Daybreaker

by Lets Do This

A Burning Question

A lone pony trotted sadly out of the Everfree Forest, and sat down with her back to a vine-strangled tree.

Before her, high on the hilltop, standing tall against a sky like molten iron, was the Castle of the Two Sisters. Its marble towers were limned in disturbing shades beneath the viciously burning light of the midnight sun. The grass on the hillsides was already brown and shriveled beneath the oppressive heat and glare. Leaves on the trees were beginning to crisp and fall to the ground, far too early.

And overhead, in the sky above the Castle, a face loomed. Her face, the self-proclaimed Queen of All Equestria...

Daybreaker!

The looming visage gazed hungrily upon a dominion over which she held authority absolute. Her fangs bared in a silent, exultant shriek as she contemplated plans for remaking the entire realm in Her image.

Far below, the pony sitting by the tree looked up at the face of her mentor, tears in her eyes.

This is how it happened! Twilight Sparkle fretted desperately. So what do we do NOW?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Another time, another castle...

The glare of the morning sun blazed through the open window, falling like a sword across the bed and its occupant. The lilac unicorn gradually came awake, squinting against the light as she sat up, yawning and stretching sleepily. And then Starlight Glimmer snapped fully awake, a happy smile on her face. Because Trixie was back in Ponyville, having returned the night before following another month-long tour of her one-pony magic show.

A quick wash-up and comb-out later, Starlight trotted out through the door of her room and followed a carefully-memorized series of turns along the castle corridors. She was sure she was crossing her own path at least once, yet it was the only reliable way she had found to navigate the confusing interior of Friendship Castle and get to the guest room her friend normally occupied when she visited.

Just as she arrived at the room, the sky-blue, white-maned unicorn stepped out wearing her purple star-patterned cloak, minus her pointy hat.

"Hey, Starlight!" the show-pony called breezily.

"Hi, Trixie! Good to see you back. How was the tour?"

Trixie looked uncomfortable. "Want the truth? It was awful. I've still got bad word-of-mouth to live down. Houses aren't that great, so I'm barely making back travelling expenses. And after the Manticore Mouthdive it's like everypony expects me to, I dunno... Explode! Live on stage! or something like that, at every performance! I mean, come on! It was my most successful trick ever... and it only seems to have made my everyday work harder."

Starlight put a companionable hoof around her shoulders. "Well, you're here now, Trix. So you can put it all behind you, and the two of us can hang out and have fun. I mean, if you don't have other plans?"

"Not a one!" Trixie smirked. "Hangin' out is definitely on!"

"Great! I'll just let Twilight know, and we're off."

"Why? Is she your truant officer or something?"

"No! I'm just... well... being responsible I guess. I did want to check on her anyways. She was up late last night working on a research project, and you know how she gets when she's on a roll."

"Uh huh! Bet you five bits she's fallen asleep with her snout in a book."

"Well, that's not much of a bet." Starlight smiled. "What kind of book?"

"Ohhhh, right! Ahhh... I'll go with... a volume of Equestrian history covering the pre-classical era, specifically the period when the Princesses were being tutored by Star Swirl the Bearded."

Starlight stared at her suspiciously. "Wait a second..."

Trixie sniggered. "Yeah! I totally woke up early and went to grab a snack, and I saw her through the library door. Completely zonked! I was tempted to, you know, sneak in and slip something embarrassing under her nose, right? For her to find when she woke up? But I didn't want to wake her." Trixie rolled her eyes. "She might be nice to me or something."

"Trixie!"

"I know! I know! Look, she might be completely over disliking me, I'm still working off a grudge or two here. Gimme time, Starlight! I'll get there."

They trotted along the twisty corridors, which Trixie always seemed to be able to navigate much more easily than Starlight. Soon they were at the library doors and peering in. And Twilight was still fast asleep. The lavender alicorn was sitting in a chair behind her work-table, face down in a heavy volume spread open before her, other books stacked in piles to either side.

Starlight cautiously stepped up beside her, and touched her shoulder. "Twilight?"

Twilight jerked up, a crazed look on her face. "What? I'm awake! Rule of the Two Sisters! Year 15! Melvin the Manticore! Uhrrggh..." Her face thunked back down on the book again.

"It's okay, Twilight," Starlight said gently. "You're in your library. You haven't neglected your studies, or whatever it was you were dreaming about."

Twilight sat up slowly, yawning and rubbing her face with her hooves. "I'm so sorry about that. Good morning, Starlight. Um... what time is it?"

"Dinner time!" Trixie called mischevously from the doorway.

"Huh? Omigosh!" Twilight cried, shocked. "How long was I asleep?"

"Trixie!" Starlight glared at her friend.

"What?" Trixie shrugged. "It's the truth... sort of. I mean if you believe the spherists, it's gotta be dinner time somewhere, right?" She trotted over to the table and waved breezily. "Hey, Twi!"

"Oh. Morning, Trixie. And, uh... welcome back."

Starlight jumped in hurriedly. "Trixie and I were just going to do... um, stuff today. We don't know what yet. Welcome-back-besty kind of stuff."

"Sounds great," Twilight nodded encouragingly. "You two have fun!"

Starlight wanted to turn around, grab Trixie, and make an exit before anything else happened. But Trixie was staring pointedly at the book in front of Twilight. "Soooo... what's so fascinating about the pre-classical era? Oh, don't bother telling me. Not really interested. Just practicing making small talk."

Twilight, finding her automatic reply neatly sabotaged by Trixie's breezy cynicism, shut her mouth and fumed.

"Ah haha!" Starlight smiled uncomfortably. "Well, I'm interested. I mean, seriously, Twilight, you've been at this for days. What's up?"

Twilight stared at the book distastefully. "Well... It's kind of personal. Not me-personal, but somepony important. Can we keep this between us?"

"Of course!"

Twilight looked warningly at Trixie, but the show-pony merely gave her a smug look. "Oh, don't worry about me blabbing, Twilight. Starlight's already sworn me to secrecy on stuff like this. And if there's one thing a magician can do, it's keep a secret. My lips are sealed. So go ahead and spill!"

"O-kay... Starlight, you remember when the cutie-map sent you to help the Princesses, and you made Celestia take on Luna's duties for a day and she wound up walking your dreams? And you saw that evil, power-obsessed version of her?"

"Daybreaker!" Starlight shivered. "Pretty hard to forget, Twilight. That was a horrible nightmare!"

"Well... I have it on very good authority that it wasn't just a nightmare. Daybreaker actually existed for a time, back in the pre-classical era!"

Starlight goggled. "Seriously? What kind of authority?"

"Celestia. She told me herself."

"Woah!" Trixie's eyes went wide. "Starlight told me about the dream, but I hadn't heard about this! Celestia actually became Daybreaker? The Celestia?" She looked nonplussed. "What the hay brought that on?"

"I don't know!" Twilight slammed the book shut in frustration. "And none of the histories we have from that period go into any detail! It's like the whole thing was very carefully hushed up!"

"Well, maybe it was," Starlight pointed out. "I mean you can't very well have history books telling people that the very pony they rely on to rule them with kindness and sanity once flipped out and went on a rampage!"

"But that's pretty much the definition of history," Twilight grumbled. "To capture and report what happened, so future generations can learn from it."

"Don't be naive, Twilight!" Trixie waved a hoof. "History is written by the winners, who tell the story they want remembered. That's why no one takes history lessons seriously these days."

"Eee... yes! Moving right along," Starlight said quickly, "to something more practical... if there are still questions you need answers to, Twilight... why not just ask Celestia? Or Luna?"

"I plan to," Twilight nodded. "But I wanted to do my homework, gather as many details as I can from other sources first. I'm pretty sure the Princesses don't like to be reminded of that time, so I want all my ducks in a row, so to speak, before I trouble them with it again." She glared at the book on the table, and the others stacked in handy piles around it. "But none of the sources I've checked have given me any useful detail to work from!"

"Hmmm... what about asking someone else?" Starlight suggested. "Like maybe Star Swirl the Bearded? He knew the Princesses during that time, so maybe he could give you an outsider's perspective?"

Twilight shook her head. "Bad enough bothering the Princesses with this. But it would be completely unfair to be discussing it with anypony else behind their backs."

"Yeah, not at all like we're doing!" Trixie flopped herself down on one of the other chairs beside to the table and waved a hoof airily. "Well, you could always just pop back in time, Twilight, and talk to Star Swirl way back then. That way it's totally fair 'cause you're talking with someone who saw it happen at the time. But, nah... that would be just as bad, because changing history and stuff!"

Starlight cringed, expecting an explosion from Twilight about Trixie's cavalier attitude toward something as dangerous as time-travel. But Twilight was looking thoughtful. Oh no, Starlight thought to herself. I know that look! That's the "what-a-great-idea-let's-try-it-and-see-what-happens" look!

"Maybe we couldn't talk to him back then," Twilight mused, "but we could always go back and see what happened for ourselves... but to do that, we'd need to improve on Star Swirl's time-travel spell a thousand-fold..."

Don't ask me! Don't ask me!

"Starlight, you've already done most of the work revising Star Swirl's time-travel spell. Do you think you could extend the range further? Like all the way back to pre-classical times? And extend the duration so it doesn't reel us back in after only a few minutes?"

"Uhhhh... err... well... mmmm... maybe! But Twilight, I thought you hated anypony messing with time-travel magic. Especially after what I did with it!"

Twilight stared at her, surprised. "I'm not against time-travel spells, Starlight."

"What? You're not?"

"Of course not! A workable time-travel spell would be a boon for the study of history. Look around you --" She gestured to the shelves lining the room. "You know how many history books I have? One thousand six hundred and forty-five. I know that exactly because I've counted them -- twice -- the last time I reorganized. And you know how many I'd count on as reliable sources?"

She gestured to the small piles on the table. "You're looking at them! I'd always kind of accepted it as a natural limitation of scholarship, a cost of doing business as an historian. But now that I have a question I really want settled, the gaps in our history are really frustrating me! If we could actually visit history for ourselves, we could resolve so many unsettled questions, correct so many misunderstandings..."

"... and create a whole bunch of new ones," Trixie observed dryly. "You don't ever really settle an argument, Twilight. You just move the trenches around. Huh! And it's not like peeking into everypony's past would be in any way nosey or creepy. Some secrets are better off buried!"

"Maybe so," Twilight reluctantly agreed. "But... if handled responsibly, safe time-travel could be a huge benefit."

"But..." Starlight added, "there's still the teeny tiny problem of altering the timeline, right? Which is exactly what makes time-travel magic so un-safe! I mean we don't want to go rummaging around in the past without having some way for us to be there without affecting history, right?"

"Absolutely!" Twilight nodded. "And what I just realized is, if the goal is only to observe the past and not alter it, we can add components to the spell that would enforce just that! On top of the existing paradox safeguards, I mean."

"Oh, right...." Starlight bit her lip uneasily. "The ones that I ripped out in my version of the spell, because it meant I could get it working twenty times faster."

"Right!" Twilight was firmly in brainstorming mode and didn't even notice. "If we're only interested in the past, we could use the present-day end of the spell as an anchor, and disallow any action that doesn't lead up to it."

Despite herself, Starlight felt herself being drawn into it. I mean, if she's okay with just talking about the practical problems, she reminded herself. "But... that would require tons of power to maintain. And time-travel's already pretty costly. It's why the spell can't be maintained for long."

"That's only true for a spell that enables changing history," Twilight said. "A spell that only allows observation, and only of the past, could likely be made close to self-sustaining, at least for a reasonably useful duration."

"Yeah!" Starlight nodded. "And if we didn't have to expend so much energy on the cycling of the spell itself, we could use that to extend the range."

Trixie sat up worriedly, seeing her pleasant day with her friend slipping away from her.

"Uh... Starlight?"

Neither of the other ponies heard her. "If you can add guard components that will reduce the power cost," Starlight said, "then I could work on extending the range, assuming I can use that spare energy."

"I think I know a way to do just that!" Twilight replied. "There's a book we should look at. It's here somewhere..." She trotted off to the bookshelves ranged around the room.

"We'll need some paper and quills. I'll get them," Starlight called, heading over to the library's supply closet.

"Uh? Hello? Am I still here?" Trixie looked from one of them to the other. "Starlight? Are we still hanging out today, or what?"

"Trixie!" Twilight trotted over to her. "Just the pony we need!"

"Who, me? Seriously? The show-pony?" Trixie scowled at her. "You and I both know when it comes to Princess-level magic, that's all I am... apart from the few real spells that Starlight's been able to teach me."

"Right, but we need a critic," Twilight said. "Someone to bounce ideas off of. Someone to poke holes in our logic, point out things we've forgotten to consider in revising the spell and adding safeguards. Someone who wouldn't miss a chance to show us exactly where we went wrong! And I can't think of a better pony for the job than you!"

"Oh." Trixie raised an eyebrow. "Thanks, Twilight... I think!"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

As it turned out, Starlight's part of the effort was relatively easy. Given the assumption of more power it was easy to extend the range of the spell, as well as put back the safeguards she'd removed. She was able to finish that up shortly after lunch. She nervously handed over her revised version of Star Swirl's spell to Twilight, and then went out for a quick celebratory ice cream with Trixie.

Twilight barely registered their presence, so wrapped up was she in the intricate pattern of spell components she was sketching out on a carpet-sized roll of paper spread across the cutie-map table, the only table in the castle large enough to contain it easily.

If it had been any other pony, Starlight would have been certain she'd totally lost it and was ready for the coat with the long sleeves. With Twilight? It was far more likely that the incredible tangle of nested invocations she was scribbling would actually work.

Trixie, once she got over her natural reluctance to credit any other pony's skill but her own, found herself easily drawn into her role as gadfly, though more than once she found herself scuffing a hoof on the tabletop in boredom while Twilight and Starlight dove into details of magical theory.

"Oh, come on!" she groaned after one particularly lengthy discussion, "are you two really still going on about... what was it again?"

"Exponential renormalization at the boundary threshold," Twilight said.

Trixie sighed. "Once more from the top, with me getting it."

"The power cost of maintaining the safeguards," Starlight explained. "It becomes huge near the threshold of the spell in the past. The closer you get, the harder it becomes to forbid paradoxes that alter the flow of history. Like, exponentially hard... there's a runaway right at the boundary itself. Finding a way to manage that is making the safeguards ridiculously complex."

"Seriously? Like this whole thing wasn't already?" Trixie sighed. "Look, just make sure that end of the spell is located somewhere out of the way, so it's unlikely for anything important to bump into it. Then it doesn't have to be perfect."

Twilight and Starlight looked at each other. "She's absolutely right!" Twilight said. "If we assume a reasonable cutoff for the safeguards, the entire spell becomes tons simpler. Well done, Trixie!"

Surprised, Trixie immediately smirked. "Well, I'm not known as the Great and Powerful for nothing. You should see some of the crap I let myself get away with in my show. Uh, forget I said that!"

They continued working through the day, and Twilight was still at it that evening, carefully revising and recopying spell components to a fresh scroll, when Starlight and Trixie finally said good night and turned in.

Starlight hoped Twilight would wrap it up soon and get some sleep herself, but she feared she wouldn't. Something about the question that had started all this seemed to be driving Twilight to seek an answer. And Starlight suspected Twilight wasn't going to rest until she got one.

Comments

[redmar]

Interesting idea and I like idea of such a time travel spell too.

[Lets Do This]

9200448
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I wanted to try for something a little different from the usual time-travel-everything-gets-broken story.
A bit like BTTF, where changing history fortunately turns out to be a good thing for everyone involved.

[FinalFan]

9200717
Pretty sure ole Biff came out worse for wear.

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

Trixie looked uncomfortable. "Want the truth? It was awful. I've still got bad word-of-mouth to live down. Houses aren't that great, so I'm barely making back travelling expenses. And after the Manticore Mouthdive it's like everypony expects me to, I dunno... Explode! Live on stage! or something like that, at every performance! I mean, come on! It was my most successful trick ever ... and it only seems to have made my everyday work harder. "

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=lyrics+i+know+it%27s+only+rock+n+roll&&view=detail&mid=CDA6F6516A3A6D76E906CDA6F6516A3A6D76E906&&FORM=VRDGAR

[TheOnlyBunHere]

Question, why doesn't Twilight just use the potion she used in Princess Twilight Sparkle? It allows the user to see historical events without changing them and being alike to more of a ghost.

[Lets Do This]

9682428
Good suggestion -- a few reasons:
a) Zecora's potion could only be used by a single pony (and an alicorn at that), which would make independent corroboration difficult, and you know Twilight's a stickler for the scientific method. With the time lens spell, you can bring multiple observers, equipment, etc.
b) the potion works by inducing visions, which probably would not be admissible as a matter of historical record, except as a plot device in emergencies
c) we don't know Zecora had (or could make) more than the one vial of potion
d) if they couldn't affect history, there'd be no story: Celestia would never have recovered from being Daybreaker without Twilight's intervention, and there would have been nothing they could do about it.

And, the most important reason of all:
e) I just didn't think of that.

Thanks for reading and commenting!