Twilight paced back and forth, looking over the staff she'd been given like a general reviewing his troops. In addition to the library's original staff there were now several historians, archivists and archaeologists from Canterlot, each with a small retinue of assistants and student interns. Some of them were looking a little rumpled from the long train ride, and a few of the more senior researchers were looking a tad miffed at being put under the authority of 'Celestia's pet protege.'

Twilight Sparkle was having none of it, though.

"Okay, we've all made our introductions, I think I'll do a quick sum-up of what we're doing here," she said. "The librarians and archivists of the Crystal Empire--" here she respectfully nodded to the library staff; they returned the nod stiffly "--have graciously given us access to some of their carefully preserved historical treasures. Among those are some of the rarest and most valuable artifacts in pony history: the preserved pages of the journal of one of the founders of Equestria." One of the interns hiccuped in surprise; apparently the professors hadn't filled all of their assistants in on the details. "Chancellor Level Head, the leader of the Earth pony tribe."

There was a rude bark of laughter. "Yes, the one we call 'Chancellor Puddinghead' in our Hearthwarming plays," Twilight said, without looking to see who had laughed. "It would appear that the name was a deliberate misnomer by his enemies. And that's just the first of many things we've already learned from it. Expect to have a lot of your foalhood folklore upended." She stood and faced the crowd. "Among other facts lost to history, it would seem that the Hearthwarming Spell was, in fact, an artifact. The very Crystal Heart that protects and powers this City." More whispers among the interns, and disturbingly a few sour looks from a couple of the scholars. "It would seem there was another schism in Equestria after the events described in the Hearthwarming lore. Chancellor Level Head and a large portion of the Earth Pony population split off from Equestria some time shortly before the Discordian reign, and went on to found the Crystal Empire, taking the crystal heart they created with them..."

One of the interns, a rather scrawny young fellow with a lime green coat rather like a young Mr. Cake in build, held up his hoof. "Miss Twilight, did you say 'That they created?' But they were Earth ponies, weren't they?"

Twilight nodded. "Exactly. We... I.... have good reason to believe that the pre-modern earth pony tribe had access to, and were capable of using, earth pony magic as powerful and complex as any unicorn's." Honestly, didn't these scholars tell their help anything? "That is why Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, with the gracious permission of Princess Mi Amora Cadenza, have sent you here. According to the information in the journal, Level Head collaborated with his grandson Smart Cookie--" another ripple of surprise in the crowd,  "Private Pansy and Clover the Clever to research earth pony magic, and eventually to create the Heart. Apparently Level Head was an earth pony mage of considerable power by the time he arrived here...

"And he kept an archive of his secrets.

" His last request was to be buried with all his books and work, to preserve them against some future time of need. Somewhere in the Crystal Empire, there is a lost tomb where Level Head was laid to rest, and that tomb contains the lost secrets of earth pony magic.

"And we are going to find them."

There was a muffled expletive. "Oh for the love of--"

Twilight turned around. There was a pony scholar in a tweed jacket and black bow tie standing in the front row. His strictly cut iron-grey beard and mane contrasted heavily with his teal blue coat. His cutie mark was a yellow triangle with a question mark in the middle. He was all but bristling with indignation. "Are you telling me that we've been dragged away from the University-- from our jobs and our lives-- to spend the Princess' bits on a wild goose chase, hunting down some nearly-forgotten earth pony fable?"

A bit startled at his vehemence, Twilight turned and faced him. "Is there something you wanted to share, mister---?"

"Dubious, Professor I.M. Dubious, PhD in folklore, mythology, oral folklore and ancient history," the unicorn said haughtily. "I've been researching a great deal of this earth pony mythos for some time. Earth pony folklore is rife with old myths and tales about 'long lost earth pony magic'. You find them everywhere you find earth ponies... half-forgotten stories of 'earth pony wizards' and other such tales."

"And doesn't that tell you anything?" Twilight asked dryly.

He sniffed. "It's self-evidently a wishful power fantasy, motivated by earth pony inferiority complexes and envy of unicorn magic."

Twilight saw several of the earth ponies in the room, crystal and non, stiffen at the subtle slur. Heck, even she was feeling her hackles go up. Something told her Professor Dubious needed taken down a peg. A memory clicked. "Wait, Dubious? Ignatious Mendicant Dubious?"

"One and the same," the stallion said.

Twilight gave a cheery smile. "Ahh, I thought I recognized the name! I've read some of your books and theses." As the haughty unicorn started to preen she lowered the boom. "You were the scholar who proposed that Nightmare Moon was, quote, "nothing but a consolidation of pre-modern era goblins and boogeymen,' am I right?" Dubious stammered a bit, blustering. "I should thank you for that." Twilight's expression went deadpan. "It put me off on a rabbit trail for over a month when I was trying to forecast her return.

"Ah, and I remember your book on the 'long debunked legend of the spirit of Chaos.' He was 'just a  cautionary fable, a fabrication of society's need to suppress discordant behavior.' Came out a week before he escaped."

Dubious tried to puff up. "Now see here--"

"What was one of your other titles? 'Sonic Rainbooms: the Persistent Belief in Scientific Impossibilities--'

"Oh yes, you're quite the renowned author in the circles I travel. Why they think you're one of the funniest writers alive." Several ponies snickered. At this point Dubious' face was a livid red. She stuck her face into his, their noses almost touching. " For your information, Professor Dubious, I am a personal eyewitness to all three phenomena. I was the one who predicted Nightmare Moon's return; I was also the one who found the Elements of Harmony using those 'old mare's tales' you prided yourself on having debunked. Discord?  That 'cautionary fable'? I can tell you everything about him right down to his table manners. And as to the Sonic Rainboom, I can introduce you personally to the mare that did it THREE TIMES thus far.

You should know by now: I do my homework. The evidence for this 'wild goose chase' is material, comprehensive, documented and confirmed by independent research.  As you SHOULD know, if you had bothered to read the exhaustive documentation I sent each of you, instead of handing it off to one of your longsuffering interns.

Perhaps you would be more renowned in scholastic circles if you spent more time studying those 'old mare's tales' than you do sitting on your plot in your University office sneering at them." She spun about, her tail all but flicking him in the face, and returned to pacing. "Now, as I was saying..."

Spike had managed to wrangle his way back into the library and back to Twilight Sparkle's side. He came toddling over from the plinth he was leaning against and handed a crimped tube to the sputtering scholar. "What is this?" the red faced unicorn demanded.

"Ointment," Spike said. "I figured you'd need it for that BURN."

"Spike..." Twilight said over her shoulder.

"Okay okay okay, I'm comin'. Jeez." He trotted after the mare, leaving Dr Dubious sputtering.

"Honestly Spike..."

"Well you started it---"

"As I was saying," Twilight Sparkle continued. A bit loudly. "The search for the missing tomb naturally begins here, in the Imperial library. As you surely know the shelves of this library, all on their own, represent a thousand year old treasure trove of lost knowledge. The staff here are already in the midst of a massive restructure and reorganization; we will be inserting ourselves in the middle of it all, aiding in the work-- and going through the archives of this institution, book by book, for any and all references to the Founders of either Equestria or the Crystal Empire, the work of Level Head, Smart Cookie, Private Pansy, and Clover the Clever, or the lost tomb itself."

"All of them??" a butter-yellow pegasus intern yelped. The ponies gathered looked around at the seemingly endless towering shelves--- the interns and flunkies with a bit more trepidation than their respective superiors. They knew who would be doing all the scut work.

Twilight actually grinned and hopped on her hooves. "That's another thing I wanted to mention," she said. She gestured to four unicorn stallions standing to one side. One was light brown with a dark brown mane and tail, and with what looked like a cutie mark of a beach ball. The next was white with a mane the tan color of straw, and a jigsaw puzzle cutie mark. The third was red, with a fiery yellow mane and a cutie mark of a fox holding a globe. And the fourth was teal, with a blue mane, and on his flank was a half-assembled pile of blocks. "These four gentleponies are contributing a series of spells that, working together, will work to search, sort, and file all the books in this library," she said.

"Mister Googleplex has created a spell that will search any book, scroll, paper or magazine for any occurrence of a word, series of words, or phrase."

"It also searches for images," Google said. He coughed. "Um, it's not as effective at that, so I'd recommend sticking to word searches."

"Mister Foxfire," Twilight continued, gesturing to the flame-haired unicorn, "has a spell that will make an illusory copy of a book's page and display it to be read."

"You can browse an entire book without opening it or taking it off the shelves," Foxfire boasted. "Or even while somepony else is reading it."

"And Wicker Speedy--" The straw maned pony waved "--- has an enchantment that will automatically cross-reference the contents of any two books.

"So long as they're of sufficient notability," He amended.

"How do you know what's of sufficient notability?" somepony asked.

Wicker looked a little abashed. "Umm, still sort of fine-tuning that..." he confessed.

"And Diamond Fragment--"

"D.Frag to my homies," the teal and blue colt said with a cheesy grin.

"His contribution is more indirect, but he has devised a spell that will properly reshelve all the books in the library... once they are properly labeled with the Dewhoof Decimal system." Twilight held up a hoof-full of stickers with runic symbols on them.

"Got tired o' climbing stepladders to reshelve my boss's book collection," D.Frag said. "My talent is putting stuff, especially busted up stuff,  together. So I applied a li'l abstract thought to my talent and innovated. Now all I have to do to reassemble the shelves in his mansion every night is hit the big red button--" he held up a wooden box with a suitably big red hoof-sized button on top-- "and go to bed."

Spike's eyes went wide. "You mean all you have to do to reshelve everything in your library is push that button?" D.Frag nodded. Spike flung himself across the room and wrapped his arms around the pony's leg. He looked up at him with worshipful eyes. "Don't take this the wrong way but-- I'm yours."

"SPIKE!" A purple glow enveloped the dragonling and yanked him away. "Sorry," Twilight said to D.Frag. "He gets over-exuberant when he thinks he's found a way to increase his nap time. Anyway," she went on. "By correlating these four spells to work together, we will be able to search the entire library for information relating to the location of the lost tomb of the Founders.

"I have composed a starter list of possible "search phrases" to pull up the information we're seeking. Foxfire, Googleplex and Wicker Speedy will teach all the unicorns in our group their spells. For the earth ponies and pegasi, these gentleponies have managed to design a... what did you call it?"

"An interface," D.Frag said. "'S like a control panel, but "interface" just sounds more jagged, y'know?"

"Rrright." Twilight cocked an eyebrow. Whatever. "Care to do a demonstration?"

"Can do." The four unicorns set up a tabletop podium, laid an oversized blank scroll with elaborate wooden rollers across the top, and set a chalkboard on an easel on one side of it and a crystal ball on the other. All three were quite ornate, and had gems and crystals inlaid in specific spots. "The next version will be much more compact and use floating illusions rather than solid props," Wicker Speedy said. "But this version is fully functional." He used his hoof to tap a rune carved into the podium: a circle partly bisected by a vertical line. The rune glowed with green light, and the scroll levitated up and unfurled, stretched between the two rollers. "Now... to conduct a search." He looked around. "Um, somepony suggest something to look for?"

"Bananas," Spike said. Twilight looked at him in bafflement. Spike shrugged. "First word that popped in my head."

Wicker Speedy shrugged. He picked up a piece of chalk with his magic and wrote "bananas" on the chalkboard next to him. A thin green tendril of light shot up from the crystal ball, struck the ceiling, and zigzagged off through the stacks, splitting and branching over and over again, sending out thinner and thinner lines that seemed to skitter over the stacks and shelves and carts full of books like searching, twitching fingers. Some of the lines froze on specific books, outlining them in a faint glow. Others skittered onward.

Immediately the levitating scroll began to fill with dense writing. Across the top appeared the statement, in bold black letters:

10,547 RESULTS FOUND FOR "BANANAS."

Several of the onlookers stepped closer, peering at the scroll. Below the the legend was a list, in a slightly smaller font. "These are the results," Wicker Speedy said. "It searches first by title, then by author, then by content. There are, woo, fifteen books here with the word 'Bananas' in the title. Let's try, oh, the third one..." he tapped the book title written in bold, with his hoof. The scroll went blank, and then rewrote itself with a title page. "Banana Farming in the Gallop-ogos Islands, by Summer Winds. Okay, to turn the page we tap this arrow--" he poked the named arrow carved in the podium with his hoof. The title page rewrote itself as the opening paragraph. "To go back, tap the other...."

"But it's only showing the top half of the page," Spike pointed out.

"Oh, you just roll the scroll," Wicker Speedy said. He began twisting the scroll rod with his hoof, rolling the paper up into the top bar. "Just scroll down---"

"But you're rolling it up," Spike said. "Shouldn't you say "scroll up?"

"No, you're going down the page, so you're scrolling down. Otherwise it's confusing."

"But it's going up--"

"Scrolling. Down," Wicker Speedy said, glaring slightly.

"Fine, fine," Spike said, holding his claws up in surrender. "Scrolling down." He pointed to the crystal ball. "So what's that?"

Inside the ball could be seen an image of a book, slowly tumbling as if in freefall. "That lets you see what book you're looking through," Foxfire said proudly. "A little add-on I made. If you wanna pull down the whole book, you just tap on the globe twice, like this." He reached past Wicker Speedy and tapped the top of the globe twice with his hoof.

"No wait--" Wicker Speedy said.

He never finished his sentence. In the blink of an eye one of the thousands of branching green lines overhead turned red, and a hardback tome came zipping back along its path. It struck Wicker Speedy full in the face, knocking him clean off his stool and laying him out on the floor. Googleplex looked down at the concussed archivist, then over at Foxfire. "Told ya you overclocked it," he said with satisfaction.

Twilight winced. "Maybe you should disable that feature till you have all the bugs worked out," she suggested. She turned back to the others. "All right then, once they get everypony set up, we'll all start searching--" she tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Archive trawling? Magi-searching? Spellseeking?"

Spike looked up thoughtfully. "How about 'web searching?' " He said, pointing up at the glittering web of emerald lines traced over the library's crystalline ceiling.

Twilight pulled a face. "Ick. That'll never catch on, Spike...." she shook her head. "Ahem. We'll start searching for any volumes with information on the lost tomb. Meanwhile I want to show the archaeologists in our group the hidden chamber with the-- yeek!" She stopped in mid stride, barely missing mashing her nose into a camera lens. "Roller Reel, what are you doing?"

It was, indeed, Roller Reel. He had somehow procured a klunky super 8 camera and was roaming around the meeting, eye glued to the viewpiece. "I'm filming this," he said plainly. "There was some sort of shipping mistake or something, and they dumped this crate of stuff on me to get rid of. There's like, a mountain of these fifteen minute reels of blank film in back and..."

"Roller, will you please get that camera out of here? This is an important historical project, and we don't have time for--"

"But that's just it, Miss Twilight!" Roller protested. He stopped the camera and lowered it. His eyes were actually shining. In fact, all of him was shining. It was the brightest Twilight had ever seen the crystal pony's coat sparkle. "This is the biggest thing to ever happen to us crystal ponies. It's, it's like, our legends and our past coming to life, right in front of us!" He sat back and waved his forehooves expansively. His smile was so wide it had to hurt and his eyes had stars in them. "This deserves to be on film! This is.... this is our history. "

Twilight Sparkle regarded him, her head tilted to one side. A smile slowly spread on her face. She turned to address the roomful of ponies who were already bustling about, getting ready to set their hoof to work. "Attention everypony, there's one other thing I forgot to announce," she said, raising her voice above the noise. "This is Roller Reel, he works in the audio visual department. He will be recording everything on film for documentary and historical purposes. Just let him tag along, answer his questions, and he'll do his best to stay out of your way."

Roller blinked in surprise, then grinned with glee.

"Oh, and if he gets obnoxious just bop him on the head. He learns faster that way."

"Heyyyyy...!"