Starlight Glimmer nervously tapped her hoof on the Ponyville train station’s receiving platform. Crowds of ponies and changelings milled about, making the air electric with anticipation for the train's arrival. Even though Ponyville was the closest town to the hive shrouded in the forest, the changelings around Starlight were scant and far between. Today at least, that suited Starlight just fine. If Queen Blitz was telling the truth, the fewer empaths around here the better.
However, her position as Twilight’s personal student carried a good amount of weight with the local changelings, and she was always being watched like a celebrity of sorts. Starlight felt those eyes upon her and looked to her left where a young purple changeling was whispering to a blue one. Both changelings waved energetically at her, to which Starlight happily returned. This whole thing with Lyra sounded a bit too clandestine for Blitz’s usual fair. In her mind’s eye, the cheery faces of the two changelings flashed back to into the cold animosity she faced when the truth of her crimes against Twilight had been revealed to the hives. Hateful names, and mumbled slurs rang in her ear as she felt her mind fall back to the past. She started to hyperventilate until a distant train whistle banished the haunting memory, and pulled Starlight to the oncoming locomotive that was steaming towards them.
Starlight had calmed down by the time the train came to a halt. Lyra wasn’t all that hard to pick out from the crowd. The bipedal bugs were fairly scarce among the scattered changelings, and Lyra’s coat and mane colors practically made her a beacon to Starlight. The pale purple unicorn slipped through the throng of ponies, only to hesitate a bit upon seeing the crudely dressed mare walking alongside Lyra. The pair slid along the train to avoid cutting through the dense crowd. Starlight followed after them, yet could only catch up to Lyra once the changeling found a bench in front of a café. It didn’t take a former villain like Starlight to realize the location distinctly lacked any other changelings nearby. She did a double take, after seeing one had been dining outside suddenly drop a bit purse on the table and leave. Wait, are all the bugs being ordered away from the café. What is this? Are we planning a surprise party?
“Lyra! I got Blitz’s message.” Starlight kept a pleasant smile on her face, trying to make it feel casual. Starlight and Lyra weren’t friends exactly, more like briefly experienced a teacher-student relationship that had relaxed over the years. It was only when Starlight saw Lyra wearing Blitz’s eyes that she started to get concerned. “Is something the matter?”
“Oh you can say that again,” Lyra said in her own voice. The contempt in her tone was so thick Lyra might as well have thrown a proverbial brick at Starlight. She jabbed a thumb at the gaudily dressed unicorn next to her.
The changeling spoke again, this time the voice was Blitz. “Forgive my quite rude daughter. We have an urgent matter to address, and I’d like to keep my aunt and especially my mother in the dark about it. At least until after my guest has had a chance to speak with you.”
“Oh.” Starlight craned her neck to get a peek at the poorly dressed unicorn mare. The mystery mare was looking the other way, but didn’t seem to be naturally shy. Looks like there’s more to this favor than there just be a need for secrecy. “Visiting students might come knocking if we go to my condo. But I know of a little place where we can talk in private.”
Trixie’s wagon was a decidedly cramped affair with two ponies and a changeling squeezed inside. Had Trixie not pulled out the props for a show later this week, the supplies would have made the tight confines far too constricting. As such, Lyra was nestled on one of the twin hammocks while the unnamed mare stayed by the closed door.
Starlight was about to climb into the other hammock, if only to have some room to breathe, when she gave the odd mare a concerned frown at her advancing age. “Do you want to take the hammock instead? I don’t mind standing.”
For her part, the mare looked distracted and irritated, her eyes only drifting from the slitted windows long enough to politely address her. “Thank you, but no, I’ve been on a train for hours.” Velvet was about to return her attention to the window when she spotted a large, ugly scar on the left side of Starlight’s barrel. It was a near perfect circle towards the front of her ribcage, with the healing process making the edges irregular. The fur was thinner than normal in the middle, allowing minute glimpses at the gnarled skin beneath.
Starlight let off a self-depreciating chuckle and pulled her hips around to hide the scar. “Oh, of course. Well,” she cleared her throat, “my name is Starlight Glimmer, the current councilor at the Rainbow Sparkle University of Engineering.”
“I’m Velvet Sparkle.” She ended it there, knowing that was all she needed to say.
“Velvet?” Starlight asked incredulously. She briefly looked at Lyra for confirmation. “You mean, the Velvet?”
Blitz kept watch through Lyra’s eyes and ears, but it was the drone who spoke. “Yup. The one and only pain in my tail for the last few days.”
“You can’t blame me for that hangover you whined about all morning.” Velvet snorted dismissively. “Nopony forced you to drink yourself under a table.”
“It was a celebration for a bomp'n concert! Drinking's practically expected of you.”
“Alright, let’s keep things cool.” Starlight slowly slid into the hammock to give herself time to process the news, and allow the situation to defuse a little. Lyra gave an angry snort, folded her arms, and looked away from Velvet. The older mare kept some measure of dignity about her, and sat there with mounting tension, as if she was going to spring right up and leave at the slightest provocation.
If she’s here with Blitz and Lyra, then it can’t be anything that would be dangerous to Twilight. Starlight was unsure how to approach the matter. I need more information. “Something tells me you should be looking for a family therapist, not a school counselor.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Velvet grumbled at Lyra. She did however manage to give Starlight the briefest of nods. “This whole detour is both unwanted and unnecessary. But it was either this, or Blitz was going to forcefully smuggle me out of town.” She gave the changeling a dirty look, but when Blitz met her gaze, the older mare sighed and averted her gaze. “I tried fighting a queen once. It didn’t work then, and I see no reason it would now.”
Blitz’s distinct voice hummed in disagreement, yet her stern tone was at odds with Lyra’s laid back, if hostile, presence. The musician was losing interest. “Normally, I’d agree with you, Starlight, but Velvet is being horrendously impatient. She’s ready to stroll right up to Phoenix Castle today, and straight into the gun barrel of the first guard to recognize her.”
Starlight almost raised a hoof to her mouth in surprise, but stopped mid-motion. “Are you saying she,” Starlight turned towards Velvet who was scowling at the window with mounting anger. “That you are trying to commit suicide by soldier?”
“I was going to submit to whatever justice she deemed fit.” Velvet gave Blitz a withering glare, and looked about ready to storm out of the wagon. “If Twilight demands my life, then so be it. If Rainbow Dash demands the same, and Twilight does nothing to stop her, then it makes no difference to me. This whole matter is far beyond having a counseling session with Twilight.”
Starlight went silent, her downcast eyes absently studying the rickety wooden floor. A haunted frown creased her muzzle as her mind wandered over similar words of the past.
Blitz sighed heavily. “Look, I know my aunt, alright? She’ll probably share some harsh words with you, and then let my mom have her way with you. And believe me, mom despises traitors. She still gives Kreesus all kinds of grief, and you've never seen her act out some of her vengeance fantasies in a few Linkscapes. I can’t blame her but-”
“You’re wrong.”
Blitz blinked at the sharp interruption. She looked at Starlight with derisive disbelief. “About what?”
“Queen Blitz, you know why Twilight made me her student in the first place.” Starlight tried to study’s Blitz’s face, but all she got was Lyra’s uncaring, slumped expression.
If the distant queen was aware of Lyra’s dispassionate posture, she didn’t show it in her voice. “Of course I do. It’s the main reason I dragged Velvet to you in the first place. You are the pony I know who has had experience with reconciling with a horrible choice, has worked her tail off to earn my aunt and mother’s trust after the fact, and could talk some sense into...” Blitz scrunched her muzzle trying to control herself, and not start name calling. “Velvet.”
The mare in question stopped inching towards the door, and fixed a critical stare at Starlight. “A single bad choice?” She snorted. “It couldn’t have been that horrible if Twilight took you in.”
Starlight developed a cold sweat as she dragged old pain back to the front. And here I thought I was long done confessing this. “Ponies like us, that were us never make just one bad decision. We aren’t the ones who destroy lives in a blinding moment of passion. Walking trouble like us, are created by a long string of mistakes.”
Velvet’s mouth twitched. Remorse threatened to break onto her face. For her part, Blitz remained quiet, and waited to let the two ponies speak their piece.
Starlight looked down at her hooves, and nervously fiddled with the fabric of the hammock, if only to keep herself busy. “Ever since… that spark. Every fire starts with one. A moment where you start down that path that leads you to a very dark place.” She looked carefully at Velvet, measuring the older mare's subdued, pensive tension.
“Ya know,” Lyra drawled. “A fire and dark place, don't seem to really metaphor together all that great.” Starlight glared daggers at the mint green changeling, yet it was Blitz who gave her a mental slap that made Lyra wince.
Hoping to not be interrupted again, Starlight Glimmer started her story once more. “As I was saying, my spark was a friend of mine abandoning me after he got his cutie mark. At first I blamed him and his parents.” Starlight kept herself in check every time she was about to say the friend’s name. “He was sent off to study magic, leaving me behind. To this day I still don’t think his father bothered sending him the letter I wrote.” Starlight’s face was marred by old anger that she had to consciously force back down. “If it had just been him, that could have been the end of it. I made other friends back then, but one by one, they were whisked away to study what their cutie mark said they were best at. Magic, blacksmithing, floral arrangements, it didn’t matter. At the time my hometown was nowhere near as cosmopolitan as it is now, so having somepony local a foal could apprentice under was uncommon. And - um - I couldn't stand the ones who could stay. She-who-shall-not-be-named was such a cantankerous filly, I swear to Celestia she was an old nag the day she was born.
“So I grew to hate cutie marks for taking my friends away.” That was the easy part. A foal's troubles seem so innocuous to adults, at least until they learned where it led. “What about you, Velvet? What was your spark?”
Velvet’s hostility bled away at the painful question. The old unease, the fear she thought she had overcome returned anew. With a long, slow, heavy sigh, Velvet sat down on the hard, dusty floor of the wagon. The sounds outside seemed to fade, the sunlight dimmed from the passing clouds. “My daughter came back from near-death as a changeling. To me, she seemed to be utterly blind that she was being manipulated by the very species that attacked us, and was flippant towards my concerns.” Velvet quickly turned to Blitz, knowing the objection waiting on the queen’s lips. “I know I was in error, but back then, I couldn’t see that Twilight had been preserved as much as could be hoped for.”
Nodding, Starlight offered a weak smile. “When I got my mark in magic, I saw it as a joke. Getting a cutie mark for the same thing that took my friend away was… I thought it was beyond cruel. So I ended up studying cutie marks, intent on destroying them once and for all. I wasn’t entirely blind. I knew cutie marks are a foundation of Equestrian society. So after I found the spell that could remove cutie marks, I decided I needed to create a new village. One that was built upon the principle of equality. No cutie marks to force destiny’s will upon us.”
Starlight let off a long, heavy sigh. “The community started off pretty rocky, as you can imagine, but we started learning how to deal with the lack of cutie marks. That is erm… Except for me.” Starlight let off a sheepish, half-hearted chuckle. “I couldn’t cast the spell if I removed my own cutie mark, so I had to fake it.”
Starlight took a deep breath to continue. “At any rate, I managed to hide the fact for a good long while. My whole plan started to unravel when one of my more – zealous citizens tried to recruit our only trader. We had set up as a mining town, you see, so we were in no position to grow our own food, and the trade was our only lifeline. But the recruitment went sour in a hurry, and he vowed to never come back.”
Lyra tilted her head, a mildly interested smirk on her face. “You must have been one sassy pepper about that one.”
Blitz took over, mentally swatting Lyra again. “I still can’t get over the fact you were relying on only a single trader as your food source. Didn’t that seem unnecessarily risky? What if he got waylaid without you knowing?”
“It was a risk we all agreed to.” Starlight shrugged sheepishly. “Well, by 'we' I mean I sorta cajoled everypony into agreeing to it. I wanted to keep my experiment quiet until I knew Equestrian society could function long-term without marks. I had to take that risk. Aaat any rate, with the trader gone, I personally went looking for a new one, and that’s when I first saw a Phoenix changeling. I forget her name," she started with a dismissive wave, "but two things were important to me: she was having a luncheon with the local general store owner about setting up a supply purchase, and she had no cutie mark at all.
“Needless to say I was immediately interested. I spoke to her about restocking my village, and thought she’d be an excellent example of how to build a markless society. It ended up not being her, but another changeling, Intel’La’Gence, who eventually visited my town. At first I was thrilled, mind you. A perfect representative of a pony-ish society working well enough to be technologically superior to anything I had seen before, if her - ah - flying warship was any indication. I lauded her, and by extension, Queen Twilight as proof that my town’s problems were simply the growing pains of a markless society. But um… to make a long story shorter, let’s just say she found out I still had my cutie mark, and told everypony in town that changelings were a different equinoid species that didn't have cutie marks, like hippogryphs and kirin, and then things quickly spiraled out of control. I was ejected from the town the day after Intel’La’Gence arrived.” A shiver ran down Starlight. “I high tailed it out of there, and ended up homeless for a while.”
I’d ask Intel about some more details, but something tells me I might tip my hoof too much if I do. Blitz decided she was safer just asking directly. “I admit I never really asked the details before, mostly since Aegis and I were busy with building Tradewinds. But, Starlight, why were you allowed to leave at all?”
It was Starlight’s turn to give Blitz a questioning gaze. “I hadn’t done anything wrong… well, nothing illegal anyway. I may have… coerced, to put it gently, some of my citizens, but nothing approaching a crime since they all eventually gave up their cutie marks willingly I only ran because I was furious at Intel, but not stupid enough to think that I could fight her and that gunship she arrived in.”
Through it all, Velvet remained in begrudging attention. She was already drawing parallels with her own slow descent. “Back then, I only toyed with the idea of joining the PCE. But every time I saw Twilight after her return, it felt like the changeling she had become was consuming her once noble, pony soul. At the time, when my grip on reality was strained at best, all I could see when I looked at her, was a stranger wearing her fur.”
“So you know how it’s like. That’s when my life… my mind went down a very dark path,” Starlight Glimmer admitted while rubbing her foreleg. “Nopony ever really believes they’re the villain, right? I believed I was helping create a social revolution for the betterment of all ponykind. And within a single day it was all ripped out from under me. To make matters even worse, I was branded as a deranged radical. Which, looking back on it, was pretty spot on. But at the time I was in no state to see what I was doing wrong.
"It didn't take me long to funnel all that indignation and self-righteousness into a vendetta. At the dissenters, at Intel, which I later expanded to all of the phoenix changelings for ruining my revolution before I could perfect it. I was blaming everypony but myself.” Starlight’s mouth started drying up, making her glance about the wagon and spotted the cheap red wine Trixie kept around for particularly profitable shows. It would have to do.
Using her magic, Starlight pulled the wine bottle up and gathered a trio of wooden cups. “Would you all like some? It’s not the best wine, but I really need something for my throat.”
“I think I’ll pass,” Velvet said as she waved away the offered glass. A deep part of her fear, one she thought she had beaten down, desperately wanted the liquid courage. “It would be rather… unfortunate if I was tipsy the first time Twilight spoke to me in years.”
“I’ll take some,” Lyra tried to reach for the glass, but Blitz took control of the hand at the last minute and pulled it back.
“You’ve had quite enough since last night. Besides, you know I can’t listen through a drunk drone. It’s nauseating enough having the remains of your hangover to deal with.”
Starlight felt embarrassment flushed her cheeks at being the only one who would be drinking, but her fraying nerves upended the first glass of wine the instant she poured it. It burned her throat on the way down, but it did manage to calm her a little. Ugh, how can you drink this, Trixie? I’m buying you a better brand. She waited for Blitz and Lyra to end their short-lived argument before continuing. “I still saw myself as a hero, I needed to believe that. At first, I thought I could just dust myself off and try again in another town, but my reputation would follow me wherever the changelings saw me or heard that my ideals were being spread around. I was convinced Queen Twilight had a vendetta against not just me, but the advancement of ponykind as a whole.” Starlight fumbled her next drink as the pain of so many years of seething in misdirected anger and assumed heroism bore down on her. “Some part of me thought Twilight and Rainbow Dash had discovered the benefits of a cutie markless society and that it was at least partly responsible for their rapid success. They kept foiling me because they wanted to keep Equestria socially backwards.”
Blitz’s tone was almost scholarly, as if she were listening to a history story. “I can see where you might see that with all the drones, but Mom and Aunt Twilight still have their cutie marks. The marks even still possess their original magic.”
Starlight shrugged, trying to only sip on her second glass. “I was misguided enough to think they only kept their cutie marks as part of a changeling’s disguise. And not even I was blind to what the tabloids were saying about changeling theories. So I thought they kept their marks to keep ties to Equestria strong.” Starlight stared blankly into her glass as she fought to keep the story going. This was a story she had told dozens of times now, and it was only slightly less emotionally exhausting than before. “Eventually I had enough of it. I needed to remove the changelings from the picture, but I knew even if I did it without anypony being the wiser, my reputation was still irreparably tarnished.
“So I delved into time magic.”
“Time magic?!” Velvet gasped. “H-how? I toyed with the idea myself, but I could never solve the bootstrap paradox to even try it.”
Lyra leaned forward with slight interest, as if actually paying attention to the story this time around. “Say what you want, but having the stones to use time magic is pretty rare. Ya know, when you’re also not stupid too.”
Starlight flashed a ghost of a smile. “Thank you for the vote of confidence. I found a work around, in the end. I had to-” Starlight's jaw snapped shut with enough force to rattle her teeth. It took her a moment to mentally recover from the surprise. “Sorry, I kinda forgot that I swore a geas between myself and Twilight that we would carry the secret of how I did that to do that to our graves.”
Lyra raised her hands up in surrender. “I wouldn’t wanna know anyway. That sorta thing should be buried and forgotten.”
When Velvet muttered in agreement, Starlight continued. “I spent the next two years researching and buying the necessary spell components and completing one of Starswirl’s spells. After a bit of history research, I figured out, if I stopped Twilight from being nearly killed on her first diplomatic mission, she would never have become a royal changeling and brought a whole slew of immigrants into Equestria. No Alliance changelings, meant no pony would have stopped my revolution.”
Blitz’s blood chilled a little, both in her real body and in Lyra’s. Her queenly instincts of losing all of her children in a snap set her on edge. “No matter how many times I hear this, I can’t understand how was it not painfully obvious we’re all Twilight and Mom’s kids?”
“I was willfully narrow minded,” Starlight said barely above a whisper. The shame of it burned her face. It took her a few moments to find the strength to raise her voice back to normal. “Or I should say, I was too focused on the solution to see the collateral damage I was going to cause. I… I was too bitter to think things through.” Starlight closed her eyes to focus on the past with more clarity. “When I first visited Phoenix Roost, I saw a dream come true, to be honest. No cutie marks and a sameness that ran so deep all of its citizens had only two colors combos. It was like somepony had taken my whole philosophy and perfected it ages ago. I had just assumed the matching colors was some religious aspect tied to the Silver City I overheard about on occasion. I tried to make some inquiries about formally joining the hive, but my request was universally shot down. The changelings I asked never even bothered asking their supervisors, let alone the queens. I started feeling even more bitter over the rejection than I had when my foalhood friends left town. The hive was the embodiment of everything I had worked for, and I was rejected out of hoof. I gave up after a month, and that was around the time I started thinking about temporal magic.”
“Wait, a second, that’s your only excuse?” Blitz chided in utter bafflement. “I must have missed that part, because a religious practice would have all of us painting or disguising ourselves as the queens all day every day? Do you realize how hard that is without serious training?”
“I hate to say it,” Lyra cut in as she blew a lock of hair out from her eyes. “But, my queen, none of us go around shoving eggs into ponies’ faces saying ‘hey look, this is where we come from. What with all that ‘we’re just another tribe’ vibe we try to put off. I mean, yeah sure, Twilight’s published some books about our biology, but come on, how many non-sciencey ponies are going to read that stuff?”
If Blitz had any reply to make, she didn’t share it with the ponies. Instead, all that happened was Lyra noding at Starlight with a side-smile.
“Especially when there’s so much more juicy gossip about us like whole drop-everything orgies we have?” Lyra smirked at the grossed out face Velvet was making. “Those happen as often as ponies do impromptu songs.” Lyra’s patronizing grin only widened as she tapped the side of her skull. “I know you’re married to Aegis, so I can see why it’s easy to forget other species frown upon siblings doing the nasty together.”
Blitz forced Lyra’s mouth shut, and was looming over the musician's brain like a angry cloud. <Okay, okay, I get it.>
Both Starlight Glimmer and Velvet were taken aback by the defense. Velvet was taking noticeably longer to compose herself at the news of her grandchildrens’ recreation of choice. “Thanks, Lyra,” Starlight said with a slightly upturned mood.
The mint green changeling shrugged with mild indifference. “Eh, you’ve helped me a bunch with my double-instrument control, so I kinda owe ya.”
Even with Lyra’s support, the prospect of bringing up old history put a pallor over Starlight’s mood. Part of her wanted to stop, if only so Lyra wouldn’t hear the full story of her crime. And yet, the other part of her pushed on with it, if only to get the feeling of catharsis through confession. She downed the rest of her second glass and poured another. “Where was I?... Oh, the plan. Right. So, I found out that Twilight made it a point to show up in person to each of her four best friends’ birthday parties. Rainbow Dash’s presence was a given any time they left the hive. So I decided to go with crashing Fluttershy’s party since she always kept the events to just her close friends.”
This was it, all of Starlight’s years of work, of planning, research, and subterfuge, was all down to this. Fluttershy’s party was held at her cottage, and the woods surrounding it were more or less empty. No scores of drones guarding the place, no bystanders, no one between Starlight Glimmer and her target.
It was after dark and Starlight had crafted her invisibility spell well. Word of mouth said queens were masters of tactical spells, plus Twilight was Celestia’s former student. Caution was par for the course, and Starlight had waited too long to let overconfidence be her downfall.
She was standing next to a tree along the only path to the cottage, and the queen was in sight. Twilight was walking side by side with Rainbow Dash. The other queen was an expected complication.
The pair were in a heated, if friendly argument with Rainbow being the first one Starlight could listen to. “Come on, Nosferatu was the godfather of vampires! If he was allergic to sunlight, then they all have to be or they’re not real vampires.”
Twilight Sparkle scowled at her sister with all the nerd rage she could muster. “The godfather? Try the actual father, Dracula. The original text clearly says sunlight doesn’t hurt him. Modern vampire stories don’t require sunlight weaknesses.”
“By the First Mother, who cares about the original Dracula? He didn’t make it in Applewood until after Nosferatu so he doesn’t count. If anything, we should only go with the newer Dracula.” Rainbow met Twilight’s scowl with one of her own. “Next thing you’ll tell me they should all look like that gross goblin like Noferablueh.”
Twilight backed her face up a bit and shot Rainbow a sardonic leer. “You just want all of them to be super sexy and sparkle in the sun.”
Rainbow got hot under the collar until a snide idea came to mind, and she gave off a smug smirk of her own. “Oh yeah? Then why is that series named after you, hmm? I bet you wrote those books yourself.”
“That – that’s just a horrible coincidence!” Twilight flustered.
By now, both queens were facing each other, and more importantly, away from Starlight’s hiding spot. They were barely three feet away, and Starlight was using every ounce of willpower she had to keep herself emotionally neutral. She was mostly successful, but she couldn’t help but to be filled with self-righteousness. At long last, she could erase the past, and reclaim her revolution.
With the grass muffling her hoofsteps, Starlight burst from her hiding spot already pulling the spell scroll from her saddlebag. She caught the queen’s flat footed, but Rainbow sensed the buildup of mana first, and moved to interpose herself between this empathically invisible source of charging magic and Twilight. The pair worked smoothly together, and Twilight acted to project a shield around them without questioning her sister first.
But Starlight was already inside the bubble Twilight threw up, allowing the unicorn to latch onto Twilight’s leg. Starlight unfurled the scroll so the spell could form properly. Rainbow physically grabbed at the now visible pony, but all her efforts served to accomplish was to have her too, be enveloped into a column of white light emanating from the scroll.
In a blinding flash, all three mares suddenly found themselves standing on a rooftop below a midday, cloudless sky. The elation of success loosened Starlight’s grasp on Twilight long enough for Rainbow to finish throwing her off of her sister.
Starlight rolled with the throw, and managed to get back on her hooves. The sudden shift from night to day gave the sisters enough pause for Starlight to orient herself. Keeping one eye on the changelings, Starlight saw the majestic marble spires of the Canterlot royal palace jutting up behind the queens. “It worked!”
“What worked?!” Twilight challenged with more fearful curiosity than hostility. “Where are we? Who are you?”
Rainbow Dash flared her wings, her horn glowing menacingly, yet before any spell could be unleashed, Rainbow’s eyes went wide, her mouth agape. “Twi, they’re gone.”
Twilight was shaking so hard she fell to one knee, tears of shock mixing with sweat. Her sister was in better shape though. Before Starlight could be certain they were in no state to challenge her, and make her escape, Rainbow Dash lashed out with a kinetic spellbolt that sailed so close to Starlight’s horn that her hold on the time scroll fizzled out.
Damn it! Not wanting to risk it further, Starlight leaped off the side of the building and used her magic to float safely to the ground three stories down.
Just as I predicted, Starlight mused with an inward grin as she looked back up. Neither queen had recovered enough to even watch her go. Their hive mind can’t stay connected if brought to a different time. This should buy me all the time I need. I can worry about the scroll later.
Starlight sprinted down the cobblestone roads as fast as her legs could take her. The signs of warfare were fresh on Canterlot, as Chrysalis’ invasion had only happened a week ago. Surveyors were still out and about, assessing the damage with only a scant few places were nearly done clearing up the rubble.
Donut Joe’s should just around the bend. Ignoring the startled, skittish bystanders, Starlight saw her target. A purple unicorn, one Twilight Sparkle, was leaving Donut Joe’s with Spike riding on her back. The unicorn waved farewell at the proprietor before heading towards the palace and that fateful meeting.
Starlight skidded to a halt on the other side of the street, earning a curious look from Spike, but his attention was pulled away by Twilight’s conversation. Not even paying attention. Perfect. Pulling out a small, green, sphinx spellstone with a hoof, Starlight held it in front of her horn and powered an incantation. “Quiet whisper, cloak of night. Hide my spell from their sight.” A second spell coming from Starlight’s horn shot into the stone held aloft between her and Twilight. The spell passed through the stone and was masked as a simple gust of air. The spell hit Twilight square in the stomach, yet all the unicorn did in response was to absently swish her tail over the impact spot.
With the deed complete, Starlight smirked in satisfaction. It’s done. Now to stall. She looked back the way she had come, only to notice a few ponies were giving her curious looks, obviously having spotted her spellwork. However, when nothing seemed to happen, the other ponies ultimately went about their way. Starlight ignored them, and listened in. There were no shouts of alarm, or even a pair of ponies racing up to her. So they figured out they can’t be in their true forms without causing trouble. Smart, but useless now.
Starlight spotted a rooftop with a large billboard that would offer at least a modicum of privacy from fliers and levitated herself up and waited. It wasn’t long before a pair of unremarkable pegasi flew up to join her, their wings quickly melting away in changeling fire, and horns grew on their heads the moment they touched down.
Starlight tried to play it smooth, and kept up a defiant, yet proud half-grin. Twilight Sparkle was unable to hide twin rivers of wet fur under her eyes. The elder sister’s gaze was torn between the scroll she now held in her magic, and Starlight Glimmer. As for Rainbow Dash, her eyes were like two pits of hellfire that threatened to burn Starlight where she stood. Her rage made her disguise drop around her fangs, making her growling muzzle unsettling enough to make Starlight start to sweat. Come on, time, hurry along. “Your majesties, I’m afraid you’re a bit too late. I-”
Without a second’s warning, Rainbow Dash’s telekinesis grabbed Starlight’s head and smashed it face first into the marble roof. “You’re dead, you hear me!” Rainbow shouted with scathing fury. Starlight was too stunned by the attack to weave a coherent spell, and all she could do was roll her head over to see Rainbow Dash running up to her prey. Starlight rolled to the side before Rainbow’s hoof could crash down on her. “I’m going to plaster your brains all over this roof!”
The unicorn tried to fling a fast spell, but a lavender shield appeared on Rainbow Dash, leaving the disguised queen free to jump Starlight. Before Rainbow’s hoof could make contact though, Starlight brought up her signature shield, completely encasing herself in a diamond barrier. She flinched at Rainbow’s raining kicks and spells on the barrier, but the barrage was as close to breaking it as gentle rain on stone.
“That’s quite enough,” Starlight fumed, while wiping the blood off her lip with a hoof. “It’s only a matter of time.”
Twilight glanced at her disguised sister. <Rainbow, stop, we’re not going to get through that shield without destroying the city block around us.>
Both queens jumped a little when they heard a police whistle being blown, and looked out over the street to see a pegasus officer waving a spell nullifier baton threateningly at them. “Stay where you are! All three of you are under arrest for disturbing the peace!”
The officer never had a chance to make good on his threat when the world around Starlight and the two queens vanished in a burst of light. “I did it!” Starlight belted off uproarious laughter. “I finally get my village back!”
The admittedly harsh badlands of her village was not what greeted Starlight, but a rooftop on Canterlot city again. The same rooftop she started on. “What? Why am I back here?”
“Because you created a time loop you short sighted donkey,” Twilight hissed from behind Starlight.
The crystalline barrier flared back into being so fast that Rainbow Dash smashed into it hard, her muzzle starting to bleed. Starlight ignored the militant, attacking queen to focus on Twilight, who was waving the spellscroll Starlight had used earlier. “What are you talking about?”
Twilight Sparkle appeared in her original unicorn self, already assuming guards would be nearby. She was giving Starlight a pained, restrained grimace. “You didn’t honestly think with a history like mine that I wouldn’t put some kind of temporal safeguards in place? I’ve been waiting for this to happen ever since she left the asylum. I didn’t expect a stranger though, which explains how you’ve managed to even drag us into…” Twilight glanced around, taking the time to finally process the damaged cityscape surrounding them. “Canterlot, battle damage, and no airships on station, so it’s not the future. You brought us into the past, probably around the time of the invasion. As I suspected.” Twilight’s face darkened. “You have to know by now any attempts you make on changing the past won’t work, not so long as my safeguards are in place.”
Seeing that she was not going to have any success in burning some new holes into Starlight, Rainbow Dash backed away from Starlight. She circled around to flank the lone pony though. “You might as well give up now. Once Twilight figures out how to counter your little safety gem here, your ass is grass.”
Starlight huffed and summoned a quartet of spellstones and had them float near her head. “I’m willing to bet your precious safeguards operate under the Time-River correction theory.” Starlight caught the barest hint of a shift in Twilight’s face. Her brow furrowed for just a moment, but it was enough for Starlight to grin victoriously. “You and I both know those safeguards of yours are large and expensive. The materials alone probably set you back a few million bits, didn’t they?”
Twilight’s temple started throbbing. “Discord is notoriously difficult to cooperate with,” she answered coldly. “Each one of the safeguards we cajoled him into making was… costly.”
Starlight’s face was a mask of stunned admiration. “Discord? Heh, leave it to royalty to court with somepony as deranged as the aspect of chaos. If your face is any indication, I’d say you probably have… four of these safeguards tops. You can’t save the original timeline forever.”
Rainbow Dash started sweating too as real fear started to break her bravado. “We won’t need it to last forever once we stop you.”
Starlight rolled her eyes, and largely ignored Rainbow Dash. “I had wanted to just give your old self a bad case of the flu. Nothing that could do any lasting physical harm, mind you, just enough to keep you from going to that meeting with Ambassador Gloss. But now you’re forcing me to make a more overt interruption.”
It took some serious concentration for Starlight to keep the barrier up, yet all the queens could do was watch as Starlight removed a small collection of spellorbs and chanted the new incantation. “Free as birds upon the wind, fly far across the bend.” Starlight cast a second spell into the orbs before arcane clones of the orbs exploded in numbers. Dozens, then hundreds of tiny spectral orbs multiplied within Starlight’s barrier like viruses within a cell. When she felt their numbers were enough, Starlight dropped the spell, causing the tiny orbs to scatter far and wide, far too quick for Twilight and Rainbow to counter them. Within moments of escaping, the orbs started buzzing loudly. The two queens paled once they recognized they sounded like a massive swarm of changelings.
The reaction was almost immediate, screams erupted from the city as the citizens scrambled for cover. Panic of a new invasion spread like wildfire, and would keep the meeting from ever happening. From there, Cadista’s boldness in exposing Gloss’s true nature the first time would fade, and she ultimately stayed passive, waiting for decades to try and step into the light again.
Yet as before, instead of being sent to her chosen future, Starlight was dropped back onto the roof with both queens glaring at her. She stared right back in defiance. “Two down. How many more to go, I wonder?”
“Do you have any real idea of the consequences you’re causing?!” Twilight challenged heatedly, an emotional warble in her voice.
Starlight brought her shield back up after catching Rainbow trying to flank her again. Safe behind her barrier, Starlight had a self-righteous scowl. “Of course I do. At some point, your safeguards will run out, and the two of you will have never become changelings. Not my endgame directly, but more importantly I’ll finally bring about my revolution. Cutie marks tether their owners to a fate not always of their own choosing or even desire. Some have to learn to accept what destiny saddled them with, but I’m working on the destiny problem plaguing our species. And I was well on my way of freeing ponykind from the tyranny of cutie marks when one of your soldiers found my village and turned my citizens against me! I lost everything because you brought your species out of the damned jungle.”
Twilight was dumbstruck by the admission. Rainbow Dash bristled intensely, and her vision reddened from sheer rage. “You would commit genocide just so you could get rid of cutie marks?! And here I thought Discord cornered the market on immorality! I’m going to put you down so hard you’re going to wish we gave you the Tirek treatment!
“I didn’t kill anypony,” Starlight barked back with disdain. “Sure, maybe Aegis and Blitzkrieg won’t be born as they were, but that’d just mean they’d be born as ponies since neither of you will become changelings once you stop resisting.”
Twilight recovered her voice. “Assuming for a moment you’d be right about Aegis and Blitz, what about our hundreds of thousands of children and grandchildren? We’d never be capable of having a ghost of a fraction of that as ponies, so you’re still committing genocide. Where did you think the drones in our hive came from? Thin air?!”
“Don’t take me for an idiot,” Starlight scoffed as she retrieved the spellorbs from last time. “They immigrated with you to Equestria. Without either of you becoming changelings, they’ll stay there, and away from my village.”
Twilight and Rainbow’s horns lit up in tandem and brought up a much larger shield around Starlight’s diamond barrier. Intricate runes of power and sigils manifested along its spherical surface. “I’m sorry you feel wronged,” Twilight began, giving Starlight a concerned frown that the unicorn took as being patronizing, like a mother to a misbehaving child.
“But we have to defend both our children and our futures,” both queens said in perfect unison.
Starlight looked around at the barrier that entombed her, the barest hint of a smirk on her lips. “Then you’ll have to forgive me for fighting for Equestria’s future instead.” Starlight pulled out another sphinx spellorb from her saddlebag and flaunted it around her face. The queens eyed it wearily, but remained steadfast in their spellwork. “Censored!”
A monumentally powerful shockwave of disruptive magic slammed into the queens’ wards, causing fissures to appear. Both Twilight and Rainbow flinched as the feedback of the attack strained their horns.
“I can’t believe somepony smart enough to pull this off is stupid enough not to see the obvious facts!” Rainbow seethed with a hateful glare that managed to unnerve Starlight a bit. “Are you blind to the painfully obvious fact that all our drones have our exact same coat and mane colors!? We’re literally their mothers!”
“Silenced,” Starlight shouted, sending another pulse. The tears in the wards were wider now, but she didn’t trust the queens. Could be faking how much damage I’ve actually done.
Starlight needed a few moments to summon enough of her reserves to empower another attack, so she at last addressed Rainbow Dash with a dismissive huff. “Please, no pony can birth a whole city’s worth of foals. As for their colors, you changelings have disguise magic. It’s obvious they just change colors to mimic who they are most loyal to.”
“You’re wrong,” Twilight rebuked a bit harsher than she meant to. “I’ll admit we don’t exactly shove this fact in ponies’ faces, but we queens lay eggs, like ants or bees. Between the two of us, we lay close to thirty a day.”
Rainbow added, “If you had bothered doing some actual research on us instead of where Twilight would be today, you’d know that.”
“Rebuked! Starlight grinned in satisfaction when the wards wavered and nearly collapsed outright. “I’m not going to listen to the propaganda of two royals desperate to hold onto their power.” Starlight powered her magic to say the final word of power.
“Please, stop!” Twilight pleaded with growing tears in her eyes. “We can prove it!”
“Oh hoh,” Starlight chuckled darkly. “Are you really out of protection already? Don’t worry. I’m pretty sure you won’t remember ever being a queen.” With a final bellow, Starlight Glimmer shouted “Denied!” This pulse was twice as strong as the last, and the wards entombing Starlight shattered like glass. Knowing her false-invasion orbs would soon fly off on their own as soon as she dropped her diamond shield, Starlight took a moment to dream about having her village finally returned to her, of one day convincing even Celestia of the virtues of a markless society. However, a shout broke her out of her dreams and back to the queens. Instead of trying to stop the swarm of fleeing orbs, Twilight had turned her back to Starlight and was back in her undisguised self. Starlight was about to ignore her again, that was until she saw a purple egg slip out of her, and drop a bit before being caught in Rainbow’s magic. Starlight’s eyes bulged as a second egg appeared, then a third; fourth, they just kept coming until fifteen in total left Twilight.
“We do this every day,” Rainbow cried with the terror of losing her hive crushing her heart. “Please, stop trying to murder our kids!”
Starlight’s blood ran cold at the sight of the eggs. All the years of pain and rage from losing her village burned brightly in her mind, only for it to expand beyond her comprehension. The idea of killing for her cause had danced in her mind, she might have been prepared for a murder, two at the most, but the prospect of eliminating hundreds of thousands from ever being born terrified Starlight so deeply she blanked.
Starlight couldn’t even process murder on such a vast scale. An army or a nation committing it maybe, but this was deeply personal. She, and she alone would be responsible. Cries of sheer terror shocked her back to the present. Starlight had been so distraught that she had forgotten to keep the barrier active. She couldn’t fix it in time, and the orbs scattered to the four winds. Twilight and Rainbow tried shooting them down, but they might as well have been shooting at fleas. The cacophony of buzzing changeling wings filled the air, and the screams soon followed.
Starlight’s horrified eyes followed one of the eggs as its parent tried desperately to destroy the orbs that were now well beyond her reach. “No, no, no, no! This isn’t what I wanted!” An idea struck Starlight, and then time slowed. She looked back at Twilight who was completely frozen, a quick look showed Rainbow Dash was utterly motionless. Both the queens and the eggs started to fade away as the alarm was raised throughout the city, and the past-self of Twilight was growing further and further away from attending the meeting. The spell scroll that Starlight had used to start it all laid abandoned on the edge of the roof, the wind threatened to push it off the edge. Starlight grabbed the scroll in her magic and yanked it back over to her. From there she sprinted towards Twilight, who was now little more than a ghost. Frozen tears, and a petrified expression of horror was plastered on her face. The sight of it brought such deep, heart chilling shame upon Starlight she didn’t hesitate any further and tried to rope a foreleg around one of Twilight’s own and power the scroll. Yet in her haste, Starlight only noticed in mid-cast that her leg went right through Twilight’s own as the queen phased away.
The world went pitch black and folded in on itself. In a snap, Starlight was back on the trail leading to Fluttershy’s cottage. She was back in the bushes that ran along the trail, only, she, wasn’t in the same position she had been when lying in ambush.
Starlight was disorientated for several moments until she could process that fact. She was alone again, in the bushes. Neither queen was in sight, and it was after nightfall. Is my past self not here yet? She shivered at the memory of the eggs. How did I not see it before? Was I really so tunnel-visioned?
She thought back to the days she spent scouting the hives, both Phoenix Roost and Tradewinds. At the time she had been looking for Intel, but now she couldn’t escape the realization of what she had done. All of them. Dead. A part of her wanted to make excuses, that it wasn’t murder per say if they never existed. That’s still murder. I caused them to be erased.
Starlight hugged herself as a deep chill ran through her. Her mind was racing with the magnitude of her crime. Two whole cities just… gone. I can’t let that happen. Not again! She looked around, trying to gauge where her past-self was hiding, but she had originally come to this spot during the day. Now that it was at night, all Starlight could tell was she was along the same dirt path to Fluttershy’s cottage.
What do I do to stop myself? If I just run out into the open telling myself to stop, would I listen? Or would I just think a changeling is disguised as me, and is trying to flush me out? My old self could just run away and try again later. Would I fade away and only my old self would be left?
Light hearted chatter and laughter from down the path grabbed Starlight’s attention. She looked over and saw the two queens cantering down the path. She was running out of time. What do I do, what do I do?!
Starlight was so distraught and distracted by her own thoughts, by the time she returned to the present, the queens’ chatter from down the path reached her ears. In a panic, she scanned her surroundings as best she could without disturbing the bushes she was hiding in. Yet with the poor light from the half moon in the sky, she couldn’t see much, let alone where her original self was hiding. I can’t let them sense me. Not until my past-self shows up. Recollecting herself a bit, Starlight pulled out a small bit of tied up, dried herbs and grasses. She popped the whole thing in her mouth, and struggled to swallow it dry. The effect all but erased her emotional aura, rendering it invisible to the changelings’ empathy. What she should do still warred in her mind. I could try capturing my other-self. If I-
Rustling from further down the path caught her ears as her past-self burst forth. The world around Starlight slowed to a crawl. In that instant, for all her planning and intellect, only one thing came to Starlight’s mind. The three individuals on the path missed Starlight powering her horn and the spell taking form.
However, the old Starlight was faster and latched onto Twilight’s foreleg, and brandished the scroll.
“I won’t be a monster!” she screamed with all of her built up self-loathing. Pouring that same emotion into her spell, Starlight fired a caustic beam of magic straight into the barrel of her past-self. The scroll burned away from the heat, and the old Starlight’s fur was charred black along her left side.
As soon as it had happened it was over. For the briefest of moments, Starlight was staring dumbfounded at what she had done, only for the world to shift around her. Instead of standing there in the burnt bush, her view of the world was suddenly obscured by the tall grass. She was lying on her side. It took barely a moment, but a hot, deep pain erupted from her barrel. The pain was so intense she blacked out before she could scream.
Back in Trixie’s wagon, Starlight Glimmer rubbed the scar in memory of the pain. The wagon was silent. Not even the creaking rope of the hammocks disturbed the peace.
Blitz had entirely let go of Lyra’s face after the story went into familiar territory, and other matters of state demanded her attention. Lyra, by contrast, was far more open with her support, and only stayed quiet out of respect more than anything else.
Of them all, Twilight Velvet felt cold, as if she were sitting on a glacier. If I had been in her place in the past…
“As it turned out,” Starlight continued when she could speak evenly. “The wards I used made sure I remained unaffected by the shifting timestream. Too bad for me, the sisters didn’t remember any of it until they touched me after I went unconscious.” Starlight let off a half-hearted chuckle. “From what they told me, they spent the first minute trying to make sense of an hour’s worth of memories as I bled out on the trail. I admit I was stunned they ended up taking me to a hospital though. When I came to, I told both of them the whole story from the moment I was outcast from my village and on. They were still looking for the mysterious bush caster until I explained it was me.”
Lyra whistled. “Damn lady, and ponies say I’m jacked up in the head for wanting to change species just to have hands. You’re on a whole other level.” Lyra frowned at bit when Starlight’s face sank, and the unicorn pressed herself lower into the hammock. “Well – er – used to be, at least.”
Starlight grasped at the compliment and cracked a thin smile. She rose up a bit and stroked a lock of her mane that had fallen over her face. “Do you really have to say that every time you hear that story?”
Lyra shrugged and flashed a friendly, mischievious smirk. “Eh, it’s a living.”
“Right…” Starlight felt a bit lighter, if slightly raw emotionally. “I like to think I’ve been earning that second chance she’s given me most of the time. It’s taken me so many years, and I’ll admit to a lapse in judgement on occasion. Funnily enough though, my recount of how the last safeguard, the one after they laid the eggs, reacted wasn’t what Discord advertised. Fluttershy had some choice words with him after that.”
“I don’t remember, did you even get a chance to see what this changeling-less future looked like?” Lyra asked, genuine curiosity painting her face as she leaned in.
“Um, no actually. Twilight’s countermeasures activated the moment the timeline would have veered away from her rebirth, and I needed to leave the past before I got swept into the new timeline.” Starlight absently shook her head. “It’s probably for the best. I was so tunnel-visioned back then I didn’t plan much beyond the change itself.”
“Thank you for the story, Starlight Glimmer,” Velvet said at last breaking her silence. She felt mildly more reassured, but the skeptic in her couldn’t take much stock in it. “I can see Princess Celestia wasn’t being entirely melodramatic when she said your crimes were “apocalyptic”. But ultimately, you were never her family, her mother-”
“Maybe not,” Starlight cut in, irking the older mare a little. “But you should have more faith in your daughter. Yes, you tried to kill her, and worse if you consider how dear the role of motherhood is in changeling society. But.” Starlight paused to regain her emotional strength. “But I nearly erased all of her children. Granted, I was able to reverse it before that timeline could become real, but – but I succeeded in it. I still have nightmares of seeing that egg vanishing in thin air. Princess Luna lets me keep that nightmare, even if she stipulated only for a few years at most. I need it as a reminder.”
Starlight Glimmer paused as her lip started quivering with emotion. She tried to get her voice under control but to no avail. “Twilight possesses this bewildering ability to trust in ponies who by all accounts have no reason to be trusted.” Starlight’s voice was muted and somber, but she pressed on. “The only thing she needs from you is a genuine effort to be a better pony. To quote a kindred spirit, show her that your past is not today.”