Paradoxical

by Smaug the Golden

We've made history.

Celestia confiscated my spells the moment she got back. Not that it was unsurprising, I just wish she had given me time to copy my spells down as per Riptide’s request. I had reproduced the first half of each, but the rest was up in the air.

I spent the next couple weeks scribbling down possible endings to the spell. None of them seemed to work correctly, but I did get some cool results. “Star-” Arcane was cut off as I activated my newest spell. He froze mid-sentence, his mouth stuck open.

I grinned, walked over, and closed his mouth. He stood there and made no objection. I deactivated the spell and Arcane tried to continue, but was thwarted by his closed mouth. He opened his mouth to ask what the newest spell was, but I froze time again. After several attempts and failures of questioning me, he gave up, and I wrote ‘time stop’ on the whiteboard.

Arcane glanced at the list on the board, which had, as of now, two hundred and seven different spells on it. “Well, we might not recreate our greatest spell, but we sure will go down in history for all these spells.” He tossed me a bottle of cider, which I caught with my magic, opened, and downed in all of ten seconds.

Arcane rubbed his forehead with a hoof. “You know, we could just stop. Celestia doesn’t want us time traveling again, you can’t figure out the last bit of the spell, and I could care less about returning to a less civilized time.”

I shook my head and began modifying the spell. “I made a promise. We need to remake the spell. Besides, I liked time travel.” He sighed and started modifying his copy of the spell half, adding in words and symbols to it.

“Sometime you’ll have to give up,” he muttered under his breath. I didn’t listen to him. I was too busy trying to find a way to time travel once more.

One day I basically gave up. “Arcane,” I said as I sat down in a chair, “I don’t think that I can get the time travel spell recreated. It’s too complicated for my magic, and Riptide isn’t here to give us another copy of that book.”

Then energy began to fill the room. Red and green magic was spiraling from the middle of Arcane’s hut. Then I appeared in a giant flash. Technically, it was me with a white beard. So nowhere near as cool, but still pretty neat.

My future self tossed me a pair of scrolls and a hat with bells and whistles. “Here. Take these. You’re going to need them.”

Arcane frowned. “Why are you here, exactly? And for that matter, who are you?”

“I’m future Starswirl. There’s an epic pony war in the very distant future involving lots of different races. You get axed off and Riptide defects to the opposing team. Now, you need to take this scroll and just fix history in some way, shape or form.” Then he vanished.

Arcane and I stood there for a few moments, pondering my future self’s words. Then those moments turned into minutes, which turned into hours. Eventually, I decided to take action. “You think that we should do something?”

Arcane nodded. “Yeah. Might as well find Riptide while you’re at it. Keep your friends close, but your possible-timeline-changing-kelpie-frenemies closer. Any chance we could just rent a places in Vanhoover and avoid all this?”

“Doubt it. Anyway, Riptide!”

The kelpie appeared in a flash, positioning himself on Arcane’s couch, a wet toothpick in his canines. “You called?”
“Yeah. We’ve got history to wreck due to an evil you in the very far future. You ready?” I gave Riptide barely a moment, but then we were sucked away into history. Pro-tip for the young: don’t listen to prank calls from your future self. Mkay?