It's hard to believe that two ponies that seem to have so little in common could ever get along. But I found out that if you embrace each other's differences, you just might be surprised to discover a way to be friends after all...

My friends and I all learned an important lesson this week: Never judge a book by its cover. Someone may look unusual, or funny, or scary. But you have to look past that and learn who they are inside. Real friends don't care what your "cover" is; it's the contents of a pony that count. And a good friend, like a good book, is something that will last forever.

When you first sent me to Ponyville, I didn't know anything about friendship. I met somepony tonight who was having the same problem - your sister, Princess Luna! She taught me that one of the best things you can do with friendship is to give it to others, and help them find it themselves! And I'm happy to report that all of Ponyville has learned that even though somepony seems a little intimidating, even scary, when you offer them your friendship, you'll discover a whole new pony underneath. And even if my Star Swirl the Bearded costume didn't go over, this still turned out to be the best Nightmare Night ever!

"WAIT! Star-" I bolt upright with an outreached hoof, and it's greeted by the cold, empty air of the Everfree Forest. I whip my head left, right, looking for the unicorn whose expectations I just betrayed and ground into dust, but there's only a couple tent canopies and a score of Lunar guard. Most of them are glancing my way after the outburst, but they quickly go back to their duty after they deem me as not a threat.

I feel a sudden sense of panic as something reaches forward from behind me, wrapping its' arms around my shoulders and gripping me tightly, but it quickly fades away as the familiar clawed digits find purchase in my knotted and tangled fur. Oh, Spike, you must have been absolutely mortified! I don't remember how long I was in that realm for, but I must have been gone for hours while he and Luna were here worried sick.

"Spike, where's Luna?" Is what I blurt out instead, still waiting for my heart rate to settle as the flood gates of consciousness finally begin opening and I start processing everything properly. The arms wrapped around me tense up a bit, and instead of a response I feel him embrace me in a tight hug from behind. I feel his chest heaving silently and- Oh, horseapples, I think he's crying.

"Hey, I'm sorry, Spike. It's fine, I'm alright, you're alright, right? We're both alright, Spike. We're okay." I wrap my hooves over his hands in an attempt to calm him down, but I think I just made whatever he's feeling worse because he's audibly bawling now, the tears seeping into the back of my neck and the claws starting to scratch my forelegs as he hugs me even tighter. I blink a few times and groan as that familiar high-pitched ringing begins quickly rising in my ears, drowning out everything else within moments.

The current legislation regarding imported crystallized mana gems isn't sustainable for a number of reasons. Pyroclastic flows can frequently exceed a thousand degrees, resulting in-

"Ow, my head..." I groan, squeezing my eyes shut and grabbing at my temples with my forehooves, leaving spike's hands to their own devices. That migraine that was rearing its' head earlier is really coming back in full force.

I don't feel Spike's chest heaving on my back anymore. Wow, he calmed down fast.

-regular seasonal movement, often north and south along a flyway, between breeding and wintering grounds. Not to be confused with hibernation habits, which result in nearly 40% of densely-forested ecosystems to be-

"QUIET!" I bark out, and just as suddenly as it left my hearing returns to me, the ringing silent and the storm of incoherent words quelled back to subconsciousness. I don't feel Spike's arms anymore. As a matter of fact, he's standing in front of me, looking incredibly worried. So does Luna, actually. Oh, found Luna.

'What I desire has always been a teleport away, at times even within literal reach.'

"Oh..." I mutter as I'm forced to remember Star Swirl's words. "That's what he meant..." I mumble. Luna says something in response to that, but my head's swimming just too fast to catch it. Thinking just isn't something I'm capable of right now, thanks for asking. Please send your scroll again later, postage paid, book returns on the left, organized by last name...

Oh, I'm on the ground again. That's nice, it'll be easier to figure this out after a nap.

Twilight's screaming like she's being torn asunder. That shouldn't be possible, I assured her that shouldn't be possible. She's doing this voluntarily but despite that, I know something's wrong. Even if we can hear them, we can't see them. I don't care what sister says, I'm interfering. I won't have her blood on my hooves, I'd rather another thousand years a world away.

With a flick of my horn every single enchantment and ward is undone, hours of painstaking abjuration incantations and thousands of bits worth of spell components crumbling to dust in doing so. Twilight's just sitting there beside the cultist screaming as she was instructed by the pegasus, but training my eyes even from behind them I can see the strain on the cultists' throat as she stretches her neck to speak over the scream.

'She's masking the message,' I realize, though I couldn't read her lips from this direction even if I was able to see through the haze of fading enchantments clearly. Before I waste any more time thinking, I teleport as close as I dare to the edge of the erratic magic and break into a breakneck gallop towards her, wings outstretched and rocketing me forward. Looking past them I see Crescent Slash and Subtle Nod doing the same, covering the prisoner's primary escape vectors like I've trained them to.

Then something happens that I don't understand. It's him, suddenly standing right there in the center of all my work and protections. He sees me, I know he sees me, but he's a flurry of movement that I can't keep track of. He yells something, and Twilight stops screaming. He touches a hoof down on the forehead of the Pegasus and his horn flashes, then she falls limp onto the ground. In an instant he casts another spell, but then he freezes up with a hoof raised half into the air as if he's reconsidering something. Whatever it is, he has about three seconds before I'm beyond the remnants of the nullification zone and... And... I suppose sending him to Tartarus is as good a plan as any. I hope he can forgive that, it's all I can think of in the split-seconds available to me.

My horn lights with the familiar detainment spell prepared, and as I approach the dead zone I see his flare to life as well, and without any hint of the hesitation from before, he taps a forehoof against Twilight's head as she starts to move towards his Portal.

"NAY!" I scream out pathetically, and I let loose the containment spell from outside the chaotic aftermath of the dispelling wards. It darts out in a blitz of Azure light and punctures against the cloudy mana-static between us, but it's not enough. It's twisted and distorted as it passes by, and it showers the inside of the area with harmless blue sparks of my dissolved spell. As I charge another and finally break the threshold horn-first, time seems to slow. Star Swirl turns and in a flash of light disappears, likely into whatever lies beyond the portal. Twilight doesn't follow, though. Instead she stands still for a moment, then begins to list to the side as her legs crumple beneath her.

"YOU DARE?" I scream in a blind fury, the forgiveness of the stallion a distant memory. Now beyond the barrier, I have a clear shot at the portal and I take it. The detainment spell passes through but misses the unicorn. I send another. Then I charge a disintegration ray and it, too, flies through. I hurl one last spell through before he can close the gateway, a Zebra incantation translated into pony magic, Kufutwa kwa akili. It looks perfect, I can see it on course to strike him in the side as he turns to close the gate, but as if he somehow divined the strike he suddenly drops to the ground and it goes whizzing overhead.

I scream, and try to force my teleportation through the magical inhibiting muck. The spell fires, but in the chaos it sends me careening across the ground face-first, and I feel something in my upper torso snap under the impact. The portal's just in front of me, but I know even if I were able to move it's too late. Through eyes stained red, I only catch a glimpse of my lost love as he tries his best not to look back and destroys the spatial link between us.

"WE WILL ANNIHILATE YOU!" I curse at him, but I'm screaming into nothing. I keep screaming anyway, slamming my hoof into the dirt where he stood just a moment before. I yell obscenities and bloody murder in a screeching racket until Subtle Nod reaches me a few moments later and immediately I feel the pinpricks of my custom healing invocations stabbing at my being. It's much more painful than if I were to cast it, but such are the limitations of unicorns casting Alicorn-tier magic. I barely feel my humerus being liquified and mended through my rage, and the moment I'm able to stand I swear I'm going to catch the trace route of that teleport while it's fresh and obliterate that fool. I was such an idiot, thinking he wouldn't be-

My multitude of ideas for de-horning him come to a halt, however, when I let my head fall to the side and I'm left staring at a collapsed lavender lump of unicorn only a foot away, deathly still and unbreathing.

It's a ploy. It's a false death paralysis, he was trying to recruit her. He wouldn't kill her, would he? That was the entire goal, wasn't it? To recruit Twilight?

I wince in pain as I begin to summon more mana than I have left for another spell, but will it to continue. With my wellspring depleted, the spell begins to siphon from Subtle's attempts to heal me, and from the excess ambient mana dissolving into the earth all around me from my past work. I press the spell forward into Twilight, and it coalesces around her horn for a few seconds before slowly seeping into it, outlining its' ridges in the light blue of my magic as it presses into her body through her forehead and begins its' work.

"Nightmother, please-" their strained voice gasps for air, and a forehoof gives out from under them.

"Silence!" I hush the unicorn, continuing the spell. She obliges, but after a few more seconds her magic flickers and fades as she collapses as well, unable to supply enough mana to maintain her own spell in addition to my siphon. That's fine, she's supplied plenty. The redundant medic will arrive shortly to finish her work. I focus on my spell, poking and prodding at Twilight's body for the second time in the same day to find the point of failure. When my spell completes, however, I'm slapped with the simple reality that I already knew to begin with.

Her internal organs, skeletal, and muscular structures are perfectly intact, but a diminutive portion of her temporal lobe has been completely vaporized. Every moment between now and reanimation the higher the chance of permanent, irreversible damage. The thought of a Twilight with dementia or memory loss flashes across my mind, and the misery the mare would be put through. She'd likely prefer I left her dead.

Ignoring the screaming pain in my chest, I lurch forward and grab at the amulet strung around her neck in my teeth, tearing it away and laying it on the ground beside her head.

'I command thee, obey.' I murmur in a quiet voice much less authoritative than the order. I search inwards for that reservoir, the restricted portion of my wellspring. This can't wait, there's no other option. As I begin replicating the instructions from the amulet to repair the missing fragment of Twilight's mind, my horn begins burning with a deep, black magic that bubbles up from the darkest depths of my soul, feeding on my rage.

'Your theory of Major Timeline Continuity suggests that any timeline sufficiently different enough from the Alpha would crumble without a perpetually-charged Chrono-anchor to bind it to the Alpha.'

My vision crosses over itself, a gaussian blur obscuring the gray pony in front of me behind a veil of melding color and mental fog. I try my best to blink it away, but my eyelids aren't responding properly. They're blinking on their own, not when I tell them to. It's somehow even more disorienting, as if there's a lag between my command and the action, or no command at all.

'Explain how you just told a lie in a zone of truth,' The gray blob in front of me says flatly. I think for a moment. What statements have I made in the last ten seconds? I claimed him to have only cast silence wards, a custom meditative-based Astral Projection spell, and a Chronomancy spell, likely his link. I reiterated his theory of Major Timeline Continuity, and admitted to seeing him cast a Zone of Truth.

He definitely cast a silence ward, the matrix for it is kindergarten grade warding and still lingering in the air. It's possible this spell isn't meditative-based, though that's far too inconsequential for him to make a point out of given the scope of our conversation. His Major Timeline Continuity thesis is the core premise of all of Chronomancy's divergence theories. The Zone of Truth in itself, but that's- No, before any of that. He's telling me I'm mistaken, he's saying-

"We're not in the Alpha timeline." I suddenly blurt out, but my voice isn't the one coming out of my throat. It's a more clipped, slightly higher-pitched voice that's just a bit faster than mine. It continues making sounds I'm not thinking, and the realization hits me that I'm very clearly not in control. Is this divination, or a relic of the past? A fever dream? What do I last remember doing, where was I just before now?

I feel a sharp stab of pain in the center of my brain, and the scene is obliterated- replaced with a searing white static that immolates my mind for what feels like an eternity, then subsides quickly to black.

The darkness slowly peels away, and I feel 'myself' blink a few times. The world beyond the veil is in focus now, and after a few tries the body I'm inhabiting finally props itself up and opens its' eyes. There's a deep green hoof in front of me, and it reaches forward to idly trace a Lunis rune inscribed on the stone floor just ahead. The rune matrix inscribed into the spell circle is a colossal undertaking. I barely understand half of the parameters, and with the way this bodies' head is pounding I assume they don't either.

I hear the stallion's voice from behind me, and there's a light pressure of a hoof on my back.

'I told you I would not right you a second time. Welcome, Goldfish. I look forward to saving Equestria with you,'

Star Swirl! I want to turn around, but it's beyond my power. I'm locked behind the eyes of the mare I'm inhabiting, and they're beginning to blur out of focus again as tears start welling up, and a massive pressure in her chest I hadn't realized was there ebbs away.

Star Swirl's hoof slides off, and he walks away. A moment later the sound of a door opening, some more hoof falls, and it closes behind him.

"What'd I tell you? Piece of cake for the smartest pegasus in Equestria!" A stallion's voice I don't recognize rings out, but the mare's chest tightens back up and butterflies start flittering in her stomach as somepony embraces her tightly from behind. He begins to mutter something, but a rising ringing in my ears deafens him and mutes the scene. It keeps getting louder, and louder, and there's another piercing pain in the middle of my brain as something snaps back into place and-

"DEAR!" I scream as I shoot up from the ground, lurching a hoof forward trying to find the pony I had somehow forgotten. The world is still blurry, and I try my best to blink the tears away amidst the sniffles and remnants of the chest heaves from my phantom crying fit I was having in my sleep. My mane and coat are damp and cold, and I feel a gentle rain pattering onto the ground.

"Twilight, TWILIGHT!" Spike's beside me, but I can't respond to him before the thoughts well up and begin to assault me.

Your theory of Major Timeline Continuity suggests that any timeline sufficiently different-

"no- Please..." I lean forward and cradle my head in my forehooves, and within moments the events I just experienced begin replaying in my mind all at once, bringing a colossal headache as my brain struggles to re-parse it at the rate I'm forced to remember it.

I feel the manipulation of a spell from somepony else probing my head, and the pain begins to slowly subside. Every moment the enormous weight on my head lifts a bit more, and I feel my body begin to relax as I rest my head on a forehoof with a blissful sigh. I crack open my eyes and see Spike's hand on the forehoof I'm using to keep my head propped up. I follow the arm up to his face, and he looks like I feel. There's a twisted expression on his face, and there's tears in his eyes, too.

"Spike, what happened?" I lift my head and take a quick look around. We're still in the Everfree Forest, in the middle of the clearing. The null-zone is completely dissipated, and I'm still sat in the middle of it. I look over to my right and my heart sinks as my eyes fall on the body of a small dark-green pegasus mare, not moving or breathing. Spike follows my gaze, but he doesn't say anything. He looks away and takes a step closer to wrap me in a hug, but I don't look away. My eyes are glued to the stalker-cultist-mare I was just having a deep, meaningful conversation with, now lying dead in front of me.

"No... Spike, Spike I need to-" I struggle against him, but he keeps me in his grasp, holding even tighter. "Spike! Spike, please move, I need to- SPIKE!" I yell at him, and we both go completely still. He slowly lets go of me and takes a step back, and he looks like I just stabbed him. Worse, he's afraid... Afraid of me?

My eyes widen and I take a sharp breath in as I realize I was snarling at him. I let my mouth hang there for a second while we stare at each other. I feel my senses slow down, and there's a moment of clarity between the rain, thoughts, emotion and pain. It's just silence as I look at my baby dragon, and he begins crying again.

He sucks in a big breath, closes his eyes, and quickly begins jogging away, taking any feeling I had with him as time catches up to my senses and the cold of the rain seeps back into my fur. I don't have anything to say, and I'm left with a hollow pit in my heart as I watch him disappear into the treeline.

"Tracer, guard him." A deep, rich mare's voice calls out from behind. My ears perk up, and I whip my head around.

"With my life, Nightmother." A pegasus Lunar guard blocks my view as he performs a wing-salute, but as he whips off into the sky the towering black form of Nightmare Moon is left standing behind me, watching the guard dart out of sight.

"Nightmare-" The words get locked in my throat and I feel myself beginning to panic. None of my friends are here, I don't have the Elements. I have no way to deal with this, I'm not properly equipped! I'm-

"It is us, Twilight, fear not." She raises an unclad forehoof through the air between us in a calming motion, and very slowly approaches as her horn glows black. Her face is genuine in its' attempt to be comforting, but the vertical iris' and powerful aura of darkness she's emitting far outweigh it. "Our mind is in our control, only our form has shifted." The glow of her horn fades, and I feel a pressure in my head I didn't realize had been building ebb away again.

Aville's Cure-All, a simple pain relief spell incepted by Ad Aville several hundred years ago, and cultivated through the ages into the refined multipurpose pain and stress relief incantation of the modern era. Stalliongrad university is cited-

I find it much easier to shake the thoughts away, but they persist quietly in the back of my mind. Nightmare Moon waits patiently as I shake my head back and forth, and I take the time to catch my breath and steady my heart rate to some semblance of normal.

"Thank you." I finally manage. She tilts her head a bit, and I turn myself around to properly face her. I give standing a try, but it's clear I'm not ready for that. My legs are fine, but the neurons between them and my mind are still busy catching up with each other. "For sending somepony to watch after Spike, I mean."

She nods knowingly, and glances in the direction he ran off in before giving a deep sigh.

"How do you feel, Twilight Sparkle? Is there any pain, intrusive thoughts? Can you feel all of your limbs?" Night- I mean Luna- asks in that rich voice of her altar ego. The speech patterns are uncanny, but hearing them from that form is doing my fight-or-flight instincts in. Maybe it's the logical side of my brain, maybe it's the sedation spell I'm under, but I manage to swallow down the unease and test everything. Hooves, check. My tail seems fine as I flick it idly on the grass. I swivel my head from side to side, and focus my ears forward. All systems nominal.

"My body seems fine, but something's wrong with my head... I'm hearing- No, more like remembering things constantly." I sit in silence for a moment just observing myself, and another detail comes to mind. "Also, my ears keep ringing. They've been doing that ever since you healed me that first time, actually." I add on. That gets a surprised look from her, but if that's exceedingly bad she doesn't show any further sign of it.

"Luna, where's the amulet? Where's the soulgem?" I ask, bringing a hoof up to my bare chest where it was hanging before I fell asleep. I glance around, not finding it anywhere.

"We have it in our possession, though it has already served its' purpose. We will cure your ailments, Twilight Sparkle, though it will require time. The reason we have taken this form is because our wellspri-"

"I need it, please, I can use it," I interrupt her, and she stares back at me with a quizzical look. Then what she just said relays itself in my mind. "What do you mean it served its' purpose? You don't mean-" I ask, beginning to piece the story together. The hollow feeling in my chest expands to encompass my entire body, and a frigid chill seeps into my bones.

"Indeed, it is so. We will inform you of our failures soon, but you must rest for a time, your mind and body-"

"That's not possible, that doesn't make sense!" I shout back, my and Star Swirl's meeting replaying with perfect clarity in my head. "He told me I would need to choose- That when the time came..." I trail off, staring at the ground as my brain tries to piece together the entire story. It actually comes together incredibly easily, pieces I hadn't even realized I knew come up as I'm thinking about unrelated things, forming a mosaic of occurrences and memories that slot together like a puzzle.

Star Swirl was Luna's student, he would know she's capable of resurrecting me, and he has the intelligence network to know my value to the Diarchs. Somehow it all fits in a twisted logic I'm sure he would have applied, even if I'm not entirely sure how I reached the conclusion.

I look to my left now, and my eyes study the pegasus mare beside me. Her ailments fresh in my mind now, I remember taking the amulet when she was talking. I remember pushing through the pain of the null zone, I remember overwriting the soulgem that had housed my replication instructions with hers. I stare back at Luna, and she has a very dark expression on her face, one that makes me question if it isn't truly Nightmare Moon in front of me after all.

"Twilight sparkle, did you overwrite your soulgem with this cultist?" She asks, and there's a hint of something venomous underneath the slow, calm words. Her mouth tightens up a bit, but I meet the glare with a lot more bravery than I realized I had.

"Yes. You must have heard her, she said she was going to die! How could I not save her?"

'WERE WE TO BE IN CONTROL SHE WOULD NEVER HAVE KNOWN, AND SCORES OF THESE SO-CALLED PONIES WOULD BE WITHOUT BREATH!' The memory comes unabated, and another piece of the puzzle slots itself into the mosaic.

"You knew..." I breathe softly, then scoff. "You knew he was going to kill her, and you didn't say anything!?" There's something behind my words too, and there's a lot of it as the realization of how Luna's willing to handle things really, truly sinks in. It doesn't have the impact I'd like it to on account of my being unable to stand, but I make up for it by glaring back with as much disappointment as I can muster. It's only after my outburst I notice there are several of her guard now staring at the display, looking unsure where to be or what to do.

Luna raises her head and sucks in a huge breath through her nostrils, and I see her begin to literally shake in frustration as she struggles not to explode. She manages, if barely, and with a huff her black aura of magic reaches out to the nearby canopy and picks up the amulet from one of the tables, flinging it onto the ground between my hooves as her spell sputters and loses power.

"We gladly bear the burden of this one's death. If thou wishes to bear their life, far be it for us to stop thee!" And with that, not dissimilar to Spike, she turns and trots away with a silent fury. I don't watch her as she begins issuing orders to the guard, instead focusing on the amulet. I reach out and wrap my magic around it, willing it to float over to Goldfish's body, and it complies. Magic, check.

I close my eyes and try to gauge myself, prodding at my wellspring from several angles. The resistance is massive, which confirms that despite my recent flirt with death, my magic wasn't affected, or at the very least my wellspring retained its' mana. Instead of trying to walk to her body, I wrap myself up in another telekinesis field and drag myself over. My legs dangle awkwardly for a second, but once I'm beside her I reach out a forehoof to press the amulet against her chest.

I've never seen a body before. Sure, an insect that reached the end of its' lifespan or a rat that got into the Cake's kitchen, but right here, right in front of me and under my hoof was a real pony's body. I try to clear my head, take a deep breath and refocus, but feeling finally returns to my stomach in the form of a churning revulsion as I throw myself away from the mare just before that feeling wells up and I heave onto the ground next to me. There's the burn of acid in my throat and mouth, but I haven't eaten since Daisy's and there's nothing left to come back up. I use my damp fetlock to wipe at the edge of my mouth, and focus on the earth beneath my hooves and the chill of the air to root myself and calm my nerves. I can do this.

I close my eyes, take another shaky breath and slowly shift back towards Goldfish, the wind suddenly taken from my proverbial sails. I pick the amulet back up from the ground and wipe a smudge of mud from the gem, and the bright glow shines back at me as I flip it around and press it into her chest fluff. I reach out with my magic and the world begins to fall away as I dive into the reconstitution spell. It's more of a reconstruction spell with the insanely detailed instructions it feeds back to me rapid-fire, but this isn't the time for semantics. I can feel her body beginning to set into the first stages of rigor mortis, but I push that to the back of my mind along with the flurry of unrelated thoughts fighting to claw their way to the surface.

It all falls away as I enter my flow state. Now it's just me, the spell, and several octillion atoms zipping and decaying through the body in front of me. No pressure. I dive into the gem and what feels like a long receipt of instructions zooms by faster than I can make sense of it. Tail, bladder, mid-section left side, all I need is the temporal lobe. I dive deeper, and the information gets more complex.

Carbon is a massive chunk of all of it, and if really bloats the processing power required to traverse the important parts. Not to say carbon isn't important, obviously- most organic beings are composed primarily of it- but to have it listed so many times is just redundant. There's a lot of things like that, actually. Sequences of repeating elements and linear curvatures that could have been conveyed with a simple formula or expression in short hoof and cut the information bloat by tenths, if not hundredths. I make a mental note to revisit this process later, in a stable and less stressful environment.

doxmtn3U1khnxFAgPzkB - NlVCTYlBzTZp5vPNLfgm
YsWAxQ5uhmJYbNlwg5oC - IH47CJQ4yHBxE78IYV2D
SFU8aVduQ34kMDbHCpfS - Br92REy8FI3sCSzqTBAg
7zZTcbPm2Goa5QWPPoyq - KThouvNEceoPz5UAi5cs
fuaNoH9QTSPDUYUmOBCR - gXobN8lS048JOzthvDYm

I zoom past a flurry of new formations and reign the spell in, reversing the flow of information. It replays again, too fast to parse, but now that I'm searching for it I'm able to get a good look at it, and instead of stopping to re-read it over and over again I find I have no trouble recalling the entirety of the massive order of commands I'll need to input. Whatever small part of Goldfish's ailment I inherited, it's like a photographic memory with several orders of magnitude of improved efficiency. There's no image, just raw data input I can peruse freely, stored and preserved perfectly in my short-term memory. Remembering it is as simple as taking a breath or blinking, and I focus on that collection of information to begin my spell.

A second humming glow overlaps my horn, overpowering the silent base spell I'm casting in tandem. It's a bit harder than usual to maintain concentration, but I need both spells in order to reconstruct her mind properly. I bite at my lip and get to work, repressing the fact that I'm quite literally attempting post-mortem brain surgery utilizing ancient alicorn magic. Doing a great job on that front, Twilight, keep it up.

The work is grueling and tedious, but I keep my focus razor-sharp for nearly twenty minutes. At some point one of the guards laid one of Luna's unconscious unicorn guards near me and moved the extra canopy tent over the both of us. I'd have thanked them for the small kindness of keeping the rain away, but I barely even register the change as my magic swims through the slowly-patching hole in Goldfish's mind. Towards the end it starts to hurt as the spell begins to draw on the last vestiges of my once-full wellspring, but I grit my teeth and dig my hooves in for the final stretch: Resuscitation.

The second layer of magic withers and fades away as I cease focusing on it after nearly half an hour, though the first, dull one remains. I let my magic spread evenly through her body, surrounding her heart, traveling into her veins, and sinking into her muscles and lungs. With the instructions from the amulet, I have a read on the blood pressure throughout her body, lung capacity, heart rate capability, and through all that I'm able to infer how to effectively jump-start her body. It's no different from a machine at this point, once I give it a shove- Or rather, manually initiate her body's functions- it's completely equipped to resume where it left off.

All that's left is to inject that stream of momentum via kinetic transference. I take a deep breath, ready the spell, and... There's one more thing I need to do.

The second layer of humming power appears again, and there's pinpricks in my head and heart as I start drawing magic from my body instead of my wellspring itself. Ponies are innately magical, unicorns just happen to have a massive wellspring compared to the other races. Once that wellspring is used up though, we can still siphon the residual mana fueling our magical neuron network as a last-ditch resort. It's not much, but it should be enough for a minor change.

A third, final light shimmers over the amulet as I bring it to my own chest, and with speed even I'm surprised at I rip through my own data all the way down to the minute differentials. Her mind and my mind share one similarity, and her curse is in that similarity, somewhere in the temporal cortex. The princess will revert my mind, I'm sure of it, but I don't know if they'll offer that same mercy to a traitor, or a cultist, as Luna calls her.

There's a knot, a series of thousands of micro-folds overlapping in the bottom-left quadrant. It's a small deviation from normalcy, but even small deviations like that can create massive ripple effects in the complex system of a brain. Ripple effects such as recursive memory, a fractured persona, even forced feedback loops. If I were to smooth them out, or even space them just slightly further apart so they didn't overlap so heavily, it could mean a lifetime of freedom for her.

Not that she'll likely be free for any of the remainder of her life if the princesses have their say in it, which they irreproachably will, but that's a bridge to burn when I get there. I unknit tiny sections of the lobe, and re-seal them smoother than they were before, spaced out ever so slightly. It's delicate, and I'm only moderately versed in advanced neurology and neuroscience, but it should fix her.

At last, I let the amulet fall to the ground, having served its' purpose. One last deep breath, one last moment to steady myself, one last second of stillness as my magic lies still, ready to give her body the push it needs to start up again.

In a surprisingly quick justle, her heart and lungs compress and expand, manually sucking air into her lungs and circulating the now un-oxygenated blood back through her body. The residual chemicals building post mortem quickly find themselves expelled as fresh air starts circulating, feeding her brain and organs and limbs. Her muscles begin to spasm as they link back up with her neural network, and there's a tiny spark that catches as the fresh fuel is greedily absorbed into her brain. It catches quickly, and less than ten seconds later she groans, convulses, then begins gasping for air as her body fails to continue automating the familiar process in her shock.

With no magic left to hold her down I lean onto her, trying to keep her from hurting herself as her body stabilizes. One of the nearby earth pony guards takes notice, and after a quick word to one of the others he trots over wordlessly and rolls her onto her side, doing a much better at holding her down than I could alone. I nod the nameless pony my appreciation, but he doesn't give any sort of response, verbal or otherwise.

After another minute or so, the convulsions ease, slow down, and then cease entirely. Her head flinches, before finally her eyes crack open as if awakening from a deep sleep. Her breathing is labored, but steady. I see some residual twitches in her hooves from her brain reconnecting to them, but all in all she seems like she's going to be alright.

I fall back onto my flank, and finally I let the tears come. I let out a huge breath, but it comes out in one shaky mess as I collapse into a fit of tears, pain, and worst of all, confusion. I finally allow my mind to let out all the stress I've been holding onto over the last day, and my empty body collapses into a fit of sobs.

I learned everything I'd wanted to, I saved Goldfish, I just cast a shoddy rendition of a personalized alicorn-tier healing evocation, and reprogrammed ancient technology on the fly. But I betrayed the hope of my hero who's actually a hopelessly lost sociopath, hurt Spike in so many ways, lost faith in myself and the princesses, and died. All in the same day. It's too much, I can't handle all of it at once, and my mind is trying to force it all onto me again now that my focus is free. Oh, Celestia, sweet merciful Celestia... Please, I need your help right now. I need my friends. I need so much.

"Twilight... I can hear...!" A hoarse, zombie-like rendition of the mare's voice forces out, and I feel the tip of what must be her hoof or her wing grazing my shoulder. I force my head out of my hooves and blink away the haze one more time. It is, in fact, her wing. The ends of her primaries are sat on my shoulder from a couple feet away, her outstretched hoof too far to have made it to me on its' first attempt. That's not what grabs me, though. What gets my attention is that she's smiling, through maybe more tears than me. She's overwhelmed too, but with very different feelings. For the first time since I've met her the other day, the bags under her eyes aren't so harsh, and her shoulders don't seem so weighed down.

We sit there and stare at each other for a while, and while the tears continue from both of us, I feel that massive void in my chest get just a tiny bit smaller.

Soft Reset - A Novice Chronomancer's Guide to Tempomancy

by Foxvolt

9 - Dear Princess Celestia