Predictions & Prophecies

by Kinrah

8 - The Cause

Twilight Sparkle, the personal student of Princess Celestia and the bearer of the Element of Magic, was deep in thought.

This session of deep thinking had come about due to a multitude of factors which had been piling up against her over the past few hours, factors which she had been unable to focus on at the time because more important things required her attention.

Teleport magic didn’t work like that, at least not to her knowledge. Casting the spell without properly visualizing the destination could have landed them anywhere, yet she still brought her friends safely back to the Marble Mine’s visitor centre. Granted, it had taken the entire class about ten minutes to untangle them all, and there had been some singed eyebrows, but they were otherwise unharmed. A degree of accuracy like that shouldn’t have been possible by autocast alone. Hay, if Pinkie hadn’t warned her, in her own way, she wouldn’t have even known that they were going to teleport before it happened.

She pretended it was intentional, it made the Crusaders happy, it made the other foals happy. Knowing otherwise was agonizing. Of course, Applejack could tell it wasn’t, and if Twilight had understood her gestures correctly she intended to ask her about it when they got back to Ponyville. That was fine. She could do that. Would she have the answers by the time they got there, though? At this rate it was looking unlikely. She didn’t like not having all the answers, especially when other ponies assumed she did. That was the pitfall of being the Princess’s student. Along with the pressures that put on her. And the nobles trying to curry favor with the Princess, and the bullying from the other students, and having to deal with the fallout from flooding the yeah, okay. There were many pitfalls, but the learning made up for them all. Twilight wouldn’t have it any other way.

Happily, the train journey back wasn’t as eventful as it had been in the opposite direction. Along with Rumble, Berry Pinch and Silver Spoon had both crashed (according to Cheerilee, Silver Spoon’s sugar rush had lasted approximately ten seconds); Diamond Tiara and Aura had both been given detention for conspiring to rig the sculpture competition; Button Mash, of all ponies, had won the sculpture competition with his well crafted if a little blocky rendition of a spider, and as a reward in lieu of the balloon ride had had his JoyBoys relinquished; the others had remained trouble-free, and as was usually the case on the way back from an exhausting trip, most of them were asleep. The relative quiet had allowed Twilight the time to think.

Is it in any way possible for the teleport to have been incomplete?

No, of course not. As with teleporting into solid objects, incomplete teleport spells were hard weaved to bounce back and prevent the teleportee from getting lost in the ether. To suggest that the entire lake matter was a delusion caused by a bad spell would be ludicrous, especially as the same delusion would have had to be shared across seven ponies, not to mention Applejack’s hat had still been wet when they’d gotten back to the mine. It had been real, no question.

Could the teleport have been hijacked?

Again, no. Everything had been entirely down to Twilight’s own magic, and she would know if any other pony’s magic had interfered. Could it have been tied to the additional five ponies’ worth during the initial teleport? Possibly, though surely that would have been wasted on relocating the exit.

What about the surge after the rainboom?

She still didn’t know what had caused that, though she had worked out she’d been about to enter a cascade, which was preposterous. Unless her magic had been resonating with another unicorn’s, there was no way to enter a cascade in the first place, and the only nearby unicorn had been Sweetie Belle, whose magical ability was nowhere near strong enough.

Am I thinking too hard about this?

Almost definitely.

By the time the train reached Ponyville, Twilight had come to no conclusions whatsoever. By the time the fillies and colts had been distributed to their homes, she still had no answers. By the time Sweetie Belle’s situation had been explained and she and Fluttershy had headed off to Zecora’s, still nothing. By the time she, Applejack and Pinkie had relocated to the library and were sat around a boiling pot of tea, she was about ready to bang her head on the table.

“Don’t stress yourself over it too much, sugarcube,” Applejack was saying.

“Yeah! We got back, and that’s what matters, right?” After the events of the day Pinkie was somehow even more chipper than usual.

“Well, yes, we did, but…” Twilight glanced out of the window. “I just don’t know how. I’ve been thinking about it the whole way back and none of it fits together.” There had to be an appropriate metaphor or simile somewhere… “It’s like I’m trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle but none of the pieces go with each other.” Her face scrunched up. “I’m not even sure they’re all from the same jigsaw.”

As she spoke, she retrieved Predictions and Prophecies from the bookshelves, and pulled out the envelopes with Dinky’s drawings on. “Before today, I thought I had some of these in the right order.”

She lay them on the table and shuffled them. Balloon - Sinking - Hat. Then she had a thought, and got out some blank flashcards, and wrote on them the keywords of Trixie’s prophecy, before adding one to the chain; Fluttershy+Hat.

“…And then it turns out I didn’t.”

Hourglass - Crusaders - Fluttershy+Hat - Pillar - Sinking - Hat.

“I’ve got no way of working out what comes next or what even comes last.”

She idly rearranged some of the others, trying to construct some sort of narrative that made any kind of sense. Trixie’s clasp - Book falling - Shatter - Celestia - Blank - Trixie+Twilight. Mailbag - Trixie’s clasp. Book - Book falling. Graph - Blank - Party invitation. What? Glare at Pinkie, receive wan smile in return.

“Pinkie?”

“Glums~!”

Twilight sighed. “Again, not the time, Pinkie.” But she was right, she was starting the downward spiral again, and she’d promised not to do that. It was scary how easy it was to lose control.

“Hmm.”

“See, Applejack’s got the right idea!”

“Ah was just thinkin’…” Applejack tapped the table, and swiveled a couple of the cards around. “If Big Mac can’t find the edges to a puzzle, he starts from the inside and works his way out.”

Stopping short of voicing a complaint, Twilight considered this. It did seem counter productive, but there was method to that madness. “…so once he’s completed what he knows, he can build up the rest from there…” Instead of searching in vain for the pieces she didn’t yet know the context to… Oh, that was genius. Why hadn’t she thought of that before?

“Ooh, ooh, let me!” Pinkie Pie dived forwards and reshuffled the envelopes and cards. Hat - Sinking - Party invitation (”Whoops!”) - Pillar - Fluttershy+Hat - Crusaders - Hourglass. Still not very helpful. But, wait. Pinkie’s accidental inclusion of the invitation had given Twilight an idea. The prophecies were only part of the puzzle - there were her experiences, too. Da Colton’s workbook. The teleports. The underground device. A sonic rainboom.

Okay, she hadn’t expected that, of all things. “I don’t know about you girls…” Twilight sat back, looking at each of them. “But I think the next piece of the puzzle is Rainbow Dash.”

In theory saying that Rainbow Dash was the next piece was all well and good. In reality, she was more like that one piece that falls down the back of the sofa and doesn’t turn up until long after you’ve thrown the rest of the puzzle away. Rainbow’s cloudominium was one of two such structures in Ponyville, the other being a much smaller construction that the pegasus foals used as a playpark. The latter tended to get caught in wind eddies above the school; the former could be above Sweet Apple Acres one day and near the library the next. Her address of 17 Somewhere had apparently demanded by the post office, who refused to accept “The Sky” as a valid street name. It still only took Ditzy two-and-three-quarter minutes to get there from Fluttershy’s, though. Exactly two-and-three-quarter minutes, no more, no less, regardless of the distance. Even if that distance was straight up. It made no sense. (Then again, considering most of the activities of the post office…)

Twilight and her friends had no such direct path to Rainbow Dash. Not even the four yard one that led up to the front of the weather patrol building, which was locked and bore an ‘out for lunch’ note that was signed with some very angry scribbles. Icy Rain’s mouth-writing was very distinctive, and normally never this cross. You had to do a lot to make that mare angry. Considering the circumstances, it seemed something very bad indeed had happened in Cloudsdale. That was likely to mean Rainbow Dash was in a similar sort of mood, and thus even more difficult to track down.

Well, if you wanted to find a pegasus, you asked a pegasus. By now Fluttershy would only just have reached Zecora’s hut, so they’d have to settle for the next best thing.

Again, the upper half of the post office door opened and the purple-maned Flutter Doo appeared. “Oh, hello, Twilight!” She spotted the others behind the unicorn. “Uh oh, three of them.”

“Just what is that supposed to mean?!”

“Sorry, Applejack, bad morning. You girls want to come in, or…?”

Time to get straight to the point. “No, thank you. We’re actually looking for Rainbow Dash.”

Flutter groaned and sagged over the door. “You’re not the only ones.” Why would anypony else be looking for Rainbow Dash? “Ditzy, Orange! Rainbow Dash’s friends are here! There’ve been ponies coming to ask for us to find her all afternoon,” she explained. Apparently she made a really big noise and then a really big fuss over something or other, then flew home in a huff.”

That would fit a sonic rainboom and a disturbance in Cloudsdale… “Don’t suppose you’d be willing to…?”

“Oh, I can take you, sure!” said Ditzy, appearing at the upstairs window. “Just, y’know, make sure we’re not tailed by the weather patrol. They’re super mad.” She gestured towards the town hall; Twilight turned just in time to see a pair of ears disappear beneath a window frame.

“If you can fend them off, I’m coming with,” said Orange, appearing alongside Flutter in the doorway. “Rainbow Dash got a huge package earlier and we didn’t think it was a good idea to deliver it if other ponies were gonna follow us and mob her.”

So something had happened in Cloudsdale, urgent enough for Rainbow Dash to fly home at supersonic speeds, and now the weather patrol ponies were upset with her? Twilight prayed that Wind Chime hadn’t done anything too drastic. It would fit her method, but… Rainbow wasn’t the sort of pony to let herself be walked over by others, even if they were higher up the management chain than she was. Should something of the replacing sort actually happen, she wasn’t going to let it go without a fight. Only she had stood between the Forecast Centre and Under D. Weather being fired over the calamities in the winter, and had anypony else been the patrol captain, Under wouldn’t have been merely demoted to the night shift.

For whatever reason, Pinkie insisted they all bunch up for the journey, all crowded around the package for which ‘huge’ was an accurate description, and that they needed to surround themselves with ‘shields’. Her preprepared ‘shields’ (stashed around Ponyville in case of shield emergencies) included a trash can lid, a table with the legs sawn off and the upper half of Davenport’s old door. Pinkie herself carried no shield, but was riding on top of Applejack’s shield armed with a bucket of grapes and a slingshot. It was easy enough to see where she was going with the idea after that.

“Merry May, hiding in the bushes, eleven o’clock!”

“Gotcha!”

“Candy Floss, chimney at five o’clock!”

“Boom, headshot!”

“Thunderlane, pathetically trying to hide behind the small sign at one thirty!”

“Oh, thanks for noth— not the eyes again!”

“Ha! Take that you— oh, sorry, Forsythia!”

“We’re trying to work here, Pinkie!”

“(I can’t see where we’re going,)” Twilight complained, adjusting her magic’s grip on the trash can lid. “(Where is Rainbow Dash’s house anyway?)”

“(She hid it over the outskirts of Whitetail,” Ditzy whispered back. “And that was this morning so she knew something was gonna happen.” It was a rare moment indeed when Rainbow manually moved her house rather than leaving it to the winds, only editing its journey if it strayed too far from town. She’d do it to try and skip the queues at the cider stall, or skip the queues for an upcoming free food giveaway at Sugarcube Corner - she still hadn’t worked out that other ponies used her very obvious house’s position as a landmark for such things and beat her to the punch anyway.

Still, over the outskirts of Whitetail Wood was a fair distance from the middle of town. Ditzy was right - Rainbow would only do that if she’d expected this kind of negative reaction from her co-workers. What had Wind Chime done…?

Twilight almost missed Orange’s next muttered comment. “(This would have been a lot easier if you dusted off your disguise thing,) she grumbled in Ditzy’s direction.

“(It’s been broken for years,)” was the reply, which suddenly seemed incredibly terse, even for Ditzy, so it probably wasn’t a good idea to ask.

As they cleared the town, the assault from the weather team died away, mostly thanks to some quick thinking from Applejack and some promises of free apples from Sweet Apple Acres, which just so happened to be on the opposite side of town. (Doubtless Granny Smith wouldn’t be too happy.) By the time the cloudominium became visible through some low concealing clouds - raising questions about how Ditzy had been able to find it in the first place - there was nopony behind them, and Pinkie’s shields were ditched to lighten the load, leaving them with just the huge parcel. Twilight had been trying to work out what it was - rectangular, but too flat to be a book box, or any other Daring Do merchandise she could think of, unless they’d started officially licensing art prints, and she was pretty sure she’d know about that. What sort of normal post did Rainbow receive, anyway?

She became aware of some muffled noises from above, then some shuddering pink in front of her. What was Pinkie doing? Her tail was— oh no. Crash. “Ow!”

“Ooh, so that’s why my tail was twitching!” Pinkie exclaimed happily, as Twilight fought off the stars that were circling her head, and Applejack made to brush away the remaining bits of flowerpot. “I didn’t think Rainbow Dash kept flowers.”

“Not any more…”

Applejack tilted an ear upwards. “She sounds mighty upset up there. Ah ain’t heard her that vocal since she went and blew up at Lightnin’ Dust. Didn’t she get away with it last time this sort of weather thing happened?”

It took a moment to work out what she was talking about. “If you mean after the Parasprite infestation last year, only just.” Twilight remembered that well. “And that was with a little outside intervention, which was only going to work once. And if you meant in winter, she was barely able to get them to let the pony in question keep their job.”

Something else came sailing out of the clouds above, and they all watched the empty cardboard box bounce off the grass a few yards away. “Ah think somepony’d better go up there before she starts throwin’ bigger stuff.”

After a quick conference with the mailmares, it was decided that Twilight go up to placate the pegasus while Orange made sure the parcel was delivered safely. It was only the work of a moment for the unicorn to cast Cloudstep on herself, and a moment more after teleporting up to reacclimatize herself to the slight sense of vertigo that told her she ought to fall through any second. She wouldn’t, of course. Cloudstep lasted for several hours, and shortly before it wore off it would distress the caster until canceled or refreshed so it couldn’t be forgotten about.

She caught up to Orange Box at the front door, and was just about to knock, when suddenly her ears pricked at the sound of a voice that wasn’t Rainbow Dash’s.

“Rainbow Dash, please, I’m just trying to be the voice of reason—”

“She can’t do this to us! What reasoning did she have, huh?!”

The two ponies outside exchanged glances. From Orange’s expression she didn’t know who the other pony was either.

“She’s doing her job, Rainbow. You know that. Look, for the record I’m not happy with this either, but neither of us have any choice in the matter.”

Who was that? Somepony from the Forecast Centre? What were they doing all the way down in Ponyville? Eavesdropping was rude, and Twilight chided herself for intruding on another pony’s conversation, but she couldn’t help listening. They were being very loud after all - at least, Rainbow was. It was kind of difficult not to listen.

“You could have said something!”

“I did say something! I do winter weather, not spring showers! But if she hadn’t sent me she’d have sent somepony else, probably Doc Stratosphere!”

“Oh, hay no.”

“Exactly! So please, just… settle down. Have a mint drop. Things could always be worse.”

Perhaps then wasn’t the best moment to knock on the door.

What followed could only really be described as a ‘petrified silence’, broken only when Twilight came to her senses and waved in through a window.

“Twilight?!” Rainbow Dash almost broke out into shouting again once the door was open. “What are you doing here? And what is that thing?”

“I’m Orange Box.”

“I meant that thing you’re carrying.”

Orange straightened herself up to her full height, which didn’t really work as she was exactly the same size as the others there. “Package for Miss Rainbow Dash, sign here. I’ve forgotten my clipboard. Hayfeathers. Just take it, it’s heavy.”

Twilight had been in Rainbow Dash’s house only once before, when she’d been instructing a new Daring Do fan in the proper storage and maintenance of books. It wasn’t a particularly simple construction, though that was hardly surprising as pegasus architecture was by its nature complicated and elegant, but despite Rainbow’s lack of interest in aesthetics, it could hardly be called plain and boring. Like any other pony’s home, there were signs of her interests all over the place, in the sort of logical untidiness one could learn to expect from a pony like her. Knick-knacks and miscellaneous junk prevailed, though leaving enough space on a few couches to crash out on if she couldn’t make it all the way upstairs to bed. There were a few pieces of equipment used to keep her wings in shape. One wall held a trophy cabinet. There was, Twilight was pleased to note, the new addition of a bookshelf with a few titles that weren’t Daring Do. And, of course, the white-and-grey pegasus standing in the middle of the living room awkwardly.

Still, it was the house of a pony who spent most of her time outside.

It took a bit of maneuvering to get the big package through the door, but at least they wouldn’t have to deal with the issue of it sinking through the floor - it would already have been slapped with a pegasus cloud charm at the sorting office. That enchantment made things so much easier. If only it worked on ponies too.

“Okay,” Rainbow said, once the parcel had been leaned up against an empty section of wall. “I get why Box is here and Derpy’s probably around somewhere, but why are you here, Twilight? You don’t do social visits. Unless Spike wants his comic book back.”

With Rainbow, it was best to get straight to the point, so Twilight did just that. “Rainbow Dash, did something happen in Cloudsdale today? You made a rainboom, and then all the patrol pegasi were looking for you…”

Rainbow’s face immediately folded back into a frown. “I had to get back here in a hurry. They didn’t follow you here, did they?”

“No… What happened?”

There was a rustling of paper. “Temporary total weather team replacement for the remainder of the spring season,” said the other pegasus, reading from a scroll. “Effective immediately, no appeal, straight from the desk of Southern Chief Wind Chime.”

An expression of panic shot across Rainbow’s face giving the notion that she’d completely forgotten the other mare was there. “Oh, uhm, Twilight, Box, this is Snow Veil from the Forecast Centre. Snow Veil, Orange Box, delivery pony, Twilight Sparkle, egghead.”

“Oy.”

Snow Veil stepped forwards to shake their hooves. “Hi. Sorry this had to be our first meeting.”

“Total team replacement?” Orange echoed, once the meet and greet had been gotten out of the way. “Why?”

“Because apparently we’re ‘not to be trusted’.” Rainbow didn’t even have to do the air quotes to make the inverted commas apparent. “After the Parasprite thing, and the Hearth’s Warming thing, and now this thing, Wind Chime said, and I quote, ‘The Ponyville weather team cannot be trusted to maintain its allotted forecast zones until summer begins’. Like she’d know what to do!” She rounded on Twilight. “Please tell me you can talk to the Princess or something and get her to change the decision.”

“It does seem a bit excessive…” Twilight rubbed her mouth. But then again, that was definitely something Wind Chime would do, especially if she herself couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong with the weather. As far as she was concerned, any weather glitches were always the fault of the ponies in charge of that particular weather, and if one pegasus couldn’t be singled out to blame, why not replace the whole team? Sometimes Twilight wished she had more influence over that sort of thing. It was one thing leaving things to the experts trained in them, but what can you do when the experts are blatantly ignoring things like rogue Everfree storms?

Yes, she could send a letter to Princess Celestia, and as soon as she rejoined Spike at the library, she’d do that. But there was no guarantee the Princess could make any significant change. Key ecological systems like the Weather Forecast reacted badly to external disruption, whatever its source, and a skipped pebble could easily become a tsunami by the time it reached the other side of the river.

So that was the story: Rainbow Dash, Icy Rain and the dozen ponies or so on the Ponyville team would have to step down until the summer season began in June, Snow Veil would be leading a team of ponies put together by the Forecast Centre in the meantime, and the stood down Ponyville team wouldn’t get paid, which was probably what had most of them riled up. It wasn’t fair, as Rainbow repeatedly stated. And just what were they supposed to do in the meantime? Sit around doing nothing being all glum?

“Hey, don’t you start with the glums now too!”

“GYAH!”

“Hi Rainbow Dash! Hi Twilight! Hi Orange! Hi pony-I’ve-never-met-before-and-totally-need-to-start-planning-a-party-for!”

“Pinkie Pie! Stop putting holes in my floor!”

The pink pony pouted, and paused just long enough for Twilight to cast Cloudstep on her and levitate her up onto the floor. “Aw, there’s no need to be like that.” Her face immediately snapped back into her usual bright grin. “Hey, if I’m feeling down, opening presents always gets me back up again!”

A quick exchange of glances passed between the others. “Pinks, it’s not my birthday for another few months.”

“Well, duh, I know that! But you got a package! A package is like a present that doesn’t need a party ‘cause a package can come any time it wants!”

Everypony turned their heads to look at the large parcel still propped up against the wall. Now that Pinkie brought it back up, Twilight was really curious about what was inside now. “Were you expecting anything, Rainbow?”

Rainbow rubbed the side of her head. “Uh, a battery for Tank’s gyro?”

That threw Twilight off. “What, already? It’s only been…” she did the math in her head “Two weeks!”

“He likes flying, okay?”

Okay, just ignore the disregard for burning out an entire magic battery in two weeks… “Okay, fine. But this isn’t a battery.”

“No kidding! Hey, Box, you got any ideas?”

Orange Box blinked a few times, clearly not having anticipated being brought back into the conversation. “Uh, flatpack wardrobe?”

“Nah, I can never put those together. Snow Veil?”

The other weatherpony shrugged. “Wouldn’t put it past the Chief to send you a work ethics poster…”

“For once, I’m bamboozled!” Pinkie proclaimed happily. “So it’s a surprise!”

Twilight could only offer a shrug.

“Well,” Rainbow observed, running her hoof along an edge, looking for a seam, “It’s gotta beat what mom got me for Hearth’s Warming…”

For its shape, it could have been any one of a number of things, most of them as Orange Box had put forward flat-packed. What it actually was, when Rainbow Dash managed to untangle herself from the packaging, was something so unexpected that Twilight was rendered speechless.

The blue pegasus stood back. “So, what? It’s a painting?”

“Hey, it totally looks like your sonic rainboom!” Pinkie pointed out, entering into happy bounce mode.

It didn’t just look like her sonic rainboom, it was her sonic rainboom. There was no mistaking those colors washing across the sky, or the tell-tale rainbow streak arcing away from it. Nor was there any doubt as to who the artist could be. Twilight had seen his work just the previous week. But… just who would send Rainbow Dash, of all ponies, a Stalleonardo da Colton painting? She’d never read about this particular one before, which meant it was undiscovered, which meant it was practically priceless! It went without saying that it had to have been the result of Prophetia yet again. Every time she tried to go out on a tangent she just got pulled straight back into it. Maybe that was a side effect of the spell, that the only way out of the whirlpool was through the hole at the end, there was no escaping it.

And then there was the worrying matter of the bright light emanating from Canterlot castle in the background. The city by power be battered…

She’d found Rainbow Dash’s piece of the puzzle, only it had come with a piece she didn’t even know was missing.

To Twilight Sparkle, my most faithful student

I understand your friend’s position on Chief Wind Chime’s decision; please let her know that I will schedule a meeting with the Forecast Centre as soon as is possible. However, in all likelihood this won’t happen until next week at the earliest, so in the meantime she will have to be patient and be tolerant of the replacement team, and it would be for the best if she were to communicate this to her own team as well.

To the main body of your correspondence then, and I will address the three points in the order you brought them up.

The painting. While I didn’t have the time to go through the entire record of Da Colton’s paintings - as you know, there are a great many of them - I believe you are correct in saying that an image depicting a sonic rainboom has not been part of any public display thus far. That being the case, it is likely to have come from a pony’s private collection. Perhaps a kind soul who wished to anonymously donate it to the only pony known to be capable of creating one?

Events at Skyview Lake. I am glad to hear that things did not turn out quite as serious as they could have been, and I must commend Fluttershy on her quick thinking. I will also make inquiries as to the condition of the pegasus you mentioned, and will keep you appraised of her status when I get an answer. And don’t worry about the rainboom’s damage to Earth City’s column - in previous years numerous questions were raised about its safety and it had already been decided on to dismantle it and transport it to the Three Tribes museum in Fillydelphia. It will be recovered.

Finally, events at the mine and your teleport spell. Doubtless the Cutie Mark Crusaders and the mine staff have both learned valuable lessons from today; no further action is warranted on that part. I am however intrigued by your mention of an overcharged teleportation spell and your description of the strange device beneath the mine. Without a perfect replication of the conditions of the spell it may be impossible to determine the source of the additional magic required, but I can tell you that the device should have not been a factor, as I believe it matches the description of a telescope once belonging to Princess Luna that went missing some while ago. She may be pleased that it has been located, if not at its condition. How it came to be there I honestly cannot say.

I know all too well the feeling of being caught in a spiral, that life demands you to finish what you’ve started before you can move on, and I repeat my message of last week to you: it will take time to understand. Stand back, look at how far you’ve come, and use what you’ve learned to move forwards.

I wish you all of my luck.

Your teacher, Princess Celestia

Flashcards liberally covered the floor of the library, and Spike’s attempt to cross to the stairs was almost like an interpretive dance. He was almost clear when he tripped over the string connecting [Crusaders] to [Telescope] and brought the blackboard crashing down on top of him.

Twilight wasn’t good at keeping String Theory tidy. She could very easily have just written everything down on the blackboard, but no, she had to get the big picture, and that meant using all of the available floor space, plus the blackboard, several yards of string in multiple different colors, and a number of Rarity’s unused dress needles which held in the wood alarmingly well. To the casual observer it looked like a minefield. If one were to stop and look, they’d start noticing the common themes, the fact and the speculation. Sitting on the table in the middle, the unicorn was getting the sinking feeling that she’d made things far more complicated than they needed to be.

She’d been very meticulous in plotting out which particular strings marked events that had already happened, and which represented her guesswork, and which related to whose prophecy if at all. With the new information provided by the Princess, she had a new theory she was pretty sure was accurate, [Telescope] to [Sonic rainboom] via [Rainbow band], so… would the telescope have to be restored to working condition before that part of the prophecy could be fulfilled?

“Okay,” she said, mostly for herself, as Spike crawled out from underneath the blackboard and pulled it back up onto its legs. “So where that part of the prophecy comes into play, somepony looks at a sonic rainboom through the telescope, and at the same time something happens at Canterlot castle which ‘batters the city with power’. That’s probably just after Celestia sees ‘past truth’, and might have something to do with the ‘symbol of magic’ shattering.” She cast an almost involuntary glance at her cutie mark. “That’s the more complete scenario I’m building.”

“Is this really a good idea?” Spike picked the pin with the string from [Telescope] up off the floor and put it back into [Crusaders] on the blackboard. “You’ve been doing this all afternoon, and last time…”

“Yes, I know, the whole time travel thing. I’m trying not to go that far, Spike.” She looked helplessly across at her assistant. “Only this time, instead of not having enough information, I’ve got far too much.”

“Uh, yeah. Just a bit…”

Admittedly, Trixie’s prophecy was where most of it fell apart. Aside from [Crusaders] and [Fluttershy+Hat], which had already happened, no cards belonging to that prophecy were connected with anything other than speculation lines. She’d tried to construct some sort of narrative from them, [Door] to [Book falling] to [Book] to [Da Colton], and [Lightning] through [Shock] to [Mailbag] to [Clasp], and at a real stretch, connecting the [Monster] in the prophecy to the tale of the Ursa Major in [Hoofington], but there just wasn’t any proof. She was looking at the bigger picture and it really wasn’t helping at all.

Deep breaths, Twilight. Deep breaths. She inhaled and exhaled. Take things slowly. You might be missing the tree for the forest. All you need is one link to explore. Start looking at your speculation and run through different permutations.

[Balloon]. If Applejack was still going to fall out of a balloon, where, when, why? Dinky’s drawing couldn’t offer any context as to location. Both balloons were currently broken, so it would be some time before either of them could fly. To the third question… her eyes fell on [Sonic rainboom] again. Being close to an event of that magnitude would certainly cause a lot of turbulence, though being in that situation to begin with would require some gross negligence on Rainbow Dash’s part for making one so close to them. Still a possibility, though.

[Lightning]. There was a new weather team taking care of the Ponyville skies for at least the next week. Was there a thunderstorm on their cards? And what was the significance of such an event? As she’d already noted down in her thought journal, she had those new capacitors hooked up to the lightning rods, but that wouldn’t make any difference. They met the very rigorous safety protocols demanded by the Magitek Regulation Bureau, and on installation Rainbow Dash had helped her stress-test them.

And there were still the very first questions that predated the first prophecy, those of the [Workbook]. Its Return charm had been deliberately sabotaged, possibly at the point of being stolen, so who had stolen it, and why? It had found its way into a secret compartment in the Ponyville library, which, old as it was, would definitely not have been around in the 600s when da Colton was alive. Sure, the first form of the dam had been built shortly before his birth, so the land that would later be Ponyville was definitely there…

Spike put his hand up. “My head hurts.”

Twilight chuckled, and shook her head. “Mine too, Spike. I think we need some dinner, some tea, and a good night’s sleep.”

“I second that!”

On her way to the kitchen, Twilight paused, looking down at the cards she was trying carefully not to disturb. Everything was connected. Everything… except [Teleports]. She lifted the card up with her magic to stare at it, perhaps hoping that it might reveal any secrets. Princess Celestia had pretty much shot down the idea that the telescope had anything to do with the overcharged teleport. The atmospheric magic from the sonic rainboom, powerful as it was, simply hadn’t been there for the first one, and the delay between it and the second was just too great, the magic would have dissipated within about five minutes. Prophetia as a trigger could also be ruled out, as it shared no weave traits with Teleport. Still, it might be an idea to tone back on the teleports for now.

Was that the next step? She stared at the linked cards surrounding her, and then again to the one she held. Everything was connected, all the pieces fit together… so maybe she should stop looking at what did fit together, and start looking at what wasn’t connected… She had more questions to ask.

As she’d been standing there, Spike had danced his way back over to the kitchen, and now he reappeared in the doorway. “Um, Twilight?”

“Yes, Spike?”

“What exactly are we going to have?”

The unicorn and the dragon stared at each other for a moment. Ah. The hard questions first.

“I’ll go out and get some pizza.”

Dinner, tea, a good night’s sleep. Exactly what she needed, and exactly in that order. She’d put together a little checklist for it.

“Uh.”

‘Have another weird dream’ was most definitely not on the list.

It was the same as previously, as far as she could tell. Same breeze, same field, same river, lowering sun. No sign of the pegasus this time, though the first time she hadn’t shown up for a little while. Twilight had her bearings, though, and the benefit of a previous experience to somewhat alleviate the confusion, even if the hyper-realistic dream was a little disorienting.

After the previous dream, she’d done a little more research and correspondence, particularly with Princess Luna, who had the power to enter dreams. According to her, at least, it hadn’t been a nightmare, she (the Princess) would have known about that the moment it started. No, it was something different. The Princess had been unable to promise to join her if the dream reoccurred; after all, she couldn’t spend her entire night dreamwalking, and still had the duties of the night court to attend to amongst others. (One thing she had done, though, was confirm that yes, there were such things as dream ponies, but no, the pony Twilight had encountered was most certainly not one, and she could rest assured she had not jeopardized diplomatic relations with them.)

That wasn’t to say the lunar diarch couldn’t help, of course…

“Princess Luna?” Twilight called out. Nothing answered but the light gurgling of the river. “Are you here?”

Silence. Nothing significant at all bar the sun completing its descent as it had done previously, and the star appearing to take its place. It hadn’t been long after that that the pony had appeared last time, so presumably, she too would follow the pattern.

Ah, speaking of… Instead of popping up behind her, now the orange pegasus had appeared some distance away, staring blankly off into the distance. With apparently no wisdom from the Princess forthcoming, Twilight decided that she would make the first move this time, and started trotting towards her. “Hello!”

The pegasus flinched, but recovered pretty quickly. “Ah, don’t do that, you scared me!”

Whoops… “Sorry.”

So, something was different this time… she didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but Twilight guessed she’d probably anticipated the same conversation as last time, if this was indeed her subconscious trying to give her a message. Or, at least, a conversation which would get straight to the point rather than stumbling around awkward greetings.

The look she was getting was somewhere between scrutiny and confusion. “Are you supposed to be here?” The pegasus looked past her; again, looking at nothing in particular. “Is she supposed to be here?”

Twilight rubbed her mane. “Well, it’s my dream…”

“Oh, really?” The pegasus’s face brightened up. “Welcome back.”

“Um, thank you.” Well, at least she was a nice pony. Twilight could imagine being trapped in a dream with Wind Chime and it was not a pretty thought. “I’m Twilight Sparkle, if you remember from last time.”

A blank stare. “Um, was there a last time…?” she continued. “Do you remember that happening?”

“Something like that, yeah.” The pegasus rolled her eyes. “Look, are we going to get started or—”

She was interrupted by a loud splash from the river, and Twilight turned just in time to see a blue alicorn rising from the water like a lighthouse suddenly looms up out of the fog. Oh, so Princess Luna was able to join her after all. Great, now she was nervous again.

Of course, by the end of the few seconds it took the Princess to walk over to the two of them, she was completely dry. Was that just because it was dream water, or because it was Twilight’s dream and its events didn’t affect her? No, that was the wrong question to be asking. The Princess would know what she was doing. Twilight bowed. “Princess Luna.”

A royally-shod hoof gestured her up. “Rise, Twilight Sparkle. Forgive our lateness, there was a matter which required my urgent attention, but fortunately it seems Equestria is light on nightmares tonight.”

At a guess, that was to do with her telescope, but right at the moment that was an irrelevant topic and Twilight didn’t bring it up, as much as she wanted to know about it. Much more important was the dreamscape, which the Princess was already analyzing. Was this sort of thing common amongst dreams? From the look on Luna’s face, the answer was ‘no’.

“I did detect an oddity coming from your dream before I entered,” the Princess said, looking back at her. “Is this the same dream you mentioned previously?”

“Almost—”

“O-kay, I can work with that.” Both of them turned to look at the pegasus, who appeared to be looking not quite at but maybe straight through Princess Luna. “Both of you, follow me.”

Twilight raised her eyebrows. “Follow you where?” The mare wasn’t going anywhere. Her wings were twitching, but there was otherwise no movement. “(I think she might qualify for being the oddity,)” she whispered.

“(We— I concur,)” was the reply. “Please remain still, little pony. You need not fear me.”

Fear looked like the last thing on the pegasus’s mind. “I hope you know what you’re doing. I’m new to this too, you know.”

The Princess’s horn glowed, and the pegasus became enveloped in light. She rose off the ground without aid from her wings, suspended entirely by the magic alone, some sort of analysis spell if Twilight wasn’t mistaken. She never ceased to be awed by the power of alicorn magic. Sure, Princess Celestia was always telling her that she had a magical ability with the potential to outshine both her and her sister, but that always seemed so far away when compared to moving the celestial bodies, or stepping between the real and dream worlds with the ease of breathing. Those goalposts were always just out of reach.

Once, Twilight had tried to lower the moon and raise the sun, just to impress her teacher. That was a mistake she’d never make again.

With a few impressive sparks, the magic subsided, and the pegasus was set down again. Now curiosity was the predominant expression on Luna’s face, and Twilight had come to taking curiosity on the faces of the royals who’d been around for centuries as a bad thing. “Princess Luna?”

“This is most strange,” the Princess said, observing as the pegasus blinked the magic away. “As you suspected, she is not a construction of thy— this dream.”

“That means…” Twilight tried to figure it out. “…she’s from the real world?”

“Yes and no. She is also dreaming, and her dream is bleeding into yours.” Luna concentrated, and her horn sparked a few times. “Strangely, I seem to be prevented from entering her dream, though I sense no malicious forces at work.”

Dream… bleeding? So somewhere in Equestria, there was an orange pegasus mare who was dreaming this dream too? Suddenly, Prophetia’s involvement seemed a lot less likely. Prophetia had only been cast by Twilight and Trixie, and Trixie was nowhere in sight, not to mention this was a pegasus they were talking about. The involvement of a third-party pony threw a spanner into everything, including the other spanners. Yet another thing that made no—

“Furthermore…” there was more?! “…and this is most irregular… It is not exactly a dream which is bleeding. It is a memory.”

“Sit yourself over there, and let’s get this show on the road.”

“A… memory?”

Princess Luna nodded. “Yes. She may appear to be responding to our words, but to her, she is simply reliving a past event. In itself this is not uncommon, as momentous or traumatic events form a foundation for many dreams and nightmares to build upon. However, I have not previously encountered a base memory bleeding like this before, and certainly not in a way that would prevent me from entering the source pony’s dream and healing the wound.”

“I see.” Well, no, she didn’t, but the picture was clearing up as she thought about it. “Why would this start happening now, though? After I cast the prophecy spell?” Beat. “Princess Celestia did tell you about that?”

“There we go,” said the pegasus, to nopony in particular.

“Yes, she did inform me of the ongoing situation.” The princess frowned down at her. “Your disregard for safety in spellcasting aside, I would have to see the spell’s matrix and know of the other party’s identity before I could state an opinion.”

“Oh.”

“It should be coming through!” Twilight looked back, and jumped, as the pegasus was inches away from her face. “What do you see?”

“Uh… the same things as last time?”

“Twilight Sparkle, permit me a moment.” Princess Luna stepped forwards, and looked around. “Have you attempted changing the construction of this dreamscape?”

Oh yes, that was something she’d thought of last time, wasn’t it? Last time she’d been, well, stunned by the entrance to the dream and her imagination had abandoned her. Then the pegasus had turned up and she’d put it out of her mind completely. Might as well give it a shot now… she imagined something simple: a giant book, rising from the earth.

There was a short pause.

“Nothing’s happening.”

“Are you sure? That can’t be right.” The pegasus tapped a hoof on the grass. “Are you sure you’re doing this properly?”

“Peculiar,” commented the Princess. “Perhaps the bleeding memory is overriding any attempted alterations.”

“You’ll know when it’s working.” No, what was peculiar was that even though the pegasus was apparently repeating lines from a memory, they were still responding to her, and her following words seemed to also be a perfect response. Twilight mentioned this out loud.

Apparently, that hadn’t occurred to the alicorn, who furrowed her brow. “That is most strange.”

“How about now?”

…caught in a spiral… Twilight’s eyes widened. It was the same thing. Events in the real world all led back to da Colton and the prophecies. Everything they said in the dream world all led back to this pegasus’s memory. Did that then mean that this pony was somehow connected to the prophecy itself, rather than the spell used to create it?

“At last!” Oh, the wind was coming up— “Now, hurry up and let’s get on with this before—”

The ground rumbled exactly the same way as before, all three ponies stumbling. “Is that a dream quake?!” Twilight shouted, perhaps a little louder than was necessary. She didn’t know if there even were such things as dream quakes but she didn’t want to waste time asking that.

“No!” came the reply. “Dream quakes are much more violent than this!”

“…the hay?”

What was next? The star? No, it was the wind. The wind…

…accompanied by a sonic rainboom washing across the sky.

That didn’t happen last time.

“I lost the balloon! Darnit, we were so close!”

She rounded on the pegasus. “What balloon?! Tell us!”

“Sorry, now we’re going to have to start again.”

Princess Luna opened her mouth to speak, and suddenly wasn’t there any more.

“We’ll try again later when the weather’s better.”

The dream was about to end; Twilight had to think quickly. Was the sonic rainboom part of the other pony’s memory? If so… the memory was either less than a year old or eleven years old, more likely to be the latter. Eleven years ago, Rainbow Dash’s sonic rainboom that had resulted in her cutie mark and those of her future friends. What had been happening around that time?

Too slow.

“You know, I really think—”

The star exploded.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

If the main OCs in this story were voiced, what would they sound like?

[Kinrah]

8641852
I actually started working on a 'fantasy credits sequence' but really I've stuck to the established VAs, so for the characters currently with voices, Snow Veil is voiced by Ashleigh Ball, Orange Box by Andrea Libman, and the dream pony by Kelly Metzger. So within their vocal talent. Orange Box would have a voice that's plausibly related to Tabitha St. Germain's Derpy voice, Snow Veil is constantly harassed but upbeat, and saying too much about the dream pony would be spoilery.

[RTStephens]

Just when Twilight think's she's got this...

The mystery to all of this is interesting. Though, I keep thinking that Twilight will have to track down Trixie in order to get more of the picture she's missing.