//------------------------------// // Act I, scene vii - Caged In Echoes // Story: A World Rent Asunder // by NeverEatTheLemonsAlone //------------------------------// I watch in strange fascination as the specter of Luna pulls the warscythe violently off of the wall, walking slowly and angrily away, passing through me again before vanishing. Alright, so if I have any intuition at all, I know how this is going to end. Following where the spectral pony went, I gallop back through the hallway into the iced-over Solar Court just as another ghostly conversation begins. "...Celestia, you've brought this upon yourself. How dare you? I have few enough supporters as it is, and you decide to attack them? You've gone much, much too far. For too long, I've been content to live by your shadow, barely ever emerging to shine my moon. And the few that appreciate me when I do so? I treasure them above all else..." The warscythe flickers into the air above her, surrounded by her dark blue magic, and she readies it to taste blood. "...So this is unforgivable!..." The two are standing across from each other, maybe ten feet apart, and each one is clearly in a stance of battle. Luna's warscythe is matched on the other side by the familiar solar spear that I saw being made just a few minutes ago. Celestia growls. "...I don't know what you're talking about, Luna. I have lifted a hoof against nopony. I don't know what madness has consumed you, but if won't listen to reason, then I can only take one course of action." "...If those are your thoughts, then this conversation is wasted, sister. Come on, then! Let me see what the Princess of the Sun is capable of!..." The two weapons flicker and vanish, moving with tremendous speed. They lock together in the center and split apart again, striking like metallic snakes so quickly that I can't follow any of their movements. All the while, the two princesses are moving closer to each other just a little every second. In a short time, their weapons are locked together, shaking, just in front of their faces. Rage is evident in both of them, written on their faces and through the tension of their entire bodies. I watch with undisguised fascination. This must be the first real fight between them. As strange as this is, and as grim as the events are, I'm watching history playing out in front of my eyes. I take a step towards them, eager to get closer to them. Imagine my surprise, then, when their eyes lock into mine. It's the most disturbing thing. Their necks remain as they were before, and they continue to fight. Their heads, however, are turned towards me, independent of any neck rotation, and staring at me with wide, unblinking eyes. A swallow and back away. Suddenly, this isn't so interesting anymore. I think it's time to get back outside. I'll take my chances with the Rime Wolves. As I skirt around the two fighting princesses, their heads and eyes follow me. Watching their heads rotate that far without even moving their necks, or stopping their fight? It's terrifying, and I'm thankful as I reach the door and walk through. Or at least try to. As I move through the archway, a ghostly image of a door that's new and polished appears in front of me and blocks my path. Confused, I try to open it with magic, but find that I can't interact with it in any way. Looking back at the fighting princesses, I jump. Their heads are back to normal, but that's barely noticeable compared to the second, more interesting phenomenon. There's another pair of princesses. They're standing a little ways away from the pair that's still warring in the center of the room, staring at me with those same eyes that refuse to blink. I shudder, and then backpedal, or at least try to. With the door in the way, I can't. Why am I backpedaling, you ask? Because they've started to move towards me, transparent fires blazing on their horns as they raise their respective weapons. Phantom voices float through the air. You are not welcome here, interloper. You have interrupted. Face your fate. Their weapons dart forwards at immense speeds and I barely dodge them out of reflex. The air above me hisses as they embed themselves in the wall just above my head, leaving enormous holes and showering tiny pebbles down on me. Barely thinking, I dash towards the archway that Luna had emerged from in the first vision, breathing heavily. Spear and scythe pierce the air around me, and I barely dodge them each time. The scythe is the first to impact me, grazing my side, and unlike before, where Luna simply phased through me, it's the very real burning pain of cold metal shearing through my fur and skin, drawing blood. My eyes widen as I remember the final few lines from the book about these echoes. Be warned, however, and do not stay for long. The more time you spend around these phantasms, the less connected to your own time you will become. The shadows of the past do not take kindly to those that interrupt their endless drama, and will become tangible and extremely aggressive. If this should occur, run as far and fast as you can, because while they can kill you, you cannot touch them. Sliding through the archway, panting, I dash onwards. The slow, paced hoofsteps of the two sisters never leave my ears as I lose myself in the endlessly spiderwebbing corridors of the ruins. Marks was right. There's nothing but death in these ruins, death at the hooves of a history that's been gone for a long, long time. Finally, I fall onto my side, chest heaving. I can't keep going. I'm in what looks like some sort of armory, suits of plate steel and racks of swords and axes lining the walls. Are these in my time, or the past? Most of them are long-gone, and it's becoming more difficult to tell which is which, but finally, I find a object that's left in my own time; an ancient blade, cased in a sheath of wood. Shakily drawing it, I know that I'm going to die. I can't possibly defend my self from two alicorns at once. If I'm dying, though, I'm going down fighting. Standing up, those same hoofsteps echo, supernaturally loud, through the halls, and from the passageway in front of me, the two sisters emerge, echoes of malice flickering in their empty eyes. As I hold the sword in front of me in a magical grip, I recall the final line of the passage too late. The ancient Celestia's spear flickers through the sword without losing pace, embedding itself in my shoulder. I cry out in anguish and fall to the floor, reflexively lashing out with my magic as a last-ditch effort. It does nothing to them, at least not at first. Then I realize that they're no longer moving. [1] Sliding backwards, I manage to slip my shoulder off of the point of the spear, looking around. I've done something more than I know, and the room no longer looks the same from second to second. I've somehow tossed myself into a state of in-between, sliding involuntarily through a gap in the threads of time. With time in flux, flickering around me wildly, there's no surprise when a hallway from the past opens up in front of me. Using what limited healing magic I know, I can knit the skin together to prevent the blood from spilling out, but that's about it. It's still just as painful and makes it difficult for me to walk, let alone run. Desperate to escape from the apparitions, I limp through the hallway. I've barely made it five minutes when I begin to hear the hoofsteps echoing after me again. I swear; I suppose it was too much for my magic to have frozen them indefinitely, but there was a desperate hope. No, there's no way for me to escape, and now I'm hopelessly lost amidst the claustrophobic corridors. Flickers of hellish blue-gold light begin to surge up the hallway after me, and yet I still can't do anything but limp at a snail's pace without tearing my shoulder apart. The slice in my side is painful as well, but with what little magic I have left, I can't even weave the skin up. I end up in a bedchamber with a great window, an enormous pane of glass that flickers between the night of the present and the brilliant daytime of the past. An idea bursts into my head, but I hesitate. I have no idea where and when I am. This could set me adrift in time, lost forever in an endless black void in between realities. Then the shadows of the sisters enter the room and I run out of time to decide. Standing tall, I ignore the pain from my shoulder and dash at the window, jumping at it. The fragile pane shatters in front of me and I fly out into a world of open skies. --- [1]: This is one of the few times in my life that panic has actually saved me from certain death. So it's not always bad. Just usually. --- I'm falling for what feels like forever. What is this? Where am I? Before it actually reaches forever, though, I can see a light beneath me. Just the faint glow of the moon on one really, really big cloud. Hang on. That's Skahaben! Beneath the cloud, a purple orb of energy sparks and ignites. Pegasi fly out of the giant cloud city, diving towards it, and as I land atop the floating structure, I can see an enormous ray of power blaze through the sky, turning the pegasi into nothingness before slashing through the city in one blow. Oh Celestia, that's me. This is when I killed Skahaben. Spontaneously falling through the top of the clouds, I find myself in one of the hallways in the city. Lightning sparks off of the walls, and the entire structure cants, groaning, to the side. I find myself in a cloudy apocalypse. Then I see a rainbow contrail blazing towards me and duck instinctively. Commander Dash flies over me, her eye filled with desperation. I can hear her calling the names of the pegasi that stayed in the city, and nopony answers. Then I'm falling again, down through the floor of the clouds, through the water beneath me, through the lakebed, and into blackness once more. Now I know where I am. I'm in the timestream. I need to be extremely careful.[1] The next place I end up is just a town. Lots and lots of ponies, and a few larger buildings. I feel like I recognize—Oh. Hey, Moonscry. I always wondered something, actually. Where did Marks go when I went to find a bed, what did she do? So when I touch the ground and see myself and her, I follow her instead of my own body. That's odd, she's going outside of the city. She said that she needed to be somewhere in the town. As a phantom of the future in a time of the past, there's no wound in my shoulder. That's kinda handy, I guess. Then Luna appears. Or more accurately, two versions of Luna. There's the normal Luna, the one that I've seen on occasion at the battlefield. She's talking to Marks—no, she's talking to Rarity, the one hiding underneath Marks. I feel anger rising. And she dares lecture me about trust? Luna probably knew where I was going the entire time. That's relatively inconsequential, though, because the other Luna that appears makes my blood chill. It's the phantom of the past. She followed me through the timestream. That warscythe launches at me, and I can barely avoid it. Dashing back to Moonscry, I see what looks like a comet descend on the town before there's an enormous explosion. The Solar Effigy. Then I'm falling again. Finally, I end up somewhere that feels reasonably comfortable for me. I'm in my tower, watching myself wake up on the morning that this whole thing started. It's now that I realize something. [2] I'm just going to keep going back without stopping. I need to find a way back into my own time. I try to remember how I got myself tangled through time as I absentmindedly follow the past version of Twilight. I believe it was when I lashed out with magic. If I can just remember how use that spell again, then maybe I can fix this. That thought is interrupted, and my blood runs cold, as I realize where I am. I'm right in front of Celestia. Two versions of her. Oh no. I dodge the first spear thrust. I have no idea where I'll go after this fall, so I need to get this sorted now. Flicking my head back through the chase through the ruins, I finally happen upon the same feeling that I had in that desperate moment. In a somewhat detached manner, I find that it was intended as a basic offensive blast, but it became tangled up through my timeline's leylines and took on a new meaning. Interesting. As I run away from Celestia through the halls of the Solar Citadel, I judge that the time is right and stop short. She round the corner to find my horn glowing and launches the spear at me. Three things happen at once. The first thing is that the spear descends towards my neck, eager to sink into my flesh and end me. The second is that my hooves begin to slip through the white marble, the beginning of another fall through time. The third is that a burst of purple energy that strikes the princess. This time, the fall is different. It's no longer a black void, but a freezing gray sky. I exhale in relief when I appear. I'm back in the Solar Court, and it's empty. No visions. Taking one last look at this place, I bolt. The door is no longer a ghostly wall, but a shattered piece of my own time. Thank Celestia. I may have found my own solid time again. When I enter the first hall of the castle, though, my eyes twitch. The angry princess specters are waiting for me, weapons floating just above me. I can barely slide through the doorway before the weapons come crashing down like a brutal portcullis of blades. They're not just shadows anymore. They've manifested fully. Huge, huge mistake. "What do you think you're doing here?" I ask them gleefully. "We're not in your time any more, girls. We're playing on my home field now. You're displaced, so you'd better skedaddle before I get ugly." Picking up a stone with magic, I launch it at them at immense speeds and laugh as it impacts the Luna clone in the horn. She cries out in pain in her echoing voice and I smile as she drops her warscythe, which clatters to the floor. Picking it up in my own magical aura, I sweep it in front of me, knocking away the spear that Celestia thrusts at my heart. [3] A single sweep of the sweep of the warscythe later, and she's rent in half. It's odd, though; there's no blood, or an expression of pain. She simply tears in half like fabric, dispersing back into her own timeline's aether. The Luna clone refuses to suffer the same fate. She leaps over my swipe and punches me in the face with a metal-shod forehoof, knocking me back against the wall. The shocks breaks the grip on my magic, dashing the polearm to the floor and leaving me winded. She grimly trots over to it and hefts it in her mouth, magic still suffering from the arcane feedback that the rock to her horn activated. I barely manage to avoid the blade as it flashes above me. If she was using her magic, I would be very, very dead. Popping back up, I buck hard with my hind legs during her backswing, crushing her jaw into itself. She cries in pain and drops the blade. I quickly draw the spear to me and plunge it into her heart before she can react. She stares at me for a beat, uncomprehending, then follows her spectral sister into the void. Interestingly enough, though, her weapon doesn't go with her. Maybe it's the fact that it's being held by another magic user at the time and tangles in my leylines, or something else along those lines. Either way, I guess it's mine now. Suddenly the timelines snap back into alignment. Pain of the worst kind blooms in my shoulder and I stagger, falling against the wall as blood begins to pour anew from the slash in my side. Then the doorway begins to glow blue. The Rime Wolves, no longer repelled by the ancient presences, come prowling in, growling at me as I sag, injured, just a hundred or so feet away. Gasping in pain, I still manage to speak a single, aggravated sentence: "Oh, you have got to be kidding me." --- [1]: Contrary to popular belief, the timestream isn't immutable, which is why I need to take care. If I do something stupid and mess with the past, it could put me in a very difficult situation. Namely, being lost in time. Not something nice. [2]: And it took me far too long to do so. [3]: I'm fairly sure that those blades had some form of enhancement magic on them. Otherwise I never could've perceived the spear coming until it was embedded in my heart.