Twilight stayed with Pinkie for two weeks. She helped the excitable pink pony around her shop, Party Time, after hours and learned all she could about what had happened to her friends in the time that she’d been gone. All of them, with the exception of Applejack, had moved to Manehattan, including Spike, who was living with Rarity now in her new boutique. Surprisingly, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash had gotten together in a relationship kind of way, and they had some sort of 'understanding' with Pinkie that Twilight tried desperately not to think about too much. They had founded United Wings, a training camp for medically-minded pegasi, and it was going rather well according to her bouncy pink friend. They had started building free hospitals with the help of the crown, much to the annoyance of the nobility, but Princess Celestia, before her injury, had backed them entirely.

It was a happy two weeks for Twilight, talking about what shenanigans the group had gotten into without her, while she slowly got a hold on life in the real world again. Rarity was apparently as dramatic as ever, often calling Pinkie to bemoan the latest schedule she’d been stuck with, or the number of orders she had to get done. Pinkie always giggled about it and helped Rarity put things in perspective with her usual bouncy nature. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash had recently weathered a large storm of criticism once their ‘arrangement’ with Pinkie Pie was discovered publicly. Rainbow Dash, in her usual subtle manner, just came out and confirmed it, then literally dared anypony to say something about it. Fluttershy had smoothed things over wonderfully, without denying Pinkie’s romantic involvement with the couple, but the whole thing had led to the most ridiculous and suggestive headlines. Pinkie had even tacked a few of the more interesting ones to the wall, much to Twilight’s embarrassment. The idea of her friends having a love life with each other made her rather uncomfortable for reasons she couldn’t quite justify.

Every weekend, the ponies would meet up at Applejack’s farm to get together and talk. Sometimes one or two of them couldn’t make it, but Pinkie always did. Twilight was always invited by Pinkie, but the purple unicorn declined without fail. She always said she would be cleaning up the store, organizing the spice racks, or doing the accounting. There was always too much to do.

Of course, the truth was Twilight wasn't sure if she could face the others yet, and she didn't want to get them in trouble with the courts, though she yearned to see them. She never mentioned to Pinkie anything that had happened during her seven years before returning to Equestria, and her friend never asked. Truthfully, it felt like a nightmare to be dismissed with waking, but every night it came back, clear as Celestia's morning.

Twilight smiled in the wind of the chariot’s passage. She and her friends had just finished celebrating their defeat of Discord, and Twilight had lingered behind to speak with Celestia and spend some time with her beloved mentor while Spike continued on, already asleep, to the library. Now she rode on a royal chariot for her home in Ponyville with the moon high above, and Twilight enjoyed the night breeze that smelled deliciously normal, without a trace of cotton candy or chocolate.

She was tremendously weary, but in a good way. Twilight felt very accomplished at helping to seal away the forces of chaos, and the cheers of the crowd had lifted her spirits immeasurably, even if they were slightly embarrassing. The ride through the night was a welcome respite from the after-party, which had been extremely loud and raucous despite only being planned in a few hours.

The movement of the chariot combined with the relaxation she was feeling started to lull Twilight to sleep, but no sooner had she laid down than one of the pegasi pulling the chariot abruptly veered, and the other let out a shout. “We’re under atta-”

He fell silent as something hard hit the stallion in the head with sufficient force to spatter Twilight with his blood. Twilight screamed as the chariot fell towards the Everfree forest, and just barely was able to put up a barrier as she hit the ground. The sudden strain on her already depleted reserves almost sent her into unconsciousness as she rolled through the underbrush in a bubble of force, cracking limbs and trampling bushes as she exhausted her momentum.

Battered and weary, Twilight pulled herself upright in what seemed to be a large clearing. The trees made ominous shadows and leering faces at the purple unicorn as she shook her head and looked around, dazed. A low rumble shook the air, and Twilight spun around to find herself facing the largest wolf she had ever seen. Its torso was built like an ape, and large, clawed hands snatched at the earth beneath it as it walked. Still, it was maybe a little larger than the soldiers of the Diamond Dogs she had faced, and Twilight readied her teleportation, intent on fleeing the scene, when a set of bright orange, slit-pupiled eyes glowed above the head of the wolf-creature before her. The eyes seemed to drink in Twilight’s courage and leave nothing but fear and despair in its place. She couldn’t even move. Twilight could barely breathe until an unseen mouth said, in words of honeyed venom, “Sleep...” And Twilight suddenly couldn’t keep her eyes open, descending into sleep unwillingly while the owner of that terrible voice approached, chuckling.

Twilight awoke in a silver cage that shone with reflected moonlight, placed there by the giant, unearthly wolf. She had healed cuts along her sides from where they had dragged her through the brambles, and the sight of them made her feel rather empty and lost. Her cage was one of thousands, all filled with frightened, pleading creatures. The other cages near Twilight gibbered and squeaked with odd sounds and frightening cries as their various inhabitants communicated their distress in a terrible cacophony of despair. Occasionally she heard voices in the crowd, ponies or other thinking beings, crying out for mercy and release, or screaming threats in maddened voices. Her nearest companions were a brutal troll of some kind and a small fox. The troll was huge and hulking, easily three times Twilight’s size, built like a gorilla with long talons and skin like rock. It bit at the bars, trying to escape in a mad, frothing rage, to no avail.

The fox, however, merely sat quietly. He merited extremely ornate bars that resonated with powerful magic for some reason, and the hulking wolf-creatures that came to feed them fed the fox from the end of a long pole. She would talk to the fox sometimes, because it appeared to listen, and because she had literally nothing else to do besides panic and cry. She tried to teleport out once, and had almost died from the magical feedback the cage had induced, sending fire through her body and mind for her impudence. Every other spell, even the simple cleaning ones she tried, had similar effects. Twilight stayed there for some time. How long she stayed she never knew, for the moon was nailed to the sky in whatever strange place she was. But one day, or night, a creature came by to claim her. He told her he was the Librarian of the Burning Books, and that she was his, and that was the end of his conversation with her. The Librarian was huge, thin and easily picked up the cage with her in it in its claw-like hands, along with the little fox's reinforced cage, who he likewise informed. The fox didn't seem terribly troubled, but Twilight fainted in terror. When she had awoken, she was in Hell; she was sure.

The Library of Burning Books is just that: a hellish place of smoke, fire and books being forever consumed. Her job, as it was explained to her, was to collect select volumes before the fires that washed through the library constantly consumed them and to bring them to the Reading Room, which was the only place the fire couldn't touch. If she failed, or brought back more than just the book she was told to, she would be given a large broom and told to sweep up the ashes in the corridor where she had failed, which by then would have mostly cooled, and bring them, bucket by bucket, down through an unlit stairway to toss them into a deep pit. If she failed to do so to the Librarian's standards, or refused to clean the halls, she would be tossed into the pit with the ashes for a time. She had gone in only once, and after that she had learned the Librarian's standards well, for fear of being subjected to that graveyard of whispering ashes again. For the books spoke down there, as ashes, lamenting their lot or simply spraying out bits of sentences, constantly yammering in her ears until Twilight felt herself going mad.

It was the fox that saved her that first time. After talking back to the voices in the darkness in a soft voice that reminded Twilight of her beloved teacher, he walked down the sheer wall of the pit and showed her how to ask the darkness to let her do the same. That was the start of her lessons in the bizarre logic of the Library and the nature of her captor. She learned that the Librarian was a lord of Faerie, of Arcadia, and the Library of Burning Books was its home. She had been bought from another faerie lord that lived in the Everfree Forest to perform her tasks, and to make her into something not herself. The little fox never gave a name, or answered any questions about his nature directly. He would instead always say he was 'a friend' and that his coming here, unlike Twilight's, was of his own volition. He taught her how to notice the little clues of the Library, to find its secret passages and hidden alcoves, places free from fire or ash where she could save the books. He also told her of the one way out of the Library: a pool of dark water in the Librarian's study. But the door to the study was locked and guarded at all times, and she would need to know how to use fate itself against her captor to escape.

Twilight learned. She learned the dark, safe spaces of the Library, became friends with the whispers in the darkness and the caress of forgotten cobwebs. She became taller, as she reached for higher books, and her horn grew longer and sharper as she focused more and more magic through it to save the precious volumes from the consuming blaze, day in and day out. Words wrapped around her lovingly, even as they turned to smoke and ash, they appreciated her efforts that saved their comrades, and while she changed, she learned. Her time off was spent reading, usually, as she attempted to find some form of mental escapism. She brushed up on all the subjects she could find, and many she’d never even heard of. The little fox, she found out from the books she saved, was a spirit of teaching, from a far off land. His knowledge of this strange land was remarkable, even for his kind, and Twilight began to wonder as to his origins and motives, even as she grew accustomed to her surroundings. The Library almost became like home, for a while, until she found the Pink Book.

It was a plain book, right in with the others, but brilliantly untouched by soot or dust, practically glowing in the gloom of one of her hidden reading rooms. She had set aside several private reading rooms, away from the Librarian’s sight, and filled them with as many books as she could. Still, most of the books were dark in color, or stained with soot until they became so, and the pink book shone amongst the others like a diamond in a chimneysweep’s ear. She pulled it out after a moment, and the three balloon design on the cover stirred a memory within her, of parties and dancing, and a pink, laughing pony. She opened the book, and found it was full of pictures, pictures of ponies laughing, having fun, including a certain purple unicorn with the same cutie mark as her, along with a blue pegasus with a rainbow mane and magenta eyes, a yellow pegasus with a pink mane, whose cyan eyes were deep wells of kindness, a white unicorn with a well-groomed purple mane and elegant blue eyes, and two earth ponies: one pink with a similarly colored bouncy pink mane and blue eyes, and one orange with a bright yellow mane, a hat and green eyes. Twilight blinked. These were her friends! How could she have forgotten? She'd been in the Library so long, it had almost felt like home, but now she remembered: she was a prisoner here, however familiar the surroundings became. She knew then, that she had to escape.

Soon she was ready. She had prepared, with the little fox's help, a long, intricate plan that would get her into the pool without alerting the Librarian to her intent. The little fox would cause a distraction of sufficient magnitude to divert the Librarian’s attention. While he was distracted, Twilight would sneak along to all of her hidden reading rooms, taking as many books as she could save in a carefully designed wheelbarrow that featured a modified storage spell in it. Twilight would then start a huge ash-avalanche in one of the freshly burned sections of the Library. This would give the little fox enough time to set the shadows to consuming the fire in one of the burning sections. They would meet up back at the Librarian’s chambers, where they would break down the door and push their way into the hidden pool of water.

As fate would have it, the plan failed spectacularly. The Librarian was waiting for Twilight at the first reading room, and she had to dash to stay ahead of the screaming monster. Enraged, the Librarian was no longer a quietly menacing master in a long, dark robe. Claws of quill pens propelled the nightmarish thing towards Twilight, while a mouth that dripped with inky drool snarled curses and threats against her as she fled through the corridors of books, kicking up clouds of burnt pages and ashes that actively attempted to aid in her escape, forming clouds to block the Librarian’s vision. She blew the Librarian’s doors apart with a spell fueled by panic, then flung the leaves of the door behind her blindly, where one of them connected with the Librarian’s face, judging by the scream of pain and fury. It took her precious moments to find the pool of dark water where it sat in a curiously clean alcove. Twilight dove in, without any of the books she had intended to save, without the little fox, though she suspected he could take care of himself, and with the Librarian in hot pursuit, its metal, eyeless face dented where the door had hit it, but its metal-fanged mouth still snarling with fury even as it swam through the passage after her. For the pool led to a long underwater passageway, filled with razor-sharp coral that bit and cut at Twilight as she frantically eluded her captor. Cuts opened along Twilight’ sides as she writhed through the shadowy darkness of the passage, but the pain only drove her onward, reminding her of the life she had had stolen from her. Her breath burned in her chest as Twilight fought towards a distant light, the only hope she’d seen in her entire dark journey. Finally she managed to lose the Faerie Lord in a tangle of coral too dense for the metal monstrosity to follow through and, thinking of home, burst out into the Canterlot evening.

Every night the dream was the same, unless she consciously changed it, or went to Pinkie's dream, something that Pinkie didn't seem to mind at all, though her bizarre dreamscapes were seldom restful. She didn't care that Twilight was wandering into her dream, or didn't realize. One day, Twilight was making breakfast in the kitchen, musing about contacting one of her other friends, when Pinkie came down looking a little less cheery than usual.

“Hey Pinkie,” Twilight said, concerned, “What's, uh, what's up?”

Pinkie blinked a little and tried to focus on Twilight. “Oh nothing Twi, just feeling a little under... the... weather...” She shook her head and smiled, a little cross-eyed. “I think I might be a little sick, Twi, but don't you worry. I'll be perfectly...” Twilight had to catch her friend with her magic before the pink earth pony impacted the floor.