Work Text:
Twilight picked up a book, levitated it in front of her, and read the pages. On page ninety-seven, line twenty-three, Twilight teared up as she read it.
astep.hertecshrinashaaaaaat spike vvvvvvvvvvvvahatch. ,,pfftjzzzzzzzbritroshluck
Amongst a sea of Babel, in the ten years, nine months, fourteen days, three hours, and twenty-seven minutes since Twilight had entered her prison, she had finally found something important. She placed the book in her saddlebag, marking the page.
Twilight was debating with herself on whether Discord had done this on purpose or was simply careless. The library, on the surface, looked like an exact duplicate of her old tree library—especially from the outside—but inside, it was pretty much perfect. It was complete with her old bed and Spike’s old bed, which is where she placed the book this night. The kitchen was always fully stocked with whatever food she asked for out loud. The map in her sleeping quarters had a dot labeled "You Are Here" and, on the bottom floor, "Exit."
As she lay down next to Spike, she spoke to him.
“Okay, Spike, I found you, so here is what I know so far. This room has what I told Discord were my top ten favorite books. Each of these rooms is duplicated with whatever I put here. So you, for example—” She turned to the book, opened to the page with Spike on it. “You can stay here and will be in any of these rooms. It is an exact duplicate of my library but I can’t open the door. I opened the door when I entered the library but once I left I was teleported to a random floor for fun he said HA that’s funny.” She looked up at the moon outside of her skylight. “I’ll find a way out, Spike. Eventually.”
You couldn’t actually count days and nights here, just when Twilight wanted to sleep and then woke up and got ready. The only reason the moon was there at all was because she said that she reads most at night. “Wish me luck, Spike.”
The bookshelves were stacked in a hexagonal shape; while it felt like it was based on her treehouse, it looked stretched. Discord promised her not only every book ever written, but every book that would and could ever be written. She flew down to the next floor; this saved her fifteen seconds, but it was the principle of the thing. While she didn’t know how big the library was, she did know that it wasn’t infinite, so she couldn't waste time walking down stairs.
She levitated book after book, ditching them as nothing came up. What Discord didn’t mention—either because he was evil and faking his reformation, or because as a creature of chaos he couldn’t navigate this library at his leisure—was how he made the books. He had taken all the letters and punctuation, lowercase and uppercase, and spaces, and put them in a random order for every book.
“I don’t know if it gives me more comfort thinking that he’s evil.” She looked down. There was a giant hole in the middle which led to the bottom. “Can you learn how to do a sonic rainboom from a book?”
She teleported to the furthest she could see, which was always four floors down. Two goals: the first was to reach the bottom, which would take a long time. The other goal was to find a better plan. That night, she came back and asked for hay fries and a burger.
“Spike, I’ve tried one hundred and fifty books today. There has to be a faster way. I’ll think of something.” As she lay on her bed, she looked at the moon from her window. “Do you think that’s the real moon, Spike? It only comes up when I turn the lights off, but it might still be the real one.” She sighed. “Could an alicorn banish themselves to the moon? Might be faster than this plan.”
One thousand years. Six hundred forty books per day. Eat, sleep, repeat on the next. Find something... anything useful. After two hundred thirty-three million, six hundred thousand books, Twilight finally found it.
"Check the clock, T."
There was a clock. It was a big clock, present on every floor, and it had read nine twenty-six and thirty-three seconds since the moment she had arrived. She flew to it; this clock showed that time was frozen—that while she was here, time in the real world had simply stopped. Discord had installed the clock so Twilight could keep track of time, but the magic inside made it so that time stopped outside as soon as she entered.
She stared at the clock’s face for what used to feel like a long time—nearly an hour. The book, like all other books, was a random assortment of letters that she had been trying to piece into a single sentence. Twilight looked at the book again. The line she had read was actually:
v.vmche cksdf,ujmt.hecl .ockt lqpwiznxm.vowiruqpalzmcnvbghjdytskaieury qpwoeiru
She threw the book to the floor and stomped on it. She tore it apart, bit it, and finally threw the shredded vellum down the central shaft.
“Meaningless like all the others! EVERYTHING IS MEANINGLESS!”
Twilight destroyed the clock, which shattered into a million pieces. She went around the rooms and—without checking, without her pointless, pathetic, and stupid task binding her—she simply destroyed. She went from book to book, destroying them one by one, then ten by ten. She flew into a bookshelf at full force, knocking it over; it hit the next, and the next, until every single bookcase on this floor had fallen over.
This was the three hundred sixty-five thousandth floor she had entered. Fueled by anger and adrenaline, she ran and jumped off the balcony. She dove straight down, wings pinned close to her, with the determination to reach the bottom and nothing else. Faster and faster she traveled until suddenly—BOOM! A sonic rainboom. She didn’t stop; she kept diving, more and more, until the adrenaline finally began wearing off. She simply allowed herself to fall.
It is interesting what you get used to. Twilight woke up and found that she was still falling. In shock, she caught herself and started to fly again. She landed on the next available floor and went into her room for a break and food.
“Spike, I did it! I finally did a sonic rainboom. Also, I’ve gotta do the math... let’s see.”
She began making fried rice with tofu and a lot of vegetables, plus an Apple family apple pie for dessert. “Alright,” she sighed. “Time for work.”
The board was filled with calculations: acceleration, time to sonic rainboom (which Twilight admitted was a humble estimate of thirty seconds), height of the room (three point six five meters tall), and free-fall time (just over six hours). Sonic Rainboom distance: one thousand seven hundred and fifteen meters. Sleeping and falling at terminal velocity: three hundred and ninety-six thousand meters. Six hundred fifty thousand, nine hundred fifty-nine floors.
“Being banished to the moon would be preferable. I always knew the way out, Spike. Was I foolish to wait this long?” The book lay open, unresponsive as ever. “No, you’re right. I had to hope for another way out. I stop for food and drink when I’m hungry, and I could fall one million, five hundred eighteen thousand floors per day, giving myself an hour a day on whatever floor I’m closest to. Okay, let's get started.” Twilight’s voice was one of wanting to hype herself up but being incredibly fearful.
She started by flying. Falling was scary; flying was easy. She flew down, building up speed, and did a sonic rainboom straight down. She then allowed the momentum to push her down and moved into a free fall. This was going to be much, much faster, she thought. “I’ll get out in no time.”
Ten thousand years and five trillion, five hundred forty billion, seven hundred million floors later, Twilight slammed the door open to her room.
“This place isn’t infinite, Spike. It isn’t. But I don’t know how big it is, and I don’t know HOW TO GET OUT! I’m sorry for shouting at you.” She turned to another book that had the sentence "rainbow that connects pink party apples butterfly rare diamond" perfectly spaced out, so Twilight put it next to the book with "Spike" written in it.
The full sentence was:
lq.p rainbow that connects pink party apples butterfly rare diamond v.vmsdf,ujm
When Twilight read that sentence, she cried. It wasn't only her friends, but it was perfectly spaced and in order. She kept it in a place of pride.
“Okay, girls, so free-falling clearly isn’t working. I think the next step is to calculate how big this library actually is—at least the height. What do we know? Well, each floor is three point six five meters. Each hexagon is six hundred forty books. Eighty characters per line, forty lines per page, four hundred ten pages per book.”
She stared at the final calculation for a month. She couldn’t comprehend it; she couldn’t understand it. There had to be another way out; falling couldn’t be the answer. The number that stared back at her was: 28^1,312,000
She had fallen for ten thousand years, and what finally got her was that she was so less than a percentage from where she started that it made no mathematical difference to standing still. Twilight just sat there, feeling nothing, for a long time.
The first million years passed by, and Twilight found something extremely interesting written in a book:
i dismissed the clock before but it is important if I’m right the time should be nine twenty-eight and fourteen seconds.
Twilight checked the clock. It’s impressive what you learn to ignore, but this message in a book seemed to be written by her, and it was true—one hundred seconds had passed. She flew to her room with a new calculation to make.
“Okay, Spike, here is the deal.” She pointed to the book with her friends’ names written on it. She had replaced the one where it was simply close and instead had their actual names written in five books. She pointed to the one that said "Pie."
“Pinkie Pie said that for my birthday she was going to come and get me in an hour for my party. So they’ll be coming in an hour. It’s been 100 seconds, so that means that I have 58 minutes and 20 seconds left to go. Given how long I’ve been here already, that means that I only have to wait.” She finished the math.
"Thirty-five million years—unless they weren't being 100% accurate. If they meant they’d start looking for me now, it might take them 20 minutes: a five-minute discussion and 15 minutes to drive here. Unless Dash comes first? In that case, it’s probably six minutes for her to arrive, which means it would be 47 million years... or if Dash comes, thirty-eight million six hundred thousand years. Which is less time for me to fall to the bottom, so you know, that helps I guess."
Twilight fell onto the bed again and stared at the word "Fluttershy." “It doesn’t matter if he did this on purpose or not. I will never forgive him.”
Two million years later…
Extract from book 467.2 billion:
pinkie pie finished baking the birthday cake it was tall with six layers and pur
ple icing it was topped with a design of twilights cutie. she kept an eye on the
clock it had been fifty minutes applejack and fluttershy had arrived first.doyo
uthink we are going to have to drag her out of the library applejack asked.well
i think so discord said it would be easy to lose track of time in there he insta
lled a bunch of clocks just in case fluttershy said.well iff she manages to get
herself lost in a book we can go get her five minutes until the hour was over an
d spike arrived with the balloons and presents. twi here yet he asked.nope dash
said lazily floating through the air.you think we should get her apple jack aske
d looking at the clock.well we still have a few things to do so give her another
ten minutes then dash can fetch her rarity offered. adlkfhasdlkjfhkiasdhjoiutlu
Twilight slammed the book closed. “NO! This is random letters like all the others! They know I’d want to be prompt. They’ll come and get me. They wouldn’t think I’d want to miss Pinkie’s party.”
She threw the book down the shaft in disgust, then looked over the edge. “There's this mountain of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb it, and an hour to go around it!” Twilight stood on the edge of the gap. “Every hundred years, a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on the diamond mountain.” She leaped off. “And when the entire mountain is chiseled away, the first second of eternity will have passed!”
Twilight free-fell. The math was perfect: ten thousand years per second. If she was off by even an hour, it would be hundreds of millions of years. There were two spells that banished Luna to the moon—the one for the actual banishment and the one for hibernation. It was good enough to try, and hopefully, when she awoke, she could fly into the main room where her friends would be waiting for her.
Ten million years later...
When Twilight woke up, she couldn’t help but question if she had taken into account relativity. Maybe Discord was simply unaware of time dilation when bending space this much. She continued to fall.
Fifteen million years later...
Falling is rather relaxing once you’ve done it for a few millennia. Twilight felt rather calm about the whole thing. She thought about the nature of immortality—if alicorns were actually immortal or if, like this library, it was merely an illusion of endlessness. After another twenty million years, the spell stopped working, so Twilight landed on the next platform and went inside to eat.
“The magical coma stopped working. I still have 3 million years to go. I’m nearly there, girls. I just have a few more minutes to wait until—”
Twilight saw an letter It had been left on the table at some point while she was free-falling.
Hi Twilight came to visit but you were in the back room and the door was locked. Anyway wanted to let you know that there is going to be rain this morning so I moved the party to 2pm see you then!
— Pinkie
Twilight looked at the clock that said 9:55 AM. Five minutes—three million years to 10am. She scrunched up the note and cried.
“It never occurred to me that they’d be early, if I was here I...”
Even with the banishment spell no longer working, it would still be doable, but this... another 291 million years. She had missed her one chance to escape, and now it was gone. 26.6 quadrillion floors so far, and if she free-fell another 161.3 quadrillion floors...
Twilight stared at all the calculations. “It’s still so much less than one percent that even after all these years, even after falling for this long, it would still be much, MUCH faster to just wait. I know I could reach the bottom, I know I could get out, but by the time I do that—even with the time difference—by the time I reach the exit, the universe will probably reach its death and probably another will be made. I wonder if this Tartarus will survive that. There is no point in falling. The only thing I can do is wait, and I will wait. I must wait. They will come eventually. They must come.”