At first, confusion reigned.
Against all odds, Twilight had been the first one to wake up, with a pounding headache and an initial fuzziness over what had happened. Library… storm… cascade… Prophetia. Yes, she’d cast it again. It seemed to have worked as a method for draining the magic, and the magic fatigue wasn’t quite as bad as last time, but… what was going to happen now? Did she have another prophecy to speak? There wasn’t anything gnawing at her mind like there had been with the first one. Or had she already spoken it, or written it down somewhere?
Around her, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Ditzy Doo and Spike were stirring and groaning. They looked okay, for an initial assessment. They probably had headaches but that would be much better than the alternative. Much, much worse had happened to them and they’d bounced right back.
“Urrgh,” Rarity offered eloquently, opening her eyes. “Oh my…”
“I never want to do that again,” Rainbow Dash muttered, sitting up and rubbing her nose. “What did you do, Twilight?”
To be completely honest, Twilight wasn’t sure. Last time Prophetia hadn’t knocked out Fluttershy and Spike, though last time it hadn’t been horrendously overcharged by a magical lightning storm. Nothing she remembered of the spell’s matrix regarded the involvement of other ponies, it was a solo cast, so… had there just been backlash? Had the sheer power of the spell simply triggered a shock wave?
She tried to explain it as best she could, between apologies, but it was somewhat lacking as even she didn’t know exactly what happened beyond casting the spell. It was difficult explaining the technical details to non-unicorns. Rarity could somewhat understand what she was talking about, and Spike was only paying attention because he’d been brought up listening to in-depth magical explanations, but Twilight was pretty sure everything she was saying was going in the ears of the pegasi and out the other. Rainbow Dash had a short attention span anyway. For Ditzy it was just completely irrelevant.
“Um, Twi…?” Spike tugged at her leg.
“Did I forget something, Spike?”
He looked around. “Where are we?”
Uh.
Sudden clarity was never a good thing. Well, sometimes it was, when you had an a-ha moment that tied everything together, but in this case, no, not really. She’d been so caught up in explaining, and before that the disorientation, that she hadn’t actually looked at her surroundings and just assumed she was still in the library. They weren’t. The inside of the tree had been replaced with a scuffed marble floor, dusty portraits of anonymous ponies, and decorations that actually wouldn’t have looked out of place in…
“We’re in Canterlot castle.”
The sheer incredulity of it was astounding. Prophetia was markedly not a teleport spell, as she’d already found out via the non-similarities in the weave of both, so how had casting it resulted in teleporting all five of them to Canterlot? A teleport miscast with such pinpoint accuracy was already improbable enough as it was. By all rights, just the teleport alone with all that magic should have slingshotted them around the moon - twice - and could have dropped them anywhere in the world from the Airsian mountains to the bottom of the Marelantic Ocean. But no. They had ended up in Canterlot.
Jury was still out on whether that was a good sign or not.
A few objects had been teleported too, a couple of books, Ditzy’s saddlebag, the Star Swirl costume, several loose sheets of paper, a pencil, basically anything that had been in a close enough proximity that hadn’t been nailed down. That was hardly worrying, though, she’d done that before too. On the other hoof there was no sign of Dinky, either, but, as Twilight reasoned to Ditzy, who was just about to start panicking, she had sent her to get a freezer pack from the kitchen, and thus was likely to be out of range of the teleport. She was sensible enough, and she’d be safe in the library until their return. Unsurprisingly this did little to calm Ditzy’s panic but it was better to have some reassurance than none at all.
Judging from the state of the decor, the amount of dust over the floor and on the portraits, this was one of the many unused corridors in the castle. It was a big castle, Princess Celestia had told her once, and it would be unreasonable to expect every single inch of it to be kept spotless at all times. Guards would patrol the unused areas occasionally, and sometimes it would be permitted for amateur spelunkers to go exploring and for historians to examine the architecture (accompanied, of course). Here, though, it didn’t look like anypony had been through for quite some time. Hopefully that didn’t mean it was one of the restricted areas of the castle.
With the way Twilight’s luck was going, that was probably going to end up being the case.
“Can’t you just teleport us back or something?” Rainbow Dash asked, earning the same micro-lecture about magic cooldowns that Pinkie Pie had gotten yesterday. She seemed to understand that. “Oh, it’s like long distance flying when you’re not built for it. I get it.” That wasn’t quite how it worked, but Twilight wasn’t going to waste time being pedantic about it now.
Priorities: Getting back to Ponyville and, should the opportunity arise, a slight detour to talk with Princess Celestia. Not if that involved going out of their way, though. If that was the case, Twilight could flag down a guard and ask them to take a message to her, no problem. There was a train journey of a few hours in between the city and the town, that would be anxious, but maybe the storm would have finished by then. If not, well, the stationmaster was always willing to accommodate travelers in the waiting room. Twilight could teleport from there to the library, hopefully, and make sure Dinky was okay. Assuming she felt confident in manually teleporting again.
All of that required getting bearings, and Twilight didn’t recognize this corridor, or at least, nothing that would separate it from any of the other anonymous corridors. She was spending a lot of time lost lately, she realized. Hoofington, the mine, Earthen Forest, now Canterlot castle. This fourth occasion was by far the most irritating, as she ought to know where she was but didn’t. They would just have to start walking and hope they came across either a public area or a guard who could direct them. Ditzy was equipped with her saddlebag, the loose books were stored inside, the Star Swirl costume was folded as much as possible, Spike gathered up the miscellany, and after a brief argument on which way to go, they departed.
“I can’t say much for the decor here,” Rarity commented, alternating glances between the uncarpeted floor which clacked under their hooves and the completely unlabelled paintings. “It could do with a little maintenance.”
“Try a lot,” was Rainbow Dash’s retort. “Even the dungeons look swankier than this place.”
What? Twilight turned her head back to look at the pegasus. “You’ve been in the dungeons? Why?”
She got a hoof wave in return. “School trip from Junior Speedsters for no reason at all. I only really remember it ‘cause Gilda—” Rainbow suddenly realized what she’d been about to say and clamped her mouth shut. “Okay, nevermind.”
Nopony pursued the matter; it had been just a few months short of a year since Rainbow had fallen out with her griffon friend and it was still a sore subject with her. She was right, though. The dungeons were more like a learning space now for school trips from outside of Canterlot, and to Twilight’s memory were indeed better maintained than this corridor looked. There was a door coming up on their left; it was locked, but from its basic design was probably only a small unimportant room.
“Hey, Twilight!” Spike jumped up onto the unicorn’s back. “You think on our way past to the train station we can call in at Joe’s?”
“Only if you’re quick, Spike.” If Joe’s donut shop was anywhere other than on the Broadway, Canterlot’s main thoroughfare, then she would have said no outright.
“Oh, I’ll be quick, alright. I know exactly what I want.” The baby dragon licked his lips. “Hazelnut chocolate donut with ultra sprinkles. I wonder if Dinky would want one?” He turned to look back at Ditzy. “Hmm?”
Ditzy blinked back. “We don’t like donuts.”
For some reason Spike classed this as a ‘wrong’ answer. “What? How can you not like donuts?!”
“Probably the same reason you don’t like tourmalines, Spike.”
“Tourmalines make me feel sick.”
“There you go.” Another door, also locked. “Keep in mind we’ll be looking to get the first train back to Ponyville that we can.”
“Tell you what, Spike,” Rainbow Dash put in, “Soon as we get out of here we’ll zoom straight there and buy stuff, and meet these guys back at the station. Deal?”
“Deal!” Spike’s face immediately fell. “I didn’t have any bits on me when we teleported.”
“Darn, me neither!”
That… was a very good point, actually. No money for train tickets. Maybe they would have to detour to see Princess Celestia after all, much as Twilight disliked having to borrow bits from her. That was mainly because the Princess always insisted that her student needn’t pay it back, and Twilight always tried to pay it back as soon as was possible. She wasn’t a moocher. She pointed this out to the others.
“I got bits in my bag!” Ditzy beamed, then her face fell immediately. “Not that much though… Maybe twenty?”
Single ticket from Canterlot to Ponyville via the Friendship Express was eight bits, so the money that Ditzy had on her would only be enough to get two ponies back to the town. If Princess Celestia was unable to give them passage home, perhaps she would instead be willing to house three of them in the castle while two of them went back, and then one came back again with the money to get the others tickets. It was complicated, but you had to deal with that if you wanted to run the logistics favorably. If that was the case then Ditzy was definitely one of the ponies who should go down the first time.
If it were to come to that, of course. It shouldn’t, but there wasn’t any harm preparing for any eventuality.
The corridor ended in a door that looked more promising than the previous two had, and bore the iteration of the Equestrian Royal Emblem that adorned a more familiar part of the castle. To everypony’s relief, this one wasn’t locked, and creaked open with the tone of a door that hadn’t been oiled for a long time. Beyond was another corridor, although this time brighter, cleaner, and with large windows that looked out towards the north west of Equestria. Twilight closed her eyes, and exhaled. This was familiar territory. She knew where she was, and more importantly, where the exit was.
“It’s this way,” she explained, leading the group down to the left. “We should be able to exit through the Meditation Chamber.”
“That sounds divine.” Rarity was visibly relaxing already. “Have you been there before, Twilight?”
Twilight nodded. “A few times. Princess Celestia always used to bring me to the Chamber whenever I was practicing a spell that needed my complete concentration. It’s just through that door up ahead.”
“Oh! You mean where that pony is?”
What? Twilight did a double-take. Ditzy was right, there was a cloaked and hooded pony beyond the doorway to the Meditation Chamber, doing something to the weird sandstone slab that she’d never worked out why it was there. There was the slight glow that indicated a spell at work. Couldn’t be a staff member cleaning, why the manner of dress?
“Excuse me!”
She wasn’t sure what exactly happened next. She’d been trotting forwards to greet the pony, and then… the pony had thrown the cloak in her face as soon as she’d stepped into the doorway? By the time she and Spike had untangled themselves the pony was gone, and there was the tell-tale click of the other door, the one that led out towards the exit, locking. What gave?!
“How rude!” Rarity exclaimed, taking the cloak at magic’s length and folding it up. “That was entirely uncalled for!”
All of Twilight’s strength couldn’t push open the door, even with the assistance of Rainbow Dash; and this was Canterlot castle, the locks were specifically made to be magic-resistant, even if she knew a lock-picking spell in the first place. The bolted doors weren’t much better, they were enchanted so they couldn’t be magicked open from the wrong side. No good. They were stuck for now, until the next guard came through to patrol in, uh, hold on, castle west side, lower outside corridor… maximum of twenty minutes. Wonderful. Well, could’ve been worse, they could have been trapped in that unused corridor. She explained this out loud, to Rainbow’s annoyance, Rarity’s displeasure and Ditzy’s agitation.
“Spike, what do you think?”
“Uh…”
“Spike?” There was no reply from the dragon. Twilight turned back around to face him, saw what he was looking at, and yelped in surprise. “Ah!”
This was not how she remembered the Meditation Chamber.
What she did remember of it she remembered well. Sitting on the cushions, listening to the pool, working on multitasking levitation. Standing at the windows, looking out, Princess Celestia pointing to all the visible landmarks. At one point, even, looking out through the torus skylight wondering about the Mare in the Moon. You couldn’t really forget it.
Now, the room was ablaze with color, beautifully rendered stained glass filling each of the windows and the eastern half of the skylight. The eastern wall below that bore a sparkling mural of a starscape, an ambient magic bringing the twinkle of each star to life. In the centre of the room, most striking, was a shining bronze mechanism that could only be the telescope from under the mountain yesterday, or at least, a restored version of, a neatly cut crystal suspended in magic above it. As a whole, the chamber practically screamed ‘Princess Luna’. Was this what she had been doing the previous night?
Rarity was beaming, and turning over and over to try and take everything in. “It certainly is magnificent. Why didn’t you mention this place before, Twilight? I would have loved to come here and get inspiration!”
“It is pretty,” added Ditzy, who wasn’t quite willing to let the spectacle wipe away her concern for her daughter. That still didn’t stop her from gravitating towards the telescope with the intent to fiddle, though. “What’s this thing?”
“Ah… ah… that’s…” Before Twilight could find her voice the mailmare had already pushed her face up against the eyepiece. “That’s a—”
“Telescope!”
“…belonging to Princess Luna,” she finished lamely.
“It’s not working.”
“It’s daytime, Derpy,” Rainbow Dash pointed out, rolling her eyes, earning herself a glare from the two unicorns for the use of the nickname. “You’re not gonna see anything.”
“Oh yeah.”
By now, Rarity had noticed the confusion that was plastered all over the faces of her non-pegasus friends. “Twilight, Spike, is something the matter?”
Twilight couldn’t come up with anything to say, but she didn’t have to because Spike got there first. “It wasn’t like this when we were last here,” he said, looking around. “Or at least when I was last here.”
“Me neither,” Twilight admitted. “Though it has been quite a while since then. I don’t think we’ve been here since before we moved to Ponyville, and it’s possible that Princess Celestia had it restored for her sister. She told me once that traditionally this room had always had stained glass windows, even before Nightmare Moon, but they were constantly getting broken by accident so she just stopped replacing them a little before I became her student.”
“Fascinating, and a shame.” Of course Rarity would think that; she was a big fan of stained glass windows but being a designer was well aware of how complicated they were to make and maintain. “Though it seems she has changed her mind, and what a brilliant designer she commissioned too. They are gorgeous, stunning, and—”
A grey head poked out from behind the telescope. “Hey, that one looks like you!”
“What?!”
Oh no… Twilight winced. The number of stained glass windows in the castle featuring the six of them as the bearers of the Elements of Harmony was starting to get out of control. Yes, they’d freed Princess Luna from Nightmare Moon, they’d defeated Discord, they’d proved instrumental in the defeats of Queen Chrysalis and King Sombra (in the latter case, Spike bragged about it every chance he got), and she had mused to herself in Hoofington only the previous week that nopony seemed to notice anything different, but there was recognition and there was too much recognition. Putting the six of them in windows was just an ‘in’ thing for windows in the castle, apparently.
Yes, that window featured Rarity and her cutie mark, the two to its left Applejack and Pinkie Pie, the two to its right Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. Twilight’s cutie mark featured prominently on the stained-glass half of the skylight. On top of that Rainbow’s depicted a sonic rainboom as best as stained glass could. Yet another monument to their accomplishments. It did somewhat detract from the base tranquility of the room, but ponies could get used to it, Twilight supposed.
She also rather wished Ditzy and Rainbow would stop climbing all over the telescope and swiveling it around before they broke it and had to face an angry moon princess.
“If there is one thing I must critique,” the fashionista wasn’t yet finished, “It is… this thing.” She gestured to the sandstone slab. “It is rather out of keeping with the rest of the chamber and somewhat spoils the atmosphere.”
“Oh, that thing’s been there forever,” Spike said, wandering over to it. “I think I tried to eat it once.”
Twilight, in spite of herself, giggled. “You were a growing dragon, Spike.” She’d asked the Princess about the slab a few times, but her teacher had always denied knowledge of its true meaning. There had once though been a very informative lesson about cursive carving done, and she’d learned about the technique of charcoal rubbing. She still sort of remembered the words written on it. “So when the day dawns on the great spark’s morn, the past will rise with a thousand eyes,” she recited, eyes closed, trying to grasp the memory. “When the chime is heard, fourth before third, do not put all of your faith in the star-shine that shows you everything.”
“Hey,” put in Rainbow Dash from the other side of the room, “Was that another prophecy or something?”
“It…” Twilight blinked. “It could be, I suppose.” The format definitely fit, though clearly she wasn’t responsible for it. Did that mean… she walked over to behind Spike to get a good look at it. Had this slab been inscribed by da Colton? A chill ran down her spine. Everything returns to the same point… Then she looked further down, and gasped.
“What?” Spike looked up at her gaping mouth, then back at the slab. “What’s the matter?”
What was the matter was there was more. Beyond the part she remembered, there was another verse, in almost the same old Equestrian script. “Spike, get out that paper and pencil and write this down, please?” She squinted, trying to translate it. “Though the mage opens the life-bearer’s vault, the magic unleashed will not be her fault. The circle be writ, six into three split, Cross the city of nine thousand… no, mistranslation, nine hundred and ninety.”
No sooner had she finished than something happened; Ditzy leaned on a catch on the telescope and the exit lens dropped with a loud clank. Everypony flinched.
“Derpy!”
“Sorry…”
Hoping desperately that it wasn’t broken - again - Twilight cracked open an eye. It didn’t look broken, aside from the fact the lens was now no longer pointing up at the sky (thank goodness for that, she thought it had fallen off). Instead it was just pointing through the Applejack window. Odd. From the looks of the spherical telescope body itself, it was intentionally designed that way, but why would Princess Luna have a telescope that looked at the land…?
Ditzy peered through it again. “Hey, I can see Ponyville! The storm’s gone!”
Twilight’s gaze shot back towards the Applejack window, then back to the telescope, trying to work out exactly where the lens was pointing. There was a circle of clear glass incorporated into the design and… yes, ignoring the complaints from the pegasi behind her, Ponyville was just about visible in the distance. Doubly weird. The telescope pre-dated Ponyville’s founding by several centuries, if Princess Luna had had it prior to her banishment. There wouldn’t have been anything there but a lake.
And yes, the storm was gone, the skies over Ponyville were clear. Something wasn’t sitting right, but… before Twilight could run with the train of thought she was interrupted by the sound of the telescope swiveling again, and another clank as it locked into position lined up with a similar clear glass circle in the Pinkie Pie window. Now it was Rainbow’s turn to push in front of the eyepiece. “This one totally looks like that cake Pinkie Pie made of her farm!”
Her turn didn’t last long before Twilight knocked her out of the way in a mad dash to see for herself. Yes, that was definitely the Pie family rock farm, which she wouldn’t have thought existed a thousand years ago… Pinkie Pie, rock farm. She swiveled right. Applejack, Ponyville. Right again. Rarity, the mountain ridges just east of Colton. Rainbow Dash… nothing in particular. Fluttershy, Earthen Forest. And… she found a clamp on the side of the telescope and released it, allowing her to swing it around almost a hundred and eighty degrees to line up with her cutie mark in the skylight. Perfectly framed was the tower in which she’d taken the entrance examination for the School for Gifted Unicorns.
“It’s our cutie marks,” she realized out loud, stepping back, eyes wide.
“Beg pardon?” said Rarity.
“It’s our cutie marks,” Twilight repeated. “You know, when Rainbow Dash did her sonic rainboom eleven years ago?”
“Heck yeah!” shouted Rainbow.
It had been a real shock when they’d all realized it, that all six of their destinies had been tied to their differing viewpoints on the same event. One sonic rainboom, directly responsible for one cutie mark and indirectly responsible for five others. Twilight had done the research afterwards and found that while some minor events had been the cause of two or three cutie mark appearances, nothing, not even the original sonic rainboom that had kicked off the myth, had caused six to appear. And that wasn’t even taking into account that all six of them had been in Ponyville, in the town hall ten years later when Nightmare Moon was released.
Princess Luna’s telescope from a thousand years prior to that could gaze upon the spots tied to their destinies. It was vastly improbable, but…
She took another look out of the circle towards Ponyville, ignoring Ditzy, Rainbow and Spike arguing over whose turn it was to look through the telescope next. No, there was something wrong, she could tell, but what was it? The storm was gone, how long had they been unconscious in the castle corridor? It had been shortly after 3PM when the lightning had struck. Her body clock was telling her not that long had passed, but the storm wasn’t just gone, there was no trace of it, and the shadows in the valley… the shadows…
“No, no, nonononono…” she muttered, scooting back from the window. “Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong.”
Rarity put a hoof on her shoulder. “Twilight?”
The lavender unicorn pointed. “The shadows, outside.”
“What’s wrong with them?” Rainbow asked, leaning around the telescope, Ditzy having won control over it, and for no apparent reason had set it back to look through the westwards skylight.
“It’s mid-morning.”
“What?”
Twilight paced around the room, trying to ease her nerves. It wasn’t working. “There’s something I’m missing…” she muttered, sitting down beneath her cutie mark, Rarity trotting nearer. “It’s something obvious, right in front of my face, but I can’t see it.” Prophetia had overcharged into a teleport spell that hadn’t used up nearly enough magic. If that was the case, and the teleport had only partially drained it… what had she cast instead?!
She got her answer moments later.
BANG.
She knew that sound…
“Hey!” Rainbow Dash knocked Ditzy out of the way, and she nearly landed on Rarity. “That was…”
Rainbow hit the catch. The lens dropped.
“To look upon the rainbow band.”
“That’s my sonic rainboom!”
“Whaaaaat?!”
“Friends around see shock indeed.”
“Twilight, stop doing that!”
Everything seemed to slow down, and it felt to Twilight like she’d just ingested a gallon of Phruit Phizz. Of course there was only one possible explanation. It couldn’t be anything else. But… she just didn’t want to admit it. She didn’t want to admit that she’d been responsible for… she had to.
“We’ve gone back in time.”
Spike looked back from the window. “You mean like last time?”
“Last time was barely a week, Spike! We’ve gone back eleven years!”
“Wait, so…” Rainbow squinted through the telescope again. “That’s me, doing the sonic rainboom that got us our cutie marks?”
“May 21st, 990, half past ten in the morning.” Everything was adding up, now she knew what spell Prophetia had shared traits with. It could only have been the time-travel spell she’d gotten from the Star Swirl the Bearded Section of the Canterlot Archives, the one with which she’d perpetuated a stable loop. Why hadn’t she seen that before? Casting a prophecy would just be like bringing the future to you - or the past as it turned out - and expressing that through words! Add in a teleport spell, and… well… you stepped over the gap while it was small.
She had to assume a similar thing had happened ‘yesterday’. So she’d time traveled to this day again, there’d been the sonic rainboom, what had happened next? Oh…
“Twilight, you’ve gone as white as a sheet!” Rarity exclaimed.
“I… That means I’m about to…”
Crrkk.
As one pony, the four ponies and dragon turned to look up at the fracture lines spreading across the skylight. What was coming next… was the second explosion.
“The symbol of magic will shatter.”
Twilight had always known something serious had happened after the outburst which gained her her cutie mark. Princess Celestia described it as an ‘Interruption’ - the sheer magnitude of the magic explosion had interrupted every single spellcast-in-progress across the city. Thankfully, there had been no permanent damage. Sure, there’d been a fair number of windows blown out, and a record number of patients at Canterlot General Hospital with headaches, and the badly built weather patrol building had collapsed, but nothing really that serious. A few days following there were no lasting injuries, and the Princess was already personally leading the reglazing effort. Arguably the most serious thing to have happened to ponies had been the temporary transfiguration of her own parents into potted plants, which was fairly embarrassing but at the day’s end they barely remembered it.
All that magic had to go somewhere.
Time seemed to go even slower as the skylight blew in, and Twilight was thrown backwards. Everything that wasn’t being held onto tightly went flying. Spike had made it back across the room, and was clinging on to one of Rarity’s forelegs. Rainbow Dash and Ditzy Doo had gone the other way. The saddlebag with the books in it came sailing past, and out of compulsion Twilight grabbed for it with her forelegs. She felt like she needed something to hold on to. She didn’t quite hit the telescope with the force she expected, but she still bounced up and over the top of it. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the crystal wobble as the magic keeping it suspended was disrupted, and it…
Again, she didn’t know why she did it, but she swung the saddlebag and caught it.
This, as it turned out, was a mistake.
Afterwards she recalled an almost-forgotten memory, of striding happily alongside the Princess on her way into her first lesson a few days after the explosion, and overhearing a couple of the guards talking about the ‘third’ blast that had come from the ‘telescope room’. Of course, the first time she’d entered the Meditation Chamber, it had no telescope, and so she’d never made the connection. She’d simply guessed it was something else blowing up because of her magical incontinence, apologized (even though Princess Celestia insisted there was nothing to apologize for) and thought nothing more of it.
As soon as she’d linked physical contact with the crystal, she could feel magic pulsing from it, and realized too late that it was actually a charm crystal, similar to the Alicorn Amulet she’d read about in da Colton’s workbook the week before. What connection it had with the telescope was unclear, whether it had something to do with powering the internal mechanics or the star map on the back wall, but it was full to the brim with magical energy, waiting to be released. In difference to the Amulet, though, which was stated in the book ‘corrupted’ its user, Twilight instantly felt as if she’d taken a very comfortable nap, gotten an entire body massage and a very relaxing bath.
On the other hoof it triggered that third explosion.
All of the remaining windows in the room blew out. Once more Twilight’s horn was red hot, despite the soothing from the charm still being present, except this time she couldn’t just ride it out. She needed to cast something. Perhaps more importantly, she needed to get herself and her friends out of the past. If she tried teleporting now… would it cast the time traveling spell again? Or would she need to cast Prophetia for a third time, and risk digging the hole even deeper?
Snap decision!
Teleport, you’re up! Twilight put all of her concentration into casting it. Base spell. Loops around her four friends… She’d barely completed the weave when the charm opened up again, compounding the effect of both of the magical explosions, and pouring power into the spell. Just how much did that thing have?! A lot more than her friends were going to come along for the ride…
The bell on top of the telescope rang with a light chime.
And before the unicorn had even hit the floor, they were gone.
Teleporting should have been instantaneous. That counted for the time travel spell as well. So when Twilight forced her eyes open to the rushing streams of the ether, she knew she was in a lot more trouble than she thought.
Around her, she could feel her spell destabilizing. She had to concentrate! April 19, 1001. April 19, 1001. Ponyville library. Just getting them back to the right place and date would be enough, the details of hiding from their past selves would be easy enough to coordinate. Her friends weren’t visible, but she could feel the presence of Spike, Rainbow Dash, Rarity and Ditzy Doo in the spell with her; they wouldn’t even know this was happening. They were counting on her to get them back to where they belonged. This was her doing, and she was going to get them safely home.
April 19, 1001. Ponyville library.
April 19, 1001. Ponyville library.
April 19, 1001. Ponyville library. At the edge of her senses, an opening. Mentally, she pushed her friends forwards. They were there.
…six into three split, Cross the city of nine hundred and ninety…
Oh no.
Just that one moment of distraction threw the entire spell off. Her friends shot off in the direction she’d been pushing them, towards the library, and she was knocked into an entirely different direction. Moments later she was knocked again by the telescope, ripped from its mountings, absorbing teleportation magic like a sponge. Guess that explained where the extra energy had come from before… A pulse ran through her as her friends left the spell, and she hoped for all their sakes that she’d been successful. If she hadn’t, she’d never find them again. A second pulse indicated the departure of the telescope to that bubble of air underneath Canterlot mountain.
They’ve left the spell. Stop thinking about them and start thinking about yourself!
She closed her eyes again and concentrated once more on the library in April. Relax. She was a perfectly capable student of Princess Celestia, and she was not going to be defeated by a spell of her own doing. Breathe in, breathe out (even though she was in the ether so breathing was an impossibility and entirely unnecessary). Focus. See the library. See your friends. There. Reach out, and finish the spell.
Bamf.
No!
She’d been there, and it had been wrenched away from her! What was going on?! Wait… a new presence had joined her mid-teleport. Setting aside all the rules of teleporting that broke, who was it?! Had a pony teleported into her teleport?!
She soon got an answer, along with a mouth full of gravel.
“What did you do to the Great and Powerful Trixie’s teleport, Twilight Sparkle?!”