//------------------------------//
// The Trouble With Librarians [History Overwritten] 
// Story: Split Second: An Eternity Divided 
// by wille179 
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	Four fillies, three real and one false, galloped into the Golden Oaks library and were greeted by the Library’s caretaker, Celestia’s protege and bearer of the Element of Magic, Beatrix Lulamoon. What neither the heroic librarian or the three innocent fillies could see was the false filly calling out to her magical puppet. ‘It’s time.’
The specter that would take her place in the world sent back an affirmation that it was ready. Materializing on the edge of town, it started floating in to town, clearly and purposefully taking a path that would get it seen by as many ponies as possible.
However, until it showed up in a few minutes, Sparkle couldn’t break character. So, acting as if everything was completely normal, she looked around and spotted the shelf labeled with the Dewdrop decimal system number for religion - specifically, she was after books about Death. Know thy enemy, as they say. She already knew what her own books said and what she had observed herself, which all together was surprisingly little; she knew that she was an extraordinarily powerful dark mage with a inclination for systematic mass killings, and that she apparently had plans for her. Sparkle figured that some other sources would give her a better understanding of the enigmatic reaper.
Quickly spotting three or four books that might be helpful, she pulled them off the shelf and set them it a little stack. She sat down at the table in the center of the library’s main area, opened the book, and began to pretend to read. She was too excited to actually read at the moment.
Scootaloo picked up one of the other books she’d grabbed. “An Unabridged History of the Divine, fifth edition? That sounds a little dry.”
Sparkle just shrugged. “You’re free to read whatever you want; this is what I want to read.”
“Meh, whatev-” Scootaloo’s words were cut off as the door to the library slammed open, revealing Sparkle’s fake wraith floating in the doorway. That was Sparkle’s cue. Under a potent illusion that she’d had ready since that morning, her horn unnoticeably darkened, causing time to bend. A faint figure appeared where there had not been one before, and upon noticing the bending time, reciprocated the action. Twilight popped into view.
In that fraction of a second it took for the alternate timeline to come into focus, several things happened simultaneously. First, Sparkle moved herself around the table so that the horse-head statue in the center obscured her immature body from Twilight’s view and then ducked under the table; her illusions would not work on her sister at all. Second, the specter posing as Sparkle moved itself into Twilight’s field of vision. Third, Trixie, who was reshelving on the other side of the room, dropped the book she was currently holding and ducked around the corner and out of sight to listen in. Finally, Sweetie Belle squeaked in surprise, recognizing the specter as Sparkle from when she’d last come to Ponyville.
“Hi, Twilight!” the fake wraith proclaimed in a near perfect imitation of Sparkle’s voice.
“Sparks? Is that really you?” her very shocked doppelgänger asked. To Sparkle's eyes, Twilight looked dreadfully thin and her fur in poor condition, as if she had been neglecting herself for some time now.
“In the flesh!” the specter replied. “Err... well, not really, but you get the idea. Sorry I was gone for so long.”
Blinking away the tears of joy that were quickly flooding her eyes, Twilight shook her head. “No, it’s fine. I’m just glad you’re safe.” She quickly tried to pull the Specter into a hug, but her limbs passed right through the construct’s body.
“Whoops. Forgot to make myself solid,” the specter replied as it helped Twilight off the floor. It spread its forelegs out, open to another hug, and asked, “Want to try that again?”
As the mare and the puppeteered Specter hugged, the real Sparkle was silently crying, tears hidden behind her glasses, and ashamed that she couldn’t even let her sister see the real her.
“Why are ya hidin’?” Applebloom asked, bending her head down to look at “Rhodium” under the table.
“That’s the bone mare,” Sparkle whispered in reply. Rumors of Sparkle’s actions had clearly made it to the trio of fillies, as they all reacted in varying degrees of surprise. Scootaloo was visibly the most fearful, while Applebloom looked over at the specter with a worried but highly skeptical glance. Only Sweetie Belle looked mostly unconcerned, relatively speaking, as that very mare and her son had helped save Rarity from the diamond dogs almost two years back. However, all three were made wary by the fact that “Sparkle” was apparently a ghost.
“Hide, you three!” Sparkle whispered when none of the fillie moved.
Meanwhile, Twilights tears had eventually surpassed her ability to hold them back and came flooding out. “I-I-I th-thought you were g-gone! Sh-Shiny told me you were d-dead!”
“Shiny did? How?”
“Th-the typewriter. You know, the one you always FORGET TO TELL ME STUFF WITH? Don’t you think I should have known?” Twilight said, her voice briefly seething with rage. Guilt slammed into Sparkle as if she had just been bucked in the side by an enraged Applejack, making it literally hard for her to breathe. Sparkle’s guilt deepened as she noticed the hundreds of thin, nearly-but-not invisible, fracture-like scars that crisscrossed Twilight’s gaunt body. She very much reminded the necromancer of china that had been broken and glued back together.
“I’m really sorry, Twi. But I’m alive now - mostly - and everything will go back to normal, right?” the Specter asked.
The light mage let out a sound that was a hybrid of a laugh and a sob. “I don’t think normal is the right word for us, Sparks.” She shook her head. “How did you survive? I thought you were shattered by the Crystal Heart.”
“I was,” Sparkle’s specter replied. Then, on her orders, the specter looked around. “Twi, I don’t think this the place to talk about my transformation into a wraith, what with four impressionable foals and a nosey librarian listening in.”
Twilight blinked and looked around, eventually spotting four of the five ponies that Sparkle had pointed out. Thinking of a place where they could be some distance away from others and yet in a place where they could both be, Twilight said, “Oh, right. To the park, then?”
“Lead the way,” the specter replied. 
As Twilight walked out the door and the specter floated behind her, the real Sparkle quickly cast a spell that filled the library. Immediately, the library’s other occupants’ eyes went out-of-focus as they donned a dreamy, distant stare. To the hypnotized fillies, the necromancer whispered, “You think I am with you still. You won’t think about what you just saw. You will stay here until it is time for you to go home. You will never think about me hypnotizing you.” Then, she trotted over to the similarly entranced Trixie. “You will write to Celestia to let her know that Sparkle is here. You will not go looking for her, as she is dangerous. You will never think about me hypnotizing you.”
Hypnotism was the lowest form of mind control Sparkle had, and was easily broken by outside influence. However, when given commands that generally aligned with what a pony would already want to do, or that lowered the overall stress level of the pony, they tended to comply very easily. As for the “do not think” command, it made Sparkle’s actions seem insignificant to the subconscious minds of the recipients, and thus not worth remembering in the long term.
Now that they were properly taken care of, Sparkle grabbed her stack of books, pocketed them, and then hurried out of the library in order to keep the bubble of distorted time in place as her sister walked away. As soon as she was out the door, she spotted Twilight and the wraith talking to one another. Instead of running up to them, she matched their pace, neither gaining on them nor lagging behind, and always stayed in Twilight’s blindspot.
“So, how did you survive? Twilight asked the wraith.
Sparkle’s copy lied, “Not easily. I was really disoriented and weakened from the blast. It took me a very long time to become coherent enough to even start forming a body, and even then, it was very slow going. By the time I came to months later, Thorn had fled Canterlot since he had no reason to stay. It took me a while to find him again, and when I did, I didn’t want to come home, since I knew that they’d ship me back to Canterlot almost as soon as I got back.”
“And you didn’t think of writing me until last week?” Twilight angrily asked.
“Sorry,” the floating image of Sparkle said, shrugging.
Twilight sighed. “Well, better late than never.”
The specter nodded. “Hey, Twi, those scars...?”
“Are from when you got struck,” Twilight answered. “I thought that, since I lived and I could still feel the connection, that you were alright too, and then I got your Shiny’s letter.”
The specter, under Sparkle’s control, sank lower and flattened out against the ground. “I said I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to keep saying it,” Twilight replied, pausing her trot briefly to look at the black puddle that was her “sister.” “I already forgave you.”
“Really?” the specter said, popping back up. “That’s a relief.”
The pair and their miniature stalker arrived at the park, and upon seeing the ghostly figure, most of the ponies in the park quickly fled. Twilight trotted over to a bench and the specter floated behind her. Meanwhile, the real Sparkle altered her course and trotted over to a bush. She then hopped inside it and spun around so that she could watch her sister and the specter from her hiding spot.
“Its interesting, being a wraith,” the specter said. “I can’t sense things as clearly. At first, being a disembodied soul is near total sensory deprivation. Do you know what your mind freaks out about first? The lack of lungs and blood vessels. Your brain pays attention to your lungs and blood chemistry without you thinking about it. When that goes… It’s not pleasant.
“I did have some senses, though. I could feel magic - both my own and the magic around me. The Crystal Empire was a nice beacon in that way, big and easy to feel. I could also somewhat see souls, though I was blind to everything else. And I could feel the setting sun, and I was immediately thankful for the fact that it wasn’t up for much longer. The sun’s light burns a little bit. I’m growing to strongly dislike the sun now.
“Now though, I can see and hear almost as well as I could before. The sun still burns, but I can handle it.” The specter smiled. “And I get to see you once more.”
“Sparkle, I’m sorry about what you had to go through,” Twilight said, “but I’m so glad I have you back.”
“Me too, sis.” The smile on the specter faded, as did the one on the hidden filly that contained the real Sparkle. She needed to know something. “Twi?”
“Yes, Sparks?”
“There was another way I could have come back. Not as a lich - my body was too shattered for that - but... What if I had come back with a new body?”
“You mean like reincarnation?” Twilight said, frowning.
“Yes. I could have.”
Twilight’s frown deepened. “I’m glad you didn’t. Sparks, coming back from the dead is a horrible perversion of the natural order - not that I’m not glad your back - but using a mare like that to grow yourself a new body... you don’t happen to have a mare willing to help you with that, do you?” Sparkle asked.
“No,” the specter replied. “That’s not the sort of thing you can ask around for, you know.”
“And just planting yourself in any random, nonconsenting mare is better?” Twilight countered.
“And what if I had?”
“What about it?”
The specter looked Twilight right in the eye. “What if I had planted myself in an unsuspecting mare? What would you think?”
“Knowing that you had options, I’d be disgusted with you.”
Both the specter and the real Sparkle narrowed their eyes. “That’s the line?  So I’m a killer and a soul eater, that’s fine, but if I came back with a new body after effectively magic-raping a mare, I’m a monster? Well, it’s great to know where your limits are.”
Upon seeing her “sister’s” glare, Twilight floundered. “No... I mean... It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it?”
Twilight sighed. “When I spent time with the Paladin Order, I was taught about some of the necromancers of the past. Some of them resurrected themselves like how you were suggesting. When I asked Princess Celestia about them, she explained to me that they were all beyond redemption.”
“Every single one of them is in Tartarus, on Celestia’s orders,” Sparkle added, satisfied now with her sister’s response. As much as it hurt to lie to Twilight, Sparkle swore that she would never tell another soul about her reincarnation. “I knew that. Why do you think I came back like this instead? I’d rather be almost here than rotting for the rest of my life in there.” Sparkle chuckled, as did the fake wraith. “I even had some bodies that I’d thought about possessing, but decided against it for the same reason.”
“Bodies?”
“Yes. I kept them in my pocket dimension - I finally got that working, by the way - but I couldn’t use them because both of them were known criminals,” the specter answered. “One of them was King Sombra, of the Crystal Empire.”
“That’s right! Shining Armor told me you’d killed him,” Twilight commented.
“Not killed; defeated. He’s locked up in my dimension. I just claimed he was dead because he was as good as dead,” Sparkle replied.
“That’s better than what happened to our version of Sombra.”
“Your... version?”
“Two months after you brought the empire back on your side, it came back on its own on our side,” Twilight explained.
Sparkle groaned. “Buck. I died when I could have just waited two. Bucking. Months! I feel so stupid!”
“There was no way you could have known,” Twilight said reassuringly. “Maybe you bringing it back triggered its slow return on my side.”
“Gah! What happened to yours anyway?”
“Take a guess,” Twilight replied, giving Sparkle’s wraith a meaningful look.
“I see.”
“How did you defeat yours?” Twilight asked.
“Easy, I took his magic by using a soul weapon I stole from Tirek,” Sparkle replied.
Twilight took a second to process that. “Who’s Tirek?”
“He’s... BUCK! I knew I forgot something!” Sparkle’s specter reached into her pocket dimension and pulled out the soulless but still functional body of Triek. “This is Tirek, or what’s left of Tartarus’s most recent centaur escapee. He can steal a pony’s magic from a short distance away and grows every time.”
“He escaped from Tartarus? Buck is right.” Twilight stood from the bench abruptly. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go write a letter to Celestia, just in case he hasn’t been caught yet. I’ll be back in a minute to throttle you for not telling me in that letter you sent me!” With a flash, Twilight vanished, leaving Sparkle alone with her puppets in the middle of a deserted park.
Quickly, she shoved Tirek’s corpse back into her pocket dimension, as there was no point in keeping it out anymore. That done, Sparkle found herself with little to do except twittle her hooves and try not to think about the crushing guilt of lying to her sister’s face.
Another flash of light shone through the park, revealing Twilight. “There. Now Celestia knows that Tirek’s loose. Any other shocking revelations that you’d like to drop on me?” Twilight hissed through clenched teeth.
“Uhh... Thorn’s on a quest to find Tirek’s lost brother, or his grave. Other than that, no, nothing,” Sparkle answered.
“Good,” Twilight replied casually, and then in playfully exaggerated anger, shouted, “Now get over here so I can grind you to dust!”
Twilight fired a bolt of superheated light magic, knowing full well that the timeline barrier would keep it from hurting Sparkle. And despite knowing that as well, the Sparkle copy couldn’t help but dodge instinctively. “Woah! Twilight! Take it easy!"
"Take it easy? You throw me into a depression with your disappearance and the first thing you give me when you come back is a criminal that you should have told me about a year ago!" She fired another high-energy beam at the specter. Obviously, unlike her body, her magic had not fatigued at all. "Of course I'm not going to take it easy on you!"
Sparkle commanded the specter to stick out its tongue at Twilight. "Nyeh! You can't catch me!" The specter dodged another blast, and then a third. Unfortunately, it was the fourth beam that spelled disaster.
Sparkle and Twilight had extensively studied the boundary between their timelines, and while neither matter nor magic could cross normally, electromagnetic forces could. Light could cross, and so could physical touch - the interaction of the electrons of atoms at close range. But what this also allowed to cross was heat, and the beams of light magic Twilight was firing were very hot.
One of them grazed the bush Sparkle's real body was hiding in, a bush that was dry from the lack of rain. The heat was too much, and the bush ignited.
Sparkle screamed the moment she realized that the heat was present. Quickly, she bolted out of her hiding spot and rolled on the grass to smother any embers that may have landed on her.
Twilight panicked, fearing that she may have hurt a child, while the specter also panicked, fearing for its mistress's safety and their secret. The mare and specter raced over to the filly, with the specter reaching her first. It gave Sparkle a once over and, seeing that none of her overly fluffy coat was burning and that she wasn't in pain, was satisfied.
"Are you alright?" Twilight asked. "I-"
She cut herself off as her eyes affixed to the bubbling black aura around the filly's horn, a result of the magic holding the timelines together.
Sparkle's eyes widened behind the glasses as the tracked Twilight's gaze. "I-uh..."
"Dark magic," Twilight realized.
The specter roughly grabbed Twilight's shoulder and spun her around until they were face to face. "Twilight, no."
"But she's a dark mage! A natural!"
"I know. And if you tell anypony, she'll go through the same nightmare I went through," the specter said. Addressing its creator, the specter commanded, "Rody, go home."
"Yes, Ms. Bone Mare," Sparkle answered before turning and running a bit. However, before she was too far away, she stopped, turned, and looked back at them.
Twilight  looked at "Rody," and then back at "Sparkle." She asked, "Who is she?"
"Rhodium. She's seven years old and used to live in Canterlot. I met her and her single mother. They had managed to keep her power secret, even after they moved out here. Don't ruin that for her," the fake Sparkle insisted.
Twilight's eyes narrowed, alternating her critical gaze at both the wraith and the filly. Sparkle's stomach clenched as she waited for her sister to say something, anything.
Twilight looked over at the filly's body, disappointment evident in her eyes. "Liar."
And in the space of a single breath, Sparkle's world shattered. Her legs gave out beneath her, dropping her to the ground. As her head dropped, her glasses slid down her snout, exposing her eyes to the harsh, unforgiving light of her sister's teacher. 
"Twilight..." 
It was a pitiful, pleading sound that came out of Sparkle's small mouth. The word felt strange and alien on her new tongue, and the expression on her sister's face was just as alien.
"A year I don't see you, and the first thing you do to me when you come back is lie to me? About this?" Twilight asked, her voice treacherously calm. "What else have you lied to me about?"
"Twi..."
"Answer me!"
"I-I... But..." No words would come. Her brilliant mind, for the first time she could recall, failed her when she needed it most. If only she could explain, if only she could just say the truth...
If only.
But no words came. And when the silence had stretched on for too long, Twilight spoke, "I told myself, 'She's just defending herself. It was an accident. They were attacking her.' Every time you killed somepony with that horrible, disgusting magic of yours, I told myself that you were in the right. Answer me this, Sparkle, was I lying to myself? Are you like all the others?"
"I don't know, not anymore," Sparkle whispered. "I don't know."
Twilight turned her head away. "Are you even my sister anymore? How much of your soul is still hers? Or are you lying to me about that, too?"
But she didn't give Sparkle a chance to answer. "You know what? I don't want to know. I'm too mad at you to think straight. I'll send you a letter through Spike when I'm ready to hear the whole truth, and if you're not willing to tell it... I don't think that we have any more to say to each other."
She started to turn away and let the magic holding the timelines fade, but Sparkle's outcry made her pause. "Please, Twilight, if there's any shred of compassion left in there for me, please don't tell Celestia. Yours will tell mine and then I'll be dragged down to Tartarus again."
"Again?"
Sparkle nodded. "I took Tirek's memories. I know what it's like down there. I can't go back. Never again."
Twilight sighed. "I don't know about you, but I'm not that cruel." And with that, she teleported away and let the temporal magic fade to nothingness.
"Mom?" The mental voice of her son cut through the silence she found herself in. "I saw that... Did Aunt Twi really just do that?"
Sparkle looked at her specter, which nodded at the unspoken command. Then, she looked at the grass beneath her hooves. A sphere expanded out around her, swallowing her but not her specter. A second after she materialized in her pocket dimension, Sparkle exited once more, depositing herself in the arms of her son, thousands of miles from where she had been just a minute ago.