L17
’Alright, skipping the attempt at Applejack’s course, I've done Zecora’s ‘being still’ class, and practicing the moves Rarity showed me. So that leaves casting the beginner spells again.’ Sweetie closed her eyes and concentrated, going through the spells. It wasn’t much progress, but now her horn was letting out a very thin trickle of water.
“Alright, time to head over to Twilight’s.” Sweetie turned, trotting downstairs. Pausing briefly at the kitchen, she held out the letter and waited as Rarity responded exactly the same as normal. After weathering the reactions, Sweetie motioned toward the door.
“I’ll be at Twilight’s if you need me.” Sweetie inwardly sighed as Rarity objected once more, and narrowed her eyes.
“Rarity, how is walking to Twilight’s any different from walking to school?” Sweetie waited, and finally Rarity begrudgingly agreed. Turning, Sweetie exited the house, and quickly apologised to Apple Bloom, before trotting away.
‘Darn, that way is actually slower than the other. I’m going to have to find the best way to get Rarity to let me go. Oh well, it can wait.’ Sweetie knew Twilight would have already left the house, but from the previous loop, she knew what direction she had been heading. Thankfully, Twilight was only about to turn the corner into a side street, so Sweetie was able to find her easily.
“Twilight, wait!” Sweetie caught up and waited as Twilight read the letter. Once more, her reactions were exactly the same as all previous loops. Sweetie wondered if there would be a way to at least make this quicker, but supposed there wasn’t.
“Can we head back to your castle Twilight? I need your help.” Sweetie’s ears flopped downward as she looked away. Sweetie hated to admit it, but she didn’t know everything. A lot of ideas spoke to her, but she was afraid to take a risk on the possibility they were bad. Following Twilight back to the castle, Sweetie handed Twilight’s notes off, and waited as Twilight slowly caught up with her old self.
“I was thinking, what if something that has magic but lives a very long time loops with me. Maybe the magic cuts off at 12:01, and that’s why it drains everypony before that. But I…” Sweetie trailed off, and Twilight nodded once in understanding, musing for a moment.
“What about a Phoenix? They technically don’t have an ‘old age’. When they get old, they simply burst into flames.” Twilight sat down, and motioned for Sweetie to do the same.
“But, why did Spike get a baby if they live forever?” Sweetie tilted her head, why would something that can live forever need to make babies in the form of eggs? Sweetie briefly wondered if she would ever see a pony egg, but discarded it. There were more important things to think about.
“Well, Phoenixes are hunted by Dragons. Teenagers break the eggs, and adults eat Phoenixes. With predators like that, they actually don’t live that long a life normally.” Twilight glanced toward a small photo of Spike and a baby Phoenix, and smiled sadly.
“Oh, I see. But where are we gonna get a Phoenix before the loop ends? It’s a long trip to their nests.” Sweetie put a hoof to her chin, musing.
“Oh that’s the easy part, Princess Celestia has a pet Phoenix named Philomena. If we inform her of the loop then she will probably lend Philomena to us.” Twilight smiled, and Sweetie nodded, pulling out the glowing letter and holding it out to Twilight.
Sure enough, the reply agreed to send Philomena down. However, Celestia could not send Philomena down via the mail, and would send a guard to drop her off tomorrow. Sweetie nodded, shrugging. As long as it was before Friday. Thankfully, Celestia had also given back the glowing letter, which Sweetie quickly put away.
“Alright, I’m gonna go to school now. See ya Twilight.” Sweetie stood up, waving goodbye to Twilight. Trotting out the door, Sweetie wondered if this had been a long enough time to get Diamond and Apple Bloom to become fast friends before her return.
Entering the classroom, Sweetie inwardly sighed as both were obviously not on friendly terms yet. Maybe it took a day, no matter. Sweetie would have to try it a different loop.
“Alright Philomena, you ready?” Sweetie saw the calm expression of the Phoenix sitting in a cage on the other side of the room. It was made out of metal, probably due to the fact Philomena was a fire bird, and had a door that was easy to open. Sweetie glanced toward her closed window and door, and nodded once. Turning, she watched the clock tick over.
11:59…
12:00
Instantly, Philomena burst into flames, and reformed in a blaze of fire. Sweetie looked away, rubbing afterimages from her eyes. Ears flicking, she heard the rapid sounds of two separate bursts of small flame. Sweetie scrunched her eyes, and forced herself to look over. Philomena seemed to not be in any pain, even as she rapidly resurrected.
The clock ticked over to 12:01, and Philomena stopped. Sweetie gasped, looking toward the clock. For some reason she felt light headed, and frowned as her mind went foggy. Was it just her, or was she having trouble breathing? It took her oxygen starved brain a moment to realise something important.
‘Fire eats oxygen, and this is an enclosed room.’ Sweetie turned and weakly raised an arm toward the window, trying to open it as she shuddered for breath. But all her strength left her, and she tried instead with her magic. Failing that, she collapsed onto the bed and looked toward the Philomena. Would the Phoenix figure it out?
No, Sweetie closed her eyes as she silently suffocated to death.
The loop reset, sending Sweetie back to her room. But she was already in her room, so it’s contents followed her though. Sweetie gasped awake, unable to breathe. Diving for the window she found herself still unable to open it.
Sweetie suffocated to death again.
Stuck in an eternal loop of death, Sweetie knew, in the brief moment she was lucid enough to think, that there was no escape. There was no way to talk, all oxygen gone from her the moment it reset. Quickly, she lost count of the loops.
Sweetie felt a tear escape her eye during one of those moments, seeing the Phoenix in the corner going through rapid rebirth as she died repeatedly. There was nothing she could do, she was stuck in a death loop.
The door to Sweetie’s room opened, and fresh air rushed into the room. Sweetie gasped for breath, launching into a coughing fit as she barely registered the window opening too. As the clock finally clicked over to 12:01 while fresh air was in the room, Sweetie collapsed in relief.
’I’m ok, I got out of the death loop. I feel so weak.’ Sweetie looked toward the door, watching as Opalescence left Rarity’s room and headed downstairs. Sweetie knew the cat slept in Rarity’s room, so it wasn’t out of the question that she made midnight trips to the kitchen. Slowly sitting up, Sweetie forced herself to calm down.
’The question is, how did I escape?’
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Welp, this just got a whole lot more complicated.
Wait... so... she got out?
So, she can't move after the infinite loop starts? Or can she? During that brief moment??
Also: Opalescence, not Opalescent... unless it is??? Did she enter a new universe????
So, her room is airtight? Otherwise wouldnt air just burst back into the room?
She needs to let twilight know about this.
Well she might have been in a closed room but there should have been airflow from somewhere, from a gap under the door or more likely an air vent, whatever architect that designed that house should have been fired the moment he showed the blueprints. And somehow the suffocation seemed too instant. How does one fail to open a window or a door during 1-2 minutes time?
P.S Philamena would basically just sit there and go "WTF?".
I wonder what the next loop number will be with these rapid resets in mind.
I'm afraid that next chapter is going to be called L252.1 or something like that....
5371421 you also have to keep in mind that phoenix fire is supposed to far hotter than normal fire. hotter fire burns fuel a lot faster, so i'm assuming that the fire burned all the oxygen from the room fast enough to have her suffocate in such a small amount of time that she died before the air could be restored.and then she died a few more times before the air naturally would have replaced itself. the only thing i don't have an idea for is how the door opened.
5371386 yes, she got out. no, she didn't, she wondered how she escaped at the end. I doubt it.
I'm guessing Philomena saved her. Though your author's note makes me think she might be dead...
Otherwise... I can imagine the windows and door eventually decaying and falling apart/melting into a puddle, if enough time elapsed in the death-loop. But it was said that they opened, so I don't know.
Another question is: does the air in her room pre-loop overwrite the new-loop's air, or do they mix somehow? Does she start the loop with literally no oxygen? How exactly is she revived from death anyway? If she lost a leg without dying, would she get it back at the start of a loop? Does she regress in physical age every time she dies, as she's brought back to a certain standard of physical being? How long does it take to loose consciousness from suffocation, anyway? (google tells me as little as 15 seconds when in space, which is a good benchmark for a zero oxygen environment, but there are differences in biology to consider I suppose.)
When she returns from death, does she come back with oxygen in her lungs to start with? If she could hold her breath, would she have lasted longer? What happens to her previous body and the air in its lungs when she dies, given that every other physical object nearby sticks around from loop to loop? No growing pile of bodies was mentioned, so we can assume that they disappear, or age into dust like other magical creatures, or something, but while I could come up with a theory as to how continually adding mass to the system could cause air-pressure to blow out a window or door, without more information to support that, it's hard to say how this death-loop could have possibly been ended by the natural consequences of the loop itself. It likely was ended by someone inside it.
The nature of the loops suggest that outside interference is improbable, as the loop would only last for about 15 seconds + however much time elapses between loosing consciousness and actually dying. An outside agent suggests someone new to the story who has something to do with time loops. That, or Star Swirl ascended when he died or something, and is now back to... I'll just stop this train of thought right there.
On another note, it would seem that Sweetie dying in her own bed did not cause her to telefrag herself, so we can throw out all the theories that suggest that possibility.
Sweeties arm?
more mindwork!
we all love physics and philosophy!(well, most of us do-- some of us do.)
getting interesting...
*shudders* Uuuh... a fate worse than death, indeed. Poor Sweetie must be so traumatized... I mean, anyone trapped in a loop like that would go completely mad after just a few hours of dying over and over, knowing they will be stuck forever without any hope at all, until their brain turns into a mush and they can't even think anymore. Forever and ever.
Well, as she seems to have retained her sanity, that would mean she wasn't stuck for that much time from her perspective, right? Thank goodness fire needs oxigen too.
Oh no, please tell me it wasn't Rarity who opened the door? Oh wait, she didn't start the loop there so even if it was Rarity she'd be okay back in her bed, phew, I worried myself for a moment there.
5371515
Everything nonmagical in the room she's in stays as it was before the reset. This means that the air would be the burnt out air.
Wow.
Somepony opened the door and window for her!! Right? But who? Uh? The more I read the more confused I get(in a good way!)
You know, Sweetie Belle hasn't tried having Celestia or Luna in her room when she resets yet. Considering that they are both over one thousand years old, that may mean they might be able to survive a reset, seeing as they could be immortal! :b
That uhhh.... was something terrifying.
o-e well f-
Dose sweetie bell age when she loops
My own breath stopped for a bit.
5372002
except Twilight is an Alicorn as well and should also be immortal, except she died when Sweetie did the outside reset so... Yeah I wouldn't chance it.
Couldn't have been dat fire bird since the window opened also; couldn't have been time affecting the objects looping with her since yet again two openings were created at once... did the rapidly aging phoenix catch the attention of Discord for a loop? Could a friendly changeling be close enough to Rarity's house to detect Sweetie's emotion? Were the openings created by the sheer magic Sweetie may or may not have been building up over the course of the loops? Ambient magic building up? Was it one of my discarded theories having happened with such timing that sweetie remained asleep or dying until the second opening occurred as well? I've yet to get around to seeing much of season 4, is there something in season 4 that explains how both the door and the window were opened at once? Could there have been a build-up of some lesser gas that eventually caused the openings to occur via pressure? Was a vacuum created?
Whatever the reason, thank you grand author for getting Sweetie out of the death loop before the end of the chapter, as opposed to afterwards.
Poor Sweetie, having an air tight room.
And then, this.
5371386
Proberbly 18 or 19
counting all those death loops as just 1 big reset gone haywire.
Sweetie briefly wondered if she would ever see a pony egg, but discarded it
Sweetie gasped awake, unable to breath
1. Don't you mean a phoenix egg? She'd need a microscope to see a pony one.
2. Breathe.
5372862 Well that depends on the Author. If you go by canon, then she isn't immortal and can age just like Cadance. It's up to the Author if Twilight and Cadance are immortal or not, and we haven't seen anything that said they are. In fact, as pointed out with her dieing in from old age, it is suggested no.
5373476
Actually there are many types of immortality. And those loops drain magic, and Magic based beings. So while technically they can both be immortal, since it was given by a powerful magic event, stripping the magic would undo the energies keeping them immortal thus killing them. Since most authors give them practical immortality (aka, stop aging at a certain point, but can be killed via injury, poison, and/or murder. But are very hard to kill), while others need a medium to come back from/reform themselves after death. Thus making death a temporary set back. And why Twilight saw her dead self just as magic/reality reset. As well as why others didn't know of the mass death event. But she did vividly.
My god.....that was HORRIFIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WEHEEEEEE
So are we going to loop two fifty-something...?
I would call you out on your Deus Ex Machina... But you're going to explain, it's an actual plot point. So it's fine.
Deary me. Does she hav a dead phoenix body now?
she?
So it's like when you fill main spawn in Minecraft with lava and then mine someones bed. Dang, that must suck.
5373207 I think it's a joke, implying Sweetie doesn't understand how mammals reproduce yet.
How the FUCK is her room airtight? There's bound to be gaps around the door, around the window frame, hell, if they have central heating (which I'm uncertain about) then there'd be vents!
I get having less oxygen and feeling way lightheaded, but seriously? Suffocating in a room that probably has oxygen streaming in?
7426696
If that were truly the case there would be significantly less asphyxiation as a result of house fires. The most common form of death is through smoke inhalation, but that is because enough smoke cannot vent from the room. That means smoke has replaced air as the main gas in the room, and because there is still gas in the room, it is not a vacuum, so there is little air flowing in because there is no room. If phoenixes have smokeless fire, it still would be converting the oxegyn into CO or CO2, as matter cannot be destroyed. No, the room isn't airtight, but it doesn't have enough ventalation to feed enough oxegyn into the room to support life.
Ah yes. Infinite death loop. That's ended many a game for me