“How many multiple thought spells have you cast so far?” asked Fluttershy, her voice emanating from every book inside the library. She picked up another glowing blue book off of a shelf, and teleported to another spot with a blue book a galaxy away.
“I’m nearing one hundred million and still going strong,” said Accord, his own voice emanating from every book instantaneously as he was talking. Their conversation continued despite the seven to the twelfth millionth power universe lengths in between them. “Our time inside this library is nearly as low as we can get without stopping time itself.”
“Are you sure that stopping time wouldn’t be easier than this?” said Fluttershy, grabbing another book and adding it to the stack in her hooves before hopping to another impossibly distant place.
“I can convince all of the atoms in Equestria to all stop at once, giving the illusion of stopping time, but that wouldn’t stop time for whatever domain Galaxia is in. No—multiple thought spells in my own universe is our best option. Remember, this library is an integral part of how I think. It may be a universe, but it’s linked to my head. If I told all the atoms here to stop it would mean stopping myself. If I stopped time you alone could move at normal speed inside here.”
“If you’re here, then where is your body? Still standing in front of Celestia?”
“No, I’m in the waiting room again, watching Pinkie Pie die. With multiple thought spells going I should be able to hold a conversation if anyone talks to me.”
“How is Pinkie doing?”
“She’s the same as four microseconds before, when you asked me earlier. Dying.”
“Just checking,” she said as she appeared in front of him at the very bottom of the library. “Another stack for you.”
Accord took the pile of blue books from Fluttershy and dyed them all a navy blue before adding them to his main sorting pile.
He pulled out a book from the stack and barely glanced at a few pages before dying it black, inscribing a title, and sending it to a teetering stack of other black books. Each hexagonal side was already stacked with books. The black pile had gray and white books seeping away from it. The largest pile was green, which was already starting to seep into the corner corridor, which led eternally beyond. Another side was light blue, with other areas of reds, purples, and yellow. There were yet more books forming their own piles in between them.
“How am I doing all of this without a horn anyway?” asked Fluttershy as she teleported away, putting the first book of the next stack in her hoof.
“Did you want a horn? I can give you a horn,” said Accord, a horn appearing on Fluttershy’s head.
She teleported back to him and handed him more books, the bottom of the library already overflowing in a multicolored sea of them.
“That’s not exactly what I had in mind,” Fluttershy said, teleporting away again, surprised to see three books sitting next to each other, all glowing blue. “I just thought I needed a horn to use magic.”
“I’ve given you a conceptually infinite amount of knowledge and near omnipotence and omniscience. If you include library time, we’ve been together for three hundred years. You don’t need a horn to do magic.”
“But then why do you have a horn?”
He paused, setting the book he was skimming down on the floor. His eyes crossed as he stared at his horn. “I think it looks cool.”
“Does it make me look cool?” said Fluttershy as she reached the bottom with more books, and conjured up a mirror out of nowhere.
He stood up, trotting closer to her and staring at her image in the mirror. “I think it makes you look cute,” he said, smirking.
“But it’s getting in the way of my mane,” she said, raising a hoof and making a few strands of pale pink hair get out of the way of her horn.
He leaned closer to her and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Fluttershy, I don’t think you could do anything that would make yourself look less adorable to me.”
“I doubt that,” she said, grinning. “I mean, what if I turned into a spider?” by the time the words had left her mouth, she had already transformed into a giant tarantula.
“Nope, you’re still my wife and I would love you no matter what,” he said, also turning himself into a tarantula, all eight of his eyes happy to see her.
She turned herself into a dragon and nearly squashed him, a few of the stacks of books toppling onto the floor.
“How about now?”
He turned into a long snake-like dragon and curled around her until his eyes locked on with hers.
“Of course.”
She turned into the same kind of dragon, entwining herself against him and returning his gaze.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
They held each other for a moment before turning into alicorns and getting back to work.
“I think I look better without the horn,” said Fluttershy, the horn vanishing from her head as she teleported away and grabbed more books.
“You’re beautiful!” said Accord, cheering her on as he raced through more books. He voraciously read through many of his old favorite books and tried to reconcile them with how Equestria actually worked. All of those books were now going to help him as he tried to formulate the best scenario. There had to be a way to let all souls be immortal and still have the complete freedom to choose to do so.
“So… Queen Galaxia and Hope,” Fluttershy said. “How are we going to talk to them?”
“Very carefully. I’m still struggling to understand why a group of beings would actively create worlds. Isn’t infinite time and the randomness of creation a fast enough process for them?”
Fluttershy teleported down and gave him a sour look, dropping off only two books. “Creating things directly is a lot faster than waiting for it to happen.”
He raised a hoof to his muzzle. “I dunno, I always had a book to read while waiting.”
“You have the oddest quality of being eternally patient, Accord,” said Fluttershy, transforming into a draconequus and staring at him.
“That—that wasn’t patience. That was…” Accord trailed off, looking at her.
“Life’s better when there’s others you can share it with, isn’t it?” asked Fluttershy.
“Yeah…” said Accord. It was strange seeing Fluttershy take on the form he had been so comfortable in for such a long time.
“Anyway…” Accord found his voice again. “I guess I’m shy as far as omniscient beings go. I’m going to have a hard time convincing Galaxia, Cosmos and whatever Hope is to let us change things in Equestria.”
“Why haven’t they come already? I mean, we’ve been here the entire time.”
“It’s like in Celestia’s memories. They’re clockmakers. They make a place and then they move on. But asking them for one of the planets they’ve staked their claim on is going to be a tall order. We might have to move the entire thing to a different universe just to change the magic of the world to allow immortality.”
“What if they say no?”
“Worst-case scenario… they take all of my memories. They’ll have a tough time sorting through all of this though,” he said, elongating the ‘a’ in ‘all’ for a while and gesturing to the library above them. “And if they take my memories it should overflow their minds with enough of myself to let us have what we want.”
“That’s worst case?”
“You’re right, that does sound like best case. Worst case is that they remove my body from my soul… and your soul from your body… and we never see each other again…” Accord paused, the idea weighing down his head so low that he stared at the floor. “And we reincarnate forever…”
Fluttershy teleported back with a stack of books, and upon seeing her husband staring at the ground, dropped them to the floor and rushed to hug him.
“There, there… it’s okay. We can get through this,” she said, enveloping him with her wings.
“I wasted so much time!” screamed Accord. “I could have been with you this whole time. I could have trusted somepony. But no—I just had to treat everywhere I went like an experiment. And by the time I understand myself enough, there’s a large group of other omniscient beings controlling who knows how much of the multiverse. And their ensuring that everyone reincarnates like they should, and monitoring the whole thing with their memory covers. But in my time, reincarnation just kind of happened… why would they enforce it?”
“First of all, I’m glad you waited, or else we might not have ever met,” she said looking into his eyes. “And second, there are so many possible souls in the multiverse. Maybe they just wanted to make sure each soul got to experience life at least once?”
“But why not leave them immortal? What happened that forced them to condemn all souls to live this kind of existence? Death shouldn’t be a part of life. If souls never die, then why should we?”
⬡ ⬡ ⬡
Something tugged on Galaxia’s mind. Something was wrong…
She was currently watching as a group of fire creatures ventured forth on their first space flight, headed towards their sun. This is the moment she had been waiting hundreds of years for. Her first idea had been to set these fire creatures directly on the surface of their sun, but she wondered if they would eventually get the idea to head there anyway.
Other sapient beings visited their moons and other planets. The urge to explore had struck this species as anticipated. These were creatures that lived on lava their entire lives, forming tall towers with the molten rock until it solidified into rock from which they farmed edible vines.
Their rock towers now criss-crossed the planet, forming entire jungles of vines. It had been so interesting to watch them put several layers of cooled rock on their tentacles to prevent the vines from burning before they were ripe.
They had advanced fairly quickly in the twelve hundred thousand years since they had started evolving. Despite their low technological prowess, they had managed to make a spaceship out of rock and used the consistent blast from one of the largest volcanoes to venture into space. Galaxia looked forward to seeing their reaction when they confirmed that the surface of the sun was entirely hospitable for them. She had even altered the sun’s solar flare so that the same rocket would be able to make the return trip.
The feeling that she was needed elsewhere nagged on her, until she finally checked some of her data streams. Something had accessed the souls of both of her Princesses on Equestria. Queen Galaxia stared out at the rock spaceship, unsure of what to do.
What would become of the fire creature’s first foray into space travel would have to be witnessed later. Galaxia tore open a temporary wormhole and used it to appear in front of Princess Celestia and Luna.
They sat rigid, each holding a titleless book in their own magic, enchanted by the words they were reading. Only when Galaxia said “hello” did they notice she was there.
It was as if her greeting had been a death sentence. They stared at her, eyes wide with shock and showing signs that they had been crying, silence their only response.
“Celestia, Luna… are you ok?” Galaxia asked.
They didn’t respond, they only stared back at her, terrified. Something was very odd: they had never been afraid of her before, and their memories had betrayed no sense of mistrust in the past. They were her perfect protective Princesses, always helping to guard this world and help the reincarnation process. A soul without a memory cover, a Trillion, must have made its way inside them again, possessing them both like Nightmare Moon before.
“Just take them,” said Luna, standing up to her full height and looking at Galaxia. “Take my memories, you’ll understand soon enough.”
Galaxia drew near to Luna and took hold of her memories, adding the new thoughts to her own. It took a few moments before the full force of the ideas and memories hit her.
Accord… a sign painter pony? No… Discord, the worst threat to all of Equestria, a threat she had thought long dealt with.
Galaxia crossed over to Celestia, picking at her memories as well, piecing it together from the end back to the beginning, trying to see what had taken place. The reason the warning had gone off was because Accord had all of Celestia and Luna’s memories now. He was the reason for all of this. The evidence for the existence of Accord’s library sat in front of her, the nondescript books that lay on the floor.
All of the sudden, something clicked inside Galaxia. The end of the multiverse that Hope had been so excited to find had been, in fact, a giant hexagonal prism. And now she knew just who that absurdly large universe belonged to. But reading such a library would require a near infinite amount of time. Just how long had this creature been alive? The idea of the duration of time he had lived weighed on Galaxia.
She didn’t like to think about such lengths of time. Infinity unnerved her and made her feel small and insignificant to the vastness of possibility. It was a terrifying reminder that the multiverse contained an infinite number of universes, that time itself was infinite and they would never discover a true record of the beginning or watch the end. She felt grateful that at the end of this universe she would reincarnate into Hope, a fresh start. But here she was, confronted with a being that had traversed further along existence than even Hope.
He had spent all of recorded time, as Galaxia understood it, in his library. Only in the last fifty years had he ventured outside to… turn into a pony and marry Fluttershy? Celestia’s memories must be wrong.
No, it was true, it was all true. It was just... unexpected.
“Accord has lived longer than the entire history of our order,” Celestia began. “If my assertions are correct then he has been alive for orders of magnitude longer than our own concept of time.”
“And now he knows about us,” said Galaxia, her eyes narrowing. “In exchange for the chance for everyone on this world to live forever, you gave him your memories.”
“Mother, I’m sorry, but I—” Celestia began.
“You were tired of ponies dying and being unable to do anything about it,” said Galaxia, finishing Celestia’s sentence, familiar with the feeling.
“Please, let us explain,” Luna tried to say, but Galaxia cut her off.
“Your memories and thoughts during your betrayal are better than any explanation you could give. This was your sole purpose, to keep souls reincarnating, making sure nothing lasted too long. It is the same as our purpose, we keep the cycle going.”
“For what reason!? Why must we say goodbye to our friends every time?” asked Celestia.
Galaxia wracked her mind for what to say. These kinds of questions would not have occurred under her preferred system, where the Princesses reincarnated as well. Immortals should not have been allowed to mix with mortals. It’s easier on everyone that way, and less work for the Kings and Queens.
“We are experimenters, tinkerers, we seek for the perfect configuration to ensure maximum life and enjoyment, but we know that living forever has only ever ended in disaster. The duration of infinity ensures that things will fall apart. Relationships, beings, ideas, everything must have an end. Reincarnation ensures that this end will be a happy ending.”
“Is that what you are trying to do? Make happy endings?” asked Luna.
“The happiest endings can only occur by ending things prematurely. Given enough time, a turn for the worse is inevitable.
“Happy endings are for stories, not sapient beings!” shot back Celestia.
“Enough!” said Galaxia, eyeing the two princesses. She needed a moment to compose herself and think through the ideal way to address this problem. There had never been a challenge to her rule before. She had done everything to help her little ponies, she had given them complete freedom to choose whatsoever they desired, and now they desired to follow some unknown being.
She needed backup, what was happening here was something that no part of Hope had ever seen before. This was beyond her jurisdiction.
She gave one final glance at Luna and Celestia before tearing open a portal and jumping into the void between universes.
The nearest gathering of Hope wasn’t too far away, only a couple hundred thousand universe jumps. Her trajectory was plotted out by a relay of teleportation spells navigating her to them.
She flew past the many dead universes, the chaos of infinity preventing them from ever becoming anything until a King or Queen could give them life.