The Days After

by NerfedFalcon

Prologue: The End of Harmony

”I couldn’t live with myself if I knew that other ponies had died by my not giving everything, and that’s the honest truth.”

“Knowing that I died so that everypony else could live, so they’d still have a chance to laugh, is enough to make me happy.”

“All I have left to give is myself, but I offer it as gladly as any material possession that I had before.”

“I like living in this world, but everypony should get a chance to do the same, and that’s why I’d die to defend it.”

“There are some creatures who are beyond kindness, and Azazel is one of them. For that, he deserves nothing better.”

“Our friendship means a lot to me, but as long as I know we’re all going together, then I face it without fear. Because that’s what friends are for!”

Azazel had been a powerful threat, possibly as bad as Tirek. It was worse for the fact that Azazel had come from another dimension entirely, and one that wasn’t very close to Equestria. Tartarus wouldn’t hold him; the Elements of Harmony had to intervene directly to create a seal that could hold him down. In the end, it had turned out that even they weren’t strong enough, and the bearers had had to give their own power and their bodies to make the seal strong enough.

As Twilight said, she wouldn’t have minded being turned into energy for all eternity if it meant that she and her friends would go out together. The one feeling she hated was true loneliness. After Spike had left, she’d been feeling it a lot more strongly, and in a way, she wanted Azazel to kill her in some way so she wouldn’t have to live without her friends.

There was only one problem: the Elements had left her behind.

She’d been sitting alone in the field for the last three hours. Despite the sunshine that had come out after Azazel’s black clouds were gone, she couldn’t feel happy as she stared at the five spheres of granite that surrounded her. Each of them was entirely unremarkable, except for a carving in each: an apple, a balloon, a butterfly, a diamond and a lightning bolt. Her own crown was still crystalline, but the amethyst had dulled almost to black, reflecting Twilight’s mental state.

Questions ran through her mind like a waterfall, none of them staying long enough for her to focus on an answer. She returned to the Royal Palace in a trance, carrying the five stones and walking at an absolutely steady pace, taking no notice of anypony else around her. They were cheering for the defeat of the demon threatening them, but only a few noticed that there was only one pony to receive those cheers. Twilight didn’t hear any cheering at all, as she was looking only into herself.

As soon as the doors were closed, and she was alone, only one word came out of her mouth, the one word that summarised everything that had happened:

Why?

Why had Azazel crossed dimensions, or so he claimed, to conquer their world over any other? Why had Twilight been left behind by her friends, and by the Elements of Harmony that bound them together? Why couldn’t she have stopped them, or stopped him some other way that wouldn’t have forced them apart?

All these questions and more ran through Twilight’s head, but she only said one word, over and over. “Why, why, why, why, WHY?!” she screamed to the heavens, as though some deity above even Celestia could answer her. She fell to the ground after that, sobbing loudly.

When Celestia finally came into the room, Twilight had stood up, and she seemed angrier than Celestia had ever seen her. “Twilight,” she started, before she realised that she didn’t know what to say. Twilight was still young, and hadn’t lost friends before. Celestia, on the other hand, couldn’t remember how many ponies she’d known and then outlived, whether through old age, famine, plague or war.

Twilight wasn’t really in a mood to hear it anyway. “I’m not going to stand for this,” she said quietly. “I’m not going to stand for this!” she repeated, much more loudly, and as she did, her mane and tail burst into flames and her coat and eyes turned blood red. “There must be something they’re keeping back from me. And when I find it, I will get my friends back, no matter the cost!” With that, she disappeared in a flash of light, the fire almost burning Celestia’s coat.

When she could finally see again, her faithful student and the inert Elements were gone, replaced by a black charring on the floor. Twilight’s magical presence had grown to an incredible level, and Celestia could still feel her moving back and forth between her old tower and the royal archives. She teleported there herself to ensure that none of the books were burning. Twilight was appearing and disappearing too rapidly to notice her mentor’s presence, snatching books seemingly at random with her hooves and her magic before disappearing again.

Celestia knew the pattern well: Twilight was planning a binge research session, and nothing would interrupt her. Doubtless, she’d be setting up teleport wards around her tower and reinforcing the door to stop anypony else from getting in. As a Unicorn, she always eventually had to stop to get food or sleep, but an Alicorn could go for weeks without it. Considering the number of books she was collecting, it was entirely possible that she’d be spending years in her tower, trying to find the answers she sought.

But not even Celestia knew how a pony could be brought back from the dead. Even if the others weren’t truly dead, she knew nothing about the limbo they were in. She walked out of the archives, wondering how she could possibly help her faithful student to recover from the grief she was feeling.

Doubtless, Twilight would need time to recover, but that didn’t mean Celestia could only wait. For Twilight, she couldn’t simply wait, even if they were both immortal. She’d need to search for answers herself, of a kind that couldn’t be found in Equestria, or anywhere in their world.

With her gone, there would doubtless be uproars. Much of the population was still suspicious of Luna, and she wouldn’t be able to cope on her own. Besides, she never wanted to be separate from her sister again. Equestria would prevail, even in both their absences, but she didn’t know what kind of Equestria they’d be coming back to, or even if they could find a way back.

But her mind was made up, and she hadn’t lived for countless eons without learning to stick to her mind once she’d made it up. Luna would accept, eventually, and she had the energy to cast a longevity spell. Somepony would need to call her back when Twilight came down, and if that took hundreds of years, oaths could be misremembered or entirely forgotten. Having only one pony to remember it would serve her far better.

The preparations would be made, and the journey would be undertaken, however long it took. She would know where Azazel came from originally, and if that world could be made into an ally. She would see a new age of Equestria, in all likelihood, without having to wait through all of it, or even passively prevent its occurrence. Most of all, when Twilight came down, she would be there, either with an answer or condolences.

Nothing would stop Twilight from learning what she would, and nothing would stop Celestia from doing the same, in their entirely separate ways. But what kind of Equestria would she find, in the days after her return?

~~~~
The Days After
Act One: Starting Over
~~~~

My name is Twilight Sparkle, and I am alone, both forced upon me by circumstance, and taken upon me by my own will.

Once, I had friends. It was only a small circle, but our friendship was stronger than anything. Spike was my oldest friend, and also the first to leave me. When he grew into an adolescent, he left to join a dragon migration, and I haven’t seen him since. Who knows what he looks like now, or where he’s gotten to... or if he even remembers me.

The others all disappeared at once, but it wasn’t by their will, and I never got to say goodbye. That’s why I’ve spent three hundred years, to the day, searching for a way to get them back. I’ve learned a lot of things in the meantime, and some of them were interesting, but none of them were what I was actually looking for.

I almost hate to be saying this, but...

The quill fell from Twilight’s grasp, and she sighed. She wasn’t ready to say she’d given up yet. Her friends would never forgive her for it. She pulled the not-quite dry ink off the page, forcing it back into the bottle with a precision most Unicorns would kill for. She’d just have to start her memoir some other way.

She looked out the window to the small town below. Unlike the rest of Equestria, Canterlot had stayed mostly the same size in the past three hundred years, and if anything had gotten smaller. Most of its permanent population was simply dedicated to keeping the museum they’d made out of the Royal Palace intact. Twilight had watched the groups go through with scrying spells sometimes, but she was never able to watch them for long before she’d break down crying and be unable to do anything else for the rest of the day. It still hurt her to see other ponies with their friends and family, laughing and enjoying a view of her world that was almost nothing like the truth.

There was one more book in her pile before she’d have to go down and get more. She hadn’t remembered seeing it in the archives before; it must have been a new one put in by the pony who’d just taken over as the head curator. With any luck, something written in the last few years could finally give her the answer she’d been seeking.

She opened the book, and three hours later hadn’t been able to put it down. The writing was nearly impossible to translate, but its workings on the concept of souls were amazing. It was an angle she hadn’t even considered before. The spirits of her friends could be called back and given physical bodies, if only she could find them. There were even a number of supplementary spells in the book, and although Twilight couldn’t quite work out the formulae, she supposed that it would help her to find those she was seeking.

Working quickly, she placed the Elements of Harmony in a circle on the ground, drawing with a piece of chalk. Soul magic apparently worked better with physical magic circles, and though it was unusual for Unicorn magic, she wouldn’t work against her only chance of seeing her friends again. She pushed all her magical power into the spell, hoping against hope that it would either bring her friends back, or bring her to them.

The Element stones all exploded at once, fragments whipping past Twilight and bouncing off her magically hardened skin. She was standing in the middle of the circle, eyes closed, until she thought she’d put enough power into it. When she opened her eyes, the circle was self-sustaining, and she couldn’t shut it down or get out of it. The fragments bounced around the room, tearing through nearly anything in their path, and she closed her eyes again, trying to get it to stop—

...When Twilight woke up, the upper room of the tower had been almost entirely destroyed. Only the windows and the hourglass were intact; everything else she saw as she rolled onto her front was in ribbons, from the books to the stone table. Slowly, she pushed herself up to all fours, only to find that it felt uncomfortable to stand. It felt like she was bending over too far, and she picked herself up onto her hind legs.

Though she couldn’t quite tell why that had felt so wrong, she had to fix the mess she’d created. She focused on her forehead to start a spell, only to suddenly realise that her horn was missing. Turning to the sides revealed that her wings were gone too, and her violet coat was gone, replaced by some kind of dress in the same colour.

The first thing Twilight did was tell herself not to panic. Then she panicked.

She fell to her knees and her forelegs, breathing heavily. Then she realised that perhaps ‘forelegs’ wasn’t the right word. Wondering what to call them instead, and what she’d turned into, brought her out of the panic attack, replacing it with curiosity. She looked at the pale pink epidermis that had replaced her coat, and suddenly remembered Rainbow Dash going on about one of those Daring Do novels that had creatures like that...

“...so it turns out that the lost city was still inhabited, by these creatures called humans. They have this pink skin, and they don’t have any Cutie Marks, so she can’t tell them apart at first. They stand about as tall as a minotaur but without the horns, and they have what they call hands, with fingers like a griffon’s talons. Not a lot of them really come up in the book, but they’re just as different as us ponies are. Then again, when you’re writing fiction, you write what you know, I guess.”

Twilight suppressed the memory before it got any more painful for her. She looked in the glass of the hourglass, trying to make out her reflection. The dress was the exact same purple as her coat had been once, and her mane was the same colour, though her tail, horn and wings were gone. Her dress hugged her body tightly, leaving some skin bare at her hips. Her shoulders were covered by a cloak with a night sky pattern, and the fastener was her starburst Cutie Mark, repeated several times on the dress, boots and gloves. The Mark itself had moved as well, to the inside of her right thigh, barely visible before the boots covered her skin again.

Her friends were still gone, and now so were the Elements. All that was left was the Element of Magic, which had turned into some kind of a staff, the amethyst starburst sitting on the end. Slowly, she reached out with her left... hand, experimentally grasping it with all five fingers.

Almost immediately, she felt an electric tingle run through her body, and all the energy she’d built up to cast a spell before was released through the amethyst. There was nothing left for it to destroy, but it was enough to cause even more chaos by throwing the debris and scraps of paper around in an invisible whirlwind, and Twilight instinctively ducked again.

Being a human was going to take a lot of work.
~
It was always at around this time of year, a few days after the autumn equinox, that Cloud Skipper liked returning to Canterlot. It was probably for the feeling of familiarity; even in three hundred years, it hadn’t changed much, except that it wasn’t the capital anymore. He couldn’t remember where they’d finally agreed the new capital was, but seeing that Canterlot had hardly changed in size or population since he’d lived there so long ago was comforting in a way.

The palace was now a museum, open a few months every year to tourists. The version of royal life they showed wasn’t all that accurate, and the story that the Day Guard was once a single pony was patently untrue, unless it had happened before his time. Still, it was a pretty good story, and he’d held onto it like many other stories he came across.

He always stayed longer than most of the tourists in the throne room, recalling the vow that Celestia had made him take. He knew that Midnight Blossom had made a similar vow to Luna, but he wasn’t there when it happened, and she’d never told him the exact nature of hers. But as always, he paused behind the group in the throne room, the memories bubbling to the surface as clear as glass.

”For the sake of my faithful student, I must leave Equestria, and I may not return for a long time. I may even forget the way back, so you must act as a beacon. If Twilight ever comes down from her tower, then use this to call me back. I may not respond right away, but I swear I will be there when my faithful student returns. You must swear to assist me in this.”

“But how long will you be gone? Months? Years? Centuries?”

“Do you recall your old captain, Shining Armor? A simple enchantment, and you will remain my vanguard until the sun itself burns out. Swear to me that you will do this for me, Cloud Skipper. Swear that you will help me find my way home, when the time is right.”

“...Ex solis invictus.”

He said the last words out loud, and a pair of ponies turned to face him. They were most likely husband and wife, considering they were completely different colours. He paid them little mind as he walked out, following the route he’d memorised as a Day Guard rather than the one suggested by the maps they gave out at the entrance. Those, too, were inaccurate; either half the castle was closed to those outside the curation staff, or had simply never been explored. Either way, it was a pity to see what the castle had come to.

A few times, he’d debated throwing away the beacon that Celestia had given him, wondering if she’d truly want to see what Equestria had turned into. The skies were full of white smoke, making true clouds harder to find. Technology had progressed, but so had the society, and he doubted that they would respond well to their rulers returning. But he had taken the vow, and Celestia was the one that had given him purpose in the first place, and these two facts combined steeled his willpower and kept the beacon in his possession.

As he left the palace, he heard a loud explosion outside, and saw a bright flash of purple light at the peak of one of the towers. Many bright points of white light came flying out of it, heading in every conceivable direction. He gawked at the sight for a while, until the entire light show ended. He wasn’t the only one in the streets who did the same, but none of the others knew its significance.

In three hundred years, Princess Twilight hadn’t come down from her tower, and had blocked it off with more protective spells than most Unicorns knew existed. Nopony ever went up there, no matter how hard they’d tried, and that included Skipper himself. But if Twilight was casting spells on that level again, then that meant she was still alive, and perhaps she had finally found something. Maybe it was nothing, but he didn’t want Celestia to not be around when she’d wanted to be.

In that instant, he felt he had to make a decision, and so he took the beacon out again. “Ex solis invictus,” he said as he twisted the golden orb sideways. A bright golden light flew off into the sky, disappearing from his sight before long. Though the spell had been cast, he held onto the orb, wondering if it could be useful for anything else.

He’d need to find his counterpart to get her beacon activated as well, but before he left, he flew up to Twilight’s tower. She’d never noticed him before, his white coat and light mane perfect camouflage against a sizeable cloud. Sometimes he felt bad peeking in on her, but this time, he felt entirely justified in it.

The glass had been distorted slightly, and he couldn’t see very much through it, but a purple blob was prominent in the centre of the room. She still hadn’t come out. There was still plenty of time to find Midnight Blossom, activate the second beacon, and bring his monarch home.

She’d arrive sometime in the days after, surely. Right?