//------------------------------// // Magic // Story: Corrigenda // by Jay Bear v2 //------------------------------// Flurry Heart started to fret. She’d looked everywhere for Auntie Twily! Then she turned around, saw Auntie Twily galloping away, and knew something was very wrong. * * * * * Memorials: Selecting Location, Material, and Design By: Twilight Sparkle (F) I think I’ve made a mistake. This place is exactly what Fluttershy said it’d be like. The sights, sounds, even smells all fit for a school, but the feeling… it’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt. My guts are strangling themselves with worry, while my heart races because I’m sure I’ve forgotten something critical. This hallway is so empty that I want to cry from loneliness, but I can’t because someone will see me. And now I feel stupid. Who would see me in an empty hallway? How am I so weak? Compared to Fluttershy, I should be at an advantage. She fought through nine labyrinths without any idea of what was in them, and she told me about what they were like. I know what this place is trying to do to me, and I know I have to find the black heart and break it. The colt is safe, so I can be patient. Now the lockers are chasing me, and none of my spells work! Well, telekinesis does. I can fight them back with this vaulting pole. Go me, Princess of Lost Special Talents. Fluttershy told me once how she made her shepherd’s crook, but when I do what she said, I just feel cold. Where’s the alien? I need it to teach me how to fight these things! I just realized, I never even finished the memorial for everyone. What am I talking about? My friends are alive again! I can wrap my forelegs around them and never, ever let go. I just need to get out of here. But I’ll never escape. I know that now. This is what failure feels like. Real, meaningful failure. That’s what I am. Why bother trying? Someone else will tell me what to do. Actually, I think I prepared pretty well. My plan worked, right? Fluttershy said she saw the black heart in each labyrinth when she was all but sure she’d lost, so I thought your kind might prey on weakness. That meant the sooner I convinced you I’d given up, the sooner you’d let me get this close to you. It wasn’t all fake, though. I really can’t do more than telekinesis, and I really don’t know how to conjure a weapon like Fluttershy. So I improvised. I’d make a joke about taking up some extracurriculars, but I am so done with your sick parody of a school, witch. Too late. * * * * * “The whole point of planning ahead is to not change things at the last minute!” Twilight snapped at Starlight. “But Polar Calf’s Bulwark is an ablative shield!” Starlight rubbed her temples. “I’d have to make it strong enough to absorb all of the energy this thing is throwing out. Wouldn’t deflection work better?” “No! Don’t you remember what happened to Thunder…” Twilight stopped. As far as Starlight knew, nothing had happened to Thunderlane. He was calmly sharing juice with his team a few paces away. “Never mind. Just please, please, please trust me, do not use a deflection spell.” “Fine.” Starlight marched off. Twilight had changed more than Starlight’s shield for the familiar battle. She’d picked a new staging area for Thunderlane, trained Amethyst Star on hit and run tactics, and ordered Nurse Redheart to stay behind cover during the battle. As for herself, she’d figured out that she could summon a heat shield, no thanks to the suddenly shy alien. Her job would be to make sure no pony got hurt, wait while they softened up the familiar, grab a big rock, put up the heat shield, and bash the familiar right in its weakness. This would all be over after tonight. “It’s speeding up!” Rainbow cried on cue. Out of habit, Twilight tried to cast a teleport spell and…nothing. Losing her special talent stung, but she never once regretted it. Her friends were back. She shot into the air and, with a few quick wingbeats, reached her hiding spot. Ground rumbled. Wind whistled. Trees snapped. Ghostly lights swam. The familiar howled. It emerged from the tree line, but threw itself into Maud’s trap without hesitation. Twilight felt dread as Starlight bolted from a berm and fired a bevy of scorching blasts. The familiar responded with a spear that crashed into Starlight’s turquoise shield: the mental force of a single unicorn against all of the familiar’s frothing malice, and it held…for a second. The spear sent Starlight flying through a dirt wall. She collapsed to the ground, her body a contorted heap. Before Twilight’s nausea welled up or her tears spilled out, she sent the hourglass in her mind spinning backwards. On a humid summer night, Twilight and Princess Celestia landed at the desolate base of an unnamed mountain in the Crystal Ridge. A pristine glacier slunk down its barren slopes and into a gravel-strewn basin. Silt-tainted pools gathered around the ice’s edge. The entire scene glittered serenely in the moonlight. A false dawn erupted to Twilight’s side. Her wings instinctively covered her face as a blinding column burst from the the second sun, by whose side she’d once snuggled when she felt homesick, and rammed the mountain's apex with sweltering fire. When the brilliance at last faded, her wing retracted to reveal that an undulating mound of glowing lava had taken the apex’s place. Princess Celestia’s aura surrounded the lava and nudged it sideways until it oozed towards the glacier. That was Twilight’s cue. She summoned her heat shield, enlarged it, and projected it forward, reaching the glacier just as the first smoking finger of lava prodded the ice. Steam gushed, and an otherworldly crackling filled the air. Twilight sighed in relief. After an exhausting day of testing, it appeared Princess Celestia had finally overwhelmed her heat shield. When the vapor cleared, though, it exposed a partial dome of jagged, sooty rock tracing the outline of her shield over the glacier without touching the ice. The “steam” had been outgassing from the molten rock flash-solidifying. The false dawn reignited, now directly into the glacier. Twilight’s wings tensed, but she restrained them and instead summoned a second shield centered on her. The glare abated, allowing her to watch the glacier shrug off Princess Celestia’s solaromancy. Twilight’s skin prickled from a sudden chill. In the first Hearth’s Warming, Equestria had been founded by three ponies repelling hordes of frigid windigos with their compassion for one another. Then, for a thousand years of its history, the realm had been ruled by the living proxy of the sun. It seemed symbolically ominous that Twilight had gained the ability to utterly negate warmth. If the Princess shared her distress, she showed no sign of it “My goodness, Twilight! No spell I’m aware of can inhibit both such extreme conduction and the direct radiance of my Flare spell. I’m tempted to try something considerably stronger, but I would need to see the sun for Nova. An early rising would upset Luna.” She looked at the starry sky, as if considering the option nonetheless. “However, your shield’s origin concerns me. Am I correct in saying witches enable this ability?” “I’m not sure. The alien said the witches would help its creators reverse entropy, but it never really explained the whole hunter thing.” Princess Celestia raised an eyebrow at her. “And for how long have you known the alien?” “It’s only been…” Longer than she thought, actually. The alien arrived in late spring, and she made her wish in mid-winter, so that was eight months. She had one full reset for another four months, and it’d been three months since her second reset. “About a year. It’s tough to get ahold of the alien, though. Rainbow and Pinkie said it talked to them, but I haven’t seen it since I made my wish.” “I see. When this crisis is over, and the alien is inclined to appear, we should discuss its projects at length. Until then…” Princess Celestia’s wings extended, and a mischievous smile appeared. “Do you suppose you can use that shield to focus heat?” * * * * * Journal This is reset four, day one. A hundred and seven days until the familiar shows up again, and I need to find a way to beat it without anypony getting hurt. I cannot describe how much I hope that this will be the last I have to stop going into a reset assuming it’ll be the last. From now on, I’ll keep a journal. I can’t take it with me, but I’ll write down observations from each reset, memorize the important parts, and put them to use later. For instance, I know the familiar can concentrate its strikes. When we had forty ponies in that first fight, it spewed those black orbs. Reset 1 didn’t last long enough to see if it’d use orbs again. In Reset 2, I tried focusing Princess Celestia’s Flare into the familiar, and then in Reset 3 I tried having Princess Celestia and Princess Luna work together. Seeing what the familiar did to Princess On Resets 2 and 3, I think it threw everything into its tendrils against the Pr one or two strong threats. That would explain why it overwhelmed them when Starlight’s first shield deflected it. One surprising result: it took four seconds to get through Princess Celestia’s shield, but seven for Princess Luna’s—is Princess Luna stronger at night? More opponents means its strikes are spread out, and therefore are easier to dodge. What if it had to fight an army? Twilight was swinging jars of fireflies around a darkened study when Rarity appeared at the door. “Darling, you simply must… Dare I ask?” “Problem-solving.” “Solving the problem of fireflies?” Rarity walked in. A wicker picnic basket hovered by her side. “No. It’s for the battle with the familiar. In the last reset, I mistook a squad of earth ponies for pegasi and sent them up a ledge, then sent thunderclouds their way.” “Oh, dear.” “Yeah. I’m thinking of outfitting them all with differently colored fireflies so it’s easier to tell them apart. The problem is they all blur together when they move too quickly.” She swung the jars in a wobbly glowing circle to demonstrate. “Hmm.” Rarity paused and tapped her chin. “You’ve said this monster casts a bit of glimmer, have you not?” “Yes.” Twilight reflected for a moment. She’d been able to distinguish ponies during the first battle, but could barely make them out in the most recent reset. An appointment with an ophthalmologist might be a good idea, but it’d have to wait until after she saved Ponyville. Rarity took two sheets of paper, a marker, and a pair of scissors to a nearby desk. She switched on its lamp, sketched quick shapes on both sheets, and cut out two pony-like shapes. “If I may add mon grain de sel, there is a more elegant approach. At night, when colors fade and bright lights dazzle the eye, what remains is our perception of form and motion. Voilà!” The two cutouts snapped in front of the lamp. Twilight saw, at a glance, how wildly their outlines differed. Long, graceful lines draped one silhouette, while dramatic spikes protruded from the other. Even when the two cutouts darted around the room, Twilight followed them easily. “You mean having ponies wear different outfits? That’s genius!” Twilight said, grabbing Rarity in a hug. “Thank you so much.” “Think nothing of it. I’ll stop by tomorrow to take your soldiers’ measurements. For now, you positively must get a bit of sunlight and lunch. Everypony else is already waiting for us outside.” She brought the picnic basket and its tempting aromas to Twilight's face. “I’m sorry, Rarity. I really, really, really wish I could, but—” “Twilight, urgent message from Princess Celestia!” Spike flew in, an official scroll in his claws. Twilight shrugged to Rarity. “Like I said, I wish I could.” As Rarity pouted and Spike fidgeted, Twilight opened the scroll and read. My dearest, most faithful student Twilight, Take a break already. Go on the picnic. —P.C. Twilight folded the parchment with a begrudging smile. “You got me.” * * * * * Journal Reset 6, Day 82 Best surprise picnic ever? Yeah! Rainbow made sure it was a perfect day, Applejack brought some cider, Pinkie and Fluttershy sang, and Starlight showed us some photo albums. It was great—just what I needed. All that aside, I lost three hours I’ll get my work done later. My friends did something sweet and unexpected for me, even if they resorted to some extraordinary measures. I should never be a jerk when they Okay, I’m not going to become a jerk to them, but what if I did? Hypothetically. Say I got so mean I drove them all away, but without the distractions I figured out how to beat the familiar and not let it hurt anypony. Afterward I could just go back, be nice to them during that reset, and do the bare minimum necessary to beat the familiar. So maybe for the next picnic invitation, I shouldn’t feel too bad telling them to saying that I can’t. I’ll make it up in the last reset, when it matters. “So…don’t be mad,” Rainbow said from Twilight’s windowsill. “Huh? Why would I be mad?” Twilight had been reviewing her journal for the reset in a few days when Rainbow popped open the shutters. She set a bookmark and turned to the window, where only the top half of Rainbow’s head and her two front hooves were visible. Then Twilight remembered to whom she was speaking. “Why specifically would I be mad?” Rainbow’s ears flicked away. “First, I just want to say that this whole ‘I’ve come from the future to save Ponyville’ thing is obviously stressing you out like crazy. You look like you got ten years older in the middle of the night.” “Don’t exaggerate. At most it’s been…” Two years? Twilight checked her math. “Three years.” “And you’ve been acting extra weird lately. Who buys four lemon cupcakes and seven chocolate cookies every single morning?” “I explained that. It’s part of the mind palace technique Mudbriar taught me so I can memorize my journal between resets.” Twilight suppressed her ire. “What’s this really about?” Rainbow winced. “I know you didn’t want us talking to the alien, but—” Twilight’s horn flashed, and Rainbow tumbled through the window wearing a mimic of the Element of Loyalty. “Easy!” Rainbow yelped. “I did it because you need help fighting that familiar thing, okay?” Twilight couldn’t speak. “By the way, did you get slower after your wish?” Rainbows wings twitched. Without thinking about the date, Twilight sent the hourglass in her mind spinning backwards. * * * * * Journal Reset 8, Day 26 I just realized two incredible things. First, I have much more control of my ability than I thought. Instead of having to reset completely, I can “rewind” from any point, to any prior point, like reversing a filmstrip! Somepony doesn’t see an orb until it’s too late? Easy: rewind and tell them to look out! I even used some rewinds to write this journal entry. No more striking through half-baked thoughts! Second, since I know I can rewind, I can try some experiments and not worry about the long term effects. This reset, I’ll ask the soldiers to become hunters and see if they come up with new ways to beat the familiar. Then I’ll analyze what worked, start a final reset, and do it all myself. Note to self: How do I count resets anymore? Maybe it’s not important. “Spike,” Twilight said while a labyrinth’s ashes showered them both, “did you make a wish with the alien?” His eyes darted to his claws tapping together, then to the heart-shaped ruby buckle on his golden belt, then to the lance beside him, and finally to the shattered black heart at his feet. “What gave you that idea?” he asked. She snorted. “I just wanted to help you! I know you said the alien was dangerous and I should stay away from him—” “Him?” “—But I got so worried about you! Yesterday you were going to get some soldiers to become hunters, but today you were yelling how it’d never work. You never used to fly off the handle like that.” Agitation slouched out of her. Spike’s “yesterday” had been two months of her watching a promising idea implode. She had ordered a platoon to find the alien and make wishes, and then brought them to a labyrinth to test their prowess. Instead of a platoon of skilled hunters, though, she got weak earth ponies, inept unicorns, and sluggish pegasi. The reason why was obvious in retrospect: hunters’ constructs were only as strong, skilled, or fast as an average pony. Twilight had blundered into making the best and brightest soldiers of Equestria’s military completely average. Spike, though, had seen only today and “yesterday.” No wonder she had upset him. “I’m sorry I worried you. From now on, I promise to tell you more about what’s happening.” Though she’d have to keep that promise to another Spike; he couldn’t keep risking his life as a hunter. However, one question intrigued her. “Mind telling me what you wished for?” He sheepishly pointed in her direction. Confused, she looked around until she caught her reflection in a polished life-size statue of Rarity. “Do you think she’ll like it?” he asked. “It’s solid platinum.” Twilight’s curiosity struck again. “Why don’t we ask? Stay here, I’ll go find her.” Spike jogged to the statue’s base. “No, I can get this.” Before she could tell him to stop, he knelt down, dug his claws underneath, and lifted it above his head. Twilight watched, agog, as he effortlessly began to carry away the statue. “Don’t act so shocked,” he said, his eyebrows wagging. “Bulk Biceps has been helping me buff up. I even did ten pushups yesterday!” * * * * * Journal Day 27 Spike’s never been the brawniest dragon, but after his wish he’s got genuine draconic strength. According to my tests and research, he’s more or less average for a dragon of his size, and I figured out why. A hunter construct is like the average of that hunter’s race, and becoming average works both ways: stronger-than-average creatures get weaker, but weaker-than-average creatures get stronger! This is huge. Instead of well-trained soldiers, I should recruit less able ponies. Ideal candidates would be ponies who gain more from becoming hunters than they lose from giving up their special talent. That kind of pony might be willing to stay as a hunter. Dawn filled the training field as Trixie led a four-square block of ponies, each adorned with silver Soul Gem jewelry, to its center. At Trixie’s barked command, the group halted in a staccato of hoofbeats. Another command, and they turned in unison to face Twilight. Beads of sweat emerged. Muscles bulged and withered. Eyes strayed to the nearby obstacle course. Twilight loathed this. What had happened to the plan? Recruit sixteen ponies—enough to be effective, not too many to manage, and easy to ration out what the alien apparently called “Grief Seeds”—and train them herself. She’d done that, and even led them into a witch’s labyrinth. Then Trixie had shown up, a golden amulet already dangling around her neck. Twilight had accepted her, and had regretted it instantly. The showmare’s antics turned practice sessions into a circus, and her wish for realm-wide fame interfered with their group’s demanding schedule. To hunt, she conjured a team of fire-breathing bears that proved spectacularly impotent against witches. However, she did excel at bossing ponies around, so as an experiment Twilight had made her a drill sergeant. Trixie had taken to the position with gusto. In the first week, she “motivated” the other hunters to shave tens of seconds off their runs in the obstacle course. Improvements ceased soon after, though. In their trials two days ago, the average run had gone up four seconds. In any other circumstance, Twilight might have had a candid talk with Trixie. With the battle fast approaching and ponies’ lives at risk, she needed to take action. She’d already picked the hunter to demonstrate her point to Trixie: a gray pegasus with a blond mane who couldn't even keep both eyes forward. Twilight checked her clipboard, took a stopwatch from Trixie, and stepped in front of the pegasus. Her Soul Gem, a tiara crested by a muffin-shaped sapphire, slumped down her forehead as Twilight examined her. “Present your weapon,” Twilight said coolly. Excitement snapped across the pegasus’s face. A long metal pole topped with a shallow bowl and four prongs appeared in her foreleg. Twilight scrutinized it. “What exactly is that?” “It’s a spork!” The pegasus chirruped. “Mister Alien said it’s special because it’s made from the last breath of a dying star.” “So it’s iron.” The pegasus blinked. “I’m…not sure.” “I am. Iron is created by stellar nucleosynthesis in the last stage of a star’s fusion sequence just before it becomes a supernova. Q.E.D., iron is ‘the last breath of a dying star.’ Your spork is as special as the nails we used by the barrel to build the obstacle course. What do you think of that?” The pegasus reined in her displeasure and squeezed the spork to her chest. “I just want to keep Ponyville safe!” Celestia help her. “Miss…” Twilight checked the clipboard but couldn’t read the pegasus’s name. Her quillwork might have been decipherable if pastry residue hadn’t been smeared across it. “I see your personal best with the obstacle course is three minutes and twelve seconds.” “Yes, it is!” “And you set that personal best eighteen days ago. Why haven’t you improved since then?” With this, Twilight shot a bitter glare at Trixie. “I…don’t know.” Her face screwed up in concentration. “But I’ll do better!” “I hope you can, for your sake. Starting today, all hunters need to complete the obstacle course in three minutes or less. Can you do that much better?” “Yes, ma’am!” “Then prove it.” Twilight levitated the stopwatch and tapped its button. “Starting now.” The pegasus’s face contorted into a betrayed expression. Then she flew to the first obstacle, an aerial slalom for pegasi, and plunged through it with the spork tucked underneath her. Next she landed in front of a rickety wooden bridge, picked up the spork with her mouth, and used it for balance while she crossed. On the other side, she dropped the spork and dove into a tunnel. Watching her, Twilight recognized the effort that this pegasus had put into practicing, but didn’t recall actually watching those efforts. In fact, she couldn’t be sure she’d ever watched a pony complete the obstacle course. She sensed an opportunity had been lost, although for what she couldn’t say. She shook aside the feeling. Everyone in Ponyville counted on her to keep them safe from the familiar. She couldn’t let camaraderie with one hunter distract her. A splash broke her reverie as the pegasus threw herself into a pool of water near the end of the course. Twilight checked the stopwatch and, to her shock, saw that the pegasus was on pace to beat three minutes. With thirty seconds left, she burst from the far end of the pool and entered a gauntlet of padded blocks swinging from ropes. Here she summoned her spork to bat the blocks out of her way. “You got this, D!” one of the hunters cheered. Others shouted more encouragement. Hooves stomped. Even Twilight felt an urge to join in as the pegasus knocked away the last block and, with fifteen seconds left, began a hundred-pace sprint to the finish line. The spork fell from her mouth… And right into her forelegs. It looked like she’d recover. Almost. But her hind leg caught the spoon’s lip and she tumbled hard into the dirt. Before she stood back up, the stopwatch ticked past three minutes. Twilight ached watching her stumble away from the course. The hourglass appeared in her mind. She could rewind, tell the pegasus what went wrong, and let her retry. It’d be monsterous to not show a little compassion. Then again, could she really risk Ponyville for one clumsy hunter? “Send her home. For good.” Twilight passed the stopwatch to Trixie. “And do the same for anyone else who can’t beat three minutes.” * * * * * Journal Day 26 We found a new labyrinth near the training field. It wasn’t like any of the witches’ labyrinths, so I thought it was a new familiar—the alien said messing around with the past would make familiars, after all. All fourteen of us went in. First, clock faces surrounded us. Breaking off the minute hands got us through them. Next were poles in the distance. We galloped towards them and suddenly thwap! I ran into one. I had lost depth perception, apparently. The other hunters dodged around them, so I followed. Then we went on a violently swinging bridge. One pony got tossed off, but I caught him and steadied the bridge with telekinesis. Trixie said this labyrinth reminded her of the obstacle course, and she was right. After the bridge we had to crawl through a claustrophobic tunnel. The setting only changed after the pendulums (swinging axes in the labyrinth): an arena in place of the sprint. We piled in and the entrance disappeared. Then the ceiling exploded, and a huge, rust-covered sphere fell in, rolling around the arena chasing hunters. I levitated it—very, very heavy—and saw a little nail protruding from the bottom. I pulled it out. The sphere shriveled up and ripped open. Giant spoons and pitchforks poured out, but I couldn’t look up from my hooves. Right there was a witch’s black heart. Someone cracked the heart. I’m not sure who. Ashes fell. I saw the alien bounding towards us, but I didn’t wait. I rewound to now. There were nine witches, and one familiar. That’s the way it’s always been. Where did this tenth witch come from? The alien told me, years ago, that no one knows how they’re made. Are more escaping the alien’s world? Or did something I do make one? I just don’t know. Whatever else happens in the future, I can’t let a new witch appear again. I won’t let things get even worse. Journal Day 25 Discord won’t help. “I don’t turn ponies into stone,” he snarled and then vanished. That’s NOT what I’m doing! Dermal lapidification means transmuting only the first few inches of flesh—dirt walls that thick block the familiar’s orbs, so stone should too. I’m going to find a way to reverse it lat * * * * * “Where’d you wander off to, Twilight?” Applejack’s voice broke Twilight’s concentration. “In here,” she yelled and closed her journal. A woody creak echoed down the palace hallway, instilling an extra twinge of frustration. She’d asked the Apple family to make a scale model of the gulch, plus some sets of pony figures, to plan her strategy for the battle. Of course, her stone-enhanced soldiers were supposed to debut in this reset. Tempest didn’t know how the Storm King’s grenades worked, and Twilight had searched Everfree for a cockatrice already, so that project faced a dubious future without Discord. At least the model would be useful for strategizing. The Apple family’s hard work wouldn’t go to complete waste. “Let me know where I should set this down,” Applejack said as she entered and unhitched her cart. “That ravine’s got some heft to it. Big Mac had to help me…” She trailed off, a perturbed expression washing over her face, while Twilight levitated the model and three boxes that had been perched atop it to the floor. She brought the boxes closer and flipped open their lids. Inside were pony figures, thirty for each race, whittled from applewood in a plain style. Or, there should have been thirty of each race… Twilight began to count. One two three— Applejack began strolling around the study, taking in Twilight’s diagrams and charts. “So how’d that chat with Discord go? “Not like I expected,” Twilight grumbled. Fourteen fifteen sixteen— “That sounds like him.” Applejack’s stroll brought her to one of Twilight’s earlier failures, a mannequin laden with ceramic armor. She prodded it. The armor tinkled like wind chimes, but the wooden support underneath groaned forebodingly. Twenty-nine thirty thirty-one thirty-two… “Applejack, you made more of these figures than I need.” “Ah, don’t you worry about it. Apple Bloom whittled a few extras in case any broke.” “Thanks.” Twilight returned the spare figures to the box. If only she didn’t have to worry about ponies getting broken in the real battle. “Tell her this is helpful.” “Not a problem, sugarcube. Anything I could do to help?” Memories of her friends’ immolation invaded her thoughts. “No.” Her eyes fell to the armor-clad mannequin beside Applejack. She ought to throw it out before it toppled over onto someone. The armor would never be useful. Barring it suddenly coming to life and fighting… She gasped. That was an idea. Starting with a central crankshaft and attaching clockwork mechanisms for the limbs, a statue could be built to move like a pony under another unicorn’s autonomy enchantment. Disposable living statues instead of fragile ponies! The living statue could apply force proportional to the original energy source, minus efficiency losses from friction between the gears… And the original energy source would be a unicorn’s spell… Meaning that after years of blundering, Twilight had just invented a fancier way of bashing the familiar with a big rock. She sagged to the floor as the utter futility of her work swept over her. Then Applejack’s leg wrapped around her, a life-saving gesture. “Twilight, I don’t know all you’ve been wrangling with, but I do know it’s a wretched feeling watching a friend suffer. So tell me how to help you.” By becoming a hunter. Twilight shook her head. She would never ask that. No more constructs, no more abandoned special talents. Her friends needed to stay alive, nothing more. How hard could that be? Then again… They wouldn’t stay hunters. Send the hourglass spinning and they’d be back to normal. Maybe, for one reset, they could help her find new ways to fight the familiar. Maybe they would see something she couldn’t. Maybe they would discover the perfect idea that still eluded her. And hadn’t she missed their company? She hugged Applejack’s leg. “Suppose you could make a wish that would come true in a dream, but you wouldn’t remember it when you woke up. It’d just be this fleeting experience, for good or bad, and all that’d be left of it was the story I’d tell you. Would you still make the wish?” A moment passed before Applejack answered. “Don’t think I would, normally.” Then her features softened. “But if it’ll help you, sure thing.” Practice led to routine over the resets that followed. Applejack, Rainbow, and Fluttershy were consistently easy recruits. Pinkie joined more often than not, despite protesting that the alien gave her a bad feeling. Persuading Rarity was invariably an odyssey, but her attention to detail and knack for finding elusive labyrinths justified the effort. Starlight soured on losing her special talent in the first reset, so Twilight didn’t bother recruiting her again. Twilight also learned how to recruit a few ponies who had excelled under Trixie’s training, such as Octavia, an earth pony who used an unusual bipedal fighting style and conjured cello bows. A training regimen of practice, drills, and sparring that appealed to the entire roster gelled. Routine led to comfort. Hunters began to offer their own contributions each reset, like Rainbow starting sparring tournaments, or Applejack leading camping trips, or Fluttershy organizing animal petting hours. Or Rarity bringing dresses, brooches, and other gifts, always accompanied by some variant of the speech: “You’ll never guess my inspiration for it. I dreamt that I prowled through the depths of a foreboding castle, and entered a room filled with fireflies swirling all about. Then, before I knew it, I was transported to this very field, and there you all were, fighting magnificently in these ensembles!” Comfort led to inertia. Despite remarkable improvements from everypony in the later resets, Twilight found herself rewinding just before the battle. She would tell herself her friends needed more practice, or that they deserved a relaxing vacation to Canterlot. Only recently had she realized her procrastination. She promised herself that at the end of this summer, they would face the familiar. At present, Twilight watched Rarity and Octavia face off for a best of three match in the sparring ring. Rainbow refereed. Rarity won the first point when she caught Octavia in a net spun from conjured thread. Octavia won the second point by slipping through Rarity’s snares and landing a strike up close. The pair saluted and, at Rainbow’s signal, began their final dance. Needles peppered the dirt inches from Octavia’s galloping hooves as she leapt high, her foreleg-held bow ready to swing, until a javelin-sized pin throttled towards her. She swept it away and fell to the ground, where glowing ribbons materialized to wrap around her. A single bow swing shredded them all. Taking advantage of the distraction, Rarity levitated Octavia in midair until a bow flew into her forehead, eliciting a yelp. The spell vanished. Octavia summoned a new bow and stepped forward, but a ribbon caught her foreleg. She yanked on it, apparently unaware of Rarity charging at her with a massive, hovering pin. Then, just before Rarity struck, Octavia twisted out of the way. With the left bow that had been hiding behind her back all along, Octavia delivered a swift but restrained downstroke to the nape of Rarity’s neck. “Point and match, Octavia!” Rainbow called out. The two bowed and left to sporadic cheers while Twilight checked the sparring sign-ups, squinting to see the marks clearly. It seemed she was up next, and her opponent would be… “Yoohoo!” Pinkie yelled from the ring. Twilight waved in reply. Pinkie’s unpredictability infuriated some hunters, but Twilight had yet to lose a match to her. Smiling, Twilight picked up a quarterstaff, entered the field, and signaled her readiness. As soon as Rainbow whistled, a ring of cannons appeared around Twilight and fired volleys of rock-hard confetti. Twilight didn’t flinch as her telekinesis captured each of the 25,427 separate objects. A new personal best; honing the one spell remaining to her had paid off. She sent over her quarterstaff to poke Pinkie in the chest. “Point, Twilight!” Pinkie sulked while her cannons disintegrated. “Come on, go easy on me for once! Your freaky deaky telekineaky is no fun.” “We aren’t sparring for fun, Pinkie,” Twilight said, although she couldn’t deny that she enjoyed sparring. “We’re doing it to practice for witch labyrinths.” “Oh, Twilight, we’re done with those! In two days, it’s us versus that big scary familiar, remember?” Twilight had to think. Was summer really almost over? It felt like it’d just started. “Besides, why not stretch out those wings and legs for once?” She nodded. There was one other tool she needed to exercise. * * * * * Journal Day 106 I can only imagine what the second point looked like to them. Pinkie said I effortlessly dodged her cannons for a few seconds, and then my quarterstaff tapped her chin. Rainbow called it “so awesome.” Rarity said I moved like a madmare. Applejack said I creeped her out. But none of them saw the hours of cannons catching me off guard, blasts that left my ears ringing, or traps I missed. Or when I got tired, lost control, and accidentally smashed the staff through Pinkie’s jaw. Thank goodness I can rewind over all that. Years ago I asked Celestia whether I made the right wish. She believes I survived the first battle because of some hitherto unknown prophecy, and that my wish was destiny. Maybe she’s right. If I close my eyes when it’s really dark in my study, though, I can see Fluttershy’s outline. It’s like the scar of her body protecting mine from the familiar’s blaze while the rest of them Was it really destiny they would all I can rewind through anything, like it never happened, so why can’t I wipe away the memory of I’ll reset. I can’t watch them die again. Is that so selfish? After the first witch in Ponyville, Twilight returned to Canterlot and found her old friends. “A real alien?” Lemon Hearts said, spraying doughnut crumbs in her excitement. “Like from outer space?” “Technically a parallel dimension.” Twilight signaled Doughnut Joe for another round. “And he can grant wishes!” Minuette swooned. “I know what I’d wish for!” “It can grant wishes,” Twilight corrected, “but they have a cost.” “Oh, Twilight, that familiar thing sounds so horrifying,” Twinkleshine said, “but of course you’d find a way to save everypony.” Twilight didn’t answer. Doughnut Joe arrived with a fresh plate, putting a pause to their questions as the three unicorns dove in. Moon Dancer, however, seemed lost in thought. Twilight nudged her. “Are you okay? You’ve been really quiet.” “It’s…kind of a lot to take in.” “I understand, it must sound pretty wild. Is there anything you’d like to ask me?” Moon Dancer adjusted her glasses. “So you’ve been returning to now to stop this ‘familiar’ monster at the end of summer.” “That’s right.” “When you do that, everything that happened afterward, in our future, gets erased. That’s why you call them resets.” Twilight nodded. “And since your wish, you have never let history go past the last night of summer.” Moon Dancer gestured with her forelegs. “How long have you been doing this?” Arithmetic made Twilight cringe. “About ten years.” The other three unicorns’ unsettled eyes darted from Moon Dancer to Twilight. “So unless everything goes the way you want it to this summer—and based on past results, the odds of that are pretty low—you’ll just reset again.” Moon Dancer’s forelegs shook. “Everything anypony else does gets erased. All of Equestrian history is effectively frozen!” “That’s not true—” “And nothing we do matters!” That was true. In fact, Twilight depended on the fact that nothing mattered until the last reset. No one else bore the cost of becoming a hunter, or getting injured, while Twilight learned how to beat the familiar without it hurting anyone. And she’d learned so much! She knew how long the princesses’ shields lasted against it, and how useful Rarity’s dresses were for tracking ponies on the dim battlefield. Plus… She drew a blank. Well, her strategy had improved. She’d started by planning to bash the familiar with a big rock. Since then, she’d recruited her Ponyville friends…to find new fighting techniques. Except they hadn’t fought the familiar even once. Now that she thought about it, she had never tried the bash-it-with-a-rock idea, either. Rarity’s dresses and the princesses’s shields. Not much to show for the ten years she’d spent rewriting summer. Her head hung in shame. “I’m sorry, I’ve really let everypony down.” Twilight rose to leave, but hesitated. There was one other idea she hadn’t tried in the past ten years. “Moon Dancer?” The unicorn’s forelegs dropped. “Yeah?” “Could I borrow your key to the old tower library?” * * * * * Twilight missed research. Musty scents livened by crinkling sheets immersed her senses. Tidy indexes yielded fresh discoveries as she swept her magnifying glass across each page. Papers, scrolls, maps, charts, and books hulked around her like a fortress. And she wouldn’t forget anything she’d read that day, thanks to her swelling mind palace. Strategy, history, military uniforms, legendary heroes of Equestria, leadership, automatons, close quarters dueling, and entropy were each conscripted into her physical and mental fortress. She learned that her limited grasp of strategic resource tradeoffs had doomed her first reset. She read about how, in Equestria’s infancy, the realm spared its early enemies out of compassion; she realized much of her life had been spent dealing with the consequences. She saw how leaders who treated their inferiors harshly, as she and Trixie had done, found positive short term results at the cost of long term morale. She even discovered an ancient kingdom that had tried to build living statues like her and encountered the same obstacles. The ancient kingdom’s prototypes had been relegated to entertaining aristocrats. She was engrossed in a dueling manual when she heard a knock at the front door. “Twilight?” Moon Dancer said from behind it. Twilight set down the magnifying glass and called out, “Come in!” While the door opened, she noticed it was night already. Her lantern illuminated only her desk and books. “I had, uhm, something I wanted to ask you.” Moon Dancer crossed the threshold with a series of tentative, off-rhythm hoofsteps and stopped just inside the room. “I’d be happy to answer anything I can,” Twilight said in her most encouraging tone. “What’s on your mind?” A glint twinkled from Moon Dancer, Twilight supposed from a bit of metal in her glasses. “Will this be the last reset?” “It’s pretty unlikely,” Twilight said, “like you said at the doughnut shop.” “So, probably nothing anypony does for the next few months matters?” “I’m sorry. I wish it were some other way.” Moon Dancer seemed to consider that. “If somepony tried to stop you from resetting,” she asked, “would you murder them?” Twilight almost gagged. “No! That’s horrible! Murder is wrong…” She hesitated. To end a life meant denying somepony their future. The immense harm of that made murder wrong. Then again, killing to defend one’s realm was acceptable. The value of protecting millions of lives far outweighed the harm of even thousands of deaths on a battlefield. In fact, it was immoral not to defend the realm in such a circumstance. The value of protecting Ponyville was huge. If somepony tried to stop her from it, she’d be obligated to at least weigh it against the harm of their death. Arguably, the harm of any deaths before the last reset was… Oh. “I didn’t really understand until now,” Twilight said. “Nothing matters unless it has a lasting consequence. Even if I have to do something terrible, as long as I can rewind back through it later, it won’t hurt anyone. All that matters is saving Ponyville in the last reset.” With careful hoofsteps, Moon Dancer approached her. “This has to be the last reset.” “I can’t promise that,” Twilight said, confused. Then Moon Dancer came within the glow of the lantern, and the new golden pendant hanging from her neck glinted again. “I met the alien. I wished that you couldn’t return to the past anymore.” The meaning sank in over seconds, then slammed Twilight in the gut. She tried to summon the hourglass in her mind, gritting her teeth from exertion, and…nothing. Moon Dancer had trapped her in the present. “I’m really sorry, Twilight. I wanted to talk to you before making a wish, but he said he wouldn’t meet me again, that it’d tamper with his observations. I had to act then or lose the chance forever.” “Observations?” Spittle flew from Twilight. “What kind of observations is that thing doing?” “He warned me that you would try to…” Moon Dancer flinched. “He said you might act irrationally, but I know how well you control your emotions. You understand that from now on, everything we do matters.” “You’re killing my friends!” Moon Dancer raised her eyes to meet Twilight’s. “No, I’m not. I’ll help you save them.” In a flash, a silver halberd appeared beside Moon Dancer. She grasped it with a foreleg. “I know you’re furious, Twilight, but do you think we could work together?” Her lips curved into a fragile smile. Twilight dropped the library key by Moon Dancer’s hooves and walked past her. “Never.” * * * * * Journal Day 6 I learned a lot from this reset. Not just what I read in the library; I learned about judgment. Overestimated: myself. Having a hunter’s toughness, living thousands of years, and being able to return to the past never made me invulnerable. I have to protect myself. Underestimated: Moon Dancer. She lives in such a simple world, knowing what’s right and wrong without having to think through all the consequences. Then again, I suppose that conviction kept her from making a more permanent wish. Misjudged: the alien. Not sure what to make of its “observations.” I think all it cares about is witches. That must be why it keeps recruiting hunters. That must be why it granted Starlight’s wish. At least I judged my friends perfectly. Starlight agreed that I’m doing what’s right. And she restored my wish. No more indulging in this endless summer. From now, I’ll do whatever it takes to find out how to save Ponyville. Nothing else matters until the last reset. Starlight died first, again. Marelin’s Ingurgitation Talisman lasted two and a half seconds before the familiar’s sickening void washed over her. Not bad, but not as good as the four and a quarter seconds she’d once gotten with Clover the Clever’s Greater Ward. Next reset, they’d try a new spell Sunburst had developed. The early part of the battle turned into a mess after loose boulders buried Applejack and some earth ponies. Twilight ignored them and watched Rarity. Her regal purple gown made her easy to track, even in the dark, as she launched a shrieking maelstrom of conjured diamonds into the familiar. Lately, Twilight had noticed those kinds of weapon differences come up every few resets. She theorized the differences were tied to the hunter’s mood when she made her wish. Octavia might get a deafening lute, or Pinkie an alligator that swallowed minions whole. Most of the variations seemed like downgrades, but Rarity’s diamonds proved effective this reset, as evinced by yet another howl-inducing shot into the familiar. “Ma,” Applejack whimpered from the rockpile. Considering how little of her body protruded from the rock pile, it was impressive she could still speak. “Ma, it hurts.” Twilight didn’t bother looking, but Rainbow’s body would be close to Applejack. She’d jetted to her side in a misguided effort to help, despite Twilight’s shouts about the orbs about to swarm her. She had almost rewound then, but it wouldn’t matter. This wouldn’t be the last reset. Rarity soared behind the familiar. “We have to help Applejack,” Fluttershy moaned. She wept beside Twilight, her shepherd’s crook leaning against the berm they cowered behind. “Please. We have to.” “Forget it.” Twilight kept scanning the other side of the familiar, waiting for Rarity to emerge. “You’d just get yourself killed too.” She found Rarity panting against a berm while other unicorns shielded her against the black orbs. Twilight hissed at her own sloppiness. She needed better data about Rarity’s endurance with the diamonds. The unicorns’ shields dropped and Rarity sprang back into motion. Now Twilight could focus on something important. “Ma, I don’t wanna hurt.” Fluttershy’s hoof pressed into Twilight. “Twilight, please—” It all happened in a blur. Bands of telekinesis wrapped around two vertebrae in Applejack’s neck and snapped in opposite directions. She didn’t understand her own intent until she heard the grisly crunch of cartilage tearing apart. “I’m sorry…” Something in Twilight choked. She felt feverish. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out, so she took a breath. She released it. None of this mattered. If anything, she’d put Applejack out of her misery. “I’m so sorry…” she started again and turned to Fluttershy. Then she saw the necklace’s golden veneer melting into peculiar black rivers flowing down Fluttershy’s chest. The butterfly-shaped gem spasmed free of its cage. Fluttershy’s wings extended high into the sky and enveloped Twilight in a whirlwind. Twilight breathedin and held it. She had no choice. Musky scents lingered in her lungs. She refused to exhale….but she had no choice in that either. One day the tension in her muscles would ease and the air would escape her. So too would the proteins of her body. So too would every atom she had ever touched. Only this home was eternal. She had no choice but to reach out her hoof to me— Pierced a thousand-fold by black icicles, the feathers dissolved into ash. They dispersed and Twilight saw Fluttershy’s grotesquely distorted body hanging from one of the familiar’s tendrils. At its very tip, the tendril held Fluttershy’s black heart. Below it, the white, freakish form of the alien watched her. “My creators would like to thank you.” Everything stopped making sense, again. “Now that they’ve proven how to manufacture witches from emotional beings, my creators will be able to harvest this world to reverse entropy. Thanks to you, my creators can save the entire universe from inevitable annihilation.” It leapt to her, unaffected by the battle and Fluttershy’s crumbling remains. “So that my creators better understand the metamorphosis process, could you explain what emotion you’re experiencing at this moment?” Horror agony disgust rage Twilight said nothing. The words evaporated as she sent the hourglass in her mind spinning backwards. * * * * * Twilight rewound to before she’d left to visit Flurry Heart. She canceled her trip to Canterlot, sending Spike and Starlight in her stead. Then, alone in the crystal palace, she waited in her study. From the perspective of every other creature, Twilight had woken up one morning and decided at the last minute to cancel her Canterlot trip. Odd, but not concerning enough to intervene. No one else, though, could sense psychic energy, or knew about witches, hunters, and Soul Gems. They wouldn’t understand how her existence broke the rules. However, she would be quite an anomaly to the alien… Except that wasn’t the right name for it anymore. Too generic for a being that had come to Equestria to experiment on ponies, to raise them like farm animals… That wasn’t right, either. No pony killed farm animals for food, but the alien had done exactly that to Fluttershy and the gray pegasus before her. It had nurtured them on a wish, but kept them fragile like eggs, until it allowed witches to crack them open. It had told Twilight it planned to incubate the entire world like that. An incubator, then. She’d begun to speculate on what the incubator had been testing—obviously, much of what it had told her last reset was a lie—when it appeared from behind a desk. “This is unusual,” it said. “You—” Her aura wrapped around it and exploded in all directions, splattering its substance across her study’s floor and walls. Tension drained from her. Neither hatred or vengeance had pushed her to destroy the incubator, she told herself as she began to clean. She’d been forced to choose between one artificial creature and all of Equestria. No one who knew the truth would have argued to spare it. Then again, no one else had to know. * * * * * Days passed. She asked the Bureau of Baffling Beasts to send her any reports of a small white creature capable of speech. None arrived. Weeks passed. No labyrinths appeared, and Twilight concluded that the nine witches Fluttershy had fought had been other ponies the incubator had recruited. Why it considered Fluttershy’s transformation such a revelation remained a mystery, one she had no interest in giving another second’s thought. She finally visited an ophthalmologist and learned that she had permanent retinal damage, likely from the first battle with the familiar. Her doctor prescribed a hat with a hallucinogenic enchantment to help her vision. She liked that it also covered her Soul Gem. Now she could read without a magnifying glass, although colors were too saturated and shapes more than a few miles away blurred. Astronomy was a lost cause. Months passed. As autumn approached, Twilight began to realize how much she’d aged. Her legs had grown longer, her muzzle more angular, and her wings dwarfed any pegasus’s. She had grayed, too, but in an annoyingly inconsistent pattern: her fur had lost a bit of its blue pigment while her feathers lost their red. Only Rainbow seemed to notice the changes. “Are you feeling okay? You look like you got ten years older in the middle of the night.” Twilight chuckled. The future didn’t falter in its approach until the last days of summer. * * * * * By the Arrival of Autumn, Apple Bloom had been missing for seventy-two hours. Twilight finished another aerial search and returned to the ballroom’s frantic scene in the crystal palace. Amethyst Star taught orienteering along a back wall. Maud refueled lanterns in one corner. Nurse Redheart demonstrated setting splints in another. Thunderlane managed a table covered with logbooks in the center. As Twilight entered, he perked up in an unspoken question. She shook her head. “Any chance you saw Sweetie Belle or Scootaloo?” he asked. “They’re not missing exactly, but their families came by to say they skipped their dinners.” “Sorry, I didn’t,” Twilight said, feigning concern. She hadn’t seen much of the trio this summer, due no doubt to the cutie mark day camp they ran. More than likely, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo had gotten lost searching for their friend. Twilight would just rewind and stop whatever had happened to Apple Bloom, so she’d prevent their disappearance too. No change in plans needed. A door to the hallway opened, and Fluttershy rushed in. “There’s something over Everfree Forest!” she whimpered. Twilight groaned. “I told Mayor Mare, no fireworks while pegasi are searching—” “No, it’s not fireworks, it’s a…thing. Seeing it gives me horrible thoughts.” Twilight felt a chill. “What does it look like?” “It’s enormous, taller than the trees even, and it’s surrounded by lightning.” Fluttershy shuddered. “Should we warn Zecora?” Twilight drifted to the balcony railing. Fluttershy followed. Without resolving the distant pinprick, Twilight knew that the familiar loomed over the Everfree Forest, Ponyville, and her friends. She had begun to theorize about the incubator’s mix of deceit and truth when movement below drew her attention. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo led a small army of young mares and stallions racing into the Everfree Forest. After a moment, she recognized Featherweight, once the Foal Free Press’s photographer. The others’ identities eluded her. She puzzled over their presence until she saw star-lit gleams from the golden jewelry each of them wore. When had the incubator recruited them? Had it returned in secret? Had it found them while Twilight waited in her study? If only she could deduce when… No. It wouldn’t matter. Her decade of rewriting summer hadn’t saved Ponyville from the familiar. How could she save the realm from a beguiling monster who preyed on emotion? Founded by three ponies warming a hearth in a cave, teetering on the brink of destruction through its infancy, and granted only a summer to prepare its defenses, Equestria as she knew it would not survive. But she would not let her home fall to the incubator. The realm’s flaws were chiseled into its past, but she could erase them. The hourglass came to her mind. “What’s happening?” Fluttershy watched her intently. Twilight touched a calming hoof to her cheek. History would not forget her friends. As long as the Tree of Harmony grew, they were destined to return, and the new realm would form around them. “It will be all right,” Twilight said. “I promise.” Then she sent the hourglass spinning backwards through the centuries.