Friends and Fairy Tales

by CrackedInkWell

Chapter 1: Once Upon a Time…

Author's Note:

A little heads up, the following story is currently unedited. Anyone who wishes to volunteer for proofreading, please PM me.

It’s no secret that the Princess of Friendship has always had a love affair with books. After all, even before her assentation, she was a librarian that organized and distributed books of every kind to the citizens of Ponyville. Those who knew the lilac mare named Twilight Sparkle would find it rare to even see her without a book nearby.

For Twilight, she developed not only the passion of learning wisdom from whatever books she could get her hooves on, but also adored all things fictional as well. From foal stories to classic literature, she was always fascinated by different time periods and countries that opened a window into cultures strange and wonderful to her.

As of today, inside her crystal tree-like castle that she now calls home, it was a slow day for both her, and her assistant who goes by the name of Spike. Sometimes when Twilight gets too invested in reading an intriguing piece of literature, the baby dragon would carry out whatever chores so that things can run smoothly.

It was on a day like this that the princess was in the throne room was where Spike found her.

“Okay Twilight,” the small dragon said. “I think I’m just about finish with my chores.”

The mare he was addressing looked up from her book before she marked her place with her magic. “About? What’s there for you to finish?”

“Well,” he took out a scroll that listed his tasks, “the only thing I have left is to mail those book orders to Canterlot. Not to mention to pick out the girls books as well to give them out as well.”

“Is that all Spike?”

“I should think so,” he told her after putting the list of chores away. “But none of that has to be done until later this evening. So with that in mind, can I go out to see if Rarity needs anything?”

“Alright, but be sure to be back here before five. That-”

“I know, I know, we’re going out to dinner with the rest of the gang at six. I haven’t forgotten.”

After saying good bye to the dragon assistant, Twilight returned to her book. After a while, she submerged herself into the story of her book almost to the point that she didn’t noticed a ringing sound that brought her back into reality.

Getting up from her seat, she knew immediately where that sudden ringing was coming from. In one of the rooms of the castle, where most of the books were kept was a magic mirror that’s hooked up to a machine, and a book with a cover of a sun of yellow and red. It is from this book that the ringing was coming from.

Lighting up her horn, Twilight summoned the book over to her, and opened it up to reveal a message.

‘Dear Twilight,’ it read, ‘I am writing to you because I need your help on an interesting matter.

‘You see, in the wake of having magic in the Human world, I’ve ran some tests on not only on what effects it has on the girls, but to see if any objects have absorbed it as well. Turns out, I was right. Thanks to some of the technology, I was able to detect some magical artifacts. In particular, seven books of well-known fairy tales that has somehow absorbed large amounts of magic.

‘Since it has such a huge amount, I personally wouldn’t dare risk testing what these books could do. In fact, I’m skeptical if it’s even safe for even humans to handle. This is why I’m planning to send these books over to you for testing them in an environment that’s safe to control.

‘If you agree to do this, I will send these books over to you immediately. Yet, I would advise for you to use extreme caution since the ratings these books give are off the charts, and I have a bad feeling coming off of them.

‘Please write back soon,

‘-Sunset Shimmer.’

This got Twilight intrigued. “She’s found magical artifacts in the human world? Well, this is new. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at these books.” Picking up a quill pen, she wrote back that she would be looking forward into investigating in what Sunset had found.

Fifteen minutes later, she got the message to open the portal so that she could receive the books. Placing the book upon the machine over the mirror like placing an important gear in a mechanism, the contraption becomes alive. Soon, the mirror was open to the world where Sunset was, allowing Twilight to cross over to collect those books.

Once on the other side, she was greeted by her friend with the fiery hair. “Hey Sunset,” Twilight said as she hugged her. “How’ve you been?”

“Oh, I’m doing alright so far.” She lifted the backpack off of her, “What about you Princess? Anything new as of late?”

“No, it’s been a slow day for me. So what was it about books you want me to look at?”

“Here, let me get them,” unzipping her bag, Sunset pulled out a set of books wrapped in twin. “You know, I was actually surprised that I was able to find these. You wouldn’t think that this world would have enchanted books as well.”

“Neither would I,” Twilight confessed. “This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve dwelt with these things. After all, my friends and I have been sucked into one of Spike’s comic books once.”

“Really?”

She nodded, “That, and that one time spike found an enchanted book in which he gave to Rarity that made her go crazy.”

“I guess I’ve asked the right per- sorry, pony for the job huh?”

“Indeed,” Sunset handed the stack of books over to Twilight.

When she looked at the titles, she asked, “Where did you get these books anyway? Are they from the school library?”

Her friend shook her head. “Except for one, I found those scattered throughout the town. With all the incidents we’ve keep having with Equestrian magic, I’ve checked to see if any objects were affected like I said. While I did found some that have small traces of it, those were overall harmless. But these are a different ball game altogether. In fact, they’ve came off with so much magic that I don’t know if it’s even safe to open them, which is why I bought most of them. Considering the fact that all of these are really famous fairy tales, there’s no telling what these books are capable of.”

Twilight nodded, “I understand. I’ll take these back to Equestria and I’ll be absolutely careful with these and see if they’re dangerous or not.”

“Thank you Twilight,” her friend told her, “be careful.”

_*_

“Interesting,” the lilac princess mussed. In one of the many rooms of the palace that’s been turned into a lab, she carefully examined each and every book that’s laid out on a table. As she noted, while each of the seven tomes varied in page density, the art on each cover, even signs of age from each of them, all of them confirm what Sunset had told her.

Not only did all of them seemed to have soaked up magic like sponges, but all seven of them contained abnormally large amounts of it.

Jotting down some notes, Twilight moved on to her next test to see if there’s any sort of magical signature to them. Looking over to the spell book beside her, she scanned through it one last time before lighting up her horn, and let her aura touch all of the books.

“What?” she asked herself as she measured each tome at the same time. Letting go of the spell, she wrote down in her notes: ‘I have never seen anything like this! After testing to see if there would be a signature spell that was casted, I have found that there’s no clear frequency that is recognizable to me! It’s as if that these books possess a different, if not wilder magic then anything known to Equestria’s knowledge. I wonder if I’m dealing with a different breed of enchanted books considering that they were found in the human world.

‘What’s more, it still raises the question whether or not these books are even safe. I’ll need to schedule a full day’s worth of research to get to the bottom of it.’

After finishing her notes, Twilight looked up at the clock and found that it was almost fifteen minutes ‘til six. “Already?” she asked herself as she went out of the room. “I wonder if Spike is still around. Spike!”

A few more calls later, her assistant answered, “Yeah?”

“First of all, where are you?”

“In the library, I’m just filling out the orders here.”

After teleporting over to the room, she found a large stack of books besides the step-ladder as the little drake placed a book on top of the stack.

“How close are you from finishing?” she asked.

“I just need to get Rainbow Dash’s book, then I’ll go packing the books to be sent to Canterlot. Speaking of which, do you know where the cardboard boxes are?”

“They’re in the lab. Do you need some bags for the girls so that we can give it to them while we’re at dinner?”

“That would be a good idea actually,” he said as he pulled one of the Daring Do novels off the shelf. “I’ll tell you what; I’ll go down to the lab so you can meet me with those bags.”

Once Twilight had agreed to this arrangement, Spike picked up the stack that was a little taller than him and made his way down the hallways and into the lab. Not to say that he did had some trouble navigating since he had to balance the books, and had his vision obscured in seeing where he was going.

“Now, where did she put them?” he muttered to himself, as he gently swings his body so that he could see where the boxes were. There underneath one of the tables were folded up boxes, each stacked one inside of another. “There they are,” was all Spike said before he bumped into a table, in which most of the books fell off onto it.

The baby dragon cursed under his breath as he tried to gather up the books and try to reorganize them in their proper places.

“Hey Spike,” he heard Twilight’s voice call, “I’m ready to go.”

“Give me a sec,” he answered back as he quickly piled the books back up. He went over to the cardboard boxes and took out one to be filled with the proper books that needed to go to Canterlot. After sealing it up, he breathed green fire on it until it was nothing but ashes flying away towards its destination.

Hearing the princess’s hoofsteps, he swiftly took the tower of books outside of the lab in time for Twilight coming to the door with five separate bags.

“All set to go Twi,” he told her as he placed the pile of tomes down on the ground. “I’ve already sent the order to Canterlot before you got here.”

“That’s good. Now let’s hurry and get these separated so we can go out to eat.”

Spike obeyed as Twilight held each bag with her magic, placing the set of books into each of them of the checked-out books that their friends will received. Once everything was organize, the princess placed each bag in her saddle bags, “Thanks Spike, now let’s hurry. I don’t want us to be late.”

The two of them left the crystal palace, heading in the descending evening towards the café that all six mares agreed to meet. Yet, what Twilight doesn’t know, is that in the lab, on the table where she promise to continue her research, all seven enchanted books were absent.

For the moment, the alicorn and the dragon rushed through the streets of Ponyville, completely unaware of the extra books they were carrying with them.