Chapter 15: Not Our Destiny

Editor’s comment: Those readers who are familiar with earlier editions of this text will notice that the following section was not present in the previous issues of these collected works. As has been widely reported in the popular press, a new collection of manuscripts have recently come to light, ostensibly from the private papers of HRH The Lost Princess Celestia of Old Equestria herself. These contain several new additions and extensions to a number of historical records. One, in particular, applies to this volume: the abridged story of the life and times of HRH The Late Princess Twilight Glimmer. After much debate we have decided to include this previously-unknown passage in the new revision of this work.

Despite its widely-regarded significance as one of the most important historical documents ever published, it is well-known that many ponies often read these compiled works to their foals as a collection of bedtime stories. We urge any parents to review the content of this entirely-new chapter very closely before they do so in this case, due to its particularly disturbing content, situations, language, and most of all, the inaccurate and distressing depictions of the actions of HRH The Lost Princess Twilight of Old Equestria. All of these points, we firmly attest, should not be considered suitable for the tender minds of innocent children.

Above all, the reader is reminded that the events related in this new section do not seem to match any verifiable historical record. They are included solely as a document that was evidently of some personal importance to HRH The Lost Princess Celestia of Old Equestria and nothing more. We do not mean to represent this manuscript as being a record of actual factual historical events, as the remainder of these collected works are.

- Professor Horantho Hoofswain, Dip.EqLit,
Supervising Editor-in-Chief,
The Collected History Of Old Equestria Reprint Seven,
Newday 9th Lune, 124 A.E.

Part 1: Life Is Good

They’d managed, finally, to get somewhere up around five or six hundred feet. Glim was still shaky and nervous but with her parents directly underneath her, smiling straight up at her, she was managing pretty well for her first flight. Starburst had been using his telekinesis to tweak and correct her balance, though she seemed that she’d nearly got it now.

“Loosen up, Sweetheart!” Twilight called. “Your legs are too stiff! Just let them fold up under you!”

“Like this,” Starburst said over the wind. He zipped up next to her and tucked his forelegs up. “You fold the front ones like this, it keeps them out of the way but you can still move them for balance. Stick your back legs straight out!” Glim wiggled in the air as she adjusted her pose.

“When you’re flying fast, you put one or both of your forehooves straight out in front of you,” Twilight called up. “It helps you to push through the air when you’re going really fast. Like this!” She tucked one foreleg, extended the other, and raced ahead of her husband and daughter.

“Right here,” Pinkie Pie said quietly. “This didn’t happen like it was supposed to.”

A couple of hundred feet out in front, she slowed, swooped around, flared her wings. “Come on, Sweetheart, you try it!” she shouted back as she stopped dead and flapped up and down on the spot.

The little winged unicorn couldn’t believe it. They’d just been flying slowly up until now, and she’d been having the time of her life, but now her mother wanted her to try flying fast? Cool!

“You’ll be fine,” her father said. He dropped from her side to directly below her again. “Lean forwards a little bit and flap harder! Put both forehooves out in front, it’ll help with your balance!”

Glim narrowed her eyes in concentration, raised her forelegs, and started beating her wings faster. She felt her father magically push up on her front hooves, because she’d wobbled forwards a bit and balancing was really hard, but this was fun, so much fun, the sound of the wind grew louder and louder as she sped up, flapping her wings faster and faster, she was getting really close to Momma now, her mane was whipping straight backwards, she flapped faster and faster and faster and she turned sideways and shot straight past her mother, shrieking in joy, Daddy was shouting something, she couldn’t really understand because the wind was too loud and then he was flying right beside her, she looked at him with the happiest smile and then Momma was there too, on her other side, they were both beaming at her, she threw her front legs upwards and back over her head as she dropped her back legs just like when she was swimming and she flipped straight up into the air, went up real fast, came right around, wobbled, caught her balance, straightened...

Twilight looked on, happy, overjoyed, incredibly proud as her daughter completed the backflip, straightened, leveled out again. Her little pony was screaming with delight.

She felt like screaming with delight herself. Just like before, in the garden before the flying lesson, it was getting very hard to hold back tears. She’d been so sad and lonely for so very long, but the last ten years had been the best of her life. The very best thing she’d ever done was to go out on that date with Starburst. She looked over at him as he soared on the other side of their wonderful daughter. He glowed deep flickering red as he levitated alongside the two feathered ponies. His face, like Glim’s, was almost split in two from his grin.

Twilight realised that her own face was carrying the same expression, and then she really did lose her composure, really did start crying, her tears lost in the rapid flow of the wind. She was glad for this because she didn’t want to have to explain to Glim why she was crying. She was so happy. She’d never been so happy.

It sometimes seemed to her that every new day was better than the last. That certainly held true today. Glim’s eighth birthday was the best day of her life so far, and tomorrow would be even better, and the day after it in turn, and the day after that, too.

“Yeah, that was funny,” Pinkie Pie said as she trotted through the familiar park. “Because that didn’t happen at all. Everything got really nasty, I mean, look over there, there’s the bench I sat on yesterday.” She pointed. The area was still behind a cordon and the splintered park bench hadn’t been cleared away and replaced yet, though a crew of earth ponies was growing new green grass over the patches where it had burned away. More earth ponies were laying new stones along the destroyed sections of the path, where the old stones had been blasted and cracked and melted.

“That’s right,” she heard her new friend say. “Thirteen years of peace and happiness were traded for eight. Thankfully.”

“I guess she would have had a few more years if they hadn’t come, but I’m glad they came. What were they? I’ve seen them before but I never knew what they were.”

“The creatures? They’re called Plague Dragons, or just The Plagues, and recently Windigoes, though there was something very wrong about them yesterday. They could be destroyed, which is impossible. You see, my beloved Pinkie, they’re not living creatures. They’re the magical manifestation of disharmony, and they can’t be hurt, harmed or killed in any way at all. I imagine that they were... Well. More importantly, I thought they were all gone, and I thought It was gone as well. Once again, thankfully, I was mistaken.”

“That’s funny too,” Pinkie said as she stepped off the path onto the lush grass and sat down in front of a long and riotous flowerbed, closed her eyes, sniffed deeply, smiled. She exhaled slowly. “I don’t remember It, from the first time I mean. From back when... Twilight?” She felt The Element nod. “From when It tried to use Twilight, from back before I died. I don’t remember It but I know it happened. That’s weird,” she giggled. “I think that I helped Twilight to kill It, like, forever. I thought It was gone too.”

“Mostly. I suppose that It’s my sibling, really. I’m still here, and so is It. There’s just enough hate left in the world, I guess.”

She’d seen it once before. Well, she’d seen a part of it. It had scared her out of her wits the first time she’d dreamed it. In fact, up until last night, every time she remembered it, she almost dissolved into shrieking terror.

But not now. Last night, when she’d dreamed it again, she hadn’t jerked awake from the nightmare. She’d watched it, calmly, peacefully. If anything, it was more horrific now that she’d seen it in context, but it just wasn’t upsetting to her any more.

Part 2: To A Screaming Halt

Thirteen is a very special birthday for a unicorn, and this little half-unicorn-half-pegasus celebrated hers in style. And in secret. As far as anypony knew, Twilight, Starburst and Glim had all vanished off the face of the world for three entire weeks, and they weren’t telling anypony what they’d been up to. The guards would have gone completely mental if Celestia and Luna hadn’t told them that everything was fine - although not even Celestia or Luna knew where they’d been, but it was clear they’d all needed the escape. Twilight in particular came back from their vacation looking younger than she’d done in years, despite her perpetual youth.

Glim, as a thirteen-year-old ‘unicorn,’ was going to start her lessons at Twilight’s School for Gifted Unicorns in the autumn. She knew a fair bit of magic already, of course, though now that she was thirteen her parents had decided to teach her a few advanced spells. Not so that she could show off when she went to Magic School, of course. They wanted her to master her disguise spell herself, and they wanted to make certain, absolutely certain that she could levitate.

Glim spent more time in the air than on the ground these days and Twilight and Starburst wanted her to have a backup, just in case. It wasn’t unheard-of for a pegasus to snap a wing in flight, or suffer some other mishap, and end up falling and suffering severe injury, or even death. So they’d both gone to visit their daughter and had surprised her with the news that she was about to be taught some very, very advanced magic today, months before her first official day of Magic School.

The first lesson had barely started, however, when there was a knock at the door. An important knock, two sharp taps and a thump. “Hang on a minute, Sweetheart,” Twilight said as she turned away from the lesson and magicked Glim’s bedroom doors open.

A Sentinel stood in the corridor. A member of the elite Critical-Alert branch of the pegasus guards, golden-armoured like any other but his specially-shaped helmet and chestplate set him apart as a very, very important guard. He strode into the little Princess’s room without being asked, trotted right up to Twilight and murmured in her ear. Then he stepped back a pace and spoke aloud. “What is your command, Your Highness?”

Twilight blinked. She paused for just a fraction of a second, then her entire expression hardened as she flicked to her most severe mood. “Understood, Sky Marshal. Thank you. I’ll see to this. Please, if you would, kindly notify the Palace Guard for me. General Alert for the moment.”

The guard bowed, total seriousness in his expression. “Very well, Your Highness, I will see to it at once.” He leaped into the air and whirred rapidly back down Glim’s bedroom corridor.

“What?” Starburst asked as he strode up to his wife. “Just a moment, Sweetheart,” he called over his shoulder to his protesting daughter. “What? What’s happened?”

“Treaty breach, Sweetie,” Twilight murmured. “A dragon’s been spotted eighty-six miles north-by-northeast of Saddlestop, entering the third old cave on Nequitariaus Mountain.”

“Oh. Well, damn.” Starburst’s mind was racing. “Uh... That’s still a long way away from anything. And it’s, uh, um... Saddlestop’s about seven hundred miles away to the west, well, give or take. What are we going to do?”

“‘We’ aren’t going to do anything. ‘I,’ however, am going to pay it a visit.”

“Momma’s sorry, Glim,” Twilight said, her voice and eyebrows raised. “Your father and I have something important to talk about. Give us a minute please and then we’ll explain. Life-and-death, Sweetheart.”

“Uh, okay,” the small winged unicorn said, her own eyebrows raised by her mother’s use of a code-phrase. ‘Life-and-death’? That one was really, really important. Like, no-messing-around-because-somepony-might-die important. She jumped into the air, flapped over to her bed, plopped down right onto its middle and picked up one of the new telekinesis books she’d got from Dad for her birthday. She strained her ears but her parents weren’t speaking aloud any more. They were talking with magic now so there was nothing to hear. Sighing, she started to read about aural transparency and magical-fulcrum mass cancellation.

“Okay, a dragon,” Starburst whispered into Twilight’s mind with his magic. “You’re going to go and see it?”

“Yes. Eighty-six miles away from a town, I know it’s a small margin but that treaty’s very important.” Twilight’s face could have been carved from granite, her expression was so hard at the moment. “We leave them alone if they leave us alone. They know this, and they know what happens if they trespass.”

“The prophecy,” Starburst magically murmured. “Are you, I mean, is this... Is this safe?”

“I’m not ‘going to the dragons,’ Sweetie. I’m going to see one dragon and tell it to get lost. Sorta. In a manner of speaking. She’s here with you, she’s perfectly safe, there’s a couple hundred guards all around the place and they’re on alert. And I’ll be back in about two minutes.” She just noticed her daughter’s ears flicking in her direction.

Starburst put a hoof to Twilight’s cheek. “Are you alright?” he said, eyes wide, eyebrows raised, mouth closed in a tight line. “You said that out loud, Sweetie.”

“Wow,” Twilight’s magic whispered. “I didn’t even notice. Sorry, I’m obviously a little bit wound up at the moment. Yes, the prophecy. Sweetie, I’m bucking terrified. Guard her with your life.”

“Well, that goes without saying.” Starburst still didn’t like it. “I could go instead,” he offered. Then he realised how silly that sounded. He couldn’t teleport the distance, and though extremely-skilled in magic as he was, he was still just a pony. One pony versus one dragon? “Alright, stupid idea. What about Celestia or Luna? Or both of them, even? Or all three of you?”

“It’s almost midday. Big Sister’s asleep, Biggest Sister’s in Court, and we don’t really have to disturb either of them.”

His expression told her what he thought of this. “Maybe we wait,” he offered.

“Can’t wait. Not with a dragon trespassing, Sweetie. It’s impossible and you know I can’t. Sweetheart?” she called aloud to her daughter. “I’ve got to go somewhere for a minute or two, but Daddy can still start teaching you.”

Glim threw down her book and let out a truly impressive whine. “Momma! We only just got back yesterday and you’re right back to your usual self! Sorry,” she added at her mother’s frown, “but we just had three weeks of fun together and then we get back and I don’t see you for a whole day and we’re all supposed to be having fun together again today and you’re gonna teach me some really cool magic but now you and Daddy have something to talk about and I’m not supposed to hear what it is so you use magic to talk together and then now you have to go somewhere!” The little filly pouted, most convincingly.

Twilight trotted over. “I can’t help it, Sweetheart, but I’ll be right back. Five minutes at the most. Promise. This whole afternoon is for us.”

“You look like Rarity,” Twilight chuckled. “Really, I do have to go. You know I’d rather stay here but something big’s happened and I have to go and fix it.”

The pout was replaced by wide-eyed curiosity. “Big? What? What’s happening? Where, Momma? Can I go with -”

“NO!” Twilight shouted in shock. Starburst had shouted the same thing, but his exclamation had been completely lost underneath Twilight’s. She’d yelled right into her daughter’s face with the full power of the Royal Voice.

Glim shrieked and toppled backwards off her bed with her eyes shut and her hooves over her ears, but before she could hit the floor her mother and father had both flashed and appeared on either side of her, catching her with their magic. They righted the screaming filly in the air. They wouldn’t even let her fall three feet without catching her. Both of their horns were flickering and flashing as they soothed and calmed her abused eardrums.

Glim opened her eyes again now that the pain had gone away. She wiped away a few of her surprised, pained tears and looked at her mother, who looked ready to burst into tears herself. “Momma... What the hay was that?”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Sweetheart.” Twilight and Starburst lifted her back up onto her bed. “You, uh, you sorta gave us both a bit of a surprise. I’m sorry. You feel alright now?”

“It’s something Mom can do. Your Aunties too. Don’t be mad at your Mom, Sweetheart, you just gave her a fright. You gave me a fright too.”

“I gave you a fright?” Glim asked in disbelief. “Daddy, I nearly peed myself. It hurt!”

Twilight and Starburst were looking at each other, horrible expressions on their faces. From her bed, Glim took in those expressions with widening eyes. She’d never seen either of her parents look even half as upset as this. “Hey, guys? Momma? Dad? What’s wrong? Really, what’s wrong?”

“Daddy? Momma?” she whispered. She’d started trembling. Her parents’ fear was starting to infect her as well. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

Twilight clapped her hooves over her eyes and turned away, suddenly sobbing. Starburst grabbed Glim and hugged her tight. He was sobbing too, though he was managing to keep his own emotional breakdown fairly quiet.

“Mom... Mom’s got to go and see a dragon,” he whispered. Twilight Glimmer gasped, her eyes flying wide. “Yes. You know how serious that is.”

The little pony’s eyes grew even wider, her mouth contracting. “Dad... Daddy... I don’t want... Can’t Momma get rid of... Can’t she do it from here? Does she really have to go?” She turned her head. Twilight was huddled against the wall, shaking and shuddering. “Daddy, Momma’s not all right. I think she needs you.”

Starburst put his daughter down on the bed and walked over to his wife. He lifted the sobbing alicorn from the floor, not using magic to do it. The situation called for something more... personal. He set her to her hooves but didn’t let her go - he could tell that she wasn’t able to take her own weight at the moment. So he did the only thing that he could. He crushed his wife into an embrace.

Twilight Sparkle, Royal Pony Sister, Eternal Princess of Equestria, burst into a flood of tears.

Nopony moved for almost a whole minute. Finally, Glim hopped off her bed and walked up to her mother and father. She stretched her little hooves around them just as far as she could. Closing her eyes, she squeezed her parents into a hug. And then they were hugging her.

“You know about the Dragon Treaty. You know how we all have to beware the dragons, Sweetheart. We can’t risk, I mean, we can’t chance it -” Starburst’s voice broke and he hugged his daughter tighter.

“I know, Daddy. Momma? You’ll be careful, right?” Glim looked awful. It was clear that she didn’t want her mother to go anywhere, but she also knew there was nopony who could do a better job.

Twilight picked her up and hugged her again. “I’ll be back soon, Sweetheart. Really soon. Promise. The sooner I get this done, the sooner we can start our lesson together.” She put her daughter down and forced a smile.

Starburst put a hoof on his daughter’s shoulder as Twilight ignited her horn. “Hurry back, Sweetie,” she heard him whisper.

Everything flashed purple-red for a moment, and then Twilight gazed up at the mountain. It looked as if it’d once belonged to a range, long, long ago when the world was young, but now it stood all alone in the middle of the hilly plains that stretched as far as she could see in every direction. It was pretty tall, maybe fifteen or twenty thousand feet at the peak, but she wasn’t aiming for the peak.

Her horn flashed and she found herself standing on the edge of the big, wide plateau she’d seen jutting out only a few hundred feet up the mountain’s southern face. Several large caves stretched away from her to her right. All of them were pretty big, but she headed for the biggest, about half a mile away. The third old dragon cave. She decided to walk and not teleport. She needed time to think. She also needed to calm down. She didn’t want to just kill this dragon on sight, though she would be within her rights to do so.

Twilight might have despised dragons but she wasn’t a monster. She’d give it a chance to explain itself, she decided, as she walked over the sparse grass of the high plateau.

“Self-levitation,” Starburst said. “It’s not easy, but it’s not particularly hard either. Let’s practice with the couch first. Grab it, but don’t pick it up.”

“Okay,” Glim said. Her horn winked pale purple, and so did her couch as she telekinetically lifted it a few feet in the air. “Whoops! Sorry, Daddy.” She put it down again and the glow faded out. “Hey, that’s weird.” She picked it up again, put it down again. “I can’t! I can’t grab it without picking it up!”

He was smiling. “I’d have been very surprised if you could have. The instinct with levitation is to levitate, after all. I’ll show you.” Glim put the couch down again and it glowed deep red to match his hornglow, but it stayed completely stationary and on the floor. The glow vanished. “You need to practice that. Once you have it, you’ll be able to control your psychokinesis enough to hold your own aura, which is what you need to do to levitate yourself.”

After a few more minutes, Glim was getting the hang of it. The couch still wobbled a bit, but otherwise stayed on the floor. “Okay Dad, now what?”

“Keep practicing for a bit. You need to be able to, oh, let’s see. Don’t stop holding it, okay?” He walked over to the glowing couch and leaned against it. It didn’t want to move. It felt as if it was stuck to the floor. “Wiggle your head a little bit, Sweetheart.” Glim did, shaking her head slightly from side to side. The couch slid back and forth across the floor a few inches in each direction, matching her movements. “You’re still levitating it, even though you’re not lifting it up. You just need to hold it, so if I push it, it’ll move.”

The cave was enormous. The opening had to be at least three hundred feet tall. Definite dragon cave. She strode inside, noting that there wasn’t any telltale smoke billowing out of the dark opening, but that didn’t matter. She could smell it. Brimstone, faint and even slightly sweet, which was unusual, but she ignored that. The dragon was definitely here. The cave was so enormous that it was quite light inside, at least until she rounded the first bend in the massive passage. Her horn flashed for a moment as she cast a spell on her eyes to enable her to see in the deepening blackness of the cave.

She marched forwards steadily, fearlessly, along the curving path for several minutes, not pausing as she rounded several more bends. The ceiling of the passageway was high above her head. This would be a very big dragon if it had chosen such an enormous cave. The rough tunnel, which had been growing wider and higher for the last few hundred paces, suddenly opened out all around her into an enormous cavern. There was not a scrap of light but that didn’t matter after the spell she'd cast. She narrowed her eyes as she saw it.

“I know you can do it, Sweetheart. I know you can. You’ll get it, don’t worry.”

Glim frowned at her couch. Then, her eyelids widened, her eyes lost focus, and she relaxed. She really, really relaxed. Her expression shifted, softened, widened. Became far more relaxed.

The couch glowed again. It didn’t so much as twitch. It remained on the floor, completely still and unmoving.

“Daddy,” she murmured. Her voice was faint and breathy. “How’bout now?”

Starburst shoved the glowing couch. It moved aside easily. “That’s it! You’ve got it, Sweetheart!” Glim just kept staring at the couch, her mouth slack, vacant amazement in her expression. “Hold it for a moment if you can, I’m going to try something.”

He picked the couch up with his own magic, Glim’s pale purple aura glowing brighter with the deep magenta of his own wrapped around it. He let go of the couch and it thunked back to the carpeted floor. His daughter’s magical glow hadn’t even flickered.

“Okay, Sweetheart, I think you’ve really got it now.” The glow around the couch faded away and Glim blinked, shook her head. She blinked again and looked at him. “You can maintain an unattached aura, you can sustain a magical link without physical effect. You can hold something with your mind and not move it. That’s the first step.”

“That was really hard, Dad,” she said. “And it was weird, so weird, like, I could feel you moving the sofa around. Almost like, hmm.” She sat down and shook her head, then lifted a hoof. “Like if I was... Oh!” She jumped up again and galloped over to her desk, grabbed a pencil with her magic and ran back. She plucked the pencil out of the air with her forehoof. “Pull it,” she said. “Move it around, I mean.”

Starburst chuckled. “I know where you’re going with this,” he said. He grabbed the end of the pencil with his hoof and pulled it left and right.

“Hey, that’s it!” Glim said as her hoof was tugged back and forth by her father. “That’s what it felt like, Dad! Like I was holding something and somepony else was moving it!”

He smiled indulgently. “You’re just like your mother. You’ve got it exactly right. And now, Sweetheart, you can learn to self-levitate.”

She squealed and threw the pencil aside. “Okay, Daddy! What do I do?” She was the picture of excited anticipation.

“It’s easy, now that you can hold a loose psychokinetic grip around something. A lot of ponies can’t, Sweetheart. But with parents like yours...” He chuckled for a moment, then blinked and focused. “It won’t be hard, darling. Hold up your forehoof, look at it, and then close your eyes and open your oculus mentis. And look, look as hard as you can, without using your eyes. This might take a while, it might take an hour or even longer. That doesn’t matter. Just don’t stop until it happens.”

Glim nodded, held up her hoof, stared at it for a moment and then closed her eyes. Thirty seconds passed. They both sat still as statues. One minute. Two minutes. Three, three and a half...

“Daddy,” she whispered quietly, her eyes still closed, “I can see my hoof.”

It was big. She couldn’t see it clearly, just a hazy magical outline, but that was all she needed. She wasn’t about to cast any light, she’d rely on her vision-enhancing spell. No treasure hoard that she could see, just a dragon, asleep and snoring softly. She marched straight up to the creature’s snout and tapped on it.

It opened its eyes and raised its head, blinking around blindly in the total darkness and rubbing the end of its snout. “Hmm,” a low voice rumbled - not as low as it should have been for the creature’s size, Twilight realised. “Is someone here?”

“Hi,” Twilight said in a voice that sounded cheerful. “Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

“Trying to get some sleep,” the dragon said, looking more-or-less in her direction. “I’ve been flying for days and I’m tired. Are you a pony?” The dragon’s eyes opened wider in the dark. “You must be a pony.” It started to sound panicky. “Please, don’t tell the Princesses, I know I shouldn’t be here but I’m not hurting anybody, this cave’s empty, it’s an old dragon cave and no dragons use it any more, I’ve got nowhere else to go -”

“That’s your own aura, Sweetheart. That was the hardest bit of magic you’ll ever do and I’m so proud of you. Now, just pick your aura up like you’d pick anything else up.”

Twilight Glimmer glowed purple, shrieked, and shot into the air like a bullet. She glowed bright red as her father caught her before she could smack into the ceiling. He put her back on her bedroom carpet. “Gently, Sweetheart. You just accidentally levitated your own hoof, not your hoof’s aura. Your aura.”

Glim shook her head, blinking rapidly. “Sorry, Daddy, that was weird. I, uh, I could feel it, I could feel my own aura, it felt weird and then my magic went right through it and it kinda grabbed my hoof...”

“It’s okay, Sweetheart,” he said, stepping forwards and tousling her mane. “You know that most unicorns learn to do this when they’re eighteen or nineteen, and some of them never learn it. You’re only thirteen. We’ve got all the time in the world.” His smile widened as he narrowed his eyes conspiratorially. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Hey, imagine what Mom’ll say when she comes back if you can levitate!” he grinned.

Glim squeaked and then grew surprisingly serious. She closed her eyes and threw all of her willpower into the hardest spell she’d ever done...

Twilight was already mad, and what the dragon had just said made her even angrier. She’d actually managed to sound polite when she’d spoken to it, and she’d been prepared to let this dragon go if it had left the cave immediately. Mistakes happen, after all. But it knew that it was breaking the treaty, it had said so. And it would know what the penalty was. Twilight didn’t particularly want to kill it, though. She just wanted it gone. She gave it one final chance.

“The Draconic Trespass Treaty was written and signed for a very important reason, and you’re breaking it. You’ve got five seconds to get out of this cave and start heading back towards the dragon sanctuaries.”

“I can’t,” the dragon rumbled. “They won’t take me back, I just want to be left alone, I’m not harming anybody. Please, just go away. Just forget you saw me. I’ll stay hidden, I promise, just don’t -”

“No more chances,” Twilight said, cutting across the dragon in a voice that was suddenly harsh, loud, full of danger. By the terms of the treaty, Twilight didn’t have to give trespassers any chances at all, and she’d just given this dragon two. And they’d both been thrown back in her face. “You know the treaty. Dragons don’t break it, ever. Dragons do as they’re told. They stay in their sanctuaries and don’t leave them except to travel to another sanctuary.” Her voice was growing colder as her rage kept getting hotter and hotter. “And they never even try to come within a hundred miles of a pony settlement. When dragons try,” she said, narrowing her eyes and igniting her horn, “dragons die.” And then, more than her horn ignited.

She could see it clearly now in the light coming off her. The dragon, very large but somehow with slimmer, more delicate features than most that she’d seen, opened its own eyes wide in total horror now that it could see her. Now that it could see what kind of a pony had woken it up and asked it to leave. It screamed, scrambling backwards, falling over itself as it tried desperately to get away from the alicorn standing before it. An alicorn with furious red eyes and a flaming mane and tail.

Glim, eyes closed and face screwed up in concentration, wobbled crazily three feet above her bedroom carpet. Her wings were extended and fluttering in her instinctive attempt at keeping her balance. “I can’t get it, Daddy - whoops!” She flipped right over in the air before she wobbled upright again.

“It’s your wings. I think we need something to stop you from trying to fly, so you can get the hang of self-levitation faster,” Starburst said thoughtfully.

Glim’s hornglow vanished and the little purple pony dropped back to her hooves. “I know!” she exclaimed, then she whipped around and jumped into the air, flapped over to her closet, alighted again. Throwing one of the doors wide, she started opening the drawers within, tossing various items this way and that, until she found...

The purple pegacorn trotted up to her father with a wide smile on her face as an equally-wide shiny-purple belt floated along behind her. “Daddy! We need to stop me from using my wings, right? So how about this?” Her father wasn’t convinced, and his expression told her so. “Come on, Dad! I can tell that my wings are stopping me from getting it. So let’s tie my wings up!” She offered him the vinyl belt. “I wanna be able to self-levitate before Momma gets back!”

Starburst relented. “I suppose you’re right, darling. Now tell me if it’s too tight.” He took it from her magical grip and straightened it out, looking at the buckle. Glim folded her wings and bunched them in tight against her sides. He slipped the wide plastic belt around her chest, pulling it tight.

“That’s too loose, Dad,” she said, fluttering her wings briefly. They rattled against the restraint.

“No,” she disagreed. She gave her tightly-furled wings a shake and then took a few deep breaths. “No, that’s good. I can’t move my wings but it’s not too tight.”

Starburst frowned. He was vaguely upset about restraining his daughter's wings with a belt, but then he admitted the facts of the situation to himself. Glim could take the belt off at any time in about a quarter of a second, she’d come up with this idea herself, and it would force her to levitate with magic alone.

He made the biggest mistake of his life as he nodded. “Okay, Sweetheart. Daddy gives in.” He smiled. “Let’s see you levitate.”

Twilight marched out of the cave mouth and into the midday sunshine, dragging the huge dragon along behind her by its neck. She stopped, turned around, scowled at it. It was choking and spluttering, its foreclaws trying to bat Twilight’s magical grip away from its throat. Tears were streaming from its eyes and down its cheeks. It looked at Twilight with terrified, pleading, glistening eyes and shook its head madly.

Looks like it’s feeling pretty damn sorry for itself. Well, boo bucking hoo.

Twilight squeezed a little, lifted it into the air. It was pretty damn big. A thousand feet long at least, she reckoned, though slim and rounded instead of bulky and angular. This was sort-of interesting, but she didn’t really care. It was a dragon and that was all that mattered. She threw it at the towering cliff. The ground under Twilight’s hooves trembled as it hit, very hard, above and to the right of the cave entrance. It screamed almost as loudly as the crash of its impact, then collapsed to the ground where it was half-buried in the slide of boulders and dust that were brought down on top of it.

The sparse grass and brush on the low plateau started to smoke and smoulder for a few feet all around her. Well, she was on fire right now. Somehow, that just made her smile even wider. The dragon was stirring, still choking and gasping feebly. Twilight sat down and waited for it to get up.

“DADDY!” Glim shrieked in panic. She was upside-down and bumping gently into her ceiling. “DADDY! GET ME DOWN!”

Starburst chuckled. His horn and his daughter both glowed bright magenta. “Okay, I’ve got you. Drop your spell, Sweetheart.” The purple glow underneath his own spell vanished. He flipped her upright and set her back on the floor. “Take a break, darling. Sit down.”

She did. He walked up to her and tousled her cherry-streaked mane. “You’re doing really, really well, Sweetheart. We can stop now. Mom'll be back soon and she’ll be so proud of you.”

“No, I wanna get it right! I wanna get it before she comes back!” Glim exclaimed. She jumped up into the air again, glowing purple. She wiggled. She wobbled. Though not as much as before. Starburst looked proudly on.

Twilight smiled at the coughing, bleeding dragon. This was fun, this was so much fun. She had thoroughly enjoyed the beating. Something deep in her mind was chastising her for breaking its fingers and toes and nose and wings, but that was easily drowned out by the deliciously righteous violence she’d delivered. And besides, she had something more important in mind than her conscience. Time to really have fun. Time to see just how far her magic could go. She’d waited a very long time to try this out.

She’d done this once before, fifteen hundred years ago during The Windigo Wars. The final battle with Discord. A real fight, a physical fight, no magic at all. The foul bastard and Celestia had beaten the snot out of each other as Luna hurried to join them all with her father’s Weapon. Twilight herself had been forced to sit on the sidelines as it were, unable to join in because she was doing something that occupied all of her attention.

She called it ‘The Magic,’ all the combined magical power there was. As the Master of Magic, she could do this, she could command all of the magic in existence. She had channeled every wisp of magic in the entire world, held it tight inside her mind so that nothing else could use it. And Discord and Celestia had taken the opportunity, as temporarily-mortal non-magical creatures while Twilight held The Magic, to release a few well-pent-up frustrations on each other.

Twilight didn’t do anything herself with all the world’s magic on that day, though. She just held it so Discord couldn’t use magic himself. And then right after a badly-bleeding Celestia had managed to crush Discord’s entire ribcage, Luna had arrived, Twilight had released The Magic straight into Moonglow’s Weapon of Harmony, and Luna ended the Wars, destroying every Windigo in existence forever. They hadn’t been seen since. Oh, and killing the otherwise-indestructible Servant of Disharmony in the bargain too.

Today, right now, she would channel all of the magic in the world again. But today, she would use it herself. And she would see what happened. She was sure it wouldn’t be good for the dragon at all.

Her horn flared with sudden vicious blood-red light, and then the light pulsed and vanished, replaced by darkness. Deep, utter, profound darkness. A darkness so deep that it made black look merely grey in comparison.

All the light and warmth seemed to vanish for hundreds of feet all around her. Hundreds and hundreds of feet, thousands of feet, then miles, and then dozens of miles. Hundreds of miles.

The Magic flowed into her, and she used it. Twilight Sparkle unleashed her fury.

The dragon screamed as it squeezed its eyes shut and clamped its bleeding forepaws over its ears. The little burning pony exploded with the loudest and most horrible sound that there had ever been.

“That’s pretty good, Sweetheart,” he said. “Looks like you’ve got it.” He was standing on Glim’s bedroom balcony, looking out at his daughter proudly as she pirouetted gracefully through the air, giggling her head off at the strange sensation of ‘flying’ without using her wings. It always felt really, really weird to self-levitate, and he could appreciate his daughter’s glee at mastering the talent.

Neither of them were the least bit bothered by the three-hundred-foot drop from her balcony to the courtyard below, of course. Glim could fly exceptionally well, and even though her wings were tied at the moment, he was right here if she lost control of her spell. But it didn’t look like that was going to happen. She was such a quick study - just like himself and Twilight, he admitted. “Okay, come on back and we’ll take that belt off, now you don’t need to cheat any more -”

He stopped talking. Something very strange, something very wrong was happening. He’d been getting odd flashes of Twilight’s moods for the last few minutes. Anger was there, but also pleasure and enjoyment and vindication, but this new feeling wasn’t right, it was so not right, it was completely wrong, it was bad -

Glim’s pale purple glow flickered, she fell a few inches and jerked to a halt again. She gasped in surprise. “Daddy! Did you feel that? What was it? That felt really weird.”

“Come back over to the balcony, Sweetheart. Something strange’s going on.”

With no warning, from out of nowhere, a sudden white-hot murderously-sadistic fury roared briefly through his chest, then the sensation vanished as suddenly as it had started. He jumped at the feeling -

The sky above darkened as the midday sun’s brightness faded to that of early twilight. Glim’s aura vanished with a snap, her horn extinguished, and she fell out of sight. Without even pausing to think, Starburst leaped straight over the balcony railing -

His horn wouldn’t ignite and her wings were still tied. And they were both falling a very long way to a stone courtyard.

Twilight exploded upwards as she used The Magic. Her feet were on the ground but her head was in the clouds. Above the clouds. Above the whole world. What a feeling, what a glorious feeling. She felt like she could do anything. She could do absolutely anything. Stop time, unmake the world, eat the sun, crack The Lunacy’s dying curse itself. Unlimited, infinite magical power roared through her. Anything. She could do anything.

The dragon almost passed out in shock. The tiny flaming alicorn that had been beating it nearly senseless had exploded, expanded, in the blink of an eye it was staring down at the dragon and not vice versa. The dragon looked skywards, its fear more extreme than it could have ever believed.

Twilight Sparkle, ten miles tall, ten miles long from mane to tail, two miles between her forehooves and blazing like the sun, looked upon the world. She turned her head this way and that, smiled around at all of Equestria. Then she looked down at the gnat by her left forehoof. The green-and-purple dragon was curling up, shaking so violently that it almost looked blurry. She smiled down at it and opened her mouth.

“YOU WILL BE MY EXAMPLE! DRAGONS WHO BREAK THEIR TREATY WILL DIE WITHOUT MERCY!”

Her magical voice hammered off the stone cliffside, hammered off the ground, hammered inside the screaming dragon’s skull.

The wind was shrieking, but not as loud as Glim. She wasn’t far below him, but there was no magic, there was no magic, he couldn’t reach her, he couldn’t stop his own descent -

The dragon was writhing, in pain, in fear, its forepaws holding its bruised throat. “Please,” it choked and stammered, “I ju-ju-just want to b-be left a-alone, I wouldn’t-wouldn’t l-leave them so they-they-they chased me away -”

His daughter’s screams were like daggers in his ears and his heart. She was tumbling, trying to balance herself but she was a pegasus at heart and so most of her balance came from her wings and her legs weren’t doing the job, she was fumbling at the beltbuckle, his heart spasmed in relief as he saw pegasus guards in the courtyard below, but they weren’t flying, they were jumping a few feet into the air with their wings flapping madly but they couldn’t get any height -

“They -” the dragon choked. “They wouldn’t let-let me k-keep them s-so I took them and f-flew and we-we had n-nowhere to g-go, p-please, they-they ne-never liked me, I n-never really li-liked them eith-either, I never re-really f-fit in with the dr-dragons be-because I was ra-raised by po-po-po-”

Twilight stared down at this writhing, choking slug near her hoof. This pathetic little worm. She was feeling particularly benevolent at the moment, so she wouldn’t kill all of the dragons today. Just this one, and a few of the big ones up in Shale Gully. Maybe some from the hibernation grounds in the south for dessert. A few more tomorrow to remind them to behave. Maybe a few more the day after too. And maybe the day after that as well. She smiled with anticipation for the upcoming slaughter. It felt good. It felt really good. She lifted her titanic forehoof to stomp the dragon into pulp.

“PLEASE!” the sobbing, retching creature shrieked. “DON’T HURT MY BABIES!”

He was screaming himself now, tears of frustration and horror blurring his vision. Where had his magic gone? Why couldn’t the guards fly? Because pegasi didn’t have the large flight muscles of birds, and so without magic, they couldn’t fly? But, again, where was the magic? He saw Glim get a wing free from the belt but there were only twenty or so feet to go... At least he’d die right after his daughter, that was something, he wished Twilight were here so he could kiss her goodbye, he closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see -

Twilight’s hoof paused, quivering. She started to tremble slightly as she realised what the dragon had yelled through its splutterings. And then she saw them.

Horror broke through her fury. In the shadows just inside the cave entrance, hiding behind a few of the boulders that had been shaken loose in her assault, there were three tiny, terrified little scaly faces. They were staring up at her, their wide eyes full of fear. Smaller than ants they seemed, but she could see them perfectly clearly. Three hatchlings. Three baby dragons. They’d come up to the cave entrance to find... their mother.

This dragon was a mother. A mother. What had it been trying to say as Twilight choked it? The dragon had refused to abandon its eggs, so the other dragons had kicked it out? Dragons always abandoned their eggs. This dragon was very, very strange, it was... It was caring for its babies? That it was showing care at all was completely unheard-of. It... It...

Her horror doubled as she finally appreciated its striking resemblance to another dragon who had been raised by ponies... It had nowhere else to go. And Twilight had kicked the shit out of it and had just been about to kill it. Twilight had nearly killed a frightened, outcast mother who just wanted to keep its babies safe.

It? Stop thinking of it as an It. It’s not an IT. It is a SHE. SHE is a MOTHER.

She released her grip on The Magic. With a loud crack she was herself again - completely herself; the fires of her rage completely gone - standing on the plateau in front of the cave, staring up at the bruised, bleeding dragon. It -

She was still lying up against the fractured cliffside next to the cave. Purple and green, and about the right age. Could it be? Could she have come from the same abandoned clutch as Spike? Might other ponies have raised her, two thousand years ago? Could she, too, have been found by ponies, raised by ponies, raised with the values of a civilized creature? Could this be Spike’s... sister? Still shaking and choking with terror, now the long, slim dragon was making frantic waving motions at her hatchlings, probably to try to get them to turn around and run back into the cave, to hide, to hide from the monster -

Starburst felt magic flood into him at the same time as an unexplained feeling of crushing, terrible remorse tore through his chest. His eyes flew open again, but he could barely see his shrieking daughter through his frantic tears, she was so close to the ground, she still had one wing caught in the belt, she was trying to wrench it free, what could he do, he could grab her psychokinetically to slow her fall, he could teleport to the ground and catch her, yes, he concentrated, his horn started to glow as the straining guards near the ground suddenly shot into the air, too fast, too far, they all rocketed up far past Glim before they checked their sudden ascents, a bright point of light sparked right at the tip of his horn -

Twilight was in the process of opening her mouth to tell the dragon that it had Royally-guaranteed free reign of all Equestria forever, to try to explain what she’d just done and why, to get down on her knees and beg for forgiveness, to apologise over and over and over again, to cast some spells for temporary pain relief and then get proper medical aid, but most of all to wish the dragon long life and happiness, and then to wish the same to her three beautiful little babies, and could she meet them, would the dragon introduce them, and would the dragon in turn like to meet her wonderful daughter and husband and Sisters, and perhaps if the dragon forgave her they might even be friends, and would she like to hear about another friend she’d had long ago, the most wonderful dragon she’d ever known...

...when she realised that she hadn’t visited one dragon, she’d ended up visiting four. Dragons, plural. She had gone to the dragons...

...but none of that mattered because with her release of The Magic, her special magical connection to her husband’s emotions had been restored. She hadn’t even noticed that it had been gone until now, but she could feel it, it was back, and she felt...

Twilight had been running on pure magic for the last five weeks. Every nerve, every fibre of her entire being was stretched to the breaking point, but she managed to keep it together, because she had to. She should be a complete and total nervous wreck but she wasn’t. She had to be there for Starburst.

Twilight recoiled as Starburst smacked the bowl of soup out of her psychokinetic grip with his own burst of magic. “I’m not hungry,” he said in that same empty voice he’d had for the last month. As the proffered bowl smashed and clattered over the headstones to their left, he managed to pull his gaze away from the grave and lifted his face, his half-dead face, to his beloved wife’s. He couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eye, so he focused on the corner of her trembling mouth instead. “I’m not hungry,” he repeated. “There’s more important things to me right now than... than food.” His bleak eyes returned to the simple stone marker in front of him.

Twilight’s alicorn resolve was already stretched beyond the limit, and this was just one heartbreak too much. Without another word, she vanished in an enormous ringing concussion of deep red-purple light, leaving Starburst swaying slightly in her magical wake. That was a massive spell, easily hundreds of times, thousands of times greater than anything he could ever perform. Wherever she’d gone, it was very, very far away.

The magically-bound emotional connection he shared with his wife was so strong that he felt her sudden explosive exhalation as her hooves touched the airless surface of the moon.

Well, at least he understood why that spell had been so powerful. The already-significant flow of his tears grew stronger. He wanted Twilight so badly, but he couldn’t bear to be around her. And now she’d gone where he couldn’t possibly follow anyway.

He couldn’t bring himself to look his Beloved in the eye any more. He’d failed their daughter so completely, so totally... He wondered how Twilight could even bring herself to look at him, let alone talk to him.

Starburst looked intensely at the totally-unworthy monument to his beautiful daughter. The pain in his chest was incredible, but somehow he knew that he’d find the strength to withstand it. His sorrow was enormous, his emotional agony unbearable - yet he’d bear it regardless. This was his punishment for letting his daughter die. He deserved this, he was sure.

He wavered for a moment, then, as his forelegs grew surprisingly cold and numb, he lost all motor control, toppled sideways, head smacking into the ground with a sickening thud, the dull pain in his chest sharpening, being eclipsed by a sudden white-hot fire that made him yell, his collapse and shout bringing a dozen guards galloping to his aid...

This was not emotional pain. This was completely physical. As the guards turned him over, shouting confused questions at him and at each other, his horn began flickered wildly, his magical awareness searching deep inside his own chest, desperately trying to find the problem, to potentially halt or correct or fix the...

His hornglow faded away as the pain became unbearable, his eyes rolling back into his head as he started to convulse. A ghastly horrible gurgling sound escaped from his throat. His savagely-beating heart, already ravaged every-which-way from emotional torment, and badly weakened through malnourishment from his month-long fast, tore itself free from his aorta...

Almost a quarter of a million miles away, Twilight Sparkle screamed into the void as her own immortal heart felt all of her dying husband’s physical and emotional agony. She appeared beside the crowd of guardsponies in the Royal Memorial Garden in a burst of light and thunder and swirling clouds of moondust, still screaming. A shock of red-gold magic knocked the guards flying. She slammed to the ground beside Starburst, screaming louder and louder, her horn glowing so brightly that the ruffled guards had to squint and look away as they got back to their hooves. Her magic filled him, instantly found the damage to his heart and blood vessels...

Part 3: Broken

Twilight spend a lot of time in her high tower chambers these days. In fact, she hadn’t left them for more than half a century. She’d even stayed here for her two thousandth birthday, preferring to spend that day the same way she’d spent so many others.

She would watch the horizon brighten, deep black fading to deep blue and then bright blue and pink and gold as the sun peeked over the edge of the land. She’d sit at her east-facing balcony and watch it climb the sky, finally standing up a few minutes before noon and trotting to the middle of her towertop study. Then, she’d turn aside and look at the monster.

It didn’t really look like a monster, she supposed. But then, who knew what monsters looked like, really? It looked quite a lot like a pony, tall and delicate-seeming with what she admitted was a strikingly-beautiful face and graceful wings and a long, sparkling horn. The mane, too, looked breathtaking in its own way. It didn’t really look like hair. Just like the tail, the monster’s mane seemed to waft like silk or smoke in a breeze that wasn’t really there.

The monster really was particularly beautiful, she supposed. Supermodels everywhere aspired to look like the monster and its Sisters. Well, she couldn’t help how the monster looked. If there was one thing that Twilight had learned over the last twenty centuries, it was that appearances could be deceiving.

The monster’s eyes, though. They were truly frightening. They looked like a perfectly-normal pair of purple eyes. But what she saw below the surface there left her in no doubt that this horrifying creature she saw was indeed a monster.

And then, as she felt the sun tip over in the sky above her, she would turn away from her gilt-framed mirror and walk to her western windows to watch it set. She’d gaze at the sky all night long, counting the stars, before turning, glancing at the monster again, and preparing to witness another agonizing, heartbreaking dawn.

For almost fifty-eight years, Twilight Sparkle had no variation in her routine. Every day was exactly the same. And that’s exactly how she wanted things. Even her Sisters had stopped coming to see her after the first year or two.

On the bright and sunny morning of the 20th of June, 6011 F.E., however, she turned away from the sunrise and walked over to her chamber doors. She had to use a fairly strong spell to push them open - they were stuck shut through disuse.

Her corridor was dark and deserted, the windows boarded over, dust lying thick on the floor, though this was no surprise. She trotted down the passageway and opened the equally-stuck doors at the end of her short, private corridor. She closed her eyes for a moment, sighed, and walked down the tower staircase and into the Palace cloisters.

Pandemonium. From the moment that the first guard had seen her and and sprinted away shrieking, the sounds of panicked conversation in the castle had grown steadily louder and louder. Ponies everywhere were yelling and running away. It didn’t bother her - she’d expected it. She jogged lightly up her Biggest Sister’s spiral tower staircase. There weren’t any guards at the top - she’d seen one of them whip inside Celestia’s private study while the other one had leaped cleanly out of the open window and taken flight. She didn’t bother to knock.

Celestia looked up from the panicking guard and straight at her Littlest Sister, her face blank with shock. “Tw... Twilight?” she managed. The guard had backed away, shaking with fright. The only living ponies who'd ever met Twilight were either immortal or elderly now. No mortal pony had seen the Third Eternal Sister for nearly six decades, and everypony knew the reason why.

Twilight’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. She coughed, swallowed, coughed again. “Sorry,” she said, voice a little husky. “I haven’t said anything for fifty-seven years. Forgot how to use my vocal cords, I guess. Good morning, Biggest Sister. Your sunrise was lovely today, one of the nicest I’ve seen in a long time. Is Big Sister about?”

Celestia blinked for a few more seconds, then recovered. She didn’t dare move in case she collapsed. “Uh... I’ll, I’ll get her.” Her horn flickered for a moment. “It’s... It’s been a very long time, Littlest Sister.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

Luna appeared next to her Big Sister with a crash of moonlight. The Princess of the Night paused for one single heartbeat, and then she launched herself across the chamber, shrieking in joy. Celestia was right behind her.

“TWILIGHT!” Luna sobbed as she grabbed her Little Sister in a massive hug. Celestia thumped into the other two and hugged as well.

The guard tiptoed out onto the balcony and took to the air, terrified and relieved in equal measure.

After what seemed a very long time, the three Sisters stepped back and looked at each other. Celestia opened her mouth to ask a question, but Twilight answered her before it was even asked.

“Tomorrow is Midsummer. A very important solstice, too. It’s been... It’s been two thousand years tomorrow since... Since I met them all. My friends. I have to be there.”

To say that the three thousandth Summer Sun Celebration was merely spectacular would be to undervalue the word. It was breathtaking. Twilight herself had raised the sun, something she hadn’t done in a very long time. But as soon as the celebrations were complete and the sun had set, the Third Eternal Sister had just gone back to her private rooms and locked the doors again, saying that she needed to sleep and please could Celestia and Luna wake her in a couple of months.

Celestia met Luna in the middle alicorn’s Gothic-themed study chambers. “She can’t last. She really can’t. Every time she’s lost control in the past, she always had something to pull her back. Like when she was only nineteen and The Lunacy overpowered her mind, or after Spike was killed. And she lost her mind half-a-dozen times when Starburst and Glim were...” Celestia paused for a moment before continuing. “Something always pulled her back. But there’s nothing to do that now. If she falls again, nothing could bring her back. Nothing could stop her.”

Luna nodded sadly. “I see it in her eyes. You must see it too. Twilight Sparkle is dead inside. She’s still there, but she’s dead.”

For a few months, it was almost like having the old Twilight back again. Almost. But then the day came.

Neither of the two older alicorns was surprised that it was two thousand years to the day that Twilight had fallen for the first time, then turned the tables on Equestria’s oldest foe, defeated The Lunacy, and begun her new life. They sat together, watching, holding each other for support, while Twilight sobbed on the ground at the foot of her husband’s and daughter’s gravestone. Hours and hours they sat there, setting the sun and raising the moon along the way, before Twilight stood up at last. The youngest Eternal Sister turned around. Celestia and Luna straightened, then stood. Twilight walked up to them, her voice quite steady.

“You must do this, Twilight,” Celestia said, wiping at her own tears. “You must do this or it will eat you away.”

The three Sisters, two of them biological, one through honour, embraced for what seemed years, but was only a few minutes. Then, they slowly began to walk up to the special room in the tallest tower.

Luna stepped out onto the balcony. She caught a brief glimpse of her Little Sister, high above, flying rapidly out of her sight. The Princess of the Night closed her eyes and lit her horn. When she opened her eyes again, the night sky above her was completely black.

“That’s a very nice touch,” Celestia sniffed as she sat down next to Luna.

The two Eternal Sisters sat together and stared at the sky, tears streaming down their faces. It had to be this way. If Twilight stayed here, she would lose her mind, and nopony could possibly guess the outcome. One thing was certain, however. One fact was completely concrete. The outcome, the result, the aftermath of The Final Night Mare would be devastating. If Twilight Sparkle lost control without her husband and daughter to pull her back, she would never come back. There was no telling just how much destruction she would cause. There was no telling how widespread that destruction would be. And there would be absolutely no stopping her.

Twilight knew this, and she had done the only thing she could. She had taken the reconstructed Element Of Harmony and she had left. She’d left her Sisters, she’d left her city, she’d left her subjects, she’d left Equestria. She’d left the world.

Because if she hadn’t, then sooner or later, she’d reduce the whole world to dust in her grief. There was no ‘if’ regarding this. It would happen. It would only be a question of when.

Celestia and Luna both flickered briefly, then they seemed to shrink. Eyes wide, they looked at each other as they felt all of the magic in the world disappear.

Their large and graceful forms had changed. Each Sister stared at the other in surprise. This was how they’d looked almost eight thousand years ago, when they were young, when they were both in their late teens. How they’d looked almost sixty years ago for a brief moment as Twilight made her mistake. How Celestia had appeared as she fought Discord during the Windigo Wars. Small and ordinary, with non-magical manes and tails. Their eyes grew wide as they realised how Twilight was going to end her life.

The sky flashed blazing yellow-white, bright as a summer’s day, then winked back to black. A tiny point of light above exploded into a rapidly-expanding ball of rainbow-hued flame that almost reached the horizons, flickered, and faded away.

Princess Celestia of the Day of the Solitary Sun and Princess Luna of the Night of the Star-accompanied Moon both started wailing as they each grew in height, resuming their customary appearances as The Magic was released back into the world. They grabbed each other, hugged each other, sobbed into each other’s mane.

Slowly, sadly, the stars popped back into view. The moon appeared suddenly, halfway up the sky. The stars seemed to flare and brighten. Ponies that were still awake saw the sky and felt an unaccountable sadness. The night sky was beautiful, but for all the wrong reasons.

The full moon dipped below the western horizon, though there was no brightening of the sky to the east. The stars above hadn’t dimmed either. The Sisters hadn’t even noticed that it was morning. Well, it was time for morning, but morning hadn’t come.

“Your... Your Highnesses?” They both turned and opened their eyes. A guard captain stood there, quivering slightly in his armour. “Your Highnesses, what... What is wrong? What has happened? The sun hasn’t risen.”

“Princess Twilight is... Has... She...” Luna took a breath. “Princess Twilight is gone. She has left Equestria.” She paused for a moment. “She is... dead.”

The guard’s mouth and eyes had opened very wide. “No,” he mouthed, stepping backwards a pace, knees quivering. “No. No, no, no, no, no, that’s not possible, Princess Twilight can’t be -”

“She’s dead, Captain Adamant. Pass the word, please,” Celestia whispered through tight lips, her eyes closed again and leaking golden tears.

The guard screamed, turned on the spot, and ran from the Antechamber of Harmony, howling his distress and grief.

“I can’t bear to raise the sun,” Celestia whispered after a few moments. “Not right now.” Her horn glowed briefly, and the edge of the eastern sky brightened slightly. “I... I can’t. That’s the most I can do.”

Luna shuddered, then stood up. “I’ll leave the stars out for her. I think... I think that’s right.” She turned, walked slowly to the balcony rail. “Come on, Big Sister. We have to check. We have to make sure.”

Celestia stood up as well, wiping at her muzzle. “Yes. Yes, you’re quite right, Little Sister. Let’s go.”

The two Eternal Sisters walked cautiously into the ancient, dark, shattered chamber. Neither of them had been here for more than two thousand years, but they remembered the place well. They remembered everything.

This was the first room of their first castle, the castle that they’d made with their own magic and their own hooves. Sixty centuries had passed since they’d built this place around the Elements of Harmony. They could remember every brick, every flagstone, every lintel and window that they’d made.

Excepting, of course, that time does pass. It had been six thousand years. The floor was covered with wild patchy grass and creeping vines. The walls were broken, they looked like jagged teeth in an angry jaw. There was no ceiling at all.

But they remembered this place. And, more important than that, they remembered where things had once been.

The tall fountainlike stone pedestal they’d made to hold the Elements was empty, but they expected this. Celestia’s horn ignited and the pedestal glowed and levitated, revealing a spiral stone staircase. The elder Sister led the way down to the roots of the ancient castle, horn ablaze.

They trotted off the staircase and walked into a dank, moss-grown chamber of rock and dirt and memory and history. The face of the world, as it were. This was the original place where they’d found the Elements so many thousands and thousands of years ago.

Luna left her Sister’s side, strode to the far wall of the large and wild chamber, ignited her horn. The dust and moss and creeping fungus on the crumbling dirt floor seemed to flinch, then started to move. The greenery - though there was no ‘green’ here, so far away from sunlight - was slithering and retracting from the centre of the room, leaving a wide, roughly flat surface.

There were five small, shallow hollows set into the ground, in a roughly-scraped pointed circle of their own near the middle of the chamber.

Five small stones rested there, one in each hollow. When the Element of Harmony had shattered last night, its individual parts - the five they’d discovered, at least; Magic would be hidden elsewhere again, of course - had come home. But there was a problem.

The stones were small, shrunken, wrinkled, black. Neither Celestia nor Luna could feel any magical life in the five husks they saw between them. They were dead.

Luna looked up at her Sister. Celestia looked back. Their individual hornglows began to waver as they both started shaking.

Pinkie Pie looked at the untidy, moss-grown chamber floor and sighed. “So you would have died? You would have died and disappeared?”

“So, if things had kept happening as they were supposed to, if your, um, your brother or sister or whatever It is, if It hadn’t come out of hiding yesterday -”

“Oh, the curse would have cracked, don’t you worry. It might have taken another million years but it would have cracked. Such magic is not forever.”

“But a million years,” the pink pony said. “That’s such a long time. I’m not even two thousand years old. And my life’s just seemed to go on forever... I can’t even imagine a million years. It’s too long.” Pinkie Pie sat down on her haunches and frowned at the ancient vine-strewn floor. “Too long. Equestria would have died. Disappeared. It’s just too long.”

The Element nodded. “Well, thankfully, that’s not going to happen. Despite the recent shakeup, I know the day of True Harmony. It’s seventy-six years away.”

“It’s the one thing that has always been constant. The one date. Despite upsets and mishaps, it’s never changed,” The Element said, matter-of-factly. “It will happen, as it would always happen, at nine minutes before five o’clock on the morning of Wednesday the twenty-ninth of June, sixty-twenty-four. So seventy-six years and two months from now. More or less. And that’s what always confused me. If I died, how would True Harmony come so soon?”

“Because The Lunacy made the biggest mistake in history,” she said. The Element nodded again. It was really weird, she realised, to be aware that something that didn’t have a head was nodding. It made her smile. “So. Just one last thing.”

“Yes?” It waited. It knew what Pinkie Pie was going to ask. The last two things she’d seen before she woke up that morning. Two things that would never have happened if The Lunacy hadn't so stupidly revealed itself yesterday.

“Those last two visions at the end of the dream. I’ve never seen them before. They were all fuzzy and dark. The Princess, Twilight, I’m sure it was her. She was in pain, I think she was injured. I think she was bleeding. And...” Pinkie paused for a moment, thinking hard. “The other two Princesses, sitting on top of that mountain and watching the sunrise. I... I was sitting with them.”

“I dunno. I didn’t understand the language. I’ve never heard that language spoken before.” She thought a bit harder. The vision had only been a quick, dim flash. “Hmm. It sounded like... What does ‘Cheyro ne damastus, damastus Equatanios, cherdu Equatanios’ mean?” Pinkie asked. “That’s what they both shouted right as the sun came up. And... And I shouted it too.”

“I’m not sure I have the right to tell you what those words mean, Pinkie Pie. They’re happy words, though. Immensely happy. I’m sure you’ll understand when... When it happens.”

Pinkie Pie thought about that, then she stood up and turned her tail on the impossibly-ancient Cradle of Harmony. “Seventy-six years. Now that, I can wait for,” she smiled. The nightmares no longer mattered. They might be horrible but, very importantly, they wouldn’t happen. Never. Not ever. They would never happen. The future would still be really bad - even worse in some ways - but it wasn’t hopeless any more. She smiled at the thought, then her horn flashed bright silvery-pink and she disappeared.

The Element was still with her as she trotted down the marble hallway towards the tall double-doors set in the gilded doorframe. The pair of armoured pegasi flanking the doors noticed her and stiffened, extending their wings. Then they froze as they recognised her. Their wings drooped and they looked at her with shocked expressions as she walked right past them and knocked on the doors. They made absolutely no attempt to prevent her from doing so.

“Yes?” came a strangely-familiar voice as the doors glowed faintly and opened. The same voice gasped.

“Hi, um, you’re Twilight, right? I’m Pinkie Pie, but I think you already know that. We need to talk.”

Glim

by Smayds

Chapter 15: Not Our Destiny