//------------------------------//
// Hare 
// Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot 
// by Equimorto 
//------------------------------//

"Are you worried about tomorrow?" Shining asked. The Sun was sinking lower on the horizon outside the building, painting the crystal room in warm orange colours. The Empire stretched out past the window, emptied of its inhabitants.
"I am," Twilight said. "And I have to assume you are too. Hope so at least." She turned to properly look at her brother. There was something off about the room, about the air, about the whole conversation. Her words reverberated oddly, things looked blurry.
Shining answered something. His words were too muffled to make out. His face was like smudged paint, his features indistinguishable. Twilight, on some level, understood that she was dreaming, but the dream's own nature as a dream prevented her from fully grasping and processing that knowledge. He stepped closer. Maybe stepping was a generous term. He moved closer, or maybe the space between them shortened. Little difference given the state of things.
Twilight looked around. The walls were crumbling, melting, bending down around her but never reaching her. Only shifting and morphing, shapeless more with every second. She had one question on her mind as memories and fantasies chased each other through her spirit. "When am I?"
"Nowhen," a voice spoke. It spoke through Shining, but it was not his. It was hard to tell what it was, warped and twisted by the dream. There was a light, flashing beneath the stallion's featureless face, something animating him and controlling him. "You are a memory of a time that wasn't, and you are with yourself past and present and future, in that span the abomination occupies. I have merely caught on to you, and one day we will speak."
And the scene changed. And Twilight spoke with Trixie, and watched her go away on a journey to the edge of Equestria, a dangerous artefact with her. And Twilight spoke with her brother over the ruins of the Crystal Empire, the battle over. And Twilight stood above the Behemoth, facing one so much like her and yet so different. And Twilight walked halls of flesh and bone, there for a trade, a heart for a heart. And Twilight rose through the spheres to the source of light, and Twilight danced in another time, another space, another body. And Twilight slept, a foal, unaware of all her life would be. And Twilight saw something that hadn't been and wouldn't be, but somewhere, somewhen, somehow true at a point.
And Twilight saw that she was not alone.
"Are you worried?" Rainbow asked, perched atop an askew silver chariot sized for a dragon more than for any pony.
Twilight looked away from the thousand moons lined up in the sky, away from the flat-topped spires of ice and marble that rose up to the clouds from the burning forest down below. "I am," she said, "but I have you with me, and everyone else too."
"And you think we can make it?"
"I know it doesn't matter. We, unlike them, are not alone."