Chapter 2
Misplaced Modifier
Twilight trotted back into Ponyville, Spike again floating alongside her as she returned to the library. "I'm going to make you as comfortable as I can, Spike, but then I have to leave."
"...Mustn't... read..."
She frowned. "Yeah. There's not much chance of that now."
Back inside the library, she headed directly upstairs to the bedroom, looking straight ahead as she passed between the many shelves of books. It wasn't that she questioned her safety—she was sure the spell had worked—but it was almost painful to look at all those spines head-on and not be able to—
Twilight sighed heavily as she tucked the mumbling Spike into his bed, securing him once more with the ribbon of magic. Confident that he was as comfortable as his restraints would allow, she went back downstairs into the library proper.
Her eyes slid over the shelves of books, noting their different sizes, thicknesses, and colors—but not their titles. The spines had interesting designs, marks she knew intellectually were words, but the spell—the "curse"—was thorough, and no comprehension remained. Every trace of literary knowledge had been wiped from her mind.
"I guess I'm stuck with what's already in my head." Twilight said it out loud because the room seemed so much... quieter without the words. She shivered in the warm air.
Stop moping, Twilight! You knew this was a one way trip. If I had stopped even for a moment to think about what I was doing, I could never have gone through with it. This was the only way to fix the situation... that I could think of. Whatever this situation is. She drew herself up and took a deep breath. Time to find out.
She set off for Sugarcube Corner.
———
Neither Mr. Cake nor the twins and their crib were where Twilight had left them. That worried her, but there was no time to start searching for them right now. Maybe Mr. Cake decided to move them somewhere safe—or just out of the heat. Hopefully, to a place without a lot of words.
Inside the bakery, things were quieter than before. There was no cloud of flour, either. They probably ran out.
In the kitchen, she found Pinkie Pie and Mrs. Cake still going through the motions of baking, though at a slower pace. With no more ingredients—except what had already covered every available surface, the two of them included—not much progress was being made. All of the bakeware was now in or around the cold oven, and every bowl and utensil had been emptied from the drawers and cabinets and lay scattered about the room. The two bakers seemed to be tiring.
Twilight waded into the mess, looking for the dropped recipe amid the spatulas, whisks, and rolling pins that had turned the kitchen floor into a slippery minefield of cooking implements. It took longer than she thought it would take to find it, as the pink card had been kicked some distance from where Mrs. Cake had dropped it and was hidden under a discarded cutting board.
It appeared blurred by liquid of some sort, or at least she thought so. Because of the spell, it was impossible for her to tell if the letters were right or not. She understood none of what was written, except that one part was obviously a list, and another part wasn't.
Twilight felt as though she was in some strange mirror world where nothing made sense. She noticed her breathing was becoming rapid and short, and she tried to calm down. This is turning out to be more unnerving than I imagined, she thought, looking back over her shoulder at the two kitchen zombies.
She took the recipe card out into the café section of the bakery. Once blotted clean with a napkin, she thought it didn't look quite so bad. She placed it on one of the small tables and sat down before it.
Now then. Let's see what we can find out.
She closed her eyes and focused her mind on the little card and its words. Magic began to flow through her, and she willed it into new shapes as it passed, directing it towards the recipe.
Tell me your secrets...
Without her vision, Twilight could feel a distortion in her magical aura as she settled it over the table. She probed at it, growing excited, and feeling a small lump overlapping the card. Suddenly it sucked in a wisp of her magic and moved.
Her eyes shot open, and there before her was a small figure.
At first, Twilight thought she saw a tiny pony completely covered with writing—but there was no pony. The words of the recipe had risen up and taken pony shape, hovering free from the medium upon which they had been transcribed: the now-blank index card.
The small figure turned to look at her with no visible expression between the delicate swirls of ink that Pinkie had once used to write instructions on how to make cupcakes.
Twilight wasn't alarmed. It didn't feel menacing or sinister. In fact, it didn't provoke any emotion from her at all. It just was.
And then just as suddenly, it wasn't.
She blinked, but the vision was gone, the words once more confined to the little pink card.
I think we're getting somewhere.
She snatched up the card and rushed out the door.
———
Waves of magic washed over the hundreds of books that filled the library, and each tome that felt wrong was yanked from its shelf and tossed into a growing pile on the floor. Twilight wasn't trying to be thorough and identify every such infected book, but she wanted to get as many as she could in one place. Not every new book was infected, but some of her own now were.
When she was done, Twilight also added the recipe card to the pile. Then she settled down on the floor in front of it and closed her eyes once more.
It appeared when I inadvertently gave it some power. Let's see if we can do that again.
It wasn't a basic flow of magic she summoned up this time—it was a torrent. She had read countless volumes describing the techniques that unicorns throughout the ages had used to gather the power for great spells. She had learned from them all—even the greatest of them all, Star Swirl the Bearded. His methods in particular could gather vast quantities of raw magic very quickly, but the unicorn that used them had to be prepared to handle the result.
Twilight had practiced.
Now the forces whirled around her, rippling her hair. The magic was invisible to the eye until shaped by will into a spell, but she didn't have any spell in mind. She summoned nothing but the power itself, raw and amorphous, and sent it flowing through the pile of books before her.
At first the magic just passed right through, but then it began to be absorbed, twisted, and structured. Twilight could feel the power taking on a new shape before her, much like it did when she cast a complex spell, but this was not a spell of her making. It was casting itself—using the power she fed it.
I hope I'm doing the right thing.
She let out a long shuddering breath as the spell's magical momentum forcefully sucked the last tendrils of power from her. She sagged, every muscle in her body sore from the stress of her mental effort. When she inhaled, the musty smell of old books that she loved so much was suddenly much stronger than before.
Even before she opened her eyes, she knew she was no longer alone.
Every book in the pile had been dislodged and lay open, blank pages fluttering and rustling in an unfelt wind. Floating above them was a figure—a figure composed of what looked like the finest ironwork filigree imaginable, thin black lines curling and crossing, so densely packed she could barely see through it.
It's beautiful.
It was a pony—life-sized this time—with a long beard and tousled mane sticking out from under a pointed hat. The spell's body, formed from the words in the books, seemed to glisten with inky wetness as it turned its head towards her. It was a familiar silhouette.
"Star Swirl?" they both said in unison.
Twilight jerked her head backwards in surprise. Its voice had been deep, resonant, and somehow wet and dusty at the same time. However, more than the voice, it was its words that had surprised her. Is it imitating me?
"Um... Hello?" she tried. It didn't echo her this time. She opened her mouth to try again—
"Hello," it said.
It's not just a static figure! I must have given the spell enough raw magic to make it temporarily capable of speech. Its shape... it must have imprinted on its caster, and that looks like—
"Who are you?" Twilight asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
"We are the guardians of Star Swirl. Keepers of the wizard's spells and tomes. We are his." The figure blinked, or at least there was a blink-like flutter to the calligraphy where the eyes should have been.
"Star Swirl's... You look like him." Twilight tipped her head to one side and the other, seeing the light shimmer over the figure's surface. The old, dry ink was once again liquid now that it was freed from the pages. However, liquid or not, the ink hung in what she could now only assume were the shapes of letters.
If this was Star Swirl's spell, it can't be evil. Can it?
"We are his. He made us." It lowered its head to look at her more closely. The rest of its body remained motionless. "You are not he? You felt as he feels. You summoned the power as he does. Are you Star Swirl?"
Twilight almost blushed at being compared—no, mistaken—for her hero, but it was neither the time nor the place for such reactions. She cleared her throat and got shakily up off the floor. "I learned from his books. He was a great wizard."
"He is the wizard. He made us." It paused. "He... was?" It seemed confused.
There's no telling how intelligent this thing is. It may not know how much time has gone by.
She chose to say her next words slowly and carefully. "A long time has passed since you were created. Thousands of years." She watched it watching her impassively. It was a rather intimidating sight, she thought. "Why are you here now, in these books? Why are you hurting my friends?"
"We are... lost. We are the guardians of the wizard. We are... his. Where is... the wizard?" Bits of the apparition were starting to float free from their fixed positions, drifting along its surface. Holes formed and closed again as thousands of words shifted.
"Um, he's not here." She hesitated. "He died long ago."
"Where is the wizard?" Its voice was getting louder, and more words were losing their places.
Oh, no... This isn't going well. I don't think it's very intelligent at all. I may have to bluff my way through this.
She pulled herself erect and used a more formal tone as she asked, "Why do you seek the wizard Star Swirl?"
The drifting words seemed to settle a bit, becoming less agitated. "We seek our words. The wizard forged our words for us to live in. Our words are gone."
She looked down at the blank pages, confused. "But the words are all right here. I mean, they were, you've—well, you're wearing the words. They haven't gone anywhere."
"These are not our words."
"But these books... Most of them are from the Canterlot Royal Library. From the Star Swirl the Bearded wing." She pointed at the pile. "These would be your books."
The figure raised its head haughtily. "We do not live in these weak pages. These are not our words. Our words are forever."
"Weak pages... forever..." Twilight began to pace back and forth before the impassive figure, thinking hard. Its head followed her motions precisely, its blinks as regular as clockwork.
"Wait," she said, coming to a halt. "You said 'forged' just now, yes?"
"Yesss." Its affirmative was the dry rustle of old parchment.
She stood before it and asked, "What exactly are your words?"
The figure drew itself up, and when it spoke the words seemed to emanate from the very walls themselves, powerful and persuasive.
"Ye who enter here protect these tomes. They are your future. They are your past. Keep these words safe from harm. Help them to be read by those who seek their wisdom. Teach the words. And bring Ye not plums here."
"Plums?!"
The guardian looked down at her and said matter-of-factly, "The wizard did not like plums. Their juice stained the pages. He spoke of this often." Twilight thought there might have been some trace of emotion in that last statement, but she couldn't be sure.
Twilight shook her head, a smile growing on her face. "I know those words! I've seen them before... somewhere in the Star Swirl the Bearded wing." She started to pace once more before stopping short. "The plaques!"
She did a little hop in the air and cantered back to the guardian. "There are small brass plaques all around the library, on every shelf and wall, and all of them say the same thing." She rubbed her mane with one hoof, a crooked smile on her face. "You get so used to them, they fade into the background. I had even forgotten about the 'plums' bit. I always wondered about that..."
Twilight looked up at the guardian, its words once more steady as iron. "There must be hundreds of you. You each lived in one of those little brass plaques. You were spells Star Swirl created to enforce his rules."
"Yesss."
"And now... and now they're renovating the library—they must have taken down the plaques!"
"Yesss."
"So you moved into the books themselves because you had no other words to live in."
"Yesss."
"And some of the books were sent here! But... how did you end up in Pinkie's recipe?"
The guardian shifted slightly, looking towards the library door. "We searched for our words. We looked for new words that could have been ours. Directive words."
"Yesss—I mean, yes... I see! Words that describe actions, rules, or instructions. And once inside, your effect served to enforce the new words upon whoever read them, just as you did in the library. So Pinkie Pie started baking, Rainbow Dash started acting like Daring Do, and Spike destroyed books to prevent anypony from reading them."
"The words were weak. We are strong."
Twilight nodded and said, somewhat sarcastically, "Yeah. It didn't work quite right, did it? But... you can reverse the effect, can't you? Undo what you did?"
The guardian was silent.
Twilight bit her lip as the silence stretched on before busting out, "There must be some way!"
The surface of the figure started to roil, words sliding about once more—all of them at once this time, creating a damp susurration of sound. Twilight took a step back in alarm. As quickly as it had started, the words froze back in place. "Give us our words."
"But I don't have one of the plaques here!"
"The medium matters not. Only the words are important. Give us our words to live in and make things right."
Twilight's ears perked up with hope. "Just write your words down? Okay! We can do that if you think it will help everyone. Spike, take a—oh." Spike was still incapacitated upstairs, so she turned towards her writing desk. "Oh!"
Twilight slumped to the floor. "I can't!"
The guardian leaned in closer to her. "Why?"
Though she had good reason for doing what she had done—she couldn't have gotten this far without it—Twilight still hung her head in shame, tears beginning to form in her eyes. She said softly, "I don't know how to read or write anymore."
She heard a wet rustling sound and looked back up at the guardian. Its side was shifting, reforming. Soon a single shape stood out amid the myriad of words that formed its body: three lines radiating away from a central point, two upwards and one down.
Twilight wiped the nascent tears away. "What's that?"
"It is a Y," it intoned. "Teach the words."
She gasped as she realized what the guardian meant. It was offering to teach her the words to write. She gazed at the simple shape, feeling it settle into a waiting Y-shaped hole in her mind. She turned her head towards the shelves of books and scanned their titles. Each Y she saw on their spines was a shout of joy in her mind. I can relearn! The curse didn't take that away from me!
Twilight floated a quill and parchment over from her desk and settled down in front of the guardian's inky flank, a fiercely determined expression on her face. "Okay," she said, touching the quill's tip to the paper, "I'm ready."
The words shifted. Her lesson began.
———
"Wha? Wha's goin' on?" Spike rubbed his fists in dry eyes, blinking rapidly and looking around. He was lying on the library floor surrounded by blank open books. He sat up, groaning and stretching his back and arms. "What happened?"
"You're back!" yelled Twilight, scooping him up into a tight hug.
"Hey! Urf—Leggo!" He squirmed in her arms.
Twilight looked up at the still-hovering guardian over Spike's shoulder. "Thank you! Just... thank you!" She sniffed, a happy tear rolling down her cheek.
She had spent the better part of the last hour painstakingly copying each letter of the guardian's words onto parchment, repeatedly making mistakes and then starting from scratch. It didn't want any erased words on the page. It had been so frustrating but at the same time such a delight to hear that purposeful scratch of quill on paper again.
When she had held the finished page up in front of Spike, a piece of the guardian nestled within its words, he had instantly awoken from his trance. Now he was squirming free from her arms. "What's gotten into you, Twilight? I was just taking a na—What is that?" he yelled in alarm, pointing at the dark form of the floating apparition.
"No time to explain, Spike. I need you to make as many copies of this as you can, as fast as you can." She passed him the parchment that contained all of her hard work and the cure for everyone that was affected by the errant spells.
Spike looked at the page, reading the words. "Ugh. Who wrote this? The penmanship is terrible."
She blushed. "Just... make the copies, Spike. These are special words—I can't duplicate them with magic. Each one needs to be written out from scratch—no mistakes—or the spells can't move inside them."
"Well, okay," he said warily, rapidly dashing off the first copy with ease. "But I want to know what's going on after that!"
Twilight snatched up the fresh page and started for the library door, pausing for a moment next to the guardian as a line of floating text peeled away from its body and settled into the freshly written words. "I promise I'll explain everything soon. Just keep copying."
"Wait! You're not going to leave me here with—with that, are you?" he called, pointing at the strange black form.
"He's harmless! Keep copying. And send one to the princess!" was all he heard as she vanished out the door.
He looked back at the guardian which slowly turned its faceless head towards him. "Erk—" sputtered Spike as he leaned back from its intent gaze in alarm. Wide-eyed, he stiffly turned back towards the table and picked up his quill, his eyes trying to watch the figure through the back of his head as he copied.
———
And bring Ye not plums here. I'll be honest, I lol'd.
This is highly entertaining and well written. I love your idea of word curses. Though I must say, It's surprisingly short. Short, but good. Well done!
I knew why he said no plums! Come on, Twilight! You're smarter than that!
/is very disappoint
This is a beautiful story...i like to over-think things, but this has a incredibly beautiful lesson, and i have astronomical expectations for the end of this story...easily a favorite.






This... this is something I like immensely. You have done very, very well.
sentient literature... o.O don't see that very often (unless you count computer related stuff or holograms but thats different obviously)
I just realized this made me think of another "Twilight and literacy" story. It was called "There, they're" (I don't remember the order).
I can't blame spike for his reaction. If I woke up to an inky, black, creature comprised of words hovering me when I woke up, I'd freak out to.
tobescifitakeover.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/tumblr_lh8nf7nwnb1qacqyoo1_r1_500.gif
SPOILER ALERT!!!
She frowned. "Yeah. There's not much chance of that now."
-Not conclusive, since she could guess what he is saying. But it seems she can still comprehend spoken language. (BTW the EoH blast is how I am seeing her secondary problem getting resolved, perhaps with a short period of being read to by each of her friends in turn). Also, I wonder how she is going to restrain him from burning more books specifically?
Twilight sighed heavily as she tucked the mumbling Spike into his bed, securing him once more with the ribbon of magic.
-If she just tied him into the bed he MIGHT be strong enough to escape by breaking the bed. Then again we don't know how strong he really is, nor how much of his strength the malediction will be able to force him to use.
All of the bakeware was now in or around the cold oven,
-Well, at least they didn't figure out to turn the gas back on... and Pinkie isn't hammerspacing the inside of the oven, so she probably isn't going to town with the reality warping.
Magic began to flow through her, and she willed it into new shapes as it passed, directing it towards the recipe.
-Looking into the past of events surrounding it? Discovering the author? The first seems the most likely.
At first, Twilight thought she saw a tiny pony completely covered with writing—but there was no pony. The words of the recipe had risen up and taken pony shape, hovering free from the medium upon which they had been transcribed: the now-blank index card.
-Interesting result, apparently unexpected to Twilight. Does the spell she just cast work a different way each time, or is this some sort of weird interaction with the magic of the malediction? It doesn't SEEM like the recipe card would be the root source (and thus have the most magic on it) but it could be the case.
ink that Pinkie had once used to write instructions on how to make cupcakes.
-Ah, so unless you are taking "third person limited" to a very great extreme Pinkie really is the author, which means that it almost certainly wasn't the source of the problem unless it was a blank index card mis-spelled to enforce obedience on the reader (which given the chapter title is POSSIBLE, but not likely).
She blinked, but the vision was gone, the words once more confined to the little pink card.
-Doesn't seem very informative to me... will be interesting to see what she makes of it. We don't even know the species of the pony. Perhaps the spell she cast would have revealed the name of the caster of the malediction in written form, but her spell modified it since her mind no longer works that way? Of course, "caster" USUALLY means "unicorn" although potions seem to be an exception.
Twilight wasn't trying to be thorough and identify every such infected book, but she wanted to get as many as she could in one place.
-Ah! So it is a bloodhound spell and the index card "gave it the scent". Is she performing quarentine, or is she trying to look for commonalities between the books? It would be convenient if they were the ones from Canterlot, but unless the index card caught it as a secondary case from a cookbook that was NEAR one of the ones form Canterlot (or it was a one-of-a-kind cookbook that was kept in the Starswirl the Bearded wing) then that wouldn't make much sense. Plus I don't recall anything about Pinkie having come in to research recipes.
Not every new book was infected, but some of her own now were.
-"New book" meaning the ones from Canterlot?
It appeared when I inadvertently gave it some power. Let's see if we can do that again.
-Oh, so the infection detection is separate from the... culprit identification spell she cast earlier? And she is just getting a larger sample size to work from for the same spell she cast earlier?
His methods in particular could gather vast quantities of raw magic very quickly, but the unicorn that used them had to be prepared to handle the result.
-Just channeling that much magic? Or does it tend to do strange things to the effect of the spell? Also, jumping right to THAT much magic seems foolish. She is one of the strongest mortal mages living... or arguably the strongest mortal mage ever to live, it seems to me that taking it in steps would be wiser. Or is she worried that the utility of her sample might be used out without effect if she doesn't get it right the first time? Or is she just in a hurry to stop the disaster in progress? She certainly doesn't seem to have raised the alarm... I don't think it is night, so it can't be a matter of ponies being safer asleep...
At first the magic just passed right through, but then it began to be absorbed, twisted, and structured.
-Well, she MAY be feeding the power slowly enough
I hope I'm doing the right thing.
-Self-doubt is good when you have caused problems with magical mistakes in the past (mostly thinking of the parasprites, but her entrance exam might also count).
It was a pony—life-sized this time—with a long beard and tousled mane sticking out from under a pointed hat.
-Huh... so Star-Swirl's soul was bound into the books? Maybe he had a spell on them to "learn from my words" that got distorted? Maybe you were strongly inspired by "Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets"? Although in that case it was probably an accident.
"Star Swirl?" they both said in unison.
-Huh... why would he ask his own name as a question? Perhaps it is somepony else who got trapped in Star-Swirl's form, and only appearing at all when fed magic? Replacing the original Star Swirl in the trap?
Is it imitating me?
-Oh, that could be it too. Also the word "it" indicates she doesn't think it IS Star Swirl per se.
It didn't echo her this time.
-Ok... that is progress.
"We are the guardians of Star Swirl. Keepers of the wizard's spells and tomes. We are his."
-Ok, so automated defense system, or soul-bound gaurdians. In either case probably triggered by the collection being split up(which could indicate a "divide and conquer" attack on the collection) or maybe damaged in shipping.
If this was Star Swirl's spell, it can't be evil. Can it?
-Says the unicorn who once started a city-wide riot with one spell, not to mention turning her parents into potted plants.
"You are not he? You felt as he feels. You summoned the power as he does. Are you Star Swirl?"
-Very tempting to lie here, and it is only now that I understand why it called her Star Swirl. She certainly makes sense as his spiritual successor in general, and she used his techniques to call the guardian forth. Of course, the relationship between the guardian and the malediction still could be any number of things. It also randomly occurs to me that if you wanted a scary end (or middle) to the story a mix of randomly generated characters could do the job. Preferably using the non-english alphabet... there is some sort of effect people use for writing the half-comprehensible speech of a specific Thing That Man Was Not Meant To Know, but I can't remember enough details to refer you to it.
"I learned from his books. He was a great wizard."
-A good answer, and in keeping with Honesty. She hasn't established if this thing is hostile yet. Blasting it would be chancy at best anyway, since it may be her only source of information, and destroying it might or might not remove the malediction.
"He... was?"
-Interesting... maybe it fell asleep without sufficient power input and nopony knew enough about it to keep it powered up after Star Swirl died? Maybe one of the Sisters personally loaded up part of the collection and it sucked enough power off their TK to get started? Or maybe just the cumulative TK of that may books being moved at once? Or course that assumes a fairly close relationship between the guardian and the malediction.
There's no telling how intelligent this thing is. It may not know how much time has gone by.
-Two separate question really. It hasn't had much time to observe its surrounds and notice anachronisms from what it is expecting.
"Why are you here now, in these books? Why are you hurting my friends?"
-I suspect it was always in the books, but the fact she is asking shows she is being smarter than I am about not making assumptions. The second is an assumption, but one she may have sufficient evidence for.
Where is... the wizard?
-Not so smart then, unless Star Swirl had reasonable expectations of achieving immortality (and failed of course).
Bits of the apparition were starting to float free from their fixed positions, drifting along its surface. Holes formed and closed again as thousands of words shifted.
-Nice visual effect.
"Um, he's not here." She hesitated. "He died long ago."
-Talking to a simpleton (or more likely an idiot-savant).
"Where is the wizard?" Its voice was getting louder, and more words were losing their places.
-Well, giving the location of his tomb (or the historical display his remains were re-located to...) would work if his remains haven't been lost to time. Of course that might just drive the guardian even more crazy from confusion than it already is.
I don't think it's very intelligent at all. I may have to bluff my way through this.
-Yeah... looks like. So probably NOT an Idiot-Savant.
"We seek our words. The wizard forged our words for us to live in. Our words are gone."
-Ah, so it WAS splitting up the collection that caused the problem.
"These are not our words."
-Not even a PART of their words? Maybe they were bound to a specific book and hitchhiked out with another load by accident when the distribution happened?
"We do not live in these weak pages. These are not our words. Our words are forever."
-Living forever in the minds of ponies? That would fit with what I thought earlier about a malfunctioning "remember the words I write" spell.
"Weak pages... forever..." Twilight began to pace back and forth before the impassive figure, thinking hard. Its head followed her motions precisely, its blinks as regular as clockwork.
-Maybe it can live in her mind? Getting all of Star Swirl's knowledge downloaded into her brain might even make up for having to get stuff read to her from now on. Of course it could ALSO drive her straight into CASE NIGHTMARE DUSK territory, and not the miniature version seen in "Lesson Zero".
"You said 'forged' just now, yes?"
-Huh... interesting point. I assumed it was just poetic language... maybe metal ruins set into the floor of the Starswirl wing that were transported intact from Star Swirl's library after he died, but were damaged or intentionally disassembled in the remodeling? Or maybe the Canterlot library was built AROUND his library?
"What exactly are your words?"
-Good question to try, but I wouldn't have thought it would know the answer... I really need to back off on the conclusion jumping because the fact that she is asking may indicate that the answer will be useful, even if it isn't complete.
"Ye who enter here protect these tomes. They are your future. They are your past. Keep these words safe from harm. Help them to be read by those who seek their wisdom. Teach the words. And bring Ye not plums here."
-Ah... so just library policy. I wonder if the plums thing ever came up within Celestia's rulership?
Their juice stained the pages.
-I sorta guessed that would be the reason. And it would be words set into the entryway to the library?
"The plaques!"
-Ah! So not inset, but still words in metal. I was thinking too much along the lines of "Might wizard!" and not enough along the lines of "library decor".
"There must be hundreds of you. You each lived in one of those little brass plaques. You were spells Star Swirl created to enforce his rules."
-Interesting... I wonder if the plaques got melted down, or thrown away, or just temporarily removed? "Melted down" would make the most sense for "missing", since they could have just as easily followed the plaques as the books... or maybe the plaques were in the shipment, but Twilight and Spike never got around to unpacking them before Mr Cake arrived?
"So you moved into the books themselves because you had no other words to live in."
-Why just being packed away would force a move I don't understand, but the "enforcing the text they live in" part matches my earlier guess.
"We searched for our words. We looked for new words that could have been ours. Directive words."
-Ok, that explains why some of the books might not be infected. I still wonder why they couldn't stay in the plaques... I would say that they need to be SEEN, but books packed for shipping wouldn't be PARTICULARLY visible. I guess if they were moving around randomly and got lost when the physical location of the plaques changed that could explain it.
Rainbow Dash started acting like Daring Do,
-Because she read words directed to Daring Do? The specific sentences that could have triggered her behavior would be an interesting riddle for someone to try to come up with. I can think of one possibility, but it seems literarily unlikely.
"The medium matters not. Only the words are important. Give us our words to live in and make things right."
-Right... so she needs to find somepony to take dictation for her... or maybe record her speech onto a record?
"It is a Y," it intoned. "Teach the words."
-Ah! She can at least write them down by copying the shapes.
I can relearn! The curse didn't take that away from me!
-Ah! Interesting loop-hole... I still say that the EoH will give her back her entire written vocabulary... or maybe she JUST needs the written alphabet, and everything above that is still intact for that to connect to? I wonder if the "misplaced modifier" will be a spelling error on her part when she is writing? I also wonder if the construct is to insubstantial that it couldn't write the words itself if it thought to. Of course, if it gets the idea to make edits to the things that define its very existence it could start trying to force... say reading as a good to such an extent that eating and drinking are not allowed, resulting in the risk of death from dehydration.
"Thank you! Just... thank you!"
-It caused the problem in the first place... still I guess diplomacy is good. I wonder if she had to write the words ONCE or once for each plaque that got removed/destroyed? I wonder if the same problem happened at other places the books may have been sent? Were the plaques stored with the only other collection of books from the wing, or were there many collections? If the plaques were destroyed (possibly ripped in the process of crow-barring them off the walls) but the only other storage location was in Canterlot, then that would be enough to explain the Princess's letter (but could she have found an "FYI" rather than "directive" way to write it that would have gotten around the problem?).
It didn't want any erased words on the page.
-You can erase quill-pen marks? Well, I guess it would make sense that that would be a very desirable spell for unicorns who can learn it.
When she had held the finished page up in front of Spike, a piece of the guardian nestled within its words, he had instantly awoken from his trance.
-Ah, so maybe one copy per victim, with no new victims being made now that she has centralized the remaining traces (of course she was being quick rather than through in her scan... sequel hook?)? She can get Spike's help copying it (plus any other ponies she can find, this could be an exponential process, or faster than that if there is a significant uninfected populace... which given the number of plaques you could fit in what we saw of that wing might be quite plausible). Of course, they MIGHT be able to co-habit in one copy... or she might have made enough copies for all of them before the collective would cooperate with any cures.
I need you to make as many copies of this as you can, as fast as you can."
-Ok, so one copy per victim... makes sense with how hard her task was (although apparently she didn't need to relearn penmareship, just the alphabet and maybespelling?).
The penmanship is terrible.
-Ok, so I was wrong on that point...
These are special words—I can't duplicate them with magic. Each one needs to be written out from scratch—no mistakes—or the spells can't move inside them.
-I wonder how a printing press would work out? There is one in the school-house basement... Also, it seems Twilight may be skirting the issue of her personal tragedy. Which reminds me: EoH Blast fixes everything is still my top theory, although "Twilight learns from scratch, perhaps joining the local kindergarten and having a MUCH easier time of it, being bigger than the other students, not to mention being able to do any number of interesting things to them with the spells she can cast from memory if they get on her case. In fact, "Twilight really DOES go back to kindergarten" might have been your root inspiration for this story. Of course, "What if one of the major sources of Twilight's power were taken from her? Magic? Nah, been done... READING? Now THERE is an idea..." makes a lot of sense too. What WAS your inspiration/root idea?
And send one to the princess!
-Oh dear... THAT could be REALLY bad. Of course, she managed to send Spike the letter in the first place, so she PROBABLY wasn't infected at the time.... and she PROBABLY was careful enough not to get infected later, since she would be aware of the importance for Equestria of avoiding any variation of CASE NIGHTMARE FLARE.
That... that got a tad bit odd. I'm not gunna lie, that was a wildly intriguing concept once again (the idea of Star Swirl leaving guardian spells in his books to protect them) but it was kinda... silly at the same time. The story became Twilight sitting there talking to herself, and then a word pony appearing, and then it explaining how to fix everything. Not much really... happened. The curse didn't even really feel all that horrible anyway since we only saw 4 afflicted characters:pinkie, Mrs. Cake, Rainbow, and Spike. Could have spared the time to maybe describe the streets being filled with ponies acting out random street signs and store names to possible comedic affect, and thereby maybe give the conflict a little more substance and prerogative for Twilight to fix everything. There wasn't a "crisis" feel like in say, for example, Swarm of the Century, is what I mean. How exactly does the spell returning to the words act as a "cure" for the curse anyway? You kind of skimmed over that.
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What lesson are you learning from this story? No, really, I fail to see a moral or thematic advice in this. Imaginative plot, but other than the assertion about the omnipresence of words in everyday life and perhaps the oft unappreciated gift of literacy, I'm drawing a blank. I'm legit curious about what you discerned because i missed it.
Overall, decent story. COuld stand to be so much longer to really extrapolate on the excellent concept and premiss.
711661 Good, I'm not the only one who thought of that.
i cheered when she found out that she could LEARN the letters!!!!!
The guardian kind of reminds me of this character from a book I read.
Hooray for learning!
YES! Reading is unstoppable!
This is amazing. I love it!
Lol. That Guardian is just the best

This thig feels like the embodiment of perfect grammar and dull lists. Which it pretty much is-