12 - Feedback
The cool howl of a wayward breeze washed over the valley, charting a chorus of rustling branches through the wood and on the plain. It formed streak lines with the grass as their sways reflected the moonlight.
The moon itself hung high in the sky, shining an intense blue light down upon the land, enough to make even the most isolated of crevices navigable. Several bodies sat against windowsills in awe at its magnificence.
The land of Equestria lay silent and still. The occasional animal broke the peace, but even they kept to themselves more than on most other nights. The towns and cities lay deserted as ponies remained in their homes.
Like a whisper, a name cropped up. In several little pockets, from the voices of small colts and fillies, came a name. Through hushed conversations over bedsides, a name passed between parent and offspring. When one presented questions, the other answered.
Soon afterward, bedroom lights disappeared into the night.
And then the name appeared again. The name of a late mare passed from the mother to father and then back again before it vanished back into the ether. All were wonderings of her life, who she was, and what she had gone through. They tried to fathom what those closest to her thought, how they felt, especially now that it was over.
Various ‘What If?’s presented themselves between them with their offspring as the subject. What if it had been their daughter? Their Son?
One by one, the conversations resolved with varying assurances that it would not happen. Everything was safe. Everything was okay.
Silent thanks and other expressions of gratitude followed.
One by one, in the cities and towns across Equestria, the lights went out until, finally, only the moon remained. As ponies of all shapes, sizes, colors, and identities slept soundly in their beds, the night ticked by just as it had for thousands of moons before.
The name took off through the minds of a collective unconscious. It appeared in the dreamscapes and sometimes, within unconscious ramblings, made it back into the real world.
But for a select few that had more than a name, other things took shape. A lavender alicorn appeared to them for those who had seen her. A scratched voice spoke to them for those who had heard her. She ate, she ran, she lectured, she read, and she did many other things for those who had known her.
And for many hours long into the night, the idea persevered. In that sense, that late mare lived on within the serenity of the Equestrian night.
Sunset Shimmer idly scratched her head and slumped further against the desk.
Even as she tuned out the hard, rapid pitter-patter of rain against the windows in favor of thoughts, there was little to think about. Judging from the other ponies lying about the room, staring at whatever their eyes happened to land on, she assumed that they were the same way.
Spike, on the other hoof, had disappeared downstairs with the crystal ball sometime prior. Sunset supposed that she could go find him, but to do so would have required her to rise from her position.
One thought formed in her mind. Even with Twilight now gone, nopony else wept. Nopony bothered to move about either, but even that was a step up from the absolute messes they had been before.
Sunset told herself it was easier the second time. She wasn’t sure if she believed it.
Sunset pushed back her curled mane and looked out of the room’s large window. Though a light haze had fallen over the grounds outside, the rain fell with less intensity than before. Sunset could hardly remember the last time she had heard the crack of thunder or witnessed the bright display of lighting.
She snorted at the thought. Maybe the storm would end soon.
No, she thought, it will end soon.
While Twilight, nine days ago, remained alive for within an hour more, the doors had closed behind her. The seconds counted down but she had no idea how many seconds there were to count down, nor did she care, because Twilight was as good as dead either way.
On the other side of the room, Rarity scrutinized some dust on the curb of her hoof. Fluttershy fiddled with the feathers in one of her wings. Applejack scratched at an itch in her ear. Meanwhile, the other two did nothing but lie on their backs and stare at the ceiling.
Sunset’s eyes drifted through them and then toward the large amounts of chalk dust and scattered pieces of parchment that coated the floor. She stood up with a sigh and used her magic to clear up the loose papers and stack them into a messy pile off to the side. She then summoned a broom and dustpan out of the corner of the room.
The etched sounds of her broom across the floor echoed throughout the tower. The others stirred as Sunset swept, and then they watched in full as she emptied what she had into the trash bin. Sunset swept up another pile of chalk dust, trying to capture every scrap.
How much longer did it have to be?
Sunset continued until the few grains remaining evaded her sweeps and she called that good enough. She returned the trash bin to its spot near the stairs and returned her tools to their spot in the corner. She returned to the stack of papers and moved all of them onto the desk.
Sunset sorted through them into several stacks. But as much as she tried to skim over them in her attempts to ignore them, they stuck. Every paper was a reminder of what had just happened and what was about to happen.
A few minutes later, five stacks of scribbles and mathematics took the desk. At that, Sunset collapsed once more with a dejected sigh.
Her eyes wandered the room again in search of something else to busy herself with. She felt her jaw go stiff when she found none. Sunset slumped further against the desk just like she had been before.
She was sure that if somepony was watching her from the world above theirs, they would be disappointed.
Sunset wanted it to be over. Sunset wanted to be done and reach the end. She wanted to go home and forget. She wanted to see her friends again. She wanted to move on. She wanted to be alone. She wanted to stay. She wanted to get to know these friends of Equestria. She wanted to run from friendship forever.
And she didn’t know what she wanted. Again.
* * *
As Sunset descended the stairs, the very first thing she noticed was not the open entry door, but rather the dragon sitting outside it.
She stopped at the bottom and sighed. Even across the room, the rain sounded sobering, cleansing even. Like it would wash away all her trouble.
She glanced into the kitchen. While the hardened floor had been cleaned, for the most part, she could still spot the faint burn marks of a time travel spell. Burn marks just like she had seen in an alternate world below her. Her marks.
Some things just couldn’t be washed away.
She pushed the thought out of her mind again as she headed for the open door.
The rain splashed against the deck, creating a cacophony of high-pitched splats. A single light, cubbied inside the door’s magnificent golden frame, lit the deck itself. A few guards roamed the grounds outside, evidenced by lights floating in the fog. Sunset imagined that they carried umbrellas or protective enchantments.
Spike sat on top of the banister, gazing out at what little he could see. The crystal ball remained clutched in his hands as the heavy rainfall cascaded down the both of them.
Shielding her eyes, Sunset stepped into the rain. It fought against her, attacking her mane and coat. Every drop drilled into her, but she plowed through all of it.
Sunset lifted her hooves onto the banister as a way of sitting next to him. Spike made no indication that he knew she was there, and in return, she made no fanfare to signal her arrival. For some moments, the two of them looked out at the rest of the castle.
“Well,” Spike said, after many long moments, “we tried.”
Sunset rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and look where that got us,” she said.
“Much better than suddenly finding out she’s gone though.”
Sunset nodded as she moved some hair out of her eyes. “I guess that’s true.”
Spike kicked his feet against the banister as he tracked a nearby moving light.
“Weren’t you the first one to find her?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
Sunset let out a long breath. He was talking, at the very least, but somehow, he didn’t appear against it in any capacity. Somehow, Sunset felt comfortable asking a question she knew would not have been answered a few days prior. “How did it feel?”
Spike shook his head. “It was… a lot worse than this. I mean really, I can’t even.”
“…Ah.”
“I mean, what should I say?” he said with a shrug. “I panicked. I mean, I did. I’m pretty sure I did.”
Sunset raised an eyebrow. “But…?”
“I… don’t really remember.”
Sunset’s chuckle escaped her mouth against her will. “Really?”
“I mean,” he said as he flipped the ball in his hands, “we probably spent at least ten minutes looking for Twilight when we came and that door behind us was open. I bet she was already dead by then.”
Sunset nodded and rolled her hoof for him to continue.
“We couldn’t find her note at first,” Spike said, “because she put her note on the back of the map. And the map was what we found. But… When we did find it…” He pointed to himself. “When I found it… I guess I didn’t wake up until we’d all ran down there and found her in that… thing.”
Sunset furrowed her brow. “I guess it must’ve been quite a shock.”
“Yeah, it must have.” Spike laughed. “I just wonder what would have happened if we had got there ten minutes earlier,” he mused. “I bet we’ll find out.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve just kinda been thinking about it, is all. We saw Twilight leave it note-side up.”
“Well then,” Sunset said, “I guess their version of you won’t miss it so easily, huh?”
“Nah, I guess not.”
The two looked into the darkness as the rain bombarded the both of them. The light from earlier had since moved further into the darkness until, at least as Sunset saw it, it instantly disappeared as it presumably rounded a corner.
Sunset felt her mane stick to her head and she shook it in an attempt to give it air.
Spike peered into the ball. The cavern lay quiet and empty save for a crystal ball on the ground. The doors towered over the scene but made no moves. Likewise, Spike made no moves to move the ball to any other spot.
Sunset adjusted her lean against the railing and cleared her throat. “I, uh,” she began, averting her eyes, “I have a small confession to make.”
Spike raised an eyebrow in response.
“I convinced Twilight to burn the book,” Sunset said. “She got rid of all her data because I asked her to.”
Spike’s expression remained unchanged for many long moments and he tapped his fingers against the ball. “And?”
Sunset frowned. “And? That’s it.”
“That’s all?”
“Yeah.”
Spike widened his eyes. “Oh,” he acknowledged, “I thought it was gunna be something big.”
Sunset shrunk. “You’re… not mad?”
“Nah.”
Sunset blushed. It sounded too absurd. “But—”
“I trust you enough to know you had a good reason for it. Right?”
Sunset shivered as the rain sent a chill through her. “Yeah.”
Spike nodded. “Can you tell me why though?”
“Yeah. It just was my way of making sure that I copied off of her,” Sunset replied. “Be pretty bad if we got them mixed up or something like that.”
Spike considered it. “Why’s that matter?”
Sunset nodded and stared back into the dark. “I had a plan. I had a thought. That what we have… is all the information that those versions of us in those lower layers would have gotten. What we started with was the result of their efforts. Our efforts only added to what was there.
“I read from a Twilight in a layer below. And then I have to add onto what’s there. That’s why it matters.
“So, when I time traveled and give Twilight her book, then maybe a version of me above us reads from her, and then adds her own information.
“I figured that if we copied each other, then we’d have more and more information each time. And then finally, somewhere at the top layer—if there is a top—they’d be able to put it all together and provide an answer. They’d send it down after the work was done.”
Sunset collapsed onto the rail. “Maybe it never existed,” she said with a sigh. “There was never a way to save Twilight. And all the work has been for nothing. An infinite amount of work for nothing.”
The rain intensified. The light bombardment turned into what felt like a flogging. And Sunset let it hit her. She felt soaked in places she didn’t know she had as the water dripped down her body. The storm howled on, sounding deafening even without the rolling thunder.
For a moment, Sunset wished that she could drown in all of it.
“Well, we still tried, I guess,” Spike asserted.
Sunset dared to glance up.
“I mean, yeah,” he continued. “I kinda hoped she’d be able to use The Answer to fake it all while still killing that Nameless. That’s what we tried to do. And it didn’t work. But we got to spend some time with Twilight before she left.”
“But we failed,” Sunset argued.
“I know.”
“And it hurts.”
Spike looked toward the sky, allowing the rain to directly splash against his face. “Oh, yeah, I know. And it’ll probably be a long time ’til I can get over it. A really long time. But I think I can kinda take it now. I think, actually… right now…” He turned and locked eyes with her. “Right now, I actually feel a bit okay with it.”
Sunset tilted her head with a quizzical expression. “Huh?”
Spike searched for his words. “You know, I mean, we know what happened now. I’m not so worried about it anymore. Besides, Twilight... she’s my hero.”
Spike caressed the crystal ball and looked into it like an adorable little foal. A grin spread across his face and he let out a sigh.
“We had a lot of fun today,” he said. Then he frowned, “Maybe not so much at the end, but…”
Sunset nodded. “Agree with you there,” she replied.
Spike chuckled. “And… we had some good moments. That thing you did with the picture was really really cool.”
Sunset chuckled. “Heh, thanks. But it’s nothing compared to the hourglass trick that you did.”
Spike blushed. “Aw, shucks.”
The two looked into the darkness as the rain became a light drizzle. Sunset could feel her hairs stuck together and decided to ignore that for a few seconds more. Sunset hummed as a rogue gust of wind blew across her face. “I gotta say, you’ve really changed in the past few days.”
Spike raised an eyebrow. “Me?”
Sunset nodded and smiled. “Totally. I think… I think you’ve grown up.”
“Really?”
“I do,” she said and gave him a playful slap across the back.
Spike shied away but his growing smile and his even redder face betrayed him. “That’s good.”
“Yeah,” she replied. As Sunset looked into the sky, the rain, in turn, splashed against her face. She blinked. “But it’d be kinda crappy to go through all this only to get sick from staying out in the rain. We should probably go back inside.”
Spike considered it. “Alright. Just a few more minutes though, okay?”
Sunset shook her head and smiled. She turned her gaze back toward the darkness as she straightened up on the railing. “Okay.”
* * *
Sunset shook herself, sending droplets of water flying in all directions. A floating towel captured a large bulk of them while the rest splattered against the floor. Sunset then took the towel and wiped the rest of herself down.
Spike cleaned himself in a similar fashion, wiping down the ridges lining his back. Satisfied at that, he hung his towel around his neck and leaned against the wall.
Sunset continued along, wiping drops of water off her legs. She then made quick work of her tail. Nodding to herself, Sunset hung her towel across her backside.
The two locked eyes, compared each other, and then chuckled.
A few muffled voices sounded from the upstairs, prompting the two to listen in. The voices sounded questioning, concerned, but neither Sunset nor Spike could glean anything else.
“Looks like they’re coming around,” Sunset commented.
“Yeah, there’s that.”
Instead, Sunset took the towel to her face for good measure. The faint sound of moving hooves registered in her ears, but she paid no attention to them.
Spike, however, stepped out into the living room and looked up as Applejack descended the stairs. “Heya.”
Applejack stumbled but ultimately kept her balance. “Oh, there ya two are. Ah was fixin’ to run out lookin’ for y’all.”
Sunset peeked out from under the towel. “Huh? Why?”
Applejack frowned. “Y’all might wanna get up here right quick. There’s uh… a thing goin’ on. Ya gotta come see this.”
Spike and Sunset exchanged worried glances before the both of them threw their towels to the floor. Spike grabbed the ball, and the three of them bolted up the stairs.
Four ponies had gathered in one corner of the room, but it appeared more like three of them had gathered around the fourth one. As far as Sunset could tell, Pinkamena lay propped against the wall as her body convulsed this way and that.
“What’s going on?” Sunset asked with a tremulous tone in her voice.
The former three turned around to meet them. “Sunset, Spike…” Fluttershy said.
“Pinkie Pie is having a very serious reaction,” Rarity said with a worried look on her face. “Just look.”
Pinkamena’s entire body convulsed. “I-it’s been a-a-a w-w-while, b-but I-I k-know this one!” she exclaimed as the shudders wracked her body.
“That means a doozy is about to happen,” Fluttershy said.
“Y-y-y-y-ou b-b-b-et!” And then the jitters subsided, to which Pinkamena blurted, “And it’s gunna happen right here!”
A long silence passed through the room as each of them scratched their heads in thought. The window nearby whistled from the light rain that hit it.
Rarity crossed her forelegs. “I can’t even begin to fathom what that could possibly be.”
Applejack grit her teeth together. “It wasn’ all that cut and dry at Froggy Bottom Bog either.”
Pinkamena raised a hoof into the air. “It’s gunna be something we’d never expect to happen,” she said.
“If it has nothing to do with Twilight,” Rainbow Dash snorted, “then I don’t care what it is.”
Fluttershy glanced between all of them and then settled in the object in Spike’s hands. “Uhm, what if it’s something that we’ll be able to see from here?”
Spike flipped the crystal ball in his hands once and then peered down into it. “I dunno, Fluttershy. There’s not much to look at.”
“Twilight’s crystal ball?”
“Yeah, the crystal ball in there should still show the caverns,” Spike said, pointing.
“Huuuuh. What is Twilight doing?”
Spike thought the ball’s view through the doors and into the chamber.
Twilight Sparkle remained in a sitting position amidst the steady red glow of the sigils on the walls. Every so often, in a slow rhythm, Twilight took a deep breath and let it all out again. Her eyes lay shut like she was half-asleep.
Spike shook his head. “Still waiting for it to happen,” he said with a grim frown.
“Seems like there’s nothing to see there then,” Rarity scoffed.
“Yeah. All that’s left is for us to come along and find her. And then we’ll start this whole mess allll over again.”
The others nodded and voiced several variations of “Uh-huh.”
Sunset let out a sigh. “…Yeah,” she said.
The others were right. There just wasn’t anything more to see within the ball aside from the fateful moment. Some other version of them would come along within an hour and find the ball as it was (with it looking at the caverns), and the cycle would begin anew.
Sunset blinked.
Wait.
Sunset held a hoof against her forehead as she thought. Something’s not right.
I know there were certain things that we saw over the past few days. We saw things happen. Heck, they threw us for a loop.
Just like I time traveled to give our Twilight a book, I saw their version of me time travel to give her a book. And I know, for that to happen, we have to be able to find Twilight at all. I have to find her that first night.
And if the ball in her world still looks at the caverns, then they can’t find her that first night. Sunset felt a drop of sweat form on her brow. The cloak thing I could let slide, but this…! This is a huge contradiction!
Sunset knocked against her own skull. And I have no idea what… or rather, who could possibly resolve it!
A long pause went by as a few thoughts swirled around her head, and then something clicked. Sunset peered through her mane and frowned. This isn’t over.
She cleared her throat. “Actually, could we possibly go back and talk some more about The Answer for a moment?”
“Yeah, like it would do us any good now though,” Rainbow Dash said. “Twilight’s already gone through the door and everything.”
Rarity nodded. “Quite so. After all, we couldn’t even get our voices through a wooden door, much less those massive stone ones. There is absolutely no way she’ll be able to hear us with her crystal ball sitting outside. And I doubt anything we say or do is going to convince her to come out and talk.”
“Y’all used up all the time travel spells too,” Applejack pointed out.
“Only once per lifetime,” Spike added grimly.
“Maybe that’s why it’s the doozy,” Sunset argued. “That’s the last thing we’d expect right now, right?”
Spike tapped his fingers against the ball. “Uh-huh. Aside from something coming out of nowhere and fixing everything.” He received several stares. “What?”
Rarity straightened herself. “Alright, sure. Why not? Tell us where you’d like to go with this, Sunset?”
The other five turned to her, even as another wave of spasms overtook Pinkamena’s body.
“My thought,” Sunset said, “was that we would get The Answer from the world above us. The one watching us from nine days into the future. And then, obviously, we would turn around nine days from now and give The Answer to them,” she explained, pointing at the crystal ball.
The others nodded in agreement.
Sunset glanced between the six of them and said, “Would you all agree that we’d do everything to make sure we could pass it to the world below us?”
Again, the others nodded.
Sunset turned her attention to the crystal ball and stared holes into it. The ball remained quiet, just as it had in the many long minutes before.
I can’t let up until that contradiction goes away, Sunset thought as she twisted her curly mane. I don’t know where this is going to take me…
“Okay,” Sunset said, “I’m going to ballpark this and see what happens. What if… The Answer exists but we’re not supposed to get it until the right time?”
Applejack frowned. “Sunset…” she began and tried to reach out to her.
“Just humor me, okay? What would we do with it?”
Puzzled expressions washed over their faces. As the rain outside died out, leaving only the low howl of wind as it wrapped around the tower, they kicked at the floor and scratched their heads and drummed thoughtful rhythms on whatever they could find.
And then Spike gasped. “I know what we’d do!” he said with a snap of his claws. “We would hide it where no one would look for it!”
Sunset paled. Somehow, she knew what words came next, but her mouth moved anyway. “And where might a place like that be?”
Spike pounded his chest. “That’s easy, Sunset! That’s real easy!” He let off a toothy grin and declared, “I would put it in the hourglass!”
All six mares let out sharp gasps in response.
“…Sweet Celestia!”
In a single moment, all seven of them jumped. They glanced between each other to see if it had been one of their voices. Their widened eyes then centered on the crystal ball and, at that moment, they turned completely frozen.
The ball had spoken.
“Who in the world was that!?” Rarity cried.
Fluttershy gasped. “Could it be…?”
Pinkamena’s mane and tail shot up and out and then tangled into a series of knots. “Twilight!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed. “Is that you!?”
More silence passed. Their hearts beat within their chests, their attention remained fixed. No one made a sound, not even to breathe.
And then finally, “Yes!” the crystal ball said with a voice that sounded just like Twilight’s. “I’m here! I’m here!”
Several cries of “Twilight!” rose up in unison as smiles spread across their faces and they jumped for joy.
But Sunset frowned. Her glance immediately fell on the mare inside the ball who appeared just the same as a few minutes before. Sunset shifted. It’s not her, she thought, but it’s…
Sunset stamped a hoof against the ground. “You! You’re the Twilight from the world above us, aren’t you!?”
“That is correct,” Twilight’s voice replied.
“That is incredible, darling,” Rarity said as she clapped her hooves together, “absolutely incredible. So you’re talking to us from nine days into the future.”
“I am. And you’re not going to believe this, but I have it. It was exactly in the place you just talked about.”
Sunset beamed, “You have The Answer!?”
“I have it right here!” Twilight’s voice yelled with triumphant strength.
“Wow!” Fluttershy exclaimed.
Rarity’s gasp barely made it past her mouth before her hooves met it. “Sunset! Do you know what this—”
“I was right!” Sunset shouted with a wide smile on her face. “I was right! It does exist! It does exist! And, we…”—her smile faded—“can’t… use it. Oh stars, we can’t get it to Twilight!”
All at once, several groans rose up between the seven of them. Sunset frowned. Eight, counting Twilight from the future.
Rarity shook her head and flipped her mane behind her head. “Alright, but Twilight, did you use The Answer in the past?”
“Yes, that sounds pretty accurate,” Twilight’s voice said, “I was… uhm, dead for a while. But, using this spell, I was able to make it so that it could be reversed and I could be brought back.”
Sunset felt her body go solid. “So… you did die?”
“Yes. I died. And then, thanks to you, I recovered.”
Rainbow Dash scowled as her ears pinned backward. “Okay, wait a minute, lemme get this straight… You’ve done this whole magic spell before and so you must’ve had it. So why couldn’t you give that to us—oh I don’t know—a little earlier when it might have counted?”
“Quite so,” Rarity said with a frown, “and you could have at least let us know you were okay a little earlier.”
The crystal ball went silent for many long moments. And then it sighed. “I forgot the spell,” Twilight’s voice croaked.
The fury in Rainbow Dash’s expression melted away. “You forgot?”
“Yes... There’re a lot of things that I forgot on account of me dying. I can’t even remember exactly how to get to the chamber. I know that map could help, but… I’m so sorry.” Twilight’s voice wavered and crumbled to a point where her voice was but a whisper. “If I had just remembered, then maybe you could have saved me in your world. Or the one you’ve been watching.”
Spike wiped a stray tear from his eyes. “Oh, Twilight…”
“I’m a really bad Twilight,” her voice said. “I’ve just felt so guilty because I watched you go through all of this for me and when you needed me to do something, I couldn’t. I’ve just… felt so awful that I am alive and your world’s me is… not.”
Applejack doffed her hat. “Twi, it ain’t your fault. This whole thing’s been mighty messed up. Ah’m just glad at least one of ya is safe.”
“I agree with Applejack,” Fluttershy seconded.
“I’m sorry,” Twilight’s voice said again.
Sunset cracked her neck. “Twilight, you said you had The Answer. Right?”
She imagined the nod on the other side. “I have the whole thing,” Twilight’s voice said. “I fished it out of the hourglass just a few seconds ago.”
Sunset nodded as she broke through the group and trotted toward the desk. Her horn lit up and the dozens of papers on top of the desk shifted around. A stack of blank papers presented itself before her and, after taking a moment of bumping them into line against the desk, she took the topmost one and turned. Sunset looked to the ceiling with a determined scowl. “Then we might as well copy it from you, just as I had originally planned.”
“That sounds good to me, but…” Twilight’s voice paused. “You’re going to need a lot more paper than that.”
Sunset raised an eyebrow. “What? Will five more do?”
“No, it will not. This magic spell that I have on me is seventy pages long.”
Sunset balked. “Se... seventy pages!?” she cried, her jaw slackened in disbelief.
The other six exchanged confused frowns.
“Well, no bucking wonder you forgot it,” Sunset muttered as she took the whole stack instead, “that length of spell is unheard of.”
Twilight’s voice laughed. “Oh, just wait until you see how it’s laid out. It managed to compress a few hundred pages worth of information into those seventy pages.”
Sunset felt the blood rush through the veins in her head. “And here I thought the time spell was complex, and that was only a page long.” She threw her hooves into the air. “Whatever!”
At that point, Sunset turned to face the other six who had anticipatory grins on their faces. “Okay, everyone grab a quill,” she commanded as she levitated over a cupful of quills and some ink. She then passed out ten pieces of paper to each of them. “So, Twilight’s going to need all of that, huh?” she mused.
“From what I can tell, you only need to give the other me the first sixteen pages.”
Sunset nodded. “Only sixteen?”
“Yes. There is ten pages of actual spell for me, fifty-four pages for a second caster, and then a six-page library full of words that both spells use.”
Sunset blinked several times before slapping herself in the face. “It’s… a spell in two parts. Of course.”
Twilight’s voice laughed and then made the sound of a clearing throat. “Yes, speaking of spells in two parts, I’m going to transmit you some images now.”
Sunset nodded to the others, all of whom pressed their quills at the top of their papers in response. The six of them grinned toothy grins, the “we got this” sort of grins, and almost shook from the anticipation.
Sunset flared her horn. “We’re ready, Twilight.”
* * *
Sunset looked up from her half-completed page to the large image hovering above her. The image contained two sheets of paper: one for her and one for Fluttershy. For her part, Fluttershy worked feverishly, scrawling several lines without looking up.
The others wrote at an equal intensity where they had to lick their lips as their mouths ran dry and where sweat drops formed on their brows. But whereas Rarity could copy several lines without having to double check, Applejack and Rainbow Dash flip-flopped between the originals and their hoofwritten copies. The other three each fell somewhere in between.
Except for Spike who currently sat backward, knocking his feet together and watching over Rarity’s withers as she worked off of the image that she shared with Pinkie Pie.
Pinkie Pie held up her paper. “Page twenty-two is done!” she proclaimed.
Sunset placed her quill down to take a good look at the page. Several lines spanned the paper, leaving little to no margins. Symbols that she had never seen before (but knew they corresponded to an entry from the first six pages) interwove with magical sigils to create a wall of text. It sounds like computer compression, she thought.
The occasional footnote, written in a thankfully plain language, appeared in a few of the open spaces. At the very top, the word Exit headed the page, coupled with a page number. She had seen the words Entry and Library before that.
“That looks like the page that I have,” the crystal ball said after a few moments. “Here come twenty-seven and twenty-eight.”
Sunset slotted Pinkie Pie’s completed page into the growing stack and then flared her horn.
Meanwhile, Spike stood up and hopped over to where Pinkie Pie sat. The two bumped fist to hoof as he sat back down.
A high shriek echoed throughout the tower that made each of them wince and then look up as Sunset’s horn lit up in response. The horn sputtered once, and Sunset fought to keep the existing images up as a new picture sprouted out of her horn: two new pages contained in a single picture.
Sunset rotated the image so that the two could see it. Spike and Pinkie Pie responded by jabbing their quills into their respective papers and taking off.
Sunset looked back down at her own page and pressed her quill against it. She bounced it in place and thought about the Twilight that looked down on them at that very moment. How Twilight was alive in another world. That the Twilight in another world had survived.
She looked at the projected image in front of her. Her eyes ran past the symbols on the page that she meant to copy down. She knew that they were there. Her quill refused to move all the same. Copying was meant to be a simple task; all she had to do was write what she saw. She had even done a whole book the previous night, so her share of ten pages should have been easy.
Instead, Sunset snorted and threw her quill onto the parchment.
At once, everyone looked up. “Sunset?” Rarity asked with a concerned frown, “What’s the matter?”
“Sorry. I’m thinking,” Sunset replied.
“About what?”
“Oh, I’m just,” she said and pushed her mane back, “thinking about our Twilight. I can’t believe all of this.
“I mean, because the whole point of The Answer was to save Twilight and it was set up so that every Twilight in every world would get it. But… somehow, that stopped with you, Twilight.”
“Gosh, I’m… I’m so sorry,” Twilight’s voice quivered.
“I was so sure!” Sunset yelled, slamming her hoof against the parchment. “You said it yourself, Applejack, that what we saw tonight is exactly what happened before. All of our worlds act just like each other, so aside from what we did and where all of you went to collect the stones, what happens in one of them happens in all of them.”
She pointed to the ceiling—at the Twilight in the future. “And yet you’re alive, but ours isn’t.” She grabbed a hold of her own mane and pulled, hard. “So… what did we do differently!?”
A series of groans rose up from the others. Applejack pulled at her face while Rarity blushed and averted her gaze.
Not to mention what the heck the deal is with Twilight’s crystal ball not showing the tower like we first found it yet, Sunset thought.
“I imagine it’s my fault,” Twilight’s voice said. “Out of all the Twilights out there, I must have been the first one to not remember the spell.” A long, resigned pause passed and then the ball said, “I am such a terrible friend. I’ve… failed so miserably, and you’ve lost your world’s Twilight all because of me.”
“That’s nice and all,” Rainbow Dash said as she stood up, “but I don’t think this is all you, Twilight.”
Applejack narrowed her eyes. “Rainbow, what’re you on about?”
“I mean, it was different in there too. Remember the cloak?” Rainbow Dash asked.
Fluttershy nodded, “Of course I remember the cloak. Because we found it at the door.”
Pinkie Pie giggled, “Oh yeah! Because our Twilight wore it! And… their Twilight didn’t. So there’s a difference—”
“Wait,” Twilight’s voice interrupted, “what are you talking about? What cloak?”
Everyone looked toward the ceiling at the same time as if they could glare the disembodied voice down. “You know,” Spike said, “the cloak? The one you had hanging downstairs?”
“I know which one you’re talking about, but… I never wore that.”
Spike shook his head and laughed in disbelief. “I guess our Twilight was the only one that did, then.”
Pinkie Pie waved her hoof through the air, “We did find that thing next to the ball though when we went down there.”
The crystal ball did not answer.
“Twilight?”
“I… this is weird,” Twilight’s voice stammered. “I do remember seeing a hooded figure that night. I couldn’t tell who they were, but when I tried to rush out and... um… see them off, they disappeared! But they left their cloak behind!”
Spike crossed his arms and drummed his fingers against them in thought. “And then, after that, your world’s version of us would have found that cloak.”
“Uh, doesn’t that put some cloaked pony there in our world too?” Rainbow Dash asked, looking between everyone for looks of approval.
“But that’s a problem because we had that thing checked,” Spike said. He pointed upward to where he thought she was watching and bellowed, “We traced that cloak to you, Twilight!”
“That is weird!” Twilight’s voice said.
Sunset ground her teeth together but said nothing in response. She instead looked at the others to see their reactions.
Even with all of these similarities between the worlds, Sunset thought, the Twilight we’ve been watching and the Twilight watching us are two worlds away from each other. There’s just no way she could possibly help her now!
Sunset scratched at a discoloration within the floor. Is there?
Twilight’s voice sucked in a breath. “I remember this much: they disappeared in a bright flash of light, and I saw burn marks on the ground. It was kind of like when Sunset teleported in however many days ago that was.”
Spike raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yeah. I even compared the two spots using my own crystal ball, because they looked so similar. …I learned how to move the view around after I died and came back.
“I guess,” Twilight’s voice said, “now that I think about it, it looked like it might have been a time travel spell.”
Spike furrowed his brow. “We saw burn marks at the door too, you know.”
“This keeps getting stranger and stranger. So, somepony time travels in, and it’s apparently me. I mean, certainly, I can’t do that because—” The crystal ball went silent.
Rainbow Dash glanced worriedly at the ceiling. “Uhm, Twilight?”
“Twi?” Applejack seconded.
A long and pregnant pause passed throughout the room. And then, “Ahhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhh!” the crystal ball cried in astonishment.
“Twilight!” Spike cried. “Are you okay?”
“I... I... Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh. Oh gosh. I could get by on a technicality...” Twilight’s voice said at around a million miles an hour.
“What?”
Another pause passed, and then, “L-look, y-you girls did a great job. Just… uh… stay there for two seconds. Okay?”
Sunset frowned. “Uh, okay?”
Rainbow Dash flung her completed paper into the center of the ring before she collapsed onto the floor and pouted. Rarity turned her attention back to the image in front of her and raced through a few more lines before she too, delicately, placed her paper into the center.
The other four set their quills back down on their papers and either yawned out loud or attempted to stifle them.
Sunset furrowed her brow. What is she up to?
Pinkie Pie’s body convulsed again and she yelped in response. Her voice shook as her body did. “The doozy! The doozy!”
For a moment, Sunset looked into the crystal ball. Twilight remained in her sitting position in the center of the room, oblivious to anything that had just happened. She was at a peace never attained before.
Twilight’s eyes shot open as a loud groan erupted from the doors at the head of the chamber. She whirled around as the doors quaked and rocked and then slid apart. And then she let out a gasp.
All at once, the seven let out startled cries and bunched around the crystal ball, craning their necks to see what was happening. Sunset’s horn chose that moment to cut out, and the several images that had been floating about disappeared.
And then Sunset pointed. “There’s something standing behind that door!” she exclaimed.
Within the entryway, a hooded figure stood with one hoof pressed against the crystal ball. The brown cloth shrouded their face in darkness. Sunset could barely make out some features on the bottom of the muzzle, but she had enough to tell that, whoever it was, they were frowning.
“Ah!” Rainbow Dash blurted. “They’re gunna get tethered!”
“Who goes there!?” Twilight shouted from the center of the chamber.
“No!” Pinkie Pie cried, throwing her hooves into the air, “they’re gunna ruin the whole thing!”
Sunset narrowed her eyes as she glanced at the figure. Cloaked figure…
Cloak.
She felt her heart swell within her chest, almost painfully at that. “I’m going to see who that is,” Sunset said. She grabbed the ball and thought the ball’s view forward.
The image moved at a slow and deliberate pace and crept toward the cloaked pony beyond the doorway. As the image drew closer and closer, the figure grew more discernible. Once the crystal ball’s view arrived at a clear angle, Sunset angled it up.
And then time seemingly stopped. “…Twilight Sparkle?” Sunset tremulously announced.
Twilight Sparkle looked back out from under the hood’s edge with a determined frown. Her eyes remained on the crystal ball under her hoof.
The other six sat as still as statues. A tremulous and whispered “…What?” from Fluttershy was the only reaction they afforded.
The Twilight in the center of the chamber lowered her head like she was about to charge. “Whoever you are, you need to get out of here right now!”
The hooded Twilight remained focused on her task, whatever that was.
The seven watched without a single sound.
The hooded Twilight behind the door took her hoof off the ball. No sooner after did a white light surround her. The glow grew and grew before it eclipsed her entire body.
The hooded Twilight looked up and grinned.
Sunset gasped. That’s a time spell! And it’s pulling her back! she thought.
The space around the hooded Twilight cracked, and in that instant, she vanished in a shower of white-hot sparks.
The cloak did not. It remained behind, singed from the explosion. It floated for a few moments as it rode the shockwave and upward rush of air before it started to fall.
For a moment, Sunset only heard the pounding thump of her beating heart. It had been beating fast before, but as she watched the cloak’s slow, graceful descent, it seemed like an eternity between each successive beat.
The cloak landed without making a sound.
And then silence.
Sunset blinked.
She couldn’t bear to move. She imagined her body would not budge had she wanted it to. The tower dissolved around her to the point that she could only see the crystal ball in front of her.
Just outside the door with the ball.
“That, and that tacky little cloak over there,” Rarity’s voice said in Sunset’s head, “but we’re not concerned about that.”
That was a future Twilight… A Twilight who died and came back, Sunset thought.
Twilight sprinted over from her spot in the center of the room and skidded to a halt in front of the two objects on the ground. Her eyes lay on the cloak, and she briefly regarded the burn marks underneath it, before she turned her discerning eye to the crystal ball.
“Is that… Canterlot tower!?” she cried. “My ball shows Canterlot tower!”
Sunset felt a chill run down her spine, and she shivered. Future Twilight... moved the ball?
“Why would they do that!? Why would they move it there!?” Twilight screamed.
Sunset swallowed, but even then, her throat felt dry. The room grew cold and Sunset felt frozen to the spot. The wind caressed the windows, and the resulting whistle went through one ear and out of the other.
The thought, the singular thought, swam through her head again and again and each time, her expression grew more pronounced.
“Because…” she whispered, shaking, “we… would have never… found you… that first night... otherwise…?”
Twilight looked upward with a concerned frown. “What?”
Sunset’s jaw all but hit the floor.
What happens in one world happens in all of them.
Is, was, will be.
And then Sunset screamed and shot to her hooves. “I got it!” she exclaimed, “I finally got it! I know how all of this works now!”
In one instant, the others stood up in alarm. “You what!?” Spike cried.
Sunset shook her head. “Everything makes sense now. What happens in one world happens in all of them! We didn’t do anything different after all!”
Rarity gasped. “Oh my stars! Did we… did we just do it!?”
“We…” Rainbow Dash began, tossing her mane around, “we what?”
Fluttershy’s jaw hit the floor. “Wow.”
Sunset looked back down into the ball and snorted. There’s still something we have to do! Sunset grabbed the ball again. “Twilight, can you hear me?”
“I can hear you,” Twilight replied as she continued to survey the items. “Who was that? And what were they doing here?”
“Twilight, we know who they were, we know what they did, and we know why they did it. Twilight…” she said as a grin spread across her face, “we have it! We have The Answer!”
Twilight paused as she processed the response. Then she looked up through wide eyes. “You… have it?”
“We have it.”
Applejack all but leaped into the air. “Hooey! This is the break we’ve been waitin’ for!”
Twilight glanced back into the chamber as a large, wide smile overtook her features. “Great! That’s… phenomenal! What is it?”
Sunset used her magic to summon over the stack of transcribed pages. She flipped through them and set the ones that she wanted—the first sixteen pages—aside.
“I’m going to have to send you multiple images. Can you handle that?”
Twilight chuckled. “Of course I can. How hard can it be?”
Sunset lifted the first two pages and stared at them. “Alright, here they come,” she said and flared her horn.
One shriek later, an image of two pages appeared in front of Twilight. She immediately took to examining it. Meanwhile, Sunset prepared the next two pages and, using her spell, sent them into the ball as well. Another shriek later, another image containing two more pages appeared. Twilight moved it so that it floated right next to the first image. The two continued until all sixteen pages had been sent.
Twilight looked between all the images and a ball of white light appeared before long. It appeared as a blob at first, but as Twilight concentrated, the blobs took form. The unfathomable shapes soon transformed into a patchwork of sigils and a crisscross of lines. The patterns settled onto several rotating layers. With each development, the layers grew in number; first five, then twenty, then over one hundred, and with each layer, the ball of light grew to accommodate them.
“I’m only halfway done with the spell,” Twilight mused. She looked at the pre-cast and the images surrounding her and smiled. “But I think I can take it from here.”
“Go get ’em, Twilight,” Sunset urged. “We’ll see you on the other side.”
Twilight nodded and after giving the two items on the ground another discerning glance, Twilight turned around. Her images and pre-cast followed closely behind her as she trotted, with a new spring in her step, back into the chamber.
The doors groaned once and then slid closed once more.
Sunset fell backward onto the floor with a loud groan.
“Yee haw!” Applejack said, tossing her hat into the air.
A loud and bubbly boom sounded throughout the tower as Pinkie Pie, pressed against a cyan-colored cannon, showered them with streamers of all sorts of colors. A round of laughter erupted as the strands of paper rained down on them.
“Great!” Spike said, clapping his hands together. “Now what?”
Sunset looked up toward the ceiling. “Hey, Future Twilight, are you back yet?”
“Yes,” the crystal ball said, “I’m back, I’m back.”
“Great. Come on,” Sunset said, beaming as she hunched back over her half-finished paper. “Let’s finish writing this spell down and set things right once and for all.”
* * *
The cavern’s crystalline walls zoomed by at speeds faster than Sunset cared to discern. Her eyes remained forward, split between the pages of the string-bound book in front of her face and the path that the cavern ground snaked through the mountain.
With each page, the ball of light trailing beside her grew larger and larger. The pre-cast lit the pages in front of her with increasing strength. Sunset could barely make out the taps and clops of running ponies and a dragon behind her, but she made sure they never fell behind.
The path turned left and Sunset skidded to a halt. Large double doors made of stone glared down at her, groaned, and then slid into the walls. Sunset glanced back at the six behind her and nodded once before proceeding into the chamber. The rest followed closely behind her.
The wide hemisphere of a room glowed an angry red. Lit symbols ringed around the floor and dotted the walls. But a towering tree-like crystal pillar with a purple horn stuck in the dead center arrested all attention.
Sunset stopped halfway to the pillar and let her eyes glaze back over the pages. The pre-cast continued to grow as Sunset poured more of her readings into it. Even with ten pages left, the swirling ball of light remained more complex than anything she had ever seen before.
She glanced back at the ponies and dragon behind her, all of whom looked back with intent expressions. “I don’t entirely know what this spell’s going to do,” Sunset said, “but once I start it… I won’t be able to stop it.”
The others nodded. “Well, we’re ready whenever you are,” Spike said.
Sunset swallowed and turned her attention back to the pages. Her eyes darted back and forth between working down the current page and consulting a pattern from the library pages. Line by line, the pre-cast grew.
Five pages left. Four. Three. The pre-cast sparkled as the scores of layers within rotated at unfathomable velocities.
Finally, Sunset closed the pages, letting out a breath that she had been holding since stepping into the chamber. While her eyes remained on the pre-cast in front of her, running through it every which way, her magic moved the string-bound book into Spike’s waiting grasp behind.
“Here goes!” Sunset announced.
Spike drew back and let out a burst of green fire. The papers burned within until nothing remained. The green embers then sailed out of the room and then disappeared around the corner.
Sunset drew in a breath and touched her horn to the spell.
The ball of light flashed once and then streamed into Sunset’s horn. Her horn lit up in response as a wave of energy pulsated through her body. Sunset could feel her insides rock as it interpreted the pre-cast. It felt like the crack of a whip. Sunset held her breath as a means to bide it, but the burning grew hotter and hotter with each passing second.
And then Sunset felt a red and orange aura around her. She felt the white-hot glow in her eyes and the raw magic around her grate against her skin. Sunset rose off the floor, and regardless of how she kicked at the air, the spell refused to let her back down.
Her insides tingled, and for a moment, she felt a crack shoot up her horn. Just like she had after putting the Element of Magic on at the Fall Formal, she thought her insides would then rip apart.
The aura shot out. Several tendrils made beelines for the ponies behind her. They cried out and screamed as it scooped them up. And then another, like an afterthought, took a hold of Spike as well.
Sunset looked back behind her as they writhed about and she let out a shocked, “No!”
Her six captives cried out in pain as the spell poked and prodded at them, although the spell treated Spike with comparative tameness. Their cries reached a crescendo as a set of white pillars of light sprang out and engulfed them. For a moment, the ponies disappeared entirely.
A set of new ponies emerged. Ponies that looked much like the old ones but appeared much more extravagant. Colors from all parts of the rainbow striped through their manes and tails, both of which had grown to unproportioned lengths. Each of them, even within the grasp of Sunset’s aura, glowed with white auras of their own.
“The Rainbow Power!” Rainbow Dash cried.
Sunset blinked. For a moment, she wondered if anything had happened to her own body, but she did not look.
“It’s draining me!” Rarity cried as she struggled against the magic around her.
Spike gasped. “The spell! It called the Rainbow Power and it’s trying to use it to power itself!”
Pinkie Pie fought against it enough to look straight ahead. “Sunset!”
Sunset had to fight against her own aura just to reach back toward them but found herself too far away. “Girls! I…!”
Applejack let out an exhausted grunt before she craned her neck and surveyed the aura around her. She smiled and went limp. “You got this, Sunset. Ah trust ya...”
Fluttershy looked over and, despite her pained expression, she nodded. “Me too,” she said. The aura around her, in response, loosened its grip.
The others looked up to Sunset and threw out determined grins. Even Spike, who floated below in an untransformed state, smiled up at her.
Sunset smiled and nodded affirmatively. And then the ravaging cackle of magic within her turned warm and vibrant.
She turned her attention back to the pillar before her and let the spell run its course. Where the spell had been a raging inferno inside her before, much like the Element of Magic had been, this felt like a coursing river.
The light from her horn, now at a blinding intensity, reached toward the rest of the cavern. The walls rumbled and the lights within the symbols all over pulsated. The crystal pillar in the center of the room shook and swayed.
The pillar did not shatter as Sunset expected it to. Instead, the crystal melted. It cascaded downward, leaving the trapped horn floating in place, before it spread across the floor like a puddle. And then the puddle rotated. The molten crystal ran slow like molasses but appeared clear like water.
Sunset felt a powerful surge of energy run into her horn. Sparks jumped off the end and she struggled to keep conscious, but instead of fighting it like before, she concentrated on funneling it through. The energy emerged through the tip and spread to all directions, rocketing off to speeds faster than she could fathom. She could feel the spell reaching for something, or somethings, but couldn’t readily tell what.
Seconds later, a purple orb appeared before her. And then another, then a score, then a few hundred. Many more appeared out of thin air and swirled around the center of the room, counter to the liquid below.
Stones, Sunset thought.
One by one, the stones dove into the liquid. Several splashes dotted the surface as each orb disappeared. With each addition, the rotating pool spun faster and faster, turning purple as a result.
The room rumbled with such intensity that small specks of dirt and dust sheeted off the ceiling. As more and more stones teleported into the room and then kamikazed into the liquid, the hum turned into a ground-shaking roar from the quaking of the walls and the sheer velocity of the whirlpool below.
And then the purple horn that floated in the center of the room lit up and sucked the molten crystal up toward it. The liquid spiraled around the horn at first and then swallowed it whole. As more and more rose up, the liquid compacted into a solitary sphere around it.
And then the sphere exploded in a bright white flash. An outburst of pure, saturated energy rose up in a hot column of light so bright that, even behind shielded eyes, Sunset found herself blinded. The roar reached its apex, deafening her as well.
She winced under its power for many moments before it died just enough for her to take a peek, something the ponies and dragon behind her followed suit in.
Twilight Sparkle stared back at them through white-lit eyes and an unconscious frown. Her rainbow-like hair and tail swayed with the energy that flowed through them. Animated by the spell itself, Twilight floated before them with her wings spread to their full length.
Sunset’s mouth hung limp for many moments before she managed to curve it into a small smile.
And then Twilight’s body sucked the column into itself and, with one last flash of light, all the tugs and pulls of the spell broke down.
All at once, all eight of them found themselves thrown to the floor.
Sunset’s world faded out and then she fell to the unconscious.
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Oh, you really had me for a moment, I was actually about to give up until Pinkie was having a combo for a doozy!!! This has been amazing and triumphant, I loved all the build up as it made the reward all the more satisfactory
Did resurrected Twilight just... sacrifice herself to save dead Twilight?
6263479 Oh dear, it would seem I've caused some slight confusion there. I mean, I should mention that they could not get the remaining pages if Future Twilight was sacrificed. Nonetheless I am really glad you commented that.
I added a couple of lines to that scene that should make the train of events a little clearer.
Hooray for loopholes in time travel restrictions~
6263665 Ohh. A time spell. I sort of get it now. But who was sent back in time, and why? Hmmmm...
Just a few errors to point out:
Two 'L's in travelled, and give is in the present tense when it should be past tense.
I think that you missed a word here.
Not entirely sure if this is an error or not but molting (or moulting if you are outside the U.S.) refers to the process by which birds and other creatures lose their feathers to make way for new growth. Melted refers to the transitioning of an object from solid to liquid, usually via extreme temperatures.
6265046 Fixed everything except traveled. That word is not spelled with two l's.
6265074
*quick google for reference*
Ah, my apologies. I didn't realise that the american spelling only used one L, I just assumed it was incorrect due to my auto-correct flagging it up (UK-based).
6265110 No worries. I appreciate that you pointed it out all the same.
dun dun duuun.
Cool how the multiverse theorem is used here.
Ok, I'm actually sorry to bother you but I'm just confused. I can't follow all of this from the very beginning of this chapter. What is different now since Twilight entered this room? Maybe someone who can understand this can take some minutes and try to explain it to me please.
6346181 it's important to note that Twilight isn't actually in the room with them. Rather, Twilight is watching them through a crystal ball of her own nine days into the future. In an alternate world, of course.
As for everything else, don't worry. The next chapter should tie those up.
And that was awesome...thank you.
If nothing else, I finally fully comprehend recursive loops. I've been struggling with the in programming till now.
So essentially... Sunset just played Eerie Interlude?
gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=409584&type=card
6894205 Yup, this would do it!
Wasn't expecting future Twilight going back again to preserve the continuity. I was confused on how she can use the spell twice, but I realized "once in a lifetime" doesn't apply when you die and get resurrected. New life, new chance to cast that spell it seems.
Also I was going to call BS on Twilight forgetting to give the answer sooner but I think we all can guess the real reason now.
6346191
I'm going to admit I was confused for a while as well. I though it was the Past Twilight in the orb that was talking for a while there, and a future Twilight had somehow possessed Past Twilight. After a few minutes of reading I realized that wasn't the case and didn't make any sense either. I also didn't know the voices came from the orb until this chapter. I though sound just came out around wherever the view was.
My point is a lot of this story needs to be combed through for spelling mistakes and the like to help it flow better because I'm mostly guessing at what I'm reading when things happen.
Part of this might also be I'm reading this in like 50 different sittings between breaks at work and a few hours when I get home. It's all a mess in my head and I might have forgotten some small details.
But I'm still enjoying it.
The titular chapter was something else. Man oh man. I jumped a little when future Twilight spoke to them from the crystal ball.
Okay, the old emotional finale theme from Doctor Who actually started playing in my head for this. That was fucking epic.
I had the random thought that when future Twilight was talking to them it was actually Chrysalis and that's why she had that cut away in the one chapter. Sent them back a spelled that would kill them lol
Ha! She gets a second try with the time travel spell because she’s on her second life! Brilliant!