I set myself up upon two broken office chairs. Their backs unpinned and flat with the seats for the most part. The long pole that used to support them broken off. It was the closest thing to a mattress I had in the room until Sombra came back. But with myself settling down, I drew the memory orbs from my bag and with a nervous gulp, braced myself for what I would see. The first memory orb began to draw me in as I held it in my magic, and the world began to spin away to the complete and utter darkness as it began.

"Sombra, Wakey wakey Eggs and Cakey." A kindly voice was what greeted me as my host, Sombra, awoke. The feeling of alien warmth in both the fur of body and the blankets he was buried under was on par to the heating of both my winter jacket and scarf. Sombra however was up and out of the sweltering heat of his bed in a heartbeat as the words triggered the ravenous nature of a teenagers metabolism, the surroundings being a blur, with barely time to consider an absurd amount of tomes bound in various materials lining several shelves. Their titles unreadable as my host zipped straight to the presumed kitchen.

"Thanks Auntie Maresbury!" Sombra... Sang?! I was still getting used to my hosts body, and it was indeed a teenage Sombra, though his fur was the same color, the tone of voice was the polar opposite of the Sombra in the present. The mare he was speaking to was a middle aged mare of slightly wider than average make and a curved, prominent snout. Her coat was a light purple, almost blue in color and her mane was... rather rounded, and done up in a large lazy looking bun that made me wonder when was the last time she trimmer her mane. Her tail was done similarly though it reminded me of the few images of Cotton Candy I had come across in my travels.

As she turned I could see her cutiemark as she put on a set of wide circular yellow glasses that had bejeweled strings attached to them. Her cutiemark was a Scroll, and her eyes were also a shade of purple, her voice was surprisingly gentle to the future tyrant, "You're welcome my little Songy Somby." as she delivered a quick pinch to the cheek with her hoof to my eating host. The food was rather quite good, better than anything I had tasted before as a morning meal, but then again I lived in the wasteland and this was the past that I was viewing.

"After You're done eating we have a busy day," Aunt Maresbury said with a small chuckle as she turned to her dishes, from my guess she had already ate, "We have a few visitors planned to come into the library to check out a few books from the magic archives. With that as well we have quite the schedule ahead of us to re arrange the third wing, particularly the shelves on Crystal Agriculture and its subdivisions on quarrying and rock farming."

Sombras pace of eating accelerated only stopping to clear his throat with a glass of juice with all the appetite of a changeling who had just come into terms with their ability to feed off emotions. As the plate was cleared, he asked, "Who's coming to visit the Library Auntie Maresbury?"

"A very special guest, and we must be or best behavior around her," Sombras aunt hinted with a mischievous glint and grin on her face, as she swept away the plate from the young dark grey stallion that was my host, "Not every day we get a visit from Clover the Clever, though I'll admit in past years she used to be quite the regular alongside her old mentor."

"Clover the Clever? as in Thee Clover the Clever? The one who saved and helped found New Equestria and brought forth the Crystal Heart from the shared bonds of friendship?" Sombra spoke with a level of reverence, the kind of voice that I myself had often thought about Grey in before... he died...

"Very Acute Somby," Auntie Maresbury replied, "Though If Clover the Clever is coming, you also know who else is coming with her then, for her own reasons as well?"

"Princess Platinum!" Sombra said with childlike joy, "Princess of our Crystal City!"

"Double points and a cookie to the correct answer," Sombras aunt replied, tossing a foreign brown object to Sombra which he promptly caught in his magic. It looked... unappetizing... it was brown for one, which made me question its difference from hard Dirt. It also had some brown bits in it. My curiosity to what this was answered as the young Sombra took a bite.

The conversation was immediately droned out by sensory overload.

The pancakes had been tasty but this...? What was this? A sensation indescribable. It was... as if the heavens themselves had descended upon the mouth of my host, a wave of bliss overriding my senses, I had lost myself in the other senses, had I control this confectionery known as a cookie would of left me flat on my back as the chips themselves hit the tongue from within the confines of the soft and semi powdery confines of the love like container was freed and the object felt like a silk like object upon my tongue, with the taste comparable to the few opportunities I'd been able to taste love in my travels, only better. It was truly torture that my host treated it as a normal everyday thing instead of a blessing incarnate of Celestia and Luna themselves. My inability to move or savor the taste left me in agony as my host moved on after swallowing, his attention turning out the kitchen. The rest of the conversation missed.

The closest thing I could compare the cookie to was the near two hundred year old Sparkle Cola found in the wasteland, but those were long since aged into being barely more tolerable than irradiated water. The cookie was like if someone had taken a Sparkle cola, made it a hundred times better, and gave it its own solid form complete with refreshing flavor... I wanted another one. My inability to get another cookie in my host made me want to cry for an entirely different reason than I had been before.

My internal grumblings came down sometime after some sorting when a loud click and the sound of a... horn? Began to play from the other end of what looked like dozens of shelves of books as my host moved them about, clearing his view as he laid eyes upon the source. It was a set of guards in absolutely ancient melee oriented plate armor, each bearing a spear wrapped around one leg and an abomination of a two headed horn in the other hoof of which they were playing. They looked Gaudy, and over extravagant. They looked nearly non-functional with barely any consideration put into how they were played. And with the five note arrival tune that was being played I was pretty sure it was the maximum amount of success that the horn could achieve. Even the Castles had been instruments than this, and they were a post apocalyptic jazz performers. Not ancient pre-war stallions who had clearly the resources for better instruments than that.

My hosts eyes however were drawn away from the guards by what their horns were horribly announcing. A curious pair of a heavily robed and furred unicorn wearing a crown made of a silvery colored metal, platinum I presumed, and a second mare walking just a few steps behind her, clad in more mundane burlap and cloths that resembled a green forest like the ones I had seen in prior memory orbs of Surprise. If prior knowledge was correct, the fancy pony was Princess Platinum, and the drab clothed one was the mare called 'Clover the Clever'. The grin on my hosts face all but stretched to the limits from the goofy grin on it. Where in the name of Celestias shiny derriere was this cheerful side of Sombra back in the present?

As her royal highness Princess Announced her presence, The elderly librarian mare bowed to her after entering and they went off muttering something to each other just out of ear shot while Clover fell behind to look at some books. Sombras cheerful grin turned slightly mischievous as he decided to place the books he was watching from back on the shelves and began to sneak around, occasionally checking the ground as he went, looking for the brown cloak as both of them went into the library proper.

After a good few minutes of shuffling about when the cloaked Clover the clever came to view around the corner, the burlap robe now up close was clear with wear and patched up tear but Sombra still came up with happy glee, as if to an old friend, but also loudly, "Hello Miss Clover!"

Only to be puzzled as the robe dropped to the ground, its inhabitant not in it, and we got a voice in return from behind us "Hello Sombra, still not as stealthy as you seem."

Turning around, my hosts line of view came to rest on an elderly mare with a white coat and a fading green mane, both kept well clean and tidier than anyone I've seen since the Stable scientists on promotional days. Her eyes held a glint similar to Greys, tired, worn, but oh so knowledgeable. Her voice reflected as much while maintaining an almost paradoxical sense of joy, "Heard you coming from the moment I entered the library, your enthusiasm makes you noisy..." she paused before giving a wink, "But oh so adorable."

Her horn lit, and there was a momentary pinching sensation from my hosts left cheek as she tugged a wider smile onto Sombras face, which the stallion shook off while responding in joy, "I'm going to surprise you someday Miss Clover! What you looking for today? Histories and their Writers? The Eternum Journal of Starswirl the bearded?" Then my host turned his voice down for a more mischievous tone of voice, "The Chitinous Seducers from the lands of Bad?"

The last one for some reason made Clover blush, and stammer, "T-that is hardly an appropriate book for a young stallion to know about."

"Yeah..." Sombra, looked abashedly away, the gaze of the marble ground reflecting a vague image of himself, "Know the restricted sections titles a bit much for auntie's liking, but never peered into them. Aunt Maresbury says only powerful and older unicorns have the mental soundness to deal with those contents soundly." Sombra elaborated.

A look of relief washed over Clever Cookie visibly as she fixed her composure, and somehow I got the feeling that not all the books in the restricted section were spellbooks and dark sciences. The last book in particular seemed to detail changelings, I guess. We weren't lovey dovey though. I mean we harvested it from others as a food source, sure, but unless... Oh. Ew.

Once again with the weirdness of prewar. Though I guess this was pre-prewar ponies? Would they even be called Pre-Prewar? I mean how many wars had happened between that point and the typical memory orbs of the pre-war eras? Don't dwell on it. I forced myself to push the rapidly scattering train of thought from the front of my mind with the mental and proverbial stick, I moved on rather than dwell on it. Sombra and Clever Cookie had been exchanging more small words on different book subjects, but rather abruptly the memory ended, without a satisfactory conclusion.

Confused, I came back to the present to the smell of faint smoke and the sounds of something between a piece of metal shrieking and tightly compressed air being released. As I rose off my uncomfortable pair of seats, the source of the sound had become far more evident. Nearby a cleaned up Pumpkin was wearing a rather large metal mask as she used her hooves to operate a strange looking device that had a gas canister and a small torch similar to the flamers back at the Hole, but far more miniaturized and instead of a giant gout of roaring flame it was a bright blue laser that was making me cringe from the other end of the room trying to look at it. The source of the shrieking metal, was the two pieces she was forcing together, using the sheer heat of the thin blue beam to melt and merge the two together before dipping the piece in a solution of icy water using some tongs. These efforts were more impressive as she used her wings to fly around while wielding the tongs in one hoof, and the strange flamer like device in the other.

"Questions?" A familiar voice asked, interrupting me from my stare at Pumpkin.

I turned to the sound of the voice, to find Sombra staring motionlessly at the pitch black ceiling, looking almost lost in thought, had he not spoken I probably wouldn't of noticed where he was in comparison to Pumpkin. I took a moment to compose my thoughts before answering, "Why did you show me this orb? It was super happy, sure, but seeing you as a child and eating a delicious treat before talking with an older friend hardly explains anything."

"It is a reference point," Sombra explained with the voice of a teacher explaining something gently to a rather dull-witted child, "To help piece together the rest of the story later on. I am fully aware of the worlds greatest danger is a lack of information, so starting with this seemingly cheerful orb will lead you to make new conclusions that wouldn't of otherwise occurred without it." dwelling on his own words, he took up the orb I had just been in, and his neutral expression shifted slightly, for the briefest moment his look of neutrality shifted to something else. A small hint of sorrow perhaps before it vanished into the depths of his usual face.

In a way it made sense, if one was to witness a single stallion charge an army of badly dressed ponies while in power armor and slaughter them all, one would assume that the single stallion was a serial killer and a psychopath, but add the context that it is the Steel Rangers dealing with bandits that have attacked and brutally killed other settlements then the context puts the single stallion into a positive light while also downgrading the slaughtered people into a less sympathetic villain.

However, similar to a popular trait used by infiltrators, and one that was actively condoned back in the stable was a tactic called misinformation. I didn't know the science behind memory orbs, if they can be altered or changed, or if the memories would portray the host in the view he thinks of it. A stallion could imagine himself a hero in the same context of the memory orb, and preach justice, but that didn't mean it was the truth. I'd need more perspectives on the matter from both neutral and opposed parties to compose an entire picture alongside Sombras memories and what he wanted to show me.

A small picture of events through a set of recorded memory orbs was fine, but I'd have to keep an eye out for additional ones, to weigh against his before coming to a decision about what I was going to be shown. Was I learning more about the Crystal Heart's past, or about Sombra and his interaction with the Crystal Empire? In a way I guess their stories were intertwined, but this lead to more questions than answers. More things to stow away I guess, the wasteland and its Celestia rump darned endless barrage of questions that needed answering. I placed Sombra's involvement up there with things like 'why is the sky perpetually cloudy in Equestria, but not elsewhere' and 'how do I beat an army of changelings and mad scientists without killing or getting them killed?'.

A mechanical bleep had me snapped out of my thoughts with rapid alarm. It was the same kind of bleep as the many turrets I had encountered before, and as I reached for Ambush, there was a cheer from the other side of the room. Clutched in Pumpkins hooves, and hastily repaired was a turret.

Drove myself insane listening to the Crystal Fair Song from Sombra's episodes. Apparently the major parts of the Crystal Empire culture that represents their Nationalism is
>Tiny Ewes
>Jousting
>A flag with many hues
>Crystal Berries
>Flugle Horns made of Crystal
>Crystal Kingdom Anthem (would love the words to this dang thing, as we got a hint of it when Spike messed it up during the 'Games'.

Which only gives me reason to suspect the Crystal Empire is very Materialistic when it comes to their values of culture(The society seemed driven by gemstones after all). More worrying since their people aren't even mentioned in the song which gave me a twisted idea for the future. I apologize heavily for the delay in this chapter, but this scene with Sombra in the library took about 34 re-writes before I was happy with it alongside arias first real taste of Pancakes and cookies which was written with a lot of re-flavors until I eventually gave up trying to give Aria a sugar high from chocolate, strawberries, or other berries to a plain but still delicious variant. Luckily some of my pace may be coming back soon since I've had the other chapters after this point a little more outlined over all this time. Thanks again for your patience and hope to publish another chapter soon. Sorry for the wait!