"I'm really sorry, princess Celestia. If only I thought about it a bit more logically, we would of made it to the Gala in time."
"It's alright, my faithful student. At least you did manage to get here at the tail end. I'll make sure to send the tickets to you and your friends in advance next time." The sun princess replied as they walked down one of the hallways of the castle. Twilight and her friends arrived only a few minutes before the actual Gala had ended, which the alicorn blamed herself for. So giving her student only two tickets at first was a bad idea after all. Who knew? But a lesson was a lesson regardless.
All of her pupil's friends were invited to spend the night in the castle, a private room for each mare, while Twilight herself had her old room all to herself. But unlike the rest, she decided to stick to her mentor and spend some time talking with her.
"Ponyville is such a lively place, princess! I really hope you could visit it sometime. It's a lot more fun and refreshing then the busy streets here in Canterlot." Twilight tried to change the subject. The alicorn only smiled.
"Perhaps, my dear student. But for a couple of months I will be quite busy. I will inform you when I'll be visiting in a week's notice." She replied, looking at the lavender unicorn.
"Thank you princess. I will be looking forward to it." Her companion said with a smile and looked ahead.
"Oh, is this princess Luna's room?" She asked, making the sun princess look up with confusion. They didn't go into her wing of the castle, did they? But then she noticed the double doors in question and shook her head lightly.
"No no, Twilight, her room is in the right wing of the castle, we are still only on the ground level where the entrance is."
"Oh yea... Say, what is this room then? Does it hold some of her possessions? You did tell me before that it was an important room." She said, looking at the deep blue double doors with curiosity. There were only a handful of rooms Twilight never visited in her life spent at the castle, and that room was one of them.
"Well.... No, I couldn't say it does. Still, I would like it to remain private. Maybe one day I'll show you what is inside." The sun princess replied after thinking about the consequences of showing it to her.
"Of course, princess." Her student replied without hesitation, always sure of her mentor's judgment.
"If it's not much of a problem, could I get permission to enter the library archives, princess?"
"At this time of night, my faithful student? Wouldn't you rather rest with your friends?" Celestia was taken by surprise by her sudden request.
"And miss the opportunity to read several books about ancient magic? Not a chance!" The unicorn cried out with great enthusiasm. A chuckle escaped the princess's lips as she looked down on the eager mare.
"Of course, Twilight. You know that the castle library is always open to you."
"Thank you very much, princess Celestia!-"
"Just make sure not to stay up too late." She added, which made the lavender unicorn blush slightly.
"I'll.... try my best. Eheh..." That was as good a promise as any to come from her bookwormish student. She smiled to her as they kept walking towards the stairs that lead to the balcony of the second floor. From there they said their good nights to each other as Celestia turned to the left wing of the castle, while Twilight gone to the centre, searching the hallway with the library. It didn't take her long to find it, knowing the castle's inside like the back of her hoof, as she nodded to the guard stationed near the door after he let her inside.
Bookshelf next to bookshelf formed long lines into the darkly lit room of the library all stacked with books of modern age, covering every possible subject. There were at least eight lines that stretched for at least a quarter of the spacious room before there was a pass for more shelves to stand. There was a reception desk that rounded in half a circle not far from the entrance with a couple of librarians, one of them reading some book while the other was busy writing something on a scroll, perhaps refreshing his memory of the amount of books they had checked out. Apart from that, there were a few more books on the table beside the reading librarian, a door that led to their private room and a few spare quills.
The librarians both lifted their head lightly and nodded at the sight of Twilight, they were very accustomed to the girl at this point and invited her in without any formalities. She walked up to the desk and looked up to the unicorn reading a book.
"I would like to visit the archives of the library. I asked for permission." The librarian didn't seem all that surprised, putting his book down.
"Of course, miss Twilight. Let me get you your gem first." He said, turning around and opening the door to their private room. While she waited, she looked around. There was hardly any free wall space around, aside from behind the reception desk and above the entrance doors, but it still had a clock to show the time above the reception. As of that moment, it was midnight. She noted for the first time that there was a red rug now leading between the fourth and fifth rows of shelves from the reception. Probably for those new to the library to not get lost easily. At least that's the only reason Twilight could think of.
The librarian soon came back, holding a yellow small gem that had a small firm string hanging off of it. He levitated it to the lavender unicorn and she masterfully picked it up with her own levitating spell.
"Could you also please call me when it will be about 3AM?" The unicorn nodded with a light smile before he picked up his book again, Twilight noticed it was a book on the history of art. She decided that she should find a copy as well for her own library. She thanked the librarian and then was off towards the back of the library. There was a door at the end of the carpet, which gave Twilight another thought on the carpet's purpose, and opened the door, leading into a black room. Her horn started to glow lightly, pulsing some magic into the gem, and with time it started to illuminate her path and the books.
Twilight knew for a fact that this room was much, much larger then the library itself, holding Equestria's entire history inside of it. She also knew that while there was a table with a candle in several parts of the room, the only way to go through the darkness was with the special gems the librarians provided. The light from the gems didn't harm the aged books as much as any other solution they had, but it would be tiring for any unicorn not specialized in magic to constantly keep the gem glowing, so they were forced to add the candles for the unicorns when they would be reading something.
Of course, the archives were designed with only unicorns in mind. Anyone else would need the librarians themselves to escort them through the archives. Twilight didn't think too long about that as she was searching through the bookcases, trying to find the section she wanted. She decided to look for new spells to work on, and maybe find some more information about the teleportation spell to perfect it. And maybe find out if it had some subconscious activation trigger when under pressure.
She soon stumbled on the section of spells, picking up a few random books to try her luck and walking towards one of the tables. She lit the candle with her magic and turned off the gem. Using her magic, she levitated one of the books closer to her and opened it up, reading up on the various spells and their history.
"Wait a minute...." She said to herself, noticing a familiar spell on one of the pages, turning to it without any delay. 'Want it, Need it'. She suddenly realized what book she was reading. The unicorn quickly turned several pages away without looking where she turned, trying to forget the rush of.... uncomfortable memories. She definitely needed to be crazy to cast such a spell again.
"Maybe I should just move on..." She thought to herself, looking at the other couple of books. Before closing hers, she did notice what spell it stopped on. It described itself as creating soft and calming music out of any noise, from the rustle of leafs and the crack of wheat to the trotting of hooves. She found it very interesting and, though compelled to just close the book, decided to hold just on this spell and learn a bit more about it.
It didn't take long to memorize the spell, closing the book and sliding it aside and picking up the next one. To the unicorn's surprise, it was a book of spells used in offence, and the book itself had a resemblance to a war history. It didn't stop her from checking the book out regardless. There was definitely a wide variety of spells she never thought about before, at least half or more concentrated on creating basic elements with magic while the other on controlling said elements around you. There was another quirk about the book that seemed odd. Some of the fire spells didn't have a creator.
Twilight searched through the book a little, and any other spell definitely had a creator, going even as far as having Starswirl the Bearded for some of the most complex spells. Yet, some fire spells only directed to a history book Twilight never heard about before when addressing the spell creator. She decided to look into this strange occurrence and find the mentioned book. She blew out the candle and gave her gem some magic energy to let it brighten the dark room again, picking her books up and moving back to where she picked them up. She put the untouched book and the unwanted book back in their place, keeping the war book to herself and going on a hunt for the history section or the archives.
To her surprise, however, it seemed to be harder to find then she initially thought. She did, however, strike luck and find it eventually, just to be cut off from starting her search by a voice behind her.
"Is it thou, Twilight Sparkle?" The voice was familiar, though sounded a bit more mature then before. The unicorn turned around, just to see the princess of the night herself slowly walking towards her, wearing a gem herself. The lunar princess has grown close to Celestia's size by then, her mane and coat becoming darker in colour. The mane now had stars sparkle inside of it, the edges of her mane translucent.
"Princess Luna!" The unicorn said in surprise. She definitely didn't expect to see her.
"Greetings, Twilight Sparkle. We art most pleased to find thou here at this hour. We would also like to give out thanks to thee and thy friends for risking thine lives in rescuing us." The moon princess said, bowing lightly, which made the unicorn a little confused and blush, against her better judgment.
"You really don't need to thank us, princess. It was our duty to lift your curse and free you!" She said a little nervously. It wasn't on their thoughts when she and her friends were in the Everfree forest, but she didn't want to flat out say that to the princess.
"Curse.... Yes..... Let us leave it at that." Luna didn't seem very thrilled about the subject, looking at the floor. The unicorn scolded herself mentally before trying to change the subject.
"So, um, princess, what lead you here? I was just reading up on some old magic spells." She said, hoping the princess would take the bait and talk about something less depressing for herself.
"Hm? Well, there art two reasons. We were studying our country's history during our absence; learn of what we had missed. Did thou, our loyal subject, have the same interest as we?" She asked the lavender unicorn with curiosity in her voice.
"Well, I would learn more about history eventually, yes, but right now I just wanted to examine a particular book. Some of the spells I found were pointing towards a history book called 'Sharp turns of Equestria'. I never even heard of such a book before!" She said, a bit ticked off at how the spells simply forced her to find reference from a different source rather then tell her who made them. However, she soon noticed Luna's confused look.
"It is quite strange of thou to mention this book. We have taken it into our personal chamber for further study just the night before." That message definitely took Twilight by surprise. She sat down on her hind legs where she was standing and blinked a few times.
"Huh... Guess I won't be finding my answers tonight then..." She then slowly said, not particularly to the princess, but more to herself. "Sorry for being so rude, princess Luna." The unicorn finally said, looking up at the alicorn.
"Rude? Thou have not done anything that could be considered rude, Twilight Sparkle." The moon princess replied more calmly, giving a light smile before seeming to remember something.
"Ah yes, we were asked to inform thou of the time. It hath been 3AM as we entered the library."
"Oh wow, it's that late already? Guess I lost more time then I thought when looking for the books..." She replied, standing back up. "Thank you for telling me, Princess Luna. I need to wake up early tomorrow for our train so I'll be going. I hope to see you again; it was refreshing to actually talk to you." She said with a smile, an infectious one from the looks of things.
"It hath been good to meet thou as well, dear Twilight Sparkle. Perhaps we could meet again soon. Good night."
Twilight wished her a good night as well and walked back towards the spells section, putting the book she had been levitating this whole time back in its place. She remembered it's name and gone down between the shelves, solving the archive maze to get to the door without much trouble. Once there, she stopped giving magic to the gem and pushed the door, walking out and going down the red carpet. It was already half past three, so she was already falling behind her own schedule. She returned the gem to the librarians and they quickly exchanged parting words before she left.
She found her old room right next to Pinkie's, the girls all asleep at this point. It was left like she loved it, not too fancy but still having a certain feeling to it. She yawned audibly once inside, her body's needs finally getting the upper hoof. She climbed into her bed and loved the feeling of the soft mattress under her body, combined with the puffy pillow and warm cover. It drowned out the last thought that was in her head that appeared during her trip back to her room as it echoed one last time before sleep dispelling it completely.
"I didn't notice Princess Luna at the Gala..."