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Chapter 1 - Bookworm2,225 words
Chapter 2 - The Fetch2,098 words
Chapter 3 - To Draw from the Source2,254 words

Chapter 1 - Bookworm

In the end, death finds us all. From the lowliest insect skittering across the earthy forest floor, to the highest mountain, standing stalwart under whipping winds and the unrelenting sun. Across the eons and beyond the heavens, there have been those who quested like heroes, seeking to conquer this enemy of the living. Myriad beings from an endless number of civilizations and races all drove themselves to become more than just a participant in the cycle of the life, they sought mastery over it. All attempts were met with failure, and more often than not, a grim submission to that very circle whose bounds they tried to step outside of.

It is commonly believed that the Alicorns were the only species known to ever wield immortality in Equestria, and all the world. This, of course, was an exaggeration. The princesses have incredible longevity, yes, but eventually even they will succumb to the grave, be it by disease, age, or injury.

Surely, if not even they can avoid death, no one can, right?

The Royal Library in Canterlot was a veritable paradise for Twilight, whose towering shelves and stacks of books were like the palm trees and limestone cliffs of some distant tropical island.

“Dragons, dragons, dragons... aha! Dragons!” the lavender librarian exclaimed as she found the section of the library she had been searching for. Her young assistant, was going through what appeared to be a growth spurt, so Twilight, being the bookworm she is, dove immediately into her library’s repertoire on dragons. With a resounding zero books on the species, she found herself forced to visit her home city of Canterlot in search of the knowledge she needed.

So here the magician found herself, her dragon napping back home while she stalked the elusive Dracopedia. She couldn’t be more content.

Twilight eagerly bounced into the draconian archive, setting her saddlebags down at a nearby table. She ogled at the colossal wall of books before her, mesmerized by its monolithic number of books, waiting for her prying hooves to caress their covers. The sheer amount of knowledge on dragons was staggering, but it was nothing in comparison to the immensity of what Equestrian society didn’t know.

Twilight dragged the rolling ladder over with a bit of magic, scampering up like a mouse, desperate for crumbs atop the dinner table. Her eyes scanned the bookcase for what she desired, systematically reading titles on book spines and savoring the flavor of boundless knowledge at her hooftips.

Her wandering eye fell on one volume that seemed out of place. It was a tattered old book, with no title written on its spine. The mare huffed, pulling out the book with her magic and gazing over its cover. Upon it was nothing at all. A completely bland, what appeared to be leather surface looked back at her. She cringed a little at holding the tanned skin book, knowing very well where leather came from

“A leather book? That’s... monstrous.”

Forgetting the Dracopedia, she stepped down from the stepladder and brought the tome back with her to the table. Twilight set the book down, donning her reading glasses and preparing to devour whatever this book had to offer. A whisk of magic flopped the hard cover open, revealing a blank page. She furrowed her brow, turning the next page. Empty. Frustration drove her to wildly whip through the pages, all of which had nothing printed upon them.

“What’s this stupid book doing in the archives if there’s nothing in it!” Twilight growled at no one in particular.

A loud ‘shh!’ came from another pony sitting on the far side of the small section. Twilight smiled sheepishly and shrunk down into her seat. With a sigh, she rose out of her chair and returned to the sliding ladder, deciding to find the Dracopedia and learn ways to help Spike feel more comfortable during his molting, rather than waste time staring at an empty book.

Once more she dove into the shelves, tunneling through irrelevant texts and scanning order tags. At last, with a grin plastered on her face, Twilight pulled the book she sought out from among the others, levitating it with her back to the table. When she sat down, however, something caught her eye. She had left the empty book open, and an errant breeze had blown through the pages, landing on a page with a single, unusual glyph inked in the center.

Curiosity overcoming her, she flipped through the next few pages, but found nothing. The entire contents of the book was that single glyph. The mare pushed the Dracopedia aside, peering closely at the enigmatic symbol. Her mind was blank for a moment, before an idea struck her. She bounded off, heading for the section of the library containing ancient languages and scripture.

Not a moment later, she had returned with a dozen reference books on ancient ideography and symbolism. How Celestia’s prized student managed to find those books faster than the Dracopedia, she wasn’t quite sure. She blamed it on lazy librarian assistants.

Twilight popped open the first book, The Omnibus of Ancient Symbols, Ideographs, and Runes.

“It looks rather like the old troll scratchings, but what would a troll be doing with a book?” she wondered.

Turning the pages, the lavender unicorn found the ancient troll section. She arranged the books side by side, comparing the mysterious glyph to the wide array of trollish letters and symbols. They were indeed similar, but she could not identify this particular glyph, and it didn’t completely fit the overall theme that the troll’s used when they wrote on stone.

“What in Equestria could it be?”

She huffed, the foreleg that had been supporting her head lazily fell across the page, landing on top of the symbol. A subtle warmth snaked through her leg, growing more intense with every second, reminding her of the heat one felt during an embrace. She snatched her foreleg away, staring at symbol beneath. It seemed liquid now, jiggling and undulating as if it were projected on the surface of a pond rather than paper. The unicorn’s mouth worked, but nothing came out as she gawked at the page. She hesitantly reached out with a hoof, prodding the letter and reeling away as it rippled on the page.

Twilight looked up, her eyes darting about the room. That other pony had since left, leaving her alone in the dragon section of the archives. Casting her gaze down, the student prodded the letter once more with her hoof, eliciting another watery reaction from the glyph.

“Well this is certainly interesting,” Twilight mumbled, still staring perplexed at the tome before her, “I suppose I’ll just take this with me. It’s not like they’d store important or dangerous texts in a place where any old pony could access it, right?”

She giggled nervously at her own attempt to assure herself. Scooping up the Dracopedia and her unusual new subject of study, Twilight saddled up and went to the front desk to check them out.

“Ah, hello there Twilight! It’s so good to see you again!” the old librarian smiled warmly at her as she approached the front desk.

“Hello Inkwell, I’d like to check out these two books please,” she said, returning the smile.

“Alright, let’s see what we have here. Ooh, the Dracopedia! Whatever do you need this for?”

“Oh well, Spike is going through a growth spurt, and his molting is making him uncomfortable. I figured I’d help him out, since he’s been such a good little assistant to me.”

“I do miss that little dragon, he was such a joy to have around, though his fire wasn’t always so pleasant,” the old mare said in a low voice, grinning at the younger unicorn.

“Well he’s gotten a lot better with that, he almost never burns things he’s not supposed to!” Twilight chuckled.

“Well, what is this here? An empty book? What in Equestria is this doing in the archive?” Inkwell hummed at the bland book, flipping through its pages, then looked back up to Twilight, “Why did you want to check this out?”

“Oh well, I saw it was empty and I, uh... I wanted to try writing a book! So I figured I could just take it off the archive’s hooves...” the student forced her best smile, panic breaking loose in her head.

The old mare shrugged at her, “Eh, alright, it’s yours! Here you go, and when you finish that book and it becomes a famous piece of literature, you be sure to send a copy here!”

“Of course, have a nice day Inkwell!” Twilight said as she backed out the library doors, heaving a sigh of relief as the door closed behind her.

The walk home from Canterlot had exhausted Twilight, and the anticipation of studying the mysterious book further hadn’t helped make the journey feel any shorter. She trudged up the stairs, noting spike still passed out on the couch, and made her way into the library’s inner sanctum. Collapsing on her bed, the mare pulled out the blank book and opened it, looking for that strange, liquid symbol.

As she turned the pages, it became obvious that the symbol was gone. Twilight scowled at the book, but an idea dawned on her. She left the book open, and gently blew on the side, lifting and turning the pages with her breath. Empty pieces of paper flipped by, until one with the single, unknown symbol landed open for her to see.

Grinning at her own brilliance, she laid her hoof down on the glyph, feeling that familiar warmth once again run up her foreleg. Removing her hoof revealed the rippling behavior, mystifying the mare to no end.

“If wind made the book reveal the symbol, maybe it’ll do something more...” Twilight pondered as she stared at the mystery before her.

She inhaled slowly, then gently blew across the page, over the glyph. Much to her surprise, the symbol seemed to spill and slide across the page, and in its wake hundreds of other glyphs flew out, erupting across the page in an ideographic tsunami.

The paper turned black with letters, until many of them faded into nothingness. Those that remained ordered themselves into lines and paragraphs, with accompanying charts and graphs. The letters remained illegible to her, but the unicorn noticed that the lines formed what appeared to be a list. Next to each entry was another word, written in either green or red ink. She frowned at the writing as she levitated the book along with writing materials over to her desk.

Twilight sat and began taking notes on the foreign alphabet, recording each unique glyph and noting how words were separated and the characteristics of each individual symbol. The letters were simply in design, but recurring attributes appeared in all of them. There were never more than four strokes per design, and each stroke was straight. Not a curve was in sight, nor were there any horizontal lines; each line either went vertical or diagonal on a forty five degree angle. Furthermore, each ‘word’ or ‘sentence’ was sandwiched in between two horizontal lines on the top and bottom, running the whole length of what was written. Words that were adjacent to others above and below them shared one of the horizontal rules.

The exhausted pony let loose a big yawn, and in the process, accidentally blew on the letter coated pages, knocking them away into whatever oblivion awaited them. She stared dumbly at the pages, now devoid of any writing whatsoever. Several moments were spent steaming before she tried blowing on the pages again, once more revealing that singular ‘cover rune’ as she had come to call it.

She ‘restarted’ the book again by touching the symbol and blowing its watery contents across the pages. Once more, the list formulated out of the mess it created, letting her resume her study. She made sure to breathe away from the book whenever the need made itself apparent.

Returning to her notes, Twilight discovered her quill had gone dry. She quickly dipped it in her well to continue her observations. She pushed the quill to the paper, but instead of writing, it slid right into the book. The letters on the tome’s pages began to jumble and jiggle as those on her notepaper did the same. Out of the runic nonsense, Equestrian words formed, becoming readable, if not messy, in mere moments.

For what seemed the hundredth time today, Twilight stared at the book in amazement. The list that had puzzled her minutes before, now revealed itself to be a set of names, in alphabetical order. Next to some of the names was the word ‘alive’ in green ink, while the vast majority had ‘deceased’ in red. A frightened look grew on the student's face as she saw the sheer number of names labeled with the latter.

In among the vast list of names, was one she least expected to see.

Applebloom.

This was more just writing an idea down than anything, I don't know if I'll continue with this, but if you guys like it, then chances are I'll keep going.

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