The Time Thief

by Reading4HalfMyLife

Loop 36

She lies in bed, immobile, as worried adults hover over her. Magic dances across her skin, unbidden, but her mind is too foggy to even contemplate casting a spell.

Voices drift overhead-

" - tried to put her magic into a ball, but it just exploded-"

" -ow is that even possible?"

" Not sure"

"-Need to call a doctor"

"-ey say nothings wrong with her"

"They're wrong!"

- but they sound very far away, and she just wants to sleep.

Her bones ache and her mind feels heavy and covered in cotton, making it hard to think. The pain registers though, a never ending throbs that blazes into agony if she so much as twitches. So, she lays still, taking small, shallow breaths.

---

She doesn't know how much time has passed, she has spent most of her time drifting. But a small part of her is aware that at least two loops have passed, and is very aware the longer she's like this, the worse it's going to get. But it's a very small part in an ocean of muzziness, so she ignores it.

Sometimes she's awake, and she listens to her mothers crying, feels them stroking her mane as they tell her stories she had heard a hundred times before, and sometimes she even talks back. She asks them to tell her a certain story, or asks them if they could do anything to help her, or ask for pain medicine (it doesn't do anything)

Butterscotch and Jam visited a couple of times, and it wasn't just the pain that made her cry. They ended up all sobbing together, likes babies. Misty visited once, pulling up a chair, and watching her silently for a moment, before brushing away her fringe and putting a small teddy beside her bed.

Eclipse comes in the most, begging her to not do this, and get better. He tries to use Chaos Magic, but it just slides off her, leaving him even more frantic.

The doctors had taken away her saddlebags, but, after checking it for curses, she was allowed to keep wearing her scarf, especially after, in an attempt to get it back, she had braved the pain to pathetically paw at the air and whine until it was once again wrapped around her.

---

"Am I dying?" She asks Eclipse, not her parents. Had she been clear of mind, she would of have known the answer, yes she was. She was going to spend the rest of her life in this bed, repeating the same agony over and over and over . . .

"You're not dying" Eclipse insists, resting his chin on a mound of what looks like fluff. Her vision has been going hazy around the edges, a fuzzy white creeping in. His words are distorted. "You're gonna' be fine, Sparkles."

"Oh, okay then" she doesn't believe a single word. Her body no longer aches, instead it feels like she's floating. Nerve damage, she remembers the doctors saying. Or, at least, temporary nerve damage, because in a couple of minutes, the damage would completely heal, only for the nerve damage to start all over.

It turns out at least some of the magic being pumped through her veins was healing magic. When the overload of magic gave her nerve damage, the regeneration magic would just heal it, and the cycle would start anew.

She preferred it when she felt nothing, no pain, just a light dizziness.

"You can't die anyway" Eclipse carries on. "I have to kiss you in front of the Elites."

"That'd be nice. We should do it in front of Blueblood" she said, referring to Misty's asshole father, and ignoring how these dreams were just that, dreams.

"I bet he'll do that thing where he squeals and laughs at the same time."

"Ten points if he pulls that constipated face that Misty says he pulls when he realizes he's around somepony with better connections than him and they're being dumb."

"Oh! Ten points if we can get Misty's twin Rose Quartz to laugh!"

She lets out a laugh at that, only for the laugh to turn into a whimper at the sudden pain in her body once more. "I'm up for it."

"You're still tired?" Eclipse tried his best to not sound concerned. "But you just woke up, lazy bones!"

"M' not lazy" she defends, closing her eyes. "M'sick"

"Yeah" Eclipse sounds devastated. "I know Sparkles."

---

She dreams of drowning, of suffocating on her own blood, and often times wakes up gasping with one of her mothers standing over her, ears flat and eyes wet as they do their very best to comfort their very sick daughter.

"You're alright" Twilight soothes, placing her front hooves on the bed.

"You with us, sweetie?" Starlight asks, reaching out, but touching the little unicorn. "Breathe, sweetie, c'mon, breathe."

She did her best, but it was like her lungs were frozen and refused to move in and out. Instead, she let out a choked gasp as she desperately tried to suck in more air.

"Breathe" Starlight repeats, sounding panicked now "you gotta breathe kid."

But she can't. A basic, fundamental thing that all ponies can do, and here she was, choking and gasping. Her chest felt like somepony had just dropped a rock on it.

For a brief, brief moment, there is a moment of clarity, and she manages to take a deep, greedy breath of the air that is coming through the window. In that moment, her mind makes and discards several plans and ideas for how to get out of her situation. There's only one thing that jumps to mind, but there's no way in hell her parents will allow her to do it, and she can't travel on her own.

Then the agony returns, as does the fuzziness, and she collapses back onto the cushions once more, managing a small smile for both her parents.

"It's okay" Twilight comforts, and lies.

Starlight looks at their daughter with a worried frown. "You're getting worse."

She nods her head, waits until she can catch her breath, and then says.

"Mom, I need you to do something for me . . ."

---

"No!" Twilight storms out of the room without a second thought.

"Twi!" Starlight follows her wife out of the room, only to skid to a stop when Twilight spun around suddenly, teeth bared.

"No! We are not doing it! It's too dangerous!"

"Do you have a better idea?"

" . . I'll think of something."

"Twi, please" Starlight begged, desperate. "It makes a certain amount of sense! It does look like magical overload, and you know how you get rid of that?"

"Learning harder spells?"

"And . . . ?"

Twilight sighed, rubbing her face wearily with a hoof. "You're right" she admitted, before narrowing her eyes and jabbing her hoof in the direction of the door. "But that doesn't mean I have to like it!"

"And you think I do?"

---

It took quite a bit of convincing from Starlight and Twilight's part to get the doctors to take their daughter outside, let alone so far away. But, once they explained the situation to them, they reluctantly agreed that is was probably the best bet. They still insisted on coming along in case things go wrong, a demand the parents were all too happy to agree to.

They took a flying chariot consisting of the sick filly, her parents, the medical team, the Princesses and Eclipse to their location, the thickest part of the Everfree Forest.

Her ''sickness'' made it impossible for her to walk, so instead she hung limply as Twilight levitated her onto the forest floor. She didn't try to move from that position, staying in the strange kneeling position. She didn't so much as twitch.

Then, just when it looked like they had trekked out here for nothing, her horn glowed. First a simple spark, then an inferno.

---

When one is in the midst of a very bad magical overload, they can either learn new spells in an attempt to drain the magic, or they can actually just force the magic out as raw power.

The problem is just how destructive that kind of power can be, especially as it is a kind of unpredictable magic. The bigger the overload, the more dangerous it is.

---

She didn't really have an exact direction for her magic, no spell, she just wanted it out of her now. She pushed as much of her magic as she could into the discharge, but even that wouldn't be all of it.

The spectators backed away from the filly with the glowing eyes and horn, from the unrefined substanstial power.

Then, in one motion, the filly let out a sharp scream, and the world seemed to explode.

---

Anypony flying overhead would just see a bright white light exploding outwards. In the middle of the thick forest, there was now a bare circle of burned ground of about twenty miles in diameter.

The channeler of the blast would of have been burned alive from the strength of the blast. But, perhaps it was best to put them out of their misery? They would of have been in agony otherwise.

---

And Astral Plane woke up

Author's Note:

FUN FACT;

In this entire chapter, Astral is only called by name once, at the end

---

Comments

[Twilight Connor]

I like the chapter, and hadn't noticed that Astral was never named until the loop ended. And... Are you sure the new update speed will give you time for other things? Normally I'm all for new chapters, but those stories tend to update bimonthly, rather than biweekly. This seems... Too rapid.

[Reading4HalfMyLife]

9228056
Honestly, I'm worried about that myself. I'm already considering just going back to eight chapters a week, and having this just be a weird exception