Starlight was about to burn the entire castle library down, for all the good it had done her. She had been working every single angle she could think of for months, had scoured every single page to try and find what she had missed. Starlight even reviewed the fundamentals, as boring and useless to her as they were, in an attempt to be thorough. Every single spell she had combined had been fully researched, except for the few too restricted for Twilight to have kept in her library.
There was only one room left in the castle she couldn’t get into due to the heavy warding. Starlight had only recently discovered a room under a concealment spell, and had been slowly picking the protective spells apart to get herself into the room. Today she carried up a few books on defensive magics and was certain she’d be able to unlock it to find out what secrets were hidden inside. If there was a book about any of the restricted spells she had used, especially the time based ones, it would be in this last heavily warded room.
Instead of another day spent learning to take apart the wards faster, she found the door ajar and the room open. It seemed too good to be true, and Starlight cast a spell to try and detect anything unusual going on. She heard two ponies chatting as they walked away, but nothing else out of the ordinary. Locked vaults didn’t just unlock themselves, so she took a moment to investigate the noise.
She teleported down the hallway to see who was there. It was the purple dragon, whose name she learned was Spike, and the blue pegasus. He seemed to be the babysitter. Both the stallion and the dragon seemed to keep to themselves. This suited her fine. The fewer ponies she had to avoid, the more time she had to study. It was easy enough to avoid the few ponies that came to check books out of the library every day, as well as the filly and colt making out in the broom closet. She chuckled to herself, realizing even if somepony did see her and raise the alarm, they’d forget the next day. Still, anypony who couldn’t help her fix this wasn’t worth giving the time of day.
Starlight shrugged and headed back towards the door, not caring how or why it had been left open anymore. All that mattered was fixing the broken spell, the one that would potentially trap her here for eternity. She ground her teeth as a familiar red tinted her vision. Being stuck here, unable to age, unable to truly progress her life or knowledge in any meaningful way for all eternity, would be a fate worse than death.
Inside the room was a wide assortment of rather useless magical objects. The first she noticed was a mirror, charged with magic, but inert. A quick scan revealed it was very old, and probably useless for anything more than checking her reflection. Starlight caught sight of her horn in the mirror, glowing faintly red as her anger sought an outlet. She decided to take out a little of her frustration on the mirror. “It’s not like my luck can get any worse.”
She took one of the books out of her saddlebag and slammed it into the mirror repeatedly until cracks spread across it. Small chips of glass fell to the floor, and the layer of silvery magic beneath began to bleed out into the air. After a few more hits, the unweaving enchantments on the mirror finished discharging.
Looking around the room revealed several expensive consoles that used technology powered by magic. A quick survey revealed to Starlight that they were mostly for medical or biological experiments, and again useless for fixing this time loop. A grin spread across her face and Starlight decided to continue her therapy session. She picked the book back up and began slamming it into the controls. Smoke started to pour out of them. The book fell apart from the abuse, the damaged spine releasing the pages as they scattered to the floor. Starlight began to feel less angry the more she destroyed Twilight’s laboratory.
She continued digging around the room, looking for a private journal, a notebook, anything that might have some useful new information. It took some time, but eventually she found what she was looking for. Behind a small illusory spell sat a collection of Twilight’s private research notes. Starlight would have to study these quickly before the loop reset, and break in again tomorrow if necessary.
In nearly two hundred days, she’d made nearly two hundred attempts to release the spell and end the time loop. For the first time in months, she had found new information that could be of use to her. She left the tattered remains of Starswirl’s book on time magic on the floor, having bashed it apart destroying the lab.
All that mattered to her now were these notes. She hoped to herself that they would contain the answers she needed. Starlight wasn’t sure how many more failures she could take before she did something drastic.
Starlight began this loop the same way she always did: running directly into a door that was a pull, not a push. Of all the inconveniences and humiliations of being trapped in a day on repeat, running into this door was the worst. It was unavoidable and too sudden for her to brace herself, or prepare for it. Just as she began to drift to sleep the door would appear, smashing into her muzzle. Even when she didn’t go to sleep, like last night while reading Twilight’s notes, it took her by surprise.
It had taken several days to go through all the notes. Twilight wrote in excessive detail about anything she studied, as if fearing to miss the tiniest detail. Starlight was upset when she first realized she couldn’t study the entirety of the books in one evening. Fortunately, now that she had been inside the laboratory once and seen the wards from the inside, it was much easier to break back in.
One of the books she had stayed up studying was an unfinished journal on friendship. She was tempted to skim it, but decided there may be some valuable nugget of information in it. It turned out that there was no hidden wisdom in it to help in her quest. It was filled with a recounting of various friendship problems, metaphors, and parables. Starlight was particularly miffed by how blatantly obvious the solution to most of the problems was, such as requesting extra tickets to the Gala. Lighting the book on fire afterward was a small consolation for having to sift through so many tales of morality.
Another book was a set of very detailed notes bound into a protective hardcover. It detailed all the steps to create a living pony and transfer a consciousness into it. While fascinating, and potentially useful to her in the future, it was useless to fix a time spell. Starlight doubted even an alicorn could pull off such a feat as creating life from inanimate components. However, she had to begrudgingly admit to herself Twilight had invented alchemical theorems far beyond any Starlight had ever heard of.
The most helpful journal was one detailing how Twilight had visited herself from the future. Unfortunately, she had used a spell Starlight already knew, so it offered little new info. It was, at the very least, amusing to imagine Twilight freaking herself out and creating a paradox. If even Twilight couldn’t master time travel, perhaps Starlight wasn’t as unskilled as these months of torment had led her to believe. There were a few theorems in the book as well, but not enough to figure out the mistake Starlight had made in the spell scroll she had crafted.
The map table seemed to remain undamaged, and was continuing to channel energy into the spell. Starlight was certain the problem must have been the spell itself. She was glad she had used a scroll to cast it. This allowed her to easily try new variations without forgetting the original components used in the spell. Every day she made at least one alteration to the scroll, and the scroll reset to the original state the next day. Every day the alterations failed.
So she spent another day studying some of Twilight’s notes, and trying to fix the scroll by trial and error. With the leyline’s power and the map table focusing the spell, it should have gone without a hitch. Starlight had determined the fault had to lie in the intricately designed patterns and runes of the scroll.
There was a loud boom in the afternoon that interrupted her reading. The mysterious object that seemed to hit and shake the castle slightly each day had just repeated. Normally Starlight was willing to ignore this nonsense as it was literally not her problem, but the explosion sounded different today. It was more of a brief thudding sound. Normally it had a sound more like a dozen windows shattering. The fact something in the time loop happened differently, which shouldn’t be possible, was enough to convince Starlight to figure out once and for all what the heck had been hitting the castle for months.
She might also find and incinerate whatever pony kept interrupting her study sessions with these shenanigans. Perhaps the rumors she’d heard of Ponyville being a hotbed for chaos were warranted.
It didn’t take her long to find her way from the map room to the east wing of the castle where the projectile had hit. There was a large hole in the exterior castle wall that was almost pony-shaped. Starlight looked out the gap towards the Everfree, noticing a few tiny ponies in the distance. There was some smoke rising from the forest too; at least now she had a vague idea what was going on.
Starlight turned her attention back to the pony-shaped gap in the crystal wall, and looked across the hallway. There was another hole, and an indent against the wall inside the room. Starlight noticed a pair of goggles laying on the floor, and went to peek her head through the wall.
The color drained from her face, leaving her as white as Rarity. She backed up and fought the urge to vomit.
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Or did you have one dream three times, because your dream was in a time loop? Are you sure you even woke up today, and aren't still dreaming?
Being stuck here, unable to age, unable to truly progress her life or knowledge in any meaningful way for all eternity, would be a fate worse than death.
Ah. Foreshadowing a possible karmic twist ending, are we? Although considering that means she'll have access to Carousel boutique's basement, it may not be that bad...
I have a bad feeling on who the pony-shaped hole belongs to.
Well.....that's not at all ominous. I wonder what happened? Who died, why, and how? And will this somehow begin to start her down the path of growing a f-cking conscience?
Eh, whatever. Thanks for the chapter!
Ah, dramatic irony. Starlight almost certainly won't figure out that a) transferring a consciousness means you had a spare one lying around for some reason, b) that reason involved dimensional travel and c) the resulting pony may potentially be aware of the time loop due to those unusual circumstances...
Dramatic irony again. The fact that she doesn't seem to recognize an inactive dimensional portal reduces the already miniscule odds of the above.
Hopefully even pre-reform Starlight wouldn't actually follow through with that when she found out how young they were.
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Rationally speaking, it has to be
Dawnnobody, because the time loop means it never happened. Heck, Starlight will likely decide not to mess with the spell today purely because it will help her forget that if she can be absolutely sure it was undone.i am thinning Scootaloo.
a grate chapter
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There was an unreleased alternating ending to Quantum Leap where Scotta Bakula jumped into a BDSM dungeon, and decided not to try to leap home... so I could see Starlight trading in her vandetta for a tight rubber gimp suit if she gets stuck.
Okay, maybe that's a little too much wishful thinking. Still, she's been very naughty, and Rarity does have experience in disciplining unruly ponies.
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You're welcome! I can't wait to start growing that consciousness for Starlight in the most entertaining way possible.
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Surely nopony would be so reckless... we'll find out Saturday.
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Good observations.
Regarding Dawn, he really is in a unique position. He's an unknown, he's not quite pony but not human anymore either. I never really went into how they made him a pony or what that could mean, so it was nice to describe him being immune to Tirek, and now keeping his memory in the time loop. Being a pain in the ass might be his true special talent.
Regarding the mirror, I realized in canon Twilight has the mirror in her castle, and I may want to do something with it some day. If it weren't for Gen 5, I might have done an EQG crossover. Heck, maybe I'll do both in the same story, Dawn x Sunset x Sunny love triangle anyone?
Regarding the CMC, I don't think Starlight would go after fillies. The longer she's stuck though, the shorter her list of things she wouldn't do to escape is getting.
I guess Dawn finally had it.
and had done all of this already.
It's funny that the deviation that Starlight notices is the daily sound, and not the open door that she's been trying to crack open for many, many loops because it's sealed closed. Had she, it would have been a direct line to Dawn. (Of course, that would probably be problematic for the plot at this point, so it was fate.)
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Once is a coincidence. Twice though... well Starlight's definitely on the lookout now for anypony or any event not following the daily routine. Plus, who would suspect Cyan Babysitter #3? He wasn't in any of Twilight's speeches on how awesome her friends are. (Which if you ask me, Dawn should have a long talk with her about.)
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You know it! This is why I can't wait for the next chapter, Dawn stuck eating his one flavor of oatmeal, Starlight getting whacked by the door... actually I think this entire trilogy is basically ponified Stargate episodes!
I feel like ‘DoH3: No Consequences’ would unironically be a great title for this entry in the series lol
I was waiting for that.
Next time on DoH:3
Dawn launches himself out of a railgun and fucking dies horrifically! scarring countless ponies for hours on end and one for life!
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I wish I could have worked more fun scenes in for Starlight, I really loved how Teal'c finally gets to just slam the person in the face that had been hitting him in the face with a door loop after loop... but I couldn't figure out how to work that one in.
Maybe Starlight will get PTSD around doors, I'm pretty sure Dawn's gonna get radio alarm clock PTSD.
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Yeah, that joke came to me during edits and I am ashamed I didn't think of it sooner!
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If that is Dawn, and he's that crazy, just imagine what he'd do to the pony who trapped him in this living nightmare?
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You're missing a step before you can get to a pattern. XD (Also, it's about existing, individual patterns breaking, not a new pattern about patterns being broken.)
Maybe Twilight thinks that Dawn is super awesome, and expressing how she honestly feels is something best done in private.
So the big question is for someone who's spent an inordinate amount of time playing Death-Loop, when they finally figure each other out, do Starlight and Dawn work together to break the loop or does this turn into a daily murderfest?
Nice
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Private, like in a dream, involving the Dewey Decimal system? And then inventing a spell to basically bring him back from the dead... Yeah Twilight's totally had a crush on him. I guess it's good she doesn't broadcast that though, or the villains might have gone gunning for the pony who beat Discord and Tirek (Dawn says the assist totally counts.)
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The opportunities to work in references to another great time loop movie, Happy Death Day, were limited, but I can't say no to references. So we should find out soon!
Dawn testing the limits of Pegasus crash durability... FOR SCIENCE!
So I take it Dawn was driven insane by Rarity's weird sex stuff, tunnelled his way through the concrete floor of her dungeon, and then when he was out he immediately sought out the CMC to aid him in commiting suicide?
What a way to go!