//------------------------------//
// Interlude 3: Moments in the Past [History Overwritten] 
// Story: Split Second 
// by wille179 
//------------------------------//

Sparkrovitar, Take One





The first time Sparkrovitar ever manifested, he was horribly incomplete and had no idea what to expect. He was also a she, as the young drake that supplied the masculine portion of his mentality was only two weeks old and had so little self-identity that Sparkle didn’t even realize she wasn’t fully Sparkle.
In fact, she only noticed that something was off for one reason. “SHINY, I HAVE TOO MANY EYES! WAAAA!!!”
Shining Armor looked up from his bowl of dry cereal to see his sister running around the room, the baby dragon on her back, and both screaming their lungs out. “Twilight? What’s wrong? What do you mean?” he asked.
Twilight Sparkle - for the two versions had yet to split their name - screamed, “I HAVE! TOO! MANY! EYES!”
Shining Armor scooped up the two young children in his magic. “Twilight, calm down! Please explain!”
“I woke up this morning and I could see things in a direction I wasn’t looking, and I could see myself when I looked at Baby Dragon!” The purple unicorn cried. But as she spoke, the infant dragon mouthed the words.
“Twilight, close your eyes.” Both obeyed, even though the dragon couldn’t yet understand the common tongue. Shining Armor asked, “Can you feel this?”
He poked the dragon’s belly with his horn.
“Ow! Hey! Why’d you do that?”
“Because my LSBFF somehow got her mind inside Baby Dragon’s body,” Shining Armor said, though he was horribly confused.
“How do I get it to stop?” the eight-year-old asked. Of course, she figured it out about a second later when the infant’s body decided it was tired and didn’t want to be awake anymore, closing the link in the process. “Oh, like that, I guess.”
“How did you do it?” the older brother asked.
“Dunno. I can kinda feel it, but I don’t know what I did. Huh...”





Twilight & Sparkle’s Room





A nine-year-old Twilight woke up bright and sunny, ready to take on the day. She combed her hair, brushed her teeth, and did her magical warm-ups. White-gold light poured out of her horn and coated the potted plants on her window sill, relieving that pent-up pressure she always felt. When she pulled her magic away, the plants looked bigger and healthier than before.
And as a result of her months of practice, her room looked more like a greenhouse than a bedroom, overflowing with plants that were several times larger and lusher than they ever should have been naturally.
Twilight felt a tingle in her horn, and knew that Sparkle was calling her. The two timelines merged. Twilight stepped forwards.
Crunch.
Twilight looked down. There was a mangled body of a squirrel under her hoof.
She screamed.
A hoof silenced her before she could summon her family with her cires. “Don’t scream.” Sparkle looked her right in the eye. “Don’t. Scream.”
“Mmm karh,” Twilight mumbled through her twin’s intruding hoof. Sparkle let go. Twilight looked around and saw that Sparkle’s room was littered with animal corpses, from frogs to rats to several collar-wearing dogs that Twilight recognized from the neighborhood. “Sparkle, what’s going on here... are they all... you know...?”
“Dead? Yeah.”
“But how?”
Sparkle smiled, immensely proud of herself. “I can make things die just by wishing for them to. You know how you make your plants bigger and stronger, but it makes you tired? I make them waste away, and it makes me feel good.”
“Sparkle, that’s horrible!”
“How else am I going to get food for Thorn? I can’t get gems to feed him like you can,” Sparkle explained. She picked up a rabbit corpse and tossed it to the side. Thorn shot out from his bed with surprising swiftness and caught it, tearing it to pieces in seconds. “Good catch!”
“Thanky mama!” the infant cheered. “Burrrrrrp! Hehe...”





The Worst Birthday Ever





Sparkle was having the worst birthday in the world. Their home, the actual house of the House of Twilight, was closed to them, leaving the ten-year-old Sparkle standing on the streets with her depressed older brother and confused son.
“Mom? Why do we have to go?” Thorn asked.
“Shiny?” she deferred, equally confused.
He was silent, still somewhat shocked that this had happened. It was only this morning that he had woken up to find their aunt, Lady Overcast of the Noble House of Dawn, standing at the door, ready to evict them from their ancestral home. “The branch House of Twilight has been disowned from the Noble House of Dawn,” Overcast had said. “You are trespassing on Dawn property. You have an hour to collect your personal property and to clean up that horrid filly’s mess and get out before I call the police.”
And so, an hour later, Shining Armor found himself at a loss for words. Finally, he found something to settle on. “Aunt Overcast’s family doesn’t like us any more. They’re bad ponies, Sparks, but they own the house. Come on, let’s go find a hotel to stay in for now.”





Celestia has a Heart Attack





If you asked her how old she was, as Celestia had just done, Twilight would reply, “Eleven and a half!”
“Ah, that’s a wonderful age,” Celestia said, rubbing her pupil’s head. “In fact, I think you’re at the right age where I can show you the next part of your paladin training.”
“Really?” Twilight said, her eyes twinkling with delight. “Thank you, Princess! What are you going to show me?”
Ponies normally got their cutie marks by the age of ten, but could get them as early as seven. The marks represented a magical boost in skill and a magically granted ease of learning anything related to that talent. Pony culture had formed its educational system around that fact, with ponies getting apprenticeships or specialized educations almost immediately after. At its most extreme, you’d see ponies with medical cutie marks working in the hospitals at as young as fifteen, whereas there wasn’t a griffin doctor under twenty five.
That Celestia had this particular lesson in mind for Twilight at this age wasn’t surprising in the least. “I have something I want to show you. Now, it may be scary, and it will definitely be gross, so if you don’t feel like doing it, you can always say no. Do you understand?”
“I understand, Princess,” Twilight replied.
Celestia nodded, and with a flash of her horn, teleported them. A putrid stench was the first thing both of them noticed as the light faded from their eyes. “Ugh, Princess, what is that?”
“That, my most faithful student, is a zombie pony.”
Celestia expected many reactions from her student regarding the caged, moaning beast. Gagging, cries of fear, shouting, or any other ordinary reaction. She’d had the Royal Guard bring in the pitiful creature to help Twilight understand that as a paladin, she’d have to put down these nightmarish creatures eventually. What she didn’t expect was for Twilight to cry out in joy.
Twilight sprinted up to the cage. “A zombie pony! Sparkle was telling me about these. I always wanted to see one!”
“Bruaaahhhh,” the zombie moaned.
“Hello, Mr. Zombie... or are you Ms. Zombie? I’m sorry, I can’t tell.”
“Muuuuuhhhhhh...”
“How are you doing?”
“Uuuuuuuhhhh?”
“Oh, I guess you’re not like Sparkle’s zombies, then. That’s kind of disappointing...” Twilight bemoaned.
“Sparkle’s zombies?” the solar princess asked.
Twilight nodded. “Mmm Hmm, Sparkle can make zombies that can talk. Even the rat zombies can talk, though she says that that’s not really the rats talking, but her talking through the rats. There were a lot of rats, too.”
Celestia’s expression darkened. She didn’t want her prized student anywhere near a necromancer. “Twilight, who is this Sparkle? And where did you meet her?”
“She’s me. The other me, in the other time. Sparkle’s my sister, but she’s also what I could have been.”
And for the first time since she’d lost her sister, Celestia’s heart skipped a beat.





Black Hammer’s Last Gift





The elderly stallion coughed violently. He had known for a while that his days were numbered, but he’d thought he’d have had more time than this. A month or two more, at least.
He picked his hammer back up with his magic. Even if the rest of his body was failing, his magic was still going strong, and by golly, he was going to finish this before he kicked the bucket. He swung the hammer, crashing it into the red-hot metal with a mighty klang.
He looked at the knife, nearly finished. Deciding that it could use a little more profiling, he reheated it carefully in the curse-flame furnace. Once it was glowing yellow-orange and singing with dark magic again, he pulled it out and struck it a few more times.
After doing the last detailing work, he inserted the cooled blade into a conventional furnace to bring it up to tempering heat, pulling it out when it was a nice, even red color. The blacksmith plunged the blade into a vat of oil saturated in his dark magic, and pulled it out when it was just cool enough.
Hours later, he had finished the detailing work, wrapped the hilt in genuine leather straps, and placed the small enchanted jewel in the pommel of the blade. After permanently attaching an enchanted length of cloth to a ring extending from the pommel, he smiled, satisfied.
Casting the last spell on it, he set the extremely lethal knife down on his workbench. It was by no means his greatest creation, but it was his favorite. Why?
“Black Hammer! Black Hammer! Look what I made!”
That little twelve-year-old filly. That was why.
“Come here and show this old coot what you made.”
She hopped up next to him and held out a simple slide whistle. The moment it was in his grasp, he could feel the magic within it. It only took the dark enchanter a second to see everything about that curse she’d put on it. While it was crude and stood out like a minotaur’s sore thumb, he had to admit, it was effectively designed. “And why would you need to make something like this?”
“There was a stallion who tried to do bad things to me. Shiny stopped him, but it still made me mad. Now they can’t do bad things to me if I play this.”
Black Hammer chuckled on the outside, but on the inside, he wept for what almost happened to the filly he loved like a granddaughter. “Well, this is very good. Mind if I try it?”
“NO!”
“Hahaha! Don’t worry. This old geezer doesn’t have much left down there. But, just in case, I’m going to go over there and play it.” Black Hammer trotted over behind the furnace and placed the whistle in his lips. He blew a long note that fell in pitch, surprising himself with how loud it was. He then felt the blood flowing away from his groin. “Oh.”
He played a note that increased in pitch, and was rewarded with the blood flowing back to that area. Black Hammer was immediately grateful that he had the foresight to move somewhere more private.
He played a third note, this one ending on a middle pitch, removing the curse on his loins. “Clever,” he said as he trotted back over. “That works very well. I’m guessing any stallion that hears it is affected?”
“Yep,” she replied.
“And you made it reversible because?”
“Shiny might have heard it. And I don’t want him to hurt him,” she answered.
Black Hammer nodded. “Good thinking, Sparkle. You really are a clever little pony. In fact, you’re so clever, I think you deserve a gift.”
“Really?” Sparkle asked as she hopped up and down. It was rare that she got anything nowadays, so a gift, especially from Black Hammer, meant a lot to her.
“Yes. I just finished it. I’ve been working on it all night.” He levitated the blade over with his dark magic. It was a simple-looking dagger, with a straight, double edge. Unbeknownst to Sparkle, the tang, hidden under the leather-wrapped wood, was absolutely covered in runes, rendering it unbreakable, impossibly sharp, and extremely bloodthirsty.
“It needs to get to know you, though. Here.” He wrapped the long cloth around her foreleg and pricked her other foreleg with the tip of the blade. A trickle of blood flowed across the blade and into the white cloth, forever staining it crimson. When it was done, he separated the knife from her. “Now it knows that you are its master.”
Without warning, he thrust the dagger. Sparkle jumped in surprise, but it ended up not being necessary. The tip, despite pressing against her fur, refused to puncture. Withdrawing it, the blacksmith said, “It will never hurt you. However...”
He dropped the dagger. 
It sank into the ground, parting stone as easily as air.
“And any pony cut by it will die for sure, if you want them to, that is.”
“Wow!” Sparkle cheered.
“And with a little magic, it keeps itself clean and safe.” He pulsed his magic, pushing it into the gem in a way that Sparkle could clearly see. The cloth seemed to come alive, twisting around the blade until it had completely enveloped it. Black hammer dropped the blade again, but this time, it just clattered onto the floor without displacing the cloth. “Impressive, right?”
Sparkle nodded enthusiastically and took the bound blade. “Thanks!”
“You’re welcome.”
He had no idea that that would be the last blade he ever forged.





Twilight Saves a Life





The first time Twilight saved a life was when she was thirteen. She had been sitting at the base of the waterfall in lower Canterlot, when she noticed a small shape bob up from under the falls. The moment she recognized it as a pony’s body, she dove into the water and swam as hard as she could. That she had magic slipped her mind at that moment.
Grabbing the pony’s mane in her teeth, Twilight pulled them to shore.
The colt was badly hurt, but miraculously still alive. Placing her horn against his body, she gathered as much of her inner light as she could and injected it into his still body. She felt out every little injury, starting with the internal bleeding, and fixed it as best she could. As she did, the mere presence of light magic stimulated his body, helping the healing along.
Exhausted, she collapsed on the ground, panting.
Another pony who had seen what had happened ran up to them. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Are you two alright?”
“I’ll be fine,” Twilight said after sucking down some more air. “But him...”
“I’m ok,” he said.
“That’s good.” Twilight flopped on her back, exhausted.
An hour later, when Twilight reunited the colt with his distraught mother, the tears of joy would affirm in her heart that yes, this is the kind of thing she was meant to do.





Like a Potato Chip...





The fourteen-year-old mare had never killed a pony before that day. She’d never killed anything sapient, for that matter.
It was also the first time she’d knowingly eat a pony’s soul.
“Ahhh! Stay back!” A different mare screamed. Sparkle and Thorn looked across the street, illuminated only by the gas lamps, to see a frail-looking unicorn mare in an alleyway held at knifepoint by a burly earth pony. “I’ll give you my purse, just leave me alone!”
Sparkle momentarily considered turning away. This was the slums; you didn’t carry a purse in the slums. ‘Stupid mare.’
“No can do,” the stallion grunted. “I’m lookin’ for somethin’ a little more, if ya know what I mean.”
Sparkle turned on a dime. ‘Nope. Now it’s personal.’ 
Seeing his mother suddenly change directions, Thorn scrambled to catch up.
“Let her go!” Sparkle yelled.
“What do we have here? It seems the pussy is multiplying. Must be my lucky day. Hold still.” He stabbed the other mare with his knife. Pulling it out, he charged at Sparkle.
She deflected the blow with magic.
He stabbed again.
A larger Thorn slammed him into the wall.
He tried to get up, but Sparkle pinned him in place. “Dread told me how to do this, but I never have before. I really hope your soul tastes nasty.”
She pressed her lips to his and sucked. The blob of magic and psyche slid easily into her mouth and down her gullet. There wasn’t any flavor in particular, but the texture was divine. Random flashes of memory flickered through her mind: a name, a face, a smell, a color, but nothing particularly interesting, and nothing she’d bother to remember past that day.
“Hey Mom, this lady’s not doing so hot,” Thorn called out.
Sparkle looked over, and sure enough, the mare’s soul was hanging on by a thread as her body rapidly failed.
Sparkle’s heart clenched. The mare would be dead in minutes, and Sparkle didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t heal like her sister. She couldn’t keep her alive; she didn’t know how!
And then the hunger came.
The hunger for souls was something every natural dark mage would feel for their entire life. If they never studied soul magic, they’d never realize that the emptiness inside wasn’t just in their head. If they never ate a soul, they could always say no. But once they’d tasted the essence of sapient life...
Well, souls were like potato chips. You could never eat just one.
“Hey, shhh... It’ll be ok,” Sparkle whispered to the mare. “I’ll make the pain stop.”
“Th-thank y-you,” the dying mare said.
Sparkle began to weep, but couldn’t bring herself to stop. Between one sob and the next, Sparkle inhaled the mare’s soul. The warmth and power it brought was no comfort, and neither was the eerie sense of déjà vu.
Meanwhile, Thorn stood behind her and watched. He didn’t quite get it. He’d seen her eat the souls. Wasn’t eating supposed to make you feel better? Then why was she crying?
He didn’t know. But there were two perfectly good dead bodies here, and for as long as he could remember, Thorn had always eaten whatever his mother had killed.
Well, bon appetit.





Happy Birthday To Us!





One newly minted fifteen-year-old walked up to the other, who was lying on a park bench. “Sparkle, are you going to come join us? It’s not really a party without you. Mom made snickerdoodles~” she sang.
“I don’t really feel like it,” Sparkle muttered.
“Ah, come on. Please? Think about it, you’re the only pony in the whole universe that can eat as many of mom’s cookies as she wants and not get fat. Even I can’t do that,” Twilight tempted.
“She screamed when she died. Did you know that?”
“What?”
“Who. Mom. I couldn’t remember that day for so long... and then it just came back to me. Probably when I... nevermind.”
Twilight sat down next to her depressed sister. “Sparkle...”
“They all screamed, I think, but I remember seeing mom’s face. She looked like she was in so much pain. But when it was all over, she looked... still. It wasn’t like sleeping at all. She was just frozen on the ground.” Sparkle chuckled humorlessly. “Mom did the best. The judges were just a pile of goo and bones. And there were dozens of others in that school that died because of me. Don’t remember them... I passed out and woke up in the hospital a week later. Celestia visited me, did you know? She had this look on her face, like I was everything she hated about the world, but she was trying not to show it. I think it was worse than every glare I get on the street combined.”
Tears welled up in Twilight’s eyes. She buried her face into Sparkle’s neck and sobbed. “Sparks, I’m so sorry! I didn’t know! Oh Celes- Oh Maker! I’m sorry!”
Sparkle said nothing, but just hugged her sister back. Her eyes remained dry, having cried all their tears a long time ago. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Twilight’s family walked up to them, confused and worried that Twilight was crying on such a happy day. Even Twilight’s Celestia, who had been conversing with Twilight Velvet, was there, wondering why her student was weeping openly in the embrace of her sister.
The dead look that Sparkle sent her told the princess more than she’d ever admit.





Look What I Caught!





Sixteen-year-old Twilight set the newspaper down in front of her sister. Sparkle looked at the headline, and then looked up. “Congratulations. You made the front page.”
“That’s amazing, right?”
“Completely. Caught the killer and you didn’t even have to kill the guy in the process.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“You have no idea,” Sparkle muttered.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”





Death and Other Sacrifices





The two of them sat together in the Elysian Fields. Death looked off into the distance. “Speaking of time, it’s almost up, I’m afraid.” And it was true. Time, that bastard, hated when she was summoned elsewhere in time. Short hops were fine, as were longer hops that didn’t interfere with her own pre-ascension history, but this was pushing it.
She’d told her that Obsidian Knife was a common friend. That was only mostly true. Obsidian Knife was her, when she was mortal, and a male. And without Sparkle, she wouldn’t have even been born.
Time hated rewriting itself. The last time it had, Time had been split into thirteen different forms, one who couldn’t even physically manifest and twelve nearly identical earth ponies. But, in order to keep the timeline from rewriting itself again, Death knew Time would have to intervene again, when the spell in Death’s book turned out not to be enough to save Sparkle from the elements.
Ah, the perils and perks of time travel. She frowned ever so slightly. This would be the last time she saw Sparkle. Every other time, from her perspective, had already happened.
“Really?” Sparkle asked. The seventeen-year-old could have sat there for eternity. It was peaceful, so much so that Death knew that the thought of actually leaving bothered her. “I don’t really want to go...”
‘Neither do I,’ the Reaper thought. “Ah, come on. That’s enough Elysium for you today. Off we-”
She stepped them outside of time and space.
She stepped them back inside.
“-go.” They were in Canterlot, with the sunrise swiftly appearing on the horizon behind them.
Sparkle jumped. The transition had been unnoticable. Death hadn’t even stopped speaking, and yet one moment she was there, and now she was here, and standing as if she had been standing here for a minute and only now just noticed.
“Hey, Sparkle?”
“Yes?”
The Reaper hesitated, savoring the moment just a little longer. When she looked at her, she couldn’t help but feel a little sympathy, and a little pride. Her past selves, as immature as they were, wouldn’t help her as much as they could have, and yet Death found pride in what Sparkle would become. She couldn’t help it. "A word of advice, though you may not understand just yet: A coin has two sides, and one is always the winner. Flip accordingly.”
She knew she would get the message. She knew Sparkle would understand.
After all, she had already.





A Bitter Taste in the Mouth





She’d moved. They’d gone to Ponyville to save themselves (and the world) from Nightmare Moon. Sparkle thought that they’d just go back to Canterlot and everything would be alright.
And then TWILIGHT. BUCKING. MOVED. 
“GAAHHH!” Sparkle screamed, hurling another rock into the pond as fast as she could. The cannonball-like splashes were getting progressively larger with each stone. “HOW COULD YOU? HOW? HOW? HOW? GAHHH!”
The next rock was still laced with dark magic when it hit. Several dead fish and one undead fish floated to the surface. Then the undead one started eating its brethren.
“YOU SAID WE’D STAY TOGETHER!”
Sparkle’s eye twitched and her mane, which was quite frazzled, oozed black smoke. The grass, plants, and a warren of rabbits nearby had all already died. 
If Sparkle had looked up from the water, she would have seen Thorn circling overhead, keeping any ponies who wandered too close away. The raw magic she was putting off made her a significant potential danger. Should she walk through town in this state, they’d see a death toll in the dozens. Yet Thorn hadn't been thinking of such things. He'd just wanted to give his mom space to vent uninterrupted.
But Sparkle didn’t look up from the rippling water. Nor did she hear Thorn flying around her. Instead, she heard all the voices from her nightmares, taunting her, humiliating her, torturing her, laughing at her as she burned at the stake. Night after night, she’d had different versions of the same dream.
A month without her sister, and she was losing it.
No.
Sparkle took a deep breath. When that failed to calm her, she magically suppressed her emotions. Thoughts clearer now, she picked something else to focus on. Groceries. She needed groceries. She’d been eating more than she’d normally allow herself, considering how tight her budget was, and she’d have to go shopping again tomorrow. Maybe the clerk would be nice and give her a discount?
It was worth a shot.