exertion from both pegasi there was a groaning as the wood moved. It was slow, but the doors swung open gradually, and they stopped as soon as there was enough room for a pony to slip through the opening.
“You’re seriously not coming with me?” Rainbow asked, double checking her saddlebags - and frowning as her compass still spun uselessly.
“I know if I go in there, I’m never coming out. See if you can find someone already inside to guide you. A lot of ponies have gone in over the centuries,” Hurricane explained, though it seemed to do little to appease the other pegasus. “Look, kid, I’m sorry, but I’m not risking my after-life for your mare. That’s on you. But I will still help you; while you’re in there, I’ll look for this flower you said you need. What did you call it? The-”
“A Poppy of the Soul.” Rainbow sighed, but relented with a nod. “I guess I can’t ask for anything else. You already let me win our match; I’m the one who owes you.”
Hurricane chuckled. “If you hadn’t been so injured I think that match would have been much closer than it already was.”
Smiling proudly at the compliment, Rainbow laughed as well. “We’ll have to have a rematch some day.”
“That we will…” Hurricane trailed off, looking to the slight opening in the doors. It was pitch black inside, and she shuddered as she felt a tugging on her mind, as though the halls were calling her back. “You should go.”
Rainbow glanced over her shoulder. “Yeah… thanks, for everything.” She snapped to attention and saluted. “Thank you, commander!” She barked, and Hurricane saluted her back. Rainbow couldn’t hold back a girly squeal. “I’ve wanted to do that since I met you!”
“Go on, kid,” Hurricane urged with a smile. “You have a mare to save, don’t you?”
“Right…” Rainbow took a breath, approaching the large stone steps that lead up to the door. “Wish me luck.” Gale nodded encouragingly, and Rainbow reached the door, squinting to try and see into the inky blackness within. Hesitantly she stepped forward, her hoof hitting a hard floor she couldn’t see. Slowly she moved forward, darkness enveloping her vision until the only thing she could see was the slight gap in the doors behind her.
“Be careful in there, kid!” Hurricane called. “And if you find-” her words were silenced as the door slammed shut, and Rainbow Dash was shrouded in an endless void. For a few, tense moments there was nothing, until suddenly Rainbow felt like the world shifted around her. Her stomach churned and she was reminded of the times Twilight had teleported her. In the blink of an eye the darkness shifted to a warmly lit interior of what, so far as she could tell, was an ordinary library. If a bit larger than anything she’d seen before.
The floor was tiled stone and the walls were lined with dark wooden bookshelves, each stacked full of countless books. Rainbow spun in a circle, taking in the room that was at least as large as the throne room in Canterlot. All four walls were covered two stories high in books of every shape and size. A balcony wrapped around the upper level, connecting to a grand staircase leading up from the center of the room with polished wood handrails and a lush red carpet covering the stone steps.
Torches stuck out from the wall, their flickering light providing a comfortable light. In the center of each wall were passageways outlined by stone arches, the walls beyond equally coated in shelves and books.
Rainbow frowned, cupping her hooves around her mouth. “TWILIGHT!?” Her shout was answered only by its echo. She sighed. “Of course. It’s never that easy, is it?”
On instinct alone she fished her compass out of her bags. The incessant spinning was starting to get on her nerves, and with a frustrated grunt it was roughly put away. “Alright… sooo… this way?”
Without any better options, Rainbow shrugged to herself and started off down a random corridor. Of course Twilight would get lost in a library. Her mind trailed off as the hallway grew monotonous, nothing but a bookcase, a pillar with a torch, another bookcase. Nothing but the sound of her own hooves clicking against the floor. Another pillar and another torch. Until, eventually, the hall let out into a large room that was… identical to the one she’d started in.
Taking wing, Rainbow picked a different hall and flew down it, coming out in yet another identical room. She groaned. “Of course. It’s going to be like that.” A moment was taken to stretch her wings, and in a blue blur Rainbow Dash shot off, taking random turns down random halls every time she came to the same room.
What must have been at least a few dozen rooms later, Rainbow skidded to a stop, panting. “Okay, she said this place was going to be big, but seriously?”
She took in the room, frowning. It didn’t just look similar to all the others; it looked identical. There was a nagging thought at the back of her mind, and on a whim Rainbow took a book off a shelf. The title, in elegant golden cursive, declared the book as “Orpheus’s Journey”. She took it and put it on the ground in the center of the room, before quickly rushing down a hall. The room she came out in was exactly the same as before, minus the book in the center.
However, when she went to the same shelf in the same place and pulled the book in the same spot, she found the answer she was looking for; it was the exact same.
“So I’m not actually going anywhere. Well that’s just great. How the hay am I supposed to find Twilight like this?”
Rainbow fell back on her haunches, glaring at the rows of books and rubbing a hoof against her temple. “What the hay do you want from me!?” She shouted, feeling some small amount of frustration leave her body with the outburst. It didn’t really help, but she felt a little better.
“Okay, Dash; think. This place is supposed to be huge, but it’s not letting you go anywhere. Why?”
Despite posing the question aloud, she had no better answers than she did a second ago, and Rainbow sighed. Twilight always used to talk to herself when she was working through a problem, and it seemed to help, but it was doing her no favours here.
“What do you want?” She looked to the books, frowning. It was a library. What would a library want from her? Her gaze turned, and she noticed several small desks and chairs set up around the wooden balcony circling the room. Little reading desks.
“Oh.”
It wasn’t really going to be that simple, was it?
Without much other option currently, Rainbow shrugged and flew up to the second level, scanning along the spines of the books, each a different colour but without even the slightest indication as to what they were. A book was pulled at random, and big, bold letters across the front titled the book “Orpheus’s Journey.”
She raised a single eyebrow at the familiar title. Putting the book back, she selected another and though the lettering was different, the title was the same. This book was placed on a table, and another book was pulled. Same title. Another, then another were pulled from the shelf, all called “Orpheus’s Journey.”
“You trying to tell me something?” Rainbow asked the shelves. She didn’t get a response, but the next book she looked at still had that title. With a sigh, she sat down in a chair and opened a book at random. It was a title she recognized. After months of searching through every myth related to the afterlife, Orpheus was a reoccuring name, and it was one of the first stories she’d read.
The first few lines confirmed it; it was the same story. A gryphon named Orpheus lost his wife and, consumed by grief, he journeyed to the Underworld to save her. There was more to it, of course, but the important part of the story was the end; eventually he was successful in finding his wife, and was able to convince the king and queen of the Underworld to let her leave with him, but they did so only under one condition. He had to walk in front of her and never turn back until they both made it back to the living world.
However, as with many classic Gryphon tragedies, Orpheus was destined to fail. When he finally made it out of the Underworld, having walked for many days and nights without once setting eyes on the wife he’d been through literal hell for, he turned. His wife had not yet crossed the boundary of the Underworld, and so he broke his deal, and that was the last time he ever saw her as she faded before his very eyes. Perhaps it was a true story, perhaps it wasn’t. Rainbow didn’t really know; it was one of the few stories that didn’t make mention of a mare with a pomegranate cutie mark, though it did mention a king and a queen, while other stories told only of a king of the dead.
Whatever the truth, Rainbow had long since dismissed the story as simply a story to discourage others from attempting to bring the dead back to life.
Looking up from her book, the pegasus glared at the shelves. “Are you trying to scare me?”
Predictably, the shelves didn’t respond, and she rolled her eyes. Orpheus may have failed, but she was anything but a failure, and for this library to imply she’d suffer the same fate was an insult. She wasn’t so weak that such a simple condition would trip her up. If that was the best the Underworld could offer, she’d be laughing her way right across the river with Twilight at her side in no time. The only thing that had come close to stopping her was Commander Hurricane herself, and even then that was only because of her injuries.
“You’ll have to do better than that!” Rainbow taunted, skimming through the pages of Orpheus’s doomed journey.
Suddenly, Rainbow Dash was consumed by an intense feeling of vertigo. Her vision swam a moment and she blinked hard, holding a hoof to her head. Then, just as quickly as it started, it was gone, and the mare looked up to see what had caused it. What once was a small, simple room with wall to wall shelves, was now something else entirely.
From her little wooden balcony Rainbow looked out across what could most accurately be described as a warehouse of books; countless rows of shelves that stretched on into a blackness that implied an endless distance. Chandeliers hung from the stone ceiling, providing just enough light to cast the halls in an eerie orange glow. Rainbow set her book down and stepped up to the railing, looking out across the veritable sea of information.
Once more, she cupped her hooves around her mouth. “TWILIGHT!?”
This time, no echo returned her call.
“Never is that easy,” Rainbow chided herself, shaking her head as she flapped her wings and lowered herself until she was standing atop one of the rows of shelves. To her left and right she could just barely make out the stone walls bordering the sides, but ahead of her was an unknown distance. She leaned over the edge and pulled out a book, nodding to herself as she confirmed it wasn’t another copy of the same book, but rather something written in a language she didn’t recognize. The rows of books also had their titles written on their spines for the most part, and each one was different.
Without a destination in mind and with no goal other than finding Twilight, Rainbow started off, walking along the tops of the selves and scanning out across the halls around her. The shelves started in neat, orderly rows, but they quickly devolved into twisting passages the further in she got, and she silently thanked whatever designed this place that she was able to stay above it all. Without the twists and turns to slow her, it wasn’t long before Rainbow could see the back wall coming into view, and she wondered idly if that was really all this supposed ‘infinite library’ had to offer. Sure, there were a lot of books - like, a lot - but the claim that all possible knowledge could be found among the shelves? It seemed a little far fetched.
For that matter, where were all the others Hurricane had mentioned? The ones who had come in and never come back out? She’d not seen a single other pony or otherwise wandering the aisles below her, and certainly none had returned her calls.
Unfortunately, the answer to many of Rainbow’s question showed itself when, in what looked to be about the center of the library, she found the one thing she’d avoided considering. Set in a small area clear of shelves, a circular hole was opened in the floor, and a metal spiral staircase descended into it.
“Of course. Celestia forbid it’s just a big library; nooooo, it has to be a big library that has who-knows how many floors.” Rainbow sighed, glaring at the staircase. There was no indication how far it went down, nor how many floors there were hidden beneath this one, but if they were even half this size, she’d have a long search ahead of her.
Rainbow glanced around herself, calling out one last time and ensuring there was still no response. When none came, there was a begrudging grunt, and she jumped down from atop the shelves. Hesitantly walking over to the stairs, Rainbow leaned out over the railing, gazing into the darkness that stared back.
“I swear, Twi, it’s like you’re trying to make this difficult,” she muttered to herself as her descent began. A few circles around the center pillar brought her to the next level, where the stairs ended. Part of her hoped that meant this was the only other floor, another had the sneaking suspicion there was another staircase. Either way, there was yet another maze of halls to search through, and this time looked to be much more difficult.
While the upper level had been tall and open, this one looked more akin to a dungeon corridor; cramped on either side by yet more rows of books and capped with an arched ceiling that connected to the tops of the shelves. Small brass lanterns hung from the roof intermittently, casting long shadows in their dull, flickering light.
“So what are the odds there’s a book on where Twilight is?” Rainbow asked aloud, chuckling at her own joke a moment before setting off. It wasn’t like there were many other options; the hallway was straight, after all. Though it didn’t stay that way long. Just a few yards in the shelves opened and the path split into different directions, each equally cramped. On instinct alone the compass was pulled from Rainbow’s bags, before being roughly shoved back inside when it remained useless.
“Stupid thing,” she muttered, picking a direction at random. “I know what I want. It’s not my fault you can’t see that.”
The self-assurance did little to ease her frustration, and Rainbow found herself wandering aimlessly through the shelves with a frown. The halls were deathly silent, the only sound was her own hooves clicking against the polished stone floor. Without a guide or any clear destination she starting to wonder if she was ever going to find Twilight in this place. The mare could have been anywhere, and if the first floor was anything to go by, this place was huge. Impossibly so.
“C’mon, where would a nerdy alicorn be hiding in an endless library?” At the very least talking out loud lessened the oppressive quiet. “It’d help if this place had some signs up or something. Or…” she trailed off, hooves slowing to a stop. “Or a map?”
“You see, Rainbow Dash, within the Underworld is… well, you’ll know it when you see it. For now think of it as a maze. That map is the only chance you have of making it through.”
Was this what Discord had been referring to? Rainbow quickly rummaged around in her bags, withdrawing the weathered scroll he’d given her. Unrolling it showed the same indecipherable mess of lines from before, and Rainbow squinted in an effort to make out any semblance of a map. Alla cross the paper were short, straight lines that seemed to connect at random. It certainly didn’t look like any maze she’d ever seen, and it didn’t at all match what she’d seen so far.
“Of course. Thanks for nothing, Discord,” she groaned, tempted for a moment to simply crumple up and toss away the useless ‘map’. However, at the last minute she thought better of it and simply stashed it in her bag for later. Maybe Twilight would know something about it.
Setting off again, Rainbow’s mind wandered as the monotonous scenery started getting to her. She scanned the books as she passed them, hoping to maybe spot something that might be of some use. Recalling an old strategy, at every fork or turn she made sure to keep to the left wall. It wasn’t the fastest way, but she’d heard it was a sure-fire way to find the exit to almost any maze.
Eventually.
For a while Rainbow walked in silence, until eventually she was forced to stop as her dry lips reminded her she’d not eaten or drank anything since she’d left the coliseum. Begrudgingly, she took a short break, but was surprised when a sound that didn’t come from her echoed through the corridor. It was a loud, groaning rumble that seemed to come from behind. In an instant Rainbow was crouched low and ready to fight off whatever was coming for her, when suddenly the sound stopped, and she was left hearing only the quickened beating of her heart.
Cautiously she pushed forward, towards the sound. The dim light limited how far she could see, but she quickly realized what she’d heard. The hall she’d just come down was now a dead end, blocked by another shelf.
“Of course,” she rolled her eyes, feeling like a broken record. Rainbow nodded to herself, a low chuckle escaping her throat as she shook her head and her chuckling grew to laughing, then to heated screaming as a hoof flew out and punched the nearest bookcase.
“Just! Give! Me! Twilight!” Every shout was punctuated by a hit, but it wasn’t long before her leg hurt too much to continue. She all but ripped the compass from her bags, shaking it every time it refused to stop spinning. “I know what I want! Just bring me to Twilight! I don’t care about anything else! I just want Twilight back!”
The compass spun, and in a white hot rage it was thrown down the hall. Panting, it took only a moment for her to realize what she’d done, and she took off after it. Carefully, Rainbow plucked the compass from the ground, giving silent thanks it seemed undamaged.
“Please, just give me Twilight. I… I don’t care about anything else. I don’t care if I can never tell her how I feel, or if she will never feel the same way. I just want her back. Please. I just need to save her. It’s my fault she died, I just…
“I just want her to forgive me.”
The needle spun. Once… Twice…
Then stopped.