"Pinkie!"

Twilight was halfway to the back of the library before she even realized that she was yelling the name of her friend out loud. Skidding to a halt, she looked wildly around, the scene taking a moment to register in her mind: one of the larger piles of books that she had been meaning to put up for some time now knocked over, Pinkie Pie (unhurt-thank Celestia) cowering against the wall, one book open with her frightened eyes fixed on it.

"Twilight!" Spike yelled from the doorway, reluctant to enter the library lest whatever had scared Pinkie so badly was dangerous. "Hey, Twilight! I heard a crash. Is everything okay?"

"Ma'am, what's going on in there?" one of the pegasi called, having extricated himself from his harness in an astonishingly short amount of time. "Do you need help?"

"Everything's fine," Twilight called over her shoulder as she trotted over to her friend. "Pinkie...what's wrong?"

The pink filly glanced up at her, shaking slightly. The unicorn was shocked at the fact that nearly all the bright happiness in her eyes had been replaced by fear and discomfort.

"Twilight," Pinkie whispered, "what's that?"

She pointed a hoof towards the book. Frowning, Twilight took a look at the open page as Spike and the pegasus stallion entered the room.

Grimacing, she closed her eyes and turned away from what she saw. She'd never turned away from a book before, but it was hard not to be affected by a full-color illustration of a dissected earth pony.

"Eeeuugh!" Spike exclaimed, clapping his hands over his mouth. The stallion frowned and flipped the book closed.

"'The Equestromicon'," he read the title. "You don't see many copies of that anymore."

"W-what is it?" Pinkie asked timidly, hiding behind Twilight, who was levitating the book in order to get a closer look at it.

"It's a very old book," she replied. "From the war days. But I thought every copy was destroyed when the reign of the alicorns began."

"The war days?" Pinkie looked confused. "But-there's never been any war in Equestria..."

Twilight shared a look with the stallion.

"Well-" she began. But seeing Pinkie's face, open and trusting and believing that the world was a wonderful place and always had been, her resolve faltered.

Her friend's coat was beginning to darken and her mane and tail were losing her curliness, testament to her fading happiness. The last thing Twilight needed was for Pinkamena to make an appearance right before she left for Canterlot.

"You're right," she said unexpectedly. The stallion glanced at her, but said nothing. "Sorry, I was mistaken."

Pinkie looked at her. "But you're-"

"I was mistaken," Twilight said firmly. Glancing at the stallion, she said, "We should probably go."

He nodded, as Twilight levitated the book over the the fireplace and dropped it in. Hopefully, she would remember to light it when she came back from Canterlot. And hopefully, nopony came into the library looking for her while she was gone and stumbled upon it. And hopefully, Pinkie's curiosity didn't get the better of her and she didn't sneak in here to look at the Equestromicon again...

With a sigh, she turned to Spike. "We'd better get rid of this."

He nodded, and rushed off. Returning with a book of matches, he lit the logs beneath the book that Twilight had decided to destroy.
She watched the flames consume the bloodred tome. Never...had she thought that she would burn a book.

"Pinkie, put the fire out when you leave," she said abruptly, turning and walking briskly towards the open door.

"Okey-dokey, Twilight!"

"Your luggage has been loaded into the carriage, ma'am," the other stallion said as his partner wrestled his way back into the harness. She dipped her head to him in gratitude and climbed up, glancing behind her to make sure that Spike was following her. As soon as they were settled, the vehicle rose into the air.

"Twilight?" Spike asked. She looked at him.

"What?"

"That creepy book..."

"What about it?"

"Wasn't it in the pile that Princess Celestia gave you?"

The unicorn felt a sudden chill in the pit of her stomach.

"Yes, but I'm sure that it was just a mistake on her part. They keep every book ever written in the royal library, even ones like those. It must have just gotten mixed up. Yes, that's it. It got mixed up. It's no big deal."

"Uh. Maybe you should ask her about it when you see her?" Spike suggested. Twilight adamantly shook her head.

"It was just a silly mistake, Spike. Even the princess makes mistakes sometimes. It's not worth bringing up, it would just make her embarrassed."

"If you say so." Yawning, the small dragon curled up into a ball. "I'm gonna try and go to sleep. It's a long flight to Canterlot."

She opened her mouth to reply, but he was already asleep. Shaking her head again, she lay down beside him.

"How anyone could sleep after seeing what was in that awful book is beyond me..."

A/N: Sorry, another boring chapter! D: Please believe me when I say that it will pick up soon-I just really like to build suspense. And please review, I really want to know what people think of this

And about the shameless fanon in here: I figured that the peace between the three tribes (as depicted in the Heart's Warming Eve episode) would have been tentative. They would have had to have broken apart eventually, even if it was just temporarily. The 'Equestromicon' was (in my fanon) a book written by the unicorn tribe, a log of their experiments on earth ponies so that they could better learn how to fight/kill them and their winged cousins.