“Spike!?”
“What was Spike doing here!?” Twilight’s mind raced. “How did he get here? How long had he been here? Discord had said two years had passed inside of his mind. Two years!? Had Spike been trapped here for two years!?” Twilight’s eyes started to water at the very thought. The sorrow she felt for how lost her best friend must feel completely consumed her until a small spark of anger ignited all at once.
“DISCORD!” Twilight screamed. She was suddenly filled with extreme rage. He had lied. He had to have known about Spike being in this library. “What kind of monster is he that he would leave Spike in this infinite prison for so long!?”
Twilight just stared at the cover of the book Spike had written on. She started breathing in and out trying to calm herself down. She had never felt this level of rage and this level of complete sorrow before, especially not at the same time.
She had to get to Spike. Now. Right then. As far as she could tell, Spike was far, far below in one of the branching hallways from the hexagonal center of the library.
Twilight galloped back to the hexagonal shaft in the center of the library and took a deep calming breath and prepared herself for her jump. It was going to be a long way down. She jumped off the railing and down the hexagonal shaft. Books flew past at astonishing rates, but the distance that remained between her and Spike didn’t budge. She tried to use a combination of falling and teleporting to the greatest distance she could see, but nothing changed the distance between her and Spike. The combination of falling and teleporting wasn’t helping at all. Nothing changed the perceptible difference.
Twilight slowed her fall and cast a centering spell that would position her in the exact center of the shaft. She analyzed the walls and plotted her teleportation trajectory. She was going to do something she had never done before, she would try to jump the length of a solar system in a single bound. It was a simple matter of editing how far she would set her teleportation distance in her mind. It scared her so much to go this far, so quickly. She gathered herself and made the jump.
When she made it out she was still in the center of the shaft of the hexagonal library. Only one of the books that contained her life story she had written had even changed position.
“How big is this library!?” Twilight shouted in frustration.
Twilight got into position again, thinking very hard about how to make this next jump. She was going to jump the biggest distance she could think of, a light-year, the distance light can travel in a year. It was a beautiful thing that her magic could move her faster than the speed of light. She didn’t take much time to ponder it too deeply, she had to get to Spike. “What had he meant by ‘I found the book?’”
She made the jump, a full light year, but there was still no change in the distance of how far away Spike was.
She was annoyed. She had to get to him, she set her teleportation spell for an even more insane number, 10,000 light years. She set the coordinates in her mind and made the jump.
She warped inside the shaft of the library 10,000 light years down. The location of Spike hadn’t moved.
Twilight had read once that the length of the perceptible universe was about 91 billion light-years. Could Discord’s library be greater than the size of the Universe? It was a number Twilight couldn’t comprehend. But she set herself up to teleport that far anyway. 91 billion light-years in the blink of an eye. How was simple unicorn magic capable of this? Perhaps no one had ever tried, or had a reason to ever try.
Twilight made the jump. No change.
She added 20 zeros to the end of the teleportation distance and jumped. No change.
She added 80 zeros to the end of the teleportation distance and jumped. No change.
She added another 100 zeros to the end of the teleportation distance and jumped. No change.
She added another 500 zeros to the end of the teleportation distance and jumped.
No.
Change.
She stopped. There was something wrong here. Something was very wrong here. There was no way her spell should be this useless. She couldn’t keep making these ridiculous jumps. She didn’t know what would happen if she reached the end accidentally.
She flew to the side of the library and started measuring some bookcases and counting the books on each bookshelf. She conjured up a quill and ink into existence and started writing on the floor. She had some calculations to make.
Thirty minutes later — with the help of several obscure calculation spells she was now forever grateful Celestia had told her to learn—Twilight had the distance of the library.
Taking the size of the universe at 91 billion light years, the Library of Discord was the length of 10^463636 number of universes.
She just stared at the answer and hoped it was wrong. The number was over four hundred thousand decimal places long! And the unit of measure she was using was an entire universe!
“What.” Twilight could only say out loud in shock.
It did explain the lack of progress of her teleportation.
She had her number.
It was time to go.
She coordinated herself and set the jump for a thousandth the size of the library, 10^463633 number of universes.
The location of the book changed. Twilight could see the change! It was miniscule, but it was there!
She set herself to go a hundredth the size of the library, and jumped.
She was getting closer.
She jumped one tenth the size of the library, and saw the location of Spike get closer than she had ever seen it.
She made 2 more one tenth jumps before she saw that she had passed Spike.
She halved the amount for her jump and teleported up.
He was now below her again. She jumped down another half, down half of that, up half of that, up half of that, and then down half of that.
As Twilight kept jumping ever closer to Spike. She couldn’t help but be reminded by that math problem where no matter how far someone got by dividing by two every time, they could never technically reach zero. The thought annoyed her. But she did her best.
She jumped up 50 billion light years. Up another 25 billion light years. Jumped down 8 billion light years. Jumped up 4 billion light years. Down 3.5 billion. Up 300 million...
She warped closer and closer to Spike for a long, long time.
She was mesmerized in the jumping and adjusting until finally, after what seemed like forever, she landed on the floor that Spike was on.
He had been close to the hexagonal center, or at least Twilight thought he had been. She recast her searching spell. She was on the same floor as Spike, but now she had to get to him. The library had the same width and height and she was mentally exhausted from all the jumping, but Spike was more important than any exhaustion she was going through. She was a teleporting machine bent on one purpose. Get to Spike.
In the days it took to adjust and readjust to get herself closer to Spike, Twilight pondered on how fast teleportation had always felt to her. She could go anywhere she wanted to in the blink of an eye. Here in this library, even pure teleportation felt like an incredibly slow method of travel.
It took so long, but she was so close. So incredibly close.
She teleported one last time and she saw him. Her best friend, Spike.