//------------------------------//
// Interlude: Shadow Journal: Entry #4 
// Story: The Beat to My Heart (The Fall of Queen Celestia Book 1) 
// by Sylpheed Dashstep 
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Sometimes in our darkest hour, help comes from the most unexpected places

I know this feeling, and I know that Alex knows it as well. We both have had this experience, myself a while ago in...I don't even remember the date, but I remember the scenario I was in. It was my first time being activated and I was slowly making my way along time, enjoying the fact that I was unable to be hurt, when I spotted something that I'd never seen before.

There was a crack in the...well nothing. There was just this crack sitting there in the air, hovering there. I made my way over to it and I began to make voices out in it.

"No! There's no way they're the different group," a stallion's voice exclaimed.

"Alex think about it, the monitor even says 'Session Diverged' right there," a mare said.

"I don't give a shit what the monitor says, I want to go see my friends...our friends when this is all over," 'Alex' said.

The mare was silent for a few moments before she spoke again, "Look, I know this is hard, but even so, we have to lead them and break the cycle. Even if it means never seeing ours again."

I slipped closer to the crack and tried to enter it, only finding my way barred by some unknown force, so I was forced to get as close to the thing and try to see. What I saw nearly made me stop and die. There was some lab with computer screens set up, a set of ten in all. They were set up into two collums, five on each and two in each row, one on top of the second. 

The first screen in the upper left, showed some sort of feed, streaming live, but that wasn't what made me stop. There was me right there, talking to a colt and a filly, in the middle of a forest at night. The colt shouted something and suddenly everything began to become white. A paradox my mind said.

My eyes flitted to the monitor below that one, the fifth one of the set. It was simply a white screen covered in black text, set up in a sort of command sequence. It seemed like the stallion had typed in some commands, each of his commands beginning with a symbol composed of two equal marks, followed by a greater than symbol.

I had noticed that the two had stopped talking and were now looking at me. The stallion had black hair with the tips dyed white, his fur a dark blue, and his eyes a cyan color, topped off with no cutie mark. The mare was a different story though. She was like me, just a shadow whose form changed between different body types and genders, the only discerning feature, her voice.

"H-hey Garanth," 'Alex' said, with a hint of sadness in his voice.

"Who are you," I asked, skipping straight to the important question, "and how do you know my name?"

He grimanced and said, "So you haven't met me yet then. I can't tell you anything, because that would cause another paradox, and to tell the truth, one was enough. It's good to see you though."

I gave him a glare before looking to the mare, "And I'm guessing the same goes for you?"

"That about sums it up," the mare said, "but I can show you my real form and hope you can realize who I am."

The shadows fell away, and I was left speechless...

I don't remember who that mare was, or what happened after that. All I know is that I woke up a few thousand years later to find everything coming apart at the seams, before blackness spread across the land, eventually catching me no matter how fast I ran and swallowing me. 

That mare said something that helped me though, I just know it, but I don't remember what she said, and that's what gets me.

I woke up and found myself at the start of everything, with the two sisters being created out of the darkness. I then had all of time and space at the tip of my hooves. Such is the life of a subject in the Lazarus Project, we must live time once throughout its entirety without any powers but our mind, and then we are left to reap the souls of the dying and take them to the Overworld.

I found days later that when I closed my eyes, I was in another place entirely, cloaked in a hood with appendages on the end of my hoof which I found out were called fingers, and my hoof was now called a hand.

I got used to the new body quickly due to the fact that there was another mind in there that seemed to move to my own when I blinked. I assumed that it was every time I blinked, but I soon learned that I could controll it and only end up there when I wanted...

Heh, look at me. Gossiping about my life as though I were a mere filly and not a being older than time itself. I figure that it's the best thing to do while up here taking care of the Overworld while being forced to watch Alex in his trip to recover from the blood poisoning. I believe that he's been in this town for almost a year now, mainly passed out mind you, but there notheless. He's looking signifigantly better, but for a while there, I thought I'd have to take his soul.

It's never a good thing, reaping a friends soul. You'd think it would be better, knowing the fact that you're the one helping them to the next life...but to tell the truth, it only hurts worse.

And off I go again, I really need to stop doing that before Anna ends up finding this and taking it from me while she locks herself in her room and reads it. You wanna know something weird though...I can fully well simply walk through the door and take it from her...yet I don't. I can't bring myself to... Why is that? Why can't I do anything to her? Why can't I force myself to harm her? 

I think I'm getting weak because of all of this war. There were so many good ponies that were killed that day who could have led good lives...I need to get off of this subject and away from this journal.

I get the feeling that the guards are getting ready to ambush the city, and I can't help but feel like I've got to go down there and help Alex, but I know I can't. I have to stay here and take care of the souls who aren't gone. 

12/21/14