> An Everlasting Twilight > by StormHoof32 > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Chapter 1: Time Gone Awry > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Twilight and her friends stood facing Nightmare Moon, and she knew this was the moment. As she spoke of her newfound friends and the spark of friendship, the shards of the shattered elements began to glow and surround them. Nightmare Moon however could only see this ending badly if she did not interfere. With a quick lunge she managed to grab the shards that were surrounding the purple unicorn and smashed them further, reducing them to nothing but ash with a blast of her horn. Immediately the other shards lost their brilliance and fell to the ground. "And now you have been foiled you foalish child! THE NIGHT SHALL REIGN FOREVER MORE!" She yelled with her royal canterlot voice, a vicious sneer on her face as she encased each of the other mares in stone. Twilight stared in fear as Nightmare Moon aimed right at her. The last thing she saw before the flash of light was the bright moon that shined behind the new ruler of Equestria. Or it at least would have been had Twilight's magical power encompassed far more than anypony had realized. Pieces of stone began to crumble away from the outside of her body. Each piece falling in small flakes as they disintegrated into dust against the stone floor. Unlike the others who had been turned completely to stone, Twilights magic had stopped it just before it touched her fur. As it stood, she was now in the dark and staring in shock at stone. She couldn't move as Nightmare's magic held her in place currently, but she could easily watch the little pinpricks of light filter through like little stars of their own while her prison fell apart. She was a smart pony, but the rate at which her stone encasing was coming apart seemed to be at random and went out of its way to foil any attempt she made at trying to calculate how long she would be like this. For all she knew it could be weeks unless she died of starvation or dehydration which was definitely not a pleasant thought. What she needed to do though was figure out how to fix all this. The elements where the only thing she knew of that could defeat Nightmare Moon, and as it stood those were no longer useable. The only thing she could think of would be the rather complex time travel spell of Star Swirl's that she had found in the Canterlot libraries restricted section. Obviously she wasn't suppose to be in there and ever since she had figured out how to teleport around Princess Celestia's wards it was a hard task to keep her out. Sadly she wouldn't be able to use the spell until she was no longer encased in stone. As more and more flakes fell, she began thinking back on the past few days. Not only had she made a few friends, but during the entire time she realized that a lot of it had been really fun. A single tear rolled down her cheek as she thought about her friends who were now complete statues. She knew the spell Nightmare Moon had used, and it was fatal. It wasn't something she could just reverse and it almost tore her heart in two. She had only just learned the joys of making friends and now they were gone. With a sniffle, she swore then and there that she would do everything she could to stop this and to bring back the mares who had shown her how to laugh, be generous, kind, loyal, and honest. With nothing better to do, she drifted off to sleep and hoped that when she woke up, she'd be free and able to use the spell. She knew she would need to go into the past and if it meant going back to smack some sense into her own head, so be it. Then she slept. * * * Twilight opened her eyes and rubbed the sleep from them, yawning and stretching her hooves as she raised her head to look around. When she realized she was lying on the ground, she hopped up and turned to see the statues of her friends. She started sobbing as she realized that it had not been all a dream. She was free from her stone prison now, but the pain in her heart was still very raw. She spent the next few minutes silently crying as she went and hugged each statue, letting them know that she was going to make all of this right again. Once that was done, she took a step back and composed herself. She would need to be focused for the spell to not completely fail on her. If it did the result could be bad, like lost in the infinite timestream bad. She closed her eyes and fixed the spell matrix in her mind and charged her horn. Carefully she charged the matrix with magic and allowed the nodes to activate in succession. This was good and well within expectations, but the hard part was to come and as the magic followed the paths it reached the part of the matrix that governed four dimensional distance via time. Beads of sweat appeared on her forehead as the strain began to set in, but it was ignored as she forced the magic through new paths, attempting to pin down the exact location she wanted in lines. But what she wasn't expecting was the random divergence of a path she hadn't calculated for and without meaning to, she watched as the matched filled it and connected like a lightning bolt. The spell actualized and in an instant of blinding purple light, she vanished. Nothing remained but a silent room and five equally silent statues. When the light stopped trying it's hardest to scorch her corneas, Twilight blinked and stuggled to get her bearings as her vision swam. She felt dizzy, sick to her stomach and like the world had flipped upside down. She decided to lay down and wait while her mind and body got themselves figured out. Once she was feeling somewhat normal, and the world didn't want to spin so much, she looked around. She was sitting in the middle of a forest glade and there didn't seem to be any sign of the old castle. In fact the forest she was in was nothing like the everfree forest. Warm sunlight filtered through leaves and branches, bathing the forest in a glow that left Twilight feeling almost at home. She stayed laying there for a bit, allowing the sun to warm her fur before she stood up and walked around. There didn't seem to be much of anything around other than the trees and there was a distinct lack of wildlife. She heard no birds or squirrels chattering at each other for food. If she was in the same area as when she had traveled then where Ponyville would be was in the direction she was currently walking, judging by the suns path. She knew Celestia always kept the sun on a very specific path and it was the reason a lot of sailor ponies were able to get their bearing, well that and the stars. After walking for about an hour though she began to get worried. She should have hit Ponyville by now, after all it didn't take her and the girls all that long to reach the Castle Of The Two Sisters. She needed a way to get her bearings better than just walking in one direction. She turned her eyes toward the trees and looked for a thick and sturdy branch that she'd be able to teleport to. It took a little while and her hooves ached a bit by the time she found a suitable tree. She tried to focus her magic for a teleport and huffed in dismay as she received only a few sparks and splitting headache. That meant only one thing, she had given herself magic burnout from the time travel spell. Normally that wouldn't bode well but she didn't seem to be in any danger so for now it wasn't too much of an issue. The problem now was that she needed to find somewhere up high that could giver her a view over the tops of the trees. But from where she was, the whole forest just looked like one long flat forest. Granted she knew that it couldn't be completely flat, as that would make no sense. But that didn't stop her mind from conjuring up the image of an entirely flat forest that defied physics with its sheer flatness, and it only made her head hurt more so she pushed the thoughts away and focused on just keeping moving. She would need to do something about shelter before the sun set, but it was high in the sky right now and she knew she had time. The forest had a slight warm breeze blowing through it, and it did little to calm her nerves. It was mainly the quiet that had been getting to her and she couldn't help but wonder why there was no wildlife here. Did they stay away for a reason? If so, why? And what did that mean for her? She didn't know but the thought of what could keep any and all wildlife away had to be something powerful. It wasn't until after a few hours of walking that she stumbled on her first sign of anything even remotely living other than plant life. There on the ground in front of her was a single dark blue feather, one that looked all to familiar to a certain Alicorn she had recently faced. Then Twilight thought about it, that wasn't right at all. Nightmare Moon had black fur, so this feather could not be from her. But that begged the question, who did it belong to? It was obviously the right size to match what she knew of Alicorn feathers, after all she had seen Princess Celestia's and Cadence's wings. She took the feather and held onto it, turning it over and examining it for anything that could give her a clue. Instead she got something else entirely. "Greetings dear subject. Prithee tell what art thou doing with one of our feathers?" said a voice from above her. Twilight jumped and dropped the feather, crouching down in fright she looked up to see something she wasn't expecting. A dark blue Alicorn flew down from a tree branch and landed in front of her. There was a black tiara on her head just in front of her horn, the same way Princess Celestia wore hers. Twilight bowed. She knew immediately who this was, and just how far back she had really gone.