Twilight Sparkle suspected she had read every book in the Canterlot library. She'd read every volume in her personal archives, in the library of friendship, and, when she'd lived in Ponyville, kept a meticulous mental archive of each book in its place on the shelf, and a physical list on paper for backup, and another one on magically-inscribed vellum scroll which was immune to fire, water, Pinkie Pie, and anything else that might have rendered it unreadable.

But there was a section deep in the library within the Castle of Two Sisters that had a special category which could only be explored very slowly. It was a category of literature that required both hooves to read, in a manner of speaking. A section that Twilight knew needed to be properly and tenderly explored, word by tantalizing word, until she'd reached the end naturally, not speed-reading and notating and yelling dictations to Spike across the room, as she normally did. This was a special section.

So special, Twilight had to ensure she wasn't followed before entering. Displacement glyphs surrounded the book-case that hid the false-book pull-out entrance, a historical treatise on an early tribal cluster of ponies on a continent that, upon minor scrutiny, it could be determined did not exist. Twilight double-checked, triple-checked her surroundings, scanning visually, aurally, and magically, the final cast of a detection spell revealing not even the presence of bugs or anthropomorphic dust-mites. The section labelled EROS was finally open, and Twilight slid into the bookcase's hidden entrance like a [REDACTED] like a whisper slipping into a midnight breeze.

Each row of books was unlit, covered in the muffled interior darkness. But the books seemed to sparkle and sizzle, licking at the air with tongues of magic flame that were every color between the spectrum of visible light, blurring the darkness in flickering tendrils that always made you wonder if they were really there or not. The heat was just as intangible, but it came and went in the same bursts, a patch of warm fur that would suddenly go deathly cold, like swimming in deep water and suddenly finding a small radius that was as cold as a windigo's... nevermind.

Twilight moved down the rows as though she'd practiced the path a thousand times, only once reaching out her hoof to test in front of her after several turns. A bookcase materialized against her touch out of thin air, blocking the way down the row and sizzling as it solidified, though no steam or sparks appeared anywhere visible.

Smiling, Twilight corrected her path to the left and made her way around a few more towering shelves before she reached her destination.

There was one book that had drawn her attention last time in the forbidden library. It had almost jumped out at her, calling with a cover stuck out of the shelf so loud Twilight was sure she heard words in her ears. She'd taken it out, even inspected the cover, but was already spent from her night's earlier 'investigations'.

Even still, it was hard to put the thing down—it had a peculiar weightless quality to it, despite the size, and even though the title was untranslated, Twilight felt herself compelled to open the book and test its contents, to pour her eyes over the words even though she might not understand immediately what they meant. Perhaps the meaning would soak in through the symbols themselves, somehow.

But now she had done the translation. She had also, upon picking the book up a second time, noticed a subtitle, in perfectly legible modern Equestrian, and felt particularly foolish for about five seconds, blushing brightly in the secret room's camouflaging darkness.

"'Examine This Text To Arrive With Great Haste'..." Twilight read the text aloud to herself. "That can't be right, can it?"

Her translation had come out more like "Read This Book And Instantly". 'Instantly' what hadn't been specified. Twilight couldn't tell which title was more intriguing in its peculiarity. Specifically, with either title, how did the book fit in the romance section.

The 'illicit romance' section, to be particular. That was what Twilight had taken to calling it, though she took care not to do so in the company of anypony else...

Still. You couldn't judge a book by its cover, or its weird title, translated or not. Heck, Twilight had once been glued to the pages of a good Daring Do fanfic for the last week, and that was only titled Daring Do Has An Adventure With Gargantuan Poultry. There was a lot you could do beyond a title.

Unable to contain her anticipation any longer, and frankly wanting to get the evening on with so she could get her daily dose of dopamine bursts and go back home to get some sleep, Twilight flipped open the cover of the book to a blank page. She flipped the first page over, revealing the title, embossed in silver lettering that shimmered even in the complete darkness. It reminded Twilight to turn on a light, which she did with a quick glow of her horn which lit the lamp she had also left on the reading table from last time. It was important nopony else knew how to get here via the secret path... other than Princess Luna and Celestia of course, who had both built the place. Though, it was Princess Luna who'd told her of the area... maybe a princess of the night needed more time to herself alone with her... thoughts.

This was it. The first page. Even though it'd be hard to compete with Twilight's last read, she had such a good feeling about this. Her body was beginning to experience physical reactions not suitably described in a family friendly story. So, we'll leave them out.

There was the first page though. It started a little above halfway down, with an old-fashioned chapter heading and big, block-printed letters, that had either been done by a very antique press, or copied meticulously by hoof, maybe even steadied by magic.

Twilight began to read the first page.

She began to, and then she was.

When she started, she couldn't stop.

She read the first page like a single word, drinking it in from the letter at the top of the page to the bottom in a single motion.

Then she had an [REDACTED].

It was very loud. Not at all appropriate for a library.

And it was long. It kept going. Twilight had enjoyed some erotic literature before, but nothing that had warranted the use of a tarp or a stop-watch. Seconds became minutes. Minutes blurred into each other, records shattering under the hands of the clock as the hours spun on. Twilight collapsed onto the floor of the library, the book falling with her, landing sprawled open on the same page, her body rocked with the convulsions of... stuff. You know. Ask your mom if you don't.

It was therefore only maybe by sheer coincidence, or some capricious fairy that had waited until the last minute but still had Twilight's best interest at heart, that Princess Luna stumbled on her junior, slumped over and gurgling with the mysterious tome still open in front of her, the single page unmoving and uncovered.

In the ensuing panic, Princess Luna had snapped the book shut without even bothering to read it. Probably she'd put it on the desk not assuming a book could have anything to do with Twilight's sudden and worrying collapse. But she left it up on the desk just the same, and there it remained, just feet from Twilight and the guard-ponies that Luna let in especially to carry her out, ensuring them that if they repeated the existence of this location to anypony they would be jobless and possibly REDACTED-less by the end of the night. Early night.

But somewhere on the other side of Equestria, or more accurately roughly on the same side but in a sort of slightly different location, like maybe an hour's drive away by carriage, half an hour if you didn't stop for pee breaks—twenty-five if you flew, and twenty if you flew with a complete disregard for the safety of yourself or others, or in other words were Rainbow Dash—anyway, somewhere far away-ish, we'll say, a signal had come in, which had been sent by Princess Luna and her guards whether or not they'd noticed or even known about it. And the signal sent a beep to a contraption on the ornate wood desk of a small pony who was sitting in a businesslike chair behind it.

The small pony was named Cozy Glow, and she had a mane of swirled bluish turquoise curls, a light peach-pink coat, and a cutie mark of a chess piece—a rook, specifically. She stared for a few seconds at the small, spinning light as it flickered in circles on her desk, then shut it off with a small button affixed to the bottom of the light. She clicked a few other, unlabeled buttons on her desk, then sat back in her chair, leaning away from her desk and towards the window at the opposite end of the room.

The plate on the front of her desk said 'DIRECTORR'. The second R was crossed out. A giant bookcase, which from the looks of things, had been undisturbed for some time, lined the wall behind her desk. Many of the volumes simply said 'BOOK' on the cover.

And somewhere else, in a place not particularly far from this one, but still far enough that a tiny button sending information invisibly was quite an accomplishment (and was quite an accomplishment anyway, when you thought about it, really), another light blinked, and an alarm began to beep, loud and hideously, playing two notes the maximum distance possible from each other without a single detectable shred of harmony, until a green hoof switched it off with a stern finality.

The green hoof picked up a set of sunglasses, and put them on the face of the pony the hoof belonged to¹.

"We're on call," the green pony said.

"Word."

"Please don't say that again."

Author's Notes:

1: Is this the worst sentence ever written in the history of the world? You be the judge, dear reader. - Ed.