Shattered Sky
It was a sad fact that the juggernaut of Equestrian governance did not stop for something as minor as a threat to the continued existence of the universe. Unless, of course, that threat was manifesting in Canterlot. In that case, the assorted bureaucrats, minor nobles, and other assorted functionaries would drop everything and panic as readily and as enthusiastically as any other group of ponies.
Thoughts such as these were how Celestia occupied the majority of her mind over the course of most mornings, this one being no exception. The admittedly cynical ruminations didn't just distract her from court proceedings she could have (and, on a few hilarious occasions, had) performed in her sleep. They also kept her from fretting over the very real threat to her world that, because of her duties, she could do nothing about.
The small part of the alicorn's awareness that was actually paying attention to the Morning Court nudged the rest. Bringing herself back to the audience chamber, the sun princess was pleasantly surprised to see an unassuming earth pony approaching her, unable to keep his gaze from wandering about the richly appointed room. He kept going until a forehoof hit the unexpected obstruction of the first step up to the throne. Realizing the narrowly avoided faux pas, the stallion backed up and bowed so low, so quickly, one might have thought that he'd lost a contact lens.
The usual crowd liked to have heralds announce them, but Celestia preferred a more personal touch with the common folk. "Hello, my little pony. What is your name?"
"S-slide Rule, Your Grace."
The alicorn smiled and added another tick to the appropriate column of her mental honorific tally. (6,042 this year.) "Please rise, Slide."
He did so with none of the haste with which he bowed. "As you command, milady." (27,311 this year, a favorite of the maids.)
With ease born of long practice, Celestia kept her smile balanced between the unnatural rictus that most smiles degenerated into when held for too long and the schadenfreude-induced smirk that the worst parts of her wanted to display. "Why are you keeping your head down?"
"I'm averting my eyes, milady." (27,312)
"She held back the urge to roll hers. "You don't have to, Slide. It's just the sun you shouldn't look at directly."
"A-as you say, Your Highness." (13,846 this year, a perennial mainstay) Swallowing his awe-filled anxiety, the young accountant brought his gaze up to meet that of the most beautiful and noble pony in the world, she who blurred the line between royalty and divinity.
Celestia added a dash of encouragement and nigh-maternal pride to her smile. "There. I'm quite flattered by your deference, Slide, but I don't want to be worshipped." She shifted a bit, her posture subtly less imposing, more casual. "Where are you from?"
The earth pony felt so relieved that his knees shook with released tension. He'd been terrified of offending the ruler of... of everything. That she would really be as kind as she seemed was almost to good to be true. "San Fratello," he burbled.
She nodded. "Ah. Lovely town, if you don't mind a bit of humidity." Judging by her pleased expression, she didn't. "I hope you aren't finding the mountain air too dry."
Slide Rule shook his head, all nervousness forgotten. "Not with the summer heat. It's lovely."
"I'm glad to hear it. What brought you to Canterlot?"
"Oh, just a business convention, nothing exciting. But when I heard that you would hold an audience with anypony who asked, well, it seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime!"
Genuine delight suffused Celestia. "I'm glad you took it. Now, it's been a pleasure, Slide Rule, but I'm afraid I have a number of other ponies who want to speak with me today. If you have nothing pressing?"
"I..." He looked away, blushing a bit. "Well, it's going to sound foalish—"
"I do not judge those who come before me, my little pony." Alright, that was a bald-faced lie, but she certainly didn't judge those ponies who came to her out of genuine need.
"Well, I just wanted to thank you, Your Majesty." (12,301) Slide kept his eyes down, smiling sheepishly. "I mean, every minute of your every day seems dedicated to making everypony's lives that much better and, well, how often does anypony think to thank you for it?"
The alicorn decided then that today was a good day, provided that it didn't end in spontaneous planar existence failure. "Not very," she admitted, "but I don't do it for thanks. I do it because somepony must, and for a very long time, nopony else could. But that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate it. Thank you, Slide. If only everypony was as considerate as you." The dark whispers this inspired made her suppress a chuckle. Oh yes, that would really nettle the usual suspects. Especially since it was true.
"Um, you're welcome." The stallion looked back up, intent on pressing one last glimpse of the Princess in his memory for as long as he lived. Unfortunately, at that precise moment, the magic elemental began to emerge. As such, Slide Rule's last look at Celestia was the princess terrified, mane crinkled like a bad perm, mouth agape, and gaze fixed on a fractured, impossibly-colored tesseract only she could see.
Spake the Most Holy Bringer of Dawn (Only 12 this year): "Shit."
The terrible, creaking groan chatteringly rose in pitch, apexing as a harsh whine that was felt in the teeth as much as it was heard. This horrendous note was held just longer than anypony found comfortable, then gave way to a deafening crack.
As echoes of this incredible fracture resounded through Ponyville, Rainbow Dash voiced the question on everypony's mind. "What was that?"
"That," intoned Ditzy, "was the sound of the universe breaking under the weight of too much magic in too little space." Ignoring the shouts of alarm this cause, she pointed to the library. "Look."
They looked. After a moment of disbelief, the group realized that there really was a crack in the sky. It began at the crown of the tree, then climbed up like a lightning bolt stopped midstrike. Several hundred feet above the building, the break spiderwebbed outward, forming six jagged lengths of ruptured spacetime. Even as the ponies watched, those cracks began to widen, forming a disturbingly familiar six-pointed star. The sound of the plane breaking apart was gradually supplanted by the howl of air getting sucked into the breach.
Applejack gaped at the display. "How in th' hay d' we fix this?"
Fluttershy was utterly motionless from the neck down. "I'd ask Twilight, but..."
Dash, so frightened that she wasn't even trying to deny it, finished the thought. "She's right under that thing."
Rarity turned to Luna. "What do we do, Your Highness?"
The alicorn shook her head. "I don't know. I've never seen anything like this." She, in turn, deferred to the planeswalkers. "Any ideas?"
Pinkie paled, recognizing a fear laughter couldn't banish. "A rift this advanced... I don't know anything that can stop it."
"I do." All eyes turned to Ditzy Doo, who was tying a stone muffin onto her forehead. Tightening the knot, she appraised the ever-widening rupture. "It won't be easy. It won't be pretty. But Equestria will still be here."
"Then do it!" cried Dash.
"Consider it done." With that, the mailmare raced towards the library, focusing all the power she could through her surrogate horn.
"Mommy!" Dinky chased after her, intent on helping. An indigo aura lifted her above the ground.
"This is something far too dangerous for you, Dinky Doo." Luna turned back to the dilating rift and shuddered. "It may be too dangerous for me."
Dash snorted. "Forget that! No way I'm just gonna sit here and let Ditzy sacrifice herself. C'mon, girls, who's with me?"
"I am!" shouted the filly, still running in place.
"Likewise," said Applejack. "Who knows? Maybe this fancy magic lasso might come in handy."
Angel Bunny glared at Fluttershy, the two holding an unspoken debate in less than second. The pegasus nodded. "We need to be there for her if she needs us."
Rarity nodded. "I couldn't have said it better myself."
Spike bore the most serious expression anypony had ever seen on him. "Not just Ditzy. Twilight, too." His voice rumbled with a faint bass undercurrent.
"You have my axe!" cried Pinkie, having found and donned a fake beard at some point.
The princess of night gazed in wonder and admiration at the sheer bravery on display. She voiced a single self-deprecating chuckle. "A wise and just leader will not ask her subjects to do anything she herself is unwilling to do. Onward then, into the eye of the storm!"
With a cheer, they followed Ditzy's lead.
Meanwhile, the planeswalker's thoughts raced along with her body. She had to time this just right to buy the plane as much time as she could. The rift continued to expand, peeling back layer after layer of reality, flensing away everything that stood between equinity and the Blind Eternities. As Ditzy approached the tree, she saw the crowd of unicorns capering about, celebrating their own destruction in an orgasmic flood of endorphins. In her haste, she barely registered one pony enclosed in a ludicrous telekinesis field, dismissing it as irrelevant.
Past a threshold, her mana sight went insane, the world dissolving into a crazed frenzy of color and sensation. The pegasus didn't care. She let momentum carry her until she couldn't bear the sensory overload anymore. At that point, she relased her failsafe in one enormous burst of magic and will and pure, desperate hope.
Ditzy liked Kamigawa. Even better, Kamigawa liked Ditzy. Bearing the blessing of a myojin made for a superb icebreaker among those who could perceive it, and she made sure to not waste that positive impression. The weather kami appreciated a mortal who could recognize their craftsspiritship. The wizards of the Minamo Academy welcomed a mind both humble and eager for knowledge. The kitsune-bito foxfolk delighted in a wit that could see through their tricks even as they saw through hers.
Indeed, it was thanks to this last group that the pegasus was where she was now; Oboro, the first cloud city she'd seen since leaving Ungula. She could've tried to explore the place earlier, but it was home to the enigmatic, insular soratami moonfolk. According to everyone she asked, they considered any other race's intrusion in their home a crime of the highest order. They were also considered the most skillful mortal users of blue magic on the plane, second only to the kami themselves, which meant that Ditzy planned on paying them a visit regardless.
According to the scholars of Minamo, the moonfolk possessed a graceful, ethereal beauty beyond anything humankind could achieve. The young pony was still puzzling out bipedal mores of appearance, but she supposed skin as pale and luminous as the moon itself and a lithe, elegant build outweighed long, floppy rabbit ears and shifting squiggles instead of eyebrows when it came to comeliness. She wasn't nearly as impressed, the sneering condescension and aloofness of those few soratami she'd met in person reminding her of all the worst qualities of elves and vedalken blended into one vaguely ludicrous species.
In any case, the cloud city wasn't just a potential source for nostalgia and new lore. It was also the perfect testing bed for an innovative illusion she'd just devised. Through study of the considerable kitsune arcana on such spells and her own skills, Ditzy had cobbled together a mystic disguise that altered her appearance based on the expectations of the viewer. If it could fool the soratami, masters of deceptive magic that they were, then it could be considered virtually flawless. If not, well, she had contingencies in place.
The moonfolk's isolationism played directly into her hoof. Because no one expected to encounter a member of another race, they all saw her as one of them. The only sound her passage could logically make was of sandals on cloud, so no one heard hooves. The pony went unnoticed because it was obviously impossible for a pony to be in Oboro in the first place.
It was amazing, Ditzy reflected, how much was both obvious and completely wrong.
She wandered the city for a time, simply enjoying the memories it stirred. This continued until she felt a mental tug and one eye tilted out of alignment to focus on an approaching building. The pegasus smiled. This was an older spell, but still a favorite. It sensed especially potent bits of arcane knowledge and told her where to find them. Purpose filled her stride as, better than invisible, she strode along the thoroughfare and into the ornate edifice.
Once inside, Ditzy took in the scene for a moment. Scroll racks stretched as far as the eye could see, every niche occupied. The entire palatial tower likely followed suit. It made the Great Library at Minamo, considered the ultimate repository of knowledge in the world, look like a rinky-dink branch in the middle of nowhere. She swallowed a developing lump in her throat. Were it not for the doozy detector, she could spend the next ten years poring over the contents of this place and find nothing.
Thankfully, that wasn't the case, one eye staying locked on target. She continued onward, her goal clearly and literally in sight. It was further back, past a door that was cunningly hidden and locked by a series of carefully crafted enchantments. Of course, to the planeswalker's eyes, this meant that it was lit up like a Las Neighgas casino sign. She approached it confidently, not faltering when she noticed that it had an actual guard in addition to the illusory barricade, the warden's true purpose disguised by an innocuously placed reference desk. Ditzy only reacted when the door was not opened for her. Looking imperiously at the soratami, the pegasus raised an eyebrow. "Well?"
The hapless librarian gazed somewhere above the pony's head, where the illusion was staring her down. She blanched as best she could with a complexion that began at moon-pale. "O-of course, Sir."
"Hmph." The grey mare watched dispassionately as the azure lattices of lock and disguise unravelled and the door slid aside. As she continued on, she gave a mental smirk. Act like you have authority, and everyone else will assume that you actually do. Combine that with a disguise that exploits such assumptions and you have a psychological skeleton key.
"Now," she muttered, "where are you?" The room on the other side of the door was a small alcove, clearly a private study rather than the comparative bustle of the main library. Scroll racks still honeycombed the walls, but only about half were filled. A low desk against a side wall and a cushion were the only other furniture.
Ditzy essayed a slow circle, trying to eyeball her quarry as she waited for her spell to reorient. "If I had to guess, you'd be about..." Her left eye skewed to one side, focused on a faintly glowing cylinder. "Right there!" Delighted, she snared the detected doozy in a telekinesis field.
"S-sir!?" The moonfolk she'd cowed into letting her in gasped in surprise.
"Oh crap." The pegasus hastily stuffed her find into her saddlebags. She really should've anticipated something like this.
"Is there a problem, Eriko?" Another voice, male, humorless as a wet cat.
"But... but you— I— He... Oh dear."
Intellectually, Ditzy knew that she had to escape, yet curiosity gnawed at her. What would this second soratami see when he looked at her?
"I understand. Do not blame yourself, Eriko." His tone made it clear that he meant the opposite.
"Yes, Sir..." Eriko's defeated sigh indicated that this unspoken message did not go unnoticed.
The door slid aside. The moonfolk standing in the doorway looked as domineering as he sounded. The sigil on his forehead reshaped itself into an odd, asymmetrical form. "Well, well, well. We meet at last."
A yawning comedy vacuum seemed to open before Ditzy, pulling something funny out of her brain through her tongue to compensate for the sheer level of cheese. "Wow. How long did you spend deciding on the most cliche reaction possible?"
"Hmph." An eyelid gave a single involuntary spasm. "I see your irreverence is as impressive as your spellcraft." The soratami sighed and shook his head. "It is a shame. Has you been born a child of the moon, we might have been colleagues. Perhaps even friends. As it is, you must die." His expression remained composed and disinterested, as though idly discussing the weather.
Ditzy felt a bit more emotionally invested in the matter. "Why?"
She didn't know what the forehead glyph indicated now, but it was probably either "mild surprise" or "slight incredulity". "You are not soratami and you have trod the streets of Oboro. Obviously."
"Oh. Obviously. How silly of me."
Unperturbed – or perhaps failing to register the sarcasm – he nodded. "I'm glad we could come to an understanding."He drew a katana from beneath his ornate attire. To Ditzy's eyes, blue vapor writhed along the edge.
"Quite." With that, she reached down and bit through the pendant hanging from her neck.
Blue smoke burst from it. With an impatient gesture, Kobayashi, loremaster of Oboro, he who meditated atop Untaidake for a year and a day, summoned a gust that cleared the room. There was no indication of an occupant.
"So that was the famed Riku of Two Reflections," muttered the descendant of the great Uyo the Silent. "He is clever, for a human."
Meanwhile, in another cloud of blue smoke, Ditzy rematerialized on the roof of the Minamo Academy. After a quick check to ensure that the scroll was still with her, she gave a sigh of relief. She knew that that seal of removal would make a good escape plan.
"Now," the pegasus muttered, "let's see if you were worth it." She unrolled the document. The ideograms seemed to dance before her eyes as her visual translation spell converted them to the familiar shapes of Equestrian. She recited the title aloud. "On the Currents of Time: A Practical Study." This elicited a low whistle. Chronomancy was serious mojo, one of the most powerful and most dangerous applications of magic. "Oh yeah. Definitely worth it."
Time had stopped.
Ditzy was blind, for photons could not make their way to her retinas. She was deaf, save for the echoing rhythm of her own heartbeat. She was numb, no sensation able to transpire without a duration in which to do so. And yet, for a time without time, she was utterly, horribly aware.
"Well, this is a fine mess you've gotten us into."
At least, that was how it was supposed to work. The sepulchral void of no-time normally didn't contain a mint-green unicorn who seemed split between amusement and irritation.
Heedless of her own impossibility, Lyra continued. "Now, as I said earlier, if these aren't extenuating circumstances, I don't know what are. Still, you've created quite a headache for us unfortunate ponies in spacetime management. Especially since the time part isn't normally my department." She sighed and shook her head. "Well, I guess I can figure this out. Just don't go thinking you can pull this kind of thing whenever you want. The ponies who usually walk this beat seem to think they have a monopoly on timey-wimey horseapples."
With that, she turned and began to walk away, though to where, Ditzy had no idea. The unicorn paused and looked back for a moment. "Oh, and Address says 'Hi.'"
With a sensation like the world releasing a held breath, the flow of time resumed. Ditzy, who had been diving forward when she'd halted it, crashed into the crowd of ponies. To her relief, her mana sight was picking up nothing abnormal. The hiccup in time's flow had allowed everything to start over fresh.
Of course, at the library's output level, that wouldn't mean anything in a short time. She had to clear out the unicorns while they were still lucid. She collected herself, offered a few quick apologies, then shouted, "Everypony get out of here!"
"Why?"
Ditzy bit back a scream. Why were ponies so easily panicked except when you needed them to be!? She looked around, spotted her approaching friends, and stabbed a hoof at Luna. "Royal decree! Official visit! Make way!"
"You're not a guard."
"I'm undercover."
Several ponies back, there came a call of "Isn't that Derpy Hooves?"
"Deep undercover." The pegasus felt ready to mind crush the next wise guy, but she relaxed when she felt a gentle hoof on her shoulder. She turned and beheld a smiling princess of the night.
"Let me handle this," Luna whispered. Then, following a deep breath, she shifted to the Royal Canterlot Voice. "CITIZENS OF PONYVILLE! WE HAVE COME TO THINE HUMBLE VILLAGE TO PAY OUR RESPECTS TO SHE WHO MARSHALED THE FORCES OF HARMONY AND EXPUNGED US OF OUR DARK POWERS! WE BESEECH THEE, GIVE US LEAVE!"
Those unicorns who weren't blasted away through sheer volume quickly made themselves scarce. The alicorn nodded in approval. "It was first made for crowd control, you know."
"I didn't know that! But why are you whispering now!?"
The princess grinned bashfully. "I guess I should have given you some warning first."
"That would've been nice!"
"I'll just heal your ears..."
As Luna did so, the others gathered by them. "Way to go, Ditzy!" cheered Rainbow Dash.
"Y' sure showed that magic elemethingy who's boss," Applejack enthused.
"Yay, Mommy!"
"Huh?" The grey mare looked to each pony in turn, confusion clear. "That was just a breach of space-time."
"Are you certain?" Trixie trotted into view. "I distinctly heard something along the lines of 'Magic comes' just before all the sound and fury."
Pinkie giggled. "Oh, you silly fillies. That wasn't the magic elemental."
Dash groaned, exasperated. "Then what is?"
The blonde planeswalker began to answer, then noticed the luminous white ring at her feet. "Oh, fu—" Then, she vanished.
In her place, something swooped out of the library. It looked more like a storybook drawing than a pony. It didn't have hair, just an outer layer of surreal iridescence. Its legs were thin, boneless things that tapered to points and clearly shouldn't have supported its weight, much of its body similarly emaciated. The mane and tail flowed like those of an alicorn, floating and waving in an unfelt breeze, but unlike a princess's coiffure, they had no defined end, instead slowly fading to nothing like evaporating mist. The horn was massive, as large and long as the rest of its head, parting the mane like a stone in a river. The eyes were also disproportionate, great glowing things that took up half of the entity's face. Most ominous were the flanks, exaggerated like a primitive fertility idol's, each emblazoned with a six-pointed star cutie mark.
Twilight Sparkle smiled. She then spoke in an earthshaking whisper. "To answer your question, Dash: I am."
Twilight, Æthertwisted WUBRG
Legendary Enchantment Creature — Unicorn
Flying, protection from abilities
Whenever a player casts a spell, regenerate Twilight, Æthertwisted. If you cast that spell, draw a card.
Spells you cast cost 1 less to cast for each card you've drawn this turn.
"My metamorphosis is complete. A new age is at hoof."
2/4
I Am Magic Given Flesh
Scheme
When you set this scheme in motion, reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a nonland card. You may cast that card without paying its mana cost. If you don't, put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.
"Reality is whatever I tell it to be."
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Oh, goody. I was expecting something horrifying to happen and you delivered. I'm both excited and terrified.
And suddenly, Dancing Mad-levels of "Oh, fuck!".
Although I have to wonder... Celestia is near-divinity, if not at least a lesser god. Who is going to stop her if she decides to intervene? Seems a little apathetic on her end, court can wait when the universe is shattering.
Shit just got real. Or, uh, ethereal. Irreal? Yeah, let's go with that. Shit just got irreal.
239358 Happy to be of service.
243198 Then I've done my job.
243219 What, and let the panic and chaos spread further? Better to keep the situation on a need-to-know basis. That way, the possible end of the world won't disrupt normal life if it's stopped (and Celestia is 99% sure that it will be.) It's not like she has some miraculous form of divine intervention that could fix everything. Otherwise, she'd have used it by now. Wouldn't she?
244050 Unreal, perhaps?
244522
I gotta see how this mess gets fixed. I hope that somepony survives with her IQ intact........
244522
That's true, too. I mean, sure she could intervene, but at this point she knows she doesn't have to. She's got two Planeswalkers and the Elements of Harmony in her corner.
Just seemed a bit defeatist of her, though. But to each their own, there's something to be said about a goddess that maintains utopia by doing virtually nothing.
245250
When you consider that one of the Elements, the most powerful to boot, has taken leave of rationality, and has achieved levels of power that I am willing to guess are on-par with an old-school Planeswalker... Things might not be so much in Celestia's favour as you would like to think.
Again I ask... WHY DOES A BLUE PLANSEWALKER DOES NOT CAST COUNTERSPELL!!!!
Why can't I use Twilight, AEther twisted as my commander??! PLEASE??!
1821649 Cause then you counter spell the counter spell and it becomes hot potato.
Was the mental list a TFS reference?
Hmm, I would have expected Kobayashi to assume the intruder was Kenshi Sakashima, the infamous impostor who actually did infiltrate Oboro (successfully), not Riku of Two Reflections, a character with no backstory.
This story is still AWESOME!
Typo:
"alarm this cause," ... I feel that I seen this one before... but I could be wrong...
"ograsmic" ... do you mean that, or orgasmic?
Really liked the Kamigawa flashback. Soratami described as being more condescending than vedalken and elves made me laugh.
I've seen a lot of fan cards from you, Foamy. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen enough to accurately gauge you, but it seems that for the most part the card designs are balanced. Twilight, Æthertwisted seems like it's a bit unbalanced, but not completely there. She would be if she had tacked on abilities which outright won you the game. What she has going for her are several abilities that synergize really well with each other and cards in your deck that will win you the game. I think what differs between cards you normally make and this is how much board presence this card has. It is a terrifying combo engine.
I really like the flashacks, don't know why.
That scene is nice, especially since its a reference to her interaction with Myojin of Seeing Winds!
----
Typo:
ograsmic > orgasmic
"beast" > "beat"?