Walking through the streets of Canterlot Eventide imagined they made for an unusual sight. Princess twilight Sparkle, Starlight Glimmer, a dozen royal guards and Eventide herself, dressed in a long black cloak with the amulet around her neck, an inhibitor on her horn and manacles on her legs. Her freedom hadn't been part of the deal and her escort was taking no chances. While they had been willing to grant her the amulet to get her back on her feet it had come with the caveat of her wearing an inhibitor at all times to prevent her casting spells. A few ponies had stopped and stared as they made their way through the streets, quickly ushered on by guards but no doubt curious as to what was going on. Between her earlier actions and her current appearance Eventide imagined that her incarceration would be public knowledge by the end of the day. Not that it mattered.
"I thought we agreed it would be just the three of us," she snapped at Twilight while observing the guard retinue. An equal split of all three tribes.
"Your request was that Celestia stayed away, I'm sorry ,Eventide, but considering your recent actions-"
"Spare me your condescending prattle, Sparkle, the only reason I'm helping you is to make sure Flurry is safe. After that you and I will be settling things between us, once and for all." She barely cared about what Twilight had to say, chances are she would just spout off the same nonsense as before, the same lies and half truths. "We're here anyway, It's all set up in the basement of the old house." How fitting that the very place it had all begun would bear witness to its conclusion.
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The retinue marched in single file down the staircase and into the basement, it was a testament to the size of the room that it was able to accommodate everypony and still have plenty of space to move around.
"Twilight! Starlight! Evey!" Flurry called as they entered the basement. She was thankfully unharmed, the ritual was yet to be completed. "What's going on down here Evey? And why are you wearing the amulet again!? Twilight, why is she wearing the amulet again?" Flurry stormed up to her aunt and, to Eventide's amusement, jabbed an accusatory hoof into her chest. "How could you let her wear it again Twilight? It made her do such awful things the last time she had it on!"
"Flurry," Twilight sighed, "we need you to head back to the castle while we sort things out down here. Eventide has been dabbling in some very unstable and exceedingly dangerous magics, we needed her assistance to stop them, but I promise that as soon as she has fixed this she will be removing the amulet and returning to the hospital." Twilight pushes past her niece and joined Starlight at the center of the room, staring in awe at Eventide's handiwork. "You made all these?"
"Don't sound so surprised Sparkle!" Eventide snapped. "I know I wasn't a magical prodigy like you or Starlight, but I was smart and determined. I wasn't the little idiot that you thought I was!"
"I never thought you were stupid, Evey. I knew you were a bright young filly and I hoped to nurture that intelligence," twilight turned away from the glowing mirror at the center of the room and wound up nose to nos with Flurry. "I thought I told you to get to safety?"
"Safety? What's going on here, Twilight? There's dark magic and multiple alicorn amulets, Evey's in chains and from the sounds of things you want her to do something very dangerous. I'm not leaving until I know she's safe!"
"Flurry please-"
"Leave her," Evey growled. "If she's going to be stubborn don't waste time arguing with her. Just get this damn inhibitor off of my horn so I can close the portal up and call it a day. Shouldn't take more than a minute, it's a lot easier to break things than it is to build them in the first place." Twilight nodded to one of the guards who proceeded to slip the inhibitor off of Evey's horn. She breathed a deep sigh of relief and looked at the mirror, it would likely be ready in an hour at most. "Right then, let's settle this." To the credit of both Twilight and Starlight they both noticed the malice in Eventide's voice and managed to raise their shields in time, everypony else was not so lucky. A great nova of red energy erupted from Evey's horn, knocking all of the guards and Flurry to the ground, unconscious. The energy cascaded harmlessly off of Twilight and Starlight's shields, but that was fine by Eventide, she hadn't been expecting this to be easy. A second blast from her horn shattered the chains of her manacles and freed her legs.
"Eventide, no! Think of all the progress we'd made, think of all the ponies that you're putting in danger, think of-" Starlight pleaded to no avail, Eventide had heard this speech enough times today already that she knew it was nothing more than hollow platitudes intended to throw her off.
"Think of how I finally defeat the great and arrogant Twilight Sparkle? Think of how at the end of this day she will be gone and my mother will have returned?" Evey smirked, it had been all to easy too convince Celestia to keep her distance. She didn't fancy her chances against two alicorns, but she was certain that this time she could take Twilight on by herself.
"Is this really how you want to be remembered, Evey? As a selfish young mare who valued revenge over the safety of Equestria? Evey, you can't beat me, we proved that already. All you're doing here is letting Tirek win!"
"What can I say Sparkle? I'm a fast study. I thought I'd take a leaf out of your own playbook, if I can't defeat you by raw power alone... then I'll beat you with guile!" Beams of red light shot from Eventide's horn in every direction, her opponents' shields held strong but this time they weren't her targets. Each beam struck one of the mirrors scattered about the room and in unison the surface of each rippled like water. "Without me you don't have a snowballs chance in Tartarus of stopping the ritual, Sparkle! So catch me if you can!" Not giving Twilight a chance to stop her, Eventide dove through the closest mirror, disappearing from the room and into another world.
"Starlight! Get everypony to safety, I'm going after her," before the unicorn could answer, Twilight was already across the room and through the portal Evey had fled through.
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As Twilight tumbled out of the portal she instantly realized that she was no longer a pony. Her body felt poorly suited to being a quadruped and she could no longer feel her magic. She felt vaguely human shaped but was much shorter and younger than she had been at CHS. She just about had time to register that she was in a forest of some kind before a female figure ran at her with a tree branch. Twilight raised her hands to block her attacker's swing and soon both girls were grappling for control of the weapon. Both girls wore green tunics and stood at the base of a statue of a hooded humanoid figure, the lower surface of the statue serving as the portal back to Equestria.
"How does it feel Twilight?" her opponent snarled with a voice unmistakably Eventide's. "How does it feel to have to fight me without your magic?" As the two of them wrestled across the clearing twilight realized they were standing amidst some kind of ruin, triangular patterns engraved on various surfaces, it would no doubt have been a fascinating place to study were it not for her present predicament. "The great and powerful Princess of books, finally out of her element!" Eventide cackled, clearly taking the upper hand in the duel. With one final pull, Eventide wrenched the branch from Twilight's hands and swung it at her head, the princess barely ducking in time to avoid the blow.
"You don't have to do this, Evey!" Twilight pleaded. "You're better than this, Evey, you still have a chance to change, a chance to do the right thing!" She backed off towards the center of the clearing as Eventide wildly swung her makeshift weapon.
"Do the right thing?" Eventide gave out a little giggle that sent shivers up Twilight's spine. "But I am doing the right thing! I'm defeating the traitor who has been lying to Celestia for years on end! With you out of the picture I can find my father, convince Celestia of your trickery and free my mother! I can still be the hero here, Twilight! All I need is for you to be gone!" Eventide dropped her branch and ran up to a pedestal in the clearing. Twilight hadn't noticed it before but it appeared as though it held some kind of sword, with a weapon like that Eventide could actually pose a serious threat. Twilight quickly began looking for a weapon of her own but was out of luck, the sword seemed to be the only thing at hand. "After all these years, justice shall be dealt!" Eventide grabbed the sword and tried pulling it from its podium, only to find it was well and truly wedged in. She gave a quick curse then darted back towards the portal. Twilight ran to head her off but Eventide reached it first, leaping through with Twilight following just behind.
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Eventide rolled out of the portal and back into the basement, she instantly channeled a spell and fired it into the portal but to her disappointment her blast struck just after Twilight crossed the threshold, the surface of the portal becoming inert behind her.
"Evey! Stop this madness before somepony gets seriously hurt!" A blast of energy shot from the alicorn's horn and over Eventide's shoulder, narrowly grazing her. Apparently she had finally succeeded at getting Twilight mad, that was the first offensive spell her aunt had cast all day.
"Not a chance, Sparkle! This ends with one of us dead or banished!" Eventide lowered her horn and charged at Twilight, the alicorn reflexively raising a shield to block her, Eventide predicted the move though and teleported straight past Twilight and through another portal.
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Following Eventide, Twilight was thankful that in this world she was still an alicorn. Everything else about it though was foreign to her. Great glass towers and neon lights, floating metal objects that whizzed through the air like the cars from the human world. The world appeared far more advanced than the Equestria she knew, that much was obvious, but at the same time she could feel magic flowing through her body in abundance, like and untapped resource ripe for the taking. This time though Eventide was nowhere to be seen, she had apparently abandoned the portal (this time built into the side of a transparent glass box, barely large enough to accommodate a single pony). She quickly surveyed the area for some evidence of where Eventide had gone and quickly heard screams and sirens nearby. Taking flight, she rushed to the scene of the commotion.
Eventide cackled madly as she flew above the chaos. A great pair of leathery wings, composed of pure magic, sprouting from her back. Below her ponies rushed about like ants as she set fire to her surroundings, so far she hadn't caused any real harm. She'd disrupted traffic, set fire to a few empty cars, set the corners of a few buildings on fire, nothing that would cause any immediate harm to the populace. The ponies here might be technologically advanced but clearly they had no experience dealing with magic.
"Eventide! Stop!" Twilight commanded as she flew into sight.
"Make me! Eventide retorted. "I can keep this up all day, Sparkle! Sooner or later you're going to have to actually try and stop me!" As Twilight began suppressing the fire with her magic, Eventide alighted and flew off further into the city, spreading flames wherever she went. The ponies here, all earth ponies Twilight noted, stared in fear and awe at the two 'alicorns', some running for safety, others cowering where they stood. Quickly realizing Eventide could spread chaos faster than she could control it, Twilight gave chase and began firing shot after shot through the air at her opponent.
"Now that's more like it, Sparkle!" Eventide laughed before disappearing from the air in a burst of red magic. Twilight sensed a burst of magical power back at the portal and teleported after Eventide, arriving just in time to see her leaping back through the portal.
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Starlight teleported the last of the unconscious ponies upstairs and returned to the basement just in time to see Eventide flying out of one of the mirrors shooting a blast of energy over her shoulder. Twilight followed her almost instantly, and the two ponies flew across the room straight into another one of the mirrors, gone just as suddenly as they had appeared. Starlight stared at the space where they had been for a few moments before turning her attention to the mirror that the two of them had come through. Where Eventide's magic had struck it the mirror had lost all traces of its former magical power. Starlight carefully placed one hoof upon its surface to confirm her suspicions. Just as surely as her earlier spell had opened all of the portals, her last spell had closed this one.
"Evey, you wouldn't dare...would you?" Starlight muttered to herself, considering the implications.
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Scootaloo was carefully tending the flowerbeds of the memorial garden when she heard the sound behind her. She leaped backwards just in time to avoid being hit by the pair of alicorns that exploded out of the base of Celestia's grave and crashed into the garden. One bore a striking resemblance to Dr Twilight Sparkle, while the other looked a lot like Sunset's daughter.
"Eventide?" She asked, but her words went unheeded as both alicorns began darting around the garden, firing off beams of magic at each other. Scootaloo ducked for cover beneath a park bench, watching in awe as the two ponies fought one another. Eventide had mentioned that there were many other Equestria's out there, judging by how different these two ponies were to her friends she imagined they must be from some unknown world she didn't know of.
"Why. Won't. You. Die!" The Eventide like alicorn screamed, breaking the statue of Celestia off of the grave with her magic and swinging it about like a club at her opponent. The Twilight alicorn fired a beam of magic into it, reducing thee statue into shrapnel to the irritation of Eventide. Her weapon gone, Eventide darted for the base of the grave and disappeared through its surface, Twilight hot on her tail.
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Four children looked on in wonder from the door of the room. They had been told that they were allowed to venture any part of the old country house but this room and so had understandably investigated it at the first given opportunity. They had been surprised to find the only object present in the room was an antique wardrobe, but this surprise paled in comparison to what they felt when two women burst through the doors of the wardrobe, their hands about each others throat.
"I'm stronger than you, Sparkle!" the younger of the two women screeched, her hair an unnatural mix of red and blue. "Life on the road made me strong, it made me tough! I may not have your alicorn constitution, but I have a lifetime of experience, exploring the world and fending for myself! What do you have, Sparkle? A lifetime of books and sitting on a throne!"
"I have my friends! And I'll do anything to keep them safe!" the elder woman shouted back, wresting her opponent off of her. The elder of the two had an equally unnatural hair color, a mix of purple and pink.
"Oh, spare me your friendship lessons, Sparkle! They were cute when I was a little filly, but now I can see them for the lies they are!" The younger woman punched the elder in the gut, sending her stumbling backwards in pain. Rather than follow up on the success of her attack though she turned and ran for the wardrobe, disappearing among the old coats and furs inside. Though still reeling from the sucker punch, the other woman was back on her feet and followed her into the depths of the wardrobe.
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In the halls of a great temple the two alicorns fought, Eventide had pulled a metallic cylinder from one of the walls and now wielded the strange object in her magic, an intense beam of red energy extending like a blade from one end. Whenever it came close to Twilight she felt it singe her feathers and hair, the magical beam giving off an unearthly heat.
"Give it up, Sparkle! Time's running out and you still aren't giving it your all! Fight me, Sparkle! Fight me!"
"No, Evey!" Twilight dodged away from the unicorns weapon, relying exclusively on defensive spells and non-lethal blasts of magic. "Killing you solves nothing! If you refuse to close the portal to Tirek's world then all of Equestria will suffer for your actions! I still believe you can be a good pony, Evey, you just need to trust me!"
"Trust you? The last pony who trusted you was banished to the Moon for a thousand years while her name was dragged through the mud! I'd sooner trust Tirek than trust you!" Hurling the weapon at Twilight with wild abandon, Eventide once more made for the portal.
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Twilight and Eventide dueled through the air above Canterlot as a furious battle raged beneath them. Ponies fought in the streets and battlements below them, armed with rapiers and axes, spears and pikes. Cries of 'death to the tyrant' and 'death to the pretender' echoed up into the sky, but Twilight paid them no heed, her attention was fixed exclusively on Eventide, making sure that the instant she tried to flee, she would be ready to follow.
"It's funny," Twilight mused, not expecting Eventide to listen. "This takes me back to something that happened about twenty six years ago."
"Oh?" Eventide answered, apparently not totally disinterested in what she was saying.
"Back then of course I was fighting across time rather than space, but the principle is still the same. Starlight thought that the world had turned its back on her, that she needed to destroy everything and start afresh. But she saw the light, Evey, I showed her that there was a better way, and I'm sure I can show you too!"
"That's the difference between me and Starlight though, isn't it? Starlight was wrong, she was making a bad decision with terrible consequences, when you finally gave up fighting you managed to show her how wrong she was! But I'm different, Sparkle! I'm in the right, I have the moral high ground! When you finally give up I won't roll over and grab defeat out of the jaws of victory!" The two ponies parted in the air, both dodging a blast of energy from a third combatant. Turning to face the new threat they found themselves not longer alone as two more alicorns, one clearly Celestia while the other appeared to be this world's Cadance, flew past them, engaged in a duel of their own. "Well things suddenly got a little crowded for my tastes, Sparkle. Time for a change of scenery!" And once more Eventide was off.
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"How much longer before you concede, Sparkle?" Eventide asked as the two of them emerged into a collection of eclectic city streets. "If you won't fight me properly you're only hurting your cause." Twilight flew after her but was quickly disoriented by the strange nature of the world she was in. High above her where the sky should be, there instead extended a second set of streets and buildings, as though the roof of the world was an upside down city. Curiously this world appeared home to humans and other various creatures that Twilight could barely begin to describe, mostly humanoid but in various shapes and sizes. Despite the seeming abundance of these humanoids both Twilight and Eventide had remained in their natural forms, the natives barely paying any attention to their presence.
"If there's any hope of getting you to see reason then I'll keep on fighting, Evey!"
"What if I cut you a deal? Surrender now and I promise that I will close the portal upon my return, Equestria will be safe from Tirek, Twilight, all you have to do is give up." While Twilight considered her offer, Eventide fired off another beam of magic in Twilight's direction, the alicorn so taken off guard that she barely managed to avoid the shot. "A word of warning, Sparkle!" Eventide cackled as her opponent dodged for cover. "This world's inhabitants are a little ornery, very quick to anger if you know what I mean! I wouldn't stick around any longer than you have to!"
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Time and time again Starlight watched as Twilight and Eventide darted from mirror to mirror. With every flight Evey deactivated the mirror they had been fighting in, but even at the rate they were going there was still an abundance of worlds left for her to flee to. Despite Starlight's best efforts she had found no way to deactivate the mirrors with her own magic, or to interrupt the ritual that was slowly empowering the new portal. She had no way to tell just how long the portal had left before the spell was completed, but judging by the intense light it was now emitting she didn't imagine that it would take much longer.
Her attempts at moving the mirror had been in vain, while all of the other mirrors were easy enough to levitate around the room, the one held in the grip of the alicorn amulets was completely immovable. She could perhaps try teleporting it somewhere inhospitable, like a volcano or the bottom of the sea, as soon as the ritual was completed, but that worked on the assumption that a magically empowered Tirek would be vulnerable to mundane hazards. With all of the potential magic he might be holding onto it was quite probable that he would emerge unscathed. There had to be some other way to defeat him, some trick or ruse that would stop him from ever reaching Equestria. Starlight had no idea how long it would take Tirek to invade once the portal was formed, but judging from the urgency the princesses had been speaking with, she probably wouldn't have long. As Twilight and Eventide made another pass through the room, a thought popped into her head. What if she could kill two birds with one stone?
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The two of them emerged into a barren wasteland, volcanic seams in the ground spewing magma into the air at regular intervals. The sky above was heavy with clouds of ash, completely blocking out the sun. The world was illuminated only by the red hot veins that crisscrossed its surface.
"I never did work out what happened here, you know," Eventide mused as she flew away from the monolith the portal had formed on. "Oh, there were signs of civilization, clearly pony culture, but I never could find what happened to the inhabitants."
"Evey, please look around you! If you allow Tirek to invade then a fate like this is what lies in store for Equestria!" Eventide made a great show of rubbing one hoof against her chin, as if in deep thought.
"There're no bodies though, Sparkle. That's the curious thing about this world, the whole place seems dead but there aren't any dead bodies. I looked around and I kept thinking I'd stumble upon some sort of mass grave, some scene of battle or some heroic last stand. But no, there's nothing here, just one great dead wasteland." Twilight tried to follow Eventide but her niece teleported back to the monolith. This time though, instead of running straight through it she erected an orb of magic around it, cutting herself off from Twilight. "I think you'll like it here Sparkle, one great big mystery waiting to be solved!"
"Evey, what are you doing?" Twilight asked in panic as she landed at the edge of Evey's barrier. She began starting to tear it down with her own spells, but it was clear that Evey was putting her all into maintaining it.
"I'm not a monster, Sparkle, I don't kill ponies. I'm simply granting you the same courtesy that you granted my mother. Actually, I'm being a lot more lenient than you were. Why when the portal naturally reopens in twenty odd moons you'll be able to come right home! Of course I can't remember the exact date this one's due to open next, so I'm afraid you'll have to check it every day," she flashed Twilight a wicked smile, "try not to stray too far."
"You don't have to do this, Evey!" Twilight yelled, slamming her hooves against the barrier.
"You're right, Sparkle, I don't have to do this." She leaned right up to the edge of the shield and gave Twilight one last smile. "But I want to," ignoring any further protestations from the princess, Eventide turned round and sauntered through the portal back to Equestria.
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Alone in the basement, with Twilight Sparkle safely trapped behind her barrier for at least a few minutes longer, Eventide let out a great sigh of relief. She'd won, Twilight was defeated, not by force or overwhelming power, but by a simple act of trickery, just as she had once tricked Trixie. Once the portal was closed, Twilight would be out of her hair for good, her vengeance would be complete and she could finally get on to the important part of her work; reuniting her family.
"Goodbye, Twilight Sparkle, goodbye forever," mustering her magic Eventide took great pleasure in casting the portal closing spell. She would savor this moment, record it to her memory forever, this was the moment that Eventide Shimmer won. A bolt of red energy leaped from her horn towards the portal, sealing Twilight's doom once and for all. As it left her horn though her eyes widened in terror, an aura of turquoise magic taking hold of the mirror and yanking it abruptly to the side. Her terror grew into fully fledged horror as she realized that with the mirror gone the path of her magic now intersected with something else, the mirror at the center of the room. Unable to stop her spell or even change its course she could only stand and watch as her magic collided with her incomplete masterpiece, the magic surging across its surface and down into the amulets powering the spell. With an ear splitting crack, the surface of the mirror exploded into useless shards of glass, the scroll and hair samples burst into flames and the amulets dropped to the ground, no longer supplying power to the spell.
"No!" Eventide screamed at the top of her lungs. "How? Who? Why?" She sprinted over to the ruins of her work, frantically trying to piece the shards of broken mirror back together in their frame, taking no notice of the cuts she was sustaining to her hooves in the process.
"It's over, Eventide," Starlight sighed in relief as she emerged from the shadows, carefully placing the mirror Twilight was still inside of, facing away from Eventide in case she tried to seal it again. "For the sake of everyone, you should take off the amulet and get back to the hospital, I want to help you, Eventide, but you're going to need to work with me." At the base of the destroyed mirror, Eventide continued fumbling with the pieces of broken mirror in her hooves. "Eventide?" Starlight cautiously asked, uncertain if the unicorn had heard her. "Evey?"
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It had taken a little effort but Twilight had managed to break down Eventide's barrier. As she stepped through the portal she was surprised to find it facing away from the center of the room. With no immediate sign of Eventide she carefully crept round the mirror, not wanting to fall victim to a surprise attack. As she turned the corner though it wasn't Eventide that she saw, but Starlight Glimmer.
"Starlight!" Twilight called in surprise. Suddenly realizing that the room was now being illuminated by a ball of light in the air as opposed to the ominous red glow of the ritual. "What happened? Where's Evey?"
"It's over," Starlight sighed with palpable sorrow, "the mirror's destroyed and with it gone I imagine Tirek won't have any way of reaching us. As for Eventide..." Starlight pointed one hoof at the center of the room. Amidst the ruined remains of the mirror Eventide sat on her haunches, rocking slowly back and forth, constantly muttering under her breath. The amulet was still tightly clasped around her neck, but most of the red had faded from her eyes and the wings on her back had shriveled away into nothingness.
"Is she-"
"She seems fine physically," Starlight explained. "She didn't suffer any magical backlash from destroying the mirror, but..." she turned and regretfully looked at the catatonic mare. "She's been out of it ever since. I've tried talking to her, I've tried reasoning with her... it's like she's not even there. She's broken, Twilight, she's broken and I have no idea how to go about fixing her."
"Don't worry, Starlight, we'll make sure she gets all the help she needs." Twilight turned and began surveying the remaining mirrors that were still active. "Who knows? Perhaps if we are lucky one of these leads to CHS, maybe we could get Pinkie to help?" Twilight couldn't help but feel sorry for Eventide, after everything she'd done, Twilight had every reason to hate her, but looking at her rocking back and forth like a scared child, Twilight couldn't help but reminded of how Sunset had first been when she had returned to Equestria twenty six years ago.
"How did it happen, Twilight? The incident with Sunset I mean. How did it really happen?" Starlight asked as the two of them stared at Eventide as she curled up on the floor.
"Exactly as we told her it did, Starlight, exactly as we told her."