//------------------------------//
// Is Friendship 
// Story: Broken: Magic 
// by Knackerman 
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        Everything spun wildly around her, or at least it felt like it did. There was no up or down, no left or right, everything was in flux, ever shifting. It was hard to even tell if she were alive or dead. One minute she could feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing. The next; a snatch of music, a flash of light, an all consuming pain as though her body were one raw nerve being scraped by sandpaper. The world heaved wildly between being a realm of nothingness and being full of...everything, anything, all things mashed horribly together, a rushing cacophony of sound and color and light. Only one thing remained constant through it all, her head ached terribly. When she put her hooves to either side of it, she could feel her skull moving beneath her skin. It was almost as if it had been split in half. The thought was terrifying, but if that were the case then maybe she could...slowly, carefully, Twilight Sparkle put pressure on her head from the right and the left. The bone shifted sickeningly, crunching slightly as the two jagged halves met. She could feel them touching and a wave of horror and revulsion threatened to cause her to black out. Yet as the gash that exposed her mind closed, the pain eased, and the world around her resolved into a familiar void.
Cradling her head with care, Twilight looked around, trying to get her bearings. She seemed to be floating in a sea of nothingness. Every now and then an occasional flash of something halfway between light and darkness would flash, quick as a dying shadow in the distance, but aside from that there was little else. No land, no sky, no stars, just an endless grey fog extending into the distance in every direction. Part of her wondered if this was what it was like to be dead. She discovered that, if she willed it, she could move through the shrouding mists. The grey substance tingled and swirled as she moved through it but, besides the shattered unicorn herself, the mist was all that seemed to move in this place. “Hello!?” Twilight cried, “Is anypony out there? Is anypony there?!” The effort of talking shifted her bones painfully, one edge of her skull slipped against the other, opening just a crack.
Twilight Sparkle was sitting at a table with the rest of her friends. They all seemed very excited about something but Twilight herself was more angry than excited. Once again it seemed like nopony was listening to her, all of them wrapped up in their own little worlds, too busy to care about her worries and concerns. Spike was there too, playing with some silly little dolls. It annoyed Twilight so much that she couldn’t help slamming one hoof into the table and storming off to...nothingness. The image was gone. Once more Twilight found herself in the void. All those emotions and sensations had felt so raw, so real. The emptiness Twilight felt now was like a yawning ache deep inside compared to that world of explosive light and color. What was going on?
“Oh there you are!” called a cheerful voice that came from everywhere and nowhere, “I was wondering where you’d gotten off to. Ah, here, let me get that for you.” A hat was suddenly plopped on her head. It fit oddly. By the hats jaunty angle, Twilight realized she no longer had her horn. That was what had caused the gap in her skull, and likely what had caused it to split apart. The hat seemed to hold everything more or less back in place with odd convenience, but compared to everything else going on... .or not going on as the case may be, not so hard to accept. She reached one hoof up to touch it. It was soft. Was that a...propeller? Why would there be a propeller on a hat? “A perfect fit! Of course it would be though.”
“I’m sorry but, where are you?” Twilight could see nothing but mist, though the shadowy bolts of un-light seemed to be flashing by more frequently. Something not unlike snow began to fall upwards around her. “Where am I for that matter...”
“Twilight, how soon you forget! You’ve been here before.” The ‘snow’, for the lack of a better word, began to sleet into a single point and spread out around her. A place and something that might pass for time began to materialize around her. The ground was a checkerboard patchwork of many colors, the sky was full of pink, purple, and blue clouds. A sweet smell filled the air. In the distance, Twilight thought she could see what looked like buildings, but instead of resting on the ground they floated in the air. With sickening realization, Twilight found she was back in Ponyville. The Chaos capital of Equestria. Discord slowly took shape before her eyes, though his form was somewhat ghostly in this place, as if he were barely here. “This is your paradise, remember? I suppose it’s a little different from before. I thought it might be helpful if it had a familiar touch.” Discord smiled brightly, and for the first time it actually seemed genuine, almost friendly.
“My paradise? This horrible place?” Twilight tilted her head to one side, and her beanie shifted, moving her skull just a fraction.
She was sitting under a tree in late autumn. The wind was cold on her face, but after each gust the sun would warm her again. It was almost time for the traditional Running of the Leaves and she was really looking forward to participating. The pages of the book she had found on how to successfully run a marathon were crisp beneath her hooves. The text itself was quite engrossing and she found herself devouring word after word, whiling away her afternoon in the quiet embrace of her studies.
“Now, now, none of that.” Twilight felt rough claws on either side of her head, pulling her back from somewhere else. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, you and I. There’s no need to be coy anymore, I think. After all, the story is over and done, Chaos has triumphed and Order is done! This place is proof of that. Look around you! Chaos as far as the eye can see, raw and absolute!” Shadowy fireworks seemed to dance around Discord for a moment. Beyond the modified Ponyville, the grey nothingness sat gnawing at its edges. It really was only a very tiny bubble of what passed for reality that they were in.
Squinting her eyes, Twilight tried her best to pierce that dense fog. “I don’t see anything. There’s nothing but nothing out there.”
“Well exactly! This is how everything started and how everything ends. This is raw firmament we’re floating in, the very basic particles of existence! The chaotic potential we’re bathing in is absolutely staggering! Why, a gifted creator could shape almost anything, indeed everything from just a few particles of this stuff.” The Spirit of Disharmony swished his talons through a patch of mist as it drifted through their bubble, causing strange eddies and whirls of half realized nightmares and fantasies. “Can you wrap your mind around that Twilight?”
“I guess. I don’t see that it matters though. It’s all over. I don’t know how, but I seem to have destroyed everything. All my friends, Equestria. It’s all gone.” Twilight Sparkle raised her hooves in front of her face. She looked at them as if she were seeing them for the first time. “I ended the world.”
“Oh, don’t beat yourself up over it! The world is ending all the time! It was going to end one way or another, I would have seen to that.” Discord chuckled. “It was a good story, but I’m afraid not one of your better works. Plenty of disharmony and distress, I’ll admit, but everything fit together just a little too well, I thought. And what was that business about that grey pegasus’s mother? You know what, I don’t even want to know! It was probably terribly grizzly. I’m glad it’s over, frankly.” Something else seemed to take form briefly, just in the shadow of the spirit’s wings. Another pony floated beside him, though she was even less visible than he was. Indeed, she seemed to be fading in and out, like a signal just on the verge of being lost. Twilight found her eyes immediately arrested.
“Wh-who are you?” asked Twilight Sparkle. The other pony had a light purple coloration, almost shading to pink, and a flowing purple and white mane and tail that seemed like liquid smoke floating around her form. A strange cutie mark of a screw and a baseball was just visible on her flank. Her eyes were frighteningly mad, literal whirlpools swirling away in a head that had clearly seen better days. Her smile was pleasant enough though. She wore a hat just like Twilight’s.
“Oh her? I’m surprised she’s still here. That won't last much longer. She was successful you know. You were successful. She got what she wanted in the end.” When Twilight continued to look blank, Discord seemed to decide it was time to speak plainly. “Time doesn’t really mean anything here, but if it helps you understand, this little darling is you from next Tuesday morning.”
“She’s me? But...how?” Twilight looked down at her washed out body. It was true that they looked remarkably similar now that most of her color had been stripped to try and re-write the Book of the Broken. The only difference lay in their cutie marks.To Twilight’s horror, it seemed that the one she had earned as a filly was fading away. Her eyes grew wide with terror.
“Settle down, settle down!” Soothed Discord. “As I said, time doesn’t really count for much here. It would be more accurate to say that she is a possible you from a possible future. You are not the first Twilight Sparkle. There have been many before you. This one comes from a different story, one that ended with me breaking her mind completely.” Discord cradled the fading pony to his breast, where the pony with a screwball mark snuggled shivering. “I confess, I actually felt a little bad about what I did to her, especially given she views me as a father figure now. She seems to remember a bit of her old life, but so many of the details were lost or changed. It was a wonder she was able to shape a world at all.”
“She shaped a world?”
“Your world to be precise my dear. She wrote your story.” The draconequus stroked the pseudo Twilight’s insubstantial mane tenderly with one talon. She was fading more by the second. “She was the one that set down all your stories. But she couldn’t write it alone. You helped her a lot you know. The Book of the Broken wouldn’t have made half as much sense without your alterations. After it was finished,” here Discord giggled remembering, “she was so proud of it! She just had to share. I’m still surprised she was able to give it to Pinkie Pie without her realizing that she wasn’t the same Twilight. And oh my, all the times she interfered. I thought she was going to give away the entire game when she showed up at the Circe de Celestia, but no pony ever suspected her as anything more than a performer or an over enthusiastic patron. I thought for sure she would fail, but in the end, she got exactly what she wanted.”
Twilight was lost again, but as she watched, the other her seemed to finally flicker out of existence. Discord closed his talons around nothingness, a look of sadness spreading over his face as he opened his empty paws. “What did she want?”
“To cease to exist.” The Spirit of Disharmony half smiled, ears laid back against his long skull. “I...I am what I am Twilight. You have to understand that. I am Chaos and Disharmony. I am ultimately a creature of destruction.To me laws were made to be broken. Stories are written to end. I cannot be stopped. Everything you know, everything you love, it will all fall apart one day. The best you can hope for is to delay the inevitable.” Discord clenched his talons, opening and closing them spasmodically as he spoke. “If you didn't care for her stories, don’t blame her. When she realized what had been done to her, to her story, it completely decimated her mind. With nothing but madness and pain to guide her, she tried to change the past to alter the future, to avert the outcome of her story as best she could. The fact that she’s not here anymore and you are means that she succeeded. You have swapped places." As he continued speaking, Discord was slowly becoming more and more solid, as was the world around him. "It would appear that I will get my wish as well. There can be no Chaos without Order, Twilight. But the world will not end as it did for her, with all her friends my puppets, with everything she believed in destroyed. With me triumphant. This time the world will go on.”
“But it can’t go on!” Twilight screamed, her voice filled with more anguish than she had realized she felt. “The world is over! My friends are dead! And you,” she drew in a deep breath, tears spilling from her eyes,” you are triumphant! Chaos has destroyed Order, just as you said. There’s nothing left but to wait for my mind to snap like hers drifting in this living hell! Then, if I’m lucky, I’ll cease to exist too. That's what I have to look forward to, isn't it?! That's what drove her insane in the first place!” Twilight fell to her knees, clutching her head in agony.
“No, no Twilight. You’ve got it all wrong!” Discord shook his head, taking Twilight Sparkle by the shoulders. “She was a very troubled pony. She sacrificed your world, yes, but your world still exists. It’s in here,” he said as he touched her head with one claw, “and here.” he finished as he touched the spot on her chest over her heart. “As I say, you have to understand, I am a being of Chaos, disharmony and destruction are all I know. But you...you are a creature of Order, Twilight Sparkle. You have always been a creature of Order, and you will always be exactly who and what you were meant to be. Much as I hate the very concept of it, one cannot exist without the other. I cannot exist...without you. That we’re both still here means that there’s still a chance that the story will go on, even if it is only for just a little longer.”
The broken unicorn looked into the draconequus eyes and saw only sincerity. “So, somewhere everypony is still out there? Somewhere everypony is okay? I don’t understand, how is that possible? What are you saying?”
Discords intangible claws sank down through Twilight’s shoulders, dipping into her chest. She could feel them catch on something that pulled away with a sharp tug. As the Spirit of Disharmony pulled his claws out, something else came with them. “What I’m saying is- reality is what you make it.” In his claws he held a book that was more solid, more real than anything Twilight had ever seen. The cover of the book was shiny and new, absolutely blank. Just as she knew each of its golden pages would be. As the book opened, her eyes began to swirl with light, a grin spreading across her face. In that moment, for the first time perhaps in her entire life, everything was finally clear.
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Canterlot stood a crumbling mess. There were many ponies who had been injured. Fortunately it seemed that everypony was going to be okay, even if they were a little shaken by what they had witnessed. The damage from the changeling attack had been quite extensive. Who could have guessed that their Queen had managed to sneak into Canterlot and almost take over all of Equestria? Celestia had been powerless against her and the Elements of Harmony couldn’t even be brought into play. There hadn't been a disaster this dire since Discord’s escape from his stone prison. Yet the changeling horde had been driven back by the very thing that they would normally feed on, the love between two ponies.
Shining Armor and Princess Cadance’s marriage was going to go ahead, now that the threat to their happiness had been removed. Twilight Sparkle was so proud of the city of her birth. All of Canterlot pulled together to get the city and the palace back into shape for the long delayed wedding. Of course she did her part, simultaneously supervising the repairs and the final wedding preparations. Seeing her brother finally able to relax was reward enough for her. He’d been so distracted before, almost like a stranger...and she remembered how angry he had been when he had thought she was trying to ruin his special day. Those memories haunted her, but it was easy to drown them in work. Her friends helped of course. Rarity’s dresses were always stunning, Fluttershy’s choir of birds were pitch perfect, Applejack’s food was to die for.
Of course the ceremony itself was beautiful. Everything was perfect down to the finest detail, Twilight had seen to that. All of her friends were there and smiling. The sonic rainboom, as performed by Rainbow Dash, was the stunning icing on the proverbial cake. With that, it was Pinkie Pie’s turn. The pink party pony had truly outdone herself this time, hiring the famous DJ Pon3 to perform for the royal wedding reception. And Twilight herself sang the first song in honor of her dear brother and her childhood friends happiness.
The night was truly magical, everypony was enjoying themselves. Celestia and Luna mingled among their happy subjects and seemed to be having a good time. The upper crust of Canterlot were there as well. Rarity seemed to be sticking close to Mr. Fancy Pants and his entourage. There would be talk later, but as Fleur de Lis put one hoof possessively on Mr. Fancy Pants’ shoulder, Twilight doubted that the gossip would last long. It looked like there might be another wedding in the future if she could read anything from the look in the two high class ponies eyes.
Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, and Applebloom were there, having served as the flower fillies, it was only fair that they’d be allowed to stay up late and keep Spike company at the party. They had hoped to get cutie marks for doing such a good job scattering flowers, not once but twice, yet their flanks were still blank, even Sweetie Belle’s. Still, they seemed to be enjoying the party almost as much as Derpy Hooves. The usually clumsy pony was really enjoying herself, but she was on her best behavior tonight. With her mother supervising her, there was very little chance she could misbehave. The two looked strikingly similar. The only real way to tell them apart at a glance was to check their eyes. Derpy’s would still drift apart from time to time, much to the giggles of those around her, while her mothers remained still, kind and calm. Twilight couldn’t remember ever seeing Derpy as happy as she was tonight.
As her brother and Princess Cadance got into their chariot to drive off, Cadance tossing the bouquet to her bridesmaids - and one very determined Rarity - Twilight Sparkle couldn’t help but feel a warmth growing inside her heart. Love for her friends, her family, her hometown, for everypony in Equestria filled her heart. “Now this was a great ending.” said Twilight.
“Beg yer pardon?” asked Applejack.
“I said this was a great wedding.” said Twilight smiling to her friends.
“Oh yeah?” said Spike. “Just wait until you see what I’ve got planned for the bachelor party!”
Fireworks filled the night sky. The guests of honor may have left but it seemed the party might go on until dawn. The world, in all it’s beautiful chaos, spun on. But this story at least had come to a happy end.
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Putting the finishing touches on her masterpiece, a warmth flooded her mind, comforting and filling her with happy feelings. The propeller on her hat began to spin as she floated into the air. Her eyes danced with mad delight as she flew gently through a world bright and alive with chaos. Chocolate milk rain fell briefly from the sky, but it sleeted harmlessly around her, a little funneling into her mouth merely because she willed it. It was super tasty today! As she glided past floating houses and flying pigs, she saw who she was looking for seated in the middle of town. Of course it wasn't like she could lose him, she could feel him at the back of her mind whenever she wanted. Daddy was sitting in his favorite chair, enjoying the world that surrounded him at his leisure.
She squee'd as she realized all her friends were there too! It had taken so long to sew them back together and even longer to find all the pieces, but it had been completely worth it. Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy, their grey bodies resplendent gathered around daddy's favorite chair, sat bathing Discord with their attention. They couldn't take their eyes off him. Though that was probably because daddy hadn't let her to give them back their eyelids just yet. Oh! And Celestia and Luna were here too! They were never far from daddy these days, but it was nice to see they weren't crying for once. She had no idea why they cried so much, daddy treated everyone so well after all! He'd even made them skin they could wear whenever they felt like being social! It didn't fit them as well as their old skin, but she felt it was still a very thoughtful gift.
Why, with everypony here, she'd have a perfect audience for her latest story! She just knew the others would be just as thrilled as daddy! She floated down to Discord's throne and plopped herself right on his knee. Daddy pretended not to notice her at first, but couldn't help but laugh as he looked down into her smiling face. "What's this you've got here little one? Another one of your fantasies? Oh, this should be good for a laugh!" She could barely contain her eagerness as Discord's talons flicked through her latest work. It was full of monsters and mayhem and true love. There were even a few songs! She just knew he'd be pleased! "My, my my. You've truly outdone yourself this time. We'll have to share this one with all your little friends. I'm sure they'll love it." He smiled with his big, sharp teeth. His face was so handsome! How could anypony not love her daddy? 
"You and your stories always brighten up everyponies day."