Reflections

by RQK

18 - Opening

Crystal Faire knew this dream. Her body floated over the Crystal Empire. The city and surrounding geography looked just as she expected it to for several miles in every direction, but then, after a distance, it all abruptly ended. An endless expanse lay just outside its borders with towers stretching to infinity in every direction.

Her vision moved about to examine the landscape against any sort of will that she had, just like it had many times before. Her other senses were numb, and she could feel her very essence disappearing.

She knew this next part too. Even her sight started to disappear. Eventually, Crystal’s world was a void. Even her sense of the multiverse went silent for a few moments. She was conscious, at least, and she knew she would last long enough to regain enough of her senses to see her home timeline and many timelines around it, but only just.

There was a flicker as the lines reappeared. They were right on cue.

“Crystal Faire?” a vague and toneless voice said.

Crystal suddenly jolted awake as she felt something jab her side. Her senses came rushing back in an instant and her whole body shuddered. She blinked and glanced up to find the pavilion ceiling above her head.

The cot underneath her shifted as she rolled about to glance at her surroundings. Everything beyond the pavilion was bathed in sunlight. Countless pieces of paper hung from clotheslines that spanned the plaza and were clipped to some irregularly placed easels. A few unponies dotted the clearing, each engaged in their own tasks.

Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer held discussions near one of those easels as they traded documents back and forth and pointed to various sheets. And then Sunset lit her horn and snatched another half-filled sheet off one of the clotheslines and the two of them stuck their heads into the text contained therein.

Starlight Glimmer and Chrysalis sat at a wooden work table and the former watched as the latter molded and fused some solid materials together. Chrysalis licked her lips and stared deeper into the mass as it convulsed and morphed into several shapes before it finally settled into something that looked metal. Chrysalis nodded and glanced at Starlight who also nodded.

Crystal rolled back over to find Adamantine standing over her. “Hmm?”

“You must forgive me for waking you—I know that you must catch up on your sleep—but we finagled with the parameters…” Adamantine said as she presented some sheets of paper. “We may have finished it.”

One of the hoofful of unponies who stood behind her added, “If you could, please let us know how well it works.”

Crystal groaned and sat up. Her magic took the papers from Adamantine and she started to scan them. Let’s… toggle all of my filters off…

Her mind’s eye winced as infinities of timelines appeared within her vision. She could already see so many of them, but this number was several magnitudes greater than what she was used to.

Crystal shook her head and returned her real-world eyes to the paper once more. As she read over it and affected its instructions in her mind, her mind’s eye watched as countless timelines disappeared into nothingness. More and more disappeared, but after a few seconds, the rate slowed down and eventually stopped. She glanced over several of the timelines, and with what she saw, her frown deepened and her blood went cold.

Yes, she thought as she mentally scrutinized the expanding holes in several of them, these timelines are collapsing alright. They’ll finish collapsing in the next few seconds, even. But… She looked further along other lines—she looked into their future parts. These ones are on the way.

Crystal bolted to her hooves. “That will do it. Girls!” she yelled.

Twilight, Sunset, Starlight, and Chrysalis glanced up and trotted over one by one.

“Do you have it?” Twilight asked.

“Thanks to them,” Crystal said as she motioned to Adamantine and the other unponies.

And Adamantine and the unponies shared smiles with each other.

Twilight smiled and clopped her hooves together. “Excellent! This means that you can find all of the collapsing timelines.”

“Indeed. And I plan to go to one right now and run some tests.”

At that, Twilight’s smile faded and she, eventually, nodded solemnly. “I see. I’ll… I’ll go with you.”

Crystal raised an eyebrow. “Go with me? Are you… sure?”

Twilight, despite some color disappearing from her face, replied, “Yes.”

Crystal remained silent. A few others, especially Starlight, started sharing Crystal’s look of incredulity.

“Are you sure?” Crystal asked again. “It’s okay if you don’t want to go.”

Twilight swallowed and shook her head. “No, I should see this. I guess I was going to have to confront this all at some point, huh?”

Starlight stepped forward and said, “I want to see it too. After the story that Twilight told me and the others back home… I’ve wanted to know too.”

“We’re the ones tackling the problem,” Sunset said as she shuffled over to Chrysalis. “Maybe the five of us should see it so we know exactly what we’re up against.”

“And what’s at stake,” Twilight agreed.

Crystal glanced over at Chrysalis. “You’ve been through the thick of this too, so you’re more than welcome to stay.”

Chrysalis snorted and stuck her nose into the air. “I am a strong changeling. I will manage.”

“Well, in any case,” Crystal said, “expect to be there at least a day, maybe a day-and-a-half.”

Twilight turned to Sunset and said, “We should maybe bring our work with us.”

Sunset nodded and levitated over the documents and easel which they had been working with. Starlight followed suit as she levitated over the materials on the work table along with some tools. Chrysalis levitated over some schematics and rolled those up.

Twilight levitated over some saddlebags. “For when we need to put everything away.”

Adamantine nodded. “I suppose that the rest of us will wait here while you all… travel the multiverse. But… if you are leaving this reality… this timeline…” She frowned. “Would you indeed be gone forever?”

Crystal chuckled. “Ah, yes. But, when we come back, our absences will never have happened.” She trotted over to her four companions and then turned to face Adamantine. “I will allow three days to pass from your standpoint. You shall know whether we have returned or not by then.”

“Of course. We shall try to make progress in the meantime. Good luck,” Adamantine replied.

Crystal nodded. She then touched a nearby timeline with her mind’s eye. Reality folded in, and for a few moments, the five did not exist.

When it folded back out, Crystal wrapped her magic around the five of them and halted their falls before they could even begin. Her magic reached for some earth down below and pulled it up. Waves rolled across the water as seagulls circled above. As Crystal’s magic lowered them down, they heard a rumble which grew and grew in intensity before a pillar of rock, around which Crystal’s magic was wrapped, broke through the water’s surface. It was on that which Crystal set the rest of them down.

They looked around and spotted several tall and glossy structures taking up the entirety of the nearby landmass. A few bridges reached out from it and connected to a landmass way behind them; a train made its way across one of those bridges. Another, smaller island lay nearby which was dominated by a large, green statue of a cloaked mare wielding a torch.

Twilight set the saddlebags on the ground and trotted toward the edge of the island that Crystal had just pulled up. “Manehattan,” she said.

Sunset lit her horn and conjured up a wooden table. She proceeded to place all the documents onto it. “Well, this sure is a place to study the multiverse, isn’t it?”

Crystal glanced down the river and eventually focused on one spot in the middle of the water. “About five minutes from now, there will be a hole over there.”

“You mean, we’re going to reach the point in time when the bottom of the hole is,” Twilight said.

Crystal nodded. “Yes. That’s if it doesn’t decide to grow deeper.”

Starlight rolled her eyes. “It probably will, won’t it?”

Crystal lit her horn and created a spherical barrier around the spot. “I suppose it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

As the others set their stuff down and organized their belongings, Crystal scanned the surrounding waters. Several sailboats and yachts glided across the river’s surface. Some tourists on Statue Island pointed in their direction (and one even snapped a picture) before turning their attention back toward the usual shots.

Crystal twitched and examined the spot. Her mind’s eye saw the hole in the future grow deeper. “And lo and behold…”

What looked like a blob of pure black appeared in the middle of Crystal’s barrier. It hung in the air where it grew at a snail’s pace. It never shrank in return.

The other four immediately cocked their heads in its direction. Slowly, surely, they approached the edge of their little island and stared at it in silence.

Twilight shivered and went green in the face.

Starlight swallowed. “So… that’s it. That’s a hole.”

Crystal nodded solemnly. “That it is.”

Chrysalis opened her mouth to speak, but when nothing came out, she closed it again. Her insect-like wings folded out and back in a few times while her eyes remained glued on the anomaly.

A second hole appeared just under the first. It hung idly for a second, expanded, and then the two holes eventually merged together into one large opening.

Twilight shuddered and turned. She stumbled back toward the budding camp. Starlight flip-flopped between the anomaly across the water and Twilight and eventually settled on the latter as she galloped over and laid her foreleg across Twilight’s withers.

Sunset, meanwhile, drew close to Crystal. “Now what?” she asked.

Crystal nodded as she levitated some papers over. “Now, I get to work finding out what I can about this. We depend on it.”

* * *

Twilight sat in front of the campfire. It hadn’t been long since the sun had set, but the night was dark enough that she couldn’t get an idea of how the hole was behaving. The last time she had checked, and that had been some time ago, it had been quadruple the size of when they had first seen it.

Crystal sat at the end of the small plateau, attentively staring across the water. She lifted a rock off the stack of papers which it had been weighing down, took a fresh sheet, and then replaced the rock. She started to write some things down, occasionally pausing to tap the quill against her lip.

Chrysalis lay atop a towel on the opposite side of the plateau with her back facing them. She hadn’t made a sound since the sun had set. Twilight wasn’t sure if Chrysalis was even asleep or not.

Starlight and Sunset sat with Twilight at the campfire in the center albeit on its opposite side. They held several chisels and measuring tapes over what looked like a ball of solid metal with several glowing lines flowing through it. Twilight knew it was part of the spell and it was one of many more metallic objects to come.

At this point, she could only wonder what the finished spell would look like. As her eyes wandered over Sunset, she wondered if the human world had any supercomputers that could rival it when complete.

She simply sighed and lay down on her own towel. Her eyes remained glued to the flames.

Starlight glanced up and then sat up. “I know that look, Twilight. Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” Twilight replied.

Starlight sighed and placed her tools down next to the object. “Alright… why don’t you tell us what’s up, huh?”

Twilight pursed her lips. “Well… Err… I never thought that I would see those holes ever again. And now here I am.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I just… The last time I saw those a hole like that… my reality collapsed.”

Sunset set her tools down as well. “Right, yeah. I see what’s wrong. You’re thinking about everypony back home, right?”

“That’s only part of it, but…” Twilight folded her forelegs together and sighed. “Yes, I am thinking about them.”

“I don’t blame ya,” Sunset said with the shake of her head.

Twilight’s eyes drew toward the island where the buildings created a canvas of dotted lights that stretched across her vision. A few dots flew about the buildings and the shoreline was littered with several ponies of all shapes and sizes dancing to some distant and inaudible tunes.

“Look at that,” Twilight said, pointing. “That’s a city full of ponies. They’re living, breathing ponies. And this timeline is going to collapse…”

Sunset stood up and walked toward the edge of the plateau. “Yeah… I could see that being a problem. They’re all going about their lives and they don’t know any better. And they never will, probably.”

Starlight scratched her head and frowned. “Yeah, right? And it’s like… we know better. Kind of a weird position to be in, isn’t it?”

“I’ve done stuff with alternate realities back home,” Sunset said. “Doesn’t make it any less weirder the second time.”

Twilight glanced up. She could see a few pegasi flying across the river between the island and the mainland. Some flew at a distance away while others flew more overhead. Most were as unknown as the next. Twilight, however, spotted one who looked vaguely familiar.

She stood and called out, “Hello, up there! Can I have a moment of your time?”

The pegasus above banked in their direction and then swooped down at a high velocity. At the last moment, the pegasus flipped over and beat her wings which slowed her down by a considerable margin. She touched down at high velocity, landing on all fours before straightening up. “Yeah? What do you want?”

Twilight examined the pegasus mare in the light of the fire. She had a light turquoise coat and wore her amber mane slicked back. Her tail was equally so. “You’re… Lightning Dust, correct?”

Lightning Dust narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, I am. What of it?”

Off to the side, Chrysalis stirred. Although her back was to them, she rolled just enough to glance in their direction.

Twilight nodded. “I thought that you looked familiar. I heard that somepony was thrown out of the Wonderbolts for being reckless and endangering the lives of others. You wouldn’t happen to be that pony, would you?”

Lightning Dust snorted. “Please, don’t remind me… I’m finding it hard enough to get a job as it is just because of that,” she said as she rubbed her foreleg and hung her head.

Twilight frowned. “But you are looking for a job?”

“I am.”

“This… this is going to sound like a silly question.” Twilight traced some circles into the dirt and then met Lightning Dust in the eyes. “Do you… know what the future will bring? Tonight? Tomorrow? Any ideas at all?”

Lightning Dust pursed her lips and shook her head. “No. I don’t know. Uh, I don’t think anypony knows. But I’m just hoping tomorrow is a better day. I just hope the rest of my life is better.”

Crystal turned and glanced back in their direction. Starlight slowly climbed to her hooves. Sunset, meanwhile, trotted up to Twilight’s side.

Twilight swallowed and nodded. “I see. Thank you for your time, that’s all I wanted to ask.”

Lightning Dust raised an eyebrow. She glanced around at everypony, momentarily paused on Chrysalis, and then shook her head. “Whatever. Later.” She shot into the sky, arced toward the city, and pretty soon disappeared among the myriad pegasi already above and through the city.

Twilight gazed into the distance for several long moments. “She has no idea,” she croaked, “that her reality is about to collapse. She has no idea that she’s going to die…”

Four heads, including Chrysalis’, turned toward the city as well.

Twilight shook her head and sighed. “Nopony back home had any idea. I had no idea.”

She sat back down and turned her eyes back to the fire. “I just… It’s the strangest feeling. I know what’s about to happen, and I’m… helpless.”

Crystal frowned. Her eyes wandered to the ground as the rest of her expression fell. Eventually, she turned back toward the hole over the river.

Starlight hung her head. “Yeah… This sucks.”

Sunset took a seat next to Twilight, wrapped a foreleg around her withers, and held her close. “Pretty much. This one’s gunna be a loss.”

Twilight nodded.

Sunset pursed her lips. “I haven’t really said anything about this yet, but… I learned a great deal about Adamantine and her unponies back in my home timeline.”

Starlight raised an eyebrow. “I think you might have mentioned it.”

“I’ve dealt with the Nameless monster quite a lot. But those unponies… they depended on it for food, and when the Nameless was destroyed…” Sunset shook her head. “Literally everything that I did to help those unponies did nothing. They died, and I couldn’t do anything about it.”

Twilight hung her head.

“Must be nice seeing them living and thriving, huh?” Starlight asked.

Sunset giggled. “You bet. It’s a huge relief. It reminds me that things can be better.” She pointed toward the city and said, “Maybe we’re going to lose them. We’re going to take losses here and there. But if there was anything else that I learned, that doesn’t mean we have to stop trying. We can save the other timelines. Hopefully sooner than later.”

Twilight smiled. “Yes. Maybe… you’re right, Sunset. I just can’t help but wish I could do something for them.”

Sunset sighed. “Me too, Twilight. Me too.”

Starlight sat back down. “I guess we just have to keep at it for their sake, huh?”

After a moment, Twilight nodded. “Yes. For their sake.”

* * *

Crystal jotted down the latest readings onto the sheet of paper and set it down with a sigh. The sun was directly overhead.

Twilight trotted over and sat down. “Okay. What do we have?”

Crystal hummed and lifted the stack of filled papers with her magic. She took a moment to read through them; they, for the most part, contained plain text. “Here.”

Twilight took the papers from Crystal and read over them.

Crystal lit her horn and made another magical cloud appear within the barrier around the hole. The hole, by now, had grown to the size of a low-rise apartment building. A smaller hole the size of a pony appeared right next to it which immediately expanded and then connected with its much larger brother.

Crystal turned her mind’s eye toward the timeline as a whole. She could see several more holes that, while still in the future, were slowly growing deeper and would eventually reach the present. She looked further into the future where several sections were now gone. She continued on and on until, finally, around a hundred thousand years into the future, the last remaining bits of timeline ended.

And it was rapidly disintegrating. If I’m looking at this right… she thought, all this could be collapsed within the next twenty minutes, maybe half-an-hour at most.

She willed her magical cloud to dive into the hole. Once she was sure that it was all the way in, she willed her cloud to stop all its movement. She held it there for a while. The spell itself fed her the same gibberish that it had been for the past few hours, although some parts of the gibberish were patterned.

Twilight hummed. “So…” she said as she held up a few pages in particular, “I see you’ve determined the background.”

Crystal nodded. “As best as I could. I don’t exactly know what makes up what’s beyond those holes… but I can certainly tell you that it’s not spacetime.”

Twilight nodded. “That… should make sense. I mean, it should exist outside of that. Interversal space, maybe?”

Crystal nodded.

“I don’t think that’s something that we could ever comprehend. We could spend so much time just guessing at it.” Twilight giggled and added, “Gosh, I wish I could do a full-length study on this. Just think, Crystal, we could find out so much about the makings of existence.”

Crystal smiled. “That would be something, wouldn’t it? Too bad these circumstances are far from ideal.”

Twilight shrugged. “If they were, would you be my partner?”

Crystal shrugged back. “I don’t know. I’m not against it.”

Twilight rolled her eyes and glanced back down at the papers. “And then, everything else… You’re saying you’re detecting interversal dust?”

“That’s my best guess.”

“I think that’s a good guess,” Twilight agreed.

Crystal turned her attention back to her spell as Twilight started on the next set of papers. She tried to gauge how her cloud was moving. She had been keeping it as still as she could, and yet, despite her efforts, it still seemed to dissipate.

The matter of where still eluded her. The cloud was moving in odd ways that she couldn’t control. But why does it keep dissipating? she thought.

Twilight set all the papers down. “So, that’s everything?” she asked.

Crystal shelved the thought for later. “Almost. This is mostly sufficient, I am sure. I just have but two more tests which I would like to conduct. If the results are what I expect, then I will have everything—”

A sudden breeze picked up and the set of papers scattered. Twilight swiftly jumped up and wrapped a magical cloud around all of them, arresting their movement. She brought them in and tried to restack them.

Crystal looked over and spotted a new hole far removed from the first. It sat at a point above the shoreline opposite the city. The waves turned erratic and seemingly flowed in the direction of the hole. The hole, in turn, lifted large amounts of water which it funneled into itself. The trees on the shoreline swayed, and those especially close were even uprooted and then promptly sucked into the hole.

Crystal frowned. “Well, it would appear that the time has come to drop the pretenses.”

A knot appeared in Twilight’s throat. “O-oh stars…”

Crystal glanced back toward the others who were now rising to their hooves in order to survey the hole. “Twilight, why don’t you go and help them wrap things up?”

After a moment, Twilight nodded and offered a soft “O-okay,” before she turned and trotted toward the others, taking the papers with her.

Crystal turned her gaze back to the initial hole and she lit her horn. She formed a barrier around the makeshift island and simultaneously dropped the barrier around the hole. The air roared as air pressures forced large amounts of air and water into a tight space.

A boat, which had been sailing just around the barrier, found itself capsized. It skidded across the water’s surface and eventually was close enough to go airborne and soon pass through the horizon. A few nearby pegasi flapped their wings with all their might but couldn’t outrun the winds and they too disappeared through the horizon.

Crystal wanted to look away. She forced herself to watch instead. In her mind, she needed to see it. She needed to know it.

The others, save Chrysalis who watched the bedlam in silence, went to work on gathering the various effects. They moved slowly and methodically, pointing between items and delegating tasks between each other.

Sunset looked up. “Crystal! How much time do we have!?”

Crystal looked over the timeline again with her mind’s eye. “There’s about ninety-thousand years left in this timeline. If I’m reading this right, all that will be completely collapsed in less than twenty minutes.”

Chrysalis bared her teeth and charged through the other three with a pointed, “Out of my way!” She stormed up to Crystal and, once there, turned her eyes toward the building-sized hole ahead. “You had better finish up soon.”

Crystal glanced across the timeline with her mind’s eye. She found her attention drawn toward the Crystal Empire; specifically toward a pile of toys. The sight of one actually brought a smile to her face. She lit her horn and teleported that very toy from the Crystal Empire to herself where it floated in her magic.

Said toy was a stuffed animal which took the form of a yellow snail carrying a greenish house on its back. Crystal chuckled and held it close. “Oh, Whammy…”

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow.

“We won’t be here too much longer. But there are still two more tests to perform.” Crystal shook Whammy for a moment and added, “I think that I will use this for the second.”

“And? The first?”

“Watch.” Crystal lit her horn. A series of copper wires, wrapped around the occasional copper rod, appeared. Crystal examined the network of cables and then set them to the side.

Her horn remained lit and she glanced overhead. “Now, I’ll use a gravity manipulation spell to equalize gravity here… And then… we’ll bring the specimen in.”

A crystal the size of a castle appeared in the air above their heads. It had a jagged and asymmetrical design with purple and green sparks jumping between its branches and stubs. It hung in Crystal’s gravity-less space. A few bolts lashed out at Crystal’s barrier but all splashed pathetically against it.

“That crystal contains a few megathaums of energy. I’m going to break it open and see what interversal space does with it.”

“And just where did that come from?” Chrysalis hissed.

Crystal smirked. “The ruins in Crooktail Canyon. Surely, you know of them?”

Chrysalis narrowed her eyes and then turned her attention back toward the hole.

Crystal altered her gravity spell, shooting the giant crystal arcing through the air. It reached the apex of its arc but the winds rushing past it caused it to twist and tumble through the air.

She levitated the series of copper wires and rods and placed a few of those rods in a tight circle around a particular point on her barrier. She altered the barrier spell so that a few small holes opened up, into which she slotted the remaining rods. Crystal then reeled back, coursed a great deal of magic into her horn, and then shot a beam of pure magic through the ring of rods; her barrier opened up just long enough for her attack to pass through and barrel right into the giant crystal. A giant crack appeared on the crystal’s side and proliferated across its surfaces.

The crystal met the hole and dove past the horizon bottom-first. The hole arrested a good deal of its momentum, and in Crystal’s mind’s eye, she could already see very small dots exiting the hole. The crystal hadn’t broken yet, but she was sure that it would, and violently.

The hole itself, however, was smaller than the height of the crystal. Just as it seemed like the entire thing was going to disappear past the event horizon, the bottom of the crystal poked out from the other side of the hole.

Crystal jumped. “What in the…!?”

“Ridiculous!” Chrysalis exclaimed as she jammed her hoof in its direction. “That should be lost!”

A loud roar caused them to look up as the crystal shattered, expelling large amounts of energy. The cloud expanded only a few meters but was promptly sucked into the hole. The bits of hard crystal still outside teetered and then ultimately passed into the horizon.

Crystal turned her mind’s eye toward the hole in the timeline and could see pieces of debris dissipating. She watched it scatter in all directions. The bits of energy, to her surprise, sped up and slowed down at random and seemed to flicker in and out of fullness.

It’s moving in more dimensions than I can see, Crystal concluded. At the very least, this tells me how these things, in general, behave once they cross the horizon.

Another hole appeared over the city of Manehattan. The hole itself immediately grew to the size of a small house. It pulled on loose bits of nearby buildings and then sucked those in. There were a few ponies that had been flying or had been on rooftops within the vicinity who were also sucked in before they could even react.

“Oh stars!” Twilight exclaimed as her legs gave way.

The earth rumbled and roared as increasingly large chunks of earth shot into the air. Buildings in the city teetered and then collapsed amidst showers of dust. Some collapses slowed down in their descent and then reversed direction as the violent forces sucked their remains into the holes.

“Oh stars,” Twilight croaked. She collapsed all the way onto the ground. “Oh stars…”

“Twilight!” Sunset cried as she rushed to Twilight’ side, scooped her up, and cradled her.

Twilight shook like a leaf. Water welled up in her eyes and then fell in streams down her face.

Starlight, through clenched teeth, whirled. “Crystal! We have to get out of here!”

Crystal grimaced. “There’s still something that I need to do.”

“Then get her out of here! She’s in no shape to watch all of this!”

There was a loud explosion from within the city. A massive fireball shot into the air which the winds quickly tore apart.

“No!” Twilight exclaimed. “I…. said that I would be here… I…”

A few smaller holes appeared in the airspace above Manehattan and even more appeared over their position over the river. The waters churned and raced toward the openings, and at this point, brief glimpses of the seaweed-covered riverbeds showed themselves.

“Hurry up!” Chrysalis snapped. “Do whatever it is you plan on doing so that we can leave this wretched place!”

Crystal turned her attention back to the hole. She levitated Whammy past the barrier. Her grip on it teetered as she accounted for the strong forces acting on the toy, but she eventually steadied it out.

“Twilight,” Sunset said, “please. This is really getting under your skin.”

“A-and I came here knowing full well that it would,” Twilight replied.

Crystal brought Whammy to face in front of the event horizon. She held it there for a few moments and then she dipped it in halfway. Her mind’s eye kept watch on the hole as it grew wider in time. Once a few seconds had passed without the hole engulfing the remainder of the stuffed toy, she pulled back out. The rest of the toy appeared from past the horizon.

Crystal cooed with interest and made a mental note for later.

Chrysalis watched in silence. Her eyes drifted to the teary-eyed Twilight and a hint of a smile graced her face. Her eyes then wandered toward the city as the holes ravaged it, and all hints of her smile faded again.

Starlight bent down to Twilight’s level. “But Twilight—”

“I need to see this,” Twilight said, her stare distant but her tone firm. “I need to see this, and you need to see this.”

Crystal levitated Whammy back into the hole; all the way in this time. The stuffed toy disappeared past the horizon. Crystal waited a few seconds and then pulled back (at least, what she could fathom as back), but nothing reappeared. She could feel her magic moving Whammy about, but it was decisively not in the direction she wanted.

But Whammy is still whole, she thought. Whole in every sense of the word. So, it can still exist on the other side.

The apartment-sized hole underwent a growth spurt where, in the span of a few seconds, it nearly doubled in size.

“Now are you done?” Chrysalis asked.

Crystal nodded. “I am. That concludes everything that I wanted to do with these holes for the time being.” She turned to face the others and said, “I do believe we can now—”

She felt something wrap itself around her magic. It was an essence. Crystal paused and then, with a raised eyebrow, turned back to the hole. “Huh?”

“What?” Chrysalis asked.

The ground underneath their hooves shuddered.

Crystal frowned. The essence around her magic was also magic itself. It was much like her own. But that couldn’t possibly exist within the interversal space. It was impossible.

She pulled on her magic. The other magic acquiesced for a moment and then caught up with her pull, grabbing with the same tender touch as it had before.

“What is this?” she asked with disdain.

“Now what?” Chrysalis hissed.

“There is some magic out there… It has a hold on my spell,” Crystal replied. “How…?”

Crystal pulled some more, and the strange spell loosened its grip a second time. A few moments later, she felt the strange spell tighten itself around her own again.

She coursed some more energy into her horn and tried to alter her levitation spell enough to take a reading of the strange magic. She had to know what it was. Was is benevolent? Malevolent? How was it even possible? Where was it coming from?

She felt the strange magic shift, but she continued to alter her spell. Finally, she received some data from her half-levitation, half-meter spell.

The strange magic felt familiar. Very familiar.

Twilight groaned and climbed to her hooves. She too stared at the hole. Sunset and Starlight, after looking Twilight up and down, turned their attention to it as well.

The riverbed, now mostly dry, suddenly caved. Sections of earth crumbled and sank several meters downward. The surrounding sections, the riverbank, and the city itself also fell the same distance. Some areas disappeared into a scattering of holes which had, evidently, been hiding underneath the surface up until that point.

Every part of the makeshift island underneath Crystal’s barrier also fell away. Everypony there felt their bodies grow lighter and lighter by the second.

“Oh gosh,” Starlight said as she whirled around, “it’s… it’s all gone. It’s all gone!”

Sunset shuddered. “I…”

Chrysalis stumbled away from the edge of the barrier and eventually fell on her haunches.

Even Crystal had it in her mind to choose that moment to travel away. Her essence was already wrapped around Whammy who still floated somewhere within interversal space. She was now wrapping her essence around the others and their effects, too.

And then she saw it: a light blue tendril emerged from the hole in front of them. It was a tendril of pure magical energy. It extended in their direction, ignoring all the bedlam around it.

All five of them watched with bated breath as it reached in their direction and eventually pressed against Crystal’s barrier.

There were now rapidly expanding holes in all directions. The few hints of what had ever been in Equestria were now at least a kilometer below their hooves. And they all stared at the tendril.

Crystal’s spell still fed her information. She could still feel the other magic. She could sense it. She could feel the way that it caressed her magic and the way it longingly pressed against her barrier. She could feel its tenderness. She could feel its love.

She could feel in it things that she had once known about in a life so long ago. She could feel in it what she had as a foal.

Crystal gasped and felt all strength leave her. That was why it was familiar: she knew it. She knew it and could never ever forget it.

Her eyes flicked upward as the entire sky turned black. Rather, she saw holes take up every corner of the sky and they proliferated in their direction. At last, it was the end.

Her mind’s eye wandered to the timeline that they had left a day prior and then touched it. All of reality folded together and then they did not exist.

When reality folded back out, they landed on solid dirt again. The other four landed in silence save for the odd grunt as they made contact. The saddlebags and tool boxes also landed in the dirt but with even less fanfare. The sun was shining and there wasn’t a single hole to be found.

Crystal glanced up. Whammy the snail was there too. Her own magic and the last fleeting thoughts of the light blue-colored magic still ebbed and flowed around it. The latter lingered for a few moments more and then vanished along the cool breeze.

Her heart beat both at a million kilometers a minute and not at all.

The other four climbed to their hooves. Many others—Adamantine and a few of her unponies—joined them. Everypony in the clearing stared up at Whammy the snail which now only had Crystal’s magic around it.

Crystal levitated the stuffed toy close to her face and then looked back at the spot where it had just been.

Twilight said it first. “That magic… I think I know that magic. Was… that?”

Yes. It was.

Crystal’s legs finally gave way. “M… Mother?” she croaked.

Comments

[Doctor Disco]

Hm...

So those that pass the event horizon are still alive, and anything sucked in is really only put into some sort of limbo.

We need to go deeper-

Hey, wait a second.... This feels familiar...

Oh yeah! The early chapter!

I made this comment before but it was deleted.

Anyways, still a fantastic chapter. Very very surprising to see there is the possibility ponies of ponies still being alive behind the spheres. The twist is just awesome. Allons-y!

[Blaster M]

And this is where time goes all wibbly-wobbly

[EchoWing]

...I feel like someone just took a hammer and hit the story hard enough for me to feel it. Dang.

[JMP]

Is this a reupload of an earlier chapter? Rewrite? Oh wait, is this the chapter that was accidentally uploaded before the previous one? Was that it?

[RQK]

8438602 Yes, tis indeed a re-upload of the chapter that was accidentally published before its predecessor~

8438266 Ah, but you see, there is still a consistent ruleset for how all this works. We'll see

[Von Snootingham]

So just A Cadence or specifically Crystal's Cadence? And is she just floating around out in the void or is she the cause? The mystery deepens.

[Razzy]

Apocalypse how.

Wow, Chryssie was still so in control despite what happened to her last time she saw something like this.

... I knew it was Cadance's fault.

'Sunset and Chrysalis, meanwhile, drew close to Crystal. close.' - something went wrong there

'They died and I was couldn’t do anything about it' - remove was

'and placed them a few of them' - placed a few

'Her eyes flicked upwards as the entire sky turned back' - black

[Csquared08]

Oh my

[NeoNymph]

OH
NO!!

S*** just hit the fan!