//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: Library Research // Story: Post-Traumatic // by Jordan179 //------------------------------// The Library of the Castle of Friendship was now familiar to Twilight Sparkle, almost as well-known to her as had been the Golden Oak Library, the one she had lost to Tirek the Annihilator. In a sense, any library was Twilight's home and native environment; books were voyages of adventure, and libraries the places where one began the voyages of the mind. Nevertheless, some books -- and some libraries -- were more special to Twilight than others. She had spent over four years of her life living in the Golden Oak Library, and it had become a very special place to her. She had personally-selected many of the books, read all of them, and annotated a good number of them. The building itself, crafted from a living tree by Earth Pony magic, had become dear to her. It had been the first real home she had all to herself and her baby brother Spike: before then, she had lived in a Palace suite at Canterlot, and before that, at home with her parents in the Sparkle Town House. At the Golden Oak Library she had assembled for the first time with her new friends on the Quest of the Elements of Harmony, and there too had begun many of their other adventures together. They had met there to plan their strategies; more often, simply to enjoy the company of one another. It had been the home stable of their little herd. It still pained her to reflect that the Golden Oak Library was gone for ever. Twilight knew something of the bloody history of Tirek; she had heard it from the Royal Pony Sisters, who had in turn heard it from Wind Whistler and Firefly, who had fought the hosts of the demon centaur in a lost age six thousand years ago, when only the coming of The Megan had saved Ponykind from extermination at the monster's hooves. In his time Tirek had destroyed cities, nations, whole species. Compared to that, what was one single suburban library? That day, Twilight Sparkle had truly learned the lesson which Princess Luna had once tried to teach her, regarding the difference between statistics and tragedies. All that vast suffering, far crueller though it had assuredly been to the actual victims at the time, was emotionally as nothing to Twilight Sparkle compared to the destruction of her own library, her own home. Sometimes she felt ridiculous for this reason, but it was nothing more than the truth. Even the incredible deed performed by Discord and Pinkie Pie, traveling through time into their own personal pasts and braving the lash of Paradox upon their own selves, just to save some of her books, could not entirely take away the sting of loss for Twilight Sparkle, the horror at just how transient might prove what seemed the firmest and most secure portions of her life. Somehow, despite all she'd faced, the idea that something might destroy her books had seemed unthinkable. Though it had, of course, very much reconciled her with Discord regarding his original betrayal. She was coming to realize that in some ways the Draconequus, for all his vast intellect and millennia of life and experience, was less cunning chessmaster than cranky colt, especially when he lashed out at others. And she was also coming to realize that he was actually her friend, though a very annoying one. (It also made it obvious to her how much Pinkie Pie loved her, though this was less of a surprise). She was coming to like her new library, though. It was physically huge, a vast circular chamber with crystalline branch-like extensions of the Castle-Tree buttressing the walls (and, Twilight suspected, possibly serving other purposes), and six rows of huge bookshelves -- each shelf large and sturdy enough for a Pony to stand in, amenable to sub-shelving should she decide to install such, climbing the walls. Great high windows provided ample light by day, and by night (as was currently the case) the room was illuminated by the castle's own magelighting. The room was large enough for a full-grown adult Dragon to occupy, though he would have been a bit cramped. There were numerous side-halls, into which she might organize studies and special collections. It was larger than the main libraries of many cities. It was very obvious to Twilight that the Tree of Harmony had grown all this for her, in full awareness of her needs and desires, probably by reading them through her connection with her Element. This, too, made Twilight Sparkle suspect that the Castle had functions beyond the obvious ones of home and fortress; she wondered at times if the whole building were not in fact, a gigantic crystalline calculating and data storage device, created by the same sort of scientific sorcery that had raised the Crystal Palace and the Great Library. This struck her as strange -- wasn't the Harmony a force long antedating the Crystal Empire? Or was it something that had sprung into existence only after the Cataclysm? These were questions to which as of yet she had no answers. As of yet. The recent revelation of the vast, interactive holographic map of Equestria, capable of zooming down to the display of individual structures of interest, such as the Pie Rock Farm, supported her speculations that the Castle was intelligent, possibly in some sense alive, and linked in communication with the Tree of Harmony itself. Either the Castle, or the Tree -- if there were in truth any meaningful difference between the two manifestations of the Harmony -- seemed to be able to scry events at least all over Equestria, and organize responses to them. Twilight had explored Our Town after Starlight Glimmer's defeat, and detected the thaumic residue of a powerful scryshield -- obviously meant to keep Princess Celestia from finding it. The Castle had apparently seen right through that shield as if it hadn't even been there. That implied both power, and sophistication in its use. The Harmony, as a force, was at least as strong as any one Alicorn, maybe as strong as all of them put together. It had, after all, enabled them to decisively defeat Tirek, even swollen with the power of millions of Ponies, including all four Alicorns, plus that of Discord. And it was directed by an intelligence -- perhaps not a Pony intelligence, but one which seemed quite friendly to Ponykind. Twilight as yet had no need of sub-shelving, but she had filled many of the main shelves. Celestia and Luna had generously donated many books to her from their own personal libaries, the main Palace library, the Academy, and the libraries of the University of Canterlot. Cadance and Shining Armor had provided numerous rare old books from the Great Library in the Crystal City. There had been the books Discord and Pinkie Pie had managed to save from the Golden Oak Library. And numerous public and private organizations had donated books to Twilight, in gratitude for her defeat of Tirek. In truth, the Friendship Castle Library was far bigger and more complete than any Twilight had ever before possessed, or even managed. Right now, Twilight Sparkle was very glad of this fact. Because the Golden Oak Library's collection had been much too limited to have permitted her to do what she was doing right now. Which was, writing a complete report to Princess Celestia regarding her experiences at Our Town. Including the deeper background. Twilight had written the first draft of the report on the train ride back to Ponyville, of course. There was no sense in letting all that time go to waste, not when it was important to ensure that Princess Celestia was properly apprised of the danger represented by Starlight Glimmer. There was no sense in simply sleeping, or brooding about what she had undergone. The first was yielding to base needs when there was duty to be done, which was neither the way of the Twilights nor the Nights, her maternal and paternal families. And the second was simply irrational. But the first draft lacked certain things. It lacked, for instance, the sort of things she might learn from conducting research into what Starlight Glimmer had done before becoming an insane warlock. Super-powered magic villainy is not, after all, not the sort of career path onto which most Ponies are placed by their proud parents. And it is also the sort of career which requires not only great intelligence, but also a very special sort of education. The typical Unicorn can manipulate small objects right in front of her nose to perform arts and crafts; she has neither the might nor the knowledge to do something such as rip loose a Cutie Mark, and its associated Talent, from one's soul. Twilight had already found out where Starlight Glimmer had studied magic, and that made it fairly obvious to her from just what source Starlight had developed the Spell of Sameness. In fact, Twilight had suspected this almost immediately after Starlight had first cast the Sameness on her, though this knowledge did her little good after the fact, as she would have needed the very abilities which Starlight had just stripped from her, in order to cast any counterspell. And, of course, Starlight had already done her worst; Twilight protecting herself now would have been closing the cage door after the monkeys had fled, to employ a Zebrican proverb. She had amused herself during her captivity trying to work out a counterspell -- it was more difficult than it would have normally been, without her Talent for Magic, but Twilight's high intelligence was innate and her theoretical understanding of magic the result of long study, and the Sameness had only slightly reduced her intellect: even crippled by Starlight's spell, Twilight was still far, far smarter than were most Ponies. She didn't dare write down her notes, for fear that Starlight might have their cell searched -- but, even under the dark cloud of the Sameness, Twilight's memory was just short of eidetic. Twilight had worked out the counterspell, and gotten some use out of it -- she had woven it into the defensive shield she had used to shield the rebelling Our Towners against the warlock's wrath. Starlight might or might not realize it, but unless she struck by surprise or devised a sufficiently-different variant, she would never be able to employ the Sameness on Twilight, or anypony she was protecting, ever again. But of course she grasped the basic principle of the Sameness. It was a terrible perversion of a spell she had miscast -- and then properly cast -- a year and a half ago, in the autumn of 1503. Starswirl the Bearded's unfinished final spell, the Spell of Destiny. The spell that had given her the final knowledge she needed to Ascend and become an Alicorn. That provided the starting point of Twilight's researches. For there were only a few possible sources for that spell -- very few, if as Twilight believed, Starswirl had devised it by studying Celestia herself, and Celestia's link to her Cosmic Self. Most mages did not have the deep and personal trust of an Alicorn. So it was unlikely that any other mages -- no, not even Meadowbrook -- had developed anything like the Spell of Destiny. She considered all sorts of complex magical formulae for tracing Starlight's path. She had, after all, some of her personal possessions, though unfortunately Starlight had been fairly careful to burn her hair and hoof clippings, depriving Twilight of the classic tools to find a Pony who didn't want to be located. By now, however, Starlight had probably renewed her scryshields, which would make retrocognition against her very difficult. In the end, Twilight did something much simpler. She turned and said: "Spike, could you get me that complete set of the yearbooks from Princess Celestia's Academy for Gifted Unicorns? Um ..." she considered Starlight Glimmer's apparent age "... starting with the ones from 1470 to 1480." Her first guess had been spot-on. It had taken only a brief perusal of the "Special Achievements" section for 1475 to find out who Princess Celestia had selected for a special protege that year. Twilight sighed. "What's wrong, Twilight?" asked Spike. Twilight showed him the picture of a cute filly standing next to Princess Celestia. The picture was a colored sketch, of course -- color photography hadn't come in yet when this yearbook had been printed. The coloration was accurate, though. The filly was pale purple with a long streaked purple and light blue mane, done up with cute little white bows. Her Cutie Mark was next to the picture: a purple star with blue and white streams, making the filly's identity obvious even if the picture had not been captioned. Her deep blue eyes were happy and innocent as she learned that she was about to become Princess Celestia's special student. Look at her, thought Twilight Sparkle. She could almost be one of the Cutie Mark Crusaders. How could she have become the monster I met? What went wrong for her? "Cute filly," Spike commented, examining the picture. Then his eyes panned down to the accompanying text. "Starlight Glimmer!" he gasped. "But isn't that ..." "Yes," she said. "She didn't start out evil, Spike. Nopony does." "She was chosen just like you!" said Spike. His eyes were huge. "Exactly," said Twilight. "Just like me. And just like Sunset Shimmer ... and Dawn Starfall." "Wait a moment," pointed out Spike. "The names ..." "Yes, Spike," agreed Twilight. "All from the Light Clan. Our clan -- though Dawn would have a bend sinister in her coat of arms, if she had one. I'll bet you, Spike, that somewhere, filed in the Palace Archives, there's some old prophecy that a mare from our clan would be the one to free Princess Luna from Nightmare Moon. I wonder who made it? Starswirl himself? Or somepony else? It doesn't really matter, now does it?" "You're saying ..." Spike looked incredulous. "Yep," replied Twilight. "Celestia's been looking for a while for a Chosen One who could save her Sister." She sighed. "Not that I blame her, really. But ... what do Sunset Shimmer, Dawn Starfall and Starlight Glimmer all have in common?" "Um ... they all went crazy and evil?" Spike scratched his chin. "Though Sunset turned around -- she was pretty reasonable and nice the last time we met her. And Dawn eventually realized that her actions were too extreme; her friends helped save her from going completely round the bend. Do you think Starlight Glimmer will stop being evil, too?" "I don't know, Spike," said Twilight. "I guess there's hope for everypony. But that's not the point." "What is the point?" he asked. "Spike, they all went crazy," pointed out Twilight. "I went crazy at one point -- when I enchanted Miss Smarty Pants. If you hadn't been there to warn Princess Celestia of what was happening, I might have gotten somepony seriously injured, even killed, fighting over that doll. I was lucky as it was that Big Mac's a really good stallion -- it's hard to geas a Pony into doing something he's really opposed to doing, and Big Mac's no murderer, so he responded to my spell with only non-lethal force. "And," she continued, "what I did was warlockry. Mind control magic is extremely illegal, and with good reason. Even if you don't kill somepony, you can very easily drive her mad that way. I'm also lucky that Princess Celestia decided that I was acting under diminished capacity myself at the time, and let me off with no more than a stern warning. The penalties for aggravated warlockry range all the way up to death, though nopony's actually been executed for the crime in many centuries. "If I had killed somepony, I might have gone mad with guilt over it. Possibly even gone Nightmare." Twilight smiled warmly at her baby brother. "I was very lucky you were there, Spike." "No problem," replied Spike, looking slightly away from her in embarrassment. Then, recovering his composure, he said proudly "I am your Number One Assistant, after all!" "That you are," Twilight smiled happily at him. Then her face fell. "Is something else wrong?" Spike asked. "No," said Twilight glumly. "The same thing that was wrong before. I was excited when I realized this, I wanted to confirm it, but now that I have ..." Her voice trailed off. "Now that you have?" asked Spike. "Spike," she said, looking at him with dismay. "How do I ask Princess Celestia why she keeps driving her special students mad?" Spike gasped at the thought. To that question, he had no answer.