//------------------------------// // Crystal Mirror // Story: Split Second: An Eternity Divided // by wille179 //------------------------------// Thorn hadn’t been here in ages. Well, more precisely, it had been around a year and a half since he’d been on this particular street, but with all the distorted time he’d spent in the afterlife, it felt something like five times longer than that. He strolled down the street, relaxedly gazing about at the stone buildings of Dragon Town, Fillydelphia. He’d been drawn here by a murder gone wrong and decided to stay afterwards once he recognized the city. He wore an illusion of being a large dragon on all fours, rather than transforming into his original four-limbed biped form, because he felt more comfortable that way, even if it did make him significantly larger even at his minimum size. Ducking under the door frame (an action his illusion didn’t mimic), Thorn entered the comic book shop owned by his acquaintance, Mina. He spotted the pink dragoness behind the counter. She, having learned his and Spike’s size/age-changing method, stood behind the counter as one of the tallest dames in the room - an impressive feat considering that she’d been rather short the first time they met not so long ago. “Mina!” She looked over at him. “Wait, Thorn? Is that you?” “Sort of. Remember when we first met, how I showed you how to see my best features? Look; don’t assume,” he replied. She did indeed remember that. How could she not? She saw his true eyes for the first time after piercing the illusion on him, and the surprise rigidly cemented the memory in her head. So, repeating what she’d done before, she took a good look at him. The thing about illusions is that they are entirely dependant on the force of will of all those involved. The caster is trying to tell a lie, forcing the target to believe the lie over their own senses. By wanting Mina to see through his illusion, even the magic holding it up wasn’t enough to fight their synchronized wills. But there was another variable that Thorn had forgotten. Every time they had met Sparkle’s time traveling future self, she had been radiating a psychic aura that distorted the perception of everyone who saw her - a sign of permanent black magic corruption. That aura, while not as strong or chaotic as it would be once their ascension fully completed in a little over two weeks real time, was already present and growing. As the two of them had desired to be left to their own devices, the unconsciously emitted aura currently had a calming effect on those that saw them. Mina, united with Thorn in their desire to let her see him, managed to break through that aura, effectively slapping her in the face with the force of his presence. As Celestia radiated the warmth of the sun, and Twilight filled a room with the essence of life, Thorn flooded the area with the chill of death. And so, expecting to see a pair of funky eyes, Mina found herself facing a six limbed, six eyed, shadow winged giant that made her survival instincts kick into overdrive. She bolted. Thorn rolled all six of his bizarre eyes. No longer needing his mother’s severed horn to use magic, Thorn simply waved a hand and caught her in a black telekinetic aura. “Mina, relax.” As he spoke, he strengthened the illusions around her to the point where when she looked back, she could not see or feel any of the things that had startled her. “Th-thorn?” “Yeah. Sorry about scaring you; I should have warned you about that,” he said. The magic dissipated from Mina’s body, letting her drop a few inches to the floor. “Shit. What was that?” “Oh, I got a few new body parts. That’s all. Mom gave them to me.” The half truth rolled easily off his tongue. “No, not that… that… that...feeling that washed all over me! I thought I was going to die!” Thorn frowned slightly, but didn’t let it show on the illusion’s face. “You’re not, I assure you.” “Right. That just leaves one more thing,” she said, visibly and audibly more calm than she was seconds before. The pink dragoness marched up to the purple demigod and slugged him in the shoulder - or where she thought his shoulder was, which was actually his hip. “Fuck you, Thorn.” Luckily, Sparkle had figured out why they were killing everything they touched, so now he was able to keep Mina from instantly dying. Of course, being an undying demigod dracolich meant nothing compared to a dame’s punch of righteous fury. “What did I do?” “What did you do? What did you do?! Thornecrovitar, I’ll tell you what you did!” She shouted. “You nearly exploded, and then flew away like a bat out of hell! I thought you were dying! Sure, you visited great grandpa Spike a few weeks ago to let him know you’d found his old friend, Scorpan, but you didn’t bother to come find me! For the longest time I thought you were dead! Really, truly, dead, and not just half-dead. I thought I was your friend.” Thorn’s shoulders slumped and his spines went pitifully limp. “Oh.” Mina glared at him, claws at her hips in the oh-so-effective ‘I’m more angry at you than I’ve ever been and it’s totally your fault’ position. “Yeah. Oh. Jerk.” “Well, in my defense, I didn’t realize you cared that much about me.” The sharp glare remained. Thorn raised his hands placatingly, but realized that she couldn’t see them under the illusion. “Here, why don’t we go get something to eat? My treat.” Her eyes glanced to the clock on the wall. Nodding to herself, she walked to the back room of the store and shouted, “Hey boss, can I take my lunch break now?” A muffled yes drifted back in reply. “Thanks!” She turned back to Thorn. “Sure. I want miso-ruby soup. You remember where we met, right?” Thorn smiled at the suggestion, and then widened it at the memory. “Of course.” “And I want to know everything that happened.” “You’d need to take the day off to get the full story,” Thorn quipped. The pink dragoness raised an eyebrow. “I hope it’s interesting, then.” Thorn chuckled. “Trust me, it is.” “So you really know when somedragon is about to die?” Mina asked. Thorn put down his fourth bowl of soup. “More like we know that they are dying while they’re in the middle of doing it, or while they are seriously trying to end their own life. A soul acknowledging the approach of death seems to be what makes it the easiest for us to see, although everything’s been getting progressively clearer since we first ascended.” “So you don’t know when I’m going to die? Darn, and here I was hoping you’d know.” She rolled her eyes. “Actually, I’m kind of glad you don’t know. It gives life a certain amount of surprise, you know?” Thorn nodded. “Yeah. And if it makes you feel any better, your soul is very strongly attached to your body; you’re not dying as we speak, so that’s good. And, if Mom, Cobalt, or I are feeling particularly generous, and are able to help, we can give you a little more time. Mom’s already stopped a few suicides. Feels weird doing that, though, like we’re going against our very nature.” He paused, a thought occurring to him. “You want to see the afterlife?” “Don’t I have to die to see that?” Reaching into the afterlife, specifically straight into his nightstand in the castle there, Thorn pulled out a sack of bits. Counting them out, he placed them on the counter for the waitress. “Nope,” he replied. “You just have to have the key, and you can walk there. It’s a real place that one can go, but it’s also very unreal.” Mina shrugged. “Sure, I’m game.” She hopped off her seat. “I’ll meet you after work, and then you can show me.” Thorn grabbed her arm. “We could go now. Time flows differently in there. Days there are seconds here. We could stay for as long as you like, and nodragon would notice that you were ever gone. Come on.” “Are you sure?” Thorn grinned. “I guarantee it. Now, close your eyes and tuck your wings in.” She did. For the hell of it, Thorn opened the portal directly below their feet, literally dropping them in. Mina shrieked. Before she could open her eyes and wings to see and stop her fall, they crashed into a deep body of water. Yet, instead of floating, they continued sinking rapidly. The pink dragoness clutched her mouth and throat, but Thorn just put a hand comfortingly on her shoulder. “Mina, breathe,” he ordered, despite being underwater. “Trust me; it’s like a dream. You can do it, just believe.” And Mina did, and air, not water, filled her lungs. “What? How?” “This is the Soul Sea, which lies to the south of the Elysian Fields.” A school of rainbow fish swam between the two dragons. “My grandfather built this place. He always loved the ocean.” “He built a sea?” Mina asked disbelievingly. “The afterlife is a world where dreams - or nightmares - are just as real as you or me,” Thorn explained. "Anything you can imagine can become reality." He grabbed Mina’s claws and, with a flick of his tail and a flap of his wings, rocketed them into the depths. Very quickly, lights started appearing below them, and soon enough, Mina could make out an entire underwater city. Thorn pulled her towards a massive glass dome filled with shining lights and thousands of people of all species. The two of them ghosted through the glass and floated down to the floor of what Mina realized was a casino. “Welcome to Lazuli Casino. Here, you bet your own soul and your ultimate fate. Win big, and an afterlife of luxury is yours. Lose, and it’s off to the pits with you. After all, what's paradise without risk? Or the pits without hope?” “How does one gamble their fate?” Mina asked. In response, Thorn handed her a casino chip with a “1” on it. “With these. Everyone who dies gets a number that represents how good or evil they were in life, based on their crimes, good deeds and the context in which they were done. The afterlife alters your perception of reality - and thus reality itself - based on that number. Negative fifty to negative ten is the pits, negative ten to ten is purgatory - about the same as real life - and ten to fifty is paradise. Everything, from where you can go to what you see and feel when you get there is dependant on that number. But, you can trade it like money. If you want someone to do something for you, give them a fraction of your number. Your afterlife gets worse; their afterlife gets better.” Mina looked at the chip with a “1” on it. “If it’s a scale with a hundred spots, then this chip must be really valuable.” Thorn smirked. “In here, that chip is worth a few million bits. Most never gamble more than one one-millionth of their number at a time.” He could practically see the bit signs in her eyes. Waving his hand, he conjured a bucket full of those chips, and chips of other fractional denominations, and handed it to her. She instantly grew a few inches. “So, want to play? My treat.” Mina may have been treated like royalty that day, but Twilight, to the amusement of her family, now was royalty. It was the second day since her coronation, and she had just arrived in the Crystal Empire for the Equestrian Royal Summit. Political leaders from all over Equestria, rulers from their neighboring satellite nations, and diplomats from most major nations would be in attendance. Twilight herself was only attending as a figurehead, much like her technically equal male counterpart, Prince Blueblood. Although in truth, due to her family's rapidly skyrocketing political clout - thanks to having sired not one, but two royals - and her status as a true alicorn, not just a pegacorn like some past princes, she actually outranked the blond prince. With her crown - a new setting for the star-shaped Element of Magic - atop her head, she and her guard escort made their way to the massive conference room that the summit meeting was being held in. Although she wouldn’t be participating in the meeting’s discussion, Princesses Celestia and Luna had insisted she be there. When she’d asked why out of curiosity, Luna had informed her that Equestria was making a statement in an attempt to help them curry more political and economic in order to catch up to the more industrial economies of the minotaurs and the griffins. “Princess Twilight!” Twilight looked to her right and saw Cadance and Shining Armor approaching her. It had been her brother that had spoke. “Princess Twilight. I still can’t believe that my sister is a princess!” “I can’t believe it either,” Cadance said. The sheer amount of love the pink goddess was emitting was palpable even to Twilight. No wonder the changelings had been after her and Shiny. The youngest of the three blushed. “It’s just a title,” she said, having said the same thing to them when they first found out. “Aww, but Twily, don’t you remember those little tea parties we had when you were a foal? You used to pretend that you were a princess too,” Cadance said. Twilight’s blush intensified. “Yeah, but I-” Cadance cut her off. “And don’t forget how we dragged Shiny into our little game.” “He was your prince charming from day one,” Twilight said. “Even if he was a dork.” “I’m right here, you know!” The blue-maned prince whined. “We know,” Cadance and Twilight jointly replied. Cadance continued alone, “Why do you think we were bringing that up?” Shining, blushing like his sister had been, motioned with his head. “Come on. We need to introduce you to the world, and those stuffy politicians aren’t going to like being kept waiting.” The goddess of life sighed. “Right. Let’s just get this over with.” To her misfortune, her first public appearance seemed to drag on forever. Somehow, what should have been a quick little pre-rehearsed speech had devolved into a Q-and-A session that, while not terribly long, had been massively draining. She could just see all of those important individuals judging her, and she hoped that they, composed of every sapient species on the planet, judged her favorably. The resulting anxiety gotten her so worked up that even now, as she tried to drift off to sleep, her twitchy wings kept her awake. It didn’t help that she wasn’t even in her own bed, or the impossibly comfy beds of the afterlife. But, at last, she did manage to drift to sleep. Flash Sentry was patrolling the halls of the Crystal Palace in both timelines. However, since the Empire had returned months earlier in one timeline, the resulting cascade of effects meant that he was nowhere near his doppelganger. One was patrolling near the southern, fourth floor corridor, watching for anypony who might try to approach Princess Twilight’s room. The other, since there was no Princess Twilight in his timeline, was instead patrolling through the third floor’s small library. Not being as large, elegant, or easily accessible as the main library on the first floor, the third floor library was rarely used. Still, it, like all the other public rooms, had to be patrolled. Now, Flash Sentry was rather talented in aeromancy - wind manipulation magic. Specifically, he was good at reading the flow of air. And while it did give him some extra skill in music, his prefered application of his ordinary talent was listening for movement during a night patrol. So, when he felt the flow of air in the library change, but no sound accompanied it, his gut instinct told him something was wrong. His first assumption, drilled into him by his sergeant, was that there was a unicorn or pegasus using their abilities to muffle the sound. He immediately turned to investigate, but kept walking at the same cadence so as not to alert whoever was there to his awareness. Following the twitch of his feathers, Flash Sentry rounded a corner and spotted a pony in a brown cloak. The pony saw him too. Panicking, the cloaked pony grabbed him with her green magic and slammed him into the crystal bookshelf and then turned and ran, never looking back. That particular bookshelf, however, was built with a structural flaw in the crystal. When Flash struck the stone, his metal armor cracked the crystal in just the wrong place. Loaded up with hundreds upon hundreds of books, the damaged shelves could no longer bear the weight. Metal shelves would have deformed on failure. Wooden shelves would have cracked and splintered, but would have flexed without collapsing. Crystal, however, is different. Terribly rigid and horribly inflexible, the only thing crystal could do on failure is shatter. Books and broken crystal rained down on the disoriented guard, pinning him to the ground and slicing his exposed skin to ribbons. But, despite being horribly maimed and having his lungs crushed, Flash Sentry did not pass out from shock. In fact, the adrenaline had given him an unusual clarity of the situation. Unless he could free himself from this pile, and soon, he would die. Ironically, it was that very thought that was his salvation. “Sheesh, what a mess. That shelf really did a number on you. Are there no health and safety standards in this building?” The pain faded, and Flash found the strength to look up at his savior. Six glowing eyes looked back down at him. “So, as you can probably guess, you're dying. But, if you want to live, I ask: do you want to play a game?” Flash nodded; what else could he have done? “Good.” Magic surrounded the books and crystal shards and pried them off. More magic spread around Flash’s body. “So, right now, your body is being kept alive by a spell I placed on you, and that spell is being powered by feeding on your own magic. You cannot die until that spell wears off, but without help, you will die for certain if it does.” She finished prying the books off of him. “So you better get to a doctor. How long do you have to live, before you run out of magic? I don't know, but the clock is ticking, soldier. The clock. Is. Ticking!” Flash Sentry picked himself off the ground and stood on three legs, since one of them was broken. Yet, despite his (no longer bleeding) wounds and his (strangely painless) leg break, the soldier hobbled forwards. The idea of survival filled him with determination. The death goddess smiled as she watched him leave, knowing that he wouldn't die. The “game” was rigged heavily in his favor, after all. She looked about. Where was she? Even having done this so many times already, Sparkle was only navigating by death calls and had no clue where she’d end up. Landmarks tended to be her biggest clues, but she wasn't well traveled enough to recognize many places. The crystal around her was a big clue. A feeling of dread descended upon her, and rightly so. She was in the Crystal Empire. Memories of the Crystal Heart shattering her flashed through her mind. Her chest tensed. Her jaw clenched. Her legs locked into place. And then she buried most of that fear with magic. Twilight would be mad that she was messing with her own head again, but Sparkle didn't care at the moment. She took a second to take stock of her situation. If she was in the Crystal Empire, the heart was sure to be active, and yet it wasn’t even attacking her. She didn’t know what that meant. Maybe her ascension gave herself some immunity to the heart’s effects, maybe her improved illusions could fool even the heart or at least confuse it, or maybe it was something else entirely.  But one thing was certain, she wasn’t sure she wanted to stick around to find out. But, there was something else nagging at her. Why was Flash Sentry under the bookshelf in the first place? And what was that strange feeling in the air? Now that she’d noticed it, she couldn’t ignore it at all. It felt like... well, there was no other way to describe it other than an impossibly large collection of souls. It wasn’t her nature as an aspect of Death that moved her six hooves. It was curiosity and her soul’s ravenous hunger that drove her forwards. Unfortunately, with her reasonable fear suppressed, Sparkle did the illogical thing and followed her faulty gut instinct and the “scent” of those souls. “Cobalt, Thorn, we have a mystery to solve.” Sunset Shimmer, Sunset Shimmer, and Sunset Shimmer had stepped out of the mirror portal. Each one was unaware of the other two, and each of the three cast the same spell. Sunsets one and two detected a strong response from the southern, fourth floor corridor of the Crystal Palace. Sunset number three detected a weaker pull from the third floor instead. Numbers one, two, and three immediately bolted for the sources they detected. The first two found themselves before the room of Princess Twilight, goddess of life, and Princess Twilight Sparkle, goddess of magic and friendship. Inside both rooms (the same room, really), they found a crown bearing the element of magic - one in the form of a tree, and the other in the form of a star. They both quickly grabbed the Elements of Magic and bolted, only to be pursued by Twilight and Twilight Sparkle. The third Sunset Shimmer had worse luck. She could not find the artifact her spell had detected, and had to make a retreat. In the midst of her search, she’d had to flee from a guard that had spotted her. She hoped that she hadn’t hurt him too badly, but she’d heard the crystal break. She’d waited a few moments to see if the coast was clear, and when she had a moment, she bolted, found another hiding spot, and repeated. Seeing an opportunity, she bolted again. Sunset came to a dead stop. There, in the intersection of two corridors, were a pony and two massive figures. Sunset had barely processed that there was something there before she was fleeing in the opposite direction. Unfortunately for her, it was the direction that the three figures were walking. “I wonder what her hurry is?” Cobalt asked. “No idea. Let’s keep moving.” Sunset Shimmer, Sunset Shimmer, and Sunset Shimmer all reached the portal that they had come from. The Sunset that had stolen the star-shaped element of magic entered first. Seconds later, the tree-element stealing Sunset entered, having been delayed slightly longer by the more aggressive Twilight. The last stumbled through the portal a full six minutes later. Unfortunately for them, there was a problem with the mirror. Sunset Shimmer, the original, had fled into the human world before the rift in the timelines had appeared, and the rift had not extended to that world. Sunset Shimmer was not affected by the phenomenon, and had aged more slowly in the human world due to the different relative times. When she had returned home for the first time, she’d been split among the timelines, since each one was equally her home, creating three doppelgangers. That wasn’t unusual either, as everyone alive at the moment of the split had a doppelganger, guaranteed. What was unusual was that they decided to return to that human world. Three Sunset Shimmer's, each at and in a different time, trying to go through a portal to the same point in space-time. The mirror didn’t care. It saw each of them as a unique passenger and nothing more. So, the first Sunset stumbled out of the portal, only for another to fall on top of her. Panicking at having been chased and spontaneously duplicated, both newly re-humanized mares fled for their home on Earth. By the time the third Sunset appeared, only to flee to the same home, the first two were already long gone from the scene. Sparkle gazed at the crystalline surface of the mirror. It was the same mirror she’d used to go to Twilight’s timeline originally, having been transported to the Empire. She’d seen the orange mare disappear through it, so Sparkle assumed that she was originally from Twilight’s timeline. And while that was just as true as saying she was from Sparkle’s own time, that wasn’t the case here. Sparkle didn’t know how wrong she was. “Come on, let’s go pay Twi a visit,” she said. “I heard that she was at a summit up here tonight.” Thorn and Cobalt nodded, thinking along the same lines as Sparkle. Together, they strolled into the reflective surface of the mirror.