//------------------------------// // I was Just Killing Time [Dark] [Mysterious] [Twilight] // Story: Fast Ponies, Faster Fingers // by TheDriderPony //------------------------------// Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. With mechanical precision, the kitschy egg timer stole away the seconds of the day. Twilight Sparkle sat before it, immobile. Her ears stood at attention like soldiers while her eyes remained open, unblinking, into the void ahead. The oven light was not on, but it didn’t need to be. It wasn’t even hot. And yet, under the concentrated force of her gaze, the bread rose anyway. Swelling with glacial slowness, but that didn’t matter. The bread wasn’t important. The wait was. Tick. Tick. Tick. Every muscle in her body remained tense like a runner at the starting block. She did not move nor flinch nor twitch. She merely sat, and waited, and listened. Her mind expanded in the moments between seconds. The silent gaps became longer and longer, untill it felt as though an eternity passed between each tick... tick... tick.  She was no longer alone. Perhaps she never had been to begin with. Awareness was funny like that. When you can be in the presence of something for so long that the brain teaches itself to ignore it. Like the ticking of a clock.  “I knew you’d come.” Her voice was level, emotionless even. “I was never not here, nor was I ever not elsewhere.” With her eyes fixed ahead, Twilight could not see it properly. Merely a blur of brown with a slash of green in her peripheral vision. Tick. Tick. Tick. Three eternities passed.  “Your efforts are futile.” Its words seemed to fall between the seconds. Or perhaps she had always known them. “I am ancient. I am inevitable. I am a function of the universe. You do nothing but waste your own life.” Twilight’s ears flicked at its words, but she held steady. Nothing but the ticking of the clock filled her mind. Not even the cognizance to form a response. She felt it come up behind her. Its breath on her neck. It was cold. Like wet clay or decaying brush. “I am a gift. And yet you squander me. Waste me. You tried this before, ephemeral one. You failed then. You will fail again.” “That may have been true. Once. But not now.” Twilight closed her eyes and let images from afar fill her mind. “Now I have friends. At this moment, Pinkie is watching paint dry. Applejack is watching grass grow. Rainbow Dash is finding shapes in the clouds.” “This changes nothing. The actions of a few-” “Rarity is watching a pot boil.” Twilight cut it off. “Fluttershy is sitting on hard boiled eggs.” Tick. It flinched and coughed. “I said, it doesn’t-” “Lyra is waiting at the DMV without a reason. Celestia is rereading the same page of her book over and over. Moondancer is counting all the prime numbers.” Tick. The being coughed again and stumbled slightly. “All over the world, ponies are killing time. Letting moments slip past without meaning or purpose. If one pony is killing time, nothing happens. But if every pony is doing it… well, I’m sure you understand by now.” It fell to its knees, as though its legs no longer had the strength to support it. “No… impossible...” “You are a construct of pony minds.” Twilight took a deliberate step forward, her expression taking on a menacing aura. The room was closing, the gap of space shrinking, the Princess cornering all available escape routes. Time, it appeared, was running out. “An ancient one, but a creation of pony minds nonetheless. And what can be made, can just as easily be unmade.” “This… you cannot outlast me.” It’s voice was weaker now, strained, but it still held more strength than it seemed.  Twilight shrugged. It was the most emotional gesture she’d shown yet. “I beg to differ. I have all my friends —everypony— helping me. I literally have all the time in the world at my disposal.” Her eyes still closed, Twilight stood and turned. The ticking clock echoed thunderously like the metronome of the universe itself. “I read in a book that you and patience are the most powerful warriors. With patience on my side, that makes you clearly outnumbered.” The universe fractured and crumbled around Twilight. The very fabric of space warped and twisted, rending  the air with a noise like screeching metal. She ignored it and focused only on the ticking timepiece. She clung to the sound like a buoy in a wailing maelstrom as waves of unspace and torrential rains of sounds that should not be tore at her form.  There was no pain. Only the clock. So long as she believed it. Eternities passed. Universes were birthed, expanded, and collapsed like mayflies as she weathered the storm. To fail now would mean consequences far greater than she could pay. In time —as much as such a phrase still applied— the storm faded. Twilight found herself once more faced with nothing but the sound of ragged breathing and the ever present ticking. Something collapsed in front of her and she allowed herself a small smile. The egg timer ticked down, the pauses extending between each movement of the gears and escapement. She leaned down, still blind, and found an ear to speak into. “You had your time, but now it’s time to move on.” Tick. Tick... “Without time, there is no aging. Without aging, there is no death.”  Tick. Tic... ... … Twilight leaned in and whispered into its ear as what it passed for life slipped away. “Congratulations. Now everyone gets to live forever. Except you.”