The Canterlot hospital was a state-of-the-art facility, which meant a dedicated diagnostics team and research facility, putting thousands of pony-hours into researching and curing new diseases and ailments. If you got a curse put on you, Canterlot hospital could help. They could magic you better from whatever ailed you.

Princess Twilight had a bed in the intensive care unit, which she might have gotten anyway, given nopony present wanted to risk letting a member of Equestrian royalty slip away on their watch. The newspapers would have a field day.

Even though a gauntlet of permissions and key-cards were required to access the appropriate wing, Lyra and Bonbon managed to glide through the hospital staff like a pair of ghosts. Every time a door opened, one of them was behind to hold it open, and without being questioned once, the pair made it to the ICU and Twilight's bedside without being noticed at all. It was amazing what kind of things you could get done if you kept your mouth shut and moved around like you knew what you were doing.

There was a large set of complicated-looking monitors and apparati beeping beside Twilight's bed. The little line that blipped up and down, something else that seemed to be delivering some sort of fluid through a clear plastic bag and tube... And Twilight's eyes were closed, her snores wheezing softly through her nose. Whether she was dreaming or in the emptiness between fantasies remained to be seen.

Lyra and Bonbon shared a look in the otherwise empty room.

"'Incident report indicated that POI-0001, aka Twilight Sparkle, had sustained lasting physical and mental damage from her encounter with the anomaly'," Bonbon read from a dossier she'd pulled out. "'Recommend allowing substantial recovery time and handling all requests for information with the utmost care and delicacy. Also recommend restricting the presence of cucumber, zucchini, and any similarly shaped vegetables until POI-0001 shows significant signs of recovery.'" Bonbon finished reading the dossier and tucked it away into a suit-pocket. "Does that sound like our usual mode of operations to you?"

“Not even the bit about zucchini.” Lyra shrugged. She was checking the various dials and machines hooked up at Twilight's bedside, poking them absentmindedly to see if something would beep extra loud or otherwise alert somepony of their presence. The machines seemed mostly docile, though that one did continue beeping quite regularly...

"Keep in mind it's very possible the princess won't even remember what happened," Bonbon said. She walked a little closer to Twilight's bedside and stared at the sleeping pony. Her eyes were closed tight, a fitful sleep, but every so often they would twitch, and flicker, like a dog who was dreaming of a rabbit hunt. Or a rabbit hunting it.

"We need all the information we can get," Lyra said. She stood up from the machines she'd been examining and turned towards Twilight on the other side of the bed. "You gonna try waking her up, or should I?"

Bonbon sighed and pulled out a small, unlabeled plastic bag from her suit's inside jacket-pocket. She undid the tiny zip seal at the top and held the bag in her hooves for a few seconds, jostling it from side to side to equalize the diminutive mound of powder inside. Then she held it underneath Twilight's nose, just for a second or two, before she pulled the bag back and tucked it inside her suit again.

Sure enough, Twilight began to cough and sputter like she was waking from a drowning. She shook her head from side to side and hacked a few times, whatever was crowding her lungs evidently content to remain there regardless of her effort. When the coughing fit had passed, only a few tiny throat-clears remained, and then suddenly Twilight was awake, wide-eyed, staring at Lyra and Bonbon on either side of her and clutching her blankets as though they might protect her from a nighttime monster. Unfortunately, whatever monsters were on the prowl right now couldn't be dissuaded with blankets.

"Hey," Bonbon said, trying to find her most accessible 'we're happy and not here to hurt you' tone. It was a difficult rung in between 'listen to me or one of us is going to die right now' and 'please pay no attention to anything I'm saying while my partner finds their way to whatever we intended to relocate without your awareness'. 'We're relocating it so no one else steals it', Lyra would say sometimes. Bonbon liked that quote.

"He... hello?" Twilight said. She blinked a few times, clearing the sparkles of iridescent hospital lighting from the edges of her eyes. "Um... are you two doctors? How long have I been here?"

"We're part of the hospital's quarantine department," Lyra said smoothly, sidling up closer to Twilight's bed. "We've been assigned to investigate the incident that led to your hospitalization. The one in the library."

Twilight blushed furiously, as though she'd suddenly forgotten her life was at stake if it meant revealing her illicit night-time reading habits.

"Um... the... 'library'?" she said.

Lyra nodded, sunglasses over her eyes. "Uh-huh. The secret library."

Twilight blushed even brighter and tried to cover her face with her hooves unsuccessfully.

"Oh, but, I really don't know much about the old castle, it's been abandoned for so long..."

"Localized thaumaturgical readings suggest a disruption of at least [REDACTED] designation. And the concentration of energy and its resulting displacement could tear a pony limb from limb and leave their organs in a pile on the carpet. Does this sound anything like something you saw before you were incapacitated?"

Twilight's cheeks glowed a permanent lavender-red mix. She shook her head and tried to look off into the distance where her conscience could freely funnel her excuses. Still, there were very few escape paths left. Pure ignorance could benefit, perhaps.

"I'm not sure," Twilight said, looking around as though for a script that might help her move forward in the conversation. "I don't really remember what happened, I was just, sort of, so overwhelmed… Wait, did you just say ‘REDACTED’ out loud?"

"The dispatched unit—"

"That's us," Lyra interjected.

"—recovered an anomalous object of significant thaumaturgical intensity at the site of the incident." Bonbon studied her notes for a moment, then reached inside her suit-jacket-pocket, which seemed to be infinite in both size and containment, and pulled out a book. The book.

INHUME THESE WORDS EXEUNT POST HASTE

Twilight shrieked and recoiled back in her bed, throwing the blankets up over her head and cowering underneath like a filly fighting a nightmare.

"Get that thing away from me!" she said. She batted at the blankets with her hooves as though trying to increase the distance between her and the thing in question.

Lyra and Bonbon shared a look.

"Hmm," Lyra said. "Looks like that's the one."

Bonbon nodded. "Yep. That's the one."

"Should we bother to stay and ask more questions?"

"I don't think there's anything we could use for the report."

"What about first-hand incident testimony?"

Bonbon looked at the hospital bed, where Princess Twilight was covered in blankets, shuddering and mumbling under her breath, vague incoherent protests involving the word 'book' and 'I wasn't...'

"If you want to ask her again, be my guest," Bonbon said.

Lyra looked at Twilight's bed once, royalty cloaked in white sheets, before shaking her head and sighing.

"Fair enough. Shall we?"

Twilight Sparkle was so invested in keeping the object away, in concealing herself under the blankets the same way she had as a foal, keeping the monsters of the darkness away, that by the time she finally felt safe enough to peek out from the covers again, the book, and the two ponies who'd brought it in, had vanished.

There was just the gentle hum and beep of the many machines, one of which was ringing closer together than it had before. Beep. Beep. Beep.