A Tale That Wasn't Right

by Equimorto

Ride into Obsession

Running, again. And again, there was no way out.

Sunset slowed down, trying to calm herself. She had found an exit before, she could find it again. All she had to do was get back to the library. Easier said than done, as the castle's shifting halls seemed to be leading her anywhere but there. She knew there was no point in running anymore, not now at least, but she couldn't stop her instincts from screaming at her that she should. She took a turn to the left and reached a dead end, her other self waiting for her at the end of the hallway.

"You should just give up. It'll make this much easier for the both of us."

"Why are you doing this? Can't you see that this is wrong?"

The unicorn approached the princess. "Because, as I've told you already, this is the way things should go. The way they should've gone since the beginning, and I'll make sure that neither you nor anyone else can try to change it. Even if it means having to send you back over and over and over again. This is the realization of my destiny, and I will not rest till it's done." Her horn gave a flash of light.

Princess Sunset Shimmer sat on a wooden bench atop a small hilltop looking over a park in Canterlot. She got up and stared cunfusedly at the scenery around her. It took her a moment to recognize where and more importantly when she was, but she soon identified it as the previous afternoon. The sun was still only halfway down, the young ponies playing in the park, and Twilight was still there, alone with her book. Twilight. She should have been the one with a pair of wings on her back. Sunset started to walk down the hill and towards the mare.

It was a risky move, she knew she was being watched and if she failed she would probably never get another chance. Slowly, carefully, Sunset made her way to the purple unicorn, trying to look as natural as she could. Only a few meters away from her now. She could see her other self watching, just a barely visible shape at the corner of her eye. She had to be as fast as she possibly could. Her horn was set ablaze with magic, that of the other Sunset following mere fractions of a second later. Two bolts of magic sailed through the air, one towards the alicorn, the other towards Twilight.

A flash of light later, Sunset was back in the hallway. She hoped it had worked, but to know for sure she would have to get back there. She started running again, in no particular direction. She knew her counterpart could maybe keep her trapped in the same place forever, but was certain she wouldn't, so all she needed was time. The caste's interior started to once again change to prevent her escape, becoming an endless series of identical repeating patterns, and Sunset kept running. She came to realize though, simply waiting would probably hurt her more than it helped her. The other seemed to be far more experienced at that game, and she didn't need to stop. She could probably let this play out for as long as she wanted, and only come in to send her back once Sunset became physically unable to carry on. It was a frightening thought, being stuck there running until her legs gave out, only for a chance to get sent to the right time. Sunset wondered if her mind would've given out first under those circumstances.

Or maybe it already had, and this was all just her imagination. It would have been an easier answer, really. No timeless chambers floating in the void, no mirrors showing other versions of reality, no insane evil unicorn Sunset from another dimension. She had just gone mad. Understandable, really, all of that stress from her position, all the fears of not being good enough, nopony would have been surprised if her head had just snapped at one point. It would have certainly been a funny story, Sunset had never fancied herself to be that creative, to come up with such a complicated, absurd story without even realizing it.

The unending sea of black and white tiles flew by under her as she kept running, the monotonous sound of her hooves on the floor filling her ears a perfect background for her thoughts to run free, the unchanging scenery presenting her with no distractions. Her reflections were interrupted eventually, when the growing ache in her legs became too hard to ignore. She didn't want to stop, but it was getting harder and harder to keep going. After some indecision, she finally slowed down until she was completely still.

As she had expected, she was greeted by the unicorn walking towards her, the shadow of a smile on her face. "I see you've finally given up on this little escape attempt of yours. Well then, Sunset, ready to move on with our life?"

It wasn't an easy decision to take, even after all she'd been through, but she had realized there wasn't really a choice. She wouldn't be sent back unless she strayed far enough from what the other wanted her to do, and trapped inside that hallway there wasn't much she could do beside what she was about to. Hoping that she hadn't really gone insane, that it was all real, she charged her horn and fired a blast of energy, then steered it towards herself.

Another flash of light, for one moment she feared she'd just made the last mistake of her life. The light cleared, and Sunset looked at the library around her. It worked. She thought about going back to the forbidden archives, maybe make it back to the room with the mirrors, but decided against it. She would only get trapped in the library like in the hallway. What she needed to do was force the other to send her back again. She didn't like the idea, but everything she did would be undone once she was sent back, which made it easier to bring herself to do it. She set her horn ablaze once again, and this time fired at the nearest pony.

Another flash of light.

In the middle of the library, surrounded by bookcases. She set them on fire.

Celestia's room again. She jumped out of the window.

The hallway, again. She didn't even lose time running, she simply blasted down the walls.

Again and again, she was sent back to different moments of her more recent life, and again and again she let loose of her magic to crash, break, destroy any nearby structure, to force the other Sunset to rewrite history once more, to send her somewhen else. Finally, after many attempts, she was returned to that afternoon in the park. She wasn't on the hill anymore, she was under the shadow of a small tree in a corner of the park, in front of Twilight Sparkle. And the look on her face told her that her plan had worked.

---

Twilight Sparkle was attentively reading from her book, resting under the shadow that a small tree offered. That had always been her favorite reading place, isolated enough from the center of the park, so that ponies wouldn't disturb her, but still allowing to see the entirety of the garden. There was another reason she liked that place, it had to do with the tree she was under. She always liked that particular tree. Small, isolated, one day it would grow to be the biggest tree in the whole garden. Almost the biggest, Twilight had to remind herself, the one on the hill would probably always be bigger just because it was older, not to mention how much work had been put into making sure that it grew to be the best one in the park, maybe even the city. Her tree hadn't received any of those attentions, but that was part of why she liked it. It proved that one could get far even on their own, even if it meant only being the second best.

The tome she was reading was an interesting one, an antique volume she'd found in the library, clearly misplaced there when it had been brought to Canterlot from the old castle and then forgotten behind an old and almost crumbled green book about focusing charms or something. She was currently concentrated on a passage describing the process by which matter was transported during teleportation, wondering if she could use it to come up with some higher precision variants of the currently used teleportation spells.

Despite what one would have thought by looking at her, she was perfectly aware of what was happening around her, she simply chose to ignore it. She was extremely good at concentrating, even with the sounds of the young colts and fillies playing nearby. So when the princess started to walk towards her from her bench up on the hill, she simply chose to not look at her. She wondered what she would mock her with this time. Boasting about how apparently everypony in Equestria had worked to get her where she was? Telling her to give up on her studies, because she would never make it on her own? Maybe she would just point out how everypony loved her and not Twilight, and how clearly that was simultaneously the alicorn's merit and the unicorn's fault.

There was something weird about how she walked, almost as if she was afraid. Probably afraid of ponies seeing her hanging around with Celestia's other student now that she was a princess. It wasn't right. She had everything Twilight could have wanted, and all because she had gotten there first. And because she'd been better, Twilight had to remind herself. As hard as she worked, she had never been able to match Sunset's results. It was frustrating, her whole life a struggle only to get second place. These were the thoughts swirling around in Twilight's mind as Sunset approached her, and distracted as she was she only noticed the spell from the alicorn's horn after it'd been cast.

It was by far the weirdest thing the young unicorn had ever experienced, so unlike any other thing that she didn't know how to describe it. After some time, and with inspiration taken from how she had learned the other had processed it, she would have explained it as what a figurine in a particularly complicated miniature with a series of moving parts would have felt if she had been removed from her place and shown the way the gears turned to make the simulated world seem alive. But when she was first hit with it, all she could do was stare blankly ahead as pure confusion washed over her.

A nauseating rush of information, memories, thoughts and sensations flooded her mind, messages flashing in her brain, chunks of data slotting themselves inside of her knowledge, her perceptions of the world around her being rewired as strands of concepts alien to her rewrote her convinctions and beliefs to become part of them. Suddenly she saw the world through a different light, suddenly she was aware of something deeply wrong going on around her. She took in all of Sunset's thoughts and memories, and from that moment she knew what was happening.

She saw Sunset's body in front of her disappear for a moment before returning. She made her way towards her as quickly as she could. It was all so confusing, that other version of herself Sunset had seen in the mirror, the way the world looked like to her now, Sunset's feeling blending in with her own. It was too much too fast, but that didn't matter to Twilight. She had seen what Sunset had been through, she'd almost lived it herself, and she was going to help her.

The alicorn moved towards her. "I don't know how much time I have before she sends me back again. I'll try to get back here after that, but I don't know how long it will take on my side. Twil-"

Sunset blinked in and out of existance one more time.

Twilight looked at her preoccupied. "How long did it take?"

"A couple of hours. But that's not important. Twilight, I need you to help me. I don't know how long I can take this. Please, h-"

Another brief disappearance.

Twilight noticed the look on Sunset's face. She was about to ask the same thing again, but the princess anticipated her question.

"Three months." Tears started to form at the corners of her eyes. "Help me."

She flashed in and out of reality again, but when she returned Twilight wasn't there, the residual light of a teleportation spell left in her place, her book abandoned near the tree.

---

Sunset was extremely annoyed by the situation. Everything had been perfect up until then, everything had been going smoothly, then out of the blue the princess had decided to start messing with the plan. Maybe some things never truly changed, maybe she would always end up doing what she was told not to. But it didn't matter, she could fix it. She could fix every mistake, every inconvenience, until her life was exactly how she wanted it. Until it was exactly the way it should have been. She just wished her other self would be a little more willing to cooperate.

She thought a couple of days of reliving the same events would have been enough, but it seemed the alicorn was far more resilient. She should have expected it, really. After all, she was perfect, the greatest creature to ever walk the land of Equestria. The strongest, most intelligent, most powerful, most beautiful mare in all of history, documented and not. And she could still become so much more, if only she stopped trying to fight her destiny.

Sunset sent her other self back to the hallway once more, a sigh escaping her lips. They had been going at this for months now. She wasn't really tired, but neither did the alicorn give any signs of fatigue. She was honestly starting to fear it might just go on forever. She turned to see the princess blowing up holes in the floor. With a flash of her horn and another low sigh she took both of them back to her time deprived home in the void.

The alicorn looked around confusedly, but before she could ask anything her mouth was shut by the unicorn's magical aura, four similar blocks of magic locking her hooves to the ground, one around her horn blocking her magic.

"I'm sorry that it had to come to this, Sunset, I really am. I've tried again and again to make you see what the right choice was, and all you did was ignore me and stubbornly go your way. I'm sorry, really. But I'm afraid you leave me no choice."

---

Twilight walked around in the castle's library, slowly making her way towards the sealed door that led to the forbidden section. She had to be careful. Even if being Celestia's student allowed her some more liberties when it came to taking stuff from the library she still wasn't allowed to go there. Finally she took a turn and found herself face to face with the door. She attentively scanned it with her magic. It had a spell to detect any damage done to it, one to prevent teletrasporting behind it, and a number of other fail-safes and protective measures.

She sat down in front of it and started to slowly untangle the complicated net of enchantments placed on the door. She meticulously probed at the spells one by one, carefully deactivating them in an order that wouldn't cause the others to trigger. One by one she removed every magical barrier, every protection spell, every built-in alarm system, until finally the door slid open with a loud metallical click.

Behind it was the same dimly lit corridor Sunset had seen. She walked towards it slowly, hesitating for a moment, then she finally stepped into the shadows.

As she'd expected, the world below her opened up and she fell beyond the borders of reality. Visions of alien landscapes briefly danced before her eyes as she felt herself moving further and further from her world of origin. She finally stopped, and looked around to see the same bookshelves-lined hallway she'd already seen in Sunset's memories. Now she had to... do something. Maybe go to the mirrors in the room and try to change things from there. Maybe look for what the other Sunset had written down and try to figure out how to fix things. Maybe find something else that could aid them in there. All she knew was that she had to help Sunset.

She was about to start walking when a sound from behind her made her turn around. Sunset Shimmer, the unicorn, was looking at her, a smile on her face. Twilight tried to run but found her body blocked by magical chains.

"You know, I never liked you, Twilight. Stealing away what should've been mine, and now you try to do it again. Luckily for us, there's no need for you in my new life. Which means I get to do this." She charged up her horn. "I've never actually tried this spell before, I wonder what it'll feel like to you. Well, guess you're about to find out. Goodbye my friend."

The spell hit Twilight in full, and then she was floating in the void, no direction to her wandering, no control over her movement. She saw her homeworld far in the distance, moving away from her. Somewhere deep inside herself she felt like something had been cut, like someone had severed her connection to her past life. She slowly drifted away in the endless nothingness between dimensions, tears running down her face.

---

"What is the matter, Sunset?" Celestia asked before taking a sip of tea from the small cup she was holding with her magic.

"Nothing important, Celestia. I simply wanted to say hi."

Sunset's voice came to her distant and fake, but she could do nothing about it. She watched her life play out from her own perspective, but she no longer had any control over it. Her voice spoke by itself, her body moved on its own. Now she was just another puppet on the strings, forced to play her role the way the other her wished. But she couldn't give up. She still had a chance, there was still Tw... Who... Who was there? She could have sworn there had been someone else. No, that couldn't be. She was alone, she was trapped. She would be forced to stay there and watch, see her own life happen before her for the rest of eternity, and there was nothing she could do.

Comments

[Ze1a7in]

This story is making me feel sooooo uncomfortable! I love it! This is like a Tim Burton movie in how surreal this is!

[aline1]

Well I will certainly say this is a rather depressing story that certainly earned its tragedy, random and dark tags.