The Day the Sky Changed
To Save Eden
Chapter 2
“Reach out, Midnight. Reach out with your magic and just feel the bubble. Do not attempt to fashion your magic, do not attempt to halt the movement of the gateway, lest it swallow you. Between this world and that lies madness, chaos, pure creation and destruction wrapped up in an eternal instant. Touch it, with the briefest of tendrils, and one such as yourself will be swallowed by it.”
I swallowed, nervously, even as I adjusted my levitation spell. Her voice was light, instructional, imparting knowledge of certain doom as one would caution a foal about drinking too quickly from a bowl of broth.
“Stare too long into the abyss, we used to say, and it will stare back through you.”
“Aye, young Midnight. Attend, the Herd rises.”
The spell was taking hold now. I could feel the herd beneath us as the princess and I floated in the air. Ordinarily I would have plummeted like a rock by now - indeed, more than once in my attempts at spellcasting I had plummeted like a rock and been barely saved an ignoble death. This time, with the fires of the night burning in my veins, it was effortless. I leaned into what felt like a deep pool of clear water - this ‘alicorn magic’ which Luna had spoken of - and soaked in it. I revelled in it. With new eyes I could not only see, but feel the throng beneath me as parts of the western united states rumbled and shook with the growing aura of pure magic being exerted. The absurdity of it struck me and I could hardly stop laughing. Their struggles as each sought to take a piece of the land and lift it was flexing the stuff of matter itself. The bubble’s shrinkage increased as the sheer exultation in thaumic release sought to repair the rift between our realities.
“Midnight,” snapped Luna, “pay attention. Take their wandering spellcasting and focus it!”
I blinked, chastized once more. I Looked at the land beneath me, spread out like a quilt, and fastened my mental grip upon the grabbing exertations of the herd. I smoothed them over, shaped them, pulled and pushed, easing them into a cohesive whole. My heart beat faster, my limbs shook, but it was glorious. The power, as I submerged myself within it, caressed my mind and sang to me. I realised that I commanded the elements. I lifted, pulled, coaxed... and what had to be millions of megatons of rocks, water, earth and living creatures broke free of the cradle.
Give me a lever big enough, a wise man had once said, and I could move the world.
I had that lever. I was that lever. On the one side lay the herd and my princess, on the other lay California. I hung in the balance and pushed.
It was so easy, so ridiculously easy. I flexed my magical muscles and eased the nigh but unimaginable bulk into the sky. My consciousness expanded outwards, rising as if on the peak of some great mountain, encompassing the sky. My ears brushed the tips of space, my tail all but wrapped around the planet. My hooves strode across the solar system and there, before my muzzle, hung a precious jewel of green and blue. I breathed out across it, and my breath washed across the land in an inexorable tide. The gift of life, the breath from my astral lungs, hung heavy around the little playthings inside my newest toy. I could hear them, see them, running and screaming as their buildings collapsed and their cities crumbled. I sought to calm them, soothe them, protecting their small, pink, fleshy hairless bodies from debris. As the bonds of Earth were slipped free, the destruction ceased. I could hear them wailing and crying, abjuring their sky-masters for solace, and thought them rather puny and pathetic. What had their assumed creators done for them lately? Left them to die in their ignorance. I, on the other hand, I held them cradled in my grasp. I alone lent them protection and safety. Several million unicorns, a bare forty-something thousand humans. The last. It would be so easy, I thought to myself, to leave them to their fate. I pondered this as I rose into the Great Black, my blue pelt aflame and my mane and tail incandescent as the stars themselves. My mistress would be most displeased. That alone gave me pause from crushing their remains into dust.
I had formed a protective bubble around the island as it lifted into the skies. The equestrian reality split as the bubble of normal space left it. It was an exquisite pain when I followed the floating land-mass back out from my new home of Equestria to the larger universe of Man. I looked ‘up’, although being in orbit, that was somewhat subjective. And then I was there, and my prize with me.
The sky was black, deeper black than I had ever seen before, and it was already growing cold. I reinforced the bubble as best as I could, now that Equestria was far behind the only bubble was my own. I crossed the vast gulf of space in mere moments, my starlit hooves thumping through the ether, marking my passage through space itself with brilliant bursts of flame. I tossed my head and laughed, exulting in the power. I eyed the moon, demesnes of my mistress, and my destination. It seemed so small, now. A toy in my grasp.
“Princess Luna,” I called, “I am here.”
“Midnight, my subject, I must ask you now to let go. Hold them, hold them safe, but let go lest you be burnt.”
“As you wish.”
I steadied my mind as I had been taught so long ago. The secret of magic was concentration, to feel one with the universe, to tap that wellspring of Self and bring it out. Slowly, ever so slowly, I set the disk of blue and green afloat in the cosmos. It orbited the moon sedately, edge on. I caressed the herd gently, let them know they were loved, appreciated. They were deep in communion and did not respond physically or audibly, but I felt the answering call. All was well.
My attention was diverted elsewhere as I hung in the blackness; my mistress was teasing at the very fabric of space and time. Deep out in the solar system, where Sol, the source of light and life in this universe was naught but a meagre flame, powerful magics moved. The stuff of creation itself - matter - was spontaneously decomposing in titanic, cataclysmic explosions. Jupiter boiled, Pluto burst, Neptune melted. Minutes ago I had thought myself powerful for lifting a mere few gigatons. The true power of a goddess was revealed, and I felt ashamed.
Luna stripped the very elements themselves apart, rendering them down into base energy, igniting a second sun and using it to shift entire worlds. The fragments sped through space at great speed, but it would not be fast enough. The tenuous connection to Equestria was shrinking by the second, and we did not have the years it would take for such rubble to track the cosmos to where it was needed.
It was then that I was humbled again. Luna bent the very fabric of space and drew the outer solar system near to the core, and in moments the worldlets were coalescing in the same orbital arc as Earth had been.
I could not resist, I reached out a mental hoof, and dipped it into the maelstrom.
It burned, it frothed, it sang in my blood and my scream caused the planets to ring in concert. Just as I thought I would be lost, a soothing presence enveloped me.
“Foolish young unicorn, did you really think you could master the magic of creation itself in mere minutes?”
“Mistress, I...”
“Calm yourself, I have you. You dared to open Pandora’s Box, now you must see it through. Remember, I am with you. Fear not, you will not fall.”
I hurt, it pained me as Luna moulded space to her whim. My heartbeat, it felt like a star was aflame in my chest, rang in my ears as I watched her spellcasting. Rocks the size of continents drifted together, melding and joining under their own weight into a spherical ball. I felt her dip a hoof into the sun and draw forth the heat that would melt the core of the planet, felt her laughter as she set it spinning. The electromagnetic field sprang into life like a firecracker as time itself dance to her whim. She breathed life across the barren desert, gases from the gas giants and the outer planets washed the surface and mixed, expanding, to become an atmosphere. She took the animals and plants from my toy-world and set them free across the cooling landscape and we watched as they went forth and multiplied, thousands of years passing in mere moments.
Again I reached a hoof into the madness, and this time it held. My consciousness expanded again. Somewhere I could hear a small voice telling me to stop, to relinquish my magic, but I paid it no mind. How could I abandon such a beautiful thing as the powers of creation themselves? I felt the sun pulse with life as the planet spun beneath me. I laughed, it was like a yo-yo at the bottom of the string, spinning in place. I wrapped space around it and observed as life - animal and vegetable - streamed across the plains. Soon, so so soon, it was verdant and green.
I turned my attention back to the island orbiting the moon. There was a commotion. The strange creatures within were restless. One drove in a mobile carriage towards the edge of the world and jumped out. He was screaming incoherently as he raised a small stick. With a puff of smoke and a flash, I noticed dispassionately as hot lead sped through the air and struck one of my subjects. My subject was wounded, severely.
The calmness I had felt up to that point fled. Now I knew wroth. The spell to undo death was simple to one such as I. I plucked his mortal essence and reshaped it, removing the bullet. I placed the unicorn down and studied the lump of metal. I snarled and cast it into the sun, then I shifted my gaze back to the creature who had so dared to injure one of my own.
“You dare.” I said, my countenance was terrible to behold. I plucked him from his jeep and lifted him into space, an insignificant ant held in front of my face, “You do not deserve what has been made for you, you do not deserve forgiveness. Watch now, human, as the rest of your tribe are delivered.”
I teleported the landmass to the new planet. It landed in an ocean and sank, but the bubble around it kept it safe. I dragged it through the salty water and left it wedged against the continental plates, where the heat and pressure would anchor it for millenia to come. Idly, I took a grasping hold of my kin, the unicorns, even as another voice joined the first that had been insistently buzzing in my ears. I brushed them off, swatting at them like flies, even as I sent the unicorns through the weakening, faltering barrier between the realm of Equestria and this universe.
Finally, there were only two left. Myself, and the human. He wept, but I snarled. He did not deserve what had been given. I looked up, towards the sun. Yes, I thought to myself, that is fitting.
The depths of space, the stars. They were my home now. They burned through my very soul, but the coolness was refreshing. I towed the tiny creature behind me as I galloped through the emptiness, until I presented him to the sun.
“This is what kept your kind alive, human. This, the sun and others like it, made everything that you are. It is only fitting that to the sun you return.”
I cast the creature into the flames, watching as it burned. In moments, it was mere black dust, and then it was gone. I expanded my consciousness again, though it hurt. The sun shrank, became a pinprick of light, just one among billions. I reached out a hoof, across lightyears, and touched a great burning ball. It burst into flame and the heat caressed my body. It was so easy, mastery of time and space itself...
The pinpricks shrunk to motes, and the milky way danced around me on it’s multi-billion-year journey around the galactic core. My heart, long since lost amidst the song of the spheres, would have jumped as I spied that centre.
I reached out a hoof.
Space was so big, so black.
I reached out a hoof....
Space was so cold.
I reached out a hoof...
Why did it burn?
I reached out a hoof...
“Come home, Midnight.” said a voice.
***
I opened my eyes, coughed, spat. I tasted blood. “L-Luna?”
“Easy, Midnight, easy. I warned you, did I not?”
“I... where am I? Where was I?”
“You’re safe, you’re in Canterlot. You’re actually in my bed.”
I sat bolt upright, and then screamed. I rolled over, fell onto the cold floor, and lay there breathing heavily for a few minutes.
“Alicorn magic, young unicorn, is not for one such as you.”
“What did I do? What did I become?”
“Much as a leaf in a great torrent will be swept along, so too were you. Magic, however, is not like water. It affects the leaf in ways a mere river will not.”
“I... felt you shaping the universe. Is it always like that for you?”
Luna smiled, looking down at me, “Now you understand, perhaps, how it is for one such as I, and my sister.”
“I am... I am sorry.” I stood up, shakily, onto all four hooves.
“You do not need to be. You saved them, us, yourself.”
“Not that one I cast into the sun.”
“He lifted the gun, fired the first shot. What could have been a slaughter, was stopped there with one death. If you were not in your right mind enough to be merciful, be thankful at least for that.”
I bowed my head, “What will happen to them now?”
“They have a home now, amongst their stars. The same in many ways, only they are free of the shackles of Equestria.”
I winced as I realised I could not open the shutters to the room as we walked towards the royal balcony. my magic had been burned out.
Luna nuzzled me, “Your magic will come back. If it does not, you will learn to cope. You are made of tough stuff, all of your kind are. Removal of thumbs can hardly change that. Come!”
She threw open the shutters with a wave of her horn, and we walked into daylight. Equestrian daylight. Home.