Saying that the library was huge would have been an understatement. Even after multiple visitations for study, the immense size still humbled them into awed silence. The ground floor straight ahead of them was devoid of any bookcases, instead having a librarian’s desk front and center, and two rows of desks that stretched much further in. The actual library component was bordering the central causeway, arranged in many tiers with ornate crystal guardrails that allowed visitors to the higher floors to look out over the expanse without falling.

The humbling quiet only lasted for a few seconds before Silverstream whooped and ascended up to the massive skylights that ran the length of the building, glad to be able to stretch her wings despite the library policy towards noise and reckless flight. With a commanding view of the entire area, her keen eyesight was able to make out all the markers hanging off the columns that denoted what each section was all about. In some areas, a large flag flew to showcase the particular region or nationality that the archive catered to. From the eastern continent of Griffonstone to the cold mountains of Yakyakistan; from the bone dry desert of Klugetown to the heights of Mount Aris – everything in the known world was covered.

A sharp whistle drew the hippogriff’s attention back to her friends, whom she glided back down to. They were already heading down the causeway, and she came in to hover alongside them with a question already coming out her beak.

“So, where are we setting up our battlestation?”

“Yona remembers Ocellus saying she would leave us a trail to follow.”

Smolder was the first to voice her frustration at the turn in events. “Kinda wish she’d just tell us where the spot is instead of doing the whole sneaky changeling thing.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Gallus stated as he marched alongside, free of any aftereffects of his unconsciousness. “Just spot the clues and follow the trail. Besides, you have a guy with the best eyes in the land to help you out.”

“Well, we better find it soon, cuz I don’t want to spend the next ho-”

Smolder tripped over something on the ground, and as she fell her now driverless cart crashed into the other with a resounding clang. She stared on at the collision in muted horror – hoping that none of the systems were damaged. Luckily, Gallus was quick to stop the runaway cart, and the dragon threw a snarling look at the book that had tripped her up.

“Sorry, musta missed that one. Luckily you found it.”

The griffon’s chuckle at her expense was lost on the dragon as she picked herself off the marble floor and dusted down her sweater. Her energy was spent picking up the book – examining it – and then haphazardly tossing it onto a nearby bench. She then took wing and hovered over to the griffon.

“Alright Gallus, seeing as the best eyes in the land failed to spot that book, you get to push the cart while Silver and I look for clues.”

Before the griffon could protest – which he most certainly did – Smolder had flown ahead to join Silverstream, who in turn shouted back.

“Whelp, let’s get to following the trail then!” she proclaimed, for once fearless of the grouchy librarian that would usually shout her down.

Yona and Gallus followed their flying friends along, keeping their eyes on the duo for any form of signal. It came in the form of a pointed claw from Smolder which pointed to another loose book sitting face down on the side of the walkway. They all stopped around the clue, trying to figure out where the next one was, until a hippogriff took off down a row of bookcases with an excited shriek. So they followed.

As they followed the trail deeper into the archive, the world around them got darker. Only a few lights near the ceiling cast a dim glow between the bookcases, which were also becoming more cramped together. The carts were forced to proceed single-file, with Gallus following behind Yona. The books themselves – despite having been moved here a few months back – were already showing disuse, with dust settling on them and a combination of cobwebs and dust bunnies taking up the few vacant spaces.

After a few more minutes of fruitless navigation through the maze of bookcases, Gallus voiced what what was running through his mind. “You sure this is the way? I haven’t seen a clue for some time, have any of you?”

A chorus of mumbled negatives were the answers he received.

Smolder leaned towards Gallus. “I hope this is the way. Otherwise we could be stuck here finding a way out. I know Twilight wants us to have the best education possible, but a library big enough to hold a small village is completely overkill!”

The surroundings had changed once again. The walkway between shelves widened up and the books and the floors were better kept. After a few more turns, Yona squinted at something ahead and quickened her pace, a smile playing on her features as she pushed the cart at trotting speed. “Guys, look! Yona thinks she found a way!”

The other three followed close behind the yak as she disappeared around a brightly lit corner. When they rounded it, their moods brightened when they emerged into natural sunlight once again.

Once their eyes had adjusted, they all became stunned at what they had stumbled upon. This far-flung corner of the library looked more like a ski lodge than a reading nook, with large plate glass windows from floor to ceiling showcasing some of the mountains and waterfalls of the Ponyville area. As they’re eyes climbed towards the ceiling, all they saw were more glass panes that were positioned with enough angle to allow snow and rainwater to flow off with ease, which ran up and mounted into the main building above.

They had no idea if the area they had entered was what Ocellus had chosen, but it was spectacular nonetheless. The way the waning, evening sunlight played off the glistening waterfalls and tree covered white peaks made this little discovery was still worth it, even if it wasn’t the spot.

“Oh wow! Ocellus found us a great spot to play our game together!”

Smolder wasn’t entirely sold on that notion, until she – and everybody else – followed Silverstream’s excited pointing. Just to the left were two tables that had been pushed together, with three large wooden lounge chairs on each side, and a final upturned book sat smack in the center.

Gallus completely abandoned his cart and flew over to the tables. “That’s for sure! C’mon guys, bring those carts over so we can get to work!”

Yona effortlessly turned her cart and joined the others at the table. With no volunteers present to push the other cart, Smolder grabbed the handles once again and muscled it over to the side that the Yak wasn’t on. From there, they all gathered around and reversed what they had all undone earlier by grabbing their systems and setting up. They argued over who would have to sit by who for the rest of the night, but that was figured out easily enough. Once the machines were situated with enough elbow room for all, only two potential problems remained.

Gallus was the first to announce this, not bothering to hide his annoyance. “Okay, this spot is great and all, but it will mean nothing if we cant power our systems, or get a line out.”

They began to look for outlets, first in the vicinity of their table, than broadened their search to the room at large.

“Hey guys, I found some over here!”

Smolder waved the rest over to where she was crouched down. One of the bookcases next to the wall had been scooched out, and the dragon was pointing at a service panel with twelve equestrian standard power outlets.

“Sweet, and it’s a good thing there’s twelve of them, cuz I so wasn’t in the mood for hunting down power strips for all of us,” Gallus stated.

With outlets located, they all found the plugs to their machines and plugged them into the sockets. After that, they flipped the breaker switches on their computers and were rewarded with some beeps from some, and standby lights lighting up on all.

A low rumble brought everybody’s attention away from their battlestation and onto themselves. They looked to each other for the source of the interruption, until it happened again and four sets of eyes locked onto Silverstream. All she could do in her defense was hold her forelimbs up and shrug. “I think it’s time for dinner.”

Yona was – of course – the first to agree to this. “Yeah, Yona starting to feel a bit peckish as well.”

A quick peek at his watch brought Gallus on board as well. “Shit, we only have five minutes before dinner. Alright, we can come back after and install our games and work on finding a phone line.”

“Sounds like a plan. That gives Sandbar and Ocellus extra time to get their systems here,” Smolder added.

“But, how do we get there from here?”

Silverstream’s concern almost put a damper on their new plan, but Gallus came to the rescue.

“If memory serves me right – which it always does – this little side exit will lead us back to the central atrium,” the griffon stated as he jogged over to a single door and pushed it open. “It’s supposed to be for staffers only, but let’s be honest, nobody really cares.”

With a collective sigh, the other three decided to follow Gallus’s lead and take the detour to the cafeteria. The set of corridors and doors that they pushed through weren’t off limits to students per-se, but rather were designed to ease congestion by giving all the creatures that maintained the school their own set of service corridors to keep things efficient. That was proven when they reached the central atrium in under two minutes where they spotted Ocellus sitting on a bench with a hardcover book open in her hooves.

“Ocellus! The spot you picked is awesome!”

The changeling closed her book and hopped off the bench, grinning widely as she approached the group. “I know, right. I saw our professors use that spot for board meetings before, and I always wanted to use it for something like this since.”

“Woah woah woah! How do you know about that spot, and how do you know they use it for board meetings?”

When Gallus saw Ocellus point a hoof at herself, he chuffed and crossed his forelimbs. “Right, changeling.”

“I do have one question, though.” Smolder held up a claw. “Where is your system? We’re all set up, and we didn’t see any other machines there, so what gives?”

“Well, there’s the mountain of cables that have to be carefully unhooked and wound up. I also have to make sure all the components are secure in their cabinets before transport, but all that can wait till after dinner.”

The dragon’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Just what kind of a system do you have?”

“A big one, and I’ll need everycreature’s help to move it.”

Smolder held her head in her claws and dragged them down her face. “Alright, after dinner we’ll all head down to your dorm and help you move it. I’m sure everyone here wants to see this mystery system that we’ve absolutely heard nothing about.”

With the gang now only one member short, they made their way to the cafeteria, a discussion revolving around them about the new game they had yet to play. That carried them all the way to the miniscule line of students queueing for their dinner, whom they were about to join when…

“Move it, losers!”

Garble and his cohorts chose that moment to show up, the teenage dragons muscleing their way into the line directly in front of Gallus, who immediately took offense.

“Hey, you cut the line!”

Garble slowly turned around and leered over the griffon. “What are you gonna do about that, little birdy?”

Just as Gallus’s beak was opening for a sarcastic retort, his tormentor swiped a barbed red tail into his limbs, leaving the griffon to fall onto his side in a breathless heap.

"That's right, nothing!"

The big red bully laughed as the downed griffon scrambled back to all fours, the others in his little group doing the same as they went to get their trays – their backs turned without a care in the world.

With a growl of rage, Gallus found his footing and made ready to attack, Yona also readying up and joining in with a livid snort as well. In their cultures – where brawling and duels were much more common – a turned back was as good an invitation as any for a fight. But before they could enact any kind of reprisal, both Silverstream and Smolder grabbed their withers and held them back.

An orange muzzle found its way into the griffon’s limited peripheral vision and it hissed into his ear hole. “Not worth it dude!”

Right next door, Silverstream was holding onto a pair of yak withers with everything she had without drawing blood. “Seriously guys, all fighting will do is land you in detention!”

The two enraged creatures wanted to teach Garble a long overdue lesson, but their friends’ plea calmed their nerves, and they eventually shrugged it off and grabbed their trays. The others followed suit, grabbing trays and plating up with their usual of meat based dinners for Gallus, Silverstream, and smolder – who also got her serving of gems – a vegetarian meal for Ocellus and in Yona’s case, several vegetarian meals. With their dinner in hoof or claw, the five headed out of the line and to their preferred table by the window.

Well, Silverstream, Ocellus, and Yona happily pranced to their seats while Gallus glowered and held back until Smolder was beside him.

“So what was that about?”

Smolder didn’t miss the pointed tone the griffon had used, but she still responded with a question of her own.

“What was what about?”

The griffon chuckled in sarcasm. “You’re not gonna make this easy are you?”

“Nope.”

With a heavy sigh, Gallus allowed his guard to drop enough to speak his mind. “You’re a dragon. Of all the species here, dragons are by far the most violent, yet whenever Garble fucks with us, you’re always stopping us from fighting.”

She let out a tense sigh. “Because a fight is what he wants. Believe me, I would love to knock him down several pegs, but that would just land us in detention and they would just fuck with us even more. Besides, I don’t want to be seen as that dragon that-”

“Pillages villages and and smokes up the sky, just like you’ve stated many times before. Doesn’t mean I have to like your approach though.”

Smolder wanted to continue her speech, and Gallus looked like he still wanted to argue, but they had reached the table and didn’t want to drag their problems in with them, so they decided to just drop the issue and get situated with their trays instead.

Just as the five picked up their utensils, a curious sound could be heard approaching the cafeteria from the hallway. It was a very rhythmic set of squeaks and rattles – like a cart wheel that hadn’t seen a drop of oil in its life – and it paused for a moment as the doors were pushed open and Sandbar trotted through with a small wagon in tow. As he pulled the ramshackle cart past the other students, many flattened their ears back and grumbled under their breaths about the irritation.

Sandbar slowly picked his way through the tables and pulled up next to the window booth his friends always chose, detaching the cart from the harness he wore over his clothes and facing the table.

“So, did I miss anything?”

“Apart from Garble’s usual shit, not much,” Smolder informed him.

Gallus was about to cut to the chase and ask Sandbar what kind of a system he had under the covers, but somebody else beat him to the punch.

“Oh, what do you have?!”

Silverstream reached over the side of Sandbar’s little cart and lifted up a corner of the blanket covering the load. Four other creatures leaned in closer as the veil was lifted away. The reaction was pretty average when the standard hoof model keyboard and accompanying mouse were revealed – along with an average set of speakers – but their expressions lifted as the rest was exposed to light.

Gallus was the first to speech this time. “Holy shit, dude! I didn’t know you had an EDM!”

With a grin, Sandbar rested his hoof atop the ivory, modernist tower and tipped it slightly.

“Sure do. My uncle works on the factory floor, so I got a sweet family deal on it.”

“Nice.” Smolder stood up from her seat to get a better view. “I was worried that you didn’t have a rig powerful enough to handle the game, but It looks like you’re the best off out of all of us. What’s it got inside?”

The pony chuckled lightly. “This baby’s got a pinnacle two chip, a VGA card with eight megs, a sound mixer card, and one hundred and twenty-eight megabytes of RAM with ten gigabytes of hard drive space and…”

He trailed off when he noticed the slackened jaws of his compatriots. “Why are you guys looking at me like that?”

“Because that’s like, almost double the amount of RAM of mine and Smolder’s machines combined!” Silverstream waved her claws around excitedly.

Yona snorted. “Yak concedes defeat, YackardBell five-hundred nowhere near as powerful as that.”

Just because his yak friend threw in the towel early didn’t mean Gallus would do the same, even though he was clearly outclassed. “Sure, it’s new and powerful. But I’m pretty sure my old beast can still keep up.”

“I want that!”

Everybody initially thought that was another student who was eavesdropping from a nearby table and couldn’t contain themselves any longer, but the skeleton crew of students sharing the room were all too engrossed in their own happenings to have really cared. That left all eyes finding their way towards little Ocellus, who quickly shrank back down into her seat with a bashful look on her muzzle.

“I-I mean, I’d love to have that.”

Smolder took a swig of her drink to wash down her potatoes, then spoke in a flat tone. "Is it bad of me that I kinda want to slap Sandbar right now.?"

"Yona think its okay, just make sure it's not too hard."

Sandbar smiled a cheap, nervous smile as he rubbed the back of his head. “Hey now. There’s no need for that just because I have the best hardware here.”

“Heh, we’ll show you hardware,” both Yona and Smolder murmured in unison while flexing their forelimbs.

Gallus had quickly thought up a witty remark just to get further under the pony’s skin, but the almost terrified look in his eyes forced out something much more tame.

"Hey Sandbar. Since you’ve already eaten, you wanna go to the library and get your gear set
up? We can meet up with you there once we’re finished and maybe help Ocellus out too."

Sandbar laughed nervously, his voice rising an octave as he spoke. “Y-yeah, that sounds like a good Idea. I’ll catch you guys there.”

Sandbar quickly reattached the cart and with another chorus of squeaks and rattles, the pony pulled his wagon away from the group, earning several dirty looks from the students as he disturbed their conversations for the second time.

Only to immediately reverse course and back up to the table again.

“Where in the library did you set up?”

“It’s, um…” Ocellus was going to just tell the pony where they were set up, but she didn’t want any prying ears to hear, so she leaned over and whispered it into Sandbar’s waiting ear.

Once she had explained where they had set up and how to get there, he finally departed the cafeteria.

With nothing left to distract them, the five decided that it would be best to dig into their meals while they were still hot.

“So…” Smolder started off while taking her gems and putting them between two fish fillets to make a sandwich of sorts. “What classes are we all going to choose? Something new, or same ol’ same ol’?”

Gallus had already wolfed down one of his fillets, and he had hardly swallowed before answering. “Nah, I’m good with what I’ve created. Long range is a griffon’s speciality, after all.”

Yona took a break from loudly slurping down two of her bowls of stew at the same time to state her opinion – coming dangerously close to spraying salty broth across the table as well. “Yak is best brute! Yak smash everything with giant hammer!”

Silverstream looked conflicted. “I’m not sure. My specialties are similar to Gallus’s, except for the fact that I can breathe underwater. I might try something new this time. What about you, Smolder?”

“Well I’m a dragon, so whatever can breathe fire is what I’ll be going for.”

Just as Smolder said that, the entire dining hall was bathed in a brilliant orange light as the sun began to fall behind the western horizon. That light also reflected off the bottom of the clouds, adding to the intense glow.

“Wow Smolder,” Silverstream giggled. “Looks like Celestia herself just vouched for you there.”

The dragon took a big bite out of her fish sandwich and watched the now halved orb of light slip out of sight, then drawled out. “Riight.”

Ocellus had been silently munching away at her green bean casserole, but with the others talking shop, she joined in as well.

“All things considered, and according to my notes, all your builds are pretty good. If we want the best multiplayer experience possible, we should stick to what we know best.”

Smolder chortled after taking a sip of her drink. “Yet you play a mage. Wouldn’t a more sneaky class suit you?”

“It might, but mages are the only ones who can perform illusionary magic. I’m okay with taking a hit to my sneaking ability if it means I can use a disguise to get into hard to reach places, just like a changeling.”

As their conversation winded down, so did the amount of food on their trays, and those found themselves stacked together – along with cups and silverware – and carried away to the dishwashing area by Silverstream as the other four gathered their things and got out of their seats. The hippogriff quickly rejoined the party and they headed for the door and to the central atrium.

They found Sandbar waiting there with his now empty cart still in tow, a bemused expression on her face. “Great spot you picked, Ocellus,” the pony chuckled. “Especially the winding path through the underused sections of the library.”

Smolder gasped, then fixed the small changeling with a disapproving stare. “You made him go through that maze!”

“Ah pfft!” The cart pulling pony waved a dismissive hoof. “It wasn’t that bad. Going through the tight spaces with my cart was a little challenging, but I managed.”

“Well, since we’ve all seen the path through the library, how about we bring Ocellus’s system in the easy way.”

“Technically, it’s the only way since my machine wouldn’t fit otherwise.”

Sandbar pointed his hoof towards the changeling. “What kind of rig do you have, by the way?”

The chorus of irritated groans told him the answer wouldn’t come easy.

Gallus’s response was the closest answer he would get.

“That’s the same question everyone else here has asked at some point, but the little bug can’t seem to provide a straight answer.”

Ocellus once again smiled sweetly. “Just be patient for a little longer. We’re heading to it next.”

With patience just starting to wear thin, the five followed Ocellus to the changeling dorms and her room.

As the lights came on and Ocellus welcomed the group into her dorm, they were taken aback by how many bookshelves lined the walls. They were populated by books ranging from high-level magical theory and electrical engineering to mineral properties and circuit board manufacturing.

“Wow Ocellus,” Gallus marveled. “You must have half the library in here. Talk about an egghead.”

The changeling smiled at the griffon’s good-natured jab, lifting a hoof to point at a shelf. “That’s just my personal collection. It’s everything I need to keep my old system in working order.”

“Heh, I know that life. But seriously though, your rig can’t be… that…”

As Gallus trailed off, everyone else besides Ocellus wondered what had silenced him, and followed his gaze. Straight ahead of them was a rather narrow desk with a small terminal with a monitor and keyboard built in sitting atop – a mouse on the right and a data cassette deck and standalone floppy drive on the left. Those in the group who were using more modern equipment were confused as to why a sole terminal was such a big deal, but Gallus used an older computer with its own terminal, and the nearby system had quite literally taken his breath away.

What had been earlier assumed to be some kind of cabinetry was anything but, and everycreature inched forward to get a better look. Tucked up as close as possible to the left wall, and nearly touching the ceiling was a massive black tower that dwarfed the desk. It was sectioned off into three separate vertical compartments – each not only housing different types – but different eras of components.

The closest stack had some kind of digital controller at the very top, with several red illuminated diodes showcasing that the unit was powered down. Just below were several panels populated by rows of toggle switches, each having a dedicated label. At the bottom were several racks with quick release hard drives sitting vertically in their cages.

The middle stack was a whole different animal. Instead of digital readouts and circuitry, it was populated with analog tape reels and large inert vacuum tubes protected by a large glass door that went from bottom to top. The tapes themselves snaked around the wheels and idler pulleys of the cabinet, with little tracks keeping them from becoming damaged and also stopping sag in the tape. That all terminated at the top, where the tapes went through several sets of heads for reading.

The last cabinet was the one that gave the machine its namesake.

It was the component of the system that married everything together, and the component that had also granted the machine longevity beyond its time. It was located in the center of the stack and was comprised of an outer ring of capped tubes with different types of gems held in each. Inside this ring was a large focusing crystal that would turn the different properties and wavelengths of the other crystals into usable instructions. And above and below were massive magical capacitors with small glass tubes that made their way to each gem in the outer ring.

Ocellus used the time that her friends spent marveling at the antiquated computer to start unhooking the terminal, mouse, speakers and cassette deck. After a minute of fussing with unruly cables, the changeling finished her work and turned around to face her friends, only to find them still gawking.

“Is something the matter?” she asked with a hint of concern.

Smolder was the first to break her eyes away and find words. “What, in the shit, is that thing?!”

Ocellus grinned and answered with an air of pride. “It’s a Gem Matrix Mainframe.”