The sun is just barely starting to rise above the horizon again as the group of stalkers continued through the husk of a town. Everypony was quiet, save for the slight crunch and boing-ing sound of Pinkie Pie hopping along.

"Alright," Cartridge says, coming to a stop, "we're nearing the Library, so stay on your guard, and try really, really hard to stay quiet," he finishes, giving a pointed look at Pinkie. "So ready your weapons, librarians are deadly and unpredictable li'l bastards." He switches the safety lever to semi-auto and continues, listening to the chorus of mechanical clicks and chinks of mechanisms and safeties.

"So these, librarians," Twilight's voice is curious, "what are they like?"

"About a head or two taller than the common pony, really long, saggy arms, and a disgusting ape-like face and mouth. Oh, and furry. Really furry."

"Ahh, okay. So, like that thing?" She points to a large, hunched over figure, silhouetted against the rising sun. Cartridge starts, jumping back just a hair. He mumbles a curse, remembering his last encounter with the librarians in horror, lining up his sights in the center of its neck. Breathing in, his finger slides gently over the trigger, and with a barely audible exhale, he slowly squeezes the trigger. CRACK! The shot rings out, and the librarian disappears.

"Do they just… vanish when they die?"

"BUCK!" Cartridge curses, whisper shouting through clenched teeth. "No, that means that it's still around here somewhere. The only question in whe-" He's cut off by a chilling roar from behind them. They all turn to see the creature behind them, glaring at Cartridge angrily. With unbelievable speed, it lunges at the startled and scarred pony. Time seems to slow down, coming to a slow stop. Everything goes gray and a bright light flashes, fading and leaving him in a different area.

A large room filled with shelves, the lights of the stalkers with him casting eerie shadows across the area. Suddenly a pained scream cuts through the room, and everypony turns to see one of the stalkers leaning against a wall, his head lowered, looking at the ground.

"Hey, Lix, what was with the scream? See a spider there?" the leader jokes around. The pony doesn't respond. "Lix?" Then, they all notice the small cracks spreading out around him, and a thin trickling of crimson leaking from his mouth. "Lix!"

A piercing screech fills the room from behind them. Flinching, they all turn to see an ugly, shaggy… thing looking at them with blood dripping from its deformed hand and snout. It jumps at them with blinding speed, striking their leader center-mass, knocking him to the ground, coughing up blood. It reaches a misshapen claw in the air, then brings it down, plunging into his

CLIP! Cartridge is snapped out of the memory by a gunshot, and sees the librarian fall limply to the ground, black blood leaking from the base of its neck.

"You're welcome," Rainbow Dash says smugly, a confident shine in her eyes.

"Th- thanks." The rifle falls from his hooves, jerking his head down as it falls loosely around his neck. He leans against a wall for a moment, breathing heavily, his hoof clutching his chest.

"Something wrong?" Fluttershy asks, absently raising a hoof to her medical supplies vest.

"N-no, no I'm fine. Just brought back… brought back memories I'd rather not have." He takes a single deep breath and lets it out slowly in a low whistle. "okay, if everypony's ready, let's get going. Not much further, but keep your eyes open for more librarians."

The scenery never changes, everything is the same sort of death-scape of shell that used to be houses and crispy, skeleton-like forms that used to be trees. They enter a more urban area; the buildings get taller and closer together, and the dead, grey sky slowly disappears from sight. At a corner of an industrial square, Cartridge stops.

"Alright, so we're about to get to… the library," he shudders at the name, "and you'll have to be on the highest guard you've ever been on, 'kay?" Everypony nods. "Alright, I'll take point with Rainbow Dash, Rarity, you and Twilight cover the sides, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, you two 've got rear, Fluttershy, you stay in the middle and keep your med kit ready. Understood?" Everypony nods silently again.

"Wait, what about the 'glowing red tower' you told us about at the very beginning?" Twilight asks nervously.

"What the hay are you?.. Oh! That, yeah, that's just something we say to see if we can scare the new stalkers, just a bunch of old mythical bullshit. We say it almost in mocking the ponies that made the stories up."

Twilight gives him her 'annoyed' look, then just shakes her head and follows him. Rounding the corner, an absolutely huge building comes into view, dwarfing even those around it. Its sides have long since been overgrown, vines hang down from the very top right down to the bottom, adding to its already ominous appearance, standing at least sixty stories tall. The still-rising sun is behind it, mostly silhouetting it, but not so much that they can't see the outlines of every individual ghostly strand of vine trailing to the very roof.

"This is the library?" Pinkie asks. Cartridge slowly, silently nods in response. "Why do they call it the library?"

"Follow, and you'll see." As they all neared the building, it seems to grow larger and larger, so tall and wide that it feels like it could individually store the planet it's built on. At the grimy glass doors at the entrance, they stop. Cartridge takes a long, deep breath, then steps forwards, positioning himself over the handle. He makes a fist, placing it over the latch. He pulls his arm up, then brings it down forcefully in one quick, practiced motion. A sharp, metallic crack is heard as his hoof snaps the entire mechanism out of its housing and on to the ground.

"And we're in," he says, pushing the door open quietly with one hoof as he swings his rifle around through the crack as a breech sweep to check for hostiles. "And as for why this place is called the library…" he lets the statement hang as they all walk in. Everypony, especially Twilight, gasps at the sight of the contents of the building. Huge shelves full of books line the walls and stand in orderly line and column through the entire space.

"And it's like this on every floor. Now follow me." They start to move through the room in their formation, following Cartridge to a wide sliding door. Entering, they find themselves in an elevator. The buttons on the wall are old and faded, some with cracks running down their surface.

"Somepony hit floor forty-two," Cartridge instructs, his voice just above a whisper. Rarity taps the button lightly, and they all stand around in tense silence as a mechanical hum fills the lift. Lights above the door update with their floor number as they climb steadily skywards. With a ding, the elevator stops, and everypony trains their weapons on the door as it slides slowly, painfully open, filling their hearts with an icy cold.

Nothing is there but more shelves, full of books further than the eye can see.

"What are all of these books?" Twilight asks.

"This building was built to house a project to find and print every story, legend, essay, novel, myth, everything in the known world, and to keep it all on record. It was newly finished when everything went to hell, and it's rumored that the ponies that worked on it were the first to die when it struck."

Continuing out of the lift, they all walk slowly, as one, to the center of the room. They all stop, hearing a sort of scratchy shuffling around them, growing slowly and subtly in volume. Looking around, their eyes all fall near simultaneously on two sets of stairs on one end of room, each curling down from the next level on opposite sides of the wall. Several slow-moving, hunched over forms are moving down slowly, meeting up on the main floor, walking in even double-file almost imperceptibly slowly towards them.

Cartridge swears under his breath as the entire group tense, their breath hitching. "Okay, just don't make any noise whatsoever, they don't like noise. If we don't bother them, maybe they'll just…" he trails off as the librarians start to emit a soft, low howl, like the wind passing through the hollow house last night. "Buck it. Rainbow Dash," he addresses the cyan pegasus, not fully turning around, not wanting to break eye contact with the beasts, "you're going to have to fly up to the next level, beat the living shit out of anything that gets in your way, and find a control panel on one of the walls. When you find it, you'll see on the far right there'll be a lever and a button next to a key. Turn the key, then pull the lever down," he speaks faster and faster as the walking nightmares get closer, "When you do that, you'll hear an electric whine that'll start high, and then get low pitched. When it stops, adjust the dials right there to X= 299.7, Y= 762.5, understood?"

"Yeah, got it," she replies immediately.

"Good, now go, we'll hold these bitches off."

Rainbow Dash bolts into the air, flying well over the creatures as the first rounds start flying at them, filling the room with the loud chaos of gunfire.

Stay safe, everypony, she thinks as she flies up to the next level. Finally getting over the stairwell, she hovers with her gauss rifle primed to scan for targets. The confident grin she had held falters, cracking to a chilled frown as she takes in the scene. Mutants and librarians alike covered the area, slowly coming to look at her, unmoving. Flying a bit higher to evade the imminent surge of the beasts, Rainbow levels her rifle at the nearest creature. But they don't move. They simply stare at her for a moment until a horrid, crackling roar goes up at the back of the pack and spreads through them as they turn their heads skyward.

All of a sudden, two giant holes are gauged out of the walls as large creatures bash their ways through. They are giant winged things with rows of sharp teeth dripping with saliva. Low, hollow swishing noises sound as they beat their wings.

"Shit, demons!" She hears a familiar Scottish voice behind her, turning her head and looking down to see Cartridge with his rifle up on his shoulder. The last echoes of the sickening howl are just fading, and with a collective growl, all the creatures tense, preparing to pounce. Dash and Cartridge line up a target, ready to kill the first advances.

"She is here…" The dry, airy words roll through the room, stopping the creatures, making them look around. They seemed to be spoken by a small group, the words doubling up on one another, meshing together like a loop, one repetition starting just a fraction of a second after the one before.

"The giver… of death. The one… from legends of old…" It pauses, as if waiting for something. "Flee!" The word carries more energy, spoken in a much deeper register, making even the two ponies about ready to turn tail and run as the mutants of all shapes and sizes scatter.

"Do not fear us… Let us have life… We wish only to help…" The voice continues even as Cartridge and Dash speed to the console. "Do not harm us! We mean no harm!" The voice gets more and more frantic as the get closer.

"I see…" the voice turns cold, sending shivers up the pair's spines. "Please…" a loose figure drops from the ceiling, appearing to sit in a kneeling position, though its full-body matte black appearance makes it hard for the ponies to tell. Slowly, it rises to full height, its long arms hanging down to its knees as the ponies' eyes grow wide in complete and all-encompassing fear.

"Forgive me my sins… All we want is peace."

---

Damn, but it's been a while. Thanks for waiting so patiently, and not spamming with demands for more updates, school has actually been taking up a lot of time this year, and I apologize. But I do hope to update again before the new year, and I expect that it'll be done in just another chapter or two (probably just one), but maybe I'll put out a backstory or two, if you guys want. Also, in case you hadn't picked up on this yet: these last few chapters, as well as this one and the next one, are almost completely unorthodox with canon, I just wanted to make part of it mine. So thanks again for waiting and reading, stay awesome and happy holidays. Brohoof /)*(\