“Twists and turns are my master plan, then find the elements back where you began.”
- Discord
100 EoH
Some days, to flee the regular chime of the orbuculum in her office and to escape the swirling anxieties of her own mind, Twilight spent time with her friends. She’d invited Applejack and Rainbow Dash for tea that afternoon in the Swan Spring Drawing Room, which was a reception room decorated mostly in white and blue porcelains and marble, and which happened to be Rainbow Dash’s favorite room in the castle.
Though not a library, it held a respectable collection of pulp and adventure novels, and it wasn’t as formal as some of the other reception rooms but was still regal enough to suit the pegasus’ rather expensive tastes. Twilight herself was quite fond of the room, as the colors and décor had a soothing effect on her, and the couches and recliners happened to be some of the softer ones in the castle.
Twilight was sitting in a blue and white pinstriped armchair–glasses resting near the tip of her nose–and was reading a research paper on a new and improved locomotive being developed in Caninia. Across from her, Rainbow Dash was lying on a chaise lounge the same color as Twilight’s armchair with her head resting against Applejack.
Applejack herself seemed lost in thought and was sipping on a cup of tea from a cart that Kerning had brought them. The tea smelled pleasantly of pears and honey. Every now and again, the earth pony would absentmindedly run her hoof through Rainbow’s unkept mane, eliciting a sigh of content. This was how it often went when Twilight had the two of them over for tea. Much reading on Twilight and Rainbow’s part and not much speaking at all.
In better times, that had been enough. In many ways, it still was. Today, however, Twilight was filled with the kind of worries and anxieties that no amount of silent company could cure. Two things in particular were eating at her. The first thing was the same thing she always worried about, which was to say her prophetic dreams of doom, the ominous warnings of the orbuculum, and a constant nagging sensation that some awful catastrophe was always just around the corner. The other thing was Rarity and Pinkie Pie.
She put the research paper down on the tea tray and sighed, adjusting her glasses with her hoof. “It’s been eleven days.”
Applejack nodded and sipped her tea. Rainbow Dash kept reading or looked like it anyway, but Twilight was pretty sure she was listening.
“You figure something’s gone wrong, then?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Since I sent the letter, I haven’t really been able to track them very well using the map. I know they’re somewhere around Hollow Shades, but that’s it. I tried to send another letter a couple of days ago, but they haven’t responded to that either.”
Rainbow put her book down and sat up next to Applejack.
“What’s there to do in Hollow Shades? Besides, the train from Baltimare to Ponyville goes through Canterlot, not north.”
“I can imagine Pinkie wouldn’t be too keen on coming home after hearing about Cheese… maybe? Might be she convinced Rarity to take a detour, but it doesn’t really explain why they aren’t answering your letters.”
“How…” Rainbow hesitated. “How long since they left?”
Twilight grimaced and shifted the research paper around on the tea tray a bit before answering.
“Seven and a half weeks.”
Neither Applejack nor Rainbow Dash seemed terribly bothered by that. At least, not as bothered as Twilight felt.
“That’s not so bad,” Rainbow Dash said, “right? They’ve got at least a couple of weeks still before, well, you know…”
Twilight disagreed, but only because it felt strange to her that Rarity and Pinkie weren’t answering her letters and had gone north instead of coming home. That said, Applejack was likely right in saying it had something to do with Cheese Sandwich’s death.
Applejack locked eyes with Twilight, and though Twilight wished she could have hidden her feelings better, her distress was plain for all to see. Applejack nodded and set aside her tea.
“No worries, Sugarcube. Dash and I can be ready in a few hours. You want me to let Fluttershy know?”
“Yes… please.”
Before Applejack could get off the couch, the door to the sitting room slammed open to admit a panting young changeling in the livery of a courier.
“Your majesties,” they gasped between breaths, “there’s been an incident in the training grounds. Lord Discord requests your assistance with all haste.”
Twilight felt her frown melt swiftly away, replaced by the placid familiar mask of governance. It came to her unbidden and without effort.
“Lead the way,” she told the changeling. If she had bothered to look back as she left the room, she would have noticed that Applejack and Rainbow Dash’s concerned expressions had not disappeared but rather deepened and were now aimed at her.
-
Twilight stood on the parade grounds behind her castle looking up at the large yellow orb of magic crackling a few paces above the field. The day was windy, and the sky was streaked with gray foreboding clouds. The guards had been sent back to their barracks, and aside from the offending draconequus and Twilight’s friends, the area behind the castle was devoid of life as far as she could see. Chaos magic didn’t often go wrong. By its very nature, it behaved erratically, so how could you tell if it was doing something it wasn’t supposed to? But when it did go wrong, the consequences tended to be drastic.
Rainbow Dash was hovering around the orb in conversation with Discord, who looked sheepishly and suitably guilty. Fluttershy was hovering next to him and had placed a hoof on his shoulder in support. Behind Twilight, Applejack was in conversation with Starlight and Kerning. Strawberry had been sent to assure the remaining officers at the castle that all was well. Twilight hoped it really was.
“Walk me through it one more time,” Rainbow Dash said, scratching the top of her head with her hoof. “This is what? Like, a labyrinth?”
“More like an obstacle course,” Discord said, looking just as confused as Rainbow Dash. “You see, I left a bit of my own power inside, and whenever the guards would enter, that part of me created some challenges for them. I based them on the Elements and everything, and honestly, it was working fine for hours.”
“Oh,” said Fluttershy, still patting his shoulder, “I’m sure it wasn’t anything you did.”
“Then what?” Twilight asked, joining in the conversation but trying not to look Fluttershy in the eyes. “What happened, Discord?”
The chimeric lord of chaos pointedly ignored Twilight, clearly pretending he’d not heard her and couldn’t see her standing there. Fluttershy too was looking at absolutely everything but Twilight. Rainbow sighed and repeated the question.
“How should I know? That Winter Shield fellow and some others stepped in, and then all of a sudden…” he waved a claw at the orb which was crackling away menacingly, “…this! It felt strange.”
Rainbow Dash and Applejack, who’d finished her conversation with Starlight and now stood next to Twilight, both shot him unimpressed looks.
“Strange?” Applejack said. “Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be?”
“My dear Applejack, of course it’s supposed to feel strange! I meant differently strange, like there was something else in there running interference… maybe. I don’t know!” He tossed his arms up in resignation. “This has never happened to me before.”
“Something else!?” Applejack asked, incredulous. “And you’re saying you can’t stop the spell?”
“Yes, well,” Discord stuttered, “I only left a little bit of power in there, you know. Maybe it got distracted?”
Twilight sighed and rubbed a hoof against her horn. She was going to have to strain herself for this one, she could feel it.
“Kerning,” she said, turning back to look at the old pegasus while her friends continued to interrogate Discord. “Would you please fetch two golden pills from the lab in the Folding Archive? They should be in a box marked with an upside down number five over the chemistry station along the west wall.”
“Of course, your majesty. The ones for headaches, yes?” He didn’t wait for Twilight to confirm before bowing and trotting off towards the castle.
Twilight turned back to her friends. “Are Winter and the others in danger, Discord?”
Fluttershy winced at the question, or maybe it was just a facial tick–Twilight couldn’t always tell–, but Discord continued to ignore her until Fluttershy said something too quiet for Twilight to hear.
Discord sneered but turned his eyes on Twilight. When he spoke, however, it was without obvious malice. “I honestly don’t know, Princess.” Well, not much malice anyway. “But yes, they might be.”
That was good enough for Twilight. She took a deep breath and splayed her wings up and out, planting her hooves firmly. Discord didn’t wait, grabbing Fluttershy and teleporting the two of them out of the way. It took Rainbow Dash a second to notice, but when she did, she too flew away from the orb, joining her grimacing wife on Twilight’s left.
She began to weave a spell, pulling deeply on the three types of magic endemic to her. Her wings, her horn, and her hooves all thrummed and began to faintly glow. She wasn’t very proficient at chaos magic, so that would do her little good here. The magic of the umbrum, however, would certainly do the trick… she hoped. It had a way of weakening or countering chaos. Well, it seemed to weaken almost every kind of magic, but it would do for a dissolution spell strong enough to handle a mishap by Discord.
She braced herself. Shadow magic, or dark magic, or whatever ponies wanted to call it, always took its toll, even in small doses. She focused on the beating of her heart, and in her mind, she whispered to it a list of things that hurt, things that stoked her jealousy, things that raged and begged for hatred, and after only a few seconds, she felt something cold travel up from her chest and into her horn.
Once, this had been a lengthy process. Now, it scarcely took her more than a couple of seconds. She opened her eyes, which glowed cyan and were leaking purple shadows, and took a moment to steady herself. Her horn hissed and spat with esoteric energy, enveloped in a sickly magenta aura streaked with sparks of curdled magic.
With a final deep breath, Twilight let loose a monstrous blast of energy, all of it focused into a razor-sharp dissolution spell.
“BEGONE!” Twilight commanded, using every ounce of her Royal Canterlot Voice to instill upon the chaos magic that it was in its best interest to cease its mischief. Her thunderous voice and the raucous crash of her magic slamming into Discord’s orb echoed out across the hills and valleys around Ponyville, and for several seconds afterwards, her ears kept ringing. Unfortunately for all involved, the orb of chaos magic remained where it was, looking no worse for wear.
Twilight released a frustrated snort and shook her head. That should have worked, and she much regretted that it hadn’t, because a small tightness at the base of her neck already warned of the oncoming headache.
She turned around to ask her friends for ideas, only to find them standing completely and unnaturally still, unblinking and unbreathing. Discord was still too, though, judging by the tension in his jaw, Twilight could see that he was struggling to move and so was clearly still aware.
“What…” Had her magic done that? That couldn’t be right. She carefully approached Discord and prodded him with a few trepidatious tendrils of magic. She did the same to Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy. This wasn’t the work of a time altering spell, nor did it seem like any regular kind of trap spell since that would have solidified the air immediately surrounding the target. None of them were surrounded by magical auras of any kind, so they weren’t being actively held in place. If there was a culprit, they were very skilled at disguising their magic. Twilight’s friends just seemed… stuck in place. Discord was aware, but the other three seemed dazed, eyes clouded over.
She sat down, gritted her teeth, then sighed deeply. Time and time again, the universe loved to remind her how little control she actually had. She rubbed her face with a weary hoof.
“If this wasn’t you, Discord, and I don’t think it was, and it wasn’t me, then I’d have to guess there’s some new outside malicious force meddling in our lives… again…” She sat for a moment, realizing what she’d just said, letting the statement percolate, then grunted with frustration. This was it. The bad thing. Wasn’t it? No sooner had she thought the thought than did an enormous weight seem to settle in her stomach.
“I just… urgh! Why?! What is it this time?!” She stomped her hooves hard into the grass. “What do you want?!” She yelled the last into the sky, not expecting a response, and sure enough, her demand was met with silence. Her shadow grinned and shook with laughter, but she ignored it. She needed solutions, not temper tantrums.
But it was hard not to throw the tantrum. It came to her unbidden, with a fierceness that surprised her. Anger, frustration, and fear roiled around inside her. Her throat felt tight, and her eyes burned with the threat of tears. She’d been on edge for so many months, waiting for something, expecting the worst every morning. And here it was, whatever it was. Surely, Discord’s magic didn’t just malfunction on its own. Surely, her most powerful dissolution spell wouldn’t have failed without some outside interference.
“Alright, Twilight,” she muttered to herself, struggling to set aside her emotions, “this is just a puzzle that needs solving, and you’re great at puzzles.” She ignored the muscles twitching around Discord’s eyes which she guessed were meant to indicate an eyeroll.
She ran through a quick mental index of spells that might be responsible and some spells that might unfreeze her friends, but nothing obvious came to mind. The Power of Friendship was useless… right now, she quickly amended in her mind. It was mostly only good for producing large rainbow-colored battering rams of magic and was otherwise too esoteric and unpredictable for intentional use. Either way, Rarity and Pinkie Pie were still absent.
The only variable was Twilight. She could still move and act, so that meant…. It meant some force or entity wanted to interact with Twilight without interference. Ok, that was something. A frightening something, but something nonetheless. She sighed and took a deep breath. If nothing was going to reveal itself to her, she’d just have to ask. Really ask, and not throw a tantrum.
“Hello?” she said, as calmly as she could. “I assume, whatever you are, that you want to talk, or you’d have attacked me by now.”
For a long moment, nothing happened. The wind continued to blow across the training grounds, and the silence lingered. Just when she was about to try again, she spotted something unusual. A small crack had appeared in the air before her. It was tiny, and if Twilight hadn’t been wearing her glasses and been actively searching for something out of the ordinary, she wasn’t sure she would’ve noticed it. She squinted and pushed her face closer to the little crack, trying to see all of it.
“What are you supposed to be?” she asked the anomaly. It shimmered, and though Twilight was quite sure it wasn’t moving, it seemed slippery in some way she couldn’t really define. She placed a hoof against it and was only mildly surprised to realize it had substance. It was rough, like touching a marred window or mirror. She pushed against it and felt the crack spread. “Hmm… might as well.”
She pushed again, harder, and gasped as the world broke around her, shattering into a million star-like slivers. Her body vanished with the slivers as she plunged forwards and down into a deep well of darkness. She’d have screamed if she still had a mouth, but instead she fell without form or sound until the falling was all there was. When she eventually lost all sense of direction and time, her fear grew less acute, and a soft and broken voice called out to her.
“Do not be afraid, little evening star. All is well.”
Twilight laughed soundlessly. It was a voice she knew well.
-
She stood on the peak of a frozen mountain, overlooking the black fjords of the unexplored north.
“Are you sure about this?” Celestia called from a ledge further down. The wind tore through the elder princess’ hair, whipping it about like a pennant in a storm, and Twilight had to admit it was a much less dignified image than she usually presented.
“I’m sure,” she said, though she couldn’t tell if Celestia heard her over the howling gale. She looked down at the thick damp moss beneath her hooves. It flourished even under the iciest patches of days-old snow, sucking life from anything it could, persevering.
After a moment of silence, Celestia called up again. “You know I can’t help you if something goes wrong, right?”
Twilight chuckled. She knew. Celestia was her superior in most ways, but not in this. She was the Element of Magic, and she could do things already that Celestia could barely understand.
“You didn’t have to come,” she called down, loud enough this time to ensure Celestia heard. “I’ve already gathered most of the components for the spell. This is the last one.”
Celestia placed a hoof against the cliff wall as if considering flying up to Twilight’s perch but hesitated and put it back down. Twilight had made it very clear she needed the space.
“This is… Twilight, all this over a dream? I won’t stop you, but please reconsider. This is dangerous magic.”
This time, Twilight laughed out loud. “Most magic is dangerous magic, Princess.” She looked back out over the fjord, smile fading. “I’m sorry, but I have to know.”
Celestia shook her head and looked away. Twilight didn’t like that Celestia disapproved but gone were the days of craving her old mentor’s constant approval or needing her permission. Twilight was a force unto herself, and what she lacked in wisdom she tried her best to compensate for with knowledge.
The dream had come to her several weeks earlier and had returned every night since. In it, she went on a journey across the world to places she’d never seen or heard of. In these places, she met a voice which spoke to her of things to come, of dangers and tribulations. She could never remember the specifics of it when she woke, but she knew it was important that she find some way to recall the visions. She felt certain this was more than a self-generated recurring dream. Her anxieties had brought her plenty of those over the years, and she could tell the difference. Had she not locked her mind to outside visitation, she’d have asked Luna to confirm, but it would only have been a formality. She knew.
When one door closed, however, another always opened, and there were other ways, older ways, to ascertain the truth of things. In books so old only magic and spite held them together, she read of objects of power, things meant for communing with the elder forces of the world, for seeing the past and the future, and for ripping aside the vagaries of material reality.
She yearned to do just that. To reduce the mysteries of existence to quantifiable and documentable facts. Though the spellbooks she’d sought were half-finished messes with faded passages and torn out pages, she’d arisen each morning filled with inspiration and determination, and being who she was, she’d reconstructed the spell of crafting needed to make an orbuculum.
Only one final component was needed, and when she had it, she’d pull the truth from her dreams and into the light of day. She would finally know why this voice haunted her every sleeping hour, why she woke in the middle of the night shivering and covered in sweat, and why she felt so afraid. She’d know.
She took a deep breath and primed her magic. This first part would be simple, a small spell, really. Discord had shown her how to do it, and it didn’t even require the use of chaos magic. Her horn lit up in an off-pink shade, streaked with angry motes of red. It felt unpleasant but not quite painful. Then, a dissonant chime rang out from the tip. Concentrated strife, a note of pure disharmony. It was bait. Bait for creatures who only lived in myth and the furthest reaches of the cold and forgotten world of yesteryear.
She held her breath and waited as tension built inside her. She imagined Celestia was holding her breath as well. Each second felt like an eternity, stretching out in nervous anticipation, each one afraid to end. The wind howled. The moss drank of the melting snow. The clouds passed by overhead. And Twilight waited.
She felt the wind shift and the temperature drop sharply just before a series of ghastly screams rang out across the dark waters far below. Twilight grinned. She’d been right. As the Windigos soared into the sky before her, she laughed and jumped and whooped with joy. She’d done it! Now, all that remained was to catch one and collect its hopes. But she was Twilight Sparkle, and they were only monsters from legend. How hard could it be?
-
“Is it what you hoped for?” Rarity had asked.
-
Twilight’s left wing had been pulled clean out of its socket, hanging limply by her side. A cut over her eyes had swollen so much she could only barely see. Other things had broken too; ribs, a radius, a tibia, more bones her addled mind had been too concussed to properly account for. Celestia had half dragged half carried the bleeding shattered princess into the map room, and Twilight had been grinning.
Because she was an idiot, she’d been grinning.
She saw herself, as if through smoke stained windows, and she had no mouth to scream with, no legs to wave. She needed to tell the past and broken version of herself that it wouldn’t work, that she’d end up hurting Fluttershy, that Trixie couldn’t be saved, that none of this was worth the cost. The little green vial of Windigo hope that the other version of Twilight had stashed away in her portable pocket dimension would bring nothing but pain.
Somepony had screamed. At the time, Twilight had assumed it was Rarity, and floating above it all, here in the void, she could see that she’d been right. Fluttershy had wasted no time in rushing to her side, ministering to her wounds and broken bones, while Applejack had been forced to physically restrain Rarity from rushing to Twilight’s side and getting in Fluttershy’s way. Rainbow Dash had taken to berating a silent and haunted looking Celestia.
Twilight’s memories of the event were understandably foggy, and though she knew she had hurt her friends and caused them to worry with her reckless pursuit for answers, she hadn’t realized the toll it had taken on Celestia.
“Why did she not provide aid against the Spirits of the Everdeath?” the familiar voice asked.
Twilight was still voiceless, but she thought her answer, willed it out. Rainbow Dash had blamed Celestia for standing by, and Twilight had been in no condition to tell Rainbow to back off.
Celestia didn’t know the proper magic needed to draw hope from the essence of disharmony and entropy, but even if she had known how to cast the appropriate spells and maintain her tether to the material world, she’d have been barred from interfering by ancient foundational laws, forces that had been interwoven with all of reality since the first morning and the earliest breath.
And of course, perhaps most damming of all, Twilight had asked her not to help. Celestia’s student, her beloved protegee, had asked her to stand by and do nothing, and she had honored that wish.
Is it what you hoped for?
-
She was leaning against Rarity, the two of them huddled together at the center of a massive and impossibly intricate glyph painted onto the cleared floor of one of the library wings in Twilight’s castle. Twilight was a sweaty mess and so was Rarity, though the later was also crying.
“It’s ok,” Twilight whispered. “You don’t have to cry. I’m ok.”
“Damn you, Twilight,” Rarity stammered between sobs. “Damn you.”
“I’m sorry,” Twilight said, though she didn’t mean it as much as she should have.
“You could have let me do more,” Rarity cried. “I said I’d help you. I wanted to help.”
“You did,” Twilight said, trying to speak a little louder, though the effort required to do so was tremendous. “I just didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“What! Like you, you mean?!” Rarity yelled, turning her head to stare into Twilight’s lidded unfocused eyes with the fury of a raging manticore. “Twice, Twilight Sparkle! Twice in the last three days I’ve had to watch you almost die! I won’t do it again!”
Rarity extricated herself from under Twilight’s weight, causing Twilight to collapse to the floor, then wobbled off towards the door on unsteady legs. Twilight could hear the unicorn’s breath hitch as it caught on the occasional sob, but she was too drained to get up and chase after her friend. She couldn’t even turn her head to watch her go, instead focusing on the bluish-gray orb pulsing on the floor before her.
She heard Rarity open the door, then a pause.
“Is it what you hoped for?”
“Yes,” Twilight whispered. “Yes, it is.”
Another pause, then the door closed. Nopony else came for Twilight that night, and she fell asleep on the floor, shivering in her own cold sweat.
-
“It is a great object of power,” the familiar voice said.
They were watching a memory in which Twilight, in her laboratory in the castle’s basement, was constructing the brass tripod on which she meant to house the orbuculum. It was an instrument of specific and meticulously measured angles and dimensions, designed to amplify the powers of the orbuculum and allow it to operate on some level even without a direct magic feed from Twilight.
Starlight and Trixie were both keeping her company. Though they were really keeping each other company in Twilight’s vicinity, drinking tea at a table she’d set up just for them. They were laughing and smiling at each other. Starlight was speaking with pride about her daughter, Luster, and Trixie was insinuating that all of Luster’s noteworthy qualities were, in fact, inherited from her great and powerful aunt.
“It’s meant to allow a pony to discern truths,” Twilight thought to the voice, ignoring how little the memory version of Twilight was engaging with Starlight and Trixie. “Esoteric truths, mundane truths, truths about the future and the past. I’d hoped it would help me understand…”
“I know,” the voice said. “Be at peace, little one. I know.”
“Where are we?” Twilight thought. “Is it the well? It doesn’t look like any part of the well I’ve ever been to.”
“It is,” the voice said. “Though we never called it that.”
Twilight yearned for a quill and scrolls. As always, she was possessed of questions and a relentless need to have them answered, but she was limited in this space. She had no form, and her mind was herded away from some thoughts and directed towards others. It was disquieting and uncomfortable. She didn’t handle her agency being curtailed well under normal circumstances, and this was worse.
“You must trust me,” the voice said, “as you have before.”
“Then please,” Twilight thought, seeking something, anything, concrete to anchor herself by.
“I am the Echo of Eternity. Once, before the forging of all things, we were friends.”
-
It was pitch black outside. Not a single star twinkled, and the moon was entirely absent from the sky. A grumpy Princess Luna lay prone on the grassy field behind Sweet Apple Acres, and Twilight was doing her best to ignore both her soulful sighing and Applejacks unsuccessful attempts to not chuckle–Applejack didn’t giggle–at the sight of an immortal alicorn princess throwing an admittedly very subdued temper tantrum on her lawn.
Luna rolled over on her back and once again sighed as loudly and morosely as she could.
“Oh, for!” Twilight groaned, stepping away from the orbuculum and a large pile of gemstones she’d bribed Spike and Rarity to collect for her. “Do you mind, Lulu? I’m trying to peak behind the veil of reality, and you’re making it kind of difficult to focus.”
“Twilight,” Luna said, trying to sound stern and not whiny. “You made me lower all the stars and the moon on the condition that it would only be a brief interlude for my subjects, not a several hour long abstinence from the radiance of my night.”
“Oh, please. Don’t be so dramatic. It’s been an hour and a half, and I promise, if I can’t get this figured out in the next hour and a half, you can have your night sky back.”
“I don’t reckon anypony in town will mind much,” Applejack said, scratching her chin with a massive hoof, “or bother asking questions, but I hope you let the rest of, well, everywhere know you were planning this, or there’s bound to be some, uhm, some confusion.”
“Yes, obviously,” a blushing Twilight lied, having done no such thing. She silently hoped Spike or Starlight had taken the initiative. Too often, she’d forget that her subjects were actual living creatures and not just numbers in the spreadsheets prepared for her by Strawberry Patch or one of her other aids. It made things… messy was probably the best way to describe it. All those feelings, wants, and unpredictable idiosyncrasies tended to gunk up the gears of even Twilight’s best laid plans.
Focus, Twilight.
She turned back to the orbuculum and placed the tip of her horn against its surface for the twentieth time that evening. A sliver of magic leapt from the grooves in her horn to the orb, anchoring Twilight’s mind to a slumbering mass of probability and possibility. She cast another spell to levitate the gemstones, six similarly cut pieces of various species, into position above the orbuculum. They were representative of the Elements and were supposed to help establish the initial connection safely.
There were four pieces of beryl–red, gold, green, and aquamarine–as well as an amethyst and a piece of ametrine. She arranged them into a pentagon with the ametrine placed at the center, equidistant from the other five gems. She was guessing that she must have locked the gems in place slightly asymmetrically the previous nineteen attempts.
The spell could technically be completed without the barrier the gems provided, but Twilight wasn’t about to leave her mind open and unprotected, not again. She didn’t trust dream barriers, no matter how intricately woven, for something as intense as this. If she tried to complete the connection without the protective spell in perfect position, a seventh gem she’d enchanted to serve as an alarm would flash brightly and chirp loudly at her.
This time, she was pretty sure her measurements were as exact as they needed to be.
“Applejack,” she said, not moving her eyes from the orb, “if you would.”
Applejack sighed and walked up to Twilight. The burly earth pony took a deep breath then knelt down and released it in the form of a soft green mist over the grass by Twilight’s hooves. For the twentieth time that night, roots sprung up from the ground, twining their way around Twilight’s legs and locking her in place. The roots sprouted a few leaves and glowed with a gentle golden light. They served as a final layer of protection, tethering Twilight to one of the three domains of the Equestrian pony tribes and strengthening her connection to the material world.
“This is pretty draining, Twi. Like as not, I’ve only got a couple more tries in me before I’m too spent to keep at it.”
Twilight nodded, still not looking away from the orbuculum. Though her horn was still magically tethered to the orb, eye contact remained an important component of the spell. So far, so good. The alarm gem wasn’t flashing or whistling. Hopefully, it’d stay that way. Luna had stopped her sighing and was watching the spell unfold with a serious and weary curiosity. She had understood all the components when Twilight explained them but admitted she probably couldn’t complete the spell herself.
Obviously, that raised all kinds of questions about who, during the prehistoric times from which this spell was sourced, had possessed the power to forge the orbuculum’s predecessors and wield their power. The implications were as fascinating as they were frightening. Unfortunately, those were questions for another day.
Twilight entered the well. Or tried to, at least. The well was a realm of pure magic placed slightly outside the flow of normal reality. It was the place in which Celestia had elevated Twilight into an alicorn, though Twilight had since learned that her ascension had been an inevitable eventuality and that Celestia had simply helped it along.
As far as she knew, only alicorns and other elevated magical creatures could fully enter the well. Others could partially enter or bring part of the well into their own minds. This was, frustratingly, something Twilight hadn’t quite been able to wrap her mind around. At least, the particular mechanics of it eluded her. Shining Armor, however, had mastered the technique and had subsequently taught it to several others.
Since the well was a place of pure harmony and serenity, it helped focus the mind and allowed ponies to perform incredible feats of will and strength. For alicorns, entering the well allowed them access to a massive influx of raw magical power. Unfortunately, most spells cast in the well, stayed in the well. Attempting to enter the well now allowed the orbuculum to form a three-way connection between itself, Twilight’s mind, and the unadulterated magical matrix of all Equestria.
The air around Twilight began to crackle with static electricity, and the few pebbles and loose leaves around her–Applejack kept a meticulous lawn–began to float off the ground. She had to fight the urge to laugh, lest she lose her concentration. As the spell progressed, Twilight could feel within her body a timer alerting her to when she had to activate each next step. The timer was itself an independently maintained spell.
After five seconds, Twilight compelled the magic in her horn to flow backwards. A thunderous crack rang out across Sweet Apple Acres as a concussive shockwave reverberated out from the orbuculum, almost knocking Applejack to the ground and flattening the prone Luna even further. Twilight herself would have toppled if not for the roots holding her in place.
Another five seconds passed, and Twilight constructed an intricate web of magic pathways under the meninges of her brain and a matching identical web on the orbuculum. It felt like somepony was squishing the soft insides of her skull with icy hooves from all directions simultaneously, and Twilight felt a blood vessel pop in her left nostril. Her eyesight grew hazy, and the wet feeling on her muzzle told her she was bleeding quite a lot. Still, it was just a nosebleed. She’d be fine.
Five more seconds passed, and Twilight began to pour as much magic as she could into the orbuculum. She kept at it until her knees grew weak and her stomach lurched. Eventually, the orbuculum was draining her magic of its own volition, and Twilight was helpless to stop it. It was a terrifying experience, but one she’d expected. If her calculations were correct, the orb would stop short of killing her. Though she’d need to rest for a few days to recover.
Sure enough, after a few more five-second intervals, the orb went dull, releasing Twilight from its grip. The gemstones fell from the air, and the roots around Twilight’s legs retreated back into the earth. She stumbled, then fell forward onto the grass, face smeared with her own blood, but smiling triumphantly.
“Eat your heart out, Starswirl,” she laughed, though the laughter was strained with effort.
Luna and Applejack both stared at her, eyes wide and mouths agape.
“Sweet Celestia, Rarity was right. You’ve plum gone mad, Twilight.”
“I…” Luna hesitated. “Yes, that was alarming to watch.”
Twilight frowned, a bit hurt by Applejack’s comment, but was determined to press on. They’d understand eventually. Rarity too.
“It’s fine, girls. Just, you’ll see. This will all be worth it.”
Is it what you hoped for?
-
Twilight didn’t like to keep the lights in The Castle of Friendship turned up very high. There were too many reflective surfaces, too much crystal, and it hurt her eyes. So, she used candles as much as she could and light fixtures that could dim where open fire was inadvisable. Many of the castle staff felt it was perhaps a tad bit gloomy, and other than Rarity, who’d claimed to find the lighting both mysterious and romantic, most of Twilight’s friends seemed to agree.
Pinkie sometimes complained about it when she was there for lessons with Discord. Applejack didn’t say anything out loud, and neither did Fluttershy, but both of them often frowned or squinted when stepping into a new room, clearly needing time to adjust. Rainbow Dash, the paragon of tact that she was, loudly complained about it almost as often as she complained about Twilight’s rule against flying inside the castle hallways.
That evening, the Twilight of the past was sitting in a small study–not her main office–staring at the orbuculum. A few candles kept her company, but their tiny flames did nothing to chase away the dark shadows that clung to the corners of the room. A harpist she retained by the name of Cat Gut–an unfortunate and prophetic moniker–was playing a somber tune in the corner of the study. Twilight always told her to play what felt appropriate, and apparently, somber was it.
Past Twilight only vaguely heard the tune. She was in communion with the orbuculum, as she had been every night for the past week. She’d never before seen herself in the act, and she thought that it looked very undignified. She appeared addled, eyes glazed over and mouth slightly agape. No doubt, the image of an almost drooling Princess hunched before a pulsing orb in a dark and cramped study surrounded by a few flickering candles was as unsettling to Cat Gut as it was to the ethereal Twilight floating above it all.
“Yikes,” she thought. The Echo of Eternity, though invisible to Twilight, extended something that felt like curiosity against Twilight’s essence. Twilight thought it best not to admit how embarrassing and revelatory it was to view oneself from the outside like this. Instead, she asked a question she already knew the answer to.
“You were here,” she thought, “in the orbuculum. You’re the one who warned me in my dreams and whispered to me on nights like this.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes it was the other. I am sorry I could not be clearer. Even here, death limits me.”
The orb had shown Twilight the future. That was what her dreams had been about, a future so horrible she’d wept the first night the orb spoke to her, the first night the orb had pulled her dreams from the realm of half-forgotten mornings into the realm of the quantifiable.
These visions, narrated by a voice, spoke of an ageless intelligence that wished to rot the world. The Echo of Eternity spoke of the Windigos as spirits of the Everdeath, and it seemed an apt description of the visions Twilight had seen, a chaotic never-ending decay that stripped every ounce of life, joy, and magic from the world until reality was nothing but a gaping sucking wound.
Sometimes the voice had been kind, trustworthy, and gentle. Other nights it had been insistent, aggressively so, and harsh, and on those nights, Twilight felt doubt gnaw at her heart. But then the kind voice would return. She understood now. The Echo of Eternity had been that voice, but she said there was another. That made sense, and Twilight wasn’t at all sure why she’d assumed the voices, so different in tone and quality, had belonged to the same entity. When she thought back on it, she’d assumed the voices were just part of the spell, a narration added for clarity.
It horrified Twilight to think that some of the advice she’d acted on could have been actively malicious, provided by something meant to cause her harm. The Echo of Eternity was frightening enough as it was. It was the angry voice that had first suggested the structuring of her guard, but then… the kind voice had agreed? If Twilight had a body, she’d have placed her face in her hooves, frustrated and confused by the whole situation.
Then ice swelled in her chest. A horrible realization clawed through her non-existent body, choking her thoughts. It was the angry voice that whispered to her about the curse that bound the Elements together, that warned her what might happen to her friends, it was that voice and the accompanying nightmares that had driven Twilight frantic, that had driven her to react as she had regarding Trixie… that had made her hurt Fluttershy.
Just, you’ll see. This will all be worth it.
Was it everything you hoped for?
Trust me, I know what I’m doing.
Twilight fled. Somehow, she forced herself away from the vision, away from the well and the Echo of Eternity. She found herself in her own body again, but this time in a dark place. It felt as if she was stepping on water, and the whole thing seemed vaguely familiar. She’d dreamt this place before, she thought. She also knew she shouldn’t be there, felt it as intensely as she’d ever felt anything.
A being stood before her, robed entirely in black. She couldn’t see beneath the robes, but she feared what she’d find there if she looked. This was the Echo of Eternity, another thing she simply knew in this place. It lumbered and jolted in strange ways as it walked up to Twilight, and she had the distinct impression that this was a more real, more tangible, version of her longtime hidden companion.
“What are you?” Twilight asked, leaning back and away from the horrible shade. “Are you… alive?”
Then a face appeared in the thing’s cowl, a face Twilight would never be able to describe accurately. It was vacant in ways that made the world seem crowded, lonely and drained and so very tired. But something struggled there, Twilight thought. Behind the vacuous emptiness of its eyes, she thought she could see the tiniest glimmer of a sad weak creature trying once again to remember what triumph felt like.
Its lips parted slowly, and when the Echo spoke, the whisper strained to bridge the void between them.
“Power. I am old power. The remnants of one who was radiant above all others. I am all that is left.”
“I don’t understand. Please, tell me what’s going on! I thought the orbuculum was supposed to show me the truth of things! I made the spell to do just that!”
“You were successful, but not all truths are benign. In reforging the Eye of Knowledge, you invited those who hold the keys. I am one such being, a fragment of what once was. He Who Hungers is another.”
He Who Hungers.
“It is difficult,” the Echo continued, “to be in this place. To speak to you this directly. I brought you here to tell you this. I have ever attempted to intervene in your journey such that you may one day prevail and awaken the Elements of Harmony. I have tried to guide your steps, but so has he. You should know that it is a servant of the adversary that presently fights the will of Discord. I would beseech you to stay your hoof and to refrain from aiding those trapped within.”
Twilight recoiled at that. No, definitely not! Her guards were trapped alongside some eldritch entity bent on their demise, and she was disinclined to abandon them.
“I can’t,” Twilight said. “I can’t leave my subjects in peril on the words of a stranger, a shade no less. This could be some kind of ploy by… I mean… why in Equestria should I trust you now after everything you’ve told me? You say this Everdeath is nefarious and that he means to hurt me, but many of his whispers, his advice, was echoed by you. Why would he warn me of the coming disaster if he himself is its cause?”
“Trust me, Twilight, because I have stood with you since before you were born. I stood with you in ages past when you served as a shining beacon in the void, when you were whole and made worlds in your image, when every breath you took was filled with the promise of harmony and love. Trust me because I have died once already to elevate your glory and will do so again.”
And then, with a fierce snapping suddenness, Twilight found herself standing back on the training grounds in front of a very mobile Discord and several dumfounded friends.
“What just happened?” Rainbow Dash asked, looking slightly dizzy.
Discord looked at Twilight, inspecting her in a way that seemed too analytical, too knowing.
“Yes, Twilight,” he said. “What did just happen?”