//------------------------------// // Epilogue for Part Two: Smothering Dreams // Story: Rekindled Embers // by applezombi //------------------------------// Epilogue to Part Two: Smothering Dreams              The cell was tiny.  Barely even ten paces across.  Sunset Shimmer was sure; she’d checked at least a hundred times now.  Pacing out the width of her cell was certainly better than trying to sleep again.              It was better than the nightmares.  It was better than thinking about what was coming.  She’d seen the headspony’s block, perched on the raised platform in the square below.  The brutes that served as her guards had made sure she saw it on her way to the prison.              It was already stained with blood by the time she’d gotten there.              The last few months blended together in a blur of horror.  Discovering a slew of messages from Twilight, spanning decades.  Driving frantically to Canterlot High, sprinting to the portal.  The panic of finding it closed.  A flurry of text messages to her friends, begging them to come and help.              She’d promised them all she’d be back, when they finally managed to summon the magic to re-ignite the portal.  Just a quick trip to the other side, to check on what had happened.  Barely poking her head through.              By the time she realized the portal wasn’t going to work that way any longer (or at all) it was too late.  If Starlight hadn’t been there to help her she would have been taken by the Diarchy right then and there.              Thinking of Starlight made her want to start weeping.  The poor mare’s haggard appearance was forever burned into Sunset’s memory; a far cry from the cheerful, friendly girl who had helped save Sunset and her friends from Juniper Montage.  Instead, Starlight was a shell of her old self: a sunken, withered thing, twisted by dark magic and slowly losing her grip on reality.  She’d had barely enough of herself left to remember Sunset and beg her for help.              The next few weeks had been a whirlwind.  Meeting the Manehatten Resistance.  Somehow agreeing to lead them in their fight against the Diarchy.  And then the siege.   Fighting.  Running.  Hiding.              When Sunset had been in the human world, she’d spent lots of time in school wondering why she was even bothering to learn things like human history and human literature.  They were a cruel, brutal, and hateful race, at times, and their history was full of violence.  But the world she found herself in now was so much more nightmarish than the one she’d left behind.              There was one bit from High School that stuck in her head.  A poem, something about some human war she’d never bothered to remember.  But the words of the poem were repeating in her head, now paired with the twisted, broken corpses of the unicorns who had dared to flock to the banner of freedom she had raised.              The first to die was Melody Flow, a middle-aged unicorn mother.  Sunset had found her face up, her mouth slack, lolling open and her eyes frozen wide. Like a devil’s sick of sin.              Next were the brothers, a pair of retired Manehatten lawyers named Legal Writ and Subpoena.  They hadn’t cast their shield spell quickly enough before the poison gas overtook them.  Legal Writ was draped over top of his brother, almost as if he was trying to protect him. …guttering, choking, drowing…              There was Feather Dart, a pegasus mare who everypony knew lied about her age to join the fight.  She couldn’t leave her older brother behind, even though he was a unicorn and she wasn’t.  Her corpse was almost unrecognizable, riddled with arrows and shattered after being shot out of the sky. …Obscene as cancer…              Feather Dart’s brother hadn’t made it.  Sunset had seen him on the way out, writhing on the ground in horror and pain, his horn forcibly severed, blood from the beating he’d gotten oozing from his lips. …gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs…              Pacing wasn’t doing much better than sleeping at driving the images from her head.  Finally her legs gave out, and Sunset whimpered, sobbing out loud.  She didn’t care who outside her cell heard her.  It was a mercy that they’d be chopping off her head tomorrow; it would all be over.  She wished they’d killed her back in Manehatten, instead of dragging her back to their blasphemous city for some sort of public display.  Mostly, though, she just wished she could see her friends again.                Her stomach twisted and clenched, and she heaved.  Her stomach was empty, but that didn’t stop the dry, painful convulsions.  In her mouth, she could only taste her own bile and whatever foul potion they’d forced down her throat that had made her magic inaccessible.  She curled up around her aching stomach, clenching her eyes shut and just praying for tomorrow to come, so she could die. *   *   *   *   *              Sunset Shimmer didn’t know how long she’d stayed, curled up on the empty stone floor.  Long enough that her muscles were stiff and her throat was sticky and sore.  There was a damp stain on the floor from her tears, and from what little vomit had managed to fire out of her raw stomach.              She tensed her sore legs to stand, then thought better of it.  What was the point?  There was nothing left.  Her magic was gone, locked away by the poison that even now filled her mouth with a foul, metallic flavor.  Her old friends were gone, trapped across dimensions on the other side of a portal that would never work.  Her new friends were dead, probably buried in an unmarked, common grave.  The only…              A familiar warm tingle grew in her horn; the sensation of powerful magic being cast nearby.  Every skilled wizard knew what it felt like, and it was surprising enough to pull Sunset out of her hopelessness and to her hooves.  There was a smell in the air, like ozone, and she backed against the wall as she felt the pressure building in the room.              The flash was sudden and intense, and Sunset had to shield her eyes from the bright light.  In an instant, she wasn’t alone in the cell.  It was a changeling; he looked young, with a red and black carapace.  On one hoof he wore a strange looking apparatus; it looked like the cylinders attached to the armor of the soldiers who had besieged Manehattan.               “Sunset Shimmer?” the changeling spoke.  Sunset opened her mouth and tried to speak, but all that came out was a dull croak.  “Sunset Shimmer, I have no time.  Put this on.”  He began shedding the apparatus from his hoof.              “What…”              “I have no time for questions!”  He’d managed to shed the strange piece of hoof armor, and thrust it towards her.  Instinctively she backed away.  “Please, Sunset!  Put it on!”              “But…”              “It’s the only way!  Put on the gauntlet and you’ll live.  Leave it off and you’ll die.  Last chance to save the world, Sunset Shimmer.”              Sunset didn’t want to die, trembling with fear in front of a crowd howling for her blood.  Besides, she’d always been one to act quickly and decisively.              Somewhat unsteady, she lifted her hoof, and as quickly as he could the changeling shoved the gauntlet onto her.  His curved horn glowed as he tightened and attached the straps around her hoof, before shoving the attached battery into her grasp.              “Can you tell me…”              “No time.  Please.  When you meet Topaz, could you tell her…”  he trailed off, and his eyes filled with tears.  “Tell her I’m sorry.”              “Who?  I don’t…”              “I’m sorry,” he whispered.  “I’m sorry.  Just let them know…”              Whatever else he was going to say was lost in the sudden rush of air in her ears.  She’d expected to feel the building pressure of a teleportation spell, but this was something else.  Something so much bigger.  She was about to cry out, when everything went white. *   *   *   *   *              The pain was more intense than anything Sunset had ever felt.  Screaming bolts of agony drove into her skull.  She tried to reach up, to grasp her horn.  Maybe to wrench it off.  She couldn’t move.  Instead, she catapulted through an expanse of flashing green light.              Even in her distress, as she flailed about through the arcane nothingness, she realized what had happened.  It wasn’t teleportation; it was time travel.  Whoever that changeling was, they had somehow managed to recreate one of Star Swirl’s time travel spells and cast it using the gauntlet.  When the spell had worn off, it had dragged the source back to its own ‘present’.  Only in this case, the caster was the gauntlet that had summoned the spell itself.              Still, she’d been dragged from one doom to another.  Wherever she was heading towards, she was sure it was taking longer than it should.  The spell was falling apart, not quite strong enough to bring her back to when it had been cast.  There was nothing for her to breathe, and she hadn’t gotten enough warning to take a breath before she’d been brought here.  Sunset’s lungs were empty, but there was nothing to inhale; just flashing arcane light and the sounds of thousands of ticking clocks.  She’d float as a corpse in this timeless void for eternity.              No.              A few moments ago she’d been willing to give up.  To curl up and wait for death to come.              No.              Death would have been a release.  An escape from her memories.              You’re Sunset Shimmer.  You don’t give up.              Did she have a choice?  The sound of ticking clocks became irregular, as if they were falling apart and falling silent.  The aether-construct was coming undone; the motic structure of the spell was never going to hold up to such misuse.              Since when have rules and boundaries ever stopped Sunset Shimmer?              What else was she supposed to do?  Her horn hurt, her head hurt, her hooves hurt, her spine hurt.  Her lungs burned with need, her stomach still clenched from her earlier dry heaves.  Her eyes tried to close, to bury her away in darkness and sleep.              No.  Not you.  Not like this.              Her eyes flashed with the tiniest hint of her customary fire.  She was Sunset Shimmer, damnit.  Somewhere out there, ponies were counting on her.  Starlight, who she’d agreed to help.  Twilight, who had reached out to her through the journal, hoping and praying.  Her friends, who she would never see again.  Hundreds of thousands of ponies she’d never met.              Atta girl.  You got this, Sunset Shimmer!              Through the haze of pain and oxygen debt, she forced her mind to concentrate.  Here, within the crushing expanse of the time spell’s arcane passage, the potion didn’t seem to be affecting her.  Her horn lit with a blaze of crimson fire, and she wrapped herself in the strongest shield she could summon.              Suddenly the pain lessened, if only slightly.  The sound of the clocks was still fading and jerking about irregularly, however, and the green light was beginning to dim.  Or maybe that was her brain asphyxiating.  Sunset wasn’t sure.              Her next spell was one she’d only cast once; something she’d learned on a bored whim years ago, before abandoning her studies under Celestia and fleeing to the human world.  A blood-oxygenation spell, something for use in medical emergencies.  Or scuba diving emergencies.  It was a stop-gap; she still needed to breathe, but it would keep her awake and aware for a few moments longer.  Suddenly everything brightened, and she was able to focus enough to think about what had happened.              Somepony (or perhaps someling?) had recreated one of Star Swirl’s time spells.  They had cast it using the arcane gauntlet she now wore.  She glanced down at the device; the metal was cracking and warping, and the crystals embedded in the sides were dull and dim.  She could feel nothing from the device.              Whoever had cast the spell knew how it worked in a general sense, but hadn’t known its limitations.  The spell was simply trying to perform as it was created to perform, but was obviously malfunctioning due to the switch in targets.  If she couldn’t figure out how to stabilize the spell, she’d be torn apart.  Carefully, she raised her gauntleted hoof to her horn and touched it with her magic.  The gauntlet felt… empty.  Maybe even a little hungry.  She poured a little more in, and saw the red gem on the side of the gauntlet sparkling slightly.  She flared her horn, filling the battery with magic, and watched as first the red gem, then the yellow and three green, began glowing with a steady light.              In the green glow around her, white circular symbols appeared, like clocks, spinning within each other.  The sounds of ticking stabilized, increasing in volume until it pounded in her ears.              But now Sunset had a new problem.  Her eyes drooped with fatigue; filling the gauntlet had taken more out of her than she’d thought.  Her horn sparked and flickered, and it was a struggle to keep it lit.  She cast her blood oxygenation spell again, but she could feel the feeble spell struggling to form.  She had maybe minutes before she started to asphyxiate again.  Possibly even less.              The problem was, the spell took far more energy to return to the present than it had to slip into the past.  Sunset knew this because that was how Starswirl designed time spells; she’d studied the theory back when she’d been Celestia’s student.  It was a failsafe, made to preclude steps that went too far back into the past.  Starswirl hadn’t wanted to chance too much tampering, and if a pony could only go back for a short period, to the recent past, there was a lessened chance of catastrophic consequences.  Whoever had cast the spell with the gauntlet probably hadn’t known this.              The good news was that the gauntlet was still powering the spell.  She could see the glowing lights flickering on the side, and guessed that they worked much like the battery indicator on a human cell phone.  She’d filled it full, but two of the green lights were already dim and the third one was flickering.  Perhaps all she needed to do was pour more magic into the battery, and it would finish its work and drag her back to whoever had sent the rescue changeling.              But magic was never that simple.  She touched her flickering horn to the gauntlet, to feel the flow of motes through the device.  They were dispersing at a rapid rate, dissolving into the spell construct she was trapped in.              “Okay, Sunset, you’re smart enough to figure this out,” she muttered into the aether.  “The spell is draining motes faster than you can replenish.  With your luck, there won’t be enough to finish powering the spell.  Even if there is, you might be out of air before then.”  Her voice echoed into the green nothingness, which was odd because there was no air.  Sound shouldn’t even be traveling here.  Then again, she could hear the ticking of the clocks.  They were once again starting to slow.              Oddly enough, the idea amused her.  Starswirl was brilliant, but he had always imbued his spells with idiosyncratic aesthetics, like the clock motif within the arcane construct of a time-travel spell.  All around her were circular clock symbols, each one spinning at a different…              Wait.              She reached out to one of them with her magic.  She was barely strong enough to touch the symbol, but it lit with a cerulean glow.  The round interior suddenly flickered to life with an image; a windswept island and a crashed airship.  Distant figures were crawling out of the wreckage.  Sunset tried to peer closer, to see what was happening, but her magic faltered and the image disappeared.              Taking a deep breath, she reached out to another.  This one showed a familiar face; Twilight Sparkle, though a tiny foal, straining and grunting with effort, trying to squeeze a spark of magic out of her horn as she stood in front of a large, inert egg.  Sunset lit a third, and this time saw an exhausted unicorn with a silvery grey beard facing off against three hauntingly familiar serpentine monsters.              These clocks weren’t simply decorations, Sunset realized.  They were windows.  Glimpses into important events in history.  Turning points, if her guess was correct.  Her discovery gave her a second wind, and she repeated the process.  She saw Luna and Celestia’s bitter fight.  She watched her own desperate flight through the Crystal Castle, Twilight in hot pursuit to retrieve a stolen crown.  She even saw Twilight arguing with an angry-looking Starlight Glimmer, finally yelling at her to leave.              There had to be something she could use, here.  Something she could take hold of, to propel herself to safety.  Maybe she could find the window that represented the original time spell being cast.  Maybe…              She found something.  A clock, like the others, but this one silent.  It wasn’t ticking; indeed, unlike all the others, this one had no hands.  She reached out with her horn, but this time it didn’t respond.              “Stupid horn, come on!” Sunset moaned with frustration.  Black swirls were beginning to spark at the edge of her vision.  Her oxygen spell had worn off.  She flailed with her hooves, trying to run in the gravity-free nothingness, somehow hoping to propel herself towards the clock.  “Please!”  She pushed again, desperately.  Her chest hurt.  Her horn hurt.  She closed her eyes, pushing her magic harder than she ever had before.  Glancing down, she watched as the last gem on the gauntlet, the red light, blinked.              Blinked.              Then went dark.              That was it.  She was going to die.  The spell construct would fall apart, the aether would disperse, and Sunset Shimmer would cease to exist.  Nopony would be left to remember Feather Dart.  Legal Writ and Subpeona.  Melody Flow.  Nopony would ever remember her friends, either.  She was the only connection.  Time would flow on, and…              …forget.              “No!” Sunset shrieked, the injustice of it all, the utter, uncaring indifference filling her with a cold burn of determined fury.  “I… Won’t… LOSE!”              One more time, her horn lit for just an instant, and she reached out to the still clock.  Beyond, was a star-lit sky.              Sunset gaped, before feeling an irresistible pull.  She flew through the green expanse, catapulting through the round window and onto a path.              She took a deep breath.  And another.  She collapsed in an exhausted pile as she filled her lungs with sweet oxygen over and over.  Sunset wanted nothing more than to stand up, to open her eyes and look around.  She knew where she was.  There was a time in her life where this was the only thing she’d wanted.  Needed.  She’d even confronted Celestia, demanded to be brought here, along with everything that entailed. “Hello, Sunset.”                 Sunset finally raised her head to see the pony before her.  Twilight Sparkle stood there, though this was a Twilight Sparkle very different from the one Sunset knew.  For one thing, she was a pony.  She was much taller than Sunset remembered, with a floating, ethereal mane that reminded Sunset of Princess Celestia.              “P-princess Twilight.”              “Please, Sunset.  We’ve been friends for how long?” The Princess smirked, and for a moment Sunset could see the old Twilight, the unsure, eager, nerdy girl, clutching at the hem of her skirt nervously.              “I don’t know if that question has an answer.  At least not here.  Time has no meaning on the Starlit Path.”              “Oh, so you know a bit about where we are?” Twilight smiled.  “That will make things quicker.”  She waved a hoof, and dozens of square images appeared in the air around them.  They were scenes from Sunset’s life.  Here, Twilight Sparkle reaching down with a hand to pull a sobbing Sunset from a crater.  There, Sunset embracing a trembling girl with green hair.  Sunset with an angel's wings at the Friendship Games. Sunset leading her friends against the monstrous form of Gloriosa Daisy. Sunset’s eyes darted over the images, both the shameful and the triumphant.              “I don’t deserve to be here,” she whispered, catching a glimpse of one of her most shameful moments: an argument held with Celestia, standing in front of a mirror.  “I don’t deserve this.”              “Maybe it isn’t about what you deserve,” Twilight said.  “Maybe it’s about what choices you made, what choices you didn’t make, and where they led you.  Here.”              But it wasn’t what Sunset wanted to hear.  She slumped onto the path, tears streaming down her cheeks.  “I wasn’t there.  I should have been there for you.  I don’t know what happened; if I hadn’t gone camping, maybe I would have seen your messages earlier.  I could have…”              A hoof gently touched her lips, and she stopped, looking up at the wise eyes of her first friend; the eyes of a mare who had seen far too much.              “I don’t know what that might have changed, Sunset.  What I do know is that you’re here now.  And you have an opportunity.”  Twilight pointed at one of the images: Sunset, with a withered Starlight Gliimmer standing next to her, addressing a ragged crowd of unicorns and unicorn allies, assembled with the determination to take back Manehatten, to make it their own.  A place of safety and love.  “Like you did then.  You can go away, if you wanted.  Disappear.  You unlocked the inner workings of Starswirl’s time spell, I think.  You could probably do something with that.  Use it to go back to your old life, in the human world.”              “I can’t do that!” Sunset demanded.  But oh, how she wanted to!  She’d been at peace; enjoying her life with her friends.  It was a life where the only concerns she had were about where she would be attending college, how she would keep in touch with her closest friends.  Even silly, frivolous things like her love life; who she would date, who she would grow to love.  Maybe even put down roots in the human world, and start a family.              But that wasn’t for her.  She’d known as soon as she’d seen the stricken look in Starlight’s eyes.              “I know, my little pony,” Twilight sounded proud, her voice choked with emotion.  “That’s why you’re here.  You saw this, didn’t you?  When Celestia first showed you the mirror?”              “Yeah, but I…” she burned with guilt, her ears drooping with shame.  “I thought it meant something else.  Not… not like this.”              “Ponies like you and me were not meant for a predictable life, Sunset Shimmer,” Twilight said.  “Our lives seldom take a path that could be called ‘normal’.”              Sunset scoffed.  “That’s the truth.”  She sighed, falling silent as she watched the highlight reel of her greatest and darkest moments.  It was rather bittersweet; to have her most shameful failures paraded before her in this fashion, she couldn’t quite feel proud.  And yet…              “You’ve come such a long way, Sunset,” Twilight said, as if echoing her thoughts.  For all Sunset knew, Twilight could; nopony but the alicorns knew much of anything about the Starlit Path.  “Everything you’ve done, everything you’ve chosen, has led you right here.  And I think you’re strong enough to do what comes next.”              “Starlight did mention that you would need a new pony to lead the Elements of Harmony,” Sunset said.  Twilight looked at her, her smile mysterious.  “Did she?  And what do you think of that?” “I would, if you needed me to,” Sunset admitted.  “But…” “It doesn’t feel right, does it?” Twilight mused.  Sunset nodded.  “You’re right.  That role is not for you.  That destiny will fall to another, I think.”  The princess sighed.  “I’ll need you there, to help guide the new Elements through the process.  I’ve tried to help where I can, but I’ve been reaching out blindly.  I didn’t know what would happen, so most of my preparations had to be made before events played out.” “Just tell me what I can do, Twilight.”  “Simply be who you were always meant to be, Sunset Shimmer.” Sunset snorted.  “Just be myself, huh?  Somehow I think it’ll be more complicated than that.” “Of course it will,” Twilight laughed.  “But you were always one to tackle a challenge, weren’t you?” “Yeah, I guess,” Sunset looked up at Twilight with her signature smirk.  “Okay, princess.  What comes next?” “Next?  You ascend.  Then you wake up. It may take some time, your body and mind has been through quite the ordeal.”  Twilight’s eyes glowed white, and her horn crackled with power.  “Thus begins the reign of Princess Sunset Shimmer.  May it be long, glorious, and full of friendship.”