//------------------------------// // 20. The Stair of the Mountain // Story: The Substitute Librarian // by Georg //------------------------------// The Substitute Librarian The Stair of the Mountain There was a certain fear that came with darkness, particularly the kind of darkness where you could not see a hoof in front of your face. Amplify that by leaning over a banister with an immense drop just one twitch away, and the distinct click of a locking mechanism on the door right behind, and then add in the sensation of wind coming up from below as one might feel when falling to death… Emerald might have widdled. Maybe a few drops. Just to mark his position in the darkness. It suddenly became very important not to move with any speed. Emerald settled for not moving at all, listening to the fading noises of the falling lantern a long, long distance below. He had no interest in following it, at any speed. One very slow motion at a time, Emerald reversed his steps until his rump was up against the library sliding door. It took quite some time in the dark for him to grope around for a knob or lever, or just about anything on this side of the locked portal before giving up the search as useless. It made sense, after all. Evacuations would take place from Canterlot to a safe refuge, or at least somewhere away from whatever had caused the evacuation. Allowing ponies to come back by climbing the stairs would allow them into areas where they really did not belong, unless they were lost graduate students who accidentally got locked into the stairwell in which case somepony should have thought of this! Nothing like this had ever happened before he went to Ponyville on that stupid library-sitting job. Maybe this was the universe’s way of kicking him because he took his name off the volunteer list. “Hello?” called out Emerald on the odd chance that the universe might be feeling generous and might cut him a break for once. “Is anypony out there? Anybody useful, that is. Anypony except a mare looking for a husband, that is,” he added out of reasonable caution, because the universe might be feeling exceptionally perverse instead. After a long period spent counting heartbeats and the perverse feeling that there was some sort of dance band playing in an upper level that he could barely hear out of the corner of one ear, he added, “Okay, even if you’re looking for a husband, we can talk.” There was still no answer other than echoes, so he provided his own response while picking ever so slowly up the stairs in search of another more openable door. “So, how did you and mom meet?” he muttered. “Oh, she found me wandering around in the pitch darkness like an idiot, and I decided marriage was slightly better than starving to death. And they said being a little overweight was a bad thing. HA! I have supplies to survive down here for days. Maybe even a week.” By the time he reached three landings up, Emerald had quit complaining out loud, but he was making a list of ponies who needed a good kicking. Engineers who developed an entire series of evacuation stairs inside the mountain without including unhorned light sources for example. Fire door manufacturers who did not include a way to set off the alarms from outside the thick locked door, with a convenient glowing button to be pressed by trapped ponies. At least there were tall banister rails between him and the air shaft, but that only stood to reason, because when the staircase was full of evacuating ponies, one accidental bump had the potential of killing dozens and terrifying all the rest. The only problem in his upward exploration—other than pitch darkness—was that this giant staircase was not the only staircase. There were other branches that forked up in their own directions, leaving Emerald zig-zagging back and forth on his vain search for a loose door that could be perhaps jimmied open or banged on until somepony noticed… It was not going well. After a certain number of identical unresponsive doors thick enough to guard bank safes, Emerald determined it was really not going well. “Up has failed me,” he muttered. “Time to give down a chance.” If nothing else, down was easier, and ever so slightly familiar. In short order, he worked his way back down to his point of origin, which was identifiable by the faint scent of urine. In addition, the longer Emerald was in the lightless void, the more he could see a faint glimmer just ever so barely beneath his eye’s focus. It was a mystery until he put his eye to the wall and squinted, allowing the tiny glints to become more obvious as bits and pieces of mica or quartz. Since he needed to visit the little stallion’s room, and there were none in the immediate vicinity, he arranged himself as discreetly as possible and took care of business while thinking about his situation. Quartz was ever so slightly pizothaumic, and his silver shoes would bleed off any harmful magical charge, so after doing his business, Emerald moved down several steps and found a good prospective piece of wall as an experimental subject. Brisk taps against the granite walls did indeed give off ghostly sparks, but did nothing in the way of usable illumination. At least they were proof he had not been struck blind, and could provide a useful experiment to relate for his other young students once he had made his escape. Walking down was easier, too. Not effortless, but far more effective than sliding down the banister and falling off and landing a thousand feet below in a shattered puddle of bone fragments and blood. One step at a time was fine, although slower once he considered the possibility of a broken section of staircase that could deposit him in that same puddle et al… After all, gravity did not play fair. Several months ago, Emerald had climbed the mountain with Picker’s wagon bouncing along behind him, and it had been a tolerable chore. Seeing where he was going made the journey enjoyable and provided a distraction from measuring every step. Moving one hoof at a time in the darkness with the dread of not finding the next step made every muscle taut, and guaranteed a stumble at every landing. Counting steps between landings would have been a rational approach to avoid a number of painful falls, but he was concentrating more on the idea of a much longer fall and sudden stop, as above, et al... Other than the lack of doors anymore, there was really no way to know how far down Emerald had traveled before he took a break and sat down on the cold stone. His senses were starting to play tricks on him, with the odd wisps of faint music that his hoofsteps were blocking out and the ever so faint glitter of sparkles in the corners of his eyes, but there were tendons in his legs that fairly demanded a break from his tip-toe-first-check-for-a-step-just-in-case descent. “Who would have thought it was harder to go down the mountain than up,” he muttered quietly to himself while trying to rub the painful ligaments. “A firepole, that would really be the way to go. Or not,” he reconsidered at the practicality of the thought, and the eternally long slide. “Escalators, maybe.” Getting back up was painful, but not as painful as simply remaining where he was and eventually starving to death, so Emerald sucked it up and continued. And continued. And continued. Eventually, every time Emerald put down a hoof, he could actually see the light put out by piezothaumic reactions in the granite, and his eyes had adapted so much to the darkness that the wan light actually made shadows flicker on the walls. Due to the ebon darkness enfolding him, the lack of any other stimuli while walking gave each faint glimmer its own special motion, a friendly indication that he was actually moving instead of some sort of infernal exercise device, designed to cripple him. So when Emerald stopped on one of the landings for one of his frequent rest breaks, his heart nearly pounded out of his chest when the ever-so-faint flicker of illumination he could just barely see… Moved.