//------------------------------//
// So You Say Time Travel is Impossible, Eh? 
// Story: How a Man and His Friends Helped Save Equestria 
// by FinInfinite 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 9


So you say time travel is impossible, eh?


Eagletone was lamenting his condition.  When he had woke up, he had decided to look at his reflection. (something he had neglected to do for the number of days that he had been in Equestria)  When he saw what he saw, he was somewhat dismayed - he had a scraggly chin’s worth of a beard that was too thin to look good at all.
Now, perhaps some explaining is due:  On Earth, puberty had more or less hit Eagletone (then Carson) like a freight train and passed like a fighter jet, leaving a basso profundo who, among other things, could grow a full beard in a matter of a fortnight.  In Equestria, very few ponies lived long enough or had the ability to grow what could be considered “facial hair,” so there was hardly any way to shave, since there was no real need for ponies to do so.  With Eagletone’s high levels of beard-growing hormones and Equestria’s beard-stopping sorcery, he had been left with something that grew, yet looked awful.
“Aww, no!” he whined, being a pony who was at least somewhat concerned about his appearance.  He decided that he needed some way to shave, otherwise he would most surely be the laughing stock of all of Equestria.  Seeing as there was no easy way to do so (especially so with hooves for hands), he ran to the most magical pony he knew the location of.

Cache awoke to the rather annoying sound of his name being repeated endlessly.  What Eagletone was saying was just that:  “Cache, Cache, Cache, Cache...”  What Cache heard, though was, “Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep...”
The repetitive noise being easily mistaken for an alarm in his sleeping state, his muscle memory took over and he hit the source of the noise to turn it off.  What he didn’t expect was the loud “Ouch!” that came when he hit it.  This irregularity woke him up at least partially.
“Dude, you hit my face!” Eagletone complained, cushioning his hurt muzzle.
“Oh, sorry,” Cache replied in a groggy, half-asleep way.
Eagle disregarded his injury and pulled Cache out of bed continuing, “Anyways, I need you to shave.”
“What?”
“Shave me.  More accurately, my face.”
“Oh, okay,” said Cache, now understanding.  He shook himself a bit more into wakefulness and concentrated on sharpening his telekinesis into a blade, then carefully re-carved Eagle’s previously decimated face.
After several minutes, Eagletone was clean-shaven and surprised at the precision that Cache was able to use.  “Thanks man, I never knew you were that good at magic,” he said with an undertone of slight amazement.
“Me neither,” Cache responded, apparently surprised at his own skill.  “Well, I’m awake now; might as well eat,” he concluded, the concentration having woke him.
“Agreed,” Eagletone grinned and trotted out with him, adding, “Let’s get Bass Clef as well,” as he did so.

Sitting in the saloon part of the Salt Block, the Three were speculating about what would happen next.  Most of all, Eagletone was very concerned as to why and how ponies would have leather.  He decided to ask Spry when they got to his house.
As they were trotting along the Western-style streets that morning, their conversation came to the subject of Jed and Aaronius.
“Seriously guys, has either of you seen them lately?” Eagle was asking.
Bass chatted back, “I keep hearing they get up really early, so I guess we just keep missing them.”
“Yeah, but don’t you think they would come back at some point?” Cache replied, catching Eagle’s train of thought.
That got Bass Clef thinking.  “Good point,” he said.
At that moment they arrived at Spry’s home, so their conversation was cut short.  Cache knocked and Spry opened the door and welcomed them into the somewhat sparsely furnished house.  They set immediately and solemnly to the recounting of the past, getting into their now-familiar position.


	***


	

Spry introduced the Three to today’s lesson.  I hope to get through much today; I will go a bit faster this time, so unfortunately you won’t have as much time to take everything in.

Rob awoke to a rumbling and a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.  the torches inside the room (and indeed, the whole building, it seemed) had been blown out, and so it was difficult to see.
Starswirl’s voice was coming from somewhere in the ceiling of the room.  It was saying, “If you are hearing this there is an emergency and the house must be evacuated.” At this point, Rob was now somewhat panicked.  Silver had woken up before Rob and was listening to the message as well.  It went on, “There is a central magic elevator shaft in the middle of the home, which may or may not be functional; I would suggest trying that first. You are currently one hallway east of the shaft...” The message continued, but the two had immediately bolted in the direction of the center of the house.
The rumbling continued, perhaps even getting louder, but they reached the shaft.  Rob was rather confused, because instead of having arrowed buttons on the wall, there was only a pad.  Silver, though, was familiar with this kind of technology, so he quickly smacked the pad, causing the doors to instantaneously slide open.  They ran inside to find a long line of buttons.  One was lit up, most likely indicating which floor they were currently on.  Rob pressed the button that said, “1,” on it and was surprised to feel an absolutely gut-wrenching sensation.
He felt as if his center of mass were being jerked in aimless spirals strongly enough to blur his sight, because all he saw was thin blue lines erratically darting and extending every which direction.  Fortunately, this only lasted for the briefest moment, and they were back in the elevator again, which opened to reveal a different layout than when they had entered.
Silver, now winded, galloped out the door with Rob woozily stumbling behind - his gut still hurt, and it wasn’t just what had just happened (although that hadn’t exactly helped, either); the sick feeling he had been having was becoming more intense.
“Never... again... will I teleport...” he gasped, holding his stomach as best as he could without hands.
Silver yelled, “Come on!” and picked him up onto his own shoulders, continuing to run as fast as he could.  As he was galloping, Starswirl’s voice continued to repeat his emergency message, directing them to outside the house.  The further they went, the darker it became, until they could almost see nothing at all.  Rob’s stomach also became more painful as they progressed, nearly incapacitating him, and leaving him somewhat delirious.  Each time they made a turn, he would groan, becoming louder as they went on.
Finally, they burst out of the front door to see nothing but shades of black.  All they could hear was screaming, and all they could taste was... darkness.
Among the panicking voices, they could hear Starswirl’s, and he was coming nearer.  As they turned to see him, they also saw something that paralyzed them and made them fear for their lives:  It was a formless shape of pure black.  Like ink dropped in water, it seemed to be seeping into the fabric of everything else.  It had two red eyes that were pits to the deepest recesses of a torture chamber and a maw that was a hole to inexistence.  Cold terror trickled down Rob’s spine as he waited to die, but as it came closer, he saw another thing that jump-started the adrenaline in his body.
Starswirl had a golden ball of light surrounding him, and his horn seemed to be a bonfire of brightness.  He formed and sent a majestic lance of white into the middle of the cloud of evil, causing it to burst and have to reform.  He took that time, to dash over to Rob and Silver as they ran to him as well.
“Starswirl!” Silver Bullet shouted as they neared him, “What the crap is that thing?!”
Starswirl’s eyes were glowing and trails of gold were slowly steaming from them as he replied, “I have no idea, but it must be stopped!”
They all turned as they heard the rushing of all this thing’s parts coming back together.  It gave them one hateful glance, backed up, and began to compress itself.
Silver stared at it for a moment, bewildered.  “What’s that thing do-”
SZHWHOOSH-BOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!
The monstrosity suddenly imploded and then shot towards the ground, seeming to disappear explosively as it did so.  Everypony was relieved as the area brightened back up except for Starswirl, who, if possible, became even more worried.
He turned to them, grave.  “That thing just time-jumped.  Into the past.”
Rob’s eyes widened in distress, while Silver was still confused.
“Do you know what this means?” Starswirl continued.
Rob took a moment to reply.  “...We have to stop it, or it will destroy everything.”
Silver blinked and sat down.  “That thing is Oblivion,” he suddenly realized.

	***

The scene blacked out until nothing could be seen.  How do you like them apples?
Them apples is pretty scary, Mitch replied with both seriousness and jest.
Eagle flipped out somewhat.  Wait, we can talk here?  It’s not just Spry?!
He could feel an exasperated feeling emanating from Cache.  I had assumed you knew this, he replied.
Well, it wasn’t exactly ever explained, Eagle responded with some frustration.  He then became somber.  But that... thing... was terrifying.
Thick in the hypothetical air was permeating the feeling of a primordial fear that chilled the blood and froze the marrow.
There was a pause in the conversation as dark tension built.
Spry broke the tension, exclaiming, Well, it’s time for more!

	***

The grim tension that had been building with their conversation seemed to carry over to the past.
Starswirl had teleported all three back into this house and locked the doors; they were back in the laboratory.  “I had hoped to become somewhat more acquainted with these Elements of Balance before we tried using them, but alas, now we haven’t the chance to do so.  I can follow that thing to where- when he went, but it will certainly be a difficult task to do so.”
Rob stood.  “Do what you must,” he said stoically but also woozily, once again rather sick from teleporting.
Starswirl took a deep breath and exhaled deeply with a resolute slowness.  As he calmed himself, his horn quickly began glowing.  Increasing in brightness, his light-golden aura began enveloping his entire body, and then Rob and Silver felt strangely light and tingly as it enveloped them as well.  They could no longer see past the aura, as it had thickened, but that did not last for long.  Starswirl once again inhaled and exhaled, leaning forward as he did so.
It seemed also that he would fall and embarrass himself, but when he would have hit the ground, the aura quickly disappeared with a whoosh, along with everything around them, or so it appeared to be.  Rob’s gut dropped along with his body, resulting in a rather frightening feeling, like being on a rollercoaster without the safety bar... or even the car train.  Nevertheless, the feeling was somewhat familiar; he suspected that it was from having already fallen through a portal to Equestria rather recently.
Everything was black, but they seemed to be following a very faint tubular path as they fell.  Rob tried to scream, but no sound came out.
A light could be seen up ahead, and as they neared it, they could see that several different coloured lights were erratically swirling around a large white central light source.  It seemed to grow brighter as they struck, and when they did, even the few ambient sounds they could hear were muffled.  Indeed, it felt much like diving into a swimming pool, for their descent was slowed to a stop, and the light was noticeably denser than the empty space.
He felt as if the lights were all compressing, along with himself, until they seemed to go through him.  As they did so, he found himself in a green field, seemingly unperturbed by any outside force, and definitely not Oblivion.  He stared in awe at Starswirl, who was slightly winded at his feat of magic.
After staring wide-eyed at nothing in particular for a moment, Starswirl blinked, took a deep breath, and quickly exhaled.  Immediately, he started walking.  “Right then, Let’s go in the direction of that castle.” he said, strangely nonchalant and pointing towards a rather large castle that Rob had somehow completely missed in his initial scan of the area.
Seeing as the castle was a good distance off, it took them a while to get there.  About midway along their journey, they suddenly found themselves surrounded, although perhaps it was only Rob who had not noticed the pegasus troops coming.
“Halt!” The pony who appeared to be captain commanded.  “Drop your weapons and armor and state your name and purpose of being here!”
Silver blinked, realizing something.  “We can’t.”
The guard decided to get in his face about it.  “Can’t what?” he said menacingly.
“We can’t take our armor off; it’s stuck!”
The captain was quickly getting frustrated.  “Whadda’ ya’ mean it’s stuck?  All you have to do is take it off!”  With much grunting and straining, he began to attempt to grasp the chestplate from off of Silver, but to no avail.  “That’s some interesting armor you’ve got there.  Where’d you get it?”
“It’s... confusing, to say the least.”
At this moment, Starswirl came into the conversation.  “Excuse me, but I think you are forgetting the other half of your orders.  I am Starswirl, called The Bearded and these two are with me.  We have come to talk to whoever is the lord of this castle.”  He removed his large wizard hat, revealing his horn.
The captain was very surprised.  He and his troops immediately bowed down.  “Forgive me, good sir; I had no idea...”
“Arise,” Starswirl interrupted, for he had no time for any of this nonsense.  “I would appreciate it if you took us to your leader.”
Silver Bullet almost snorted.
“Of course, sir,” the pegasus said quickly, willing to comply to the unicorn’s will.  He turned to his men - ah, stallions - and began to shout orders.  “Sharp Edge, Ironhoof!  You two carry the unicorn while we fly!”
The respective ponies responded smartly with a “Yes, sir!” and went to what they were assigned.
“Lightwing, Fortè!  Carry the earth pony!”
The other two pegasi responded in likeness to the previous two.
The captain then looked at Silver.  “I trust you can fly, pegasus?”
Silver grinned.  “Faster than you, I would imagine.”
The captain’s face mirrored Silver’s with competition in his eyes.  “You’re on,” he said, to Silver, then raising his voice for all his troops to hear he commanded, “Troops!  Prepare to fly; we’ve got a contestant for the fastest wing!”
All of the military pegasi braced themselves, and gracefully took off, carrying Starswirl and Rob with them.  Silver, however, waited.
“You coming, or are you chicken?” the captain called out once he noticed that Silver had not come with them.
“I’m giving you a fair head-start,” Silver Bullet called back.
The captain shrugged, his wings beating faster.  “Your funeral,” he yelled before he turned his head to continue on.
After the group of pegasi were little more than specks in the sky, Silver began trotting.  His trot turned into a canter, and his canter turned into a gallop.  Holding his wings out, he began to catch the air.  Finally, when he was at a dead run, he jumped with all his might and gave one hard flap, sending him much farther than even he would have expected.  He laughed; this was going to be a lot easier than he expected.
After a number of more hard and fast flapping, he began to see something strange about himself - the beginnings of a sonic cone.  Finally, he pushed with all his might and something incredible happened.

The captain was already celebrating his victory when he was about three quarters of the way to the castle.  He was just beginning to laugh when he heard thunder.  That’s strange, it’s not raining.  He looked in the direction of the sound (along with all of the other troops) and was completely dumbstruck to witness an enormous shockwave knock around several trees and extend into the clouds.  At the center of this shockwave was a dot that was coming nearer.  No, it was not a dot, it was Silver!  He had created a sonic boom!
Silver Bullet quickly grew from a dot in the distance back to a dot in the direction they were headed.  Before that, though, while he was passing the group, he yelled as loud as he could, “IIIIII WIIIIIIIINNN!”
The captain could only stare slack-jawed at the spectacle as Silver returned to the group.  The troops were even more impressed; one of them had completely stopped flying until he almost hit the ground, but remembered to think just before he became a pile of mush.
“Two words,” Silver said with closed eyes and crossed forelegs, “Ha, ha.”
The commotion caused by the sonic boom alerted even more troops than had already come.  Soon, there was about fifty military pegasi surrounding everypony.
An electric-blue-coated mare who was wearing the same color of armor as the captain flew angrily up to him.  “What’s going on, Falcon?!” she demanded in a gruff voice.
“That’s Falcon’s Eye to you, and this little pony,” he retorted, motioning towards Silver Bullet, “just flew faster than the speed of sound, Blue Lighting!”
Immediately, the mare was stopped in her tracks.  She slowly looked at Silver, her eyes widening as she did so.  Silver nodded his affirmation and Blue Lighting’s jaw dropped.
Somewhat recovering from her awe, she attempted to brush it off. “And what of the big flash you saw in the distance?”
Falcon’s Eye pointed his hoof towards Starswirl.  “Unicorn.  We’re not really sure what he was doing, but apparently the earth pony and the pegasus are with him.”
She raised an eyebrow.  “Well, if we’ve got a snotty upclass unicorn noble, we’d better get going, shouldn’t we?”
Starswirl spoke up.  “Agreed, but I hardly would consider myself ‘snotty.’  In fact, I am quite certain I could defeat you in battle.”
As the group started moving towards the castle again, Blue Lightning huffed.  “Well, of course you wou-”
“Without my magic,” Starswirl interrupted.
Some of the soldiers began jeering and cheering, until her head shot backwards venomously, silencing the crowd instantaneously.  She turned back towards her conversation.  “I’d like to see you try.  O-Eight hundred hours, sharp, Lokisday.”
“I’ll be there, but ah, that reminds me: what day is it?”
“Thursday,” she responded.  “Why do you ask?”
He decided to try and avoid the real answer as much as possible.  “Let’s just say we’ve been... traveling for quite a while,” he said surreptitiously.
“Without supplies?”
“Unicorn.”
Blue Lightning shrugged, ending the conversation.  They had arrived at the castle, anyways, so they landed.  A guard was sent to escort them to the location of the lord of the place.
Walking along a large carpet through the wide stone halls adorned with paintings, vases, windows, and other fancy things, the guard was trying giving a tour of the place.  “...And this is the bust of... oh, what was her name again?  Ah, I forget, but she was important.  Heh, I’m not exactly the type to be teachin’ about history, me being more interested in flying and fighting and the like.”
They graduated a long spiral staircase covered in stained-glass windows facing the outside of the keep and paintings facing the inside.  In between paintings, there seemed to be a bust of a different pony, but they all looked related, as if they were descendents of each other.  It turned out that they actually were.  “This staircase, which leads up to Lord Nightwing’s hall, shows his lineage pretty far back.  That bust at the beginning of the staircase is his grandpa with a lot of greats.”  They neared the top, and the line of busts stopped, leaving room for several more generations of children to rule.
Finally, they came upon a wooden door with a large knocker.  The guard grabbed the ring and proceeded to knock loudly, which confused Rob because he had no hands to grab it with.  Oh, well, he thought.  “Lord Nightwing,” the guardpony called out, “We have visitors; an earth pony, a pegasus who broke the sound barrier, and a unicorn who already challenged Captain Blue Lightning to no-magic, single combat and has a funny-looking hat!”
Starswirl huffed.
“Come in,” said a somewhat-old sounding voice, which was muffled by the large door.
The guard opened the door and bowed.
The three assorted ponies entered into Nightwing’s chambers and found it to be quite spacious.  A large circular first floor served as an entryway, with an assortment of delicate-looking instruments lining the half-wall.  A few steps of stairs on either side of the large room revealed an even larger first-and-a-half floor.  Every wall except for one was lined with tall shelves of books, and strewn throughout were several tables covered in open tomes and strange trinkets.  A desk much larger than the other tables sat in front of a very large window that opened to a wondrous  view.
A tall ladder (which they climbed, not finding Lord Nightwing on the first floor) led to an even higher room.  Instead of being covered with books and flooded with light, there were stone walls for at least forty feet, leading into a glass hemisphere with a cover and a stand for a rather large telescope.  This room was quite dark, and contained a large bed with curtains.  Couches were along the walls of the place, offering somewhere to sit were there somepony there who needed to sit.
The mysterious Lord Nightwing decided to finally show himself.  Flying down from the telescope’s balcony, it was revealed to them that he was much like Princess Luna in the sense that he was dark in color... and he was an alicorn.
Before he could say anything, Starswirl had realized this and had immediately bowed down.  Looking rather surprised, he spoke in a somewhat humorous tone.  “Arise, unicorn.  I assure you that you have no reason to bow to me if you got within three miles of here without the detection of my mages and have challenged my strongest fighter to a battle.”
Starswirl arose and dusted off his long beard.
“Your beard is that long?  You must be older than I!”
He looked away, embarrassed.  “I devised a couple of spells here and there...”
Walking towards the group of three he shrugged.  “Whatever floats your boat, ‘captain,’” he said in a joking manner.
Nightwing turned his gaze to Silver Bullet.  “And I hear you broke the sound barrier?”
Silver felt like this was somepony he could trust enough to talk casually to.  He laughed.  “You’d have to be deaf if you didn’t!”
Nightwing grinned.  “Impressive; very impressive!” he said.  Finally, he turned his gaze to Rob.  “And what incredible feat of strength can you pull off?”
“I’m no great pony,” he said humbly, “Just the right one, I hope.”
Lord Nightwing nodded in approval.  “Humility is a virtue that is hard to come by.  I simply can’t stand ponies who are prideful.  Now, I assume you have heard my name by now.  If not, I am Nightwing, lord of this castle.  And you are... ?”
“Starswirl, called ‘The Bearded,’” he bowed, but quickly arose after realizing what he was doing.
“Silver Bullet.  I don’t kill werewolves.”
“Robert Allen, or Rob for short.”
The last name made Nightwing pause.  “Rob?  That’s a weird name,” he mumbled to himself.
“Okay, okay, I get it:  my name doesn’t exactly work here.  You know what?  from here on call me Spry Canyon.”
The dark alicorn king smiled.  “A fine name, if you ask me.”
The others nodded.
Nightwing decided to cut the small talk and get serious.  “Now that we’re done with introductions, we have the interesting part:  Why are you here?”
In unspoken agreement with Silver, Starswirl also felt that this was a pony whom they could trust.  He decided to lay out the whole story on him, in an abridged sort of way.  “So, it all started when I created a spell that could travel through time.  Unfortunately, this spell could only take you there for a few seconds, and could only be used once in a lifetime.  Although I was aware of the dangers that accompanied, this was not enough for me.  I decided to find something... more powerful.  Perhaps I created something that was too powerful.  I devised a way that, through extremely complex means, a wielder of magic could permanently bring as many ponies as their magical power could allow through the fabric of time as many times as they wanted!  Against my princesses’, and even my own advisement, I was too tempted not to try something so amazing.  I wanted to test the spell’s limits, and found that there are very few; I ended up before the creation of the universe and was ordered to take back three very special jewels.  I went back to my current time and soon after found that I seemed to break at least one hole in the barrier between dimensions and brought Spry Canyon from his world into ours.  Soon after that, Silver Bullet appeared as well.  The following morning, something I was warned about when I went before time appeared.  This something was so horrible that, had we not impeded it, it would have spelled out the end of everything in existence.  Unfortunately, the thing went back in time, seemingly with its own time spell.  I tried to follow it, but I suppose that my trajectory was slightly off.  I seems that I went a bit too far, ending up here.”
Nightwing had sat listening carefully to Starswirl’s story.  Letting silence take over for a moment while he think, he eventually broke it saying, “Those three gems you’re wearing: would they happen to be called... The Elements of Balance?”
“Indeed they are,” Starswirl replied.
Nightwing sighed.  “Then this entire world is in graver trouble than I had ever imagined.”  He stood up quickly, his horn igniting.  “Come with me!” he said as he teleported the group out of his bedchamber.

	***

Spry Canyon had broken the Visionary Bond.  Strangely, the time of day seemed not to have changed, judging by the light coming in around the wooden shutter doors on the windows.
“By the way,” Spry commented, “It’s been approximately twenty-eight hours.”
Oh, that’s why.
Before the Three knew it, they were in bed, having gotten something to eat at Spry’s already.  They had felt very awake in the ‘dream,’ but were dead tired in real life.  As such, they did not have a chance to converse with each other about what the last memory had meant, and indeed had not conversed with anypony before falling flat on their beds.
“Goodnight, pillow,” Eagletone said into his pillow, his voice muffled.  He quickly began to snore.