Chapter 7
Clover was getting quite used to being Time's student. She's been learning from this alicorn for a long time. And in the process, her instincts have been honed to avoid danger and keep herself alive. Too many times has Time sprung some form of a trap on her to make her think on her toes or be grievously injured.
If I was a real Dark alicorn you would be dead, Clover the clever. She can recall it clearly, the few times Time showed her dark magic.
The sight of Time when she uses dark magic will always give her shivers. Time likes to say 'Experience is the best teacher'. She's had to contend with any manner of dark magic and come out on top.
Waiting patiently by her teachers' side Clover looks forward to meeting the other alicorns. She wasn't told much about them, Time has only very briefly spoken about them. Clover knows there are seven in total. But beyond that, she's never met any of the others
Well, besides Chaos, but he's not an alicorn.
"Life wouldn't be comfortable in your presence, she dislikes dark magic. I doubt you could handle meeting Death, very few can see him and survive unscathed. Love hasn't been formed yet, and Hate is best left alone."
She knows next to nothing about Sol and Lun, or Celestia and Luna as they have named themselves.
Seeing the moon so close to her as it rises up and blocks out the sun Clover feels a shiver of excitement, Using magic to protect her sight she patiently observes the two orbs, waiting for the alicorns to rise from their celestial bodies.
She gets the privilege of being the first 'mortal' to meet them.
It was a bigger honor than she could have ever imagined previously.
The first to awaken is Celestia, The alicorn of the sun, her body wreathed in flames like a phoenix as she gracefully flies from her orb. She glares at Time for a moment before standing next to Clover, giving a serene smile to the unicorn. Time said she isn't on the best terms with Celestia right now, I better be respectful. Clover gives a small bow to Celestia, the smile on the white alicorn's face widening in genuine love and affection.
Before she can even speak her horn begins to ache with the telltale signature of dark magic, her body screaming at her that something is close...something dangerous. Following her unease she see's a dark orb flying from the surface of the moon toward Celestia. Taking a ready stance, She watches the orb cautiously as it slowly fades.
And a nightmare steps out of it.
You wouldn't last a second against a true dark alicorn. The best bet is to surprise them. Attack them before they even know you're there. The geas prevents her from using hornless magic unless her life is in danger.
She is definitely in danger. Wasting no time she forces the manaflow in her body into a spell matrix, summoning several foot long spears of ice before her, sending them toward the nightmare with a flick of her hoof without hesitation.
Strike first and strike true, alicorns are difficult to kill, but they still feel pain.
It works! She's taken the nightmare completely by surprise, she begins weaving another spell, one designed to cause the Icicles to explode, seeking to incapacitate before the monster has a chance to retaliate.
Suddenly her entire world is engulphed in searing hot pain, her spell faltering as her mind struggles to catch up with what just happened. Looking over the last thing she see's is Celestia's angry expression looking down at her, her long elegant horn ablaze with fire and Time blinking to appear between her and Celestia, who's channeling another spell.
There is a bright flash, and Clover doesn't feel anything after that.
~~~~~
A deep voice chuckles as he looks into the shimmering orb of chaos magic.
"Oh my, and here I thought it wouldn't get any better!" A chorus of other versions of Chaos are running about behind him, getting ready for the upcoming show. Though several of them take the time to stop and cheer for Clover trying to kill Luna.
A familiar voice inturrupts the impromtu applause.
"Don't you have anything better to do? like...you know...the plan?"
Chaos rolls his eyes out of his head and over the cave floor, stopping at the bubble of chaos magic that surrounds the purple alicorn so they can look up at her and give a wink.
Somehow, even without a face Chaos' eyes manage to look smug.
"Now now Twilight Everything is nearly ready."
The purple alicorn rolls her eyes (albeit in a less dramatic fashion). "Please don't call me that, I haven't gone by that name in..." She stops and shakes her head. "No distracting me. what's stopping me from simply leaving and informing myself about what you're doing?"
Chaos snaps his fingers and the orb vanishes, the tiny images of two alicorns and one crispy unicorn disappearing. "And if you did that, all this work will be for nothing. You agreed to this yourself, all those years ago." He reaches a claw into the sphere surrounding the irritated alicorn and caresses her cheek.
For her part, she simply shudders but doesn't shy away. "That doesn't mean you can slack off. What if it doesn't work? have you thought about what will happen if you fail?"
Chaos absently waves a claw at the 'trapped' alicorn. "Yea yea, the destruction of harmony, end of the universe, blah blah blah." In his paw, a small image of Time's head appears and speaks in a mocking voice. "Do this, do that, don't do this, do that differently." Tossing the head at her it pops like a balloon and fills the air with confetti. "You really have to learn to loosen up Beta, its no wonder you turned out so rotten."
Time Beta simply huffs at him and conjures a scrying mirror to watch the commotion Time Alpha has caused. "Do you think she'll do it? I don't even know if I would do it, but I've been separated from her for so long I'm not sure what her motivations are anymore."
Chaos's expression changes from a simple smirk to one of complete seriousness. "Look at her. so arrogant...so sure. Nothing is as dangerous as somepony that has been knocked off their pedestal. This is the ultimate gamble, the highest stakes one can imagine."
the alicorn sighs. "You're right, she's almost unrecognizable now, so different from who I once was. I may be just a copy but I am functionally no different than her." She looks at The commotion, seeing a standoff between her other self and Celestia.
"Now now my dear Beta, don't worry that head of yours, we're going to need it if we are to succeed."
Time Beta looks up at Chaos and sighs, taking a look at the cage surrounding her. Yes, she could easily escape these confines, and the temptation to rejoin herself and become one being again is strong...but she knows her thoughts and convictions would be ignored by the First version of herself.
Seeing that Beta is placated Chaos is informed by a smaller version of himself sitting on his shoulder that the preparations are complete. Smirking he lifts up his claw and slashes through reality, exposing a thin ribbon that seems to be made out of rainbow. Reaching into the breach he puts a claw on it.
As usual, it doesn't like his touch and complains wordlessly to be left alone. "Now now Harmony, you know this must be done." He doesn't receive a reply as usual but the complaints slow down and eventually stop, the slight recoiling from his grasp fading to nothingness. Accepting Harmony's wordless acceptance (more or less) he pulls the ribbon, distorting harmony and letting it go, causing the world around him to shake as one of the very binding forces of the world is shifted Closing the breach he looks up and smiles as shadowy shapes rush through the tunnels around him, rising to the surface.
"Check, your move Time."
~~~~~~~~~~
Princess platinum is looking at the heavens, a look of rapture on her face.
alicorns are coming!
She's positively giddy with excitement. She blinks in awe as the moon flickers a bit and the sun flares outward...almost angrily.
"They will usurp your throne"
One of her ears flicks a bit at the whispered words. Blinking and looking around, she channels magic to her horn, ready to pierce another 'notice me not' charm once more. "Who's there?" From the shadow of a tree near the edge of the clearing, she can see a pair of glowing red eyes looking at her intently.
"They will love them more than you."
Platinum frowns at the voice, it sounds a lot like hers, moving closer and channeling her magic into a soft glow she shines a white light on the shadow, revealing a grey version of herself standing in the tree's shadow. She gasps a bit as the copy moves toward her, the same intent red eyes bore into hers.
The copy opens its mouth and a slightly distorted version of platinum's voice comes from it. "Unicorns are the true rulers of this world, we've lived for centuries at the top. Why do we have to step down now that some 'alicorns' are arriving? Didn't we earn our right to rule?"
The initial shock of seeing a copy of herself fading Platinum opens her mouth to refute this... doppelgangers words, only to find that they struck a chord with her. The grey version offers her hoof to Platinum with a soft smile
"Come, we don't have much time to prepare, they will be here soon." Nodding at the other version of herself she accepts the offered hoof.
"Not much time at all." A blinding flash of light erases all shadows from the clearing for a moment, nearly rivaling that of the glowing orb above.
All around the world similar flashes of light brighten the skies of Equestria.
~~~~~~~~~
Time channels magic to her horn and the world seems to blur slightly, taking a few steps to the right she positions herself between Celestia and her student, giving the angry alicorn a soft push she restarts the flow of time and takes a ready stance.
Celestia's angry eyes go unfocused for a moment as she gets used to Time suddenly appearing between her and the unicorn who hurt her sister and she says softly. "Move aside." The venom in her voice is almost palpable, and from her expression, she's only a hair's breadth away from blaming Time for this.
Taking a deep breath and glancing at Luna's ruined chest Time works on casting a warming spell, melting the Spikes of ice into lukewarm water. The dark alicorn gasps a bit at the sensation but the wounds slowly begin to close, flesh stitching itself together to leave no trace of the damage. Luna nods in thanks and walks over to the prone Unicorn, looking down at her with a curious expression.
Bowing deeply "I'm sorry on behalf of my student, I trained her to fight against dark magic, and my methods were a bit....odd." Bowing low, but keeping an eye on Celestia. "It slipped my mind to warn her about Lun's... appearance."
"Slipped your mind? Our first interaction with the mortals of this world is now marred by violence." Celestia's fiery wings flare out in anger "Move aside. I shall not let such an infraction against my sister stand."
Luna speaks up as she moves closer to the hurt unicorn. "Be still sol, I'm sure my appearance is likely the cause of this." The Dark alicorn looks down and frowns. "It seems you've done a fair bit of damage already." Kneeling down Luna's horn glows, a dark aura flowing from it and slowly enveloping Clover's unconscious form. "She's an ice mage, your flames have wounded her deeply." Lun inspects the prone form of Clover and frowns. "I didn't think that Equestria would be magically advanced enough to cause such a pronounced magical shift."
Time simply replies. "It's not." Looking at Celestia and seeing that she is calming down slightly she releases the spell she was channeling, causing a noticeable spike in the ambient magic around them as the mana flows back into the world, something easily noticeable to the other two alicorns present. Frowning Luna looks at Time intently. "She is truly that important to you? I've never seen you care about anypony that much, let alone a mere mortal.
Time nods. "I gave her a grimoire, and taught her as much about ice as possible to learn." Looking down at the Unicorn in question. "She impressed me enough that I agreed to train her, she is to be my weapon against Chaos." Luna's spell finally ends, the wounds on Clover's body fading. "Her manaflow isn't rejecting my dark magic either." Seeing that Clover is slowly regaining consciousness Luna steps back a bit. "You have found a remarkable student Time." When Clover is fully awake Time blinks between her and Luna. "Clover the clever, I would like you to meet Luna, Celestia's opposite." Attempting to make up for lost time she explains alicorns a bit. "Alicorns come in pairs, each covering either Light magic or Dark magic."
Seeing The shocked expression on Clover's face Time continues. "Celestia, meet Clover the Clever, my personal student, and an Ice Mage."
The tension is thick enough to be cut with a knife but Clover scrambles to her hooves and bows to Luna. "I am terribly sorry for the way I treated you. I was...shocked by your appearance." Time places a hoof on Clover's shoulders. "This is more my failing than it is yours, Clover the Clever." Time sighs. "I should have told you about the alicorns before today."
Standing straight Clover forces herself to look at Luna's nightmarish form, ignoring her bodies many protests to get away. Looking from time to Luna Clover sighs. "I can't let you take all the blame for my actions." Channeling a quick spell a floating blue tome appearing before her. "As an apology, I think it would be best if I gave you my Grimoire." Clover floats it in front of Luna, who grabs it in her magic after a few moments.
The shocked expressions on Celestia's and Time's faces go largely ignored as Luna inspects the tome, her blue eyes roaming over the simple cover, paying extra attention to the small authors signature at the bottom. -T Looking up at Clover Curiously Luna asks. "What is a Grimoire?"
Time opens her mouth to explain the gravity of what is being offered but gasps as a Lance of pain shoots through her head, causing her to stagger and nearly fall over, Luna and Clover move toward Time in concern, Clover offering a hoof to help steady the purple alicorn. "What's Wrong?"
Time gives clover a serious look, her head throbbing with one of the worst headaches she's ever had. "Something has happened, something bad." Clutching her head Time takes some deep breaths. "I've never felt something like this, it's like Harmony itself is screaming at me." Time's attention is almost physically dragged toward the Planet below them, several bright flashes of light illuminating the world in various places. The others follow her gaze with concern.
"I'm sorry Celestia, but we can discuss my many failings later...I think something just tampered with Harmony itself."
The list of beings capable of doing such a thing is small.
very small.
Her expression going from curious to shocked Celestia gives one last glare at Clover before moving next to luna. "We can settle the matter of her punishment later, and we will have that discussion you've been dreading, Time." Pausing long enough to give the cause of her ire a pointed glare to She Lights up her horn, her magic flickering like flame and slowly encompassing her body, Luna does the same a few moments later, floating the tome back to clover as her body is enveloped in shadow.
Several long moments later the moments the effects fade, the two alicorns are looking different.
Celestia's mane and tail are now pink instead of flickering flames like before, her wings now resembling regular (if a bit large) pegasus wings.
Luna for her part is a bit smaller than she was previously, standing a bit shorter than her sister. The bat-like wings and fanged mouth are gone, replaced by much friendlier face than before, her mane and tail now a light blue compared to the floating concentration of stars it resembled previously, even her draconic eyes are gone.
At clover's shocked expression Luna smiles. "Twould not do to be seen as our true selves to the mortals, I'm afraid we are already going to make an impression. let's see if we can make it the right one." Her gaze is still friendly but the reminder of her failure makes Clover fold her ears to her head in shame.
After waiting for the alicorns to change their shapes Time projects a copper-colored field around them, a lance of pain shooting through her as she focuses on the spell.
my abilities are going to be severely limited for awhile until I Figure out the cause of this. Gritting her teeth she blinks them all down to the familiar clearing outside the Cave of Harmony.
Once the spell completes, the throbbing headache gets worse, making her gasp as she waits for her body recover naturally.
A wing wraps around her and she looks over to see Luna smiling at her. "Do not push yourself on our account, the sooner we figure out the problem the better."
Time goes to thank her but is interrupted by a regal voice. "Oh, we know exactly what the problem is." Ahead of them at the entrance to the cave is Princess Platinum, her regal expression turned downward into a snarl. On Platinum's left is Chancellor Puddinghead, and on her right is commander hurricane.
All three of them have no color at all in their coats, the normally friendly expressions on their faces filled with disdain and...hatred.
They've been Chaos touched. Or as the inventor of that little trick likes to call it.
The founders of Equestria have been discorded.
A great thanks to the person who stepped up and helped beat this story into something resembling a good tale. I wasn't able to contact him for the last few parts, but his help was greatly appreciated.
If you see something wrong with the story or notice an error you want to be fixed. shoot me a message or leave a comment on what part needs fixing, I'm glad everyone is putting up with my bad writing so far 
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I Have never want to read some thing so much form just a description ever in my life
This line gives me Déjà vu something fierce for some reason.... I swear i've seen it before in a fic....
Holy shiet, the quality of the story has gone down since the start! Or maybe the grammar was always this bad, and it's the story itself that has become boring. Either way, it's a single dislike from a perturbed, anonymous reader!
I really want to like this story and I'll continue to read it, but the description doesn't match what's going on. I've seen one experiment so far, but so far it just looks like preparation. I hope something slice-of-life like happens soon. I want to like this story, I love the concept.
8841016
The issues mostly come down to time. I don't have the time to reread each section till they are perfect, a lot is going in right now.
Its why I've been asking for help with the grammar, it's a bit too much for me to do alone.
if ANYONE is willing to become this story's editor I would greatly appreciate the help.
8841544
I may be able to make time.
I can do basic grammar and spelling errors, the more advanced stuff though I may not catch on the first pass, though don't take my stories as examples of my grammar they are like that due to planning, (or lack of it) and writers block.
8865606
Any help is appreciated. As it stands the story is probably going on hiatus for a few months.
I need to go over each of the more recent chapters. (the last four I think) and slowly fix them before I think about any future chapters.
if you want to help with grammar, by all means, do so. send me a message and I'll get back to you later when it's not so late, I have a method to use that I'll go more in-depth when/if you send a dm.
The story is so great it even gave me an existential crisis for a moment.
Hey, can I use some of your ideas on magic for my story? You know, the dark magic corrupts light creatures but is fine with dark creatures, and light magic hurts dark creatures but is fine with light creatures?
8950068
I'm completely fine with that, you can tweak it how you want, but remember, a ponies soul doesn't always stay light or dark. events in ones life can alter their soul to the point that they can change alignments.
two things can change a ponies alignment.
1. traumatic events, such as death of a family member (especially if it was from murder) can force a pony into darkness if they give into vengence.
2. Using magic opposed to ones alignment will eventually 'corrupt' them. a natural Dark aligned pony can be a member of society, use dark magic, and be fine. no loss of sanity or corruption at all. But a light pony using dark magic will eventually become a raving lunatic like sombra.
same for dark ponies using light magic, though its harder to explain how being suprenaturally good is a bad thing.
shifting from light because of your convictions changing is preferred, as you won't lose your sanity in the process.
8955097
I see. Maybe ‘Dark’ ponies using light magic just become insane? Maybe not bad, just crazy.
Yo this story is dope. Keep writing my dude, I'm stoked for what you've got planned.
Also, if you're still looking for editing help, I'd love to lend my services; I'm not exactly an established author on here or anything (I posted one story a year and a half ago) but I'm looking into being a professional editor, so any practice I can get is super valuable.
8982585
If you are looking to help with the story, that means I can probably continue. I've yet to write anything on the next chapter. If you want to help me, send me a message and I'll see. You might have just saved the story from being forgotten.
This chapter needs a touch of editing, but otherwise, it's an interesting story. (Mostly stuff like sentence fragments/errant uppercasing in the middle of sentences. I am guessing it's from making changes to parts that you wrote and then not completely making the changes fit.)
I will follow this.
I am rather curious what exactly the two incarnations of Twime (sorry, not sorry!) are up to. My guess is that Beta wants to make Alpha act more like the Twilight that we know? Perhaps that's why she has already taken an apprentice (and made her immortal! That's a bit of a change...)?
I too can do editing help (and for free), but I may take a while to get back on that (but likely much less than a week). Send me a PM with anything you want edited, and I can do an excellent job at typo removal and a decent one at fixing style errors like sentence fragments (and others).
You should have Clover have crush on Twilight.
9058074
Well done, I'm very sad that I missed this comment. It's hard to explain how right you are about this without giving anything away. But congrats on looking in the right places to notice things about the story that I've not seen covered before. Just warning a second time, this is a potentially major spoiler. 'Time is supposed to be neutral. And I never said she was doing her job correctly'
Can someone remind me when there started being multiple Goddess of Time Twilight's? I can't remember.
That's it. Just how dumb must one be, to give away something that was entrusted to them, and does not belong to them, the very reason they were chosen to be a student away as an apology? Had no thoughts of a damage such a powerful thing may inflict visited her small brain? Or maybe what the actual owner of it may feel? Especially after being repeatedly being prohibited to share it with anyone? She has a giass for fuck's sake. She should be physically incapable of doing it. No matter who it may be.
This is such a forced plot point, it's literally unacceptable.
That's aside, seeing darker version of yourself telling you to fight against immortal goddesses "because they will steal her trone" and believing it instantly without hesitation despite being die-hard fan of the later, is utter bullshit. Especially considering that she will die in forty years and they will have her trone anyway, just thinking you can do anything to them being dumb weak mortal is ludicrous, considering she was so afraid she did not care that her crown fallen into the mud, which speaks about her thoughts about her attitude towards ruling by the way.
let me guess, Discord colluded with beta and harmony to kill or teach time a lesson because they don't like her actions and think that she went mad with power. Boring
10309368
About the Grimoire being forced, you may be right, I could probably do it in a more elegant manner, but...if Time Didn't want Luna to have the Grimoire of ice (when she's already given fire to Celestia) She wouldn't have allowed it.
How the grimoire works is that Time has to agree for a pony to use them. (which chaos stripped from his tome)
I don't know if this still made it into the story, but Twilight was trying to release more grimoires to the world to help counteract the one that Discord stole.
About the acceptance. This is a version of Discordfication, where ponies are turned into their opposites, the words it is saying to Platinum are things she thinks deep down in her lowest part.
You're having your dark thoughts spoken to you, the ones you don't want to admit you even consider, the ones you justify to yourself with logic as being wrong.
It's also backed by magic, discord can force a pony to discordify if he wishes.
and about your spoiler.
bold of you to claim such a thing, many people have tried to guess it, and so far none have gotten it fully correct, including you.