//------------------------------// // Cracked // Story: Broken Mirror // by KatonRyu //------------------------------// From the corner of her eye, Sunset saw the screen of her phone light up for what must have been the tenth time that day. She turned it over and leaned back again. She knew she would have to talk to her friends sooner or later. They didn’t know what had happened. They knew about her and Twilight, of course, but they didn’t know about the portal. She figured they would find out soon enough, when their magic would fail to work now that it was cut off from its source. She knew she owed them all an explanation, but she just didn’t feel like it. Hardly the most mature thing of her to do, and she recognized it as the pettiness it was, but she felt entitled to act that way. If her friends knew what she had given up, surely they’d understand. Surely they would forgive her for being distant just this one day. The books in Twilight’s library were still in disarray. To Twilight, they now looked like the aftermath of a battlefield. Hastily scrawled notes referencing tomes of varying degrees of usefulness were scattered all across the floor, and even in her most dedicated studying sprees, she didn’t think she ever had this many books open at the same time. She looked at the scene with jaded eyes, still hearing the frantic voices of herself and Sunset as they raced to find a way to stabilize the portal before it would tear open and consume both dimensions at once. They’d been so focused on that one thing that they’d never stopped to think about the consequences their actions would have. Magic is powerful and volatile. It was one of the first lessons Sunset had ever learned as a student of Princess Celestia’s, and one of the main reasons she had been so interested in gaining more and more power. Using a force so versatile requires great skill and mental acuity, and Sunset had always prided herself on possessing those things in large quantities. So why was it, then, that these basic tenets were so easy to forget whenever Twilight was involved? She had known from the beginning that a portal between dimensions made use of magic far beyond her knowledge, and that overusing such a thing would likely have grave consequences. At first, both she and Twilight had even decided not to cross too often, and to stick to using the journal for the majority of their interactions, but as time had gone on that good intention of theirs had fallen by the wayside more and more. It had just been so much fun. They were nearly equal in magical aptitude, but their differences in attitude, with Twilight being more theoretical and Sunset more practical, made them excellent complements to one another. At the same time, Sunset taught Twilight to be bit more relaxed in daily life, while Twilight helped Sunset get more organized so she could better apply her talents. Their friendship was mutually beneficial, and because of it, it was addicting. It had started quite subtly. Occasionally, the journal Twilight and Sunset used to communicate between worlds seemed to distort the letters a bit. Neither had seen anything particularly strange about that at first, but then it began happening more often and more noticeable. Still, Twilight and Sunset figured it probably wasn’t anything serious. Now, Twilight wondered if they’d just been in denial. After all, Princess Celestia had been in a similar situation with Mirror Sombra. It hadn’t been long before larger things began to go awry. Rainbow Dash suddenly had a scrape on her foreleg without having any clue as to why, which just so happened to match with a scrape human Rainbow Dash had on her elbow after an athletics misstep had sent her sprawling to the ground — an incident which had earned her the name Rainbow Crash in the human world for about a day before people got tired of it. Rarity had woken up with a sore back, on the same night human Rarity had attempted a project which was a bit too ambitious and had fallen asleep at her desk in a rather uncomfortable position. It was due to these things that Twilight and Sunset had finally begun to realize what was going on. Perhaps, Twilight reflected, if they’d made work of it right at that moment, everything that followed could have been averted.