Golden Oaks Library, while a marvel of earth pony magic and one of the most recognizable buildings in Ponyville, was not a particularly big structure.
The ground floor was almost entirely one large room, originally a parlour but which was later converted to the main publicly-accessible space when the structure underwent the transformation from private residence to public library. Stuck onto the side was a compact combination kitchen-dining-room, scaled down to the needs of the sort of pony who viewed food as an annoying necessity rather than a passion.
The second floor consisted of private spaces. A bedroom, closet, small personal library, balcony, and a bathroom whose magical plumbing was best not contemplated in any great detail.
Aside from that, there was also a basement which had been dug out some years after the original owner passed on and thus lacked the artistic flair of shaped living wood present in the rest of the house. While just as big as the first floor (if not a little larger on the southern side) in practical terms the basement actually had less space than any other level thanks to it being stuffed with the neglected and abandoned possessions of the last three to five librarians-in-residence.
The small area of free space (that which was not occupied by scratched furniture, forgotten tchotchkes, and enough Hearth's Warming decorations for a tree thrice it's size) was where Twilight had set up her laboratory and research space to plumb the depths of new magic and continue the projects she'd already been working on in Canterlot before moving to Ponyville.
Though one would be forgiven, these days, for mistaking her workspace as just another part of the general clutter.
A pile of documents and scrolls floated through the air in a parade of paper, sorting themselves between piles that were only slightly less disorganized than the ones they'd come from (and getting worse as each pile's edges grew, shifted, and overlapped).
At the center of the organized snowstorm was Twilight, her horn alight and a frustrated frown on her lips.
"No. No. No. Initial Analysis of 'MacGyver' Ability? That needs to be in the Pinkie section. No. No. Woodworking notes. Is this for mine or Dash's? Testing was.. incomplete due to lack of materials. Great. Another for the to-do pile. Notes on Fluttershy's healing cookies. That's for the Fluttershy file. Measurements for Applejack's bat'leth. Still need to make that. To-do pile two. Rarity's analysis on the output of Horadric Cube tests four hundred through four ten. That needs to be transcribed onto the main test log. Which means it goes... temp pile number nine."
The page flew off and landed on what she'd previously been calling 'Re-sort Stack Five'. One by one documents were lifted, skimmed, and sent flying to new homes across the room. A few slid into the single rusty filing cabinet, some stacked themselves on old furniture, but most just made room on the floor.
"Wait… is this my letter to Enchanted Comics about their novel Haycartes spell? What is this doing here? This was supposed to be mailed days ago!" It went on the top stair. "Notes on the magical breakdown of Fluttershy's comic-sourced costume. Now should that go under Fluttershy or does the Haycartes research merit its own subsection?"
That had been a real disappointment. The idea of a spell variation that could let her extract items from books was enough to make her mentally squeal and start drafting another full write-up for the Academy Heads. But much to her disappointment, Fluttershy's supersuit had only lasted a few hours before it dissolved back into inert magic. Still, the spell itself was a remarkable achievement (though whoever created it needed to work out that bug with the cascade failure that made the comic self-immolate right after they were ejected from it).
She decided to give the paper its own pile, placing it...
Twilight blinked several times as she looked across the room for the first time in many minutes with senses beyond her magical proprioception. There was nowhere left to start a new pile. Papers and scrolls covered every surface, making the basement look like it'd been subjected to an early snowfall.
She groaned and set the still floating papers back down onto the "unsorted pile" from which they'd come. "This isn't working. How am I supposed to be able to plan what I need to focus on when I can't even tell what's already been done?"
Twilight loved studying. There was no issue there. She loved studying and researching magic in all its forms. There was always something new to learn, some new discovery to make, a new boundary to push. She'd never expected to have the problem of there being too much to study.
What was more important? To watch Fluttershy bake and figure out how she could turn normal cake batter into snacks that healed better than most medicine? Or have Rarity inspect unidentified artifacts to learn the truth of them? Did history have more value over healing? Or should the synthesis function of the Horadric cube take precedence with the advances it could make in materials science? What if there was some revolutionary material hidden behind the right combinations of ingredients? And that’s before she even got into considering all the possible interactions between them!
She'd been given an unprecedented opportunity. A plethora of new magic that could change the world... if only she had time to properly study it.
Was it even possible, let alone practical, to try and study it all? She closed her eyes and started to draft a timetable in her mind. A full month broken into fifteen-minute segments. She added her earthly requirements first. Time for sleeping, eating, and socializing with friends. She blocked out traveling time then trimmed it down where coordinating Keys and Doors was a viable shortcut. Then came the blocks for research. A section for the Cube, a section for the Originite. Portions for focusing on Rarity's abilities, on Pinkie's, on her own. Time to collect data and time to analyze it. A day to write up her findings. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. A break day to alleviate mental strain. A little flex time in case of unexpected disasters.
She studied the completed sheet in her mind’s eye; a patchwork quilt of a dozen colored squares. It looked doable. Tight, but doable. Coffee was an acceptable substitute for sleep so long as she limited it to no more than three all-nighters per week. So long as nothing unexpected happened, she could still study everything. And make the most of these strange circumstances.
As if to mock her efforts, not a moment after thinking that Twilight felt the tingle of a new ability playing an arpeggio across her horn. It danced down the length from tip to base before plunging into her mind and blossoming into new knowledge.
Runes. Runes filled her mind. Twilight knew runes, both from her education under Celestia and also the unique strings needed to power her “Wizard Tower” magic relays. These were different. A whole alphabet of new runes, ones made of perfect circles and right angles. Runes that interconnected into long strings of complicated effects. But this was more than mere knowledge. While simple in design, the grammar of these runes was bafflingly complex; each addition to the chain changed the meaning of the whole string. And yet Twilight knew, with a thought, how they would interact. How to use those runes to make tools that would channel magic far more easily than the material should allow. How to make a building that would improve the performance of any spells cast within. How to custom build these things to sync with an individual pony’s magic so well that it’d work better for them than anyone else.
It was a Master’s degree and years of practical work experience rolled into one precise brain blast.
She blinked slowly as visions of rune strings disappeared. The knowledge settled into her mind as if it had always been there, leaving her back with her mental schedule.
A schedule that now seemed laughably incomplete.
“It won't work,” she said. “It’s impossible.”
It wasn’t so much the new runes themselves that spurred the realization, but what they represented. She’d only accounted for the abilities they already had. Her schedule was packed to bursting with research already and she hadn’t even considered all the new things that might appear in the coming days, weeks, months. There literally was not enough time in the day for her to cram in everything she needed to research.
But unless she discovered some kind of time travel magic, there was only one way to squeeze more research out of the same amount of time.
“I need help."
But it wasn’t as easy as just that.
She’d tried enlisting Spike’s help already. But while posting “Research Quests” had seemed like a good idea at the time, it hadn't quite panned out like she'd hoped. He was more than eager, but while his penmanship was fine, his actual data collection was... less than academic standards.
And as much as she loved her friends, the thought of trying to draft them into proper rigorous research felt doomed to fail even within her own mind. She knew from personal experience it was tricky enough to coax some of them into cooperating as test subjects, let alone researchers. She cringed at the thought of Pinkie handing her a research paper that was nothing but colored pencil pictograms. Or Rainbow Dash just writing the end result and none of the steps it took to get there. Not to mention they had their own lives and interests to occupy their time.
She needed ponies who would understand her need for rigorous scientific and magical discipline.
Something in the phrasing of that thought caused a memory to bubble up to the surface of her mind. One that sparked a rather novel idea that made her grin amidst the storm of loose research.
After all, they weren't her only friends.