Epilogue
Once Upon a December
Star Swirl growls loudly as he stares at his desk, the spell he has been working on for the past week still eluding him. He knows it was possible to go further in time than a few minutes, he had visited plenty of places and times far further in the future than the calendar had years! Yet, for some reason, finding the exact point he wants to find in the timestream seems to be impossible!
How, with all the power, all the research, all the countless years and all the training, how can he not find his daughter!? How could she just vanish from under his nose? From under the watchful eyes of not just one, but two goddesses?
“Where is she!?” Star Swirl shouts, sweeping a hoof over his desk, papers and magical devices scattering across the room. Breathing heavily, ears back against his head, Star Swirl starts pacing. “Why can’t I find her? Where could she have gone to remove her so firmly from the world?”
Turning around he stops and looks at the fallen notes and objects on the floor. Sighing, he picks them up and starts putting them back where they belong, pausing to look at each one in case he missed something the first hundred times. He is clearing missing something, some small minute detail that would make all the pieces fit correctly. Tossing the last few papers back onto the desk, he sits down and stares at the window, his eyes unfocused.
“I’m a terrible father…” he whispers, ears going back against his head, “I can’t even keep track of my daughter... “ He looks over at a picture on his desk, an aged pegasus mare smiling back at him. “Hope, where did I go wrong? How could I have failed you…?” The picture, of course, does not reply, for his wife had been dead for many years now.
Shaking his head, Star Swirl rises from the desk and walks out of his study, going up the stairs to the room he keeps some of his more dangerous or fragile experiments and instruments. Perhaps one of them holds the answer? At the very least, getting up and walking around will help him think.
Stopping at the door, Star Swirl uses his magic to open the various locks and disarm the different magical traps and obstacles he has placed upon the entryway. You could never be too careful, especially after he had caught Radiant’s friend attempting to sneak out that spellbook on forbidden magic! He had known that colt was a bad apple, but did anyone listen? Well… Amore had, but the poor mare had decided to try to tackle the problem with love, instead of locking him in a dungeon and throwing away the key like Star Swirl had insisted they do.
And where had that gotten them? Amore was dead, Radiant was missing, and it was all because Sombra had smiled and made Radiant’s heart flutter. So what if he was a prime candidate for the Captain of the Crystal Guard, or that he was admittedly a handsome stallion. Or that he was a gifted student of magic, or that he had complimented Star Swirl on his theory of transdimensional displacement when he had finished creating the mirrors. He was still a horrible, terrible pony! He had destroyed everything Hope had fought to build up! The last true vestige of the Equus Empire outside of Celestia and Luna was now gone! Destroyed because some young colt couldn’t resist power!
Growling, Star Swirl opens the door a little harder than he intended, causing a boom to resound through the tower, the sound not too far from a peal of thunder. Ignoring the fact that he has likely stirred awake half the Castle -- with perhaps the exception of Luna who is likely still awake -- Star Swirl walks into the room and closes the door with another thunderous boom.
Striding to the center of the large room, Star Swirl looks around, his eyes drifting from object to object in the hopes that something will spark an idea, a thought, anything. However, no matter what he looks at, from the mirror leading to a universe populated by ‘humans’ to the wall of scrolls holding his most expansive spells, nothing sparks an idea.
Nothing, that is until he looks at the massive hourglass he had built. Normally, it was supposed to sit idle, the sand frozen in time and space until he needed to use it to test one of his spells. Perhaps he has been going about this the wrong way. Perhaps, he could use the sand to track the power of the Virtues through time? Radiant had some of that power, she had shown herself to perhaps be the pony to take over for her mother… perhaps… perhaps?
Running over to the hourglass, Star Swirl levitates one of his spells off of the rack nearby, and opens it up. Yes, perhaps he can use it to track her that way? If he uses the sand to lock onto the Virtue of Hope?
Powering up his horn, Star Swirl doesn’t even think twice.
The spell impacts the hourglass, and for a moment the sand shifts, then nothing. Growling, he powers up his horn again, directing more power at it. Once more, the spell seems to work for a moment, but only a fraction of a second longer. Stomping a hoof, Star Swirl draws on more power.
For what seems like hours he draws on increasingly more power with the same results until, in a fit of rage he draws as deeply as he can on every single magical reserve he has stashed in his tower, down to the primal magical energy that holds together the very fabric of the universe. Howling in rage, his horn and eyes glowing brightly as the very power of creation is held within his hooves, he aims the spell at the hourglass and releases it. In slow motion, he watches the beam of pure creation impact the glass, which for a moment resists it before allowing it to impact the sand beyond with a muted sound.
Stumbling, Star Swirl leans against a nearby table breathing heavily as the sand starts to glow brightly. Then flow forward.
He had done it! The spell is working!
As the sand flows forward, images start to appear. Pictures of strange ponies Star Swirl has never met flash across it, the most common being a grey unicorn with dark blue hair. For a moment, Star Swirl swears he sees her wearing Hope’s bracers, but before he can get closer the glass starts to crack and the hourglass starts to vibrate dangerously. Star Swirl is able to take a few halting steps backwards before the energy contained inside the hourglass, which was never meant nor built to handle the stress he has put it under, shatters in an explosion of sand and shards of red hot glass.
Instantly, the aged wizard throws his arms up in front of his face, expecting to feel the sharp pain of the flying shrapnel. Instead he feels nothing, and when he peeks around one arm he finds a shard of glass hovering frozen in the air before him. In fact, the entire room seems to be frozen, objects and papers suspended in the air as they are thrown from their perches by the energy of the explosion. Leaning his head to one side, Star Swirl regards this curious turn of events silently wishing he had a roll or parchment and a pen to write down his observations. Reaching out with one hoof, he touches the shard of glass in front of him, and suddenly everything rushes back towards where the hourglass had stood with a very loud, very jarring, boom….
--------
Waking with a start, a young colt breathes heavily as he lights his horn to illuminate the room around him. Placing a forehoof to his chest, the feeling of his heart beating in his chest like a drum, the colt blinks away tears as he looks around with wild and fearful eyes slowly.
For a single terrifying moment, he had heard a voice speaking to him as he slept. The voice had been old, if the scratchy and worn quality of it was any indication, and had shouted a single sentence.
“Find my daughter…” the colt whispers softly, his dark grey wings coming out from beneath his blanket to wrap gold and blue primaries around himself protectively. “That was scary…” Shivering at the memory of the nightmare, the young colt gets out of the simple bed he has and grabs the warm blanket he had been sleeping under as he makes his way slowly towards the door of his room.
Opening the door slowly, the young alicorn defly slips into the hallway on silent hooves, his blanket wrapped around himself like the cloak of some ancient wizard or king with only the tip of his muzzle and end of his horn daring to peek out from beneath. He advances swiftly, his quest taking him beyond the towering glass windows that look out to the ancient snowbound city beyond, pausing only to gaze once more at the perpetual blizzard that holds his home in it’s icy talons.
Yet he does not dare linger long anywhere, and soon he finds himself at the bottom of the tower he calls home, pausing only when he reaches the ancient and worn doors that bear the sun and moon upon them. Raising a hoof to push the door open, he stops when he hears voices from inside.
“I know he came here!” the voice of a mare shouts, the ferocity of it reminding the colt of the voice he heard in his dreams. “He came to this city, and found something here that took him from us! And I know he returned to it when he was slain, I felt it!”
“I cannot help you, young one,” another voice, another mare, the familiarity of it bringing comfort to the colt. “As I told your friend I could not. This city was his doom, as it will be yours if you do not leave it.”
“I will not leave until I find him,” the mare says softly, her voice carrying an edge to it. “And I will not allow an ancient shadow to tell me that I cannot.”
“Then go,” the familiar voice says, “go and meet your fate, as he did.”
“I’ll be back,” the angry mare says, followed by rapid almost stomping hoofsteps towards the door.
Scurrying backwards, the young colt quickly dives into the shadows of a nearby plant pot, the small crystalline bush held within hiding him from view. He pokes his head out right as the doors open, only to shrink back as a dark purple unicorn mare with a light blue mane storms out of the room beyond the doors.
She stops, her angry blue eyes looking around as she adjusts what looks to be plate armor beneath her heavy black fur-lined cloak, the clinking of metal and the creak of leather drawing forth unfamiliar memories in the colt. Then as quick as she came, the mare turns and canters quickly down the hallway, and the colt finds himself coming from his hiding spot slowly as he tries to keep her in his view. Something about her is familiar, tugs at a part of him that he does not know, a part that is full of shadowy memories of darkness and despair.
But above all, he can recall the image of a dark unicorn, draped in shadows and wreathed in blood red flames. A tyrant, though he does not know how he knows, the pony scares him above all.
Shivering heavily, tears forming in his eyes as he tries to suppress the images of the evil pony, he sniffles and sits down.
“My dear child,” the familiar voice comes from the open doorway to what had once been a meeting hall, “what are you doing out of bed at this late hour?”
Turning to look up at the form of the cloaked white mare behind him, the colt stands up and quickly goes to latch onto one of her forelegs. “I had another nightmare, mama,” the colt says softly as he trembles against an amber and white leg.
“Shhh, it’s alright,” the mare comforts the young colt as she sits down and pulls him against herself before leaning down and brushing a tear from one of his cheeks with a hoof. “It’s alright now, no nightmare can get you while I’m here.”
“Can I sleep with you tonight, mama?” the colt asks softly, looking up at the mare hopefully.
“Of course,” the mare replies as a warm smile spreads over her scarred face, the blindfold she is wearing shifting slightly. “Come, let us retire then for the evening.” She releases the colt and stands up as she extends a mangled wing from beneath her cloak to lay across the colt beside her. The action clearly pains her greatly, but she does it all the same as she leads the way back through the ancient tower, the only light in the hallways coming from her and the colt’s horns.
Soon they are back up at the top of the tower, and moving towards the large room in which the mare slept. To get there, they pass by the still slightly ajar door of the room the colt sleeps in, which has the emblem of a sun on it, and the name ‘Tia’ painted on it in faded gold lettering.
Moving into the master bedroom, the colt hurries forward and jumps up onto the large four poster bed, and quickly settles down as the mare removes her cloak and folds her wings back up. The last action causes the large alicorn mare to wince and hiss slightly, causing the colt to look at her with worried eyes.
“Are you alright, mama?” the colt asks softly.
“I am,” the mare replies softly as she goes and climbs onto the bed. “The cold is simply seeping into my old injuries a little more today, that’s all.”
“O-oh,” the colt murmurs softly as he goes and snuggles up against the mare’s side. “I’ll keep you warm, then,” he offers innocently.
“Thank you,” the mare chuckles as she leans over and kisses the colt softly on the top of his head. “I love you, sleep well my little Luz.”
“I love you too mama,” Luz replies before yawning and laying his head down against the mare’s side.