//------------------------------// // Stealing Harmony (Part Two) // Story: The Sun Never Sets // by Mr Fislewait //------------------------------// The sight of the banners disgusted me, I tried to hold it down but I wound up vomiting what little was left in my stomach onto the floor, much to the surprise of Vinyl. As I began to choke up my thoughts fluttered to the obvious truth of my situation; in every world I had visited some enemy of Equestria had succeeded where they were supposed to have failed, why should I have been exempt from that rule? To the side of my head I could hear the scratching of the stone on the chalkboard and turned to see what Vinyl wanted to say. "Are you okay?" "No," I shook my head back and forth vigorously, "no I'm not okay. I destroyed the world, Vinyl. I mean, is anypony else even alive? What happened? How did she- I win?" "Wasn't you. Was a different Sunset Shimmer," she meant it in earnest as well, there was a sympathy in her eyes and from the manner that she was tracing one hoof back and forth in the dust I guessed she was feeling guilty about her earlier treatment of me. "Not different enough, Vinyl, now answer the damn question." A terrifying sense of clarity had come over me, it would have been easy to pretend that this was the handiwork of a completely different Sunset Shimmer from a completely different world but the honest truth was no doubt that the only difference between me and her was that nopony stopped her from claiming the Element of Magic. "The other Sunset stole Princess Twilight's crown and ran off with it to some other world called CHS." "Wait, Princess Twilight? Personal student of Princess Celestia? Element of Magic?" That made no sense, all of the previous worlds had gone wrong due to somepony else being there instead of Twilight. How had this one gone wrong? "That's her. She followed Sunset to this CHS but two days later Sunset returned as some freaky red alicorn wearing the Element on her head and with a small army of mind controlled civilians in tow." Vinyl paused as though expecting me to question her on the matter but I kept my silence and motioned for her to continue. "The fight was pretty bloody, unarmed ponies against royal guards, apparently it was fairly one sided until Sunset turned the Element of Magic against Luna and Celestia. Even a corrupted Element still has a lot of power, perhaps even more than normal, she used the magic to banish Celestia and Luna to the Moon," Vinyl gave a great sigh and sunk to the floor, hiding her head between her hooves as she continued writing. "Things just got worse from there. Nopony was strong enough to stand in her way and soon enough Equestria was hers. That first day after banishing the sisters she raised the Sun but the following night she couldn't lower it. She began getting crazier and crazier every day, strange proclamations, ordering ponies to continue on as though nothing had changed, even as the Sun was slowly baking all of Equestria beneath it she insisted that everything was fine and anypony that said otherwise was punished. She had the remaining Elements of Harmony brought before her and cut their horns off so that they could never stand against her again-" "Hold up, horns? Who were the other Elements?" "Lyra Heartstrings, Twinkleshine, Moon Dancer, Minuette and Lemon Hearts," and there it was. In this world Twilight was still Princess, she still had a good group of friends to stand with her against any danger, but in the world of CHS she would have had nothing. The only one of those names I recognized as going to CHS was Lyra and I had barely done anything to her during my reign as queen of the school. When Twilight turned up she probably wouldn't have noticed that your five friends had been broken up, hay she probably wouldn't even have known who they were. She would probably have had to stand against me alone, nobody to help her win the crown, nobody to clear her name from the rumors being circulated about her and nobody to help her fight Sunset Shimmer. "Want me to continue?" "Please." "Not much more too it. Sunset kept things going like that until there was nothing left of Equestria to govern. Everypony who was still alive had run away to far off lands where the sun was cooler, or taken shelter in the mountains and dark corners of the world. Ponies are still alive out there, but they are in hiding. Then one day Sunset leads me to the top of the Canterhorn, takes off her crown and turns into a little amber unicorn that looked just like you. Takes a walk, takes a jump and then splat. Sunset pancake." Vinyl made a gesture of slamming one hoof into the ground to accompany the end of the story and though mute managed to blow a raspberry into her other hoof to give an accompanying sound effect. "Why were you even there? How did you know her? What are you doing here of all places?" the questions rattled off one after another. I'd been interested in the histories behind the other worlds too but this one felt much more personal. "I was her chamberlain. When she came to power Blueblood put himself forward for the position but she got mad at him and ended up having him executed. Next two were volunteers, followed by five unlucky sods who got voted in. I got elected cause my name was pulled out of a hat." "What did you do that the others didn't?" "Didn't talk back to her, never raised my voice. By the end of it all she seemed to think of my as a friend, not even sure she knew what the word meant. After she offed herself I looted a few things from Canterlot and came back here, apparently this is where it started." Vinyl looked forlornly to the ruins of the upper floor. "Sunset said a lot of things in her sleep. She never said she killed Twilight though. I'm hoping one day the portal will open up again and Twilight will be waiting to come back through." Grabbing Vinyl roughly between my forehooves I stared deep into her red eyes. "The mirror is here? In the palace?" Vinyl nodded her head slowly. "Can I see it? I might be able to get it working, or find out how I got here or...or anything! Vinyl, I've been trying to find that mirror for weeks, I've been through Tartarus and back, you have to let me see it!" "Upstairs in the ruins of the throne room, knock yourself out. It isn't exactly going anywhere." The moment the message was finished I half sprinted, half scrambled across the floor of the room. I'd made no recovery from my week of work in the last world but this tiny new flame of hope gave me new energy. My body protested at the movement, aching at the joints and threatening to give out at any moment, but I didn't care. I finally had a shot at getting home, and I was going to make the most of it. ----------------------------------------- Vinyl hadn't been lying. Upstairs, exposed to the open air was the mirror, a little dirty but otherwise exactly as I remembered it. Beside it sat a small chest but when I entered the room my attentions was entirely on the mirror itself. My first test was a simple matter of touch to see if the mirror was currently active, unsurprisingly it was not. I was a little disappointed but not wholly surprised. I hadn't been expecting it to be as simple as just finding the mirror tapping my hooves together three times and magically returning home. So I began exploring other options. I don't know if Vinyl was scared of me, or sad for me, maybe she was giving me some space or maybe she couldn't stand being in the same room with somepony who looked the same as the mare who had destroyed her home. Whatever her reason was she left me alone with the mirror for what must have been hours as I tried to open the portal. My attempts started off simple and reasonable, mustering what little magic I had available to me to cast scans and spells of opening. I looked for unusual physical markings that I might have missed in my previous studies of the mirror. Switches, buttons anything that might allow a pony to influence the mirror. Hours after I had started I had resorted to casting random spells into its surface, speaking magical words out of foal's tales and slamming my hooves against the surface until they were red and bloody. I hadn't even noticed how bad my hooves had gotten until then. The keratin was broken and in places and had almost completely fallen away in others. The skin at the base of my legs appeared off colored and dead, frostbitten from repeated exposure to the cold over my weeks away. It was a heart wrenching experience. The one thing that had kept me going for the past few weeks had been the hope of finding my way home and now even that seemed to be robbed from me. If the mirror wasn't going to do anything until another the thirty moons had passed then what good was it to me? Perhaps I could find Celestia in the next world and see about having her help me get home but if past experience was anything to go by then it seemed likely that she would be indisposed in any awful version of Equestria I might end up visiting. I screamed in anger and kicked the chest next to the mirror, spilling its contents across the floor and chipping a large lump of hoof off my leg. I cursed at that pain and cradled the injured hoof against my chest. I was so mad I barely even noticed the technicolor glow that was beginning to spread across the room. As the light intensified my attention was turned to the contents of the chest, now strewn across the floor of the room. Six pieces of jewelry, one a crown the others all necklaces had begun to levitate up off of the floor and were floating towards me. Memories of my own attempt to use the Element of Magic flooded into my mind and I winced backwards from the approaching objects, raising my hooves to try and keep them away. Yet just as soon as the light show had started the room seemed to return to normal, bathed in the perpetual twilight of a frozen setting sun. I blinked and looked about the room to check if anything had changed, check that I hadn't just imagined the whole thing. Being attacked by angry Elements of Harmony would have been about par for the course for my guilt ridden mind. Cautiously checking out the room I saw that I had indeed knocked the chest over. Its contents though were not haphazardly spilled across the floor of the room though, nor were they floating ominously towards me. Instead, lying immobile upon the floor by my hooves was a golden diadem with six gems embedded within it. At the top of the crown sat the Element of Magic, its shape unmistakable, while beneath it the remaining five gems were arranged together to form my own cutie mark. Each of them shone with a different brightness, the red of loyalty being particularly radiant while the blue of laughter had almost faded to grey. Cautiously I lifted the crown in my magic and placed it upon my head. The feeling I felt as it came down upon the top of my head was not the same sense of pain and malice that had surged through my body at CHS though, instead I was filled with a great sense of purpose and desperation. This world's Sunset Shimmer may have ruined everything, but I might be able to fix some of her mistakes. Behind me I heard the scratching of Vinyl's blackboard. "What the hay happened up here?" was scrawled in large letters across her slate and she eyed the crown upon my head with palpable fear. "It's okay, Vinyl," I sighed. "I'm not her, I'm not going to hurt you." My eyes turned to the sun, perpetually shining into the room through the decimated masonry. "In fact, I think... I think I might be able to fix things here. Vinyl, I think I might be able to bring the Princesses back."