//------------------------------//
// Vine Ascendant 
// Story: Split Second: An Eternity Divided 
// by wille179 
//------------------------------//

	Princess Celestia and Princess Luna published a pamphlet each year with the upcoming year’s schedule of sunrise and sunset times, with the promise that the sun and moon would transition within ten minutes of that given time. If either moved outside of that time - an extremely rare occurrence, seeing as the last time it had happened was over a century ago - it was a signal to Equestria’s allies that the nation was in significant and dire trouble.
The sun and the moon sharing an east-west bifurcated sky thus sent the leaders of the world into a panic. Across the seas, the minotaurs, dragons, and griffins feared for the damage to the Equestrian economy; to the south, the Zebra feared for their northern cousins’ safety; and deep within the Everfree Exclusion Zone, a tribe known as the Flowing Stone Deer prayed for their goddess’s safety, and for their own.
In Ponyville, like all settlements in and around the Everfree forest, the sky was quickly forgotten about in favor of the more immediate threat: the black vines that had erupted from the ground and practically declared war against all they encountered. Unlike most of those settlements, Ponyville had a defender by the name of Twilight, a 3rd order paladin.
Spurred into action by the vines, Twilight first attempted to establish communication with the princesses. She practically threw her hastily composed letter at Spike as she barked the order to send it.
Wasting no time, Spike ignited the scroll, only for it to reform almost instantly above his head. “Hey, Mom, we’ve got an issue.”
Twilight swore creatively. “Fine. Ah... send it to Kibitz. Celestia’s Secretary should know what’s going on.”
Spike nodded. Taking a second to recall the feeling of the elderly stallion’s magic, he gathered his flame and sent the scroll with a burst of emerald light. This time, it sent without fail.
The response came with the swiftness a royal secretary was known for. Spike tore off the scroll’s ribbon and unfurled it, only for a golden pendant to fall out. Twilight scooped up the pendant and gasped. “A seal of wartime authority?”
The dragon quickly scanned over the letter and then summarized it to his mother figure. “Celestia and Luna have been captured by unknowns, vines are attacking Canterlot as well, and... here’s the passcode spell for the vault of the Elements of Harmony.”
“We’ve got to get to Canterlot right now,” Twilight declared, to which Spike nodded.
Unbeknownst to them, although not at all coincidentally, the alternate timeline’s Beatrix Lulamoon was simultaneously, silently making the same declaration to an empty room, having also messaged Kibitz through different means.
However, only Twilight had the magical strength to teleport directly to Canterlot. And so as Trixie ran to the chariot airstrip, Twilight gathered her magic to teleport herself and Spike to Canterlot.
Except, upon triggering the spell, Twilight and Spike found themselves painfully slammed into the hard dirt just outside the library. Spike, being the extremely durable dragon that he was, was the first to recover. “Guhhh... What happened?”
“That's what I want to know,” Twilight replied. “My horn feels like it's on fire.”
Spike licked his fingers and pinched her horn. The protruding keratin sizzled. “That’s because it was,” the drake replied.
“What- SPIKE! MOVE!” Twilight shouted, lunging to push Spike out of the way of the erupting vines. A hastily erected and mercifully functional barrier deflected the worst of the blow, even if the vines did still pierce it.
“Are you ok?” Twilight asked the young drake.
“I’m fine,” Spike replied, “but you’re bleeding.”
Indeed she was, Twilight observed. There was a decently sized gash across her back. It wasn’t deep, nor was it bleeding too badly, but it would need to be tended too soon. She knew some first aid spells, but was hesitant to use them given what had just happened with her failed teleport.
“Spike, come on. We need to get somewhere where these vines can’t interfere with my magic. Let’s start moving to the train station.”
Spike nodded.
As they ran, Twilight sent out tendrils of magic to probe the air around them. As the probes drew near a vine, the black plant would lash out at it violently. Twilight saw similar vines all over town, attacking ponies everywhere. Dread filled her heart; would they even make it to Canterlot in time?
She could also feel the fluctuations in space caused by her sister. If this was happening on the other side too, Twilight realized that Sparkle must have been throwing around some powerful magic. All of Sparkle’s ripples were coming from the direction of the Everfree. Twilight acknowledged that that might be towards the source of the problem.
The paladin rounded a corner and then came to a halt. Before her, she could see the train engine of the Canterlot express on its side, knocked over by the writhing vines sprouting from the track.
Twilight swore again. Spike didn’t bother correcting her, as he was too busy swearing as well.
“We’re stuck here, aren’t we?” Spike asked rhetorically. Twilight hummed her agreement anyway. “Now what?”
“We fight back.”
Spike was just about to ask how when Twilight’s body started glowing. Her fur shown with lavender light instead of merely reflecting the color. A smile crossed her face. “I half expected that to not work.”
“What?”
A similar glow enveloped Spike, granting him a mental clarity from a fog that he hadn’t noticed clouding his mind. “Whoa.”
“The vines are disrupting magic at the source - our bodies and souls - so I used a charm to help push that influence out. Spike, I’m going to go help the others, but I need you to do something for me.”
“Yeah?”
“Burn.”
The dragon’s grin was infectious. “Aww yeah!” he said, his tone oh-so-similar to Rainbow Dash’s own cocky voice. “Right. I’ll try not to burn anything other than the vines, OK?”
“Good boy. Right, I’m off,” Twilight replied. She knew that dragon fire, when unhindered, was one of the most dangerous things in the world. She also knew on an academic level that dragons were incredibly durable, more than her instincts seemed to realize. Even if her instincts were telling her to keep her son close, Twilight trusted Spike to be able to look after himself.
The battle roar from his growing form filled her with even more confidence.
Twilight charged. With every pony she passed, she quickly purged them of the vines’ influence and established a magical link through which she could push healing and rejuvenating magic. It wasn’t enough to heal them of their wounds, but it would toughen them up and help them last longer.
If there was one benefit to being bonded to a ritual-using necromancer, it was their massive magic reserves. Twilight had magic to spare, and with Celestia as her witness, Twilight swore that she would use it to save all their lives.
Brighter and brighter her horn grew. Light magic poured out of her like a fountain, enveloping every single pony in the town, reinforcing their souls, their magic, and their bodies on the most basic of levels.
Deep within Twilight’s soul, at that very moment, a miniscule, foreign shard fused to the core of her very being. It searched and, finding what it was looking for, began to truly awaken within her.



Princess Celestia and Princess Luna published a pamphlet each year with the upcoming year’s schedule of sunrise and sunset times. The filly currently known as Rhodium did not read that pamphlet at all, instead choosing to set her alarm clock to whatever time was convenient. However, she didn’t need to know any of that at the moment, not the rise time, nor her clock’s time, seeing how the sky was bifurcated between night and day.
“That’s a problem.”
“Tell me about it,” Scootaloo replied.
The two of them were currently in their room at the orphanage. Sparkle and her younger and far more innocent companion were staring out of their window, trying to comprehend the chaos outside. Vines surged from the ground and attacked everything that moved, as well as most things that didn’t. The vines themselves made Sparkle shudder for reasons that she couldn’t even fathom. Whatever her soul sight was telling her in regards to those vines, that message just simply wasn’t taking hold in her mind.
There was a wooden-sounding crash from the floor below, followed immediately by the screams of the matron and several foals. Sparkle knew that the slithering black plants had found their way into the orphanage. She acted quickly.
“Scootaloo!”
The orange filly looked at her roommate. But before she could say anything, Sparkle lifted the foal up with her magic and shoved Scootaloo into her pocket dimension. “Wait there. I’ll be back before you know it.”
Scoots tried to protest, but the closing of the portal cut her off. Sparkle sent a magical command to the pocket dimension to adjust the internal speed such that what could be hours or days would only feel like seconds to her friend. 
Her link flew open next. “Thorn, code dark-gray.”
“I guessed as much. Are you sure that it will come to that?” he inquired.
“It’s very likely. I’d hate to abandon ship so early, and after having invested so much, but such an outcome is likely.”
With the vines quickly approaching, Sparkle jumped out the second story window, landing far too solidly for her own good. She groaned before squashing the pain down and breaking out into a gallop.
She ran without any particular destination in mind; her only goal was to observe the situation. Her senses told her that the vines were distorting magic, and that any spells against them directly would be ineffective. However, she had more than spells at her disposal, but no way to know if they’d work.
“Do you want me to start shopping around for a body or surrogate for you?” Thorn’s mental voice asked. “I’m still out in Cengoyle, so you have the option of a centaur rebirth, if you want. Or do you want me to start preparing Sombra as your next vessel?”
Sparkle shook her head, though Thorn wouldn’t have been able to feel it. “Keep your eyes open, I guess. We’re not at that point yet. Just... look for those who are desperate or are within death’s reach already, ok?”
“Sure thing.”
To herself, Sparkle muttered her dislike of the whole situation. “Now, how to deal with you?”
A vine lashed at her, possibly attracted by the sound of her voice. She jumped to the side, able to dodge thanks to magically enhanced reflexes.
Deep within her core, she wound up and launched the harpoon of her soul weapon, hoping to drain the vines of their magic. Opening her mouth wide, she began to pull.
The harpoon came loose, filling Sparkle’s mouth with nothing but air and the possibility of catching a fly. Irritated, Sparkle dodged another vine and wound up her weapon again. This time, however, when she fired, she sent a tendril of her own magic chasing the harpoon. The moment it struck the plant’s essence, her magic spilled around and then solidified its grip on the very life of the plant.
Sparkle heaved a mighty heave. With tremendous effort, she started pulling in the life essence of the vines, eliciting a horrid shriek from the even more horrid plants. And yet it was working; as soon as the first little bit of the plant’s life force touched her own, the boost of energy made pulling out even more that much easier.
It was a cycle; the more she ate, the more easily she could eat even more. But that cycle was not without cost. Her magic pulled the noodle-like ribbon of life force from its vine casing, meaning that the vines started dying at their furthest point from her - all the way on the other side of the Everfree.
There was a lot of the black vine between Sparkle and the furthest reaches of the plant, and it was not happy at all about being eaten. That which was closest to her lashed out, and with the necromancer’s mind focused on devouring the plant, she could not as readily dodge. The vines lashed out, wrapping around her barrel. Blood oozed out as the thorns opened up gashes on her sides, though the life of those very plants saw the wounds healed up just in time for the plants to inflict more pain.
As her feeding grew stronger, the normal plants and underground creatures around her started dying off. The black vines, however, grew even more vicious. Dragging her towards the forest, they tried to gas her, but the necromancer’s augmented metabolism was too fast for the tranquilizer to seriously take hold.
Faster and faster Sparkle drained the life from the vines. Her only awareness now was the power flowing through her, the sense of how much still needed to be consumed, and how full her soul’s “stomach” was getting. Whole towns now were getting the upper hoof now, but Sparkle was still trapped in a writhing mass of vines in a growing field of death. The rapid influx and expenditure of life force was having a toll on her as well; with every cell division, her body aged faster and faster, growing into an emaciated adult within the violent half hour she’d been trapped.
And then, deep within Sparkle’s soul, at that very moment, a miniscule, foreign shard fused to the core of her very being. It searched and, finding what it was looking for, began to truly awaken within her, just like it was in her sister at that very moment.



In another place, another time...
“A mark of one's destiny, singled out alone, fulfilled. Wait a second, that's it! I understand now! I know how to fix the spell!”



In yet another place, but in an unknown time...
A gray, bald stallion in a gray suit and gray fedora looked at another stallion who also fit that description. The first, August, spoke to his slightly younger looking colleague, July, stating, “The shards have awoken.”
If July had had an eyebrow, or emotions, he would have raised said eyebrow in surprise. Has he had neither, his face remained completely neutral. “Shards?” Although there was no inquisitive inflection, August knew July was asking for clarification.
“The reason for the interference has been revealed. The split replicated the shard of divinity twice. One remained almost completely isolated in the prime timeline, while the other two formed a bridge between the two daughter timelines,” August explained.
“This clarifies much,” July replied. “The temporal instability is repairing itself, is it not?”
“Correct,” said August.
July then stated, “We must prepare for our first confrontation with her, then. She must know of the danger her later abilities pose to the stability of the universe. Gather the other eleven fragments of Time.”
“Yes, July.”



And finally, in three particular, congruent times, in three close locations...
Three mares suddenly vanished. 
The first was supposed to vanish, and went where she was supposed to go. Her teacher was there when she got to that new place. 
The second was also supposed to vanish, but not at that time. She also did not go where she was intended to go, but she found herself where she needed to be.
The third mare was not supposed to vanish at all, but did so anyway. After a moment’s panic, she found someplace she knew and set about getting herself there, unaware of the two companions she was dragging along for the ride.