• Published 19th Jan 2018
  • 6,104 Views, 131 Comments

Through the Mist - puddingskinmcgee



Twilight Sparkle is hailed as one of Equestria's greatest minds, but she has always felt like there was a missing link that she could never understand. She started to understand a bit more when a horned, winged version of herself fell from the sky.

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Prologue

Twilight Sparkle adjusted herself to the now-familiar sensation of time travel, as Starlight Glimmer's spell once again sucked Spike and her through. Again, she found herself back in Cloudsdale all those years ago, at the critical moment of Rainbow Dash's first sonic rainboom. It was a scene she saw at least a half a dozen times now, and each time it was tampered with by Starlight Glimmer.

She quickly reoriented herself to land upon a cloud, ready to continue her pleas to Starlight. But it would appear that despite showing Starlight the consequences of her actions and trying to understand her motives, she wouldn't budge on her stance. Before Twilight could try to assess the situation or think of another solution, Starlight began her tirade once again.

"You don't know what it's like to lose a friend because of a cutie mark," she said with more malice and conviction in her voice than ever, "But once I stop the rainboom, you will!"

After that final conviction, Starlight simply plucked the scroll away from Twilight with her magic. By the time Twilight realized what was happening, it was too late to make a move; trying to attack Starlight or take the scroll back with her magic posed too much of a risk of damaging the scroll right then and there. But it would appear that the scroll would be destroyed no matter what Twilight did to prevent it.

"And when I destroy this scroll, there will be no way for you to change it!" Starlight proclaimed.

Starlight used her magic to begin tearing the scroll in half, Twilight and Spike looking upon in horror. Though it would have been easy for her to destroy it in just a moment, Starlight seemed to be savoring every moment of it. Twilight prayed that it was hesitation and not a grim satisfaction that was making Starlight take her time.

Twilight quickly switched tactics, folding her wings in and slowly approaching Starlight in hopes of defusing the situation long enough to dispel the immediate threat, hoping that anything could prevent Starlight from ruining the future forever.

"Starlight, you're right!" Twilight pleaded with her again, "I don't know what you went through! But I do know you can't do this! I've seen where this leads, and so have you!"

Starlight scoffed, tearing the scroll just a bit more as she did.

"I only saw what you showed me, who knows what will really happen?"

Twilight had lived through more than her fair share of world-ending and death-defying catastrophes, but the prospect of what could happen if Starlight destroyed the scroll filled her with a whole new kind of terror. No danger had ever seemed so absolute, yet so uncertain at the same time; if every future she returned to was worse than the next, then would anything exist if Starlight broke the flow of destiny forever? The thought of the possibility of total entropy because of Starlight's actions made Twilight's hooves heavy and body cold.

"I've seen it a dozen times! Things don't turn out well in Equestria without me and my friends!"

Starlight scoffed again and tore the scroll just a little more, now about two-thirds down the middle.

"Ugh! What's so special about your friends? How can a group of ponies that are so different be so important?"

"Because," Twilight cried with even more urgency, "The differences between me and my friends are the very things that make our friendship strong!"

Starlight seemed to hesitate, her face momentarily becoming downcast and contemplative. "I thought Sunburst and I were the same, but we turned out different and it tore out friendship apart!"

In one swift motion, the ripped the scroll almost completely, only a small bit keeping it together. At this point, any common mishandling or accident could easily sever it.

Starlight's anger and conviction came back just as quickly as it had gone, though the gravity of the situation seemed to finally be weighing on her, as if she wasn't sure if she should follow through, but really wanted to look like she had no hesitation.

"And now..." she said, her voice wavering and unsure, "I'm going to tear apart yours!"

Twilight's fight or flight instincts kicked in full gear. The time for pleading and scheming was over the instant Starlight began her final tear, and she shot up and fired a powerful magical blast directly at Starlight.

Starlight wasn't so lucky to side-step this shot, and took the blunt of it, so surprised by the strength and pain associated with the blast that the scroll dropped out of her grasp, dropping lightly onto the cloud. Starlight, meanwhile, was knocked off the small cloud and flew across the sky, having to grab herself in her own magic over open sky.

Before Twilight could procure the scroll, Starlight fired off a blast of her own; not at Twilight, but at the scroll itself. However, the shot went just a little wide and ended up destroying the cloud under the scroll instead of the scroll itself, sending it fluttering.

Twilight flew towards the scroll, Spike clinging onto her back for dear life, but focused her actual efforts back onto Starlight. She fired off another bolt of magic, but not the vague arcane blast that she had in the past. Her wide fuscia beam transformed mid-air into five distinct bolts that looked much more solid and much more painful than the blasts the two had exchanged before.

Starlight teleported out of their path and right next to the scroll, quickly casting a spell to knock Twilight away. Though Twilight recovered quickly, Starlight smirked and looked her in the eyes as she took the scroll in her hooves and prepared to pull. She hesitated, however, at the surprisingly grim and determined look on Twilight's face. The oddest thing about this look was that it wasn't focused on Starlight, but somewhere behind her.

Unknown to Starlight, the missiles were locked onto her and redirected their course after she teleported. Though most of them simply faded before they could curve around to hit her, one slammed into her back. The scroll dropped yet again as the impact caused her magic to fizz out, resulting in her dropping herself into a free-fall. Though the impact didn't knock her out, the pain and intensity stunned her. Though, perhaps more disorienting was the sudden rush of fear, both for her life and of Twilight's sudden grim determination.

Twilight, meanwhile, gingerly caught the scroll in a magic bubble, but encountered an issue of a new kind; as it did last time, the fight resulted in an interruption of the actual race as fillies crowded around to watch this display. But now that it wasn't just a pretty light show, but was resulting in actual violence, children were being quickly ushered away as adult ponies yelled out to her, flying towards her with the intent of restraining the apparently violent and mysterious mare.

The distraction gave Starlight just enough time to gather her thoughts enough to send an arrant magic blast towards Twilight above, striking her and encasing her in a block of crystal once again. Though the various ponies were rushing to resolve the fight before either pony met their end on the ground, what happened next was too fast for any of them to react to.

Twilight, along with Spike on her back and the scroll in the crystal with her, fell quickly, catching up with Starlight's descent in a moment. At just that moment, Twilight summoned the will to blast the crystal open, sending the scroll flying right towards Starlight, still in a free-fall. Starlight grabbed it in her hooves, and without hesitation pulled her hooves apart.

"Starlight, don't-!" Twilight screamed in the split second before the scroll was destroyed.

The instant the scroll was split, white light surrounded it and grew to encompass Twilight, Spike, and Starlight, then shining out across Equestria. Then, everything contracted in on itself, and the world went black.


Twilight reoriented herself, flapping her wings wildly until finding her rhythm. After a moment, Spike finally unburied his face from Twilight's neck, relaxing the death-grip he had around her for the duration of the fight. Both of them looked around, seeing nothing in all directions except for blackness. It wasn't even as if there was a lack of light, but as if there was simply nothing to see. The absolute silence made Twilight suddenly regret never getting treatment for her mild tinnitus, and nothing seemed to happen in this space bar for the flapping of her own wings.

"Twilight," Spike said, his voice echoing strangely across the empty space, "What happened?"

Twilight looked around, hoping to see any clue as to what happened, or anything at all.

"I have no idea, Spike..."

Twilight knew that was a lie. She did have one idea, one that was leaving her well into a state of shock and denial. She had done enough study on both science and arcane interactions to be familiar with the theoretical concept of entropy, the idea that one day, all energy from the universe would be depleted and everything will fall into a state of nothingness. It was mostly a philosophical concept, as what ponies knew about arcana told them that physical energy and arcane energy do not have consistent conversions. Essentially, as long as magic exists and as long as physical energy exists, the two will constantly refresh and grow each other.

But this wasn't exactly a natural progression of things. Starlight had tampered with events that seemed more and more intrinsic to the balance of all of Equestria and beyond, and the reverberations of those shattered bonds may reach further out than any one could possibly know. Her friends were connected to the elements of harmony, which were simply the physical forms of some of the most important forces that held the world together. By ending these friendships and defying destiny, she created chaos in the future, and by destroying the scroll that could reverse the damage, she may well have destroyed the elements themselves.

Though Twilight had no way of knowing, she suspected that this "butterfly effect" that Starlight had created was reaching so far into the past and future that what she was seeing now was a result of magic being taken away from the world. Entropy. Twilight may have felt much more upset about this if it weren't for the feeling that she was very, very far away from herself right now.

That is, until a a pulling sensation brought her back. She thought it might have been a consequence of the shock at first, but the sensation slowly grew, as if gravity just remembered to exist again. She flapped a little harder in order to keep up with the pull, but the force kept growing exponentially, until Twilight wasn't able to keep up.

It wasn't long before Twilight and Spike gripped each other, unable to see anything, but having the sensation that they were falling downwards very quickly. They both began to scream as the sensation became overwhelming, buffeting their bodies and knocking the air out of their lungs. Twilight's last comprehensive thought took the form of a shield, tightly bound around the two like cling-wrap as they fell ever faster into the darkness.