Twilight fell.
Twilight fell through light so profound it pressed upon all senses at once. It echoed in her ears like the airiest of flutes and the heaviest of basses. It slid along her skin, caressing her like a lover. Light filled her nose and mouth with a burning flame and just a hint of citrus. Twilight, in her writhing and falling, tripped the light fantastic.
It was pervasive and invasive and had it not been so ferociously kind it would have been painful beyond Twilight’s power to bear. She was cradled in the embrace of the light. Twilight had always loved magic and now she knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that magic returned her love.
Twilight was falling and falling and she was…
She was an earth pony colt, discovering her cutie mark in carpentry. Her – his?–, hooves sparkling like the crystals of his city. And why should that surprise him? The crystal ponies’ scintillating coats gave the Crystal Empire its name. He fell in love with the filly next door, an artist. They created together. Sculptures from her and barrels from him, working together for beauty and bits. Their greatest creation would have been their child. Instead she died giving birth to a stillborn foal. He drowned his sorrows in the liquid in his barrels and drowned himself in the city’s river, desolate. And he was falling…
And Twilight was falling.
And she remembered. She remembered falling in love with that beautiful mare and their days of happiness. She knew that she could cut a set of staves and bind them into a barrel in a single try, though she’d never even seen a cooper’s tools. More, Twilight remembered that joy turning to ash in a single terrible day. She remembered a grief of a magnitude she could scarcely comprehend. Before she could even begin to process a lifetime of memories she was falling…
She was an operatic singer, trained intensely from an early age to master her voice as her instrument. She sang in the greatest cities of the world, before the Princesses themselves. Music was her lifeblood, but she had a secret passion for her garden. No pony ever knew for she was ashamed to love something other than her music. She died in a hospital room, her voice stolen by illness and without a trace of greenery in sight. And she was falling…
And somepony was falling.
It was Twilight Sparkle, she thought, though she was not sure. The memories of three lives crowded her mind, pushing the life she thought had originally been hers to the sides. Had she spent fifty years raising a bonsai tree from a seed? No, that had been the second memory, she thought. It wasn’t clear. Her own life wasn’t clear. And she was still falling…
She was a unicorn colt with a dark grey coat and a silky black mane. He studied magic intensively, obsessively. Magic of the mind drew his attention and he pushed every pony in his life away in pursuit of it. He experimented, on his own mind and on other ponies, expanding his expertise. He devised a way to force his mind overtop of another’s mind, to control them and duplicate himself. He planned the first use of this magic on his own parents, and as he restrained them and powered up his horn for the spell, he was standing…
But he was still falling. No. She. She was still falling. She – Twilight Sparkle? – thought there was something important in that last set of memories. Something that would have mattered to who she once had been. But it was so hard to remember which life that was. The memories, the lives, wouldn’t stop coming and she was still falling.
She was a dancer. He was an artist. She gave up her dreams to be a mother. He relished the chance to stay home with his children. She raised up buildings and city streets. He was a murderer stalking those streets with ill intent. She lived to old age and cursed each moment that passed. He died as a foal and loved life so fiercely. And they were all falling.
And she was falling.
The lives came in a flurry and left her with lifetimes of memories. No time to process or form some cohesive whole. No anchors for the pony she once had been to hold on to. There was so much life, so much experience. Dimly, she thought she would have loved to know so many ponies so intimately, if it had only come in a manageable fashion. Instead, she was drowning in an ocean of experience.
She was falling.
Suddenly, mercifully, and with no transition whatsoever, she was standing. She opened her eyes and stared at her hooves. Purple. She was purple and female and she had been falling. That ruled out most of her memories. There had been that one filly who wandered too far from home and fell into a crevasse. But no, that sequence of memories ended with the ground rushing up far too quickly.
Who was she?
She was the pony with the dragon for a brother. Archmage. Companion to the princesses. Element of Magic. She was Twilight Sparkle.
As if in confirmation, a warm white wing wrapped her in a firm embrace. The faint scent of sunflowers evoked a memory of maternal love. The voice that spoke soothed her with that same love.
“It’s alright, Twilight Sparkle. Take your time. You are safe here. I’m so proud of you for making it this far.” The words continued, the meaning unimportant but the caring tone a balm on Twilight’s ragged soul.
It was sufficient to help her hold fast against the memories. They were not gone. Like waves they still frothed and crashed against her mind, held at bay by the dike the other pony’s presence had built.
Slowly, carefully, Twilight rallied herself until she was confident enough to raise her head, and look up at the pony that held her.
Smiling beatifically down at Twilight was Princess Celestia.
“My faithful student,” Princess Celestia murmured warmly. “I never imagined you would find me. Hoped, yes, but I thought the journey to saving me from my own folly too far, even for you.”
Disbelieving, Twilight’s head swung this way and that, peering at her surroundings. The two ponies stood in a colorful void. Under their hooves was a teal river of stars, firm to the touch. Above sparkled yet more stars, some so close Twilight could see the roundness of the shining spheres.
Except she shouldn’t have been able to perceive the roundness, not with the poor depth perception of her one eye. Slowly, wonderingly, she raised a hoof to her face and in place of a ruined socket she found her right eye whole once more.
“What is this place?” she asked in disbelief.
“This is the plane of magic and ascension,” Princess Celestia answered. “All the immortals have passed through this place in their own time.”
“Then I’m here because-“ Twilight didn’t even dare finish the thought.
“Yes, Twilight,” Princess Celestia said gently. “You are on the cusp of ascension. You are also very near to madness or possession, and an alicorn afflicted by either is a terrifying thought. Come and sit. Fortunately, we have some time to talk it through.”
Princess Celestia led Twilight to a low wooden table that had certainly not been there a moment before. Two plush red cushions sat directly on the stars that made up the floor on either side of the table, and Princess Celestia settled Twilight’s still-dazed form on one before sinking into the opposite with a sigh. Two steaming cups of tea appeared on the table and Twilight watched as the princess brought hers to her face and savored the rich aroma.
Only after Celestia had sipped her tea did Twilight bring her own cup to her lips. The flavor was reminiscent of the magic through which she had fallen but milder, bright and citrusy without being overwhelming. Each sip sent warmth and strength flowing through Twilight’s tired limbs.
They didn’t speak as they drank. They should have. There was so much to discuss, so many questions Twilight wanted – needed – to ask, answers she should have demanded. But she held her peace and drank. No, rather, she clung to what peace that place had to offer and gripped her teacup like a life raft. Slowly, through her repeated sips the raft drifted toward shore and Twilight’s hooves steadied as she rediscovered herself.
Two mares alone against an infinite starscape. It should have felt alien. Instead, each motion felt imbued with ritual formed through hundreds of repetitions. Twilight could see flickers of the past moments that echoed this moment. So many days in Princess Celestia’s study, taking tea after lessons were done. The rare beautiful afternoons when the fair sky had called them to sit outside. And always, always, the constant of each other’s company.
Twilight couldn’t yet know, but she wondered if Princess Celestia was recalling those moments as well. Or did the thousands of years she’d lived render her time with Twilight unremarkable?
Unbidden, memories of other tea times, as other ponies, rose through her mind. She had those same thousands of years, she realized. Maybe not as the same pony, but those memories felt real and personal nonetheless. Despite their sheer quantity, the emotion released by taking tea with a loved one was undiminished.
And she did love Princess Celestia. Twilight hadn’t been sure her love still held true until she had seen the other pony. The princess has raised her, uplifted her from a foal trapped in magic run wild into a mare who knew her own power. More, the princess had loved her, had comforted her boo-boos and hung her spell diagrams on the refrigerator. It had been the princess who listened when she’d made her first friends and the princess who cautioned against shutting those friends out in favor of study. Finally, and most importantly, it had been Princess Celestia who had sent her to Ponyville to meet the greatest friends any pony could ask for.
Now maybe Celestia had torn her away from a loving family. Maybe she had used magic to alter Twilight’s brain and force her to forget her family. But that was just the thing; she had no memories of that other family, of what might have been taken from her. Instead, she remembered only the love of Princess Celestia. That love filled her, resonating with her anger and her pain to crystallize in a feeling that had no easy name, but was somehow a gestalt of all three.
Princess Celestia lowered her teacup and smiled. “Now, Twilight, I imagine you must have questions.”
Under other circumstances Twilight would have thought carefully and reasonably about the best questions to ask and how to get the most from their conversation. Instead, her question arose from that gestalt of emotions. She looked up, eyes wide and teary and wasn’t that a wonder in and of itself.
“Why did you abandon me?” she asked with the guileless tone of an injured child. At once she clapped her hooves over her mouth, as if to capture the words before they could escape. To no avail. The words sat as heavy on the table between them as the beating heart torn from her own breast. It rested on a plate like a biscuit for Princess Celestia to devour or decline at her leisure, and Twilight couldn’t have said just which she hoped for.
“No, wait,” she said, hastily trying to stuff her heart back into its proper place. “Wait. There are more important questions. Like, how can we get you back your body? Or, how can we defeat Sombra? Please, answer one of those.”
Princess Celestia sipped her tea as Twilight waited with baited breath for her response. It seemed to last an eternity. Twilight was sure she had several life times of memories that were shorter than the moments it took for Princess Celestia to finish her sip and replace her teacup on the saucer. The wait felt so long to Twilight that when Princess Celestia actually did speak it caught her by surprise.
“There are other questions you could ask, but I think that’s the one you want answered more than any other.” She peered, not unkindly, down at Twilight. “Am I right, my faithful student?”
Twilight shrank in on herself but she couldn’t find it inside to deny the truth. “Yes,” she whispered. “I just don’t understand what you were thinking. But then, I don’t understand how you could have cast a spell to twist the mind of filly away from her family, so perhaps I never really knew you in the first place.”
Princess Celestia raised one perfect eyebrow. “So you know about that. Well, it seems I’ve even more explaining to do than I anticipated. I’d better get started.” She sighed and sat back on her cushion. “Would you believe that I made a mistake?”
“Once, no, I wouldn’t have. Now?” Twilight looked away. “Now I can see a bit more clearly. Despite my-“ Twilight broke off, remembering that her injury wasn’t present in that place. “Never mind. So you made a mistake?”
“I thought this would be a minor incident in the grand scheme of things.” Princess Celestia raised a hoof as if to sketch it out. “I’d disappear for a few years so Luna could run the country and gain confidence as a leader. There would have been challenges, but I’m sure Luna and you could have handled them. Then, when the time seemed right, I’d undo the spell, return myself to my body, and undo the alterations to everypony’s memory.”
“So what went wrong?”
“I’d tied the memory spell to my renunciation of my body and immortal magic. I’d thought that that way when I reassumed body and magic both it would undo the memory spell automatically.” Princess Celestia gestured to herself ruefully. “Instead, the spell required more magic than I’d anticipated. Enough to completely sever the links between magic and body to leave me little more than the wandering spirit you see before you.”
“That’s it?” Twilight asked blankly, hardly believing her ears. She brought one hoof down on the table and leaned forward angrily. “Oh oops you made a mistake. So sorry. Won’t happen again. You hurt literally everypony who ever knew you – which, since you’re you, is literally everypony – not to mention the agony its put Spike, Luna, and I through, and all you have to say is that it was a mistake?”
“It was a mistake,” Celestia said with equanimity. “And I believe you have recently learned something about the dangers of mistakes from powerful ponies.” That took the wind right out of Twilight’s sails. She sat back, stunned that Celestia would go that far, but Celestia wasn’t done. “I don’t think that’s really what you’re angry about anyway, or what you meant when you asked why I abandoned you. I will accept your anger, Twilight, but only if you are honest with me about the source. Now, do you want to try again?”
The scene felt so painfully familiar to Twilight. And why shouldn’t it? It had played out time and again in her lessons with the princess. First there was the recounting of Twilight’s mistakes, said in tones of slight disappointment, as if she had personally and intentionally let Celestia down. Then came the suggestion of the real answer and the magnanimous opportunity to try again.
As the faithful student moments like these had not been unpleasant to Twilight. Oh, she’d hated getting something wrong and feeling like she’d disappointed Celestia. But the kindness, the gentle guidance toward the answer, these had made her feel loved. As if her goddess has personally reached down and steered her to the correct path.
Now though, it made her blood boil. The casual knife thrust into an open emotional wound, the sheer condescension in Celestia’s tone, the intimation that she knew Twilight better than Twilight knew herself, all of them set Twilight to seething.
All the more so because she couldn’t truthfully say that Celestia was incorrect.
“Fine,” Twilight growled, ignoring Celestia’s raised eyebrow at her tone. “You’re right, I could forgive you for what you intended here and for making everything so much worse with your mistake. None of what you’ve done recently damaged my image of you. It made me angry, of course, but it was only when I found the spell you cast on me as a foal that I truly felt abandoned by the pony I’d loved like a mother. Though as I said, it would be more accurate to say that I suddenly felt as though I never really knew you at all. So I’ll ask again, why?”
Twilight was breathing hard when she came to the end of her speech. Her face glowered, but her eyes pleaded with Celestia to have some reason, some excuse that would make it all okay.
“There is an explanation, Twilight,” Celestia said slowly. “I can only hope it is enough to satisfy you, though you may wish you’d remained ignorant.”
Twilight sat back bowed her head. “Tell me. Please. I have a right to know.”
“So be it.” Celestia looked down for a moment, gathering her thoughts. Then she raised her eyes and began to speak. “A thousand years is a long time to be alone. Most of the other immortals are from solitary races and they don’t mind the mayfly lives of the mortals of their kind. Ponies, though, are herd creatures through and through and most of us react poorly to isolation.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Twilight asked, frowning.
Celestia, staring off into the starry distance, continued as if she had not heard. “That’s why Luna came to be. When I first ascended it rapidly became apparent that I needed a companion, one who would not wither with the turning of the seasons, or I become… unbalanced and things go awry.”
Twilight began to have an inkling of where this story was going and Celestia, perhaps sensing that, lowered her gaze and spoke directly to Twilight.
“When I first met you I realized that you might well be able to use the Element of Magic. With Luna’s return fast approaching I knew I would need somepony ready with the Elements to oppose her. I thought at the time that the Elements would simply banish her once again, and the thought of facing another thousand years watching everypony die just as I grew to care for them was simply too much for me to bear. Do you understand yet Twilight?”
“I want to hear you explain what you did to me.” Twilight fixed Celestia with a penetrating stare. Not accusing, exactly, but not merciful either. She would permit no evasions on Celestia’s part. “I want to hear the words, plainly and without mitigations or obfuscations.”
“I cast a spell on you,” Celestia said with perfect equanimity. “A variant of the want-it-need-it spell, actually, to redirect all the love you felt for your family to me. A side effect of that spell was that you could no longer perceive them, not because you couldn’t remember, but because you were utterly apathetic to their presence.”
Though she looked as hard as she was able, Twilight couldn’t detect the smallest glimmer of shame or regret on Celestia’s part. Though given the years Celestia had spent building her mask, that did not necessarily mean those emotions were absent.
“And the reason?” Twilight asked.
“I planned for your ascension, that you would take Luna’s place at my side to assuage my loneliness. There is an old and incomplete spell designed to alter the fates of the ponies closest to you and, in completing it, you would have grown sufficiently attuned to others’ magic to ascend. But I needed to make sure that you would never rebel as she did. Hence the spell.” Celestia calmly sipped her tea, seemingly indifferent to the turmoil roiling in Twilight’s heart.
It was too much, simply too much. The anger in Twilight boiled over. She leapt on the table and slapped the teacup from Celestia’s magic, sending it to shatter on the starry ground. The tinkle of breaking porcelain echoed and reverberated strangely in that ephemeral place, growing in volume as Twilight shrieked in Celestia’s face.
“You brainwashed me! You stole me from my family and brainwashed me into becoming what? A replacement for your sister? I loved you as a mother and now I find that’s only because you took me from my real mother. How can you sit there calmly drinking your tea and tell me that molded me like a pawn?
Twilight paused, teeth gritted and seething. A thought struck her and she sat back, hanging her head in desolation. “Hay, there was nothing to mold. I was just a filly when you took me. You practically built my psyche from the ground up to be exactly what you wanted it to be.”
She looked up, staring straight into Celestia’s eyes. “Tell me the truth. Did you ever care about me as a pony, as an individual, rather than as a project?”
“I love you, Twilight Sparkle” Celestia said simply in the face of Twilight’s anger. “I loved the powerful magic-obsessed filly I first met. I loved the eager student I raised. And I love the strong confident mare you’ve become. No matter what happens or how this ends I can’t tell you how proud I am of all you’ve done. I did what I did because it was necessary for Equestria.”
Twilight snorted. “’For Equestria’, what a terrible reason to hurt somepony you claim to love.”
“I love my sister,” Celestia reminded her, “and I banished her for a thousand years, because that was what Equestria demanded of me. Sometimes leading means sacrificing the ones you love.”
“Brainwashing me was a sacrifice for the good of Equestria?” Twilight demanded.
“Yes. Equestria has prospered under my guidance, but these past thousand years alone have worn me down. I am not so arrogant as to think I can maintain my sanity through sheer force of will. And so I chose you to join me, to be the counterbalance I so desperately need. Even after Luna’s return I still planned on your ascension because I cared for you and I thought that between the three of us we could make Equestria greater than ever before.”
Celestia sighed. “Unfortunately, what I planned is a moot point. I am on the edge of dissolution and you are on the edge of ascension and of madness.”
“If I’ve spent my life brainwashed then would going mad really be any different?” Twilight spat.
The shattered teacup from which Celestia had been drinking swirled together and reformed on the table before her. It filled again with tea and Celestia took another patient sip. “That pettiness is beneath you, Twilight Sparkle. Hate me if you must, but you know that you have a part to play in defeating Sombra, and that you cannot perform that role if you are insane.” As always, Celestia’s rebuke cut to the quick, making Twilight feel small and foolish for her anger.
“Fine,” Twilight said, hating that she sounded like a sulky teenager, but not knowing how to avoid it. “Why am I on the brink of ascension and madness?”
Celestia did not deign to answer. She merely looked at Twilight, waiting for her to come to the obvious answer on her own.
“The memories of those other ponies. It must have something to do with them,” Twilight said slowly, thinking it through. She could feel the myriad of memories pulsing at the edges of her mind. Memories beyond counting that wanted nothing more than to pour into her until her poor vessel cracked under the pressure. “What are they? Why are they here?”
“Sombra,” Celestia answered. “When my sister and I fought him last he was acting in much the same way, forcing ponies to bend to his will. We knew of no way to break his control and didn’t want to simply kill everypony he controlled. On the other hoof, we could not allow him to control Hvergelmir or the Crystal Empire. So, using the Elements, we banished everything; him, his slaves, and the Crystal Empire itself.”
“So your disregard for the lives of mortal ponies goes back at least a thousand years,” Twilight said harshly, taking pleasure in the faint flicker of irritation her jab finally managed to evoke.
“What would you have had me do? His strength grows with everypony he controls and the more ponies he has the more he can capture. He’s essentially an exponential threat and once he passes a certain point he’s nearly impossible to stop. We had assumed the banishment would weaken his control and we could defeat him immediately after he returned, which shouldn’t have been for a while yet.” Celestia sighed again and looked away. “As with so many things, it did not go as planned.”
Twilight nodded. “Luna told me what she did. She had forgotten him during her own banishment and when she suddenly rediscovered him she tried to reseal him. Apparently her efforts were insufficient.”
“I suspect her patchwork attempt at reinforcing his prison may even have sped his return,” Celestia acknowledged, “but the banishment itself did not have the desired effect. I thought he would be isolated from his victims and they might have a chance to break free when the prison weakened. Instead, he had access to the minds of all the crystal ponies imprisoned with him, both the living and the recently dead, for the entirety of his banishment. The second he could touch the real world he used his iron hold on them to spread his taint to Hvergelmir. You, in leaping into it, plunged right through them and, like any wandering spirits, they sought to take the first body they came across.”
“Okay, I understand how thousands of ponies trying to possess me would drive me mad, but how would any of this make me ascend?” Twilight asked, her anger with Celestia warring and losing to her desire to learn.
Celestia, for her part, seemed grateful that their discussion had moved on to less contentious topics. She answered almost eagerly, falling into the lecturing tone she had used to give lessons to Twilight when she was just a foal.
“As you well know, immortal magic simply refers to the capability to use natural magic directly, rather than being restricted to the magic produced by one’s own body. It is commonly thought that only immortals have access to this magic. An interpretation that we immortals take great pains to reinforce. In truth, any being that manages to access natural magic becomes an immortal.” Celestia smiled mischievously. “And now you know the great secret of our age. Rather disappointing isn’t it?”
Twilight stared unbelieving at her mentor. “That’s it? A pony could randomly luck into channeling natural magic and, poof!, they’re immortal? That’s the trick to the incredible power you all wield?”
“It’s harder than it sounds,” Celestia replied. “Channeling natural magic is impossible without experiencing from the inside what somepony else’s personal brand of magic feels like. Only through achieving a multitude of perspectives on magic can a pony triangulate, as it were, what it feels like to wield pure natural magic.”
“So, it’s like trying to see through another pony’s eyes?” Twilight asked slowly. “Or experiencing the qualia of another’s senses?”
“Precisely,” Celestia praised. “In its incomplete form the spell I’d planned to give you would have altered the cutie marks of your friends. Completing the spell would have required you to immerse yourself in their beings. Only when you did so would you have been able to reverse the effects and in doing so achieve the perspective necessary to wield natural magic. Naturally, having the memories of thousands of ponies thrust into your head will have the same effect, albeit in a far more damaging fashion.”
Twilight could scarcely believe her ears. “I always thought there was more to it than that. You immortals call yourselves gods and goddesses and claim entire sections of existence as your own. You mean to tell me that fundamentally you’re no different than an ordinary pony like me?”
Celestia chuckled gently. “I would say we are very different from ordinary ponies, but not so different from you.”
Twilight spluttered in disbelief. “So that’s it? There are some few special ponies and the rest are entirely irrelevant?” Twilight sat back, still staring at Celestia. “Luna was right. I defended you when she said you played chess with ponies’ lives, utterly uncaring of the pieces that get taken, but she was right. You don’t care at all.”
“I did not say that.” Celestia responded sharply. She leaned forward, practically following Twilight across the table. For the first time in their conversation urgency colored her tone. “I do care and they do matter. They matter in the brief moments of their existence. Indeed, they are the only thing that matters.”
“I don’t understand.”
Celestia rose from the table and began to pace back and forth. “If you are to become an immortal then you must know this. I have lived for thousands upon thousands of years and known millions of ponies in that time. The vast majority of those ponies are dead and gone so completely that no record remains of their life. They are absent even from my memories because no living mind could hold them all. And yet, even knowing that my current subjects will soon be similarly forgotten, I spend my every waking moment playing games, as you put it, to make subjects lives as joyful as possible. Do you see the paradox there?” She jabbed her hoof pointedly at Twilight.
“Perhaps you enjoy the game for its own sake?” Twilight ventured.
Celestia cocked her head, just as she had whenever Twilight offered a particularly poor guess in their lessons together. “Really? You think I spend all day every day arguing with ponies like Blueblood because that is the most fun activity I have encountered in my immortal life?”
The question called a small smile from Twilight and an answering one from Celestia, who lowered her hoof and regained some of her composure, though she remained standing.
“Alright,” Twilight allowed, “I see the paradox. I will admit that I often wondered why you spent so much time arguing with nobles when you could have simply overruled them or left to more valuable uses of time.”
“L'immortalité oblige.”
“A twist on noblesse oblige?” Twilight asked. “I’ve never heard that formulation of the saying.”
“That is because no pony would dare claim to my face that I am obligated to them,” Celestia answered with amusement. “Nevertheless, the concept stands. What else could I do with my life? I have tasted ever pleasure imaginable, indulged in the most hedonistic excess and lived as the purest of ascetics. Nothing of that sort was worth building an immortal life around.”
“So which is it? Do you serve your subjects because that is the obligation of immortality, or because it is the only thing that brings you joy anymore?”
“Yes,” was Celestia’s maddening response and she chuckled at Twilight’s groan. “You compared what I do to a chess game. I confess, my own preferred metaphor is that of a gardener of bonsai trees. The trees I raise are no less beautiful for their impermanence, no less valued for all that I must sometimes trim them back.”
“Trimming a tree is an awfully generous euphemism for what you did to me,” Twilight remarked sharply, letting some of her earlier anger creep back into her tone.
“Viewed in isolation what I did to you was terrible. But as a consequence of that action my sister was returned to me and you yourself became great pony in your own right, one who, if things had gone more simply, would have joined myself and Luna as a princess of Equestria.” Celestia shook her head. “It was a harsh cut, but I cannot bring myself to regret it or view it as a mistake in light of the tree that has grown from it.”
Twilight made to respond, but was interrupted by a strange ripple that passed through everything around her and Celestia. The far off stars, the teal ground, the table itself, all seemed to waver like a still pond disturbed by a thrown pebble.
Turning back to Celestia, Twilight caught her grimace of pain, a disturbing expression on the face of the pony she’d once, like any filly regarding her parent, thought omnipotent. “What was that?”
Celestia closed her eyes and brought her hoof up to her chest as she breathed in, then gently pushed it away as she breathed out. A familiar calming exercise and one that had become Twilight’s favorite shortly after Celestia taught it to her.
Celestia opened her eyes. “We are still in Hvergelmir,” she reminded Twilight. The memories seek to continue flowing into you and the magic seeks to erase me. I don’t have the strength to maintain this space for much longer.”
“Ok, fine, let’s think.” Twilight tried to force her tired brain into problem-solving mode. “How do we get ourselves out of here alive? ”
“There is an obvious way,” Celestia said. “I need a body to prevent my self and my magic from degrading any further. You need the mental fortitude to bear the memories of an Empire’s worth of ponies without losing yourself. Say, the fortitude of a pony that already has thousands of years of memories of her own.”
“What are you suggesting, exactly?” Twilight asked slowly.
“You play host to me, sheltering my magic within yourself and I take on those memories with my own mind. After we escape perhaps we can devise some way to seperate. If not, I suppose you will have to take my place in Equestria while I guide you from the back of your mind. The plan hinges on you allowing me to take up residence within your being.” Celestia fixed Twilight with a frank gaze. “Can you do that, Twilight Sparkle? Knowing everything that you know now, can you accept me?”
Could she? Twilight cast her mind back to the faithful student she once had been. That Twilight would have accepted without a second thought, would have done anything for Celestia. She’d never have that level of trust in Celestia again.
Was that wrong though? Celestia’s plan to cause Twilight to ascend clearly showed that she planned to treat Twilight as an equal, and it wouldn’t be right to have that kind of unquestioning faith in an equal, just as she wouldn’t unquestioningly trust her own decisions.
No, a lesser level of trust was entirely appropriate. Even at that lesser level of trust, Twilight-as-an-equal would have been happy to go along with Celestia’s plan, for both their sakes. The holdup was the spell Celestia had cast on her as a filly.
That had been wrong. It had been a violation of such magnitude that Twilight still had trouble comprehending it. That betrayal was quick to choke out any seeds of trust that might have grown in their cursed bonsai garden.
Unbidden, the image of Fluttershy rose in her mind. It was true, that had been a mistake, one she bitterly regretted, which was an acknowledgement Celestia had refused to make. But there were similarities too. In the end, it hardly mattered that Twilight regretted it now. What mattered was that she had given the order and, against Fluttershy’s will, sent her to her death.
It had been a betrayal of her friends and of what the six of them stood for. Despite that, her friends had remained at her side. That hadn’t necessarily forgiven her, Twilight knew that there was still a chance Dash would try to kill her when this was all over, but until that time they stood by her. That was what mattered, she realized. Not forgiveness or regret, useless emotions that they were, but the decision to keep the pony that had wronged you in your life, or not.
So, if there was no trust from her to Celestia now, could there be again someday? Twilight thought back over her memories with Celestia. It took a long time. There were so very many.
She remembered early on in her time at the castle, when she had crawled to Princess Celestia’s room out of fear of a new place and been welcomed with a warm wing. She remembered lessons in the garden, getting lost in far-reaching explorations of the nature of magic. She remembered smiles and birthdays and laughter. Princess Celestia had said that she loved Twilight and Twilight knew, deep down below her anger, that she would have loved the princess even if the spell had not compelled it so.
And it was in that love between the two of them, the love that had been and could someday be again, that she decided to place her faith when she made her response.
“Princess, I choose to trust you.”
Princess Celestia lowered her head and something like relief, or was it grief, passed across her face. “Thank you, my faithful student. No. Thank you Twilight Sparkle.”
Twilight stood. “What must I do?”
The princess’s face tensed and she seemed to draw in on herself. “Simply open your mind and be ready to hold fast to your sense of self.”
Twilight nodded and a golden aura began to radiate from the princess’s horn. It grew in brilliance until it was almost blinding, fading the cool regard of the stars above and below. Twilight could feel the sun-kissed energy of the princess’s magic gathering.
As it reached its peak the princess made a noise as if she wished to say something. The light blinded Twilight and hid Princess Celestia’s face from her. “Did you say something?” she asked.
A moment’s pause and then, “be ready Twilight, I’m about to begin.”
Twilight couldn’t have said she was truly ready, but it didn’t matter. The golden light swelled and their brief sanctuary was washed away.
Twilight fell.
All around her beat that unceasing ocean of memories, trying once more to fill her small mortal vessel. Inside beat the warm heat of the princess’s magic and it kept the ocean at bay.
Twilight felt her heart swell even as she continued to fall. She was still afraid, uncertain of her ability to handle the memories, but the princess was with her and that inner warmth buoyed her spirits.
That warmth grew stronger, stretching out within Twilight and pushing back against the memories that dared encroach. It was almost painful in its brilliance, but Twilight trusted the princess to know what she was doing.
Except the warmth of the princess’s magic kept increasing, passing the point of pain. It began to spread from where it had nestled close to Twilight’s heart on down through her veins. It reached her legs and with a sharp prick forced her to kick out in midair.
“Ouch! Careful princess, those are my legs you’re using,” Twilight muttered. She focused within and tried to convey a sense of pain to the magic within her. There were no words between them, but they did inhabit the same body and an emotional connection of sorts was possible.
Alarm bells began going off in Twilight’s head when the only emotion that returned was a faint feeling of regret. Twilight reached for her own magic and turned her attention inward. Her own mindscape stretched out before her inner sight. She found Princess Celestia’s magic easily enough, but she could scarcely believe what it was doing.
The visual her magic provided to help her make sense of the mindscape was that of a purple heart, her own, with a golden orb to represent Princess Celestia’s magic nestled beside it. As she focused down on the interface between the two, she could see the light being given off by the orb bleeding into her own purple heart.
Twilight cast a diagnostic on the golden orb, trying to determine if it was unstable and needed part of her heart to maintain itself, or to maintain Princess Celestia’s presence in her body. The second her spell touched the orb a lance of light shot out and followed the spell path back up to Twilight’s vantage point. At the same moment the orb began radiating power, speeding up the rate at which its effect spread through the purple heart.
Crying out at the assault and the accompanying throbbing pain, Twilight sent that pain winging to Princess Celestia, along with feeling of cessation. ‘Regret’ came the response. A regret flavored with love and colored with remembrance of all the life Twilight had spent with Princess Celestia, but an unyielding regret nonetheless.
It was intentional, Twilight realized with a sting of betrayal that hurt worse than any of the attacks she’d yet weathered. Celestia was seeking to possess Twilight, mind and body both, and to leave her little more than a screaming specter in the back of her own mind.
Hay, Celestia had as good as told Twilight that this was her plan. She’d said that wandering spirits would take the first body available to them, and that she would even hurt the ponies she loved to maintain her place in Equestria. Honestly, after their conversation Twilight was almost disappointed with herself for not expecting this. Celestia was fundamentally incapable of putting her before the good of Equestria as she saw it. If only one of them could survive, Celestia would see it as her duty to Equestria to be the survivor.
Twilight considered giving in. Perhaps Celestia was right in prioritizing her own survival. She had been a benevolent ruler of Equestria for millennia. Moreover, she was already deeply entrenched inside Twilight. It would be so easy for Twilight to tell herself that her surrender was for the good of Equestria. Celestia would probably do a better job of fighting Sombra anyway. This wasn’t an enemy that Twilight needed to fight. It was a sacrifice for the good of her home.
That was the attack Celestia had fired off making her think that way, Twilight tried to tell herself, even though she knew it wasn’t true. Gazing down at the engoldening of her purple heart, almost halfway done now, she tried to rouse some further anger at the betrayal or at the intrusion currently taking place. She looked desperately inside her for some will to fight, some reason not to simply give in.
There was nothing.
Twilight was just so tired.
“Have at it then, Celestia, and all the luck of world be with you. Fluttershy, I’ll be with you soon,” she murmured, smiling at the thought. Her mind turned to each of her friends, one by one. Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie. They would be sad, she knew, to have lost her as well. But they understood the meaning of self-sacrifice, and this was the kind of sacrifice any of them would have made without hesitation. It didn’t seem so bad when she put it that way. Her life for her country. No, her life for the lives of her friends.
Her life for Spike.
Well that might pose a bit of a problem. Spike wouldn’t understand that, wouldn’t want to understand. He could still be childish at times, or maybe it was his dragon greed coming to the forefront. Either way, he wouldn’t accept the necessity of what she was doing. He would want to have it all, both her life and his own. And she had made him a promise.
Or two promises, technically. Twilight remembered promising both that she would protect her life as if it was his life, and that she would return from Hvergelmir. Would she have let Celestia take over Spike without a fight? Emphatically not. She wouldn’t surrender her little brother to the princess, not even for the good of Equestria.
So perhaps there was one small obligation that still rested on her shoulders. Twilight felt the need to fight back, just a little. Just enough of a fight that, if she should happen to meet Spike in some kind of afterlife, she could honestly say that she’d tried. That way he’d understand that she couldn’t really have won against Celestia after all.
Besides, she was curious about the magic Celestia was using to take her over.
Curiosity and a promise, that was all there was within her. It was enough to rouse her, with barely one quarter of her heart remaining, to mount some small effort at a counter attack.
Twilight gathered her remaining power and sent a lavender pulse back against Celestia with all the power her enfeebled and quartered heart could muster. Celestia’s advance halted at once and the golden orb rocked back from the blow she thought would be so pathetic that Celestia wouldn’t even notice it.
Well now wasn’t that interesting.
Celestia should have been far stronger than anything Twilight could hope to defeat, particularly at this late stage. Why wasn’t she? Hot on the trail of a mystery, Twilight gathered herself as best she could and dove into her own heart, swimming toward the intersection with Celestia’s magic.
She found the point easily enough. Golden chains penetrated the shimmering lavender wall that marked the border of her being. The chains blazed with light and an oppressive solidity that had no place in a heart. Even looking at them sent pains stabbing into Twilight’s head. Celestia, as if sensing her lapse in focus, redoubled her assault, but another simple pulse from Twilight held her back.
With her magic to guide her, Twilight began prying apart the spellwork of one of the chains, identifying and analyzing its components. It was, dare she say, a perfectly vicious spell. Layer after layer of magic meant for crawling like vines through any walls Twilight could erect. Yet more layers to claim and possess and subjugate every inch of the target’s being.
It should have worked as best Twilight could tell. There were no obvious flaws and it was certainly far stronger than any defense she had or could mount.
‘Regret’ came from Celestia once again and then another wave of magic crashed over Twilight. This one was simply designed to cause pain and disrupt Twilight’s focus on her defense. And oh how it hurt! White hot knives dug into every inch of her being, flaying one piece of self from the next. Alone within her heart, Twilight screamed.
Yet even through the pain, Twilight could tell it didn’t hurt quite as much as it should have. It was as if the pain was a fire and she was seated twice as far away from it as Celestia had expected. Both spells just didn’t seem to be aimed at her in quite the correct way.
It was a clue, and one Twilight desperately needed. Gritting her metaphorical teeth, she pushed past the pain and dove back into the spell analysis. There, deep within the targeting components, Twilight found what she was looking for.
Celestia, having only the vaguest notion of what had been occurring in her absence and not sure of the major changes to the identifiers, had aimed her spells at the mind of the Twilight she had known prior to her disappearance. That Twilight had not commanded an army for 6 months, would not have dreamed of shouting down an immortal, and had never killed anyone in battle. That Twilight had not inadvertently sent one of her friends to her death.
Perhaps most pertinently, that Twilight had used dragon fire to burn out an eye along with the associated mental contamination. Celestia’s spells were designed to connect with her brainwashing spell to home in on Twilight’s mind and prevent her from fighting back. In essence, Celestia’s magic was tailored to a pony that no longer existed and was anchored on a spell that was no longer present.
As a result, none of her magic was truly aimed at Twilight as she actually was. The offensive magic couldn’t hit with its true force.
That weakness gave Twilight the opportunity to do a little creative editing of the target of the spell. After years of magical training with her, Twilight knew Celestia’s mental signature as well as Celestia had known hers. One of the consequences of being so old was that Celestia’s nature and thus her mental signature could not change that much over a six-month period. With the alterations Celestia could only strike glancing blows while every shot of Twilight’s pierced her opponent’s mind.
Some hint of Twilight’s intentions must have leaked over to Celestia because she redoubled her efforts to make Twilight submit, bringing her superior and formidable magic to bear. Twilight pushed back, throwing up shield after shield precisely targeted at the flaw she had found in Celestia’s spells. Gold chains sizzled against lavender force fields and Twilight’s mind cleared.
Twilight directed her magic to wrap around the chains and brought them as close before her as she could stand. She braced herself and plunged her horn directly into the seething magical chains.
A ragged scream tore itself from her throat as Celestia used the chance proximity had given her to stab deep into Twilight. At the same time, Twilight forced all her magic into the chain’s targeting components, rewriting the magical signature to that of the pony who had once taught her magic.
It was a race between Twilight’s co-opting of Celestia’s invasion and Celestia’s complete dominion of Twilight’s being. In the end, perhaps because of weakness, or because of misunderstandings, or simply because that was the way things were meant to be, Twilight won.
From where Twilight’s horn had impaled the chain her magic spread. It was a deeper purple than usual, and where it touched the chains darkened from gold to a dusky orange hue. It quickly engulfed the chains that had already entered her heart, and with every inch her magic conquered the pain lessened and her mind and heart cleared.
She withdrew her horn from the chain, panting with exertion. Twilight knew she didn’t have enough within her for another counter attack. Either this spell would succeed in defending her heart, or Celestia would win.
Twilight wasn’t sure she truly cared one way or the other what the outcome would be. She had tried her best, and even Spike would have to accept that. She zoomed her focus out until she was observing the entirety of her heart once more and she could take in the whole of her mindscape. The golden chains wriggled and writhed like giant worms as her wine-dark corruption transformed the sunlit chains to the amber of dusk.
Of course. She was claiming Celestia’s magic. Of course it would take on the colors of twilight.
Her sunset chains each worked one end free from her heart like worms rising from a rotten apple, and wasn’t that just a lovely simile with which to regard her own being. Still, if it worked she would accept it.
The chains undulated in the air as if looking for something, and then dove deep into the still-golden orb of Celestia’s immortal magic. Twilight had expected them to spread her influence across the sphere much as they had been spreading Celestia’s influence through her. She wasn’t sure what it would mean to turn the sun to twilight, but she was desperate enough to try.
Instead, the chains held fast and began to reel in the orb like a fish on a line.
At once, a sense of immense pressure pounded at Twilight. A mountain had taken up residence above her and it was determined to meet the ground with no regard for the pony betwixt them. There was nothing Twilight could do to fight back for it was her own magic that was creating the form that victory took. There were no spells to cast or cancel, no way to dodge or escape.
All she could do was endure.
The pressure mounted and it brought with it a closer connection to Celestia’s mind. The emotions of the other pony flowed into Twilight and she held fast to them to distract herself from the force that threatened to pop her mind like a grape.
Denial. Anger. Depression. Despair. Hope.
Pride.
It was pride that dominated Twilight realized with disbelief. Through the mist of negative emotions pride unmistakably blazed through. Twilight couldn’t spare a thought for what it might mean; she clung to that spar of pride to shelter against the forces and emotions that assailed her mind.
The pressure was Celestia. The terrible strain of adding a vast ocean of memory to Twilight’s tiny lake. She endured, marshaling every memory she possessed and every one she could beg borrow or steal from the memories that had so recently invaded. They weren’t hers precisely, but they would serve and together they resisted the weight of an immortal life.
Celestia’s orb had nearly been completely absorbed by her lavender heart and Twilight knew that, one way or another, that would be the end of her current trial. Fervently, she begged the orb to hurry, the chains to speed their reeling and end her torment. But there was no magic behind the wish and the chains continued their slow and inexorable pull.
And then, without any warning whatsoever, it was over.
Stumbling from the sudden release of that hated pressure, Twilight found herself in wide green meadow. Blue and yellow wildflowers dotted gentle rolling fields. In front of Twilight frolicked a small pegasus filly with a white coat and long pink mane.
She awkwardly flapped her wings and giggled at the gust-blown dandelion seeds. Twilight nearly gasped as a flood of the filly’s pure joy rocked her. With that emotional connection came the unmistakable knowledge that this was Celestia, more, this was Celestia’s earliest memory.
Another pony, this one blurred due to Celestia’s young age and lack of focus, appeared on the scene and gently escorted the young filly away. Twilight felt herself pulled along with the other two, forced to stay close to the filly at all times. She looked around, trying to figure out the point of this. Celestia never did anything without a reason, she must have wanted Twilight to learn something from this scene from her foalhood.
As Twilight wondered she found herself surprised by the length of the memory. Filly-Celestia had been taken care of and put to bed in a blurry sequence of events, and now Twilight had little to do but watch as she slept.
Reaching for her magic to investigate the area, Twilight found it missing. Not just missing but utterly absent, as if she no longer possessed the capacity for magic. Another sense intruded on her search and the memories she’d absorbed from the ponies in Hvergelmir rose to the forefront to remind her that this was what it felt like to be a pegasus.
Twilight reared back in shock, or attempted to. She found that she could not tear her eyes away from the sleeping filly, could barely feel a body at all, in fact. And it was this last fact that clued her in to what she was experiencing. It should have been obvious she supposed. After all, she had absorbed a wandering spirit while inside Hvergelmir.
Now she was condemned to live that spirit’s life from beginning to end, just as she had for the other spirits she contained.
Except, Twilight realized with a dawning sense of horror, she wasn’t just living that spirit’s life, she was aware of herself while she did so. She would spend the next few thousand years floating next to Celestia unable to speak, or move away, or perform magic. If she had to fully experience those thousands of years, it might well render her insane as surely as having thousands of spirits pour their memories into her would have.
Even as that fear filled her, the sun rose and filly-Celestia woke to her day. It had been a far quicker night than it had any right to be and, naturally, Twilight had been incapable of sleeping. Yet she felt well-rested and energized, ready to face a new day.
No, she felt Celestia’s feeling of energy and readiness. Moments later, the feeling faded and the world around her blurred again into night. It had been another day for Celestia but Twilight, despite getting the full emotional load of the day from Celestia, had only subjectively experienced a few minutes. The weight of that day was hers though. The vague memory of playing in the field one day and learning in her house the next rested in her mind, similar to the recollections from the lives of the other spirits.
A difference existed with this memory though. She had experienced it in the third person but, more than any of the other memories, it felt as though it were hers.
Slowly, as Celestia’s days slid past, Twilight understood the rules of her experience of Celestia’s memories. They flowed faster than normal memories, letting her experience years of Celestia’s life for days or weeks of subjective time. Once the time had passed, however, it was hers to recall at her leisure. Her memories from Celestia’s life did not jostle for preeminence like the memories from the spirits of the crystal ponies. They merely rested in the back of her mind, as easy and smooth to call forth as her own memories of Ponyville.
Reliving Celestia’s life gave Twilight the twin gifts of time and perspective. Twilight lost years contemplating important individual memories from Celestia’s life. And she spent additional years going over every life she already possessed in greater detail, claiming the memories of the other ponies and encompassing them. Slowly, she learned to live as the host of a multitude.
Twilight Sparkle was the primary, yes, with the memories of Celestia providing the weight and the time she needed to remain so, but there was a little corner of her heart dedicated to gardening and opera. Another was preserved as a shrine of love to a pony who had died a thousand years before Twilight was ever born.
On and on it went, and Twilight grew. She learned the simple truth that, given time and space, there is no limit to what one life can contain.
In the process of her self-construction Twilight missed entire decades of Celestia’s life. That was ok. She knew that the memories would be waiting for her when she had the time to examine them. Indeed, she used them as something of a reward system. Recalling Celestia’s moments of joy or of magical learning served as a respite after imbibing a particularly difficult or painful life. In this way, Celestia lent her strength and her skill to her faithful student one last time.
Celestia life was not infinite, so the recitation of her memories could not last forever, though it often seemed it would do so. Twilight had nearly finished her task of sorting the lives within her when her attention was caught by perhaps the most important of Celestia’s memories: the moment that Princess Celestia first met Twilight Sparkle.
After that moment, Twilight could not tear herself away any longer. She lived the student teacher relationship from the opposite side. Twilight felt the nauseating mix of fear, need, and desperate purpose as Celestia cast the spell to alter Twilight’s mind as a filly. She felt, too, the honest love that burgeoned after for her faithful student.
Watching their relationship develop and watching herself grow in Celestia’s eyes brought Twilight as near to tears as she could get in her disembodied state. Those years they had spent together seemed far too fleeting in the face of the vast stretch of time they now both understood.
Or perhaps it was the other way around. Perhaps they were blessed beyond compare to have had even that much time together given the sheer quantity of loneliness that dogged their extended memories.
And so, nearly overwhelmed by the resonating feelings of herself and Celestia, Twilight found herself hurtled toward the present. Celestia’s fateful decision to renounce her immortality to give Luna a chance to grow came and went in an instant. The six months of nothingness that followed passed nearly as quickly. Then the world around Twilight jerked to a stop as her long journey through Celestia’s life came to its final stop.
Twilight found herself in Celestia’s last memory. The white alicorn stood in that teal place among the stars where they had taken refuge. Now Twilight could see the weariness in the faint drooping of her shoulders and curl of her mouth. Now she could see Celestia as she was, and she saw a pony that was tired. Into her silent observation Celestia spoke.
“Twilight Sparkle, if you are watching me now, then I am dead.” Celestia swung her eyes back and forth, as if trying to see the ghostly form of Twilight that had not even existed when she made this memory. Giving up, she stared straight ahead into the starry backdrop.
“If I am dead that means I failed in taking your body for my own. I cannot help but try to do so, for the sake of Equestria, but I cannot bring myself to regret it if my attempt fails. Doubtless, I will tell you many lies in my attempt to take your body, and so I have left this message, now when lies would serve no purpose, in hopes of finding forgiveness.”
Celestia sighed deeply and Twilight could see the mask that she had watched build up over years of responsibility crumble away.
“You have seen my memories and so you should know beyond a doubt that I love you, Twilight Sparkle, like the daughter I never had. I crafted this form for my memories because I feared that if you experienced them personally, like you did the memories of the other spirits, then the sheer mass of them would overwhelm you. After spending so much more time reliving my memories than you yourself have lived, you might have become simply a reflection of me. And I did not want that, did not want to win that way. If that could truly be called winning.”
“So you sped them up, and made them patient,” Twilight croaked, finding herself suddenly able to speak, though in a voice rusty from disuse.
Celestia, of course, continued unhearing. “I hope– I believe that they will arm you against the rest of the memories in Hvergelmir, that they will enable you to survive what is to come. I hope that they will aid you in your future governance. Equestria now belongs to you, and to Luna of course. May you rule justly and wisely.”
Celestia laughed. A bitter sound Twilight had never heard from Celestia in life. “Listen to me, trying to exonerate myself and give you advice. The truth is, Twilight Sparkle, I want to beg your forgiveness. You who were my student, my daughter, you who have seen my life entire, you have the right to judge me as no other ever has. And I am painfully aware that you have no reason to judge me kindly, not after what I have done to you and what I am about to attempt. I want to beg for your absolution, though I know that I cannot receive it even if it were given.”
“I’m procrastinating,” Celestia scoffed and looked aside. “As you can feel, I find myself afraid of facing a mortality I never thought I possessed. Yet there is a part of me that relishes the chance to finally lay down my burdens. To rest, knowing that what I built is in good hooves.”
The princess breathed in and brought a hoof to her chest. She held it for three heart beats and exhaled, letting her hoof flow away with her breath. When she looked up, through luck or fate or inevitability, her eyes found
Twilight.
With a firm voice she spoke her farewell.
“You are my legacy, Twilight. I am content leaving all that I have done in your hooves, and I can offer no higher praise than that. Go with my life and my love! Rise, Twilight Sparkle, bearer of the mantle of the sun!”
Celestia’s life was spent. Her memory ended.
Twilight fell.
Tears flowed unchecked from her one good eye. Forgiveness and absolution seemed such paltry concepts in the face of her feelings for Celestia. The anger was still there, would always be there, but it was tempered by understanding and by love. That was enough. That was all that mattered.
Lives resumed their terrible crash and froth, draining into her mind. But it was different now. She had the memories to resist, to weigh against the invaders and remain whole.
Twilight accepted the flow and rode it, rising and falling with each wave that entered her. She accepted a nation into her heart and found that she had room to make a home for it. Somewhere in the spaces between lives it happened; she reached that critical threshold of knowledge and perspective and tipped over the edge.
The wings came and with them the strength of an earth pony filled her veins. Her body blazed with light to rival Hvergelmir itself. And when the light faded Twilight Sparkle floated, clad in the armor of the dragon queen.
There were more lives to come, but there was no longer any question of going under. Twilight was equal to this, equal to the lives of an empire. She felt the burden settle on her shoulders, the yoke of responsibility and the blessing of power.
It felt good.
It felt right, meshing with the memories of Celestia and her own heartfelt longing to be more than she was.
The memories ceased. Twilight knew that it would take many long years before she had fully integrated all of them, but she had enough within her to preserve her mental balance until she had the luxury of time. She was ready.
For the first time in a subjective eternity Twilight Sparkle turned her gaze without. She had fallen through the bottom of the world and now she floated in an endless void. There was no light in that place, nor shadow. It simply was not, at least as far as her mortal eye could see.
Unbidden, the mantle of the sun flowed through her body and an ember of the setting sun found its place within her missing eye. Long atrophied muscles forced the eyelid open, and for the first time Twilight Sparkle saw with immortal sight.
Light. Glorious light.
Twilight swam in an ocean of light, the light of stars and sun and magic itself. She beheld the entirety of Equestria and the lands beyond. This was the world she had loved and left, just as she had sworn that she would one day do. Casting her gaze outwards she saw other worlds, floating in that sea of infinite potential.
For a moment her curiosity nearly drove her to set wing and seek out those other worlds. There was so much to know, so much to experience and to understand. Her endless life could easily and happily have been filled with sailing the ocean of light to world after world.
Twilight Sparkle might have done so, she thought. That pony for whom curiosity had proved the only emotion left after all others were worn away. She might have gone for lack of any will to stay.
But then, that pony was not Twilight Sparkle anymore. She was filled with too many memories and too much of Celestia to be Twilight Sparkle, and she was an alicorn besides. Perhaps it was time for a new name, to mark her new self.
Or perhaps not. Twilight was the rock to which she had clung when the memories had battered at her sense of self. It would not do to abandon entirely that which she had fought so hard to keep.
A compromise then. Something lost in exchange for memories gained. There was no sparkle in her now, that had been worn away by what she had become. She resolved to leave that name behind in the place that it had once most desperately sought.
Her immortal eye searched and found the aperture of Hvergelmir on the underside of Equestria. That was her path home. It would lead her first into deeper darkness, but she knew that it was her place to make sure that the sun set as it must, so that it could rise again.
The newly immortal princess, sister of dragons, Element of Magic, bearer of the mantle of the sun, alicorn of the dusk, shelter of the spirits of the Crystal Empire, she who had once been simply Twilight Sparkle spread her wings for her maiden flight.
And Twilight rose.