//------------------------------// // The Way Things Will Be // Story: Babel // by BaeroRemedy //------------------------------// The remnants of Ponyville were a nightmare frozen in time, a moment that everypony who had been a part of wished to leave behind. So here it was left, perfectly preserved. The rolling slopes of the countryside ground into a uniform flatness and stripped of all color and features. Now it was just a sheet of glass that dazzled and gleamed in the dim moonlight overhead. In the center of this desolate place rose a crystal spire, shattered and left broken. A temple soaked with the blood of innocents and heroes alike. Pieces of the structure, expelled from the center with great force, lay embedded in the ground like crystalline fingers reaching up from Tartarus itself to lay claim to the wasteland. A pair of violet eyes studied the landscape critically, tracing the glossy terrain and remembering her time spent among the buildings that once stood there. If she were to close her eyes she could imagine the little town that once was, all the inhabitants filling the streets as they went about their lives. She could still see Sugarcube Corner and smell the sweet sugary scents that filled streets around it. She could still hear the Apples hocking their fresh-picked produce in the market. Only in her memories, though. It was only in her memories that she could see all these things, and her friends, again. “I still don’t think we should be here, Twilight.” The mare beside her protested as a gust of wind caught the cloak draped over her head and back. “Princess Luna has this place marked as an exclusion zone for a reason.” Apprehension clung tightly to the words that fell from Twilight’s companion’s mouth into the chilly night air. “It’s my castle, Starlight.” Twilight spoke quietly as she kept her eyes fixed on the ruins of her home. She only received a nod from the hooded mare beside her in response. “Did you get what we need?” “Yeah.” Starlight’s horn lit up and a vial of electric blue liquid came from below her cloak. As it was brought closer, the little vial caused the fur on Twilight’s neck to stand on end and sent a buzz down her horn. “Do you really think this will work?” “It should, but there’s only one way to find out for sure.” Twilight took the vial from her student in her own magical grasp and gave it a once over before tucking it in her saddlebag. “You got it safely, right?” “The Everfree is dead, just like you said.” Starlight’s head turned towards it, now just a normal non-magical forest. “I thought the magic coming back would reconstitute the monsters, but no.” The mare shook her head. “I can’t figure it out.” “They can’t reconstitute if the spell that created them doesn’t exist anymore.” Twilight clarified as she readjusted her saddlebag and began to walk towards the castle in the distance. “The Event acted like one massive magic dispel, and whatever spell or ancient magic made those monsters just doesn’t exist anymore.” The alicorn rattled off the fact of nature easily, something she had figured out in the first week of being back to normal. “Not that anypony really minds right now.” The pair or sorceresses trotted off towards their destination, the only sound in the night being hooves crunching against the glassy ground below. Both mares were too lost in their memories at the moment, this being the first time either had been back to Ponyville since leaving months ago. Despite having physically left the town within a day of the Event ending, she had never mentally left this place. She still came back here every night, every time she closed her eyes. It was still home, whether she liked it or not, and this is where her heart would forever come to rest no matter how tortured a respite it might be. Twilight’s life had practically started in Ponyville. Yes, she had been born in Canterlot and spent her formative years in the capital city, but Ponyville was where she started to live. It was where she met her friends, where she discovered her destiny and earned her wings, it’s where she had learned so much and loved so many. It was also where she lost almost all of those things in the span of a month. It was where her story had started and certainly where it had ended, now here she was again trying to salvage some sort of epilogue for herself and more chapters for the country and the ponies in it she loved so much. She was determined to keep going on for however long it took to ensure Equestria’s safety. It was the entire reason she was back here. If she didn’t need to come back to Ponyville, she never would. A gust of wind swept across the still and shattered plains, catching Starlight’s hood and lifting it off of her head. Twilight caught the motion and instinctively turned her head and instantly regretted the act. The elongated muzzle still stuck around, as did the mouthful of sharp teeth from the time as a monster. To many that had survived through the terror of the Event, she still looked like one of those beasts just shrunk down to normal proportions. To Starlight herself, well it didn’t exactly help that the outside now matched what she thought lay on the inside. Twilight lit up her horn and pulled the hood back up over her pupil’s head, which earned her a thankful nod and a toothy smile from the unicorn. It was a long silent walk to the steps of the castle, one where both of the mares kept their gaze on the shattered spire. They both knew if they looked around the only thing they would see would be the deeds they had done and the destruction and death they had wrought. They reached their destination, though...and they waited. “Twilight, are you sure you want to go in there?” “I have to.” A hoof of the alicorn connected with the first step, disturbing a thick layer of dust that had settled on the golden staircase. She looked up to the similarly colored double doors which still hung open and gently swayed in the wind and the confidence and determination that once filled her heart drained into a sea of doubt and fear. Starlight rested a reassuring hoof on Twilight’s back, and that was the little push she needed. In the past Starlight had faced her failures and gone back to the town she had wronged and ruined, and now Twilight had to do the same. She had to push through and face it all for the greater good. The stairs were ascended and the door entered and that left Twilight face to face with the interior of her home. Only about twenty to thirty feet of the structure remained standing, the once cavernous interior cut off at the proverbial legs and left exposed to the star-filled sky overhead. The staircase that led to the extra bedrooms was crumbled now, completely gone save for the few steps that remained at the bottom. Chunks of the castle lay all around the floor, massive spears of bluish-purple that obstructed any true view of the floor. The screams and cries of her friends and the other survivors as they were teleported inside still echoed in this place, a splash of green blood from a Changeling could still be seen staining the floor in the center, and the stench of death and decay hung heavy in the air. All of that was disturbing, but not as much as the lack of magic was. In it’s short-lived prime, the castle was one of the most unique structures in the world. It hummed with pure magic that anypony with a horn and a good head on their shoulders could tell was different. If you understood what was happening and just concentrated on the mana that reverberated through the structure, you could enter a magical euphoria with just how pure it all was. Now it was dead. Twilight lit up her horn, partially just to check if there was any magic at all in this place but mainly to light their way. The two mares stepped over the rubble carefully as they made their way to the room in the back that housed what they were looking for. The door to the room at the back of the entrance hall was forced open with the combined magic of the mares, the hinges giving way and causing it to fall to the floor with a heavy thud. The princess and her apprentice stepped into the room and waved away the dust that their actions had kicked up before looking upon Twilight’s throne room. A hole sat in the dead center of the room. It was wide enough for a pony to go down, maybe even a fully grown alicorn, and went down into an inky abyss. A circular table two times the circumference of that hole and made of roughly the same material as the rest of the castle, had been visibly pushed to the side to uncover the entrance to the void below, leaving heavy and deep scratch marks on the floor. Seven chairs lay scattered around the room, each with a symbol on their backs and dust covering them. Twilight ignored everything but the table and strode over to it, making sure her eyes never strayed towards the hole in the middle of the room. She stood on her hind legs and placed her front hooves on the surface, her magic already withdrawing things from her saddlebag as she approached. A journal and the vial that Starlight had retrieved were sat on the flat and featureless tabletop. The other mare in the room stood beside the alicorn and watched on. The vial of neon blue liquid was lifted in a purple aura and held aloft as violet eyes studied it. She already knew what it was and she had theories about what it was about to do, but there was hesitation building in her heart. Needing to act before the hesitation overcame her, she pulled the cork out of the vial and poured the contents onto the table before her. There was a moment of dead silence and nothing happened, then the table began to glow. Slowly the glow spread across the entire surface and a projection map of Equestria formed over it, shaky and a few spots not appearing at all, but it was still there. “I don’t know if you can hear me.” Twilight whispered to the table. “I don’t even know how this thing really works...but we need your help. Equestria needs your help.” She could feel tears that she thought had been all but exhausted start to form in the corners of her eyes. “Just...show me. Show me where I can find them.” She tapped her journal with a hoof and then held it up to the table. The table, the map, flickered and flashed a few times as it seemingly processed the requests. Features on the map itself moved and flashed in and out of existence as the limited power the alicorn had presented to it worked through its system. Six copies of Twilight’s cutiemark appeared all over the map, slowly circling various points. Both mares looked at each other before both of them withdrew quills and inkwells and began to scribble notes on where the locations were. “Dragon Lands, Hayseed Swamp…” Twilight muttered to herself as her eyes flitted about the unstable map before her. There was also an island in the Crescent Bay, one over some old abandoned village in the middle of nowhere, and one in Manehattan itself. “Okay...I think that’s all of them.” She gave a small smile to the table like one might give to an old friend. “Thank you, truly.” Then the light of the table died as the last of the magic it had been provided was spent. The map flickered and disappeared, likely for the last time. Here it would sit for the rest of time without the life it had used to guide her and her friends in the past. She gave it a small pat and a sigh escaped her lips. “Okay...time to get started on gathering these up.” Twilight shook the errant sad thoughts from her mind and nodded towards Starlight. “No time to lose.” “Are you sure, Twilight? We’ve been on the move for months now. Are you sure you don’t want to go back to Manehattan for a bit and just, y’know, relax?” Starlight offered, a hoof rubbing the back of her neck. “You’ve barely slept lately, you’ve been working yourself to the bone.” “We need to do this, Starlight. It’s the only way to make sure Equestria is safe.” Twilight responded, her voice an iron grip of confidence that gave no quarter to doubt or apprehension. “If you want to go back to Manehattan for a bit, I understand.” Her voice mellowed a bit as the image of Celestia popped into her mind. “But I can’t...not until I get this done.” “Before we leave do you want to...go down there?” Starlight asked, nodding towards the hole in the floor. Twilight followed her student’s gaze to the hole and her eyes locked onto it automatically. She knew that the five piles of ashes that spilled into the empty lakebed were still there, only the jewelry they once used to fight off the great evils of the world were removed from the area. Everything else was as it was left on that day. “Not today…” Twilight mumbled. “When I’m done...when I’m done, I’ll let them know.”