//------------------------------//
// Chapter Six: The First Day of the Rest of Your Life 
// Story: Ouroboros 
// by OfTheIronwilled 
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A ragged noise croaked out, echoing across that frosty abyss of stars. Twilight shook her head, twitched at her ears. She couldn’t believe it. No, surely– surely she misheard!

Her whole body quaking, Twilight reached out to the mental link tying her to the Cosmic Library. It took her a few attempts – her magic slipped off the matrices like sand in a sieve as she gasped in raspy breath – but eventually she grabbed hold and, with a flick of her horn, replayed the memory.

“The instant the spell is cast everything you have ever known will cease to have ever existed.”

Her knees nearly buckled, but she held fast. She couldn’t panic now; she needed to focus. Think Twilight, think!

That’s it. Twilight whinnied, barked out a laugh that came out sounding more like a sob. She was overthinking this, surely. The memory she had just watched was of the very first attempt of the Ouroboros spell, something which Mobius Strip herself said was being used as a last resort in that timeline. Surely, after presumably multiple generations of ponies, a permanent solution to the breaking of the Seal had been found, or the spell had been modified?

But Twilight thought back to the past versions of Celestia and Luna, their tear-streaked faces screwed up in grieved agony. The screen itself floated up to face her as her mind swirled on the image, flashed a still picture of Luna’s sobbing, snot-covered muzzle over the cosmos.

It felt like her stomach hit the floor. No. No, that– that couldn’t be it, it couldn’t. Celestia had told her so little; this had to be some kind of test.

Her breath thinning, her chest erupting into fire, Twilight flared her horn to life. She grabbed hold of that mental link, the string attaching her invisibly to that image of Luna, and she yanked. She dredged up all of her energy and exploded it outwards across the leyline, her mane whipping in that ethereal breeze in response, and thought: what about the previous uses of the spell?

And with the noise of a shuffling deck of cards, there came the screens: blossoming into being with a twinkle of fantastic light that rivaled the stars, sliding in like an unspooling rollfilm. They– there were…

There were so many.

Twilight’s horn tingled at the feedback, while sickening blurs of color swooshed past her muzzle. Her mouth went dry and stale as hot sand. Her whole body trembled. 

Hundreds– no, thousands of ponies sped past her in a smear of noise and light. The sounds of it all pierced her ears, rattled in her skull; the light washed over her body coldly, flickered so intensely Twilight had to squint her eyes. Ponies crying, holding their loved ones, sucking in the magical dew made of the heavenly bodies… continuing on. Never… never going back home.

At some point Twilight had collapsed. Her breathing was ragged, her chest spasming in wild jerks as she fought for air. The invisible ground below chilled her to the bone, and she shook as if she were freezing to death. Fat, hot tears pooled in her eyes – and they didn’t even give her the service of falling. Instead, they bloomed upwards into globs of salt and liquid, drifted off into the cosmos to refract that frosty starshine.

Her mind was swimming. So many thoughts flashed through her head, so fast, almost the same speed as that eternal roll of screens still blurring past. Her parents. Her brother, Shining Armor, and Cadance. All the acquaintances she had made in Ponyville. Luna. Celestia.

They were gone. Dead. Except – no, death would imply their very existence hadn’t been taken from them. They had been erased, evaporated beyond the concept of dust. Twilight Sparkle had failed not only Equestria, but the entirety of Equus, and she’d done so before she could even know it needed saving. Now they… a sob heaved from her throat, her stomach… they were all gone, and she didn’t even have a chance to stop it because Celestia hadn’t told her what to expect and–

– and the screens just wouldn’t stop coming.

How many? How many ponies had tried and failed to save their universe, their timeline? How many ponies, just like her and her friends, like Celestia and Luna, had their homes vanish into nothingness?

With a scream, Twilight burned the screens to nothing. Their golden ashes floated amongst the unyielding stars.

Twilight Sparkle sobbed.

What was she going to tell the girls?







For a moment, the darkness was absolute.

Nearby was a jingle and a grunt of effort, and then, with a sizzling noise, pale yellow light blossomed over the ice in a blinding sphere. It unfolded over Mare, the pale gray pony holding the lantern, and dyed her honey gold beneath the swaying glass. As the light listed, the world swirled in and out of tilting shadow, until Mare brought up a forehoof, coated with thick furs, and stilled it. Inside the fireflies buzzed, flittered about on a carpet of glowing mosses.

Mare was the only thing in the world, then, a lone pony on an island of light. Outside of that bubble lay absolution.

“First Born!” she called out into the darkness, her voice a beacon in the nothingness. “Second! This way, dears.”

First, blinking past the splotches dancing in her vision from the light, toddled towards Mare. She made sure to keep her tail wrapped tight around Second’s withers as they crushed over the ice in their studded horseshoes. Eventually they made it inside the bubble; in an instant light flooded over First, and she could see that she did, indeed, still have her hooves, and no horrible monster pony had eaten them while she was in the shadows.

Mare wiped away Second’s tears with a cloth, with a gentle smile.

“So sorry about that, children. It won’t happen again. Now come. There’s still work to be done.”

First Born thought it was rather unfair that they keep going on, since Second had gotten so scared and was still hiccuping with salt streaming down her face, but she didn’t dare say anything out of turn: the Village still needed to be looked after, after all. So, with a hushed coo, she swished her tail gently over Second’s ruddy cheeks, then turned back to Mare as the pony twirled around with a sway of the light.

The lantern forming a small cone of light which shone gold and white across their path, the three ponies trotted across the chilled earth in silence. Wind whipped, croning out a whistling wail of noise, and it carried small tufts of white and gray fluff that seemed to magically appear inside of the light, build on the lantern’s surface. It collected on First Born’s furs in puffy clumps, then evaporated in tiny streams of steam until only ashy scars were left on her clothing. First just rubbed at the stuff, smearing it into dark stains against the white of her own coat and mane, and stumbled along after Mare with Second in tow – she would hate to get left behind and be swallowed by that abyss of nothingness again.

Eventually, when First’s tiny legs were aching and shivering with exertion and cold, and she was practically dragging Second by her tail, Mare stopped dead. She motioned with a hoof, and the fillies scrabbled forward, chips of ice spraying from their shoes.

They stood on a precipice.

Below them stretched a thick layer of ice, blue and white and coated with a fine coat of frosty snow. It had rolled on endlessly on the way here, a constant glare from the lantern bouncing off of its surface as they trudged – now, a few tail lengths away, it dropped steep into another pit of dark. Cracks webbed across the ground, gashes cut into the eternal white and leaking darkness upwards, then those cracks widened, bulged, exploded until only chunks of ice floated in some inky black soup. The lantern caught on refracted edges of the pool in its radius, twinkled bright on the gently rolling surface like spinning gemstones.

They’d reached the ocean. First Born had never been allowed to see it before now. The way the older ponies talked, she always thought it was some exciting, frothing wake that spewed up spray and was loaded with scary monsters, but this just seemed like more darkness to her. And it was quiet. The only noise was the shifting of waves rippling against the lip of ice, the occasional clack of chunks as they touched the mainland.

First’s mouth puckered. This was supposed to be some important job for her Village, not just more of the same! Be good, be quiet, do chores – she thought this would be something fun! She stomped her hoof to the cold ground with a sharp tink, a ripple of the dark waters nearby.

At the same time Mare huffed out a snort, hot and steaming and grumbling. With a squeak, First jumped back, thinking she was getting in trouble for making such an unexpected noise, or for not respecting the work that fed her Village – then:

“Ach, and now I’ve forgotten the good hooks,” Mare grumbled. She turned to the fillies with a crooked smile. “So sorry, children. Here.”

She fished the lantern off its crook and placed it to the ice below with a tiny ‘tink’ of the glass, its light flaring off the surface in a spark of blinding white for a moment. When it died away, specks of black dancing in First’s vision, Mare stood at the edge of that effervescent dome, her forelegs casting deep scarring shadows into the snow beyond.

“I can make my way without it. First Born, watch after the filly, would you?”

Without waiting for an answer, Mare turned tail and stomped through the frost, crunching away until even the noise of her departure died into bleak nothingness. The wind whistled hollowly against the rippling water lapping at the shore.

First Born stomped at the frosty ground. She could almost scream, but she held her tongue so she wouldn’t get in trouble. Not only did it turn out that the ocean was a boring chore just like everything else, but now she had to watch one of the Foals all by herself! It just wasn’t fair, it–

There was a laugh.

With a snort, First turned and hissed at Second, “Sister, shush! You know we’re not supposed to speak unless spoken to!”

Second Born turned her doe-eyes up to First and shook her head. There were still dark tracks running slick down the snow-white pelt below her eyes. “I-It wasn’t me. I didn’t say anything, I swear.”

First ground her teeth and grumbled lowly in her throat; Foals weren’t to talk back to their elders! But then, bubbling up over the churning waters, bouncing through the glaciers in a watery echo, another giggle broke across the icy wastes. Second’s mouth hadn’t moved.

Her ears twitching around atop her head, First Born spun around. Her heart thudded up into her throat, her tail thrashing – was Mare back? That didn’t sound like her. Who else would be all the way out here? Another Mare or Stallion fishing for the Village?

Eventually she honed in on the sound, and jerked around to where the ocean lay dark and glassy under the light of the lantern. There, poking out of one of the crashing waves was–

First Born sucked in a ragged gasp, spit flying down her muzzle. She shot out her tail and yanked Second Born to her side, shivering.

A seapony! She knew there were monsters out here!

Its big bulbous eyes, large and round as fishbowls, and slitted in the gaze of a predator’s, peeked over the pitch blackness. The lantern’s sweet glow pooled over the thing’s head, casting the reflection from its scales glimmering shining crimson, a pool of blood-red over the snow. A row of fins jutted from the top of its head, paper-thin and translucent, and glowing oh so faintly as if it were made of living moss. It rose up in the sea, water dripping black as tar down its smooth, iridescent body, and it opened its mouth in a gnarled smile – rows of hot-white teeth flashed in the firelight, sharpened to wicked, crooked points.

“Hi!” it squeaked.








Twilight felt numb as she popped back into the swamp by her friends. Her horseshoes squished in the peaty ground below, and the dried, cracking mud caked into her fetlocks started to seep with moisture again, but she didn’t feel any of it. She didn’t say anything either; what was there to say? How could she?

Around her, her friends flinched at the sound of her teleportation. They’d all settled down on a dryer area of land, and were picking at the dirt with their forehooves. Rainbow Dash was flying a tight, lazy circle, her head hung low - when Twilight flashed back in with a sharp crack of magic, Rainbow Dash whipped her head at her with a grimace.

“Finally!” she grumbled, swooping in close. “Hay, Twi, you said you’d be gone for a few minutes. I was getting so bored!”

Rarity, curling up her tail to avoid it splashing in the muck, and no longer squinting at the light from her headache, nudged at Rainbow with a hoof and a tut.

“Rainbow,” she scolded, then turned to Twilight, “Darling, we were beginning to worry. Are you alright? Did you learn something useful?”

And then… then they were all staring at her. Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, who had once again been observing toads and dragonflies, stopped their babbling and turned to her with calm, expectant grins. Applejack, settled down to the peat, lifted her hat from her eyes and raised her eyebrows in her direction. Rarity and Rainbow Dash stood directly in front of her, their eyes burning into her as they waited for an answer, while Spike, absolutely caked with mud from toe to tailtip, sat glancing grumpily in her direction a few hoof-falls away. 

Twilight’s stomach dropped. They were– they were all looking at her, for an answer, for an explanation, and the one she had… how could she possibly tell them? Applejack, who loved her family, her kin, more than life itself; Pinkie Pie, who was friends with everypony; Fluttershy, whose home was packed with animal friends; Rainbow Dash and Rarity, who had sisters and families to look out for; Spike, who was still just a baby dragon. They… they would all be so broken. Her throat spasmed and croaked, her eyes burned.

Why couldn’t Princess Celestia have told her sooner? Why couldn’t they have had the opportunity to say goodbye, or grieve or– or hay, anything? If nothing else, Twilight could have used her council for how to explain this to them, but– but instead it was all on her, and she didn’t know how in the hoof to break it to them and–

Rarity’s expression had drooped. Fluttershy glanced at her with panic and sorrow in her eyes, her wings fluffing out behind her.

“Twilight?” she muttered.

“I…” Twilight coughed. Her whole body shook. “I can’t…”

In an instant her friends were on their hooves. They all crowded in close, their presence warm all around her as they snuggled in. Rarity leaned up against her side to support her as her knees jiggled, while Rainbow Dash floated up above and placed a dirty hoof gently to the top of her mane.

“Whatever is the matter, dear?” Rarity asked, breathless.

Applejack stood up last, brushing herself off and padding over in a smooth gait. She spat the straw from her mouth, scooped Twilight’s cheek delicately into her hoof, and looked at her full in the face. Her green eyes shone, burning so emerald and deep and kindly into Twilight’s own.

“Twi, Sugar,” she breathed. She smelled like apples. “Remember what we talked about. We’re all here with you.”

Twilight sniffled, drew in a shuddering breath. She did her best to breathe evenly and deeply, the way Cadance had shown her as a foal, and focused on Applejack’s eyes boring into her own. If nothing else, she was here with the greatest friends a mare could ever ask for. If she just focused on this – the rock solid hoof to her cheek, the warm bodies pressed close to her, the pure care and love radiating from every one of her friends as they stared worriedly at her ruddy cheeks… maybe, just maybe, this, all of this – she winced, thinking that she would never be able to have another Ogres and Oubliettes game with Shining and Cadance again, or send her mom that birthday card and bundle of flowers this year– would all be okay. They could get through this together, couldn’t they? So she started, her voice hitching:

“It’s E-Equestria, everypony, th-they– they’re gone, girls.”

The green eyes gazing into Twilight’s own shrunk to pinpricks as Applejack gasped. Everypony went silent and still as cold stone, all the air ripped from them in an instant. Wind whistled hollowly across the swamp, with the only thing to be heard being the soft rippling waves across that muddy water. The reeds whipped, the grass billowed, the leaves in the skinny trees crinkled in the harsh, pregnant silence.

Then Fluttershy whispered, “What?”

Rainbow Dash, still floating above her, furiously shook her head, “What does that mean, Twilight? What do you mean ‘gone’?”

Applejack’s hoof dropped from her cheek like a rock as she wrenched her face away, eyes smashed shut. Still, Twilight couldn’t stop now. They deserved to know, no matter how much her lungs and heart ached with every breath.

“It’s hard to explain…” she wavered, gulping past what felt like glass caught in her throat. “But that spell, the one that brought us here… it was a time travel spell, or something like one; it–”

“Time travel?” Spike asked, from where he sat clutching her left foreleg for dear life. “But we’ve time traveled before. Can’t we just go back?”

Twilight screwed her eyes shut as the heat bubbled back up, as she looked Spike in his hopeful little face. With all her energy, every ounce of it she had left, Twilight forced herself to look at the situation as objectively as she could, to describe the situation as simply and efficiently as possible; otherwise she would break down before she got them all to understand.

“No, Spike. We can’t. We–” her voice broke, and she forced the pieces back together before it could fail completely. “The Equestria we knew is gone. We can’t ever go back. I’m… I’m so sorry.”

It went silent again after that, as if everypony couldn’t understand what she had just told them. It was Fluttershy who started crying first.

Through her first tears, quiet and hot and dripping down her chin, Fluttershy stepped forward and asked, “Y-You’re sure?”

But she didn’t even wait for Twilight’s curt nod to start sobbing. She just wailed into her front hooves, shaking as if she were dying.

Pinkie Pie trotted forwards to sweep the pegasus’ frail body into a hug, her eyes distant and clouded. Her poofy mane, like a stormcloud dissolving, started to fray and flatten at the ends. Above Twilight, Rainbow tilted drunkenly over, then collapsed from the air like a stone; the splash from her hooves rippled up over Rarity’s hooves, staining her curled fetlocks a dark green-brown, but she didn’t seem to notice; her gaze was glassy and far away, her jaw working over and over as if a cow chewing cud. Spike looked up at her with giant, wet eyes, his claws pinching at her foreleg.

Applejack shuddered in the shakiest breath Twilight had ever heard her take before. And then she walked away.

As she slowly trudged through the mud, Rainbow Dash perked up her ears and moved to follow her – but Applejack whipped her tail with a sharp crack, snorted deep and low.

“I reckon I need a few minutes, Rainbow,” she said.

Rainbow creaked open her mouth to say something – then clicked it shut again at Twilight’s glance. This was hard, so very hard, and they needed to respect each others’ methods of coping. Twilight could only hope, as Applejack stomped away from them, that she would be okay at the end of all of this.

That any of them would be okay at the end of all this.

Still, with a gulp against her dry throat, a bob of her head, Twilight reasoned that the only way they could have time to heal is if she made sure they could ever be okay again, had the opportunity to do so – this new Equus and the creatures in it, the girls, Celestia; they were all depending on her to prepare the seal on whatever had ravaged their old world. As much as Twilight wanted to curl up next to Spike and cry for a while, she just didn’t have the luxury. Right now – she sighed, folded her little wings tight against her sides – she needed to focus on their objective while the others couldn’t, otherwise all of this heartache would be for nothing.

So she took everything: the thought that she would never see Owlowiscious or the library again, that she never spent enough time with her parents, that Celestia hadn’t even warned her for hoof’s sake– and she shoved it somewhere deep, deep down. Then, with a clearing of her throat, she turned away from Fluttershy, still sobbing into Pinkie Pie’s mane, and unfolded Hazel’s map in a dry area of dirt in front of her.

Instantly she was taken aback. A gasp ripped from her throat, and she stumbled back from the little crinkled bit of paper as if it could reach out and bite her. Scrabbling towards it with a hoof outstretched, shivering from hoof to horn-tip, Twilight darted her eyes over those etchings of ink with rapt attention. She studied every line, every symbol, every bit of ink gracing the wrinkled surface.

She hadn’t noticed it earlier, but now, with this new information, the map was familiar. Too familiar.

It wasn’t as if Twilight extensively studied cartography, but she’d seen her fair share of maps of Equestria in the past. Hay, before coming to Ponyville she’d even looked at a small map of its surrounding areas, so she wouldn’t get lost and embarrass herself the day of the Summer Sun Celebration. Even if she hadn’t – Twilight twirled in place, and looked out to where that purple-gray mountain range lay towering over the swampy wastes ahead, and sure enough, it was the same height and general shape as the one in her mind’s eye. When they first started trudging through this swamp, in the back of her head Twilight had wondered at how much it reminded her of Froggy Bottom Bog.

That’s because it was Froggy Bottom Bog. Just in a different time period, untamed by pony magic and left to fester in its own chaos.

Her pulse spiking, Twilight glanced at the area around her, from the peaty ground below, dotted with hills and stone, to the mountains they were headed towards and– yes, while her memory of her time in the Bog was fuzzy considering the last time she was there she’d been running for her life from a giant Hydra, the general layout of the place and the adjoining forest added up. This… this was Froggy Bottom Bog, and… Twilight’s stomach lurched. The grassy field they’d come to when they first arrived, that had been Ponyville, once.

Twilight’s blood rushed in her ears. Her hooves went numb, and her wings flailed open in a spray of feathers.

Their objective was in the Frozen South. That was ages away from Ponyville!

Her heart skipping a beat, Twilight curled to the muddy ground; her own breath echoed hot and humid up off the peat as she struggled not to break down.

What was she going to do?! Not only had everything Twilight had ever known been erased to- to nothing, but now this. She knew that Celestia’s casting of the spell had been interrupted by her injury, sending them to an incorrect location, but now she knew that said location was miles upon miles away. Every second the sun and moon- which, yeah, were still busted into pitiful fragments; she hadn’t forgotten that horrible tidbit thank you very much! – remained as they were, and the Seal remained unchanged, their whole purpose for being here was draining away. All of those ponies, so many cycles, all committed to adding their magic to the spell and giving the future generation more time, and it could all be for nothing now! What if something else went wrong as well– something that led to the ponies in the deer village not having Cutie Marks? How long did they have? What if they didn’t make it in time to save anypony?!

They had to make it. She had to make it.

Twilight bit down hard on a scream of frustration and grief. She had to keep it together, stay calm, for everypony’s sake. For now, she tried her best to numb it all, focus on the facts presented to her in the most rational and clinical way possible:

The spell that sent them here had malfunctioned, sending them far away from their goal. So, simple, right? They just had to get a move on and get to the Frozen South as soon as possible. Which just meant they had to focus everything they had on moving forward and never looking back. Easy as pie!

Shuddering, her nose flaring and her tail flicking irritably, Twilight perked up, whipped around, and prepared to tell the girls the news.

–Then she deflated at the sight before her.

Predictably, her friends were… not doing well. Fluttershy had sobbed herself limp and dry, and now hung hollowly onto Pinkie’s front hooves like a broken doll. Pinkie Pie herself stared off into the distance, her eyes blank and so wet, shimmering in the midday light. Her hair was puffy still, but just barely, clinging on to every last curl with everything it had. Rainbow Dash and Rarity sat side by side with Spike, Rarity mumbling something small and croaking between the two of them. Applejack was still gone.

Twilight sighed, her stomach dropping to her knees– then snorted and shook her head. No problem! This was fine, an easy fix. She just had to go get Applejack, and then they could all go cry on the way.

With a nod, Twilight steeled herself and splashed around the boulder Applejack had disappeared behind.

She honestly didn’t know what she expected when she rounded the bend. She’d rarely ever seen Applejack cry before, only a few stray tears burning in her lashes during some – Twilight gulped again, thinking about the way AJ’s face pinched up as she sewed dresses that just wouldn’t sell – emotional moments between their friends. Would Applejack be sobbing like Fluttershy now? The thought was just so… wrong. Applejack was their rock, the mare who cried on the inside; would Twilight see her torn apart by grief now, barely like herself?

Twilight snorted to herself and pushed on. Applejack was there for Twilight when she needed her. If Applejack was falling apart, it was only right that her friends pick her back up again. So she turned the corner and–

Applejack was just… sitting there.

Her hindquarters splashed into the mud, the waves rippling over her coat, Applejack sat still as a lone apple tree in the muck. Her old stetson gripped wrinkled tight to her chest, she stared, her neck tilted to gaze up at the broken discs of sun and moon. Her eyes, dull and reddened but dry, flickered in the wan light like two apple-green candles.

Twilight stopped short. What should she do? What should she say? She’d never had to write a report to Celestia about dealing with a friend’s grief, at least not yet; Twilight was in unknown territory in a number of aspects.

Her voice shaking, she tried, “Applejack?”

“I reckon I don’t rightly feel like talkin’ right now, Twilight,” Applejack drawled simply, slowly, cold as stone. Without looking in Twilight’s direction, those green eyes hardened, turned from wavering and lost to something so, so angry.

Twilight jolted at the growl in Applejack’s voice. She certainly hadn’t expected that. Still, she figured it was to be somewhat expected. Applejack’s entire family, everypony she’d ever known, had been taken from her, and here Twilight was stomping in and ruining her peace. Twilight couldn’t stop though, not now. Not only was it imperative that they get moving again as soon as possible but, so much more than that, Twilight was worried for her friend.

“I–” Twilight stammered, “I understand that you’re going through a lot, Applejack. Please, if you’d just let me help–”

Applejack slammed her eyes shut, followed by her jaw snapping closed in a startling click. She wrenched her neck to the side, away from Twilight, as her tail thrashed in the dirty water like a dying fish. Her ears twitched in all directions, while the skin over her withers flicked along in time with her ragged breath.

“Now Twi, I said I wasn’t in no mood for talkin’. I’d hate to say something I regret.” It came out strained, croaking out of her jaw and wavering as if over gravel.

Twilight almost couldn’t suppress a groan. She knew that Applejack was having a hard time, but so were they all, and the mare had hardly let her get a word in edgewise. Hadn’t they already learned this lesson, together? Sometimes you just had to accept help from your friends, and something like this… they needed to stick together, more than anything. How could they possibly hope to survive this if they didn’t?

So Twilight opened her mouth again: “Applejack, last night you helped me when I was about to fall apart, and you said you knew I would do the same for you if given the chance. Please, just–”

Applejack was standing in a snap. She jerked her head to the side and spat, a frayed piece of wheat flying alongside a loogie to plop loudly into the water below. She stomped, her hooves splashing at every step, until she was nose to nose with Twilight.

She bucked her chest forward until their barrels and snouts were brushing, and stared Twilight full in the face. Her eyes were lined with red, cold and hard.

“You wanna help?” Applejack spat. Then, before Twilight could say anything else: “Then tell me, Twilight. Swear to me that y’all didn't know.”

Twilight’s stomach dropped. Her mouth suddenly tasted sour.

Twilight, with a hot snort, gently brought up a hoof and placed it to Applejack’s chest, softly pressed her away so she could breathe more clearly.

“What? Know what?” Twilight said, calm and quiet and not at all shaking.

“Did Celestia tell you about this? Any of this? Th-That we would have to leave our kin behind some day?”

Twilight felt like she’d been sucked into a black hole. Her heart thudded, dropped into her stomach heavy and cold. She thought about Celestia, regal and tall in the Cosmic Library, her wings splaying out – her feathers stretched wide to hide the sick rot crawling up every vein, every ventricle. She thought about what she had told Twilight: that there wasn’t enough time.

Then she thought of Celestia’s younger face, freckled and framed by baby-pink hair the color of sunset. How, with tears in her eyes, she had said goodbye to her family, wrenched Luna away from that last hug out of necessity. How she’d gone on, left her world behind. Took a young unicorn as her personal student, her protege, and groomed her to become the holder of the Element of Magic, the savior of Nightmare Moon.

‘Not enough time’. Or was it something else? Did that even matter now?

Twilight felt numb. Something ripped apart in her chest, throbbed with every strained breath snorting deep through her nose. Her tail thrashed.

“No. I promise, Applejack, I was just in the dark about all this as you were.” Her eyes met the soupy ground. “Celestia and Luna… they never told me anything...”

Applejack seemed to deflate at that. Her chest, puffed up and rock hard below Twilight’s hoof, decompressed with a heavy rush of air as she sighed. The water below trembled at the contact of her breath.

Applejack’s watery, wavering reflection met her eyes.

“I… well, shoot, Sugar. I just thought…”

Twilight shook her head. Gulped, strained and rocky against her raw throat.

“It’s okay, Applejack. Really,” she said, with a smile. Her reflection still looked so very sad, though. “But there’s something else you and the girls need to know.”







Nopony celebrated when they made it out of the swamp unscathed. Not even Pinkie Pie, who would normally take any excuse she could to party, or Rarity, who would no longer have to worry about holding her tail up out of the mud.

Instead, everypony was silent as they took that last step out of the marsh, as the cool ground underhoof transformed to rough, hard crag that clacked beneath horseshoes.

Ahead, the mountains loomed like a thorn piercing the sky.