Micro-story inspired by Doctor Who · 5:12am Dec 14th, 2023

Yep, I recently started watching the Doctor. Nothing much, just about three episodes (one of Twelve's and two of Thirteen's), plus a comics mini-series about Missy. Which inspired this very quick and very unfinished story. Nothing much, but I'd love to get some feedback since I haven't written anything in over a year.

It starts with Twilight watching over a crystal ball. It feeds her a lone pony in Canterlot's dungeons, who keeps shouting. First, she's shouting to get out. Then to know why she's there. Then she's asking for forgiveness for whatever crime she may have committed. Then listing any past misdeeds, hoping for the one that bring her forgiveness. And finally, just begging to get out.
Starlight burst in, furious. Her mane and tail are electrified (like Twilight's turned to fire when she was angry). Behind her there's a trail of guards knocked out. Twilight greets her with an uncharacteristic coldness, clearly distressed over the vision on the crystal ball. Starlight repays her coldness with rage, demanding her to let Trixie out of the dungeon.
Cut to a week before, Twilight's first day as Princess.
On her throne, waiting for here, there's a letter. The last confession and testament of Princess Celestia. It details the most guarded secret she held her entire life. For you see, Equestria has been the resting place of an evil far beyond Equus, or the stars surrounding it. So, just as with Celestia and Luna, now it falls on Twilight's shoulders the weight of deciding what to do over it.
Starlight interrupts Twilight, demanding to know what it has to do with Trixie. Twilight doesn't answer at first, but hands her a talisman, a small octagonal diamond. Starlight recognizes it as Trixie's. The one she always wears on her cape. Twilight tells her to use a detecting spell, which reveals magic too ancient to be of pony origin. Older than Discord or Grogar. Most probably older than the entire planet, if not the sun it circles around, according to Twilight.
Starlight calms down, both curious and a bit scared of the implications.
[stuff happens here]
Trixie finally catches the diamond between Twilight's pleads to not open it and Starlight's for her to run. If what they said is true, then she's not who she thinks she is. What she thinks she is. In a split of a double heartbeat, Trixie recounts her entire life. The ups and downs, an ambition she never really knew what to do with. But more importantly, this background noise she's always heard her entire life. A noise of knowing and not knowing at the same time who she is and what she came to do to this life.
She opens it, and it engulfed by light. More accurately, the diamond shoots light into Trixie's eyes, and then her body just lights up, burning and melting the palace's hallways. Once it stops, Trixie is standing there, but not really. Her cape materialized on her back, as well as a vest adorned with star patterns. Only instead of decorative, both now show actual constellations, making it look as if she was dressed in a cosmic map.
"Now I remember," she whispers, looking down. Her left hoof down is tapping, marking four tempos. She suddenly looks up.
"Allow me to introduce myself." She throws her cape to a side with her right foreleg. "I'm from a planet named Gallifrey." She points at the constellation drawn on the chest of her vest. "It's in the Constellation of Kasterborous." She calmly walks over, smiling but serene until she's face-to-face with Twilight and Starlight. "I'm a Time Lady." She looks down at the diamond on her neck, which has turned pitch black. "You may call me Mistress."
As she finishes, a series of vortexes of purple energy open around them all across the hallway. From each one walks out a copy of her. Some of them stand on the wall, and other on the ceiling. Their manes and capes falling along their positions, ignoring the gravity as if they had their own.
Thinking it’s an illusion to try to escape, Twilight flares up as revealing spell that consumes the room like a magenta fire. Although it does burn an illusion, it doesn’t make any of them go away. Instead reveals they were all different from the original one, dressed differently and some are radically different in colors and body shape. The only constant is the black diamond on their necks, and the same expression of cold, frozen hate from the one still standing in front of Twilight, smiling at her.
The one immediately behind her starts talking, recounting how she saved Equestria from eternal night by Nightmare Moon a year before the prophecy. It forced her and Celestia to clash until both couldn’t go on, burning out the Nightmare Forces and freeing Luna. No need for a Twilight Sparkle to awaken the Elements of Harmony.
The one on the ceiling interrupts her to say she acted before that, traveling to the Day of Discord, distracting the Spirit of Chaos with a chase through time and space until he saw more value in befriending others rather than toying with them. One by one, all the copies claimed to have saved Equestria through different crisis. All of them making sure Twilight Sparkle is never involved.
Until the last one admitted she simply advised Celestia to not put the weight of the world on a single student, teaching many instead so Equestria could on itself instead of a single chosen one. No need to train Twilight to be a ruler from her youth.
They all laugh together after that, leaving through their portals. Finally, the original one simply turns her back to Twilight.
"I will walk away now and start saving Equestria. I'll make sure you two have good lives too." She takes a step. "Or you can stop me, stop the paradise I will bring, all in the name of your own." She takes another, then another.
Until she leaves.
Twilight Sparkle woke up. She couldn’t recall her dream, but she did remember feeling a deep sadness, as if she had lost everything she ever held dear. She realized her face was wet, as she had been crying in her sleep. She shook her head, calming herself before starting a new day. After all, it was the day of the Summer Sun Celebration, exactly one year after the return of Princess Nightmare Moon.