--Yes.
Light! Light inside of light! I am swimming, or I am falling, or walking, or sitting, reclining, dying! Sense goes and does not return. The world is too much with me and there is Somepony approaching. She reaches for me and I am crying as I worship her she touches me--
I have never asked what the Song was because I assumed I knew what it was already. I had assumed it was like any other song. A melody. Counter melody. Harmony. Chord structure and timing. I imagined that the thing Luna talked about was just another tune. I thought that when ponies whispered hoarsely in awe--by the Song. The Song preserve me. May he rest in the Song, they say as they lay the old ponies to rest. May she sing in the choirs invisible.
I was so wrong. There are no words now or ever for how wrong I was.
Anything I say will be wrong. Given a lifetime of contemplation, if I return wizened and wise to write my experience, I will be wrong. I could not paint this if I worked a thousand years. I could not write a symphony that would match it.
How can something be so stately? So majestic and yet so whimsical at once! And beneath it all the quiet solemnity of good friends who know they look together into their last, long night--the quiet mirth of lovers! the procession of a King beyond all knowing in crimson robe! the agony of a hardfought victory! the relief that comes with decisive defeat, laying down the burden at long last! a kiss! a foal’s hug at your foreleg!
Between closing my eyes and entering the Well and opening them beneath, I lived a dozen lifetimes. I was born. I grew in stature and wisdom. I loved over and over. Mares and stallions alike. I lived alone or with several lovers or with a husband who smiled nervously at me through great horn-rimmed glasses when I asked him to stay with me forever. I was a scholar and a priest. A warrior and a healer. I administered justice. Once, I built a great empire of ilicit wealth and became cruel and was slain. Another time, I hid my family from a goddesses’ wrath. I gave up my magic and convinced others to do the same when it proved too detrimental to the world’s fabric of being. I searched for a lost filly, gone to rescue her mentor from the jaws of death. I was shattered and my apprentice searched the universe for me. I was a creature of strange lusts, draining a shy painter of lifeblood. I was a ghostly librarian, imprisoned in a subterranean archive for millennia. I was a faithful student many times. I taught physics on the third floor of the Starswirl Hall. Over and over and over and--
Somepony touched my cheek. I put my own hooves over theirs. I find that I’ve been weeping. The visions stop. I am me again, Twilight Sparkle. Only this life, this one and solitary life. I live only once.
I do not shy away from the touch. No, I cling to it because it is a lifeline--I feel like the right me now because somepony is here, touching me, grounding me.
“I can’t see you,” I say, before I realize with horror that I’m still under water. But nothing happens to me. The words are easy to hear in the great Music. My words are a part of the Music, perfectly fitting into the great shifting structure of Reality. It accepts my contribution.
“I know,” she says--sings?--sighs? “I am so, so sorry, Twilight.”
“Who are you?” I ask.
Her words are light--if I could see light beyond the blinding white. No--shade. A darkness to overcome this broken light that I see. So soothing. So sorry. So soft.
“You called me Eon. I called myself that. I was afraid, and so I hid, and now you are wounded. But you will be whole presently. No, you will be renewed.”
“What do you mean?” I felt my throat and found it cut… but felt no blood. I waved a hoof in front of my eyes but the shadows were gone. Now everything was white. I was blind. A lump formed in my throat. “A-are you sure? Really, really sure?”
“Yes. Do you not hear this truth all around you?”
And somehow, somehow I did.
“Where am I? Is this the Well?”
“Yes. This is the Well. It is, in fact, the lesser Well. Here there is only the echo of the Song, but there is the Song proper. This is looking through a glass darkly, but there we see and hear face to face. This has been my prison.”
I wished I could see. “Prison? What? But… but it’s just water! I can’t be trapped here.”
“And you are not. It is a prison I made myself, not one that the Song forced upon me.”
“For… why?”
Eon sighed. The sound was like thunder in my ears, and yet she did not wince or falter. Nothing could hurt me here.
“First, your sight. Pray, be still. It will take me but a moment…”
I was still as I could be and closed my eyes. Not that it mattered. I felt her touch the sides of my face, my forehead, my ears, and finally my eyes. I felt warmth there, and then the touch ended.
When I opened them again, I saw…
I saw. I am trying. I don’t know how to say what I saw. I would need another language, because this one is so very narrow. How do you say that something is vast as a city but intimate as a bed? How do you reconcile infinite size and personal warmth? Even asking those questions, which are the best I can do, cannot convey what I mean.
She was there, and in this place (was it a place?) I felt a twinge of something a little greater than awe. For a moment, I thought I knew what it felt like to sit before the shrines in the halls of the Celestialists and consider the Stars. Eon was taller, greater, more regal than Celestia--her eyes were like suns themselves. Her coat was fire and wind. Her mane was the flowing sea. Where she walked the earth would sprout and the earth would crack. Destruction and life. She was in the presence of something beyond her.
But Eon smiled at me. “How do you feel?”
“Better,” I managed after a second of staring. “Is… is this what you’re really like?”
“After a fashion,” she replied. “In this place you see me as I am with no veil. I am… embarrassed, I confess. If it makes you feel at ease, you too have a much changed appearance.”
“Me?”
“Yes. It is lovely. Not without it’s wounds,” she added, more for herself than me, I think. “But it is beautiful.”
“I… uh… thanks,” I mumble. “I’m not really sure what’s going on. I’m sorry. I’m trying to remember how I got here. I… D’Jalin and I were fighting, and he kept going on about sacrificing and…”
“D’Jalin is a fool, but not for the reasons you think. He was not lying about being in two parts,” Eon said. “But he was mistaken about my intentions. I was drawing you here. But not to devour you. I hoped that you would win your way here… but I had also hoped that if you were captured, he might simply throw you in without harming you. It took all of my effort just to plant part of the idea in his mind… and it almost cost you your life.” She seemed to wilt. “There is no way to express how sorry I am.”
“I think he would have done that anyway,” I said. I felt my throat. I remembered the feeling of the knife now and shuddered.
“That wound is also healed. The… the scar will remain. The blade was corrupted.”
“It’s just a scar,” I whisper.
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s… it’s okay,” I said. “I’m alive. I can see. You saved me, more or less. Were those lifetimes…”
“They were true.”
The lump in my throat is back. “I’m alive, right? I’m really alive? This isn’t some kind of death-hallucination or the afterlife or anything? Please tell me the truth.”
She shook her head. “I do not know what lies beyond the veil of death. But… this is not it. I know I am alive. I know you too live.”
“Can my friends not get to me? It’s been… I mean, surely by now they would have…” I closed my eyes and held my head. “All that time… Oh, Celestia. Please tell me they’re alright.”
“From their perspective, only a few seconds has passed. I can show you.” I looked up at her, and Eon did not meet my gaze. She looked off into the distance, and before her opened up a rift in the swirling, roiling, endlessly cascading Song. I saw the inside of the shrine. Pinkie was frozen in place, running towards the water. Applejack was yelling, I thought. Looking past me. But she was not running.
“What’s going on?”
“Your other friend, the pegasus, took the Mad God by surprise as he gloated over you,” Eon said. “She has caught him in her grasp and flown them both off the cliff. I believe she means to send him flying at high speeds into the ground.”
I winced. “Geeze. That’s dangerous. Oh, Tradewinds… will she be okay?”
Eon sighed. “I wish that I could know.”
I sat. Or, I tried to sit. Movement… movement was odd, here. There was no floor beneath me, no walls on either side. There was nothing to orient myself with. A moment’s thought was enough to realize that there was no up or down here. Yet I did not feel overly lost or disoriented. Not really. Here, in the Well, these things were natural. They fit into the still present theme that played all around me.
“Now… There are things I must tell you. And one thing that you must simply be shown,” Eon said. “You have asked who I am. I will tell you. No--I can show you, can I not?” She hummed, and then before me she turned and opened another great scene in the churning, bright chaos.
EON
She did not know what had happened, but when her eyes snapped open in the semi-darkness before dawn, she knew that something was terribly wrong.
The Lady of Jannah lay still in her bed upon the temple mount. The only sound, the only motion in her simple quarters was her breathing. Hers, and Aegis. She carefully, carefully turned her head to look at him. Sleep still held on to her husband and captain. She smiled, despite the way her insides crawled.
Eon left her bed behind without noise. Her magic was a subtle magic when it wished to be, and it was as much a part of her as something she called upon. Her walk through the silent, calm hallways took both weeks and but a moment. Her being was both here and there.
Her grasp of time was tenuous, after a fashion. She experienced the present fully, and loved her life a day at a time. But she was also somewhere right after the foundations of the world. She was a few minutes ahead of herself. She did not know what would come or what had been. She knew sometimes what could have been or what may be. She saw other whens and other wheres.
So it was these she hoped that drug her from her bed and towards the Well. Or, at least, towards the outside. She wished to fly for a moment. To look over her city and put her anxiety to rest. She would soar over the homes of her myriad little ponies, smiling, and say to herself--There is nothing the matter. The sun rises as always and the days continue!--and then she would return to bed and her lover would nibble on her ears and she would enjoy another bright day in Jannah, in Paradise.
As soon as she felt the night air, that vision dissipated. All visions, in fact, faded. The worry that waited in her to bloom finally did so--and Eon was afraid. She was, for perhaps the first time, feeling the icy touch of terror. And she had yet to see anything wrong.
Because it hadn’t gone wrong yet. But it was going to. There was no other option. She had been trapped in a doomed world.
It took a whole minute before she could think again. She was an alicorn, and though her magic was great and her form appeared almost divine, her heart was a pony’s heart and it trembled. She staggered, sat on the path. Stared. What would it be? What was coming? What if this were just… what if she were just mistaken? Sometimes she looked at something that would not come and she would work herself into a panic trying to stop it, only for nothing to change and then… then nothing. Because it was never going to happen. But when that happened, it was tunnel vision that kept the truth from her. She searched fitfully for some evidence that the promised end was not coming, and found that she could not even understand the event itself. It was not a picture but just a feeling. Or it would be a picture, but one she could not comprehend, like looking through a glass darkly at something, far away. She was being--
Her eyes widened.
There were Alicorns and alicorns, ponies and zebras, a dozen things that walked and flew and talked and loved on the earth and above and below it. But there were only two things which could bind the magic of an Alicorn.
Eon stood and tried to press against the block of her foresight. It resisted. She turned and fled back towards her own bed.
Aegis was there. As she entered, he rose. Sleep fell from him instantly, a life time of martial service shining through. “Eon? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I can’t see it.”
His brow furrowed, as if confused, but then he seemed to understand. He stared in a slow horror that mirrored her own. “But you see…”
“I see almost everything. Certainly everything that could be that would hurt my… my…” She leaned against the doorway. “Oh, no. Oh no, no, no….”
“What is it? Did you see?”
“No!” she whispered urgently. “I can’t! I just feel something. Something awful. Something I’ve… I can’t remember if I have felt this before but I know that I would never want to remember it.”
Aegis stood and hurried to her. He touched her cheek, her neck. He embraced her. “Calm, my lady. Be calm. I am here.”
And he was. But it could only keep so much of her terror away.
It was not one simple doom. More and more, she felt this and knew that she could not make Aegis understand. How do you explain that there are other whens and other wheres and other hows? That in this life you lie with him but in one next door you tease a knight called Blue Sky, and in another you are alone, and in another…
How do you explain that he is replicated and that you are not? That there are a thousand Aegis’s, all sharing, all approximating an idea, but that there is only one of you, and you are everywhere?
She clung to him. In other whens and wheres she clung to others. In some she wrapped her forelegs and wings about herself and shivered. Her mind and magic kept looking for some… for some other way, some other path.
There wasn’t one. All things that rise converge. They converge in one great blackness. There was nowhere to go but into it.
“Dear? Eon?”
She was shaking. She hugged Aegis tighter. “It is… perhaps it is a bad dream that lingers... “ she lied.
She could feel him stiffen. She knew he would want to say that yes, yes it could be. He would want to shy away from danger. But he wouldn’t. He was still a knight, still the martial of the Fountain Guard.
“Eon, you are not tricked by dreams,” he said softly. “We need to alert the guards. If you cannot see what comes, we must try to prepare for everything we can think of that may come.”
She shook her head. “There’s nothing we can do.”
He was quiet a moment. “I do not doubt you. I never have. But we must try.”
“It’s already too late,” she said.
The both felt the moment that the hubris and greed of unicorns tore creation. Everypony awake in Jannah would feel it. She endured, but Aegis groaned, holding his head as he began to lose his balance. She kept him steady, trying to tell him she was still here, to be strong, not to listen if he--
And then they both heard it. The low keening. The Noise. Like static, but not. Like music, but unlike any music ever played. It whispered, come out. It filled the streets below, but even high above on the acropolis they felt the urge. Come out into the streets. Come and wait for our devouring. Come out. Come out. Show yourselves. Give yourselves.
And then she felt it. She felt the Shadow somewhere in the city.
There are things that happen that you cannot let go of, no matter how hard you try. There are feelings that no amount of time or happiness will totally bury. The agony of a wound. The first time you touch another intimately. The strains of a song with connections you cannot cut.
She stopped being in the present.
It was, for a brief moment, the Morning of the World again. The song reverberated in newborn valleys and off of nascent mountain ranges. Eon was not called Eon, but wore her truest and first name, and she watched over her sisters and brothers on the great table land, where they sang in turns. And then the youngest was soon to come. She would be named Luna. The second youngest, Celestia, was very keen on her coming, and the rest smiled at each other. Another sister! What a wonderful thing it would be to have a new face smiling amongst the rocks and gardens! The moment of her foaling was almost here, and Celestia waited eagerly by the waters. She will need me when the time comes, she said very seriously when Eon sat beside her, smiling and waiting. She had greeted all life, and she would greet this one.
The others sing or wait to sing. The song is bright and powerful and unified. All in the world is beautiful. It is Dawn.
When the first discordance comes, it shakes them all to the core. It is a small noise. But it sways others. Luna’s head is visible below the water as a rogue sound becomes something more. There has never been anything but harmony, melody and counter melody. There has never been darkness. The alicorns panic. Celestia is rooted in place, sweat on her brow, waiting. She must be there. Eon’s heart beats fast in her chest. Her wings itch to fly. She sings aggressively, pushing back. Others hear her and join. The sun, which sits below the horizon, waiting to rise as it always has, sinks lower. Above they see not stars--they have seen stars--but nothing at all. There is a great Shadow born out of a few seconds of discordance, a few miswritten lines in the great oratorio.
Luna’s head breaks the surface of the water she is born singing as all alicorns are in the beginning. But her voice is not clear. Her song is mangled and her eyes leak… she does not understand. She will call them tears later. Luna is born crying with a broken voice. Celestia holds her, whimpering, comforting her. And as she does so, Luna’s song straightens, and then turns to a soft humming. The shadow goes.
She is in the present. Aegis is pulling her along. At some point, she told him they must flee. The Well. The Well is the only safe place.
The Shadow has returned--but the alicorns no longer sing the song. It sings itself inviolate. From whence did it come? Who called it? She had thought it gone away. And how did it steal into the world again without her noticing long before?
They race along the winding path through the crags and when they come to the shrine he stops her up short. She knows--she needs no second sight to see it--what he is going to say because Eon knows him. Her knight. Her brave, small knight, always flying so hard against the wind.
“No,” she said.
“I haven’t said anything,” Aegis replied, breathlessly.
“You’re going to go out there. You are about to tell me to wait for you in the safety of the Well, and come out when it is over to find you. Or perhaps you will make an empty promise to return to me.”
He tried not to look at the shrine. She could see the need in his eyes even as he struggled to keep them locked on hers. The Well has that effect. The fountain of the song itself is… intoxicating. Those not familiar lose their senses, becoming not dangerous so much as devoted. Those familiar with it find themselves dreaming of once more returning.
For a moment, Eon knew that she could stop him. She could force him to stay. As an Alicorn, she was stronger by far than he was--they both knew this. She could plead and beg, which might work. She could lie to him, give her mate some reason to stay away from his duty. In the second they stood silent, staring at each other, she considered dozens of various lies. She was pregnant. She could see enough of the future to know for absolute certain he would do no good, or that in fact he would almost certainly hinder the evacuation. She knew a way to stop this, but if she was distracted worrying about him she might not be able to complete her spell. Or, perhaps she could simply push him slightly to the left. Just… just say nothing, pull him into the aura of the Shrine, and know that once inside he wouldn’t leave. He would want to stay. He would want to be with her and--
Eon shut her eyes. No. She couldn’t do that.
“Please,” she said. “Please, Aegis. Don’t go.”
“I have to, my lady. You know that.”
“You won’t come back.” She said this with absolute certainty.
“Perhaps. But while I breathe I--”
“Hope,” she finished.
“Yes. I love you. Please, wait for me in the waters.”
“Always. Until I can bear it no more.”
TWILIGHT
Eon wept.
I tried to… well, I don’t really know. I want to comfort her, but anything I say would seem almost…
How do I tell someone that it will be alright when it isn’t? And she waited her alone, didn’t she? She’s been alone for so long. I can’t tell her I know what it is like--I’ve been alone for days or hours. She has been alone longer than I can guess at. I have never had a spouse. I’ve never sent one off to die.
“I am sorry,” she gaspsedat me. I recoil. I felt her sorrow. Yet even that is in its proper place in the Song. It too is woven out of the light inarticulate that surrounds me. “I… I must partition... “
“What? Wait,” I said. “Partition? What are you doing?”
“I exist…” She swallows. Tears roll down her cheeks. I can see them in perfect detail even from several meters away. I can feel them as if they were mine. They catch the omnipresent light like sunbursts. “I exist redundantly, is what you or Celestia would say. I cannot… I cannot bear it. After so long, I must partition those parts of me that discover his memory. I know of him, I feel him--all of them, all of their absences! But I cannot go to them and they cannot return.”
I took a hesitant step forward. “He was… he was your husband, right?”
She nods. “And so was Blue Skies, who I called my knight when I teased him. And many others. Many. Many, so many. I exist redundantly. I am all whens that I am in,” she said, and shuddered. “Please, it is time. I must partition or the knowledge…”
“Why do you need to forget? Don’t you… I mean, don’t you love him? Or you did?” I blurt out. I don’t know why, but this feels important. You can’t just cut the memories out! You can’t do that! You shouldn’t, even if you can. If I thought Luna or Celestia would endure the long march of years simply by erasing me from their memories when I passed… unless they would. What if that was exactly what they would do? I would be a few years of amusement and warmth for Luna, and then when I was gone she would erase me and what I meant. Or maybe I would remain, but only vaguely. As facts.
I shuddered. “Please,” I said. “Don’t erase him.”
She glared at me, her divine eyes flaring with righteous fire. “I am not erasing him! I would never erase Him. He is all I have to live by! Oh… Oh Song, but--”
“When you seal his memory--this memory--away… just stop! Hold on, at least think this over!” I said, as her horn glowed.
And I found at last a thing that did not fit in the Song. For as she began to work her magic, and the image receded, the world around me warped. This was wrong. Every single iota of creation was saying so. There was no general scream, no indignant shout. Just the firm proclamation.
“Please,” I said again. Don’t. “Don’t!”
And then, miracles never cease, she stopped. She stared at me. “Why?”
I swallowed. “Because… because if Luna or Celestia did that to get over it when I died, I don’t know if…” I shuddered. “I don’t even know what I would begin to say or do. It would be too awful. I would say they never loved me in the first place. I wouldn’t be a pony to them. I would be a toy.”
“If I do not partition Him away, then I will lose my hold here,” she told me. She approached. “I cannot do that.”
“Why? Why stay?”
“Because somepony must stay.”
“Why?”
“Because… because it is right.”
“No, unless you have a mission, it isn’t,” I said. I felt lighter here. I felt firmer and more myself. I felt like Twilight two or three years ago. This place hummed in me, and my words were half mine and half music. “But you have no mission, Daughter, you are hiding in despair because your helpmate is gone. But you must not hide forever. The time has come. There will be a tomorrow for you now or never again. Come out. Come out!” The last words were mine. I felt like laughing, so I did. My mouth tasted of angel food and hyacinths, the air smelled of roses, the tears coursing down my cheeks were lavender scented. My body was on fire with pleasure.
“You are touching it,” she said to me. We were very close now. She decreased, or perhaps I increased. We were face to face. “My… my goodness, you are. You are touching it. How strange. How do you feel, child?”
“I feel wonderful,” I said. My voice sounded both drunk and like the heavenliest of strings. “What is your True Name?”
“Do you ask or does the song within you ask?”
“I am my own song,” I said, and giggled. Thinking was hard. But not that hard. I knew that I felt strange, and yet I was not changed. This was not like how it had been before, when Eon had invaded my mind. This was me. It was all me.
“You are,” she replied. “I… and you say that I shall not partition?”
“Every chain will be broken soon,” I said. I felt like kissing her--not because I felt anything for her, but because her lips looked nice and kissable, and maybe it would make her happy, and mares were made to be happy. But I do not because I also know it would not be welcome. Or expected. Also, Luna would probably murder me and then unmurder me at the last moment and then she would cry and I would feel awful.
I laughed again. “What is happening to me?” I asked.
“You touched the Song, or it touched you. You are swept up in its joy,” she murmured. “I will not erase Him, as you say. I… I am frightened,” she admitted.
I felt her fear wash over me as a physical sensation. It was a great wave of cold, and as it passed the feeling of being dirtier, smaller, did not go with it. But that lingering feeling was not mine. It was hers. I was a fire, something sterner than happiness and brighter than smiling. I hugged her.
“Daughter,” I sang, “The singing will wipe the tears from your eyes. And there will be no more mourning, or sickness, or death, and the old way of the world will pass away. Everything is made new.”
She hugged me back. “Why did you not speak to me before?”
“You would not listen,” I sang. “What is happening to me?” I whisper. But I was not afraid. I am not sure that I could be afraid here, truly, even if I wanted to.
“You look as I and my family do, Twilight Sparkle. I suppose you are something unlike our children,” she told me quietly. “For now. Would you see?”
I nodded, and she created a mirror. Before I looked, she shivered. “Oh… oh. It is becoming hard to bear. I am.. the others… the other parts of me are beginning to realize something is wrong.”
“You must make all things new,” I sang. “Break every chain, for now is the hour of your deliverence at hand.”
“It is hard.”
“Reality is hard to the hooves of shadows,” I sang. I shook my head. “I don’t understand,” I added, in my own voice. “What you mean, or I mean, what I’m even singing about or… any of this. But if you aren’t guarding anything or have a mission here… you should leave. You should live. Nopony should be alone. I was alone,” I added. “Until Celestia helped me. She pushed me. Go and make some friends.”
“This seems like not a world to be doing that in,” Eon said.
“It will be again,” I said. “The night is nearly over! The day is almost here! The works of darkness will be cast off, and the hour of your deliverance is at hand, Daughter,” I sang.
She sniffled and shivered. “Are you alright?” she asked me at length. “Look in the mirror, Child. Would you prefer me to call you by your name? We called all of our little ponies children, once.”
“It would make me and Luna kinda awkward,” I said, blinking. She looked at me curiously. “I, um… Luna and I--”
Her mouth opened in a little O. “Oh, that is wonderful. So my sister has found a new helpmeet. You are not our actual children, of course. Your parents are… are gone,” she finished lamely. “You remind me of him. Now you look… come, see.”
I stepped to the mirror, singing, and I saw myself.
I was taller. Much taller. My face was longer, more slender, my eyes shining with a purple fire, my mane long and regal and tinged with starlight. My coat blazed with starfire and plasma and around me danced the debris of whole systems, the detritus of the nurseries of stars. I was a goddess. I looked like dusk, like a time of day--as Celestia had always looked like dawn and Luna had always been the core of Canterlot night. I stared in open mouthed awe. This was not me. It was another. I wanted to bow to her.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“You look so much like him,” Eon said again. She wiped a tear from her eye. “Like Thaumus. He had a sterner gaze, but his smile was soft and his words were always gentle. He invented the first letters, you know,” she said. “He gave you life from his own body. He would have been so proud--oh, he would have loved you.” She was weeping again. “You are him repeated, and a mare. He would have been so perplexed! Asked you all sorts of questions. Taken notes. Probably challenged you to some sort of duel of magic to see how quick you were, and then wanted to know if you… if you had any of those new book things,” she said and laughed, and then shuddered again.
“Are you okay?” I asked, like an idiot.
“No,” she said. “I remember more and more. Every… every time I have done this. The partitioning of myself into smaller and smaller parts leaves wounds. But so does thinking. Remembering. I will not be much use to you. Do I have to remember?” she whined.
“I think so,” I said. “I can’t make you. But you should.
I sang, “Finally you hear, you who have ears to speak, but you must make your own approximation with truth. Love never faileth, its quality not strained, it keeps no--”
“Record of wrongs,” I finished in my own voice. Because I knew those words. Because… because Celestia had some them to me.
“But delights in the truth,” Eon whispered, and then she vanished.
I reeled. Celestia. After so long, it was like hearing her voice. I knew those words. She had said--
Celestia, speaking softly beside a fire, tea before her, untouched. Twilight, listening intently. What was the matter? What was the meaning of her teacher’s watery eyes?--
I shook my head. There would be time for remembering later.
“Another approaches!” I sang, startling myself. I laughed again.
Even with the ebullient spirit which animated me, I was still me and I was still worn out by all of this. I closed my eyes and hummed, if only to enjoy the way I could feel my music being caught up in the greater music.Everything felt wonderful here. There was a part of me that wanted to stay forever. Maybe eventually one of my friends would come looking for me, and then we could be here forever. What would they think? Applejack would never be bothered by magic again. Not knowing that something like this created it and sustains it.
I feel Her before I see or hear Her. Each step she takes is like a distant thunderhead, or a far-off fanfare. When I opened my eyes, Eon had returned. She wiped her eyes, but her crying did not begin again. She smiled at me hesitantly. “She wished to see you,” Eon said. “She is… I should warn you that you do not see the truth but a shadow of the truth.”
“What?” I asked.
“Your teacher, Celestia, my sister--she left something here for you,” Eon said. She smiled at me. To be smiled at by a goddess, by the way, is an amazing experience.
“Eon, why did I sing at you about your true name?” I asked her. “What is it?”
She sighed. She looked at me, as if studying me, and then smiled once more. “I will tell you. I am called Eon, but I told you there were other names. Eon was what I was known by in Jannah. But my name in the beginning was Kyrie, and I was the firstborn of Creation.”
And then she vanished again, and I heard a voice say, “Twilight?” and my heart stopped because I knew that voice.
I turned slowly, feeling frozen in place.
Celestia stood in the brightness of the Well, smiling at me. She smiled that same way she had smiled before I watched her leave Ponyville for the last time. Serene, filled with ease and--I whispered only to myself--full of love, in one way or another. She was not as I remembered her because here she was far greater. Her coat had been the pink of early dawn, but now it was dawn itself. Her hair was multi-colored fire, the brightest rainbow of purest light. Her eyes shone.
I had nothing to say. I had been working towards this moment for so long, and now there wasn’t a single thing to say that didn’t feel pointless.
“P-princess,” I said, just to answer her.
“And faithful student,” she said, and in a blink she was right in front of me, close, smiling that perfect smile, smelling of vanilla and a swift sunrise. I shook slightly. She would overhwelm me if she came closer. She already was. “Twilight, before you ask… no, this is not me. It is…”
I swallowed. “A copy? An image?”
“Yes, more or less.” Celestia smiled at me. “But I am a part of Celestia. I am Celestia,” she said and sat. I left myself behind so that you might not go on without guidance, if you came for me. I had other messages for Luna or others, as well.”
“Then… do you…” On an impulse, I reached out and touched her with just the tip of my hoof. She felt solid and real. “I… may I…”
She cocked her head to the side, and smiled at me. “Might you what, dear Twilight? You may talk to me normally. I am Celestia, in a way that is hard to exp--oh!” She didn’t finish because I had rushed forward and hugged her tightly, burying my face in her chest, feeling something I didn’t even want to name. She hugged me back very gently, running a hoof along my back, between my new fake wings. I shivered, not used to them.
“I missed you so much,” I said. And then I started bawling because I’m an idiot. “You left and nopony knew where you were and I didn’t know what to do and you’re the one I always asked when I was confused and--”
“Twilight, it’s alright,” she said softly, stroking my mane.
“No it’s not! Everything went to h-hell without you there to help and we couldn’t hold things together and you never came back! Why didn’t you come back? Why? You left me.”
“Twilight… Shh. I did not abandon you, Twilight. There is a little more to the story than that.” I feel angry, and elated, and sad all at once, but no matter my confusion I still enjoy the way she strokes my mane fretfully.
“Then what happened? Where are you?”
“West,” she said simply. “I am farther west, at the Well in the Garden. If you find the Garden, you will have come at last to where I am. I left my shard with enough magic to take you past Sarnath to the edge of the world. Any more and you would have been in the outlands, and teleporting you there would be to dangerous.” She paused. “If… if you wish to continue,” she added.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I asked. “I’ve come so far. I have to ask you why you left. You won’t tell me, will you?”
“I cannot. I do not know.”
“Of course you don’t,” I said.
“But… but I have enough of Celestia in me to know this, Twilight: she did not abandon you. I did not abandon you. She loves you fiercely, Twilight Sparkle, faithful student, brave little librarian. She is so very proud of you. She would never abandon you--have faith for just a little while longer.”
“I’m trying,” I grumble. My anger is fading. Mostly because… this isn’t Celestia. I can’t blame this shard for her absence. “So you’re here to teleport me and my friends and tell me where I’m going?”
She nodded. “And… Celestia was worried that it might take longer for Luna to send you than she expected. She thought her sister would send the elements or some of the elements within three or four months. Counting after she was supposed to return, of course,” Celestia said, humming to herself. “She seems to have been right to worry. It has been much longer.”
Twilight didn’t stop hugging Celestia like a drowning mare clinging to a rock, but she did look away. “Things got… complicated,” she said. “There have been a lot of problems, and I have questions for you about some of them, but… I don’t suppose you know much if you’re just a shard, huh?”
“I know some things,” she said, a bit indignantly, a bit teasingly. Celestia stopped stroking my mane, but that was alright. I let go and stood before her as she continued. “The Shadow moves, does he not?”
I hesitated. “I think so, yes. Luna found a sort of infection or plague or something in the Aether, touching dreams and minds. Rarity told me in a dream about encountering a pony who sort of just dissolved into inky black ooze… creatures who have been gone for thousands of years suddenly reappear and society breaks down far, far too quickly. Luna has begun to suspect that it was what I guess you could call a… Shadow. So it is that, then? For sure?”
She sighed. “Celestia can explain its nature and its origin better. This Celestia can only say that yes, your suspicions are correct. The Shadow writhes under the conflict of this world as he beats against Jannah, his prison. Celestia came here after a month of travel and relaxation expecting to view the ruins and perhaps contact her long-lost sister. But it was here that she realized what was about to begin.”
“So she’s fighting this thing. Or stopping it, or…” I trailed off. Or she lost.
“She has not died, before you ask me if I know,” Celestia said. “If she had died, then I too would die.”
That was comforting. I smiled. “Happy will she be who knoweth the cause of things,” I sang. “What is that? Why am I doing that?” I asked.
Celestia giggled. As in, like, actually giggled. My shock at finding her was back again. I had found her. Well, not really. A piece of her. A drawing that talked, or a dream. But it was the closest I had come since she left!
“It’s the Song,” she told me in a beautiful voice. She opened her mouth, and sang in the way that I did. “An honest witness speaks the truth!”
“So… well. I think I can figure it out. So, the Song makes me do that. Or I want to subconciously, or something, because I recognize what its saying as true in some way?”
Celestia nodded, grinning. She sang: “Then you will know the truth, then it will set you free.”
I nodded back. “Right. Okay. I can understand that.” I sighed. “Celestia… I have so many questions, and I don’t think this you can answer them. I’m sorry. I know you would if you could.”
“Do not apologize,” she told me. “Celestia left me here and told me I was to do all I could if it was you who came for her. She sent her love, and asked that I tell you she was proud of you for coming so far.” She chuckled. “But she didn’t need to tell me! She gave me all of those feelings. I know how much she loves you firsthoof. I also know how proud she is of what you’ve done, and what you are yet to do. She told me you would make the right choice. And when you are ready, I will help you go to her.”
“What happens to you?” I asked.
“It is up to you, faithful student,” Celestia replied. “You may leave me behind and retrieve me on the way. You may take me with you, in your heart and mind, where I will be a whisper. You may use all of me up and gain a boost to how far I can deposit you. This is your choice, not mine.”
“Use… use you up?” What the hell? I grimaced. “That sounds awful! I couldn’t do that to you!”
“It would be alright if you did, I am just a ghost of sorts,” she said. “But thank you.”
“If… will you talk to me if I take you with me?”
“If you wish.”
“I don’t know. Eon--Kyrie. Kyrie didn’t mean to hurt me, but she did. I don’t know how okay I am up here,” I said, tapping my head.
Celestia raised her eyebrows. “May I see?”
I nod. “Be prepared. I’m a bit… yeah. I think I’m a little crazy.”
She stepped forward and placed her forehooves about my head while her purple eyes stared into mine. They were light, so light, the color of the sky at the sun’s first touch and I was again forced to recognize how beautiful Celestia was. How perfect she was in every way. I felt small and dirty in her presence, knowing what I felt. What I wanted.
Did I still want those things? It was hard to say. Her gaze still made my pulse race.
“There is damage,” she said softly. Her face twisted in something that looked like agony, but that the Song magnified a dozen times. “So much damage. Oh, Eon… Her partitoning sabotaged her magic. She couldn’t keep her eyes on you and keep the memory of her loved ones at bay at the same time, and so she has scored your soul. Oh Twilight, I am so sorry. Celestia never foresaw this. She should have… she should have… I don’t know!” Celestia backed away from me, which stung. Was I so awful? Was looking so painful? “I’m so sorry,” she said.
“I don’t understand. It can’t be… I mean…” I just sort of stare at her.
She closed her eyes. “Twilight, I am afraid you no longer have the options you once had. I must give you others.”
“What? I’m not going back, before you say anything!” I said, stomping my hoof. The echo was all around us, reverberating in the song. I sang, “Greater love has no mare than this, that she would lay her life down for another.”
She seemed shaken. “It is true, I hear the Song within your words. I know. I… I will not suggest that, then. Twilight, your visions and confusions will not go away when you leave Jannah. You are already affected by the Calling, but this is far worse than mere obsession. You will see more visions, more real visions. First, only of others. But then, more and more and more, you will see yourself until you are always seeing yourself somewhere else, over and over. You will lose control of yourself. Twilight, you won’t even remember who you are in a few weeks!” She was breathing hard, looking around as if there was some answer there.
I don’t have any immediate reaction. Why would I? That’s nonsense. You can’t just… poke holes in pony’s souls. That’s ridiculous. And yet Celestia is so troubled, so serious.
“What can you do?” I ask. There is a tremor in my voice. I hope she doesn’t hear it. Because I’m not afraid.
“You could go home and hope that distance from the End of the World will heal you. You may continue west, using my energy to the fullest to increase your chances of reaching Celestia and what healing she could give you. Or you could… you could allow me to heal you.”
“How?”
She looked at me in the same way Celestia had, so long ago, when I lay shivering in my dormitory after that panic attack. “I would plug the holes, to use a crassly physical metaphor, with my own essence. You would be you. Twilight would be Twilight… with a little bit of me.”
I swallow. “Whoa,” I say, stupidly, even though I would never say that. The Well won’t let true panic touch me. I know its right there, waiting to rush in, but I can’t feel it. “So you propose that we meld somehow? Fuse. You and me.”
“It is the best choice,” Celestia said. She paused. “It would be what Celestia would choose to propose, if she were here instead of I. If her nature was as mine. She would want to help you, heal you, save you.”
I swallow again. “And… I’ll still be me?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Does this make me an alicorn?”
She looked at me in utter confusion, and then she laughed. And I laughed, despite myself, because the Well was made for laughing.
“No,” she replied. “There are Alicorns and alicorns, and neither of them are made by mere spells. Not any that you would know, dearest Twilight. You remain yourself. Your body may be different when you leave the water, as your soul will be different, but not new. Not in the way you fear.”
I close my eyes. “And the alternative is… going crazy and then I die. Seems that I have only one viable choice, logically.”
“You could use me up and try to reach the real Celestia.”
“Dangerous and risky,” I murmured. “I would be useless on the trip, and right now I am very, very tired of being useless. No, you’re right to suggest what you have. It’s the best choice. Will you cease to be?”
“I will be you.”
“So, in a way, yes. But also, in a way, no.”
“Correct.”
“Are my friends outside alright? Do you know?”
Eon’s voice drifted through the blinding light. “Yes. I have prepared my final countermeasure before we leave.”
I blink. “Wait, we?”
“I, too, must see my little sister.”
“And what is this final countermeasure? Why didn’t you use it earlier?” I asked.
“When we are all free, then I will destroy the temple complex.”
I gaped at nothing. “Just like that?” I was reminded of Vanhoover, but the memory was ripped away from me in an instant.
“Yes. I will not allow the fountain to be touched by the unclean if I can stop it without harming the innocent. They have no more prisoners after your friends have been gathered.”
I bite my lip. “Then… then do what you have to. What do you need me to do?”
“We need to leave soon, before those below break the barricade your friends contructed at my command. Which I am very, very sorry for,” Eon said.
“It’s okay. Eon. Kyrie,” I corrected.
“You may call me either.” Eon reappeared and smiled at me. “As it pleases you. You must bring your friends here and then I will carry them away as I refine my home with fire and cleanse it with force. It is necessary,” she added to herself, looking down. “It is.”
“If I am to heal you, Twilight, it must be now. The well has healed your body and has stopped and restricted the corruption, and leaving would allow it to grow with a vengeance to make up for time lost. This is the perfect window. What is your decision?” she asked me, and bit her lip. It’s probably where I got that from.
I take a deep breath. I sang: “Your choosing creates yourself; choose Child and be shaped.”
And then I said, as carefully as I could, “Do it. Quickly.”