The Sun Never Sets

by Mr Fislewait

Stealing Harmony (Part Three)

It was strange how little there was to do. Assuming the magic worked as I believed it did then I had a whole week to put my plan into motion, a whole week to prepare myself. I could have just gotten straight to the task and tried to free them on that first day, I made the right choice not to. For an entire week a lay about the ruins of the palace getting as much sleep as I could. With the sun stuck in place in the sky I couldn't track day or night but Vinyl promised me that she would be able to wake me for my seventh day there. It would have been a horrible irony to have been spirited away from the world before I could fulfill my promise to her, especially considering that she was the one doing all the work for those first six days.

The Elements were kept out of sight and out of mind in the chest that Vinyl had been storing them in. When the other Sunset had...died... she had rounded the Elements up and brought them here, apparently she planned to pass them on to Twilight if she ever returned through the portal. The arrangement that the two of us had was pretty simple, Vinyl would help me recover and when I had my strength back I'd attempt to free the Princesses. It was a fair deal and in retrospect Vinyl probably got the better end of the bargain, but day after day for the entire week she seemed to resent me more and more. Vinyl had to gather and prepare food for both of us, she had to draw water from the well, she had to work at keeping us both alive while I spent almost every hour sleeping and recuperating. She didn't know if I could make good on my promise, for all she knew I was abusing her trust and that at the end of the week I'd run off without even attempting to hold up my end of the deal. After hearing how bad the other Sunset had been I think the only reason that she didn't kick me out on my flank was the fact that the Elements had responded to me.

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"It's time." The message Vinyl shoved in my face one morning was short and to the point. If I was going to try and fix her world then it was now or never. I nodded and rose from my makeshift bed in the throne room. I'd barely moved from the side of the mirror for the whole week and despite being well rested I didn't feel much better. I hadn't been expecting some miraculous cure to all of my physical woes brought on by a lengthy bit of sleep but I was really hoping to have improved more than I had. Almost as soon as she roused me that day I bolted towards the corner of the room and began vomiting up the contents of my stomach. I hadn't been feeling well for a couple of days and I was beginning to feel like it had nothing to do with the poor quality food and murky water that the two of us had been living on. Giving myself a quick look in the mirror I frowned at how thin I'd gotten. If Discord's words were to be trusted then I probably wasn't doing the foal any favors. In a good world I'd be starting to consider the fact that I would be eating for two, back then I was barely even eating for one.

"Okay, Vinyl. Plan's simple. The moment I start casting you can't do anything that might interrupt me. Doesn't matter what happens to me, stay out of the way until the spell is done." Vinyl nodded in agreement then pointed towards the buckets of water she had piled up in the corner of the room. "Right. Once the spell is done go ahead and douse me. I might be pretty out of it, or passed out from the pain so just do what you can to get me back on my hooves so I can use the Elements." She nodded again and moved to the entrance of the room, stepping across the threshold and out of my way.

With Vinyl gone I slipped on the crown and readied myself in the center of the throne room, digging my hooves into the dust of the ground to prepare for the coming struggle. "Hey you," I whispered to the Sun as I stared at the horizon through the breach in the palace walls. "You've had a good run, but I think Equestria is about due for a night's rest." Mustering my magic as I had learned to do in the last Equestria I began channeling the spell to lower the sun, except this time I also attempted to cast the portion that would raise the Moon in its place.

There were a few things I had going for me. I was the personal apprentice of Celestia herself, one of the most magically gifted unicorns of the past century. I was well rested and had been preparing my magic for this task for an entire week. I had practiced this spell every morning and every night for a whole week prior to my rest. I was not only wearing the Element of Magic but the other five Elements as well. My cutie mark was the image of the sun, a mark that was borne by Celestia herself and marked me as being the perfect unicorn for carrying out this task. The odds were as heavily tilted in my favor as I could have ever hoped them to be, it still didn't change the fact that I was a lone unicorn though, I wasn't an alicorn.

I described how painful the ritual to raise the Sun had been right Twilight? Well everything I felt casting the spell with the aid of other unicorns I felt in the first few seconds of casting it on my own. The pain flooded through my body and I screamed out in pain, true to her 'word' though, Vinyl did nothing to intervene. As pure agony shot up the length of my horn my knees buckled and I almost collapsed to the ground. Steadying myself I kept my gaze locked on the sun and gritted me teeth, forcing the sun to slowly move even as it resisted my magic.

Hoof wrestling with the Sun, Twilight, that's how I described it to you all those months ago, Twilight. As it began to dip below the horizon I felt a second burst of pain shoot through my body. Up to that point I'd only ever felt hot from casting the spell, this time was different. The first sign that it wasn't just some magically induced feeling but genuine heat was the smell of burning hair. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that my mane was starting to go up in flames and I could feel the tell tale burning sensation of embers across my coat. I couldn't stop though, if I stopped the spell would be broken, everything I had already done would be for nought and I could end up being subjected to horrific magical backlash. I realized just in time that the burning strands of my matted mane were dangerously close to my right eye, slammed my eyelid shut just before the burning strands of hair managed to curl into it. I kept my left eye locked on the Sun, tears running from it as I kept my concentration on the sun, murky spots beginning to mar my vision.

If the smell of burning hair was unpleasant then the smell of burning flesh was downright sickening. I couldn't tell exactly where it was coming from but judging by the increased intensity of pain in spots across my body I gathered that wherever my coat had been burning before the heat had now moved on to my skin. My only distraction from the stench was the intense pain in my horn. It was like over channeling and magical exhaustion mixed together and coupled up with the worst headache imaginable. To make matters worse as the Sun finally began to disappear behind the horizon and the cold light of the Moon began spreading across Equestria I heard a sound like cracking bone that worryingly seemed to be coming from my forehead. With one last crunching noise I felt my magical connection to the sun being shattered and I was frown backwards across the room, landing in a heap on the floor. Around me the world had gone dark, but this wasn't the darkness of unconsciousness or even of prison, this was a new type of darkness, and it was terrifying.

I flailed about on the floor screaming in pain and calling for Vinyl. Something had gone wrong with the spell that much was clear and now I could no longer see the world around me. The feeling of cold water hitting my coat was an incredibly welcome sensation. I might not be able to see her but it was safe to assume that Vinyl was somewhere in the room with me. Another wave of water hit me and I was relieved to feel some of the worst of the burning across my body was diminishing. I stopped my flailing just in time for the third load of water to hit me square in the face. Blinking the water from my eyes the light of the room returned to me but it was muddled and hazy. I wasn't blind, not entirely. I'd been holding my right eye closed tight for most of the spell but my left, the one I'd kept locked on the Sun was seeing only a dark haze, the details of the world completely indistinguishable to it.

"You okay?" the chalkboard was shoved roughly in my face as Vinyl embraced me.

"Hurts!" I moaned, "it hurts all over. But we still have work to do." I noticed the crown sitting on the floor in the middle of the room and tried to levitate it back to my head, for my efforts I was rewarded with blinding pain and a fresh headache. Rubbing one hoof across its length I confirmed my worst fears, deep jagged cracks crossed its surface, I wouldn't be casting any more spells unless they healed.

"Can you still free them?" Vinyl motioned towards the Moon where the silhouettes of a pair of alicorns covered the entire surface.

"Only one way to find out." I hobbled across the room to where the crown had fallen and picked it up with my hooves, placing it firmly back upon my head. It took a few tries to get it to sit comfortably as there was barely any of my mane left to hold it in place. I kept my eye away from the mirror at the center of the room not wanting to see just how much damage the spell had done to me. With the crown finally settled on my head I turned my attention to the moon, only to feel the sting of a still burning ember on my flank. I turned to try and pat out the offending flame only to see that the culprit wasn't a fire, but the electrical crackling of magic across my coat.

"No! No this is too soon! I'm not done yet!" With the magic of the portal quickly spreading across my body I turned my attention to the Moon and scrunched up my face in concentration. I didn't bother wasting my time trying to cast unicorn magic, instead I though back over happy memories, of times with my friends in CHS and all the ponies I'd wound up meeting over my travels. I thought of you Twilight, and of Celestia, trying to channel the emotions I had felt at the Battle of the Bands. With the magic surging through my body growing stronger by the second I thought of the little foal I might be harboring inside of me and of how nopony deserved to have to endure a lifetime of eternal day or of eternal night. As gravity lost its hold upon me to the tug of the growing portal a blast of multicolored energy shot from the crown and up into the night sky, slamming into the surface of the Moon above me. The last thing I saw was...was... Moon. Surface... nice and clean... no shadows... no...alicorns. Free. They...free.

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"Sunset!" Twilight screamed as her friend collapsed to the bed, her eyes open but devoid of any sense of recognition. Her hooves twitched slowly in involuntary spasms and her mouth hung open, limply. Twilight was instantly at her side gently shaking her to try and wake her from whatever had come over her. "Sunset! Wake up, please wake up!" Despite Twilight's efforts Sunset showed no signs of returning to her senses. Feeling something damp against her fur Twilight took a step back and looked over her friend's body, finally noticing that a slightly bloody liquid was seeping onto the bed sheets from between Sunset's hind legs.

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With a burst of magic Sunset was flung through the portal and into another world. A quick scan of her surroundings through her one good eye revealed that she was in a much better kept version of the throne room she had just left. She was clearly in an inhabited version of the Crystal Empire but what kind of villain ruled over this one? Hearing the sounds of other ponies at the doors she hobbled behind the throne as a pair of guards checked on the room. Sunset wouldn't be caught again, she'd have to make her way out of the palace and find somewhere to lay low until she had a better idea of what this world was like, until-

There was an unexpected weight upon her head. The crown. She was still wearing the crown. She hadn't meant to take it! Who knew what damage could be done by removing the Elements from their native Equestria!? What if they fell into the hooves of this world's villain? Sunset couldn't allow that to happen, she needed to hide them somewhere, someplace they wouldn't be noticed, someplace like... the portal room. Every instance of the room she had seen so far seemed like a storage room for unwanted magical junk, and forgotten artifacts. Or a large and forgotten ball pool. Either of those would be the perfect hiding place for the crown!

Sunset waited till the guards seemed distracted and sprinted out of the throne room, skidding across expertly polished crystal floors and past surprised ponies she made her way through the palace halls towards her destination. She kept her movements erratic and unpredictable, trying to prevent her pursuers guessing her destination, until at last she was at the door. With one hoof she flung it open and with the other she tossed the crown into the nearest pile of magical junk, and then she was off again. Hopefully they would never realize that this had been her destination.

Now all she had to was escape the palace. Turn after turn brought her closer to the exit but the guards cut off her every escape route. Time and time she altered her course attempting to find some way around them to freedom but she was thwarted at every junction and soon found herself cornered. With no magic, nowhere to run and and already battered and broken body it seemed the end was finally at hoof for Sunset. She glared at the guards, growled at them in anger as they advanced upon her, backing her up against the wall.

"Hold!" the voice rung through the halls and stopped the guards in their places. "Who are you and how did you get into the throne room undetected?" Sunset turned to the stallion asking the questions, there was something familiar about his voice. He was a tall white unicorn with a blue mane and-

"Shining!" Sunset gasped beneath her breath, trying to tilt her head so that her good eye had a better view of him. "Is it really you?" at this distance he probably couldn't even hear her. Sunset cautiously took a step towards him and-

"Is everything alright, Shining?" a heavily pregnant pink alicorn that Sunset recognized as Princess Cadance stepped to the side of Shining Armor and nuzzled him affectionately, her eyes turning towards the source of the commotion that had been spreading through the palace. Sunset's eye flashed back and forth between the two of them and-

No. No no. nononononono

She collapsed backwards into unconsciousness as the two of them stared at her in confusion, no recognition of who she was on either of their faces.

Comments

[Son of Sanguinius]

Well that's a plot twist and a half. Well done!