For the moment, Broken seemed content to simply watch her. Twilight appreciated this; it allowed her a chance to consider the best short-term course of action, alter her long-term plans to account for his earlier-than-expected appearance, and forcibly reregulate her suddenly arrythmatic heartbeat. After about a minute of near silence (a low groan from Rainbow Dash being the sole noise to break it) Twilight frowned.
“How did you get here so fast?” The winged unicorn asked. Broken blinked. “I mean, you wouldn’t be strong enough to teleport from Canterlot even if your magic wasn’t restricted. I only had enough magic because I was panicking to the point where my body thought I was going to die if I didn’t get to somewhere safe. And it’s been, what, less than an hour? Ten minutes for Pip and Spike to find me, maybe five with them, fifteen for the girls to get here after Pip contacted them, five to convince them to hit me with the Elements, then, well, I don’t know how long I was unconscious, but it can’t have been longer than two or three minutes given that nopony’d gone for help, and then six or seven for our little discussion before your arrival. So forty-five minutes, tops, and that’s not accounting for the delay between my freakout and you finding out about it. The guard carriages take twenty if they push themselves incredibly hard, and I doubt that you heard about me, escaped custody, and then convinced a carriage team to take you down here as fast as they could in twenty-five minutes.
“So, what’s going on? Did you escape a few hours ago and Celestia just didn’t tell me? Did she just lie about bringing you up to Canterlot at all? Are you one of those changelings that escaped the hive’s capture?” Twilight’s ears flicked at the now-half-dumbfounded look on Broken’s face. “Well? I’m kind of in the middle of something.” She flicked her eyes at Applejack, idly sparking a diagnostic spell over both the earth pony and Rainbow Dash; fortunately, the most serious injury to either of them was their developing concussions.
“…I’m not a changeling. And I was in Canterlot until a short while ago.” Broken tilted his head, the anger and confusion in his eyes replaced by their bastard offspring: Suspicion. “You don’t seem particularly threatened by me.”
Twilight shrugged as she carefully moved Rainbow over to lay beside Applejack, taking care not to jostle either mare for fear of worsening their brain damage. “I have no reason to be. I’m not Rising Dawn, I’m not planning to take over Equestria, and I’m certainly not planning to kill Cadance or Dazzle.”
“Not Dawn.” Broken repeated flatly. Twilight nodded, catching his eye flicking to her back.
“The wings are a comfort thing, I can’t actually fly with them. Not enough pegasus magic left over from my alicorn days.”
“Pet could fly with hers. She just wrapped them in actual magic, increased the wingspan and strength enough to support her weight.” Broken blinked and shook his head, grimacing as he glanced at the two unconscious mares. “Not that that matters. You going to claim that you’re innocent for those two as well? They just wanted to take a nap?”
“No, no, I knocked them out…” Twilight sighed. “I don’t even know what I did! We were just talking about things and all of a sudden they attacked me!”
“Talking about ‘things’. What ‘things’, exactly?”
“Mostly Celestia being a lying, murdering nag who needs to be removed from the throne as quickly as possible. And why her being a lying, murdering nag justifies removing her from the throne as quickly as possible.”
“By which you mean killing her.”
“By which I mean killing her.” Twilight nodded. Broken’s eye twitched.
“If you’re trying to convince me to not kill you-“
“But! Unlike Dawn, I have a good reason for it.”
“…a good reason.” Broken took a breath, then let out a long, tense sigh. “Explain. Quickly.”
Twilight smiled, thankful that Broken was willing to listen rather than immediately trying to kill her. “Okay! One, she murdered nearly a thousand ponies and then covered up their deaths so that she wouldn’t look bad… though knowing your history, I’m going to guess that you don’t care about that.” At Broken’s shrug, she nodded. “Right. So, reason two: The sun can move on its own.”
Twilight expected Broken to react to that news with shock and disbelief, as her friends had. Perhaps more intensely than they, given his extreme loyalty to and trust in the Princess. Given his health and the general difference in extremity between their timelines, she halfway expected him to have a heart attack or some similar physical exhibition of the sudden trauma such knowledge would inflict upon him.
Instead, the scarred stallion blinked.
There was about a minute of silence before he spoke up.
“…is that it?”
Twilight stared at him, her smile further slipping. “Wh-what do you mean, ‘is that it’? The sun moves on its own! Celestia’s authority is based on a lie! She’s been deceiving everypony for over a millennia! How could you not-“ A spike of ice shot up her spine. “…you knew?”
The brow over Broken’s eye rose. “You’re surprised?” The stallion snorted. “Of course I knew. One of the first things I learned as Captain. The Princess needed the Guard to keep the citizenry in line should she ever become too injured to ‘do her duty’, so letting us in on that little secret would ensure that we’d remain calm enough to keep control of the lower ranks.”
“B-but, but you said, when I asked-“
“I lied. In case you haven’t realized, I’m rather good at that.” Broken cricked his neck. “And even if I’d had any desire to tell you, it’s not like I would have, given that Celestia hadn’t.”
“So… so you knew, then…” Twilight’s voice was hollow. “You knew this whole time…”
Broken’s eye narrowed. His horn glowed for half a second before a barrier appeared, barely in time to catch the spikes of magic emanating from Twilight’s horn.
“What, no more attempts to convince me? No-“ He cut off as he blocked the spikes coming at him from behind. Twilight flexed her magic, sending a third trio of magic spears towards him while shifting the first set to another angle.
He’d known Celestia’s secret. He’d helped her keep it. That made him just as guilty as her of the deception. She had to die for it. He had to die for it.
But did he? She was going to kill Celestia because she had no other option; Broken could well stand trial-
No. She had to die. He had to die.
Twilight grimaced as another lance of pain shot between her neck and her eyes, though luckily it was much milder than the previous one had been. She built up a dozen blades of magic, sending them at the stallion each from a different direction, before raising another trio of lances and shooting them straight at him. She knew that he didn’t have the attention to block everything, and that a single barrier, given the limits on his magic, wouldn’t be strong enough to bear the weight of the assault.
Broken seemed to know that as well, which explained why he teleported away before the first blade came close to hitting him. Twilight leapt up to the loft, intending to follow his magic to wherever he’d fled to.
“You know, you really aren’t doing a good job at convincing me you aren’t Dawn.” Twilight’s eyes shot towards the voice, finding Broken balancing on the balcony’s guardrail. He gave her a smug grin as her eyes fell upon him, only to suddenly pitch back from the guardrail and disappear below the edge of the balcony.
Twilight moved to the edge and glanced over, not terribly surprised when she found no physical trace of the scarred stallion. Feeling around with her magic, she quickly caught the trail of a teleportation, which she promptly followed with her own. The spell brought her to an empty sidestreet, no hide nor hair of her target to be seen; her eyes narrowed as she again conducted a magical search, the barest wisps of Broken’s magic that she found serving only to incense her.
Once more, she followed his trail, and once more, naught but magic remained. The pattern repeated itself, over and over and over, each empty landing only irritating her further. As she followed the trail, she idly noted that Broken was cutting a jagged path towards the Everfree, leapfrogging between the town’s less-travelled roads in the direction of the forest.
It took her all of two seconds after realizing this to simply cut out the middlemare and teleport there directly, picking the spot on the edge of the Forest that was the shortest straight-line path from the library. Broken appeared a short distance away almost immediately afterwards, just barely throwing up a shield to catch the mass of magic Twilight launched at him.
“Come on, what’d I ever do to you?” Broken called, a mocking grin curving his mouth despite her continued assault. Twilight gritted her teeth, launching another few bolts of magic before teleporting as close behind the stallion as she could. Before he could turn to block her she’d already twisted, adding some magic to her hind hooves as she launched them into his back. The stallion grunted in pain before he warped away; Twilight heard him land behind her, and turned around just in time to catch a large, flat wall of magic with her face.
She was sent tumbling hooves over head, her wings opening on instinct to stop her from being continually rolled over; instead, she found herself being gently-but-firmly pushed along the ground by the ever advancing wall. Her horn glowing, she did a quick teleport to put herself back on her hooves, bracing them to the ground with her magic in order to ensure that the wall wouldn’t push her further away from her target. As soon as the wall met actual resistance, it shifted, curving around and over her in an enveloping barrier. The magic tightened around her before she could simply break it, getting close enough to her that any blast strong enough to shatter it would result in a significant amount of collateral damage upon herself. Twilight gritted her teeth as Broken approached her makeshift cell.
“I do honestly wish that we could have avoided this.” The stallion said, his voice unhindered by the barrier, a hint of regret playing across his features.
“Oh, don’t give me that shit!” Twilight hissed. “You think I’m Dawn, right? Then go ahead and kill me. Get it over with.”
Broken’s eye narrowed, and the two stared each other down for several seconds before he glanced away, cursing under his breath. “…I can’t.” He finally ground out. Twilight laughed.
“What’s the matter? Scared? You say that you spent nearly a decade trying to kill Dawn, that you’ve spent almost every moment you’ve been in this timeline trying not to kill me, but when you finally get a chance to go through with it, you chicken out?”
“No. Trust me, you falsely-feathered whorse, I have every urge to crush your heart, to tear out your throat, to rip out your horn and push it slowly through your eye until your bowels loose and your brain starts leaking through your nose.” Broken let the rest of his breath out in a heated huff, drawing another in through locked teeth. “But I can’t.”
Twilight stared at him for a few seconds before the appropriate memory came to her. Then she tilted her head back and laughed.
“‘All of this applies to Rising Dawn as well.’” She quoted, giggles escaping around her breath. “Oh, you poor, poor colt. So close and yet so far.”
To her surprise, Broken’s anger vanished, his face once more gaining a smug smirk. “Believe me, you homicidal witch, I’m as close as I need to be.”
A small breeze lifted a lock of Broken’s mane. Twilight’s heart soared as Pip appeared beside the scarred unicorn, glancing between Broken and Twilight with a dull gaze.
“My apologies for the delay. It took longer than I had expected to bring Miss Fluttershy, Miss Rarity, and Miss Pinkie Pie back to the library.”
“That’s fine, Pip.” Twilight and Broken said simultaneously. Twilight’s gaze shot to Broken, bewilderment clear across her features, but the stallion gave no indication of noticing the mare beyond a small pause before he continued speaking. “I have her under control. Go to the hospital, see if you can’t convince a doctor to check up on Applejack and Rainbow Dash, make sure they aren’t too badly hurt.”
Pip, in flagrant defiance of Twilight’s understanding of him, nodded at the order. “Fluttershy was tending to them when I left. Rainbow Dash had already awoken and was complaining of many of the symptoms of a concussion, while Applejack’s heartbeat and breathing pattern indicated that she was going to regain consciousness soon.”
“Fluttershy isn’t a doctor. I want to make damn sure that they don’t have any lasting problems from what she did.” The scarred stallion sighed, giving Twilight’s increasingly disturbed form a sidelong glance. “And I’m sure you can understand that I’m reluctant to have you around for this.”
“I… I can understand that, yes.”
“Good. Now go grab the doctor, then wait there for Shining and the guards to arrive. They should be down here any minute, if Spike sent the message when you said he did.”
Pipsqueak nodded once more. “I assume you want them directed here?”
“Damn straight. Get-“
“P-Pip?” Twilight finally managed to choke out a word, her voice high and tight. Both stallions’ eyes went to her, but her gaze was locked firmly on the earth pony. “Pip, what, what are you doing? You… please, Pip, I need your help, you need to, you need to make Broken drop this barrier, okay? I don’t care how.”
Pipsqueak blinked, taking a breath before speaking. “My apologies, Milady, but your Ladyship’s orders preempt yours.” He turned to Broken as ice shot through Twilight’s veins. “Good luck, Broken Shield.”
“Just get going, lad.”
“Pip, no, wait-“
The stallion disappeared as Twilight tried to speak. Her gaze stuck on the empty space he’d occupied, her eyes wide and pupils pinpricked, mouth working without sound.
“See? I don’t need to kill you here.” Broken’s voice jolted her out of her stupor, her eyes shooting to his sneering face. “I just need to hold you down.”
Twilight stared at the stallion for several seconds before her vision went red. She crouched down, making herself as small as possible before forming a thousand separate spikes of magic around herself. She could feel the radiation hit her, the skin beneath her coat already starting to itch and tighten in the half-second before she launched the spikes out at Broken’s barrier.
As she’d expected, the shield couldn’t handle that many points of assault, no matter how individually weak; Twilight was already reworking her magic as it fell, making her own barrier around herself and pushing it as far outwards as she could in the seconds before Broken formed another barrier to restrain it. Twilight grinned; while she was still more-or-less trapped, Broken’s barrier was noticeably thinner. She could feel it trying to shrink, to collapse hers and replace the cell she’d just broken free of, and gained a smirk at how weak his attempts were. She walked up to the new edge of her confinement, barely a pace away from Broken, and stared him down through two layers of magic.
“This isn’t going to stop me for long, Broken.” she said. “You’re too weak to keep a barrier this size going. I just need to give it a poke somewhere, and it’ll pop like a balloon. Then you’re mine.”
Broken, defying sanity, gave a barking laugh. “You know, that’s something that I’m rather disappointed that nopony noticed.”
“What?”
The stallion cleared his throat, and Twilight’s voice emerged from it. “‘But Broken Shield, how could you have escaped from Dawn like you said you did? Once she figured out that you channel magic with the root of your horn, wouldn’t she have put a lock on it?”
One second passed in silence. Then two. Then three.
Then Broken’s magic flared to a hundred times its previous strength. Twilight suddenly felt her own barrier start to buckle as Broken’s pressed down on it, visible cracks forming in the solid magic shell. She barely caught it before it shattered entirely, her reserves of magic reinforcing it against the suddenly intense force that bore down upon it. She ground her teeth, glaring at the focused face of her captor.
Even at his full strength, Broken was weaker than her. While barriers were his special talent, and the one he was crushing down on her was incredibly strong, the sheer difference in raw strength between them meant that Twilight could simply pour more magic into hers and start pushing back, forcing his barrier wider and wider until it broke and left his magic exhausted. The problem with that plan was that it would eat into her magic as well; she needed to reserve as much strength as she could for her confrontation with Celestia, should worst come to worst and a protracted fight occur. And she had no idea of how long it would take to actually break Broken’s barrier; if she was going to get back to the library before her brother and his guardsponies arrived, she needed to end this as fast as she could.
So she opened a small hole in her barrier, then jabbed Broken’s barrier with her horn and gave it a quick jolt of magic.
Broken had no time to react before the shock hit him, his magic rapidly inverting and retreating into his horn. His barrier disintegrated as he crumpled to the ground; Twilight quickly dissipated hers, wrapping a cord of magic around the insensate stallion’s throat and hoisting him into the air.
“N-no…” the stallion rasped, forehooves scrabbled feebly at the magic noose. Twilight scoffed.
“No? You think I’m going to listen to you beg for your life? I remember a certain night not too long ago when our positions were reversed; did you listen to my pleas for mercy?” Twilight tilted her ears at the memory. “No, wait. I never made such a plea; you held my throat in a much tighter grip than I’m holding yours. Let’s fix that, shall we?”
“…You don’t…know…”
“Oh? What don’t I know, exactly? What information could you possibly offer that would stop me from putting you out of everyone else’s misery?”
“What you did...” The stallion ground out, his voice a bare rasp. His eye met hers, a solid steel behind it in spite of his current state. “Why I… hate you…”
Twilight stared at the stallion, her brow furrowing as she registered his words. She wanted to kill him, and could do so quite easily, but something about his words, the look in his eye, gave her pause. Her grip on his neck loosened, and he took in several desperate breaths before she spoke.
“You’ve been telling me ‘what I did’ and ‘why you hate me’ at every chance you’ve had. What could you possibly offer now?”
Broken shook his head the small amount that he could, still dragging in ragged breaths through his tortured throat. “I told you… what you did… to make me fight… Not what you did… to make me risk… coming here…”
Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “And how do I know you’re not simply lying again? Buying time for my brother?”
In response, Broken tilted his head down, presenting his horn to her. Twilight’s eyes widened at the gesture.
“Broken-“
“Look… for yourself.” he muttered, confirming her interrupted question. “Proof… of Dawn’s evil.”
It quite easily could have been a trap. Twilight wasn’t stupid enough to not suspect it, and she doubted that Broken was stupid enough to not try it.
But what he was offering – a glimpse into his memories, to see what he’d gone through with her own eyes – was too great a chance to pass up. And it would only take a moment in real time, not long enough to affect anything. She could see his ‘proof’ then continue with her plans unhindered. There was no real reason to refuse.
Slowly, cautiously, she tilted her horn to his, the required spell already dancing along its tip. She could hear him halt his breath in preparation for the shock, and felt herself do the same.
Then their horns touched, and Twilight’s mind was pulled into the past.