//------------------------------//
// S3 Intermission: A Ligament of Times 
// Story: JTHW: Journey To Hearth's Warming 
// by Lighttone GryphonStar 
//------------------------------//

Two weeks is what she was told and Twilight didn't waste any of it training hard. Time inside the egg seemed to move faster, despite the anomaly in one hundred years per day. Her friends were moving to find her. Starlight didn't know where her teacher was, but she would not give up on searching for her.

Rex and Clover searched for Twilight in other ways. Rex scan through all the shadows he could as far as he could reach. Yet no matter where he looked, Twilight was nowhere in sight.  Clover could see the anxiousness growing in his eyes slowly being replaced by anger. He could sense that icy blue was connected. He was often looking through the map for hours on end, wondering.

On the other side of the board, things were changing too. Thule gathered together the unicorns that arrived and put them to work in the ashy wasteland of the Dark City. They bent to his will, be pulled not by his strings but by another. 

He questioned this reasoning at first, until he ran into Mira among the crowds. The former Princess Platinum was running around like a frightened child screaming the name of a naga. Hanging over her like a cloak was the image of her mother. Where before lady Mass Hysteria had used her daughter to manipulate the war, now she was just frightened of her daughter's state of mind. 

She took her away to save her from Blood Diamond and the fearsome Hollow Prince. However, leaving that loyal guard behind only brought more pain to Mira's mind with each passing day.

Thule concluded that since Lady Mass Hysteria could not control her, she was instead controlling the surrounding unicorns, hoping to keep her daughter in line. The rotting corpse could only see shame in her actions. He had brought her back from the dead to help Mira. However, now all she was to doing was making her worse.

With a snap of his limb, he broke the mind control over the unicorns. Yes, they would repeal against him, but such mind control would prove only pointless to his plan and the plans of Indigo Frost's child.

Despite what the light alicorn told Twilight, he arrived in the Dark City far sooner than the two weeks allowed. However, he kept Twilight and Cold Blue within the time egg, blind to the rest of the world.

Thule was at least glad to see this part was a success and ordered Sage and Vanity to start work on the minds of the unicorns. Mind control would not be needed if they could bring them to their ideals. For that was the true reason the heir of the wendigo wanted these creatures on his side. Not as his slaves, but as his new people. The purpose of the Dark City would be a throne for which he would lay a waste of any opposition in their way and unite all creatures under one crown.

Thule would be the shining light in their darkness. Aitym would bring that light and shine it even brighter. Sage would teach of the darkness in one soul. Vanity would show the darkness and their lives. Carnival Carnage with praise for their darkness and their light. The heir of the wendigoes would sit upon the throne guiding the light through this darkness.

Twilight herself, the greatest role of all, their heart of darkness.

By this season's end, the two weeks would not fully reach completion. However, many things will change completely for all and by the time Twilight steps out of the egg, her world will be all the stranger. And her place will be all the more realized than ever.

******