Windfall got up and stretched.
She had gone for a brisk, if unsteady trot up and down the long, wide hallway and had drunk a big mug of water before going to sleep, so there was only a slight dull ache behind her eyes. The inside of her mouth tasted only a little like burnt capers and sauerkraut, so she judged it to be a fairly mild hangover, at least by her standards.
Poor Twilight, she thought. I'll let her sleep as long as she can manage. I'll know she's up when I hear the groans.
But, much to her disgust, she found Twilight already awake and working in the library. She was drawing some sort of diagram on a big sheet of paper and humming happily to herself.
"How's your head, Princess?" Windfall called out loudly. She winced a bit at the sound of her own voice.
Twilight looked up and smiled. "Good morning, Windfall! What about my head? I thought I brushed out my bed-mane pretty thoroughly."
The pegasus squinted at her. "You drank more than I did last night, and you're not even hungover?"
"Oh, that. Alicorn metabolism; I might have had a bit of a hangover an hour or so after going to bed, but I was asleep and didn't notice anything."
"That's… That's completely and utterly unfair!" There was a good deal of passion in her voice, but the pegasus carefully kept the volume low.
Twilight nodded as she turned back to her diagram. "Completely," she agreed pleasantly.
Windfall sighed. "So what's the plan, Princess?"
"I'm triple checking the calculations for the time spell to get us back home. As soon as I'm done here, we should go."
"Don't care about the Oracle and whatever threat to the kingdom is going on out there anymore?" Windfall gave a jerk of her head toward the clerestory window where the telescope still stood, and immediately wished she hadn't. She definitely didn't care, but her throbbing head made her feel a bit contrary.
The pencil floating in Twilight's magical grip stopped moving. "Windfall, that… All of that won't exist after we go back. It will never have existed."
"Yeah, right. So what about all those books you stuffed into your saddlebags? Won't they just disappear because they came from a future that never happened?"
"Exclusionary exceptions to causality are necessary to avoid subspacial tears from naturally occurring time loops," Twilight patiently explained. "Hockings pretty much proved that mathematically, and I experienced it directly when my friend Starlight tried to alter my past. If the universe wasn't a little flexible with regard to such things, it would have torn itself apart long ago."
Windfall felt a bit dizzy, and it wasn't because of her hangover. She doubted she would ever get over her astonishment at the alicorn's ability to suddenly terrify her with a casual word or two.
"That could happen?"
Twilight nodded. "It actually might have happened already. Maybe several times in many different universes. It might even be common, and our current, mostly stable universe only seems normal because of survivorship bias. One of the many, many good reasons not to mess around with time spells."
Windfall was quiet for a long time, watching Twilight work. Finally, she decided to go lie down on one of the couches and bury her head under a few cushions. The next thing she knew, Twilight was gently nudging her with a hoof.
"Windfall? I hate to wake you, but I think we should go now."
"Awwww," came the muffled voice of the pegasus from beneath the velvet cushions. "I'm gonna miss this creepy zombie future."
"You can stay if you like."
The cushions tumbled off Windfall as she rolled off the couch and onto her hooves. "Naw. Maybe I can get torn apart by mindless blank-flanks the next time we visit."
"Are you always grumpy and sarcastic when you're hung over?"
"Why should I be any different from any other time?"
"Good point." Twilight levitated her book-filled saddlebags onto her back and was a bit surprised to see her friend drag out a much larger set of bags from behind the couch and struggle into them.
"Uhmn… What did you pick out to take back with you?" The odd lumps in the fabric of the bags didn't look like books to her.
"Gold and gems, mostly," Windfall said casually. "I pried all of the huge star sapphires out of that big mirror in the bathroom. They ought to fetch a tidy sum back home."
"Ah," Twilight paused for a moment and tried to work out the ethics of stealing objects that wouldn't exist if they hadn't been stolen in the first place. "So, it wasn't really the books you were worried about."
Windfall shrugged and then wriggled a bit, trying to get the backstrap of her bags to settle in a more comfortable spot. "A gal's gotta look after herself, right? And this gal doesn't own an entire kingdom."
"Fair enough," Twilight said and turned toward the door leading out to the hallway. "It's not the lost treasure of Trotankamun, but it's some reward for your trouble."
They entered the hallway and walked toward the big doors of the cavernous laboratory.
"When we get back, where will we be?" Windfall asked.
"Still here in Canterlot," Twilight replied. "The cave the lab is built into is natural, so it will have existed back in our time. That's probably why she set up her equipment there if she's been fishing through her past for suitable subjects."
"Then, I've got to get back to the San Palomino somehow—"
"Don't worry about it," Twilight said. "I will arrange for you to be taken there, or I can send out ponies to find your friends and bring them to Canterlot. It might be better that way. I've targeted the spell to return us to the day after I was taken, so a few months will have passed for your friends since you disappeared."
"Can't you just send us to different times?"
Twilight shook her head. "The spell will use an incredible amount of energy. Probably drain those crystals completely, and I don't know how long they'll take to recharge. Besides, putting you back in the timestream before I appear, with the knowledge you have now, would be very dangerous. You might trigger an asynchronous anomaly that would propagate a phase-change through the…"
Twilight trailed off and grinned sheepishly. "Just pretend I rattled off a lot of clear, comprehensible, and convincing reasons why I'm doing things this way, okay?"
Windfall shuffled her wings and snorted. "Sure thing, Princess. As long as we get the flit out of this place, I'll be a happy…" She suddenly stopped walking and cocked her head. "Hey, do you hear that?"
Twilight swiveled her ears forward. "That sort of hissing sound?"
"Yeah." Windfall nodded. "Coming from…" She gestured to the big double doors that led into the laboratory cave.
Princess Twilight said a very bad word and then bolted for the doors. She grabbed them with her magic and flung them open to reveal the cavern lit by irregular flickers of actinic light from within the huge tank, which was cloudy and turbulent. The two mares could barely make out the form of the alicorn within, but it was clear that she was struggling and moving far more than she should have been able to.
Another flash of lightning from within the tank shocked Twilight out of her immobility, and she immediately formed an appropriate plan of action. "Run!" she screamed to Windfall and sprinted for the glowing crystal cluster deeper in the cave.
Windfall ran.
Twilight skidded to a halt in front of the crystals, threw her diagram down on the floor where she could reference it if she needed to, and began to form the mandala of the time spell.
Windfall stood close behind her and twisted her neck around so that she could keep watch on the tank. The sight of what was going on inside terrified her, but if she was going to be ripped apart by an enraged goddess, she at least wanted to see it coming.
It was a close thing. They almost made it.
As Twilight was forging the final link to the power crystals, she heard a thunderous crash and the rush of thick liquid from behind her. Windfall slammed into her rump and she was flung forward, smashing muzzle-first into the crystals and losing her concentration for a critical split second. She sloppily re-established the link to the crystals and triggered the spell as quickly as she could.
A searing white light that was definitely not part of the spell surrounded them as the vortex formed and sucked them in. Twilight shoulders and neck flared in agony, and she smelled burned fur and feathers before she blacked out.
= = =
"Twilight, dear? Can you hear me?"
Twilight had an odd impulse to answer, "No, I can't," but she licked her dry lips and croaked out, "Yes." She tried opening her eyes but her eyelids were gummy and it took some effort. When she managed it, the glare of light sent a jolt of pain through her head, so she immediately closed them again.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, darling! Let me pull the curtains!" There came the sound of metal rings sliding on a rod and the room dimmed.
Rarity's voice was richer and more mellow than Twilight remembered. She opened her eyes again and blinked in the low light of the hospital room. Rarity leaned over her, fine lines forming at the corners of her eyes as she smiled.
"It's so wonderful that you're awake! The doctors said you would heal quickly, but we didn't expect you to wake up for another day."
Twilight couldn't think of anything to say to that. She peered upward at her friend, studying her face carefully. What happened to her? Twilight thought. Has she been sick?
Rarity's smile faltered a bit. "Are you feeling alright, dear?"
Twilight tried moving a bit and felt surprisingly little pain. Then a question occurred to her. "Where's Windfall? There was a pegasus with me."
Rarity nodded. "She's alive and being treated. We couldn't know if she was a companion or one of the—whoever it was that attacked you, so she's being kept in a secure, guarded room. The doctors say she will recover. Not as quickly as you, of course, but eventually."
"That's good," Twilight said. "She's a friend."
Rarity's smile brightened. "Of course she is. Oh, I've missed you so much, Twilight Sparkle!" She leaned down and kissed Twilight on the cheek, and that's when the alicorn noticed the silver gray stripe in her friend's mane. "You just rest for a moment! I'm going to nip out and let the princesses and everypony else know you're awake. Don't worry, we won't mob you all at once, but they will be miffed at me if I don't tell them!"
Twilight caught a glimpse of a royal guard pony in the hallway as Rarity left the room.
She's older, Twilight thought. Much older than when I was captured. Did I miscalculate the spell, or… No, I triple checked. It must have been that last blast from the Monster.
Twilight looked around the room. It was a VIP suite of some sort. The was a silk bell-pull right next to her bed and she considered ringing for a nurse, but thought it might cause more fuss than she wanted, so instead, she cleared her throat and quietly called out for the guard mare outside her door.
The large door swung open just far enough for the guard to poke her muzzle into the room. "Did you call, Your Highness? Shall I summon a doctor?"
"No thank you," Twilight replied, "I just have a question. What is the exact date including the year, please?"
The guard was utterly professional and answered the question without hesitation. "It is the third day of May, 1037, Your Highness."
Twenty five years. Twilight had missed her target date by over twenty five years.
= = =
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