• Published 1st Sep 2021
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Glimpses 2 - Pen Stroke



The power of "what if" tempts once again, but are the little ponies really ready for the answers?

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Variance 5 - Legacy

What if Nyx was the only one left?

This was written in August 2021, and there is a LOT of speculation for something that will be released in September 2021. You’ll figure out what I mean by the end.


The sun rose, cresting over the wild forest and beginning its ascent into the sky. Nyx watched the orb ascend as it had done so many times on so many days, guided by the nudging of her magic. Truly, it was the gentlest of nudges, the bare minimum of effort. Still, it was enough effort, and Nyx turned to let the sun continue the sunrise on its own as she shuffled back towards her bed.

Truly she had come to hate summertime in so many ways. The nights were the shortest this time of year, which meant she truly had to be strict about going to bed and rising to ensure the sun and moon kept to their schedule. The schedule that her dear mother had made so much more complex in the name of allowing the seasons to pass more naturally on their own.

It was undoubtedly brilliant, and she loved the long nights in winter. But summer… summer she had grown to hate with a passion. Short nights, hot days in her black fur. Just too many reasons to be miserable.

Still, Nyx tried to put it behind her as she moved from her bedroom and began walking the halls of her castle. Yes, it was not Canterlot Castle and it was not the Castle of Friendship. This was her castle. This was the castle carved from raw stone by diamond dogs and then lifted above ground in a grand feat of magic. This was Night Stone Castle, though… perhaps not as dark and menacing as it had once been.

Just as the forest had come to surround the castle, it had sought to try and consume it. As Nyx passed a particular small balcony, just off one of the main hallways, she could see a familiar tree. It had found some small crack in the balcony stone long ago and had grown to an impressive oak that leaned against the banister. It had honestly become one of her favorite places to sit and read, the tree’s trunk forming a natural, comfortable seat.

That tree however was not an outlier. Vines, shrubbery, moss, and other full trees had taken root in the small cracks of stone and gaps in the brickwork. And Nyx knew the castle was home to more than just new flora as well. Tiny creatures, nuisances at worst, had found nooks and crevices to make their homes. If Nyx truly wanted, she could probably clear everything out with a few good spells, but the embrace of the forest helped to obscure the castle. That and it was nice to know there were other living things in the castle.

But all that was neither here nor there. Nyx’s mind couldn’t help but wander to the state of her home in the morning when she was walking the corridors with a night’s sleep behind her. It was like bidding good morning to a good friend and taking notice of a change of wardrobe or some new haircut. So much of the castle could change, and yet so much of it could stay the same.

One part of the castle that had changed a long time ago, and now changed most frequently, was the castle grounds. Once a place for marching soldiers was now a tightly packed vegetable garden. It was Nyx’s first stop each morning as she went to procure her breakfast and tend to the many plants.

Nyx did not pause to take in the garden once she had stepped outside. Instead, she quickly moved to a spot just to the right of the castle’s grand doors. There, sitting as an obvious unplanned addition to the grim and glorious castle, was a stone platform, an old metal water pump, and several stacked buckets and baskets.

With a flick of her horn, Nyx urged the old water pump to life. The handle rose and fell on its own, creaking and groaning before starting to burp up water drawn from deep underground. Another horn flick and the buckets rose up, forming into a clean single file line. One bucket would get filled by the pump, then go floating off to water some part of the garden. It was a delightful, choreographed dance that had become as second nature to Nyx as breathing.

As the magic tended to the garden, Nyx set to work using her hooves to harvest. She wrapped her mouth around the handle of the wicker basket, her teeth falling into well-worn grooves. She then began moving through the garden, browsing it as if it was a summer market. Whenever a particular vegetable or fruit caught her eye, she would stop and inspect it. More often than not, the food would then be promptly plucked. Some of it made it into her wicker basket. The others were tossed into a compost bin situated near the castle’s front gate.

Through the garden, Nyx walked from leafy greens to vibrant berries to root vegetables. Her last stop was a small cluster of trees furthest from the door, mighty apple trees. Nyx looked into the branches, moving among the trees before coming to a stop near one. With practiced efficiency, she brought one leg up and then swung it back, bucking the trunk of a tree. The branches rattled, and from the tree, a few apples fell to the soft grass below. Nyx picked up the apples, brushing them off a bit before smiling and nodding to the trees.

By this time, the water pump had stopped working and the buckets were stacking themselves. The garden was tended, and Nyx retreated back inside to lay out her food for the day and to decide on her breakfast. Then, it was back to work.

~~~

The sun rose, cresting over the wild forest and beginning its ascent into the sky. Nyx furrowed her brow a little bit, rubbing the base of her horn. The sun seemed heavy that morning, as sluggish as Nyx was when she did not want to rise from her bed. Perhaps her magic itself was just having an off day.

Retreating from the balcony of her bedroom, Nyx went to go about her routine. Out to the garden she went, flicking her horn at the water pump… but again… it felt off. The pump’s handle felt stiffer. She had to pour more magic into it to get the water flowing. The buckets, usually so swift to line up to their duty, floated haphazardly. It was like they too were deprived of sleep. Nyx furrowed her brow at all of it but went about picking her breakfast for the day. The plants were fine. The leaves, the produce, all of it was growing like normal. The plants were healthy, and the compost pile sure stank as much as it usually did.

Upon approaching the apple trees, Nyx found them in the same stellar health as always. She went to buck them, but… this morning she was granted nothing. The branches shook, but not a single apple fell. Nyx decided to try a few other trees, but they refused. On the final tree, she decided to buck with both legs. Finally a single apple fell. It was ripe and delicious. It looked like it’d be amazing, but still, the amount of effort needed didn’t seem right.

~~~

Nyx was sure of it now. The magic was slipping out of Equestria. She knew what this felt like. It was slower. It was happening over the span of weeks instead of days, but this felt all too familiar to what Cozy Glow had once attempted. Nyx found herself having to truly strain herself to move the sun and moon now. In a few more weeks, she feared she would lose the ability altogether. She had fallbacks, of course. A certain ancient amulet could be used in a pinch if she could remember where she put it.

Tending to the garden had become equally troublesome, now taking up a significant part of Nyx’s morning. She had to pump and spread the water by hoof and now had to pluck the apples from the trees. The garden itself seemed to be suffering as well. Pests and blights that the plants should have been resistant to were starting to creep in. Nyx was truly worried about losing the apple trees, though they seemed to be standing strong for the moment.

From the garden, Nyx would eat a quick breakfast. Then she would go straight to the castle library. The library of Night Stone Castle had never really been impressive in days of old. It had been made to store the contents of the Canterlot library, ready to be the true seat of Equestria’s government.

This, in a roundabout way, was the one purpose of the castle that had been fulfilled.

Nyx had books from across the old empire. Canterlot Castle, the Castle of Friendship, the Crystal Empire, Mount Ares, and beyond. The bookshelves overflowed, with some books simply having to be left in stacks because there was no room on the shelves. This was the one place where Nyx was rather diligent about keeping back the ever-encroaching forest. Yet, in the past few weeks, the library had become even more disheveled than usual.

Nyx had picked up her mother's tactics when it came to trying to find some obscure magical fact. Step one, try the most obvious books. Step two, try the obscure books. Step three, try the really obscure books. Step four, pour over everything and hope you find something. Nyx was deep into step four as she had yet to find an explanation.

Moving up to the table that Nyx had turned into her workspace, she looked over her efforts from the night before. It was a new spell, based on the same spell circle paradigms that had once brought her to life. It was her latest attempt, a spell meant to act as a compass and point to where the magic was going. But even as Nyx looked at it, she feared it would fail as so many other spells had before.

Truly, it felt like Equestria was in a drought. That the magic was simply evaporating under the heat of the late summer sun. That Equestria was simply becoming less magical, but Nyx knew that couldn’t be right. There had to be a reason, right? Either the magic had to be going somewhere, or that, for some reason, Equestria had lost its ability to generate more magic.

Nyx sighed and shook her head, and felt something shuffle on it that didn’t seem right. She turned her head and saw a glimpse of white. In a frantic search for a mirror, Nyx ended up looking at her distorted reflection in one of the decorative suits of armor in the adjoining hallway.

The magic had left her mane, and in its wake, it had left hair as white and pale as moonlight. It had been centuries since Nyx had seen her true and natural hair, free of magic. First, it was just a shock. She could almost hear Rarity giving a fainting gasp, even though it had been so long since anyone had heard the mare’s voice. Yet the deeper implications began to sink in. Alicorns didn’t age normally, and yet her mane was white. And now, as she looked at herself closely for the first time in a while, Nyx began to notice crows' feet around her eyes and creases at the corners of her mouth.

The magic of Equestria was evaporating, and her alicorn immortality was going with it.

~~~

Nyx stirred later that evening. She had spent the rest of the day trying to finish her most recent spell. The realization that her own lifeforce was being drawn away with the magic had lit a fire under her and had perhaps resulted in her pushing herself too hard. She had stopped only for dinner and to raise the moon. After that, she must have fallen asleep. It was now night, her drool staining the scroll she had been working on.

With a groan and a popping of her neck, Nyx resigned herself to going to bed properly. It was as if the floodgates had been opened, her mind now realizing that every little odd annoyance of her body from the past few weeks was age setting in. A weird sharp pain in a joint for no apparent reason. Achy legs and just a growing weight of exhaustion. It was the ravages of age finally catching up.

Still, she couldn’t let any of that slow her down. She had to find a solution, even if she was admitting she needed to get some sleep. She gently tucked away her work and quickly slipped out of the library. Nyx could almost hear the siren call of her bed, though she was already dreading having to rise in the morning to raise the sun.

She yawned, wondering if Equestria would notice if the sun was a little late, but… she then froze. She had been passing the front doors to the castle. The library was on the ground floor while her bedroom was in one of the towers. The quickest way between the two locations was to go by the front entrance and take a long set of stairs that led directly to her bedroom. Each morning, she left those doors to pick her food, and then pulled them shut behind her.

Now, as she stood there, Nyx saw the doors were open. On top of that, looking at one side of the door, she could tell it had been forced. The doors were supposed to be enchanted and resilient to entry, but Nyx could only guess that magic was fading as well. It had all become weak enough for something to force its way inside.

Nyx then heard it… a gasp, a squeal… it was hard to tell, but it certainly sounded unfamiliar. Her magic stirred, but even summoning the most basic of spells felt like lifting a great heavyweight. Still, Nyx would not stand for her castle to be invaded. She drew on her power, pulling from the ever-dwindling well of her magic to enact one of her oldest and most practiced spells. Nyx became a cloud of magic and began searching the castle.

Room to room, corridor to corridor she went. She began to hear voices, and she quickly honed in on them. The throne room. She hadn’t been in her throne room in decades, but that was where the sound was coming from. She began to move more quickly, ducking out a window and going around the exterior of the castle before going back inside through an old servants' entrance.

Within a minute, the magic cloud that was Nyx slipped into the throne room. She slunk around the edge of the space, hiding in the shadows. The once detailed stained glass that had depicted a great and frightful Nightmare Moon had long ago been replaced with more abstract and geometric designs. Yet, the glass of those windows still let the moonlight flow in.

And there, in the moonlight, Nyx saw five figures standing about the throne.

“It’s so amazing. I mean, look at the stitch work. I wonder if this was someone’s commission, but then who would leave it all the way out here? And where are her wings?”

One of the ponies was speaking as she stood near the throne. She was holding something, and Nyx felt her anger stir as she realized what it was. It was her soft, plushie recreation of Twilight. The target doll turned huggable, life-sized toy had been left to occupy the throne in the room. Nyx kept it there for a myriad of reasons, none of which applied to the current situation.

Not only were there intruders in the castle, but they were touching her things.

Nyx did not hesitate a moment more. She extended her cloud self, covering the main exit from the room. Her form crackled with lightning and boomed with thunder, causing the intruders to jump and quickly turn to face her.

“Who dares invade my home!?” Nyx bellowed, and… felt strange. Her voice was raspier than she remembered. Sure, she didn’t take to talking to herself too much, though she would read aloud to help fill the void. But she had been so focused on trying to solve things, she hadn't spoken in weeks. It would make sense her voice too had become aged and dry. Yet, the rage in her words still rang true.

The five ponies clustered together, a few moving to the front while the others clung to the back. Now that she was out of the shadows, Nyx could get a better look at them. At first glance, it was two pegasi, two earth ponies, and a unicorn. It was one of the earth ponies that now clung to her doll of Twilight, the one with orange coat and pinkish-purple hair.

Yet, it was that pony, that mare, that stepped away from the others, moving forward. She clung to the doll of Twilight as if it was giving her courage.

“I’m… Sunny Starscout. We’ve come… because the magic is disappearing from the world. It started with unicorns, like my friend Izzy, but it’s starting to affect the pegasi too.”

Nyx remained in cloud form, looming over them all. “Friends… earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi have not been friends for centuries.”

The mare who had stepped forward, Sunny, winced at Nyx’s booming voice, but… then her eyes looked to the doll of Twilight. She looked back to Nyx, bracing her hooves firmly against the floor. “They are my friends, and I’m going to do everything I can to help them. We came looking for the Tree of Harmony. We think it can fix what’s happening.”

“The tree… you know of the tree?” Nyx’s anger was calming, her cloud form relaxing. The crackling lightning faded and she became more like a billowing rainstorm.

“My dad told me stories about it, about how it helped Twilight Sparkle and her friends save Equestria. We believe… we hope it can help us do it again.” Sunny reached into her saddlebags and drew something out, something unfamiliar to Nyx. It was a wooden amulet, hoof carved, but on it was something unmistakable: her mother’s cutie mark.

Nyx remained silent for a moment continuing to loom. She had hidden away after the calamity, doing as instructed by her mother to ensure, no matter what, that some creature would remain to move the sun and moon. And yet in this darkest hour, when she felt she might fail in her task… a group of friends arrived at her door, seeking a tree that no longer existed.

Nyx couldn’t help but chuckle, thinking back to the beginning of Twilight’s own story. Six friends facing a calamity and searching for the Elements of Harmony. Had it really been so long that history was beginning to repeat itself? She couldn’t deny, she was curious, but Nyx could not risk exposing herself. News of a living alicorn in Equestria… she could not put the movement of the sun and moon at risk.

“You are close to what you seek,” Nyx answered, starting to let her cloudy body recede back away. “Head a day's travel to the west, to the dark heart of the Everfree Forest. There you will find a ravine beneath a castle more ancient than even this one. There you will find what remains of the tree.”

With that Nyx slipped away, leaving the throne room and taking her cloud form outside. She flitted and flew to her bedroom balcony, retaking her physical form. Nyx felt her legs tremble and heard a few joints pop and crack. It felt like she had robbed years from herself, age taking a steep toll for the magic she had just performed. Still, Nyx steadied herself against the banister of her bedroom balcony and looked down to the castle courtyard below. It took only a few moments before the five intruders came out of the castle, some visibly eager to escape. Nyx could imagine they believed the castle haunted, and perhaps that was for the best.

Still, as the other four left, the orange one lingered a moment just outside the castle gates. She turned to look back at the castle, and as her eyes followed the rising towers until her gaze met with Nyx’s. She held that gaze for a moment, then gave a hesitant wave. Nyx did not return the wave, continuing to simply observe until Sunny turned to follow her friends back into the forest.

“A new generation… it will be interesting to see what they do,” Nyx said, chuckling as she turned to go to bed. Though before turning in for the night she would want to check on one thing.

She wanted to be sure those ponies didn’t steal her Twilight plushie.