//------------------------------// // 5.6 - Books into the Breach // Story: Quantum Vault // by WishyWish //------------------------------// July 15, 2015 Ponyville -- Palace of Friendship Wednesday Afternoon Quantum felt a lightness in her saddle bags. For reasons she couldn’t quite place, she had wanted to take the small, lacy journal with her, but Twilight had convinced her to let sleeping ponies lie. It was for the best. Now, the quartet of would-be adventurers stood under the looming shadow of the Palace of Friendship as it looked, from two of their perspectives, a quarter-century ago. Quantum felt that it didn’t look all that different from photographs in her own time, if you didn’t count the broken windows and the ominous snapping of torn, singed banners in the breeze. “Aaaanyway,” Spike, still bedecked in his bucket helmet, pillow armor, and hoofball mitt, spoke up, “Maybe we should rethink this. I mean there’s books at the lab. A-and the bookstore! Did you know we have a bookstore in town?” “The bookstore burned to the ground...” Derpy, hovering nearby with her spear-mop pinched between her hooves, muttered sadly. “You’re not help-ing!” Spike declared. “I mean there’s gotta be books all over town, right Doc? We should search the town first! And the hills! There might be books all over the countryside! Did you ever think of that?” Twilight was trying to vain to nose Spike encouragingly, but her muzzle kept passing right through his shoulder. Quantum sighed. “I told you both that you could have stayed at the lab.” Derpy furrowed her brow, smiled that lopsided smile of hers, and saluted. Spike scratched the back of his neck, thought about it, and finally shook his head. “...I couldn’t do that.” Quantum and her holographic mentor smiled the exact same smile. Quantum stuck her minty hoof out. “All for one?” Spike wisely laid his claw atop the offered hoof before Derpy could slam hers down upon it. Twilight, hooking her lip up in a grin, phased her foreleg through the joining. “And one for all,” Spike smirked. “Let’s do this thing.” Five minutes later the troupe was making its way through one of the many empty, echoing corridors Twilight’s home was famous for. Sunlight bled in from shattered stained glass windows wherever they went, bathing the interior of the palace in multicolored light. “The library is just around the corner,” Spike commented, Twilight shook her head, tapping furiously at Hal’s device. “I’m not detecting any ponies around, Cutie, but don’t trust in that. And the book you’re looking for is probably in the second library.” “Second library?” Quantum scrunched her muzzle. “What about it?” Spike asked. “The book,” Quantum quickly continued, “It’s in the second library.” Spike stared. “How do you know?” “I just...have this feeling,” The minty mare smiled, “Trust me on this.” The questionably armored dragon hesitated. “Ooookay Doc, whatever you say. But the second library is where Twilight keeps all the books we hadn’t gotten around to sorting yet. It’s in the basement.” “The basement?” Quantum shot her mentor a look. “Seriously?” Twilight’s shrug and her hay-eating grin deepened. “That’s what I said, yeesh,” Spike huffed, turning down a hallway in the opposite direction of the library proper. Quantum descended the stairs behind Spike, who had conveniently lit his own torch, into a scene straight out of Frankenstein. With Derpy hovering in the air, the clopping of Quantum’s hooves echoed off of every stone surface, and the narrow stairs that were in desperate need of a banister plunged into the membrane of blackness such that she had no idea just what she was descending into. “This looks like a dungeon,” Quantum scoffed. “Oh,” Spike smiled obliviously as he led the way, “That’s because it is.” “And...why exactly is there a dungeon in the Palace of Friendship?” Spike didn’t bother to favor the conversation with a backwards glance. “A palace is a castle. Castles have dungeons. It’s like a rule. We also have forty-seven bathrooms, a room where we store all the armor that popped up with this place even though we have no guards to wear it, and everypony calls our cupboard a larder. Oh, and flying buttresses.” Quantum raised a dubious brow at her two companions, who were giggling like schoolfilles over the phrase ‘flying buttresses’. She rolled her eyes and groaned. “Anyway,” Spike scoffed, “There’s nothing to be scared of. I’ve been down here a million times. There’s nothing down here but old books.” “And clouds!” Derpy cried cheerfully. “What?” Spike lifted a brow. “Derpy...we’re in the basement of Twilight’s palace. Twilight doesn’t keep clouds in her basement.” “Clouds!” Derpy repeated, pointing with her spear-mop. Sure enough, the ceiling that had climbed above them as a result of their steady descent was coated in a measure of dreary gray storm clouds, so close to the color of the stone itself that they’d scarcely have been noticed except to the trained eye of a pegasus. Spike raised his torch up as far as he could and scratched the back of his head. “I didn’t put clouds down here. You think there’s a hole somewhere and they leaked in?” Quantum was about to dismiss that comment as ridiculous, when Twilight, who had been silently following the group on account of her hooves making no sound against the stairs, spoke up. “Cutie, Spike’s right. I don’t store rain clouds in the second library. Something’s wrong. Be careful.” “Twilight...doesn’t store clouds down here.” Quantum repeated warily, scanning the sky through her interphased corrective lenses. “Huh?” Spike replied, “How do you know? Well, granted, all we usually have down here are...” he trailed off when he passed the torch’s light out into the room. “...books.” The entire chamber was a veritable ocean of haphazardly discarded books, such that a pony would have to wade through them to the shoulder just to move around. “...woah,” Spike blinked. “Hey! I bet there’s a book here about everything!” Derpy spun gleefully through the air and playfully dove at the book-sea. “I need a good rock muffin cookbook!” Quantum touched her hoof to her forehead and sighed. “Derpy there are no books about rock--just forget it, can you fly up there and check out those clouds?” “Roger dodger!” Derpy saluted. Spike was testing the ‘shore’ by kicking at some of the books there. Quantum used the distractions to turn back to Twilight. “How are we supposed to find one single book in all this mess?” Twilight only smiled. She pointed wordlessly at Spike’s back. “Him? Look I know he’s your assistant and you think the world of him, and he’s really a nice guy and all, but--” Twilight held up a hoof the way she used to when guest lecturing. Quantum had long since trained herself to shut her mouth in response to the gesture. “You don’t know Spike like I do. He can smell words like a bloodhound. In the fourteen-thousand, nine hundred and seventy four times I asked him to find a book for me, he had a ninety-four point one percent success rate.” Quantum looked exasperated, “You counted them all?” “Of course!” Twilight grinned, levitating the control device like a notepad, “Keeping good records is one of the most important things a pony can do! Other than eating and sleeping, that is.” “Now I know why they say what they say about you...” Quantum trailed off and turned to Spike, who was still testing the ‘water’ with his foot. “Hey Spike, you think you can narrow down our quarry a bit?” Spike blanched. “Uhh...seriously? I don’t even know what we’re looking for.” Quantum looked at Twilight. Prompted for details, the princess began tapping on the device. “It’s a thin, yellow bound book measuring approximately nine by twelve inches, with somewhere around two hundred and sixty pages.” Quantum relayed the details. Spike curled his lip and folded his arms. “What’s the title?” Twilight shrugged, and Quantum resisted the urge to ask the princess how she could possibly have all that information and not know the title of the book. Thankfully, Spike only grinned and waved his claw dismissively. “Aw, don’t worry about it. Twilight used to give me scatterbrained challenges like that all the time. Wow Doc, it’s like you can channel her or something.” “I-I am not scatterbrained!” Twilight complained. Spike naturally ignored the outburst and scanned the horizon until he brightened and pointed at the far wall. “There!” Hundreds of yards away, on the other side of the book-sea, was a small platform with a single, narrow bookshelf still filled with books. The area around it was glowing slightly with a faint raspberry luminescence that reminded Quantum of...Twilight. “You’re sure?” The minty mare squinted, trying in vain to make out a yellow spine amidst all the others. “Yep!” Spike puffed out his chest, “I’m the Chief Assistant to the Princess of Friendship! Count on me!” Twilight smiled softly, mouthing the phrase ‘oh Spike’, while Quantum lifted her head and whistled. “Derpy! We need a lift!” Derpy’s lopsided grin popped up from behind a storm cloud that blended so perfectly with her coat that she looked like a merrily floating parade balloon. She saluted again, mop in her teeth, and swooped down to the base of the stairs. Spike hopped on her back. Quantum hesitated. “Uhh...hmm...” The three of them exchanged defeated glances until Derpy’s eyes widened and her mouth formed an ‘O’ shape. Dropping the mop into her hoof, she curled her foreleg around it and offered the head end to Quantum. “...you’re joking.” Quantum huffed. Seconds later, Quantum found that the bubbly gray pegasus was indeed not joking. Dangling from the end of the mop and bracing her pinching hooves, she cast her gaze on the book-sea below as though she could actually drown in it. Derpy was holding the other end in her mouth again. Apparently she had strong teeth. Rock muffins indeed. As they flew, Quantum surveyed the rest of the area. There were a few other platforms peeking out from under the ‘waves’ like islands, but aside from their goal, only one other bore anything of note. Some distance away, the other platform bore three suits of the guard armor Spike had mentioned before. Quantum thought they would indeed make regal garb for a cadre of knights, bedecked as they were in satin baldrics, fine plumage, and colorful livery emblazoned with Twilight’s cutie mark. It seemed a shame that they would likely end up disassembled and tossed in a room on some future date. Quantum almost pointed at the platform containing the bookshelf before she remembered she was holding onto the end of a mop for dear life. Instead she merely nodded. “Set us down here.” The minty unicorn-turned stallion scientist grinned confidently. She had gotten herself so worried over nothing. This was going to be easy. The sharp cry from above told her better. In an instant, Quantum found herself plummeting into the sea of books, coming down on their spines with a hard smack. She yelped and flailed, the shifting ‘currents’ immediately burying her up to her neck for her trouble. Frantically attempting to take stock of the situation, she first found Spike. The little dragon was dazed and rubbing his rump, but he was otherwise seated safely on the platform. His torch, still burning, lay a few hooves away. Quantum gasped and ducked, nearly bowled over by the sudden shock of colors that whizzed by her head. The zooming shape pulled up from a perfect nose-dive and doubled back in the air. Sticking out its hind legs, it bucked Derpy like a cloud and sent her sprawling. To her credit, the ditsy gray pegasus recovered quickly and deflected the next assault with her spear-mop, capturing both herself and her assailant in mid-air as they fought for the makeshift weapon. “That...” Twilight was hovering nearby and staring, dumbfounded, “...Rainbow Dash...?” Quantum stared. The pony locked in combat with Derpy was not sticking to her. Its coat swirled with cyan blue and streaks of gleaming white, while its eyes flashed violently back and forth from magenta to cornflower blue. Its mane, stylishly curled and clashing badly with its freeflowing tail, was every color of the spectrum, and upon its flank it bore a mark of a rainbow lightning bolt piercing a large, elegant diamond crystal. “A-and...Rarity...!?” Twilight gaped and began furiously tapping at her device. She needed no confirmation of what she was seeing - she just wanted an excuse not to look at it. Quantum was dumbstruck at the spectacle above. “Is she--are they why all these clouds are down here? Why would they do that, though?” Twilight flattened her ears and couldn’t watch. “The clouds are out of habit. The place is out of...loyalty. That’s why they’re here.” She bit her lip, “Quantum, get that book. M-make this end...” Coming back to herself, Quantum turned and began to plow, peddle, kick, balance, and swim her way through the deep coating of books that had filled the entire chamber to at least twice the depth of the tallest draft ponies. She could see Spike staring upwards, looking mortified. He mouthed the word ‘Rarity’. Then he pointed and cried out. “It’s Raridash! Look out!” Aptly named, Raridash ended the short midair confrontation by bucking Derpy silly again. She then did a graceful, high speed loop up to the clouds, landed on them, and began stomping atop them viciously as if calling for a thunderstorm. “Generosity!!” She cackled in an elegant, psychotic voice. Expecting to find herself suddenly soaked, Quantum was instead drenched in...more books, that fell from the clouds in a torrential downpour. She was cracked in the forehead by at least two collections of ancient Equestrian literature and one dictionary before she had the wherewithal to cover her head and let her forelegs take the brunt of the assault. “Not good!” Twilight shouted over the clatter of hundreds of falling tomes. With books falling right through her by the score, she tapped away, staring at her display. “If you trot out of here without that book, the percentage of failure shoots so high that this reality, and possibly ours, is doomed! And Tissy says for every five minutes you spend here, the one point eight percent chance that a falling book heavy enough to break your neck will hit you increases by eleven percent!” Quantum turned to look at Spike, who was still staring at Raridash as if she’d just ripped his poor little heart out of his chest and stomped on it. “Spike! The book!!” “B-book...right...” Spike muttered the words but showed little recognition. Quantum could practically see the little heart bubbles evaporating from his scales. Twilight groaned. “Rarity has always been Spike’s Achilles’ fetlock, so seeing her like this...” She turned, “Quantum, just levitate the book over. We don’t have time for this! It’s right there!” Quantum squinted, and sure enough, there was one yellow book on the third shelf from the bottom. She sighed. “...I can’t...” “Nopony’s going to see you Cutie! And it doesn’t matter anyway, this is more important!” “I CAN’T!” Quantum practically screamed. Twilight, taken aback by the outburst, waned under it. “My mother, and now you! It’s too far away! Why don’t any of you understand that I’m not a damned wizard!? I can learn the spells but I can’t make the magic, okay!? So I have to throw wrenches around instead! Can’t that be good enough!?” Twilight saw a hurtful rage in her student that, for a brief second, shed some light on Quantum’s final visit with her mother and the rash actions that started her tumbling through time. The princess’s expression softened, and she took the tone she’d sometimes taken with a frustrated Spike - the closest she’d ever come to a child of her own. “Cutie, the things you can do throwing wrenches around is a magic all its own. Don’t let me or anypony else ever tell you that you’re not a wizard. Wizards are two bits for a dozen in Equestria. You’re something special.” Quantum shut her eyes and took a calming breath. There was a cog that needed to be extracted from the machine, and nothing - no sounds, no bumps, no bruises, and no hurt feelings, were going to keep her from fixing it. Forcing it all down, she plastered a grin on her face, winked, and started for the shore. “You can do it...” Twilight smiled to herself. Quantum slapped her hooves on the stone platform just as a book the size and weight of a phone directory ricocheted off of the hard surface and went careening off into the sea. Spike, forcing himself away from his own feelings, left the aerial combat to the muffin mare and marched over to the bookshelf. “Aw, this is easy,” he blew out a breath, reaching to touch the spine of the yellow book. “We’ll be out of here in two shakes of a pony’s t--” Yanked off his feet by a sudden magical glow that enveloped his whole body, Spike was pulled up to the top of the bookshelf and slammed in the stomach so fast and hard by a pair of bucking hooves that Quantum barely saw him fly in a flailing arc into the book-sea. “Spike!!” The two mares shouted together, watching him disappear into the darkness. Quantum immediately made as if to dive back into the ‘waves’, but Twilight held out a hoof. “I’ll check on him. You get that book.” Twilight fled too quickly for Quantum to get a word in edgewise. She wondered why her teacher would be so quick to make her escape, until four leaping hooves made a slamming crack on the platform behind her. Turning, she barely had time to duck before an ensorcelled lance that clearly had come off a suit of guard armor made a pincushion out of her head. “Maaaaaaaagic--” A voice rumbled. Quantum understood. Poor Twilight’s nerves could only take so much. The mare standing before her had everything. Mottled orange and purple wings like a pegasus, a unicorn horn that flashed with the potential to fell ursas, and a lifetime of raw earth pony power in its bucking hooves. Atop its head was the familiar cowfilly hat Quantum herself had worn in Ponyville not so long ago; a jeweled crown resting on its brim. Eyes that wavered between miasmic purple and the emerald of Oz bore down on her, and a cutie mark of a starburst exploding into tiny apples seemed to cackle at her with the movement of her adversary’s flanks. Quantum backed away. “Apple...Sparkle...?” She ventured, trying in vain to establish a dialogue with any rational thought that might still lie within this diseased mockery of her teacher. “...Twijack, maybe?” ‘Twijack’ was pawing at the ground with one hoof, her hackles up and ready to charge. The constant cackling noises she was emitting sounded to Quantum like a perverted chorus of rodeo clowns, and her snorting breaths were visible even in the low glowing of the platform. Instinctively Quantum levitated a random book from the sea and held it protectively in front of her face, but the color of the glow around it changed as Twijack sent it spinning away with ease. “Books...” the creature muttered. “...booksbooksbooks!” Backed to the edge of the platform, Quantum turned to find a tide of hundreds of books heading straight for her like a wave breaking over the surf. She was engulfed and forced into a low crouch, her forelegs over her head as the heavy books smacked into her back and sides. Through the pain of the assault, she wondered if this version of her mentor even knew what books were anymore, beyond her overpowering desire to possess them. Further, Quantum wondered how much time had passed, and how long it would be before she would have her neck broken by an encyclopedia. Fumbling and kicking, she managed to break her way out of the cocoon. “Listen...” Quantum began to circle, trying to get around the amalgamation of all three tribes that stood in her way. “I don’t want any trouble...I just...need to get a book...” “Books!” Twijack snarled, “Yeeeehaww!!” Charging, Twijack spun on her heels and snapped her knees, delivering a wicked buck that Quantum had to throw herself to the floor to avoid. Aimed high, it likely would have broken her spine like a twig had it connected. The minty mare scrambled to her hooves, panting with the effort and her general sense of terror. Alone and desperate for ideas, Quantum captured the flap of her interphased leg pouch with the glow of her magic, ripped the ancient computer pad she was still carrying free, activated it, and held it in front of her attacker, praying that Twilight’s natural curiosity would buy her some time. The earth-alicorn squinted at the curious flashing thing before it, her jaw slack but her eyes fixated as though in deep thought. Not waiting for Twijack to paw at the thing, Quantum sprinted to the bookshelf, grabbed the yellow tome, and stuffed it in her saddlebag just as the computer pad, flung back by stronger magic, smacked her in the side of the head. Dazed, Quantum slumped to her knees against the bookshelf. She had the strange computer, and she had the fabled remedy book. But she was about to lose a lot more. Twijack stared down the scrawny unicorn. Then she noticed the single hole in her bookshelf. Enraged, she emitted a feral howl and summoned two lassos seemingly from nowhere. One wrapped around Quantum’s legs, held only by the force of the sorcery. The other, un-knotted and also held by magic alone, stretched like a noose around her neck. Hogtied and hanged, the rope about Quantum’s neck began stretching her off the ground just as she noticed the holographic Twilight emerging from the sea. In desperation, Twilight was trying everything from ineffectually levitating books she could not touch to simply swatting at her other self. “I can’t...ugh!” She drew up close to the mad expression on her own face, pleading with it, “Twilight...me...Applejack...think...you’ve got to think! Don’t do this! This isn’t who we are!” For a moment, Twilight thought she might be getting through. Even if she wasn’t actually in this spacetime continuum, she saw a faint glimmer in her own eyes that suggested somewhere in there was a vestige of herself, or of Applejack, who wouldn’t let this come to pass. But Twijack’s expression twisted to the point of dementia, and Quantum’s hind hooves began to only scrape at the platform beneath her. “Cutie I...” Twilight sputtered, watching Quantum gag and bat helplessly at the rope, “I’m so sorry, I...I should never have let it come to this...you and Trixie, I...should have done more, should have said more...” Quantum felt the straining agony of trying to breathe through a gradually closing windpipe. She felt a strange sense of peace looking into the heart of her sovereign, her mentor, and her friend. “...s-ok...” she managed, “...my f-faul...” Twilight wracked her brain. Thought of ways to thwart a maniacal version of her own mind. Then it hit her. “Cutie!” The princess cried, “Grab a book, any book!” With no time to question, Quantum wrapped the unsteady glow of her magic around the closest book and held it aloft. Twilight nodded at Spike’s torch, which was still flickering with a greenish-hued flame. “BURN IT!” Quantum had just enough seconds of life left to contemplate what the princess was getting at. She nabbed the torch, brought it right into Twijack’s field of view, and touched it to the dry, aged, brittle paper of the floating book. The tome was engulfed and went up in seconds. Quantum collapsed to the floor, panting and pumping her lungs, the ropes all but forgotten as Twijack desperately stamped out the fire. She bent, cradling the scorched, now unidentifiable cover. Twilight watched a tear trace its way down her twisted doppleganger’s orange cheek. On some level, she understood the emotional response. It made her wonder what was lurking at the most rudimentary base of her own personality. Twijack didn’t grieve long. Fire burning in her emerald-purple eyes, her soulless grimace put Twilight on instant high alert. Quantum was still gasping for breath. “Cutie!” She shouted again, “Hold a book hostage!” “Hold a...what?” Quantum scrunched her muzzle at the bizarre order, but when she saw the Apple-half of her opponent bearing down on her, she whipped another book off the shelf and held it before her like a talisman - this time with the torch flickering hungrily only inches away. “Back!” Quantum shouted with all the gusto of a vampire hunter, “Back! Or I’ll burn it!” As if impacting upon an invisible wall, Twijack froze, her vengeful stare simmering into the calculated gaze of a timberwolf looking for a weakness in its prey’s guard. Quantum saw a magical glow begin to wink into life around the book. In response she brought the torch so close that the edge of the book’s spine began to singe. “Let go!” She ordered. “Let go, let us leave, and nopony...no book gets hurt!” Twijack backed away. With a clattering of hooves Derpy suddenly landed on the platform. The mop in her teeth was splintered into a sharp point, her mane was a mess, and she had a number of small gashes in her coat, but she was standing tall and saluting with the pride of a Wonderbolt. Spike was lounging, dazed, on her back. He was holding his stomach and looked about to throw up, but seemed none the worse for wear. The pointed end of the mop was covered in red. Quantum stared at the mop tip, then at her companions. “You didn’t...she didn’t...I mean these creatures are still our friends...” Spike jerked his thumb towards the far platform with the stylish suits of armor. “Nah, it’s just red ink. You’d be surprised how that stuff never dries.” Quantum glanced at the far platform. The glorious costumes of the suits of armor had been purposefully thrown into disarray - mismatched colors, baldrics on their heads, feathers stuffed into their helmets, spine-up books laying all over them, and blotches of red ink tarnishing their armor. RariDash, gasping in horror, was flitting around the platform like a hummingbird. She was apparently at war with both her personalities as to how the intolerable fashion disaster should best be solved. “Wow,” Quantum gaped, “Quick thinking. Points for Derpy.” Derpy beamed under the praise from her Doctor. Spike cut in, his bucket missing; the pillow around his chest possibly what saved him from being crippled by the blow he took. “Hate to break the teary moment up,” He cringed, pointing at the snorting Twijack who seemed about to succumb to Apple family stubbornness and attack anyway. “But unless you’ve got some apple trees we can burn too, let’s get outta here!!” Derpy held out the head end of the mop. This time Quantum took it without hesitation. Halfway up the stairs Derpy’s wings succumbed to fatigue, leaving the party to hoof it the rest of the way with an enraged apple princess hot on their tails. When her companions were safely in the hallway, Quantum stood on the landing and held out the book, still with the torch licking at it. “Baaaack...” she urged, “...back and I’ll give this back to you...” Twijack backed away again. Quantum stepped through the doorway backwards, nodding as she passed Spike. “One...two...three!” As one, Quantum tossed the book right at Twijack while Spike slammed the door tightly. The group fled back to the main entrance, puffing as they ran. “I don’t hear anything!” Quantum yelled, “She could have bucked that door off its hinges by now easily!” “She won’t,” The hovering, holographic Twilight sighed. “The books are...special to her. She’ll see to them first.” Quantum hesitated, and then finally bowed her head. “...I’m sorry you had to see all that.” “Don’t worry!” Twilight brightened, “We’ll save the day yet!” The princess puffed up with confidence...and then gaped at the main entrance. Once firmly shut and in need of crashing through to make a quick escape, she noticed the hinges had failed, and one of the two massive gates was wide open. “Cutie...Quantum! Slow down!” Her attention distracted, Quantum ran until there was nowhere else to go but down. Crashing down the palace stairs, both the yellow book and Spike went flying and ended up in a heap on the dirt path outside. Spike sat up, rubbing his head. “Ugh...some pony get me the number of that horse...” He looked around...and his eyes came upon the yellow book, now lying open. He stood. Bent over. Examined it. “...what language is this?” Twilight tapped buttons furiously and scanned the book with her device, answering the dragon without being heard. “I...have no idea. And neither does Tissy. Cutie--” Twilight’s words died in her throat. At the bottom of the stairs was a heap of hopelessly tangled mint and gray. Both Derpy and the good masquerading doctor were pushing and kicking at each other...but they weren’t getting any further away. Spike swallowed. “...oh boy...”