Ancient Twilight

by demonbaker

Research

Author's Note:

This chapter was cobbled together with various words left on the cutting room floor from previous chapters, I just shoved them into a sorting machine and this spat out.

This chapter needed more, and I was still working on what the other half would be. (that's why it's so short.)

But, tis the season, I decided to upload it a bit early (and without much editing done, forgive the errors)

happy late hearths warming eve everypony.

Cycle 21563759

Experiment: Destruction of Light to see effects on Equestria’s reign.

Nightmare Moon takes over unopposed, issuing in an authoritarian regime and claiming the title of Empress.

Demands for secrets involving time increase roughly 87.5% and refusal leads to the destruction of property and sometimes cities as she attempts to take that which cannot be taken by force.

Throughout our encounters, she’s realized some magic can affect me normally, and that ambushes would prove effective if I didn’t keep warning myself they were happening.

She has also realized that I am stronger than she is. I lost my temper after one request and nearly killed her, my Overseer intervened and spared her.

Since that encounter, she’s realized that I am CHOOSING to let her live and that she’s only able to succeed at my whim.

This has had a noticeably negative effect on her mood, for the repeat of this experiment do not allow her to realize I am stronger.

Nightmare will have her way, regardless of the consequences. Luna puts more forethought into her actions, Nightmare has her intelligence, but without empathy, her cruelty often leads to undesired outcomes.

Effect on Harmony:

Harmony backlash resulted in the creation of heroes to try to subdue Nightmare Moon on the exact date that she would have come back from banishment with Light alive. Disposing of these interlopers helped secure her Reign, as the power of Harmony they possessed was quite strong, and would have unmade her.

Interesting that those Six would still be born even with such substantial changes to Equestria present.

Harmony must have put this into play meticulously

Effects on Discord:

He seemed to enjoy himself for a moment, but Nightmare Moon was his superior in combat, he only survives because of his difficulty to eliminate, refer to Chaos Document 314592654 on theoretical methods to remove Chaos.

That and he seems to be deliberately not using much of his power, he’s tight-lipped on why, and often mentions things he shouldn’t be aware of.

Par for the course with Chaos.

So far, all her research has led to dead ends. She sighed in vexation and pulled an experiment log from the growing pile at random...

Cycle 21564759

Experiment: Removal of Both Light And Darkness to study the effect on the world government.

Left unopposed Chaos takes over the timeline, as per Cycle 21564758 Sealing of Discord at the proper time Light and Darkness would have confronted him results in beneficial societal progression.

Without a being to protect them from Chaos’s creatures that run rampant and the ‘Discordified’ ponies, the growing society collapses within two centuries due to attrition.

Effects on harmony: Headaches, a strong desire to protect ponies that is obviously foreign in nature.

I’ve not had such feelings since my first thousand Cycles, when I was more similar to my original narrow views.

Thinking back on it, seeing the elements of harmony grow old and die affected me deeply at the time

Refrain from documenting irrelevant thoughts. - Overseer 21564759

This! This is it! The migraine, the weakening of her control over herself, there’s only one possible solution:

Harmony Backlash.

But how? She hadn’t done anything, what’s different this time?

She sat upon one of her chairs and slowed her thoughts, clearing her mind with the ancient technique of royal breathing.

Not that breathing was necessary for her anymore.

It still helped.

As her thoughts and anger subside the result is clear.

Chaos.

Random elements click into place, a lot of the weird things Chaos said in the past suddenly begin to make sense.

Chaos is like her, he doesn’t exist within the timestream. That would explain how he could interact with her so easily, and how he knew of her tree experiments.

He’d been watching, waiting for her to...take a vacation? Or maybe...maybe he tampered with the last experiment, knowing it would be difficult to deal with without all her power.

That moment, that single instant that her protective wards on her Grimoire’s was down.

That is what he was waiting for.

Time’s estimation of Chaos grew, but so too did her resolve.

He wants to play with the timeline? Two can play at that game, It’s obvious what she had to do.

She rose from her seat and the tower, floating over to the chaotic mishmash that was the current timestream.

With practiced ease, she pinpointed the Prime Timeline.

The river that all forks of potential futures and multiverses split from.

There was no need to stop him all at once, nor did she care about the Alternate Universes.

Seeing his obvious meddling she knew what she needed to do.

If harmony is blocking her power, she just needed to appease it somehow.

Tit for tat.

An eye for an eye.

Chaos doesn’t know who he’s messing with.

Splitting herself in two she enters the timeline.

Overseer 1 watched as she entered the timeline and everything suddenly went dark. The usual white void vanished instantaneously, all the futures got cut off shortly after where Prime entered.

Like a tree with it’s canopy removed.

With a quick estimation Overseer deduced that it happened roughly 3 years after she entered.

This is bad, she’d never seen something like this, Time itself is about to end. In the distance her tower crumbled to nothingness, the void moving closer, and closer to the Prime Timeline. Soon all that would exist is the timestream.

Acting quickly she moved to a few moments where time ended and appeared before herself.

Prime’s mane was ablaze with fire, her wings flared in anger, her coat shone bright and pure fury burned in her gaze, the radiant heat of her wrath was scorching the planet around her.

If she weren’t careful, the planet itself would break apart.

“Stop! If you continue down this path you’ll destroy everything! This moment is the crux, either the multiverse ends now, or it begins anew!” She’s surrounded by many beings, Light, Darkness, and even...Chrysalis? As well as 5 of the elements of harmony.

One is missing though, even her student is here, shielding the other ponies with an icy barrier.

She also felt Death’s presence nearby, not close enough to kill anyone though, and what little effect he was having was being counteracted by Life, likely next to him.

They could all feel how everything relied on this singular moment.

Alpha for her part simply snarled. “This? I’m just removing a thorn from my side. It’s time for a new experiment, make sure to write down that the theoretical method to kill Chaos seems true.” She held up a diminutive Chaos between her hooves.

”This is my lab, and I’m done allowing a rat to run around and topple over my experiments” She pulled him close, her fury rising, she was one flex away from crushing him to nothingness.

Chaos simply looked resigned, his body was pale, his mismatched form only being kept together by Time’s magic forcing all of the Chaos in the universe into a singular point.

The theoretical technique to destroy Chaos was simple, incinerate it.

Then pull together enough for him to form a new body, and incinerate that too, repeat ad nauseam till all chaos is gone.

Something clicked in Observer 1’s mind.

The goading, the pain. The discorded Plague.

It was all for this, all to piss her off.

Chaos simply winked at observer 1 when she realized, a burning sensation in her chest causing her to gasp.

A spark of realization.

He knows that if he dies, so too does the universe.

He knows, yet he’s willing to risk it all for...something.

Something worth more than everything.

Observer 1 looked back to Alpha. She seemed to be waiting for something, looking at Observer 1 intently.

This was bad, it was obvious that Chaos was vital to the existence of the Multiverse, And Alpha didn’t notice.

A quick check confirmed it, from what she could tell, the rest of the universe's Chaos was about to be incinerated.

From previous flares of emotion, the standard tactic was to retreat and let the anger die off, or overpower with a sneak attack.

She’d lost that opportunity when she entered in haste without creating a duplicate.

And waiting wasn’t an option either…

With no outward sign of gathering energy, she does a last-ditch effort...

An attempt to discorporate herself, in the time Alpha reforms it should let her emotions cool off.

Her attack is blocked with ease, and Alpha’s anger turned from Chaos to Observer 1. She was promptly incinerated as well.

Ever burning flames. Only timeless things could affect Time, as Alpha well knew.

As she burned away she decided to send a single letter.

A final letter to her old teacher.

Overseer 1’s last thought was ‘I hope it’s enough.’

Observer 2’s last thought was “please, Celestia.

I was wrong.”

~~~~~

Comments

[Secundum]

This was...Kinda confusing.

[Spellflame]

10599992
Of course it is! She is killing chaos!

[LEGION55]

Interesting.

[Direct Access]

I can't understand shit.
You have really messed up narrative of this chapter.

[demonbaker]

10600440
if I need to work on things I will, but it seemed pretty clear to me, it was an exposition dump mostly.

you got to see earlier cycles, some insight into why Time is the way she is, the protocol of using observers (duplicates of Time that observe from outside, to ensure experiments are successful. usually a second set of eyes on each experiment)

you're not the first to say it was hard to grasp, but it seems plain as day to me, help me be better, give some specific points that need tweaking and I'll work to fix them, though it will be a while.

[Direct Access]

10600983
I understand things you talk about.
What i can't understand is why they do what they do and generally how things go from one to another.
It's kinda like as if some stuff missing, considerable chunk of narrative. Things don't quite connect.