The low, dulcet plucks of a bass guitar reverberated around the school’s practice room without a particular pattern. Applejack idly played any note that her fingers happened to hit, unsure if any of it would make for a decent song.
The human glanced at her other friends. Rarity sat in front of her laptop and switched back and forth between her Mystable page and some rough sketches from her VariantArt gallery. Fluttershy sat next to her and attentively scrutinized each new design, piping up with the occasional question. Pinkie Pie held an ear over the set’s snare drum, sticking the drumhead with one hand and adjusting a knob with the other.
Rainbow Dash burst through the door. “Nope, nothing,” she announced.
The rest of them collectively groaned.
Applejack’s fingers slipped across the strings, producing an atonal shriek. “Why in the hay hasn’t Sunset come back yet? It’s been three days for dang’s sake.”
Fluttershy shrugged. “Maybe she just needed a little more time home?”
Rainbow Dash dropped to the floor. “You think she’d at least find a way to tell us if she did that. The portal’s still open,” she said as she opened her own laptop. “I checked.”
Rarity frowned. “I guess that means we can’t exactly write to them…”
Fluttershy shook her head. “We could always go through, but, well… where would we look?”
“This ain’t lookin’ too good,” Applejack concluded.
“Well, I don’t think we can really practice without her,” Rainbow Dash said. She clicked a key on her keyboard which prompted a short ditty.
“So Ah guess you’re gunna just sit there and play Hoof Life again?”
Rainbow Dash deadpanned. “Ehem. Buck Mesa mod.”
Applejack snickered before returning to her bass guitar, now trying for a particular pattern. Things may come and things may go. Some go fast and some go slow. Few things last, that’s all I know.
The notes flowed in and out of each other, and the rest of the room slowed down as a result.
The notes that came afterward, on the other hand, jumbled together into an incoherent mess. She briefly tried to return to the tune from before, but she found that it escaped her fingers the second time around, much to her chagrin.
“Ah’m still worried ’bout her,” she said. “Like, what if she never comes back?”
Fluttershy folded her hands together and stared at the floor’s reflective tiles. “I sure wouldn’t like to lose her too…”
Pinkie Pie threw herself onto the drum set. “Yeah,” she said with a frown, “that’d be the worst thing ever.”
“I hate not being able to do anything about it,” Rarity added.
Rainbow Dash snorted. “The only thing we can do is wait. Dammit.”
Applejack crossed her arms and nodded. She turned her gaze to the window. Gosh, Sunset, Ah hope you’re safe…
Rainbow Dash wiped the sweat off of her brow, but by the time she had subsequently thrown the shovel head-first into the ground, new sweat formed in its place. The hole she currently stood in was easily the length of Hoofbeard’s ship in depth.
And Hoofbeard, who stood at the edge of the hole, too wiped the sweat off of his brow before placing his large tricorn back onto his head where it belonged. “I think we be earnin’ a break.”
Rainbow Dash nodded, flew up to meet him, and then collapsed into the sand and looked out to the sea fifty yards from their position. “I just hope Jewel is having more luck than we are.”
Hoofbeard sat back as well. “I wager they are. We have one of those treasures already now. And hopefully, by the end of the day, we will get two more.”
“I’m just glad they can go down for me. Diving is cool, but not to the bottom of the entire ocean.” She paused. “I woulda done it too,” she added.
The captain took in a deep whiff of the thick and salty air and fixed his gaze on the blue skies. He briefly tracked a pelican as it soared in idle circles before the crash of a wave broke him from his daze. His attention meandered down to a pair of coconuts hanging off of a nearby coconut tree.
“I’ve been doing a wee bit o’ thinkin’,” he half-muttered as he stood up and trotted over to the tree.
“Huh?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“I have a query, ye see. Just something I be—” he gave the tree a sharp kick and caught the coconut that fell, “—wonderin’ about.”
“Shoot.”
“Ye say she already be dead. But you’re on this quest since ye reckon you can save the lass. But, I be thinkin’: what if ye get all these treasures…” He paused as he searched for a nearby rock, found none, and settled on his shovel instead. “Ye get all these treasures, ye return home, and then nothin’ happens? What’ll you do then?”
Rainbow Dash blinked. She scratched the back of her head. “Well…”
“Say, it turns out you could not have ever done it?” Hoofbeard shook his head. “Even if you find all yer treasures and even if you scrounge up every little thing you can outta them, you still be goin’ home to a dead mare?” he asked before tapping the shovel to the coconut, breaking it in two.
Rainbow Dash crossed her forelegs and tapped her hoof against the dirt and sighed. “See, Hoofy,” she began, “the way I see it, there ain’t no way I can be any worse off, because I’m there already. If she’s really dead, then… I guess it is what it is.”
Rainbow Dash stood up and puffed out her chest with a huge cheeky grin. “But I have hope, and so I’m going to fight for her.”
Hoofbeard flashed a toothy grin. “Then that be a good enough reason for me. I’ll see this dig through with ye. Coconut?”
Rainbow Dash blinked before looking at the split nut and the nectarous water contained within. Hoofbeard offered half of it to her.
She nodded. “Ya know it!”
* * *
Spike chuckled to himself. The mare beside him nearly skipped through the halls of the castle. In fact, he almost mistook her for outright floating. In short order, his steps started to match.
“I’m guessin’ it went really well, huh?” he asked with a laugh.
Sunset Shimmer giggled. “You bet it did. I’m really glad that I went.”
“That’s great!” he exclaimed as they rounded the corner.
A hallway full of doors greeted them, most of which Spike knew were locked. One opening, however, hosted a set of crisscrossing metal bars instead.
“Oh, great,” Sunset growled. Her ears folded back as she furrowed her brow.
Spike grinned and held up a golden option. “I have the key.”
Sunset frowned. “…Oh, right. Yeah.”
Chuckling, Spike placed the key into the steel lock and turned it once. It clicked loudly and the gate swung open with a metallic shriek.
Even with the colorful selection of tomes and scrolls on shelves orbiting the hourglass in the middle, the amount of brown in the room struck him first. Just looking at it made him yawn and he had to fight a sudden heavy feeling in his eyes.
And then he sneezed. Twice even. He looked around once more and ran his finger across one of the shelves, streaking through a thin layer of dust on the surface.
“Okay,” he said, squeezing the clinging dust off, “if I remember... the time spell that we used is over on that shelf there.”
The two crossed the library to the shelf in question and Sunset used her magic to grab a rolled-up piece of parchment off the top. She glanced at it quizzically and shook her head before replacing it amidst the others. The second and third turned out negative as well. On the fourth, she let out an intrigued, “Hmmmmm.”
“Find it?” he asked.
Sunset chuckled. “Nono. This isn’t it. Although... I didn’t know you could do that with gravity.”
Spike laughed. “Yeah.”
She searched through a few more before she exclaimed, “Ah! Here it is!”
He gave a toothy grin. “Cool! You have the time spell now.”
Sunset gave a cursory glance over the contents. “Huh, this is neat. I thought this spell would be more complicated, although...” she said as she ran her eyes down the page again, “this looks like it’s just a modified teleportation spell at its core that has an additional time component.”
Spike shrugged. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“…Okay.”
Sunset chuckled. “Well… Mind you, this is still a pretty complex spell by normal standards. But, heh, this is foal’s play compared to the spell we’re putting together.”
Spike grunted and shot his hand into the air. “Speakin’ of, I was thinking. It kinda looks like that spell you and Twilight are putting together is really, like, all over the place. Twilight’s good, but I’m not sure she’s that good.”
Sunset rolled her eyes, “Oh, she’ll probably just pre-cast it.”
Spike raised an eyebrow. “…Uh? What?”
“Pre-casting? You know…?”
Spike frowned.
Sunset groaned and slapped her forehead. “How do you not know what pre-casting is?
Spike deadpanned. “Well duh, dragons don’t use magic.”
She scoffed and nearly pulled her own face off. “Fine, whatever. Pre-casting…” She took a moment to take a deep breath and twiddle her mane. “Most of the time, when you do magic, you perform the spell as you cast it,” she explained. “Most spells are really simple anyway so regular casting is the most convenient, plus you can change it up on the fly. But with pre-casting, you build the entire spell beforehand, and then you cast it.”
“Sooooo, it’s kinda like you’re planning it out before you perform it, right?”
“Exactly. You can change the spell however you want, but the catch is that once you cast, you have to commit to the entire length of whatever you made.”
Spike nodded. “Mmkay, I think I see. I guess that’d be useful for something that big, huh?”
“Yup,” Sunset said, turning her attention back to the time travel spell. “It’s also the basis for computational magic.”
Spike gasped. “Oh! That!” he exclaimed, snapping his fingers. “That’s number twenty-two. Now I get it!”
“Uh-huh. So like for this one…”
Sunset flared her horn and concentrated on the scroll in front of her. A ball of light containing a patterned maelstrom of ethereal energy appeared above her head. The swirls took the shape of blobs at first, but as she concentrated, the shapes that orbited around the core became more jagged, more robust, and more diversified in their construction.
“All I have to do is touch my horn to this, and I’ll be on my way to the past.”
But that wouldn’t be a good idea! Spike thought. He pointed at the scroll, “Yeah, uh, you might want to read that.”
Sunset buried her face into the scroll again. She read it from top to bottom as her built spell floated just above her head, ready for casting. “You can only do this spell once per lifetime,” she murmured, parroting a line off of the bottom. “So once I perform this, I won’t be able to do it ever again.”
The ball of energy fizzled out. Sunset chuckled nervously and swallowed. “So when I do perform the time spell, I’ll have to make this count then, haha…”
Spike crossed his arms and stared her down. The floor thumped from the taps of his foot.
Sunset turned a shade redder. “…Sorry. I wasn’t going to cast it anyway. I just wanted to show pre-casting. That’s all.” She held her foreleg in shame. “…Didn’t mean to worry you.”
Spike sighed and shrugged. “It’s okay.”
Sunset looked at the scroll one last time and then furled it back up. “Listen, Spike, I have a favor to ask you.”
“Okay.”
“Later on today, after we’ve done today’s work… can you take Twilight and give me the tower for an hour or two? I-I need to do some serious thinking so that I can figure things out, and I kinda would like the place to myself.”
Spike turned toward the door, motioning with his arm for her to follow. “I could probably do that. But what do you want us to do in the meantime?”
Sunset trotted behind him. “I dunno. Just whatever. All I need is the tower.”
Spike toddled through the entryway and looked down the hall. “Sure, okay. I’ll find something for the both of us.”
Sunset used her magic to shut the door behind them. “Do you have any idea of what you’ll do?”
Spike placed the key into the lock and turned it once. Then he looked up at her with a smile. “Yeah, I got something in mind.”
* * *
Pinkie Pie glanced up the cliff face in front of her. She ran a hoof through the dry dirt underneath her hooves as she considered the steep grade. It had to be at least thrice the height of Sugar Cube Corner.
She fixed her gaze on a sizable hole in the face. She rubbed her chin as she thought about how to get up to that very hole which had to be halfway up the face by her measurements. She noticed a disturbing lack of footholds up to the opening as well.
“It’s in there?” she asked.
Stone Obelisk nodded sagely, brushing some dust off his lapel. “Yes. Both your stone and the being guarding it are in there.”
Pinkie Pie nodded. “Welp, here we are then. This is it.”
Stone Obelisk raised his eyebrow. “The end of the line.”
Pinkie Pie narrowed her eyes and smirked. “My entire last four days have led to this moment.”
Stone Obelisk reached into his saddlebag and pulled out a purple orb. “Well, in that case, you will want this.”
Pinkie Pie grinned. She placed the stone into her saddlebag and simultaneously fished out another object. It was large, circular, and somehow bigger than the saddlebag itself. Pinkie Pie threw her trampoline under the opening.
Stone Obelisk looked on in abject horror as she then procured a large and curly musical instrument out of the very same saddlebag. She carefully placed the sousaphone on the ground.
He adjusted his glasses once, and then took them off to clean them. After replacing them on his face, he blinked several times and then mumbled something about buying new ones.
“I packed them because I knew I would need them,” Pinkie Pie explained.
“Y-yes, I can see that. I-I think I’ll need to contemplate everything I’ve ever known after witnessing that.”
Pinkie Pie honked him on the nose. “It’s just a saddlebag, silly!”
He deadpanned. “Then I’ll have to dedicate the rest of my life to understanding that saddlebag of yours. …After I study the stones.”
Pinkie Pie giggled.
“I must say,” he said, straightening his collar, “this has been very engaging. I’m very glad to have come on this small adventure with you.” He smiled and tipped his pith. “Farewell, Pinkie Pie.”
With that, the earth pony turned and trotted off into an opening in the rocks behind them. His hoofsteps faded into the distance, and soon enough, all traces of him left the scene altogether.
Pinkie Pie looked between the sousaphone and the trampoline, and then she turned her sights to the opening in the cliff face, imagining what sort of creature lay inside. But then again, she would find her final stone if successful.
* * *
Crystal ball in hand, Spike wound through the streets of the city. He wandered without direction, delving around corners purely on whim. Then again, even after living in Ponyville for so many years, Canterlot was like the back of his hand. Several memories of several places he had gone to with Twilight took their turn in his head and, without conscious command, his feet worked to take him there.
Within the image shown inside the crystal ball, Twilight Sparkle slumped against the desk as she poured a concoction out of one vial and into another. A small puff of smoke erupted as the ingredients interacted. She frowned.
“Well…” she said, “I just have to let this sit for half an hour and then I’ll be able to finish this gum off.”
Spike glanced another group of communicative aristocrats up and down as he passed by them. “That’s great!”
“Yes. It is,” she said, turning her gaze toward the window for a few moments.
Twilight then walked over to the chalkboard. She had drawn a diagram of a bottle on its front, much like the twelve bottles she had sitting off to the side, labeled with instructions for a simple enchantment. She flipped that over to reveal the other side: range calculations and diagrams and a set of half-finished equations atop layers of smudged chalk. She levitated a piece of chalk up and stood in front of the board for a few moments, glancing from section to section.
She then snorted and launched the chalk into the board. It broke in two on impact and both pieces clattered to the floor.
Spike furrowed his brow. “Twilight? Are you okay?”
Twilight slunk toward the window. She tried to look over the walls of the castle, frowning deeper when it became apparent that craning her neck failed to improve her view. She looked back at her wings and gave them a couple of flaps before taking to the air. Even then, she couldn’t keep a constant rhythm and wavered as a result.
With a loud “Augh!” Twilight plummeted to the floor and landed in a heap. After trying to rise to her hooves (only for them to fall out from under her), she sighed defeatedly and rested against the glass.
Spike ground his teeth together. “Twilight?”
Twilight looked into her reflection and sobbed. “I-I can feel it, Spike. …The Nameless wants out.
“I’m fighting it with every bit of my being… I’m doing everything that I can to delay it, but…” She felt at some of the split ends in her hair. “I just, I-I don’t know how much longer I can hold out!”
“Twilight…”
Twilight tried to reach toward the city but the window stopped her far short. She futilely banged her head against it and let out a distressed cry. “I guess… I want out too… I want to go someplace else. Anywhere. Anywhere but here.”
Spike groaned and used his free hand to rub his face. He held the ball close, hoping that he would somehow travel through it. He wanted to hold her tight. No, he needed to. Because she needed him.
How can I help her?
As Spike continued to walk through the street, he glanced at his surroundings. A thought came to him, but he shook his head. He knew her. He knew what she liked the most. Nothing in that tower would satisfy that.
And he wasn’t in the tower either.
Spike blinked. He skipped a step, which was punctuated by an “Oh!” He looked into the ball and said, “Hey Twilight! I know what’ll cheer you up!”
Twilight shook her head and sniffled. “…What?”
Spike reached the corner of the street and stopped there. He looked down the adjoining streets one by one and focused on the area around him, looking for details.
“So I’m standing here on this street corner,” he said, “and there’s this… smell of honey in the air. It’s thick, and hot, and I kinda wanna walk down to the bakery down the street. I can see their sign. It’s bright and it’s got bold lettering, and so every other sign looks small compared to that.”
The many nights from years ago when Twilight would sit beside his bed with a book in hoof came rushing back.
“There’s an older couple; they’re hanging out in front of the shop and they look like they’re about to smash their muffins into the other’s face from the way they’re waving them around. There’s another couple watching them down their noses from the other side and I bet they’re all, ‘How dirty.’”
The days where Twilight would dive into books, into other worlds, and not emerge until hours later, also sprang to mind.
“And there isn’t much else happening here. There are a few other ponies around. They all got like these three hundred-bit mane cuts, and their noses are so in the air, I bet they can’t see the ground. And everything else is blocky and white and all the stores on this street sort of blend together.”
Twilight continued to gaze out the window but her ears remained fixed on the ball. She stifled every sob that tried to run through her muzzle, and soon those stopped altogether.
“And the sun’s shining and there’re no clouds in the sky, but the grass is all crunchy because they had to cancel some weather a few days ago. They’ll make it up tomorrow, though. And there’s this constant whistle from the wind as it goes through all the buildings.”
Spike looked around the intersection and nodded before resuming down one of the streets. “That’s my street corner.”
Twilight continued to stare out the window, but now she sat completely silent and remained that way for a few moments. And then the smallest crack of a smile graced her muzzle.
“Did that help? Spike asked.
Twilight chuckled and wiped away a tear. “It sure did, Spike. That was beautiful. I really needed that. Thank you…”
“It was nothing, Twilight.”
“You’re really good at it though. I think you’d make Jade Singer proud.”
Spike blushed. “Haha, well, that’s what happens when I spend so much time with you.”
Twilight snickered and rolled her eyes. “Suuuurrre.”
Spike shrugged and glanced up the street. He smiled and gave himself a mental pat on the back.
Twilight looked back out the window. Without even looking, she levitated her own crystal ball over and clutched it against her chest.
Spike looked down. Even though her crystal ball still appeared as an impassible white to him, she could see something. He guessed it was still the rock cavern. She could hear their voices when they talked, but that was the full extent of their interaction.
I’m sure she could use something other than just our voices, he thought. I’ll have to ask Sunset if we can do something about that.
“Spike?” she asked.
Spike looked down, “Yeah?”
Twilight clutched her crystal ball tightly. “Can you describe more of it for me?”
Spike grinned. “Sure.”
* * *
Sunset brushed aside another object and then let out an “Aha!” Using her magic, she fished the box of candles out and then backed away from the cupboard. “Finally, I found you.”
She whirled around and grabbed a pair of bowls from the tabletop before ascending the stairs.
Thousands of books stared down at her as she reached the top, and she paid them no mind. She trotted over to the hourglass, went to set her items down, and then paused. She looked at the spot before her where a pair of incense rods and a pillow lay waiting before she turned her gaze to the sprawling window behind the hourglass.
With a chuckle, she levitated every item to the other side of the hourglass and, after giving Celestia’s tower a smile, Sunset sat.
She stood the sticks of incense and the candles around her, took a deep breath, adjusted one of the candles, and then she flared her horn. The objects flickered to life; a dull flame stood on the tip of the candles while a small, steady stream of smoke wafted off the incense.
With her magic, Sunset flipped the hourglass over. The sand within shifted and began falling through; it made a ssssh as it trickled into the bottom chamber.
She took a long whiff of the incense’s wooden smell and let out a long and wistful sigh. The human world just didn’t compare. When had she last achieved this setup? Sunset smiled. Probably just before my last midterm under Princess Celestia, huh?
Sunset took one last look at her setup, took a long whiff of the burning incense, and then she closed her eyes.
The rest of the tower melted away. All of her senses faded and, shortly after, her perception of black did so as well.
Peace.
Quiet.
Tranquility.
Sunset took a long, deep breath and opened her eyes.
An eternal plane of coalescing reds and oranges greeted her instead. Sunset peered across the idle expanse of her own mind and smirked.
“Alright,” Sunset thought, “let’s review the facts.
“We’re dealing with the prospect of parallel worlds, worlds just like this one. One staggered nine days from the other.”
A small and disembodied flame appeared in front of her face. The flame danced for a moment as an image formed within its body: a crystal ball with a large number nine painted across the front. Sunset watched as the flame started to orbit around her head.
“We don’t have any proof yet that this is the case. That was just a possibility that we thought up. If it is not the case, then we will eventually retrieve the information that’s in the book right now.”
She watched the flame as it circled around and furrowed her brow. “And if we are unable to reproduce the information in the book, or if Twilight can’t reproduce those sets of coordinates, then we’ll have proof that this parallel worlds theory is the case.
“We’ll know either way within these next couple of days. And if it’s just one world, then our course of action is clear…”
The crystal ball with the number nine paused in front of her, and Sunset grabbed it out of the air. “But not with the parallel worlds theory…”
She tossed the flame back into the expanse where it exploded into a million pieces, bathing the immediate surroundings in a glittery coat of embers. “So,” she thought, “let’s just pretend for a moment that she is in a parallel world.”
Sunset trotted forward. “Probably the first question I should ask is where do they differ from each other.”
One of the embers in front of her face mutated, taking the form of a brand new flame. This one contained the image of a clock.
“Another question would be what role the crystal ball plays in all of this.”
Another ember burst. This one hosted the image of a plain crystal ball.
“And then there’s the matter of the discrepancies in the book.” A new flame with an inequality sign appeared.
Sunset turned to the clock. “Let’s start with you. If the worlds are really divergent, then in which capacity? If it’s just like in the coordinates like Twilight said, could there be possible divergence earlier?”
She scratched her chin in thought and shook her head. “No. Up until the discrepancy with coordinates, the worlds followed each other. That can be proven by the time loop that Spike caused, since that depends on both worlds coinciding.”
The flame containing the clock wriggled and writhed as the image within changed. The new picture took the form of Spike’s disembodied head overlaid by a circular symbol. The flame began to orbit around her head.
She narrowed her eyes. “But wait,” she thought, “if that is the case, that raises another question: if Twilight is in a parallel world, how did we get a package from her through the hourglass?”
A flame with a box appeared. It swirled around her head just like Spike’s flame did.
She kept her attention on it, and then she turned her gaze to the flame containing the crystal ball. “If I want to answer that,” she thought, “I’ll have to figure this out.” She mentally called the flame in close, to which she grabbed at it and juggled it between her hooves.
“In terms of communication between our world and hers, it’s hilariously lopsided. We can see her and hear her and we can even look anywhere else to boot. But she can only hear us and what she hears comes out of her crystal ball.”
An eye and an ear versus an ear. “Information is somewhat one-way because of that. Why is this important? Because our Twilight had to receive the same set of instructions as theirs did, from… somewhere. Another version of us?
“How could that be? If the ball operates the same between both worlds, then what she should see is nine days into her past. That’s eighteen days behind us.”
Several of the flames banded together and produced an arrow.
“So that means that, at one point, while our Twilight was at the rear of this arrow, another version of us was at the head of it, just like their Twilight is at the rear of this arrow and we are at the head. We talked to their Twilight, and they talked to ours.”
The arrow mutated into two arrows, each crisscrossing the other.
Sunset stared the flame down for a few moments, examining her mental diagram. Then she snorted and slashed through it. “No, that’s not possible,” she thought. The flame disintegrated, and the former arrow rematerialized in its place. “That would mean that causality would be going in a figure-8. That completely breaks the immutability of time.”
A new flame, showcasing two parallel lines, popped into being beside the arrow. “How can I lay this arrow so that both lines are the same?”
For what seemed like an eternity, Sunset stared at the two flames, gritting her teeth together all the while. She tried to jam the arrow in between the two lines but found each permutation disgracefully asymmetric.
She allowed the arrow flame to engulf the box flame. The resulting fire glowed even brighter than the one before it. Sunset attempted to curb the flames, but they continued onward. Instead, she tried jamming the arrow again.
After a few more unsuccessful attempts, she frowned. “Okay,” she thought, “let’s try this.”
Sunset duplicated the arrow. She placed both arrows between the lines in front of her, each pointing to opposite lines. The design didn’t click. “But one of those arrows makes sense,” she thought. She played around with the second arrow, trying to make it fit. “The arrow has to point at a place nine days before it. And whatever arrow comes off of that has to point at a spot nine days before it. And then that has to point at a spot nine days before that.
“But then it’s just going back and forth between these two lines indefinitely! That’s not possible! There’s nowhere for it to go between the two worlds! It could only work if…!” Sunset paused. “If…”
Sunset looked over her mental diagram. The second arrow rotated in place as she considered her options. She moved it to the outside of her diagram so that it touched the tail of the first arrow with the line itself running between them. Only then did she see some sort of semblance of symmetry (one which ran through the arrows pointing into the lines and then the lines themselves).
Sunset backpedaled. “If there’s a third line…”
The two lines became three, and Sunset slotted the second arrow between them.
She frowned. “Okay, but now that third line is missing something. I think I have to do the same thing with this.”
A third arrow appeared, and she stuck that to the tail of the second. Sunset frowned before bringing out a fourth line. “Now the fourth one is off! I need a fifth! And a sixth! And…”
Sunset Shimmer felt a drop of sweat run down her face. “N-No way…” She stared daggers into her diagram and grit her teeth. “There will never be enough lines. T-there will never be enough worlds for this picture to work, unless…”
A shiver ran down Sunset’s spine. “So… basically… the big takeaway from this… is that there are i-infinitely many worlds. And they’re all connected through the crystal ball!”
With that, she took the crystal ball and threw it forward. The minuscule fire transformed into a raging inferno with a large, glowing infinity symbol in the very dead center, leaving singes on her coat in the process.
“Infinitely many worlds below us. And infinitely many worlds above us.”
Sunset ran a hoof through her curly mane. “Oh… bucking buck. What the buck.”
She ran her eyes over the large blaze before her with a worried expression on her face. Briefly, she assumed a fetal position in the middle of the expanse.
“Get it together, Sunset!” she cried to herself. “Get it together… You should have known this was possible after reading about omniverse theory.”
Sunset righted herself and let out a long sigh. “Okay, okay. Infinite worlds. And they only differ by the coordinates we were sent to. Why do the coordinates differ?”
A new flame, this one containing a set of numbers, appeared. The inequality symbol from earlier flew forth and mingled with it.
“It’s safe to assume that the Nameless in our world is the same Nameless in all of theirs. Otherwise, we would have some serious divergence going on. So… it’s safe to assume the data we’ll find in our world is the same as what could be found in theirs.”
Sunset placed a hoof on her chin. “But why the difference? What determines which stones we go after?
Sunset thought back to what she had seen in the book. She knew that it contained several sets of parameters for searching for stones. There was also a long list of coordinates. A good number in each set had been crossed out.
A large but docile flame which showed both aspects floomed into existence. She examined the picture within.
“We’re collecting twelve. We could reasonably say they will collect a different twelve below us. Could it be reasonable to assume that they have collected a third set of twelve above us?”
Sunset blinked. “We’re… all collecting different pieces to the same puzzle.”
A flame containing a puzzle piece appeared.
“And if that’s the case, the differences of which stones we’re chasing are completely arbitrary. The entirety of the stones will eventually be collected. And, eventually, all of the information will exist. Scattered, maybe, but it will exist.
“If all of that information was ever in one place, we’d be able to write this spell. Right?”
The docile flame fizzled into a much smaller one about a question mark. “…So, how do I access this infinite network of information?”
The smaller flames began to orbit around the raging inferno of the infinity symbol. Sunset watched as they whirled around faster and faster and she could hardly tell any two apart before long. Sunset watched, slack-jawed, as the speeding items slowly closed in on the inferno.
They hit. The inferno engulfed them before growing into a monster of a fire. Sunset had to shield her eyes for a moment as it raged at its highest capacity.
The inferno suddenly shrunk down to the size of her hoof. It was smaller and stiffer than all of the other flames before it, but unlike them, the fire glowed a hot blue color. Against the fiery-red background of the expanse, the blue flame ate every bit of her wandering attention.
Sunset crept up to it, sucked in a breath, and grabbed at the blue fire. The flame in her hoof exploded and engulfed her. Sunset’s body disintegrated and the rest of the expanse followed suit.
“Eureka!”
Sunset’s eyes flew open.
The rest of the tower greeted her. The shadows had crept to different places in the room from when she had gone under. A quick look down revealed the lingering smoke ribbons of spent incense and the globbed forms of the candle bases. The hourglass behind her was now mostly spent.
She stood up with a huff. “I know what I have to do now.”
* * *
Rarity looked up at the sun and brushed some dirt off the side of her mane. I should have paid the extra bits for the cart, she thought.
She placed the opened bottle on the ground next to her before reaching into her saddlebag for a handkerchief. The embroidered edging tore in several places and the dirtied body looked browner than its native white. Rarity let out a dejected wheeze, reached back into her saddlebag, and found no alternatives.
Oh my, this really is my last one, isn’t it? she thought. She levitated the cloth near a dirty patch on the underside of her neck, paused, and then decided the cloth was somehow dirtier than she was. “Ew,” she said with a disgusted grimace.
The flicked the cloth once and shook her head. “I am going straight to the spa when I get home,” she thought aloud. “I wonder if Princess Celestia knows any good places to—”
A loud zaaaaap pierced the air as a purple ball shot out of the mud, interrupting her train of thought as it unceremoniously splashed her. She shrieked as it hit her coat and she reeled back. That only served to throw up even more mud.
“Disgusting!”
Rarity looked up at the glowing orb above her, basking in the dazzling display of sparks. A magical aura held the stone in place for many moments, allowing Rarity to position herself underneath.
And she winced. Goodness, how long has that stone been underground in all of that dirt? And then she looked over at the worn cloth in her magical grasp. She gasped. “Ideeeaaa!”
Just as the magic spell dissolved and the stone began to drop, Rarity glided the handkerchief underneath, using it to scoop the stone right out of the air.
She let out an affirmative “Humph” as she levitated the whole package back into her saddlebag. Without so much as even a glance, she then magically pulled out a small, purple sphere. The hard object shined against the rays of the sun.
Had it really come time to chew on the teleportation gum?
Rarity chuckled, eying the object. Then she took one last look at the cliffs around her and one sour glance at the muddy ground underneath her. “Indeed. I am leaving now.”
She popped the gum into her mouth and chewed down. An explosion of a flavor that she couldn’t place cascaded through her muzzle. The energy coursed through her body, and in short order, it swallowed her whole. She could feel her entire being torn apart, bit by bit, and yet it didn’t hurt.
As her world twisted and distorted and collapsed into itself, she had one last thought. Hmmm, I wonder if anypony else has encountered anything unsavory at their sites.
My, what trouble that would be!
* * *
Fluttershy tentatively set down the lantern and reached into her saddlebag. Her eyes darted between the various tunnels snaking away from the large cavern she currently stood in.
She swallowed; she could barely see in front of her face, let alone clearly tell which tunnels went where. Or if they even existed for that matter; the telltale depressions of their mouths were her only clue of their whereabouts.
A screech shot forth from one of the adjoining tunnels. She winced under the sound and whipped her attention back toward the ground.
Still nothing.
Her hoof bumped against something round in her bag and she yanked it out in a heartbeat. The teleportation gum shone against the lantern’s light.
A cascade of cries and shrieks and the cacophony of rushing air burst from the tunnel. A drop of sweat ran down her face and she grit her teeth. “Come on, please…” she muttered.
She flipped the teleportation gum in her hoof several times while staring at the spot on the ground.
Fluttershy hoped the lantern wouldn’t decide to die.
The howls became more voluminous and drew closer still.
She began pawing at the ground. “Please go faster. Please go faster. Please please please please pretty please please. Please go faster.”
With a loud boom, the ground heaved, sending debris in all directions. The stone shot upward, bathed in a shower of sparks, and at the moment of its apex, it floated there.
Fluttershy gasped. Finally! she thought. Without a second thought, she popped the piece of gum into her mouth and positioned herself underneath the stone.
In the darkness, a set of red eyes appeared and moved against the backdrop. With every passing second, dozens more followed behind them. Their cries grew in increasing number as they emerged.
The sparks fizzled out and the stone fell into her outstretched hoof.
Fluttershy bit down.
The gum exploded and her entire body dissolved into a series of green-colored flames. The fires banded together and sailed through the air, disappearing toward the exit.
* * *
Applejack charged headlong through another patch of grass before she dared to crane her neck toward what ran behind her.
Several primates, covered from head to toe in hair, thundered behind her, hurling high-pitched and primal screams at her. Their rugged and reddened faces slipped between expressions of rage and bewilderment, but in both cases, they glared her down through beady eyes.
Applejack groaned. How in the hay did I get into this mess?
She looked forward to focus on outpacing them. Her saddlebag’s loose buckle flapped with each step, and the contents tumbled about. At times, they dug into her side and she attempted to shrug them off each time, but the pounding was starting to pile up.
As she charged through the long, yellow stalks of grass, she craned her neck to look over their tops. The path ahead appeared to thin out ahead of her. She leaped into the air for a better vantage point.
Rather, the whole earth dropped off altogether. She paled.
Applejack dug her hooves into the dirt as she landed. The dirt rebounded under her hooves and she skidded.
And then her hoof caught on something and Applejack fell face-first. Something shifted in her saddlebag.
A speeding glint caught her eye and she looked up. Her one remaining glass bottle, containing Twilight’s stone finder spell, flew through the air and then broke against the hard ground.
Zaaaaap went the spell. Applejack watched as the ball of electricity hung in the air.
The baboons behind her stood by in enraptured awe at the spell twisted and crackled about, any trace of their malevolence eroded from their features. A few even reached out at some of the sparks that arced in their direction.
Applejack lowered her stetson to block out the view. Now that the bottle was broken, the spell was cast. If there was one thing Applejack knew from the instructions, the spell had a range.
Applejack gulped. Ah’m not near where Ah need to be!
The vortex surged once, twice, and then it dimmed for a moment. No, rather, unlike the last time when the spell had rocketed into the ground, this one fizzled in midair. Several loose figments blew away in the breeze as it disassembled itself. The spell disintegrated until only its core remained, and then that disappeared in a dim flash of white light a few moments later.
A cool wind swept through the area, passing several decaying leaves through and around all of them. Everything else stayed still and silent. An eternity brushed past them.
Applejack shakily rose to her hooves.
…Ah failed.
Applejack whirled around to face the baboons who returned their attention to her in kind.
Ah failed.
One of the baboons screamed.
Their serene picture quickly dissolved into the party of shrieks and cries from before. Several pounded the dirt and bared their fangs and made several lunges toward her but never went all the way.
Applejack retreated, step by step. Step by step, the line of primates inched forward.
Applejack’s hindhoof pierced through the earth, sending several rocks tumbling into the gorge. Applejack cringed and pulled it back. “Wooooaaaah nelly.”
She grabbed her hat as she looked between the mob in front of her and the drop behind her.
She grit her teeth together. Looks like Ah’m finished.
Applejack cautiously reached in and grabbed her orange piece of gum, keeping her eyes trained on the pack all the while. She then fumbled with the strap on her saddlebag, managing to pull it tight.
She took one last look down at the earth far below and swallowed.
Applejack whirled around once more and then leaped off the edge of the cliff just as the baboons surged forward. She quickly wrapped her free hoof around her stetson to keep it from blowing away as she plummeted down the side of the cliff face.
She threw the gum into her mouth. She twisted around to take one last look at the baboons who had piled up against the edge of the cliff.
Ah’m sorry, Twilight… Ah failed you.
Applejack bit down and then exploded into a plethora of green embers that the wind scooped up and carried away.
* * *
Sunset gazed out toward the sun through the first-floor balcony. For a moment, she rested her forelegs on the balcony and pondered the rest of the sky.
She frowned. We have a storm scheduled for tomorrow, don’t we? she thought. Rain could easily get in here with this open balcony. Hmmmm.
Sunset flared her horn and fired a short and weak bolt out. However, the bolt rebounded against an invisible wall and struck the floor beside her instead.
She glanced down at the small mark left on the floor and chuckled. Well, she thought, at least that still works.
The large, blue double doors behind her creaked open and Sunset whirled around. “Spike! You’re back!”
Spike skipped through the opening. “You bet. Any luck?” he asked with a scratchy voice as he presented the ball.
Sunset used her magic to take it from him. “Lots of it. I think I’ve made a huge breakthrough.”
Spike nodded before he plopped himself on the couch. “Tell me about it?”
She grinned. “Well, for starters, I realized that we’re dealing with an infinite worlds scenario.”
He frowned. “…Uhm?”
“Basically, if Twilight’s in her world and we’re in another world, then I think there’s a third world that’s watching us from nine days into the future,” she explained. “And then there’s a fourth one watching them. And it just goes on to infinity.”
Spike frowned and crossed his arms. “Uh… yeah… So, really… it’s just like we thought, huh?”
“Yup.”
Spike’s scales flattened. “And… does that mean our Twilight is, you know… actually gone?”
Sunset swallowed. “Maybe. And we owe it to her to not let this other world’s Twilight make the same mistakes our Twilight made. We still have time to save her life.”
She leaned forward and said, “But I have a plan. It’s kind of a gamble, but if it pays off… I’ll not only save her, but ours, and every Twilight in existence.”
Spike’s jaw dropped. “You… you really think so?”
Sunset nodded. “But I have to get working on it right now.”
Spike nodded and handed the crystal ball to her. “Okay. I’ll be down here if you need me. I’ll probably be burping the girls up soon.”
Sunset turned and ascended into the study area and, after taking a moment to bask in the towering bookshelves, looked down into the ball. The view showed the living area. She surmised that Twilight had gone down there sometime before Spike had returned. She glanced around the balcony within the ball, and then, on a whim, glanced around the room in search of Twilight.
Her eyes stuck on a particular object in the room. A brown hooded cloak hung on one of the hangers.
Sunset rubbed her chin perplexedly. That must be the one she’ll wear to the door, she thought.
She shrugged and willed the view into the study area.
Twilight hunched herself over a chemistry book, flipping through several bookmarked pages as she glanced between it and the vials on the desk.
Sunset placed her hoof on the ball. “Hey, Twilight.”
Twilight’s ears twitched and she glanced upward. “Hi, Sunset. Figure anything out?”
Sunset nodded, “Yeah, I figured a lot of stuff out. I’m going to try and access the multiverse.”
Twilight ran a hoof across the page. She blinked several times and took a long, deep breath. “Okay. Okay. Do you have a plan?”
“It’s my ‘go for broke’ plan. The all or nothing. My way of getting The Answer. And to make it work, I’ll need a couple of things from you.”
“The Answer?” Twilight asked.
“That’s what I’ve decided to call the spell,” Sunset replied.
Twilight stared blankly into the page, idly flipped it, and then glanced over at her own crystal ball.
Twilight snapped her book shut and cantered over toward the desk. After swiping some loose articles out of the way, she pressed her quill against a blank notecard. “What do you need?”
Sunset smirked. “First things first: do you remember the first set of coordinates that you generated?”
“Yes?”
“Those coordinates are correct. I want you to send them through with your care package.”
Twilight wrote down a single sentence on her notecard. “Okay, I’ll do that. What else?”
Sunset quickly glanced around the bookshelves on both sides of the room, centered on the desk area, then magically grabbed down a blue sketchbook. “I want... you to let me copy your entire book.”
Twilight glanced over at her journal. “You mean, the one I copied off of you?”
“Yes,” Sunset said, stamping a hoof against the floor, “that one. I’d like to copy that through the night.”
Twilight nodded. “I think… I can enchant the journal to flip pages every few minutes. I’ll keep the ball close by if you need me to make adjustments in the night.”
Sunset clapped her hooves together. “Great, thanks.”
“Anything else?”
Sunset placed a hoof against her muzzle as she looked into the crystal ball. She glanced hard at the journal, stroking her chin all the while.
“Yes,” Sunset finally said, “there’s one last thing.”
“Alright, what is it?”
She swallowed. “Twilight? Do you trust me?”
Twilight glanced upward with a contemplative frown, and then she slowly nodded. “With my life, Sunset.”
Sunset sucked in a breath. “Okay. Alright. So, when all of this is said and done… whether or not we have The Answer for you or not… when it’s time for you to leave… I want you to burn your journal.”