The Influence

by GMBlackjack


XXXIV

Twilence opened her eyes - all the acolytes were frozen in time. Aradia smirked.

"Why didn't you do that before?" Infinity yelled from the other side of the gate.

"Sometimes you need to fight your own battles. But I'm here now, and yes, that does mean we are very overpowered in this setting. Manipulation of time offers some delightful ways to cheat the system, though there are consequences, so I hope you'll trust me on what I say about it."

Twilence nodded and smiled. "You've been nothing but helpful - if a bit mysterious. I see no reason not to trust you."

"Good! Hey, did you know they do live sacrifices here sometimes? The town doesn't know about it, but it is an interesting ritual nonetheless..."

Twilence blinked. "I had forgotten you were morbid."

"Huh? Oh. Right." She chuckled. "Guess we didn't really have time to get to know each other, did we? But now it's time to go."

"You saw us leaving now previously?"

"I saw you leaving in a few minutes in numerous different ways. The timeline loves to split around you, though you always go to the Capital. Why do we always call it the Capital anyway? It's Chalak..."

"It just seems right!" Pinkie said, appearing from nowhere.

"That it does..." Twilence said. "What else do we do every time Aradia?"

"Well, you always get to Chalak, and then you..." She paused. "...I'm not sure if I should tell you about-"

"Don't," Pinkie said. "Bad idea."

Twilence glanced between the two of them. "What?"

Pinkie gulped. "It's... The pivotal point. You can't know about it or it can't happen and well that would kinda ruin things. Not even Aradia really knows what it is."

Aradia's smile fell. "...Okay, that's mildly concerning."

"Eh, don't mention it. Really, don't."

Twilence gulped. "So we are heading towards a fixed point in time that not even the time traveler really knows about. That's... great. What happens after the 'pivotal point'?"

"Always different," Aradia said. "Sometimes you find the altar, sometimes not. It really could go any way after that, it's so bad I can't even make predictions."

Twilence frowned. "...Where exactly is the altar?"

"Somewhere in the catacombs. As for exactly where I couldn't tell you - even going to the deep past couldn't reveal its location to me. I did meet Vester once, and he basically said that it was never meant to be seen. He's apparently gone through every measure possible to ensure nobody can ever find it and threaten him." She glanced at Orchid for a moment. "I have no idea how you end up finding it in those futures."

Fluttershy sighed. "This isn't going to be easy, is it? We only have a day to find it..."

Aradia smirked. "I can keep resetting the day over and over again if need be, but you do seem to find it in many of the futures, so something tells me it won't be necessary. But it would be cool."

"Who do we get out of the altar?" Twilence asked.

Aradia shrugged comically. "Different every time. Sometimes I think I run into flukes where you summon some evil that isn't the Dark Lord, but I'm beginning to think that's time trying to compensate for the Influence." She snapped her fingers. "We really are wasting time here, we should go. Sail to Chalak."

"We need to make another boat..." Infinity said.

Aradia vanished. Then she came back, looking tired and haggard. "Okay, that was much more difficult than it needed to be. I am now the proud owner of a yacht on thirty-fifth dock. But..." She shook her head. "Investing in the future economy is always supposed to be an easy thing but apparently the ponies in Troisha love to screw you over in every way possible."

Orchid laughed. "Brilliant deduction."

"Yacht's this way," Aradia said, rolling her eyes. They arrived at her rather impressive boat. She donned a captain's hat (provided by Pinkie) and set sail. "This is Captain Megido speaking, enjoy the ride. We would arrive in Chalak at sunset if time were normal, but you're all lucky enough to be on an accelerated boat. The entire world may look like a snail to you while we're traveling, but I assure you, to the outside world we are a streak of light on the water. Please, help yourself to the complimentary peanuts." She ate an entire bag of complimentary peanuts.

Fluttershy smiled slightly. Twilence looked at her and sighed. Was Fluttershy okay? Did the Influence have a point?

Speaking of the Influence...

"Okay, starting with Ponygood... Aradia, can we use time loops to exploi- oh, wait. You already offered."

"Hey, if we run out of time, I'll reset the day. If you got any better ideas, I'm all ears - or horns, heh - but try to avoid any larger-scale time shenanigans, one of the timelines in the future has a time-traveling version of Starlight that wants my head. Don't want to draw her into this mess."

"Not sure if that's good to know or not. Pinkie... Ponygood wants to know what we've forgotten."

Pinkie blinked. "Well... There's several things that probably really aren't fair for me to say. You haven't forgotten about the ship or Four, just hasn't been important lately. ...Eh, Lore Thirst. He's still important."

Twilence blinked. She hadn't thought about that guy in a while. Honestly, she'd probably pushed him out of her mind - she just didn't like him and what he did. But he had to be more important than he had seemed, Pinkie was right, he'd been a reason behind her coming here. Maybe he would help in the future? Or have some agenda? He did want knowledge - maybe he'd eventually help improve the Eye? Or know what to do with the Spirits? She groaned, not in the mood to think about working with that guy again.

"Also, I am now a member of the Sparkle-butt committee. Thought you should know."

"I do know. That's what I'm reading now," Twilence deadpanned.

"I know!"

Twilence was somewhat irked that Ponygood wasn't calling her Twilence, but she said nothing. She realized Ponygood had, like, a 50% chance of hearing what she thought, but she didn't really care at this point. "Hey, Creek, thinking is good. I mean, don't go overboard with the thinking and go crazy like I did, but thinking is great. Connor, I..." She glanced at Fluttershy. "...Maybe..."

Twilence shook her head. "Sun guy! Uh... Hi! Yeah are you one of Celestia's devotees or do you just like the sun?" she chuckled. "Either's fine. Heh. I would have been so upset with you in the past for being like that... Now it's just run of the mill. Afizah or Sonic, I-" She stopped in her tracks as she read further what Afizah/Sonic had said. She kept reading, dropping her wings. Her face tightened and her eyes rippled with moisture. She... she just couldn't take it.

She started weeping.

Fluttershy came to her. "...Twi?"

"I... I am so sorry everyone," was all she could manage. She had known - they had kept telling her, over and over, that she was becoming distant. Losing it. Part of it was the Influence's fault... Actually, if Twilence was being honest most of it probably was. But she wasn't blameless. She was distant, uncaring, holding herself at leg length from everything so she wouldn't go mad. That was no way to live; no way to treat the ponies around her. Not even Orchid.

She grabbed Fluttershy. "I'm sorry..."

"It's... It's forgiven, Twi, I never-"

"I can't go back Fluttershy... Not to who I was..." She gripped tighter. "Too much has happened... I'll try to be better... But... But I can't be Twilight... Not the Twilight you used to know..."

"Nor... Nor would I really want that, Twi," Fluttershy said. "We... We can't just dial back our lives. Things change. We learn how to deal with the change. Then we change. It may not always be for the better..."

"...but we can't just run from it," Twilence said, nodding. "I... Right." She buried her face in Fluttershy's wing. "I... I've neglected you most of all."

"...Twi..."

"Don't try to correct me, you know I'm right. I brought you here because I was scared and needed somepony to lean on. But then I found something to stand on and forgot you might need to lean on me. I... I was unfair." She looked up. "I was unfair to all of you. I've been... angry at all this. Infinity, Orchid... I've treated you wrong. You shouldn't be where you are. I shouldn't look at you and shake my head - I should talk. That's what I am. I'm the Princess of Friendship, and I forgot my calling."

Orchid blinked. "Uh, okay...?"

"Which means I'm going to have to say some things. Infinity, you should stop being so reckless all the time, you're going to get yourself killed. None of us want that. I'm willing to help you get through this and to get you closer to the rest of us on a deeper level."

Infinity blinked. "...Thanks?"

"Orchid, you need to learn that just because the ends may justify the means, you are still fully responsible for your actions. Everything you do, you carry the direct responsibility. You can't just dismiss what you do. That's dangerous. Carry the weight - carry it hard and well."

Orchid shook her head. "That would interfere-"

"It'll keep you from becoming a tyrant," Twilence said. "Or, as Vriska would say, a bitch."

Fluttershy facehooved. Pinkie giggled.

"And Pinkie..."

"I'm too silly and don't take things seriously enough?" Pinkie shrugged.

"Not what I was going to say. You... You have little regard for the sanity of others. The only reason you don't say things is because you're not supposed to, but perhaps some of the things you do say should be kept to yourself. Not everypony can handle random things spouted at them forever. It... It doesn't work."

Pinkie nodded slowly.

"Do me next!" Aradia said, grinning.

"...You're actually pretty okay, though a bit morbid. Tact, maybe?"

"But death isn't something to be afraid of or put into a tabo-"

"Yeah, figured you thought that." Twilence turned to Fluttershy, frowning. "You... You could stand to slap me around a bit more."

"I won't."

"I know," Twilence sighed. "The rest of you, we can work together." She grabbed Orchid's hoof. "As a team."

Orchid blinked with all three eyes. She tentatively gripped back.

Aradia smiled. "This is good."

Twilence turned to Aradia. "Can... Can you take us to the future, to Equestria? I promised to take Fluttershy home. I plan to keep that promise."

Fluttershy shook her head. "Twi, I'm-"

"We can always come back later," Twilence said. "We have time on our side. We could go to Equestria for reinforcements, even."

Aradia smirked. "I like this idea. I can take us, just give me a second, have to prepare a jump that large."

"I have more messages to respond to anyway. Nickel... yeah, there's apparently no need to check the past for the altar, not that it'd help given what Aradia said. Creek-" Twilence fell silent. "Creek... You didn't have to share that. You don't want Keywii writing for you? Well... You're basically doing what you didn't want him to do for him. Basically... I just... You revealed something about your deep past like an author would do his characters. It seems like you played into his hand, actually. He probably really wanted to tell that story." How the heck do I know that... I don't just think that I know that She glanced at the Eye. "I don't want to lower the weight of what you said - it's a harsh trauma you experienced, and I do feel for you. It's... It's not easy fighting back sometimes. You shouldn't have served those years - it sounds like self-defense to me. It just... It just strikes me that you don't want to be written, but are doing exactly what the 'author' would want you to do." She glanced at the horizon. "I guess we don't have much of a choice in that regard, admittedly. It just... I would have rather this revelation been something personal between us, rather than something brought on by... well this. It sullies it. I'm... I'm sorry. You don't want to hear this about your trauma - but I've resolved to try to help people, to connect more. And you need to take a step back and look at things differently. I can't even pretend to know how something like that would affect you long-term, I'm not as good of a psychologist as I pretend to be. But I do think you're thinking about it wrong. Instead of worrying about being 'written' and 'not,' how about you just live your life? I think that's what I've found out, and what you've all been telling me from the start."

Pinkie grinned. "Yeah, in the end, it doesn't matter much. Our choices are still our own even if they are written. We have motivations, feelings, desires! We often surprise those writing us!"

"Pinkie, remember what I said?"

"Oh. Sorry. Riiiiiiiight..."

Infinity let out a breath. "Thank goodness..."

Aradia raised an eyebrow. "I thought I was supposed to be the one who needed to learn tact?"

"Eh..."

Twilence nodded. "Anyway Creek... I'm sorry, that's probably not what you want to hear. But I think it's what you need to hear. And... I could stand to learn these lessons as well. I'm not done growing. I need to do more introspection, even when my life is in danger, lest I become uncaring. Lastly... Ponygood, that's a good lead on Siron. Didn't Lore say Siron was the first thing sealed in Tartarus? A demon would certainly qualify as that. And... Songs of the Spheres..." She looked at the Eye. "...That's going to be important, isn't it? I just... I just know it."

Aradia grinned. "Okay! Now we can go!"

Orchid raised an eyebrow. "It took that long?"

"No, just waiting for Twilence to get done. Also can't you see when we leave?"

"It's fuzzy, probably because you tweak it slightly just to annoy me."

Aradia shrugged. "HERE WE GO! A thousand years into the future!"

And suddenly it was night. The yacht was sitting on the waters. There was no moon.

Aradia frowned. "Well great."

"Huh?" Twilence asked.

"We're currently in a timeline where the Dark Lord wins. Dunno why the world doesn't freeze when the sun is destroyed..."

"HUH!?" Twilence gawked.

"Look, many timelines where the Dark Lord wins simply have the sun and moon destroyed and darkness cover the land. Doesn't look like we can do anything in this future. I'll just take us back before something bad happens-"

A blue laser shot Aradia in the chest, missing her heart. She fell over backward, spraying her rust blood everywhere. "AUGH!"

Orchid healed her quickly, turning to face the incoming opponent.

It was Starlight Glimmer - or a Starlight Glimmer. She looked like nothing Twilight had ever seen - one of her legs was replaced with some steam-powered gear-apparatus, there was some metallic top hat on her head, and one of her eyes was replaced with a complex system of lenses.

Pinkie whistled. "Oooh! Steampunk!"

Starlight's horn flashed, and she was suddenly in dozens of places at once. Aradia did the same, meeting her at every place. "Okay, well then I'll just take us all back-"

And then a tentacle of dark magic shot out of the water and tore the yacht in half, throwing everyone involved into the sky. It went right for Orchid - and she disintegrated it with the five Spirits. The, more darkness came out. Things exploded.

Twilence lost consciousness.

~~~

The dream was even darker than usual.

But she could see the planet - Equis - in front of her somehow. No sun. No moon. Just a dark, dark planet, somehow not frozen over. It pulsed with strange, dark magics everywhere. Equestria was unrecognizable. Peran was covered in dark purple shards. Parts of the world were covered in lava.

Then there was a red eye. It looked at her.

She thought it looked sick.

She thought it was apologizing.

Then it vanished.

"You left the past to rot."

Twilence blinked. "I... I... What?"

"You left the past to rot. Came here, seeking refuge. Then the past rotted and became this."

"I thought..."

"You break time loops. Your presence ruins it."

"What are you?"

"I am a voice in your head and that's all you need to know right now."

"...Great. Can I at least see you?"

A form materialized in front of her. It was tiny - beyond tiny - and it was hard to see. She could tell it was red and that it most certainly wasn't the eye that had been watching her. But its shape was... unpleasant to look at.

"Satisfied?"

Twilence shook her head. "Not really."

"You will be eventually. I live in this future. I take it you want to know exactly what happened?"

"Yes?"

"Vriska and the Mite got to the Overseer. They told him what was going on. He couldn't find you with his eye, so he realized something had gone wrong, so they took measures to stop the Dark Lord. They kept Corot from being awoken - but Siron rose. Try as they might, they couldn't stop him. After decades of fighting, the Overseer had to cut his losses. He took his ship and several hundred people from across the world and left the planet, hoping to find greener pastures. Vriska and the Mite stayed behind but were eventually felled themselves. But Siron didn't try to kill Vriska - he knew she couldn't die in a timeline that remained constant. He enslaved her. The Mite was destroyed."

Twilence gulped. "...Obviously, we have to stop this... Go back..."

"I know that's what you want to do. That's why I attacked."

Twilence gawked. "...That was you!?"

"Oh, yes. I am Siron, after all."

Then the Eye lit up.

"Sadly, I cannot hear them. But this should be interesting nonetheless..."

~~~

[IMPORTING...]

Vriska and Mite felt chills go down their backs - like someone had just walked over their metaphyscial graves in the deep future.

"What an oddly specific feeling..." Vriska muttered.

They were in Chalak, walking down the streets in broad daylight. They had gotten in and suddenly the guns had stopped. Nobody seemed to care about them anymore. It was probably because she had hidden her wings and changed her clothes - she didn't raise any alarms.

"Shenanigans," Mite said.

"Ah yes, Aradia's using time travel, or Orchid's seeing the future, or something." Vriska bought an ice cream cone. It had been easy to get money. Gambling was always just perfect for her. "Regardless, we're here to do recon and such. What do you see?"

"City."

It was indeed a city - orange buildings as far as the eye could see, scraping the sky. Complex bridge systems led from higher floor to higher floor. They were currently far above ground level and, looking down, they could see far into the basement levels as well. This place was truly extensive and over the top, though not as outrageous as a troll city. But trolls were pretty crazy all on their own. The inhabitants were mostly dragons and ponies, but she saw a few other races from time to time. This was probably why she didn't get too many unusual looks for her stature, though she could tell they'd never seen one of her race before. They just didn't ask questions.

She still had no idea where the palace was. She had asked for directions a few times but they were always too confusing for her to parse. Maps were no help either - apparently, you needed to know what kind of map you wanted. High level? Low level? Alpha type bridges? Omega? Gah it was all just a mess...

"Amused."

"You can shut it," Vriska said, setting herself on a bench. "What the heck am I supposed to do here. Need to find the palace to talk to the Overseer and Council or whatever and then find the altar and then stop this Dark Lord. I mean-"

"STOP IN THE NAME OF THE LAW!"

Vriska put up her hands and groaned at the dragon police officer. "What am I charged with this time? Trespassing? Breaking and entering? Being a bitch?"

"Cheating at gambling!"

Vriska facepalmed.