Sparkle Day

by Potential Albatross

Chapter 5

Lumen was, at the moment, Twilight Sparkle, which was confusing but not particularly surprising; intermittent Twilight-hood had been a fact of life -- if life was, in fact, the thing she was doing -- for quite some time now. As Twilight Sparkle, Lumen was troubled by a great many things. Starting from the most basic, her ongoing responsibility to not explode into countless globs of destructive energy was unreasonably difficult right now.

She wasn’t sure why that was, but because she was, for the time being, Twilight Sparkle, she did have a theory. She had, after all, channelled a great deal of magical power fairly recently. Maybe not recently. It was more recent at least than some other things that she remembered -- or things that she remembered remembering. She’d opened the spigot wide, and now it was extremely difficult to close. That seemed reasonable enough in the microseconds when she thought she understood the memories she didn’t have of how Twilight Sparkle’s magic might have worked.

While she mulled that conclusion, she went ahead and exploded. Right -- she’d wanted to avoid that. Lots of times, actually, and she never seemed to get it right. There had been a really good reason not to explode, she was certain, and not the one most ponies had. The city! The city was gone again. Granted it was already basically a ruin, mostly empty aside from a few troublemakers. Still, it had been a nice city. Historical significance, beautiful architecture, homes to which ponies had hoped to return.

What was it called? Mare something. Not Maretopia, Mareopolis, or Maresville. Well, it was gone now. Maybe they’d build a new Mare Something -- or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe demolition by exploding Twilight Sparkle was a definitive enough end to the place that nopony would want to give it another go. Maybe just the siege, evacuation, and sacking before that had been enough.

Who could even know with mortals? Lumen, maybe; she was mortal, after all.

Lumen, Lumen wondered to herself, what is the deal with mortals?

I don’t know -- I’ve never consciously defined myself by my mortality, as it is a universal attribute of my social group and thus not notable, came the answer.

That didn’t really sound like a Lumen answer, Twilight Sparkle thought suspiciously.

Identity has become an issue, Twilight agreed.

Mareis was back, she noticed. Mareis -- that was it. If Mareis was back, that meant she was going to destroy it again. Before that, she might also kill Spike, if he showed up. He usually did, sometimes with an army of malcontents, sometimes alone, and sometimes there were several of him. She wasn’t sure why she was killing Spike -- there were century-shaped gaps in her sometimes-available memory whose content might have explained it, but lacking that information all she could do was follow the script.

“Spike, stop epitomizing my failures as a princess and alicorn this instant,” she bellowed across Mare Something’s central square.

“That’s a pretty self-centered way of looking at it,” Spike complained from her left. He was a juvenile Spike this time, complete with high pitched voice and stubby, wingless body. “Can’t I just be deranged and incompatible with society of my own volition?”

“No,” Lumen replied solemnly. “I can only understand significant events in the context of my influence upon them.”

“Sounds like some kind of god complex.”

“Well, yeah,” Twilight said with a roll of her eyes. “Try to keep up.”

Spike shrugged. “So why are we doing this again?”

Twilight thought on that for a moment. Spike was a problem, she was sure of that. She’d been through lots of problems though, centuries worth of existential threats to all of Equestria, and almost none of them had necessitated killing Spike -- at least, as far as she remembered, which was a notable caveat in that she did not remember much.

“I think because Celestia was going to kill you.” She decided at last.

“So it’s better if you do it?” Spike asked skeptically.

“Maybe,” Lumen answered uncertainly. “It’s complicated.”

“I’m not busy,” Spike prompted, plopping down into a sitting position.

“Of course you are,” Twilight admonished. “You’ve got a city to raze and everything.”

“You’re just going to blow it up in a minute anyway,” Spike complained.

“That’s not the point -- we have to do it the way it happened.”

“Ugh,” Spike grunted, and burped out a ball of flame that arced lazily to the nearest structure. “There. Happy?”

“Happy isn’t the word,” Lumen said stonily. “But it checks the box.”

“So explain already,” Spike demanded.

Without a word, Twilight stomped Spike into dust. That also checked a box. He didn’t seem to mind this time; he just watched with a slightly miffed expression as Twilight’s hooves punched repeatedly through his body. All in all, this was a fairly tame cycle. One routinely catastrophic failure of control later, she was ready to start again.

She didn’t really want to, though. There had to be a better way to pass the time. Unfortunately, Marevania -- or whatever it was called -- seemed to constitute the entirety of her mental landscape at the moment. She would love to escape to a dream land of things Twilight Sparkle might enjoy, but had no idea what those were -- odd, given that she was Twilight Sparkle even now.

Mareis was taking its time reappearing, which bothered Lumen more than she would have imagined. It wasn’t as if she was on a schedule; after destroying Mareis, she would destroy Mareis, then she would destroy Mareis again.

Instead of the ancient Prench city, Twilight Sparkle eventually appeared. With the alicorn’s arrival came an extremely gratifying sort of cognitive grounding. It was as if all of Lumen that was Twilight Sparkle had suddenly realized it was in the wrong vessel and jumped ship. She looked up at the face that was no longer hers and studied its stormy expression.

“What are you doing here?” Twilight demanded bitterly. “This is my place.”

“You put me here,” Lumen said defensively. It sounded right, at least.

“I did no such thing.” Twilight’s frown deepened, as if a troubling thought had just occurred to her. “Have you been here this whole time?”

Lumen hesitated. “What whole time is that?” The idea of time being in any way measurable or otherwise definable had great novelty.

Twilight shook her head. “Nevermind.”

“Are you going to make it stop?” Lumen asked hopefully after a minute.

“It doesn’t stop,” Twilight answered flatly.

“I’d really like for it to stop.”

“Yeah.” Twilight tossed her mane, avoiding Lumen’s eyes. “Well the only way to stop it is to wake up. Last I saw of you, that didn’t seem likely. And even if you manage that, if you’re anything like me, it’ll be here waiting every time you close your eyes.”

With her mind at least temporarily cleared of confusion, it was easy for Lumen to see how absurd it all was. Getting stuck in somepony else’s nightmare was almost as ridiculous as being unknowingly raised by the long-dead Princess of Magic, while said princess lived under an assumed identity.

“How can something like this even happen?” Lumen asked angrily.

Twilight sighed. “Luna being Luna.”

“Well, tell her to let me out, then,” Lumen demanded.

“I don’t know if she can. Besides, she won’t risk coming back here. Not now that she knows what it is.”

Twilight turned and looked disinterestedly as a mountainous Spike kicked over comparatively tiny towers in a distant Mareis. Apparently the cycle had restarted while they talked. Twilight’s horn shimmered briefly and the dragon shattered like a dropped bottle. Purple shrapnel flew in every direction, leaving several deep cuts across Twilight’s face and neck. She seemed either not to notice, or not to care.

“Ooh, symbolism,” Twilight remarked unenthusiastically, rolling one eye while blinking blood out of the other. “I get it, subconscious. You don’t have to keep banging that drum.”

“You have to let me out,” Lumen said, an edge of desperation in her voice.

“Hold on,” Twilight said, distracted, as a beam of energy issued from her horn and erased the latest Mareis from her otherwise blank dreamscape. She then turned back to Lumen with a somber expression that Lumen found unencouraging. “I don’t think I have the power to let you out. Dream magic brought you here, and that’s one type of magic I have no access to.”

“End the dream, then,” Lumen snapped in sudden anger. “You built this prison; even I can see that. Take it down and let me out. Then you can rebuild it, if that’s how you want to pass the centuries.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“I don’t care if it’s simple,” Lumen snarled.

Twilight was silent for a long moment. “I can end it for you,” she said finally. “If that’s what you want.”

Lumen brightened momentarily, then shook her head angrily as she realized what Twilight was offering. “That’s your solution? So I can choose between a quick murder or drawn out psychic torture? Thanks, Princess.”

“Well, that’s what I can offer you.”

They watched quietly for a moment as a horde of Spikes stampeded through the newly grown streets of another iteration of Mareis.

“I think I’m done here for tonight,” Twilight said at length.

“What? You can’t do that!” Lumen protested.

“I think I can.”

Panic began to overtake Lumen as she imagined what would become of her when she was once again the only host present for all of Twilight’s spare regret and self-loathing. “You have to at least finish the cycle,” she bargained.

“There will always be another one waiting. Finishing it solves nothing,” Twilight said, her voice growing fainter as her form began to fade.

“If you leave me here, you’re murdering me,” Lumen bellowed at the last shadow of the alicorn. “Whether or not you go to wherever you stashed me and smother me in my sleep, you’re killing me right now!”

It was no use. Twilight was gone. The real one, anyway.

“Maybe next time you come, you can put me next to Spike and find a million and one ways to kill me, too,” Lumen mumbled. “Or maybe I don’t rate that high.”

The thoughts were coming now. The thoughts, and half-memories, and feelings that weren’t hers but which insisted on inhabiting her because she was convenient. Then, suddenly, they weren’t.

Lumen looked up in surprise to find Twilight standing before her again.

“The last time I tried to fight my way out of this, it nearly destroyed me,” Twilight said in a low voice. “It could destroy both of us, if I try again. Is that acceptable to you?”

Lumen opened her mouth to answer, but Twilight spoke up again before she could.

“When I say ‘destroy’, I don’t mean ‘kill’. I mean something potentially far worse.”

Lumen wondered briefly why Twilight was leaving the decision to her. Deciding the fate of a goddess might be the same as deciding the fate of Equestria. What would failure mean for Twilight? Would it unleash another Nightmare?

Was it worth the risk? Lumen didn’t have enough information to say. She nodded anyway.

“Alright.” Twilight nodded in return.

Lumen didn’t know what she expected next. Perhaps Twilight would complete the cycle, and obliterate the small army of Spikes still running amok through a now significantly damaged Mareis. Perhaps she would try to change the cycle, and save the Spikes -- or at least one of them. Maybe she would try to save Mareis without injuring any of them.

What Lumen definitely did not expect was for Twilight to, with a stomp of her hoof, obliterate the world itself. She did not expect that world to be replaced by a lavishly decorated candlelit chamber that reminded her of her very short time in the capital.

“We’ve known this time was coming,” Celestia said grimly. “There aren’t many options left.” She was sitting across an ornately carved wooden table from Princess Luna while Twilight Sparkle paced in front of a large window across the room.

“We can still do something,” Twilight insisted, shaking her head without looking at either of the other alicorns. “We can give him a job. Sentinel of the North, or something. Unless the Crystal Empire decides to reappear again, he won’t be bothering anyone up there.”

“He’s not stupid, Twilight,” Celestia argued. “Even if he accepted such an assignment, how much time would that buy us? Ten years? A hundred? You have to start thinking about these things in the long term.”

“You’re one to talk,” Luna muttered. “This should have been addressed centuries ago, when it would have pained us all much less.”

“I’m not sure rehashing that argument gains us anything now, Luna,” Celestia said, her tone one that Lumen somehow knew mortals never heard. “But if you insist, perhaps we can also revisit some other suggestions you made around that time?”

There was a sudden fire in Luna’s eyes as she stood and placed a hoof threateningly on the table. “Don’t change the subject,” she ordered.

“Please sit down, Luna,” Twilight requested softly, her pacing paused for the moment.

Luna glared at Celestia a few seconds longer before complying, never taking her eyes off her elder sister. The room was quiet again for a time, then Twilight’s rhythmic hoofsteps began again.

Twilight passed back and forth before the window, pausing only occasionally to cast almost bashful glances towards the other alicorns. Celestia and Luna alternated between glaring at one another and avoiding eye contact. It seemed to go on for a very long time.

“Everything you’d ever need to know about the period of triumvirate rule,” Twilight said from beside Lumen. Not the same Twilight as the one pacing before the window, but Lumen had spent enough time in this sort of place that such impossibilities no longer bothered her. “Well, not quite.”

“I’ll take care of it,” the other Twilight said at last.

“There it is,” said the Twilight whom Lumen had decided to label as the ‘real’ one. “That’s all you need to know. But they didn’t let her off so easy this time.”

“And how will you do that?” Celestia questioned, gaze shifting from anything-but-Luna to Twilight’s face.

Twilight looked down at her hooves in an unsuccessful attempt to hide her uncertainty. “We’ll go out into the unknown lands. Find him a new home where he can be happy.”

“That could take months. Years, even,” Luna protested. “And it’s not as if those lands are empty. I doubt the current residents will accept him without question.”

“I don’t see any other options,” Twilight said glumly. “He can’t go back to the dragons. They won’t have him.”

“It’s not good enough,” Celestia said with a shake of her head. “I’m sorry, Twilight.” She stood and looked briefly at Luna, who did not look back at her. “He’ll have to be banished outright.”

“Banished?” Luna repeated incredulously, finally meeting her sister’s eyes. “As if he’d respect such a decree. Already, he’s given up observance of our laws. None of your half measures this time, Celestia.”

“Luna--” Twilight started in alarm, before Celestia interrupted her.

“No half measures -- what does this remind me of?” Celestia said, just loudly enough to be heard. “Oh, yes, a time about two--”

“Stop it!” Luna barked, rising from her own seat as her horn started to glow. “You made a promise.”

“I’m not the one who keeps bringing it up,” Celestia said.

Celestia was flung towards the far wall before she could finish, though she never made it there; outstretched wings and a touch of her own magic arrested her neatly in plenty of time.

“The funny thing is,” the real Twilight said in a tone that suggested anything but humor, “they are in complete agreement about Spike right now. They just wanted a reason to fight -- as if there’s any shortage.”

“Stop!” the younger Twilight cried. “Luna, what are you--”

Luna turned to Twilight, body aglow with a sheen of cerulean energy, and everything stopped.

“Is this a memory?” Lumen asked, looking to the real Twilight to confirm that she hadn’t frozen like the others.

“Not exactly. It’s more of a…” Twilight seemed to search for words for a moment. “Like the aggregate of many memories. We had this argument time and again -- not always the same subject, but the same argument.”

“So you have to fix it to move on, or what’s the point?”

“There’s no fixing it. Everything has already happened.” Twilight stepped over to the other version of herself and inspected her with an expression of contempt.

“What are we trying to do, then?” Lumen asked.

“I don’t know.” Twilight looked back to Lumen with a sad smile. “You seemed adamant that we do something, though. I can keep peeling back layers, trace the failure cascade backwards and forwards and backwards again. I’ve spent decades doing just that, with nothing but pain to show for it.”

It wasn’t the answer Lumen wanted to hear. She had hoped Twilight had some plan to escape the nightmare. Still, this was considerably more pleasant than an eternity of dragon murder. For her, at least. Twilight, in contrast, seemed more agitated by the second.

“Did they always fight like this? Getting violent, I mean?”

Twilight shook her head. “That was just once. A very special occasion.”

The scene burst into motion again, Celestia settling her hooves gracefully back onto the floor and glaring at Luna, who looked in turn at Twilight -- the only Twilight in attendance now, Lumen realized with a start.

“It’s nothing,” Luna growled. “I grow tired of her antagonization. That is all.”

“What did she promise you, Luna?” Twilight asked, her voice firm but her expression apprehensive.

“No concern of yours.”

“You can’t hide it forever,” Celestia said, drawing Luna’s eyes back to her.

“I could, if you would stop trying to force it.” Luna’s horn began to glow again.

“Luna,” Twilight called sharply. “Think about what you’re doing. Fighting now can only make things worse.”

“I think it might be quite satisfying,” Luna replied without looking away from Celestia.

“Satisfying in that you endanger all the ponies in the capital?” Twilight asked. “What is this about? If you would just tell me, she wouldn’t have it to hang over your head anymore.”

A brief expression of uncertainty was chased from Luna’s face by one of renewed anger. “You’re letting her meddle in our affairs,” she said, taking a step toward where Twilight stood by the window.

“What affairs? You aren’t making any sense.”

Luna didn’t answer, instead taking another aggressive step toward Twilight.

“Luna, this isn’t what you want,” Celestia called from behind her.

Luna paused and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them the fury remained, but instead of continuing on her course, she disappeared in a flash of blue. Twilight stared silently at the spot where she’d stood, while Celestia gazed contemplatively at Twilight.

“We’ll finish later, I suppose,” Celestia said finally, almost as if the source of the interruption had been something mundane like a scheduling conflict or an unexpected visitor. Without waiting for a response from the still-silent Twilight, she turned and exited the room, her magic closing the door behind her.

Lumen waited. Twilight didn’t move. Ripples of anxiety coursed through her coat along the length of her body, and her eyes, still focused on the empty space before her, seemed to have glazed over.

“Twilight?”

Twilight grunted, then rolled her head slowly to look at Lumen. “Shall we do it again, then?” she asked, her voice ragged, dread clear on her face. It was a surprising contrast to the memories of Spike, which she confronted with glum defeat, but comparatively little distress. Was this argument really more upsetting than reliving the killing of her friend?

“Why? Does that accomplish anything?”

“It hurts me,” Twilight answered with a shrug. “I wouldn’t blame you if that’s what you wanted.”

“No!” Lumen snapped. “All I want is to get out of here! You know that.”

“It’s easy to forget, with all this…” Twilight paused, looking again to where Luna had stood before she’d vanished. “With everything.”

Before Lumen could respond, the door flew open and Celestia stormed in, Luna just behind her.

“I told you, it’s not politically viable,” Celestia said, glaring over her shoulder at her sister.

“Politically viable.” Luna said with a mocking sneer. “We needn’t worry what the politicians will make of this -- or of anything else. Why you play their games is beyond me.”

“Yes, that much is clear,” Celestia said with a shake of her head. She took her seat at the table and poured herself a cup of tea from the kettle that had appeared along with the rest of the tea set some time in the past few seconds.

“Ah, back to belittling me instead of explaining yourself, I see.” As Luna bit out the rejoinder, Twilight mouthed the words along with her. Luna did not sit opposite Celestia, opting instead to turn away from the table and seethe from a position where Celestia could not see her face.

“I can only explain it so many times before--”

At some point, the argument had faded into nothing more than noise. The sisters exchanged endless verbal attacks, each indistinguishable from the last, while Twilight watched with a glum passivity. Occasionally they left the room, only to return moments later and start anew. Unlike the dream of Spike, which was the same memory twisted thousands of different ways, this was clearly a sample of countless memories, all of which played out identically.

Lumen pondered Twilight’s apparent timidity; was this how her younger self had always behaved? Autumn Wind never would have tolerated such bickering, though of course Autumn had never had to contend with angry goddesses. Autumn was also a false identity; perhaps a fantasy of the pony Twilight wished she was. Still, even in her true form, Twilight had put a stop to the sisters’ argument when it had begun in Autumn’s cottage the morning after the wyvern attack.

“Are you going to do something?” Lumen asked at last.

Twilight looked away from Celestia and Luna for a moment to glance quizzically at her. “What’s to do? I told you, this already happened. It can’t be changed.”

“Maybe it’s not about fixing the past,” Lumen suggested. “Maybe it’s about fixing you.”

Twilight shook her head and looked back to the sisters, whose almost rhythmic volley of invective continued unabated.

Lumen was startled when, hours or minutes later, Twilight spoke up.

“Luna, I have to agree with Celestia. We need to be more tactful with regard to the Corvids.”

Silence.

“Celestia, no amount of back room manipulation or verbal games will soften the blow for the parliament. You must see that.”

The sisters stared at her with identical expressions of betrayal, shook their heads in identical gestures of disgust, and turned to leave.

“You see?” Twilight asked. “Useless.”

“You stopped the argument.”

“For now,” Twilight acknowledged with a snort. “There will always be another.”

“You can stop that one too. How do you feel?”

“Feel?” Twilight asked, her eyes widening as if she was surprised by the question. “The same, I suppose.”

“Even though that was what you were afraid of,” Lumen said. “And you did it. Even if you didn’t solve anything, you’re no worse for it.”

“They aren’t happy about it.”

“They aren’t real,” Lumen said, frustration making its way into her voice. “Not here. And your job isn’t to make them happy. You are their peer -- the only one they have. No one else can do what you have to.”

Twilight was silent for what seemed like a long time. Neither Celestia nor Luna reappeared, which Lumen took as a positive, if only because she wanted to.

When she was as certain as she could be that the sisters wouldn’t be back, Lumen spoke again. “That first fight -- the one where they actually fought. That was different from the rest of them.”

Twilight exhaled noisily through her nostrils. “Yes. That one was about me.”

“It was?” Lumen tilted her head in confusion. “They never even mentioned you.”

“No, it was all references to references. They never explained it to me, either, for obvious reasons.”

“So how do you know it was about you?”

Twilight gave Lumen a measuring look, then shook her head. “We can leave now. We’d better get going.”

“Huh?”

The room melted away, replaced by a star-filled sky over a lonely desert. A few miles distant, a dozen or so dim lights suggested the presence of a small town. Otherwise, there was no evidence of civilization; flat, red ground peppered with sandstone spires extended indefinitely in every direction.

Spike was also there, a few steps away, his back turned to Lumen and Twilight. It took Lumen a few seconds to recognize him -- he hadn’t appeared this way in any of the multitude of versions Lumen had seen of his death. Standing upright on his rear legs, he was about twice as tall as Twilight. Wings too small to be useful extended from his back, and his head hadn’t yet taken on the more angular shape she’d seen on his adult form.

“Hey, Twilight,” Spike muttered without turning. “Word travels fast, huh? Or are you just watching me now?”

Twilight didn’t respond. Finally, Spike turned to look at her.

“I was just trying to help, you know.”

“Just trying to help,” Twilight repeated icily. “I’m not even sure I want to hear this rationalization.”

“They were having trouble--”

“Spike!” Twilight interrupted sharply. “It doesn’t matter what you tell yourself you were trying to do. We have had this conversation too many times. Ruined houses, raided gem caches, burning crops -- everywhere you go, I have to follow, consoling ponies and issuing reimbursement. Where reimbursement is even possible, that is.”

“I get it.” Spike said, holding up his claws in a gesture of surrender. “I’ll be more careful. I’ll learn to control my urges.”

“No.” Twilight shook her head. “We’ve been down that road.”

“You have a better idea?” Spike asked suspiciously.

Twilight took a deep breath, as if steeling herself for what she had to say. “You need to go somewhere where you can be a dragon.”

Spike seemed to puzzle over that for a moment. “You’re starting to sound like Celestia. I’m fine here. I’ll adjust.”

“It’s not up to you.” Twilight said, her voice nearly cracking. “You can’t stay in Equestria.”

Spike raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “Okay, I get it, you’re mad. I’ll work on it, I promise.”

“It’s time, Spike. Let’s make this as easy as we can.” As she spoke, Twilight took a step toward the dragon.

“Hold on,” Spike said, as he took a corresponding step back. Panic colored his eyes and voice as he came to grasp Twilight’s seriousness. “You can’t banish me. This is my home! You have to at least give me a chance.”

Twilight opened her mouth as if to argue, shook her head, and closed it again. Spike was lifted from the ground in her purple aura as she spread her wings and took to the air.

“Put me down,” Spike yelled, struggling uselessly against Twilight’s magic. “You can’t do this!”

Twilight didn’t reply. Soon, they were soaring above the clouds, Spike still complaining and Twilight still ignoring him. Lumen was flying alongside them, despite her lack of wings, which was a new sort of oddity, but not one she spared much thought for.

They landed some time later in a rocky valley between two rugged peaks. Vegetation was sparse, comprised mostly of stout, wiry shrubs that added patches of dark green to an otherwise gray landscape. An orange glow shone from behind the eastern of the two mountains as the sun began to rise behind it.

“Where are we?” Spike asked as he looked around with a sour expression.

“Equestria has no name for this place,” Twilight said. “You can make your home here, or keep looking, if you prefer. What you can’t do is return to Equestria. If I find you inside our borders… I won’t have many options.”

“Come on, Twilight,” Spike pleaded. “You’ve made your point. Let’s go home and talk about this.”

Twilight scanned the valley with her eyes, as if memorizing its features for future reference.

“I hope, one day, to visit you here -- or wherever you end up -- and hear from you about the life that you’ve made for yourself. I hope that will be a joyful reunion for both of us.” Twilight paused, then continued with apparent difficulty. “Until that day, though, I don’t want to see you at all -- for your sake.”

Spike’s parting words were drowned out by the rushing wind of Twilight’s sudden ascent. Lumen found that she rode on the alicorn’s back now, which was more believable, but also considerably more awkward. When the valley in which she’d left her friend was hardly visible behind them, Twilight’s flight lost urgency and she let herself glide sedately wherever the winds pushed her.

“I thought for a long time that that was the moment when I really killed Spike. That if I’d done it sooner, or later, more gently, or more harshly, or any number of other ways, things would have turned out differently.” It wasn’t clear whether Twilight was talking to Lumen, or herself.

“You don’t think so anymore?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Twilight said with either resignation or acceptance. “It’s done.”

“So why even bother coming back to it?”

“It was the way back to here.”

Lumen looked around in surprise. She hadn’t noticed Twilight’s rapid descent, but now she saw that they were again below the clouds, approaching a jagged coastline, and, just beyond it, a very familiar smoldering city. She didn’t want to go back there, but something kept her from voicing her discomfort.

As they landed in the cobblestone square she’d come to know so well, Lumen almost wondered if she’d finally awoken. There was a detail and consistency to the scene that had been lacking in all that she experienced since she’d first found herself trapped here. That extended to Spike, as well.

Moments ago in the desert, he’d been about twice Twilight’s height. Now he towered over her such that comparison wasn’t possible from a pony’s perspective. He seemed to know the moment she arrived, turning away from a clock tower he’d been methodically tearing apart to lock eyes with her.

“Twilight,’ he acknowledged.

“Spike.”

Spike watched her closely for another moment, as if waiting for something. “No speech?” he asked at last.

Twilight seemed to consider her words carefully, which made her very simple statement all the more startling. “I’m going to kill you.”

It wasn’t a threat, nor was it spoken with anger or malice.

Spike nodded calmly. “That’s why I’m here.”

A pained look crossed Twilight’s face, and for a moment, it seemed like she wasn’t willing to leave it at that. She regained control, though, and returned his nod. “I wish it could have been better.”

“Me too.”

The fight itself was short. The same level of detail that made the rest of the scene seem so real had the opposite effect on this confrontation. Whether Spike might have had a chance had he come here for any other reason than to die was something Lumen didn’t have the experience to judge. If this vision was anything like the actual event, though, she had a hard time imagining it. It was as if the world itself had collapsed inward on the dragon, crushing him before he could so much as swipe a claw at Twilight.

Then, he lay on the cobblestone, broken, coughing out his last attempts at speech. After one last erratic heave of his chest, he was still. Twilight looked at him in silence some time longer, her expression unreadable.

Even though she knew somehow that this time was different than all the others, Lumen still found herself bracing for the cycle to begin again. It did not.

“Are you alright?” Lumen asked after what seemed like a very long time.

Twilight looked up with tired eyes that, for the first time, seemed to show her years. “No. But I think I’m ready to work on it.”

She spread her wings and gave each an appraising look, as if it was the first time she had considered using them. Then, with a series of powerful flaps, she pushed herself into the sky.

It didn’t occur to Lumen to object until Twilight was just a purple speck above Mareis’ ruined skyline. Then, the speck was gone, and Lumen was alone again. With resigned dread, she awaited the next repetition of the nightmare. Again, she would lose herself in Twilight’s regrets. Soon, there would be nothing left to call Lumen.

It didn’t happen, though; instead, the dream world faded away, and did not return.

Comments

[Kairee]

Tragic; very tragic. But I'm grateful for the additional backstory. Looking forwards to more.

[Sunny]

A mix of answers and further questions. I did enjoy this and do hope we see more to come, soon. The biggest issue seems to be the source of the Sisters's endless bickering - will we see a root of that, eventually?

[Iron Nebula]

Why do I get the feeling Luna wants to pursue a relationship with Twilight, and Celestia keeps finding reasons to say no?

[Derpmind]

Really well done sadness here.

[ForSpite]

6325116
I was thinking the same thing and it's not going to help Luna's resentment that theoretically she doesn't have the power to say no to that if the other two want it.

[Obsidian]

6325116 - Re-reading the passage, it seems more like Luna has a thing for Twilight that she DOESN'T want revealed. Celestia keeps trying to get Luna to tell Twilight the truth, but Luna is resisting, forcefully... for whatever sort of masochistic self-penance thing she needs...

[Harwick]

Cryptic, but interesting... I have plenty of questions left, of course. Does Twilight not remember her romance with Luna? From the events of "Two Pair" it began long before this drama with Spike, yet looking back over the story I can't help but notice that Luna reacts with great passion over Twilight's loss as if it was (or should be) more personal to her (locking herself away for Sparkle day, being incredibly indignant that Celestia would keep these events from her), but Twilight doesn't really seem to behave quite so strongly towards Luna, interacting far more with Celestia instead. I can't help but wonder if the decision that the original Royal pony sisters let poison their relationship had something to do with this.

I'm also curious as to what happened to Cadance and the Crystal Empire. Her absence was already a question mark, and now we know that the Empire has vanished again too.

[superfun]

Despite finding the story too confusing to favorite at the moment, I AM intrigued enough that I decided to start tracking it.