As Twilight pulled a book off the shelf in the long term book storage stack, a large amount of dust was dislodged from it’s previous resting place and resettled in her straight mane, darkening her single pink highlight, as well as settling in her eyelashes and the rest of her face. She sneezed loudly, removing all of the dust from the cover of the book but further coating herself in it. She sneezed again, this time falling off of her hooves and landing with a firm bump on her rear. Shaking the rest of the dust from her mane, she looked at the cover of the book. A lot of the books in the stack had been there for close to a century and the names had either rubbed off of the spine or been lost to the decay of the normally gold writing used to mark them. She ran a hoof over the front cover, feeling the indentations of the lettering, still unable to make it out even without the dust. Her horn glowed, and beads of purple light appeared on the thick cover, tracing out the indented letters forming the words “A Beginners Guide to Same Sex Relationships”.

Her interest piquing, Twilight flicked it open to the first page to see that it had been first published close to two-hundred years before she had even been born. Whilst natural curiosity tried to nudge her into reading further, she realised that she was in pretty much the wrong end of the library, as she had hoped to find an old book on herbal remedies for her friend Fluttershy. She put the book back on the shelf, intending to fetch it on her way back, wondering if filly-fooling and colt-cuddling weren’t as new ideas as the fashionable Equestrian media would have the average pony believe.

The title of the next book she pulled from the shelf made her smile, it was “The Egghead’s Guide to Running” and quite obviously (judging from the antiquated cover, the ancient illustrations and reading the theory that fillies were incapable of challenging stallions in the athletic arena, which she knew would have her friend Rainbow Dash falling over with laughter) the first edition of that text book, having the fourteenth and much more up to date edition in the main library. She looked at the title again, what was this book doing so close to the “A” section? She sighed and put it back, deciding that Spike would have to rearrange everything down here into the correct order when he woke up.

Pinkie Pie had originally told her about this fascinating place underneath the main library, she had said that a number of ponies had come down here before yet few had ever returned. According to Pinkie, occasionally new ponies had popped their heads out of the cellar holding the stack, curious as to where they were before being whisked away by guards from Canterlot castle.

She knew that outside of Canterlot, the repository within Ponyville had the largest store of books on the continent, a massive amount of space beneath the tree that was her home dedicated to holding old recipe books, romance novels, spell books and any other literature that had fallen out of favour with the readers of Ponyville. When Pinkie had first mentioned the stack, Twilight had the idea of bringing out some of the older books for ponies to be able to borrow and give the more heavily read books in the current selection some time down in the stack where she, or most likely Spike, could repair them. Browsing the aisles further, she had no clue as to why Pinkie had been so keen to put her off the dusty place; sure it was huge, she couldn’t even see the end of the row that she was walking down...

That was when it hit her; she had been so lost in thought that she didn’t really know where she was anymore. She saw a light up ahead at the end of an aisle and increased her speed to a canter to reach it. At the end of this aisle a large wooden cut-out of a number was attached in a similar way to the sign above many of the shops in Ponyville, hanging from chains attached to the shelf itself. The air started to smell slightly less musty and she began to feel carpet under her hooves. She looked up at the now clear sign; all that was on it was the number 18,903. Peering out of the end of the row, she could see the deep red carpet illuminated by candles at the end of each book case, the styles of each shelf’s design varying vastly between different numbered aisles.

Twilight peered back down aisle 18,903 and yelled for her dragon friend, Spike. There was no answer, so she slowly edged her way back down the row, taking a closer look and realising that she could no longer see the door from which she had entered, the row of books stretching as far as her eyes could see. Panicking slightly, she trotted back down the aisle, soon reaching the end of the row. This was getting worse, she didn’t remember passing this part of the library and assumed she hadn’t been paying attention. She continued to canter down the long rows of books, not noticing that the row she had left was still 18,903 and she was entering row number 12,101.

Twilight was beginning to get anxious now, the initial worry twisting in her stomach into genuine fright. She had no idea where she was as she ran down the endless shelves trying to find a wall, to find a point of reference and her way out of this nightmarish place. She noticed a light hovering at about her height down a different row of books, the carpet nearby almost being alive with plants and strange organic looking structures that she didn’t recognise immediately; the quiet clopping of her hooves having more of a squelch in the damp carpet. She got closer to the light, seeing a sight that ponykind had not seen in Equestria for (according to books and questions on archaeology she had asked Princess Celestia about) close to two thousand years; an orangutan, who was also looking through the books. It was wearing a red dressing gown with gold trim, a banana sticking out of the left pocket.

Fearing this creature, Twilight crept slowly, observing it from the end of the aisle, her ears just picking up the clink of metal against metal behind her. She turned her head to see a book leap at her.

Twilight screamed.

When she opened her eyes, she saw the ape forcefully closing the book that had leapt at her, strong arms and fingers pushing the pages together whilst a foot attempted to tie the chain attached to the spine of the book around it to keep it closed. The orangutan turned to her and put a finger up to his pursed lips.
“Oook.” It said, softly, putting the book back on the shelf from which it had appeared from. He knuckled over and patted her roughly on the head, avoiding her horn, beaming and offering her the banana from his pocket. The end was slightly bruised, but Twilight opened it using her magic and took a mouthful. Swallowing, she turned to the creature next to her.
“Where am I?” She asked.
“Ook?” He replied. Twilight’s ears pricked up and she turned her head to one side. She knew she had heard the ape simply say “ook”, which normally wouldn’t have meant anything to her, but for some reason or another, this felt different. She could almost see the idea that her saviour had put across in her brain, despite their obvious language barrier.
“Why on Equestria would I ask where I am if I knew where I was?”
The ape shrugged, grinning again and motioning with the remarkably long fingers of a ridiculously large hand, convinced her to follow him back down the aisle where he had come from.

**************
“Please stay calm, miss Sparkle. You’re in no danger now, just please continue your tale. Her Majesty will be with you very soon.”
**************

Twilight blinked as sunlight finally touched her face once more, still following the robed orangutan. She had tried talking to him repeatedly as they had walked through the library and he had occasionally allowed her to stop and take a brief read of some of the titles until she had found a skeleton in roughly the same shape as him. She had been interested in looking further at it, but he had pretty much dragged her away.

“It’s about time you were back. You’ve been gone for hours!” a bored sounding voice called to her companion.

“Ook” he responded,

“Hmm? What do you mean, you’ve found something?”

Twilight rounded the corner to see a lectern with a large book propped up on it. Behind the lectern, she could see the threadbare red tip of a pointed hat moving, as if scanning the pages. The hat moved again, and Twilight saw that it was connected to the face of a creature she had never seen before. It looked roughly like the ape who had saved her, but was considerably less hairy in most places. He had a scraggy and thin red beard, and a somewhat skinny body shape, adding to his height and reminding her somewhat of Snails, a young colt from Ponyville.

“Oh,” he said, seeing her trotting behind the Librarian, “You've found a miniature pastel coloured unicorn? I guess you've found weirder things back there.”

"Ook."

"Oh, it can talk? How wonderful."

“Neigh.” responded Twilight, raising an eyebrow.

Her eyes shot wide, and she clapped a hoof over her mouth. The librarian waved a hand at the skinny man, who sighed and left the building as Twilight frantically began to neigh, whinny and snort in panic, her voice no longer able to form any sort of understandable communication...