The Trial of Empathy and the Catalyst of Belief
Twilight had always been curious about the house across from the library.
It was hard to not be curious—the gothic-style architecture stuck out like a sore thumb compared to the neighbouring houses and the plaza on the opposite side of the street. There were never any cars in its driveway, but she noticed that whoever lived there didn’t let the grass grow too long and made sure to take in the mail before it filled the mailbox.
So it couldn’t have been abandoned. It was always just so... empty.
Being a twelve-year-old in summer meant taking advantage of every possible way to stave off boredom, and Twilight had a bus pass. But books could only hold her attention for so long before thoughts of the House (she decided it deserved to be a proper noun) started creeping back in.
Don’t think about it, she scolded herself. She flipped to the next chapter of the book in her lap and stared harder at the words on the page. The library had air conditioning and beanbag chairs. There was no reason to go outside. There was no reason to walk over to the crosswalk and cross the street and trespass on someone’s property—
Twilight snapped her book shut. Jaywalking would be faster this time.
She’d lasted all of two hours that day. Longer than the beginning of the summer, but not as long as her personal best of four.
The librarian looked up from her computer when Twilight dropped off her book in the reshelve pile. “Going out so soon?” she asked.
“Mhm.” Twilight adjusted the strap on her bag and lied, “I’ve got money for lunch today.”
“Well, doesn’t that sound lovely?” She pointed over to the reshelve pile. “Will you be back after? I could hold your book for you if you’d like.”
Twilight shrugged and turned on her heel to leave. “Oh. Yeah, sure.” She managed to walk all the way over to the main doors before she remembered her manners and added a quick “Thank you!” over her shoulder.
Then the doors clicked shut behind her and Twilight’s thoughts returned to the House.
She hadn’t actually done anything criminal yet, she reasoned on her walk across the plaza parking lot. It was perfectly legal to ring doorbells. If no one came to the door it was totally fine to peer in a window—just to check if someone was home! And if the first time she’d looked through the backyard window she’d seen a room that looked straight out of a wizard’s tower, who could blame her for wanting to catch a glimpse of the wizard himself?
Well, okay. Getting into the backyard was a bit borderline. He could have tried a bit harder to lock the gates.
A Monday morning in summer meant traffic was light, though given that the library was a smaller branch on the outskirts of town Twilight hardly ever saw vehicles apart from the bus anyway. Still, she made sure to look both ways before crossing the street at the library’s turn-in. With her luck, the one time she didn’t check would be the one time a car came speeding through.
She made it to the opposite sidewalk in one piece. And once again Twilight found herself standing directly in front of the House—except this time, she realized, something was different.
The porch light had been left on.
Someone stopped by over the weekend, she decided. It must have been on Sunday after she went home, since she was sure she’d have noticed otherwise. But wait—had it been on when she’d gotten off the bus? Twilight racked her brains, but despite her best efforts she couldn’t remember if it had been on or off. If it was already on it wasn’t a big deal, but if it had been turned on while she was in the library...
Then someone could still be inside.
Suddenly, the prospect of actually meeting the wizard was a lot scarier than Twilight had thought it would be.
But she couldn’t just go back to the library. What would the librarian think, knowing that she’d lied through her teeth about lunch for the nth time? There were no ways around it and no going back—scared or not, Twilight had to investigate the House.
Slowly, she stepped onto the driveway. Then she took another step, and another, until her legs were marching up to the porch of their own accord. You can do this. Three more steps to the porch stairs. You can do this. Two more steps. C’mon, you can do this! One left.
But then her nerves won out, and before her shoe made contact with the porch Twilight took a hard left into a dash across the front lawn and down the side of the House where she threw herself flat against its siding, hand over her mouth and heartbeat pounding in her ears.
Okay, she managed to think. She took a few shallow breaths into her palm to try and calm herself down. Maybe I’ll just... take a look around today instead. Yeah. She lowered her hand and instead squeezed it around the strap of her bag until her knuckles whitened. Don’t wanna scare the guy off or anything, right?
She turned to the fence beside her and tugged the handle. It swung open easily, like every other time she’d tried. A quick peek around the corner into the back garden didn’t reveal anything out of the ordinary. Just the same tidy lawn and greenery around the little cobblestone path that led to the back door. Her gaze trailed over to the larger window on the right side—the wizard’s window—but it also appeared identical to the day before.
Twilight took a deep breath. In and out, just like always. Nothing to it.
She crept across the lawn in silence, keeping close to the edge of the House just in case someone might have been looking out from the second floor. The summer atmosphere did nothing for her wound-up nerves—every cicada buzz and bird chirp and squirrel chatter threatened to set off her reflex to turn around and bolt. When she reached the flowerbed in front of the window she took care to step around the well-tended shrubs at her feet.
Then, her back against the House, she craned her neck around to peer inside.
The inside of the wizard’s room appeared the same as ever—plush grey carpet beneath a stately antique desk, bookshelves along the right wall stuffed with books in disheveled piles, some display cabinets on the left side with odd contraptions and papers and even more books visible behind their glass doors, and Twilight’s favourite part: an honest-to-goodness suit of armour standing proud against the wall behind the desk, just beside the door.
Oh, and the second suit of armour on the other side of the desk with a sheet over it. Twilight didn’t know who the wizard was trying to fool with that. The sheet didn’t even cover down to its knees.
She scanned the room to check if anything had changed. The desk seemed messier than usual, with a different set of papers and folders spread out across the surface than the day before. Some of the books on the shelves seemed like they’d been shuffled around, and the cardboard boxes stacked in the corner by the cabinets were definitely new. Someone’s been up to something.
Still on her tiptoes, Twilight inched closer to the window to try and get a better look. Maybe she’d be able to read something on the desk if she squinted hard enough. As she moved over she involuntarily leaned her arm on the top pane of the window to keep her balance—
—only for the window to swivel slightly in response, the lower half rotating out to bump against her stomach.
Instantly Twilight froze in place. That’s new, she thought. Then, a second thought: oh, shit. She stumbled away from the window and threw herself back against the side of the House, her heart pounding in her throat.
Trespassing, the sane part of her mind recognized. She couldn’t find an excuse for an unlocked window—the gate was already stretching it in the first place, much less actually entering the House. And if the wizard was upstairs; if she got caught?
Twilight didn’t want to think about that.
Instead she squeezed the strap of her bag with both hands and drew her shoulders up to her ears. She could come back. One day, when she found the courage, she’d ring the doorbell and meet the wizard in a proper, legal way. Just not today.
In the meantime she’d have to be satisfied with glances of magic and mystery stolen through a window, and nothing more.
So, with a resigned sigh, Twilight let go of her bag and took one last longing look inside. I could definitely get in there, she noted. It’d be easy. I’d just... She scanned the room to find fuel for her imagination. I’d go in, grab a book from the desk, and leave. She pursed her lips. I’d finish reading it by the end of the day, and then I’d return it before anyone even noticed it was gone.
Her hand moved on its own, reaching up to push the window further open. It’d be really, really easy.
She crouched under the glass and straightened up so that the top half of her body passed through the window and into the House. If she thought about it long enough she knew her nerves would find a way to talk her out of it—so she didn’t think. Twilight took her first steps into the House at the same time she held her breath, two slightly-dirty sneakers touching down one after the other onto the pristine and silvery carpet.
When no alarms went off, Twilight moved.
She reached the desk in three steps and grabbed the closest book she could. There. She spun on her heel as she reached for her bag, desperate to stow the book away before she made her escape—
But she forgot about her surroundings, and her bookbag swung too wide. Twilight realized her mistake just as her bag connected with the sheet-covered suit of armour and sent it crashing to the floor.
Shit!
The carpet muted the impact a bit, but it didn’t matter. Instantly Twilight heard a thump come from the ceiling directly above her head, then footsteps.
Someone’s here!
There was no time to think. Twilight dropped the book to the floor and scrambled for the window, panic coursing through her veins. The footsteps crossed over to the other side of the House and started descending at the same time Twilight reached the window and managed to get one leg back over the sill.
And then she felt it.
An electric, magnetic sensation that sent the hair on the back of her neck up on end. Twilight lurched to a stop halfway out the window, unable to ignore the source of the peculiar feeling. She looked back over her shoulder to see if she could spot anything, but nothing had changed. Just the toppled armour tangled in the sheet across the floor, and the book she’d dropped—
Her eyes widened.
The footsteps reached the main floor.
Twilight unhooked her leg from the window and darted back across the room to snatch the book away from one of the armour’s disembodied gauntlets. She didn’t know how it had managed to grab the book; she didn’t know what on earth could have possibly caused that strange and electric feeling; but she did know that she had to find out no matter what.
The leather of the book felt like fire and guilt against her palm as she ran, just managing to hop through the window and bolt across the yard as the footsteps approached the door. Twilight didn’t dare look back to see if she’d been spotted—all she could do was run and run and run, until her lungs protested and her legs burned and she had to swallow down the beat of her heart.
She took a different bus home that day. The librarian held on to a book that no one would come back for, and her pattern of summertime curiosity came to an abrupt and delinquent end. And while the spoils of her crime were not enough to sate her curiosity about the House across from the library, Twilight did learn two things from the book she stole.
One, she could never, ever go back. Not to the library, not to that bus route, and never again to the House. She couldn’t be sure if the wizard had seen her, and she certainly wasn’t going to make it easier for him to find out who she was.
And two:
Magic was real.
Under the covers in the dead of night—that was the only time Twilight truly had to herself. Those few precious hours where her house (not home) was silent were more valuable than anything else. No arguments echoed up the stairs, no television chatter bounced between the walls, and no adults were awake to bother her about anything and everything.
There was just silence, Twilight, and the magic book.
(She remembered the night she’d first written in the book vividly, though it was pretty hard to forget a conversation that had left a permanent record on paper in ink. All her disappointment at stealing a blank book had quickly shifted to shock, then wonder, and then delight after words she hadn’t written appeared on the page out of thin air.
Wow, she’d written after she’d calmed herself down enough to hold a pen. A magic book!
Wow, came the book’s reply seconds later, a human girl.
Even without a voice it managed to have an attitude. For some reason Twilight found it rather charming.)
Her wonder had worn off with time, but her curiosity still remained intact. After so many months Twilight had finally gotten into a comfortable routine: as soon as the hallway light flicked off she counted a hundred seconds before she slid out of bed to retrieve the book and her tools from under her mattress.
Okay, she wrote as she got back under the covers, clicking on the flashlight between her teeth to illuminate the pages of the book. Where were we?
We certainly weren’t exchanging pleasantries, the book responded.
Very funny. Twilight flipped back a page and skimmed their conversation from last night, just barely able to read the blocks of her own tiny, cramped writing. It was partly to conserve the pages she had available, but also because writing under a bedsheet was much easier when her elbow moved as little as possible. She flipped back after she caught up and wrote, You were telling me something about stars, weren’t you?
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
Twilight rolled her eyes. There’s no point in being cryptic when the proof is literally on your other side.
The book lay still for a few seconds. Then: Oh, fine. Always straight to the point, aren’t you, girl?
I prefer to think of myself as efficient.
They’d quickly developed a rapport, though Twilight did wish the book was a little more cooperative and a little less of a pain-in-the-ass. It’d been nearly half a year, yet she’d barely managed to learn anything about magic during their conversations. The book had its own agenda—she knew that, and she knew that the book knew that she knew—and it wasn’t about to let her benefit from its knowledge without receiving something in return. Sometimes Twilight felt like she spent hours pulling teeth trying to learn something from it, only to realize she’d been tricked into operating on a shark.
Names are powerful things, girl, the book eventually wrote. The sensation of magic pulsed from its pages in time with the words appearing, snapping Twilight out of her thoughts. You humans bestow names upon living and inanimate alike without a second thought. Yet through a name something once useless can evolve into so much more. Perhaps a conduit. Perhaps a hiding place. It paused for a second. Perhaps a prison.
Twilight scrunched up her nose. And this relates to stars how?
I’ve heard patience is quite a virtue, girl.
Sorry.
The book lay still for a moment, as if to taunt her. Thankfully, after nearly a minute it wrote, Certain patterns of stars have names, do they not?
Constellations, Twilight supplied.
Yes. They shift and change, but somehow the human eye finds ways to pick out patterns in an unfamiliar sky. It’s admirable, really. You should be proud that your kind realized this defense mechanism thousands of centuries ago.
The flashlight wavered between Twilight’s teeth as she quickly wrote, Defense? From what?
And if Twilight had been paying attention she might have heard the book’s trap snap shut around her; might have remembered that whatever entity dwelled within its pages had its own reasons for tolerating their conversations. But she was far too engrossed in the mystery of magic to keep her guard up, and the book easily latched on to its opportunity to strike:
From a creature of darkness both bound and freed by those chosen by the stars.
And before Twilight could even try to think about what the book meant by that, another block of text faded onto the page.
Now, girl, tell me: do you know the meaning of your name?
If elementary school ended with a whimper, high school started with a roar. There had always been rumours about her, whether because of her detention record or the near-perfect grades her teachers reluctantly handed back, but the addition of magic just made things ten times worse. They weren’t kids, her classmates parroted. They were teens. Almost adults. No one had time for kiddy shit anymore.
Twilight realized pretty quickly that high school wanted her to choose: wear a magic-shaped target on her back, or be the one to shoot at someone else.
Easy choice.
“So you’re that frosh chick who believes in fairytales,” an upperclassman taunted one week into the school year. His massive frame blocked the hallway, towering so far over Twilight that she could barely even see his eyes beneath his dirty-blonde fringe.
“Sure,” she replied, and slammed her locker shut. “So what?”
“You five years old or something?” He rubbed his chin and smirked. “Does that put us boys on a watchlist, huh? Because let me tell you, even if you’re a freak, with a face like that I wouldn’t say no if you—”
He never finished his sentence.
It took Twilight just three seconds to send a message that spread from the crowded hallway to the entire school overnight: one to tuck her hand into her bag and press her fingertips to the book, one to lunge forward at an inhuman speed to sweep her leg through his knees and knock him off his feet, and one for his head to hit the ground with a skull-splitting crack.
Silence.
She pulled her hand away from the book, and the magic she’d borrowed faded from her control as the hall erupted into chaos.
“Oh my god—”
“I can’t believe she just did that—”
“But he definitely deserved it—”
“Yeah, for sure—”
The bigger they are, the book remarked dryly in the back of her mind.
Twilight stared down at where the boy lay crumpled in a heap, his shoulders shaking and chest heaving from barely-contained sobs of pain. She didn’t feel bad about it, she realized. Maybe she should have?
Instead she squatted down beside him and stared him directly in the eyes. “So you’re that guy who likes to pick on people half his size.” She raised her eyebrows. “You five years old or something?” she echoed.
The boy gasped a snot-filled, watery breath in response.
“Mm.” Twilight pushed herself back to her feet. “That’s what I thought.”
Going out of your way to make a good first impression, little star? the book asked.
“We’ll see,” she replied quietly.
Oh, it chucked, they will.
News spread fast, and before the bell for the next period could ring Twilight found herself being dragged through the crowded hall by a teacher furious enough to risk laying hands on a student. She didn’t care—whatever punishment the school wanted to hammer down paled in comparison to the message she’d finally sent:
I’m not afraid to fight back.
She smiled for the smartphones as the teacher hauled her to the office, the middle finger of her free hand raised across the centre of her lips.
“You hear about that girl that bodied Blueblood last week?”
“Man, she’s crazy! I just can’t believe she didn’t clock a suspension for that.”
“I mean, he definitely deserved it.”
“Oh, a hundred percent.”
“And, get this: no one even knows how it happened. Jet Set had a front row seat to the whole thing, but somehow he still didn’t even see her move!”
“That’s... kinda scary, man.”
“Yeah. ‘Cause like, Jet was watching. You know how he is with the frosh.”
“That’s so gross, dude.”
“Ha ha, I know, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“...”
“...You think she’ll run for fall formal?”
“Oh, fuck yeah, man. She’s got my vote locked with legs like that, crazy bitch or what!”
Somehow, despite the fact that she didn’t attend any of them, Twilight claimed the school’s seasonal thrones one after the other. First the Fall Formal, then the Winter Ball, and then the Spring Fling to sweep the entire year.
What do you gain from these victories? the book asked after she tossed the crown for the Fling into the back of her closet and flopped on top of her bed. Why do those human children want to crown you queen?
“I don’t really know,” she replied into her pillow. After taking a second to think she rolled onto her side and shrugged. “Maybe they like me.”
Fear is more likely, little star.
“Hey, I didn’t put them up to it. They made that choice on their own.”
Twilight couldn’t see the book, but somehow she knew that if it had a body it would have been eyeing her with an intent and catlike curiosity. Then will you take advantage of that for the next time?
She blinked. “What?”
The next crown. Will you vie for the throne? Dare you rule those insignificant beings as the prophesied chosen star?
“They’re just high school dances,” Twilight tried to argue. “They don’t mean anything.”
But the ambition to do so means everything.
“I—” She hesitated. Memories from the school year floated up to the forefront of her mind—electricity in her blood as she kicked Blueblood to the floor; mouthing off to an unfair teacher while her classmates egged her on; receiving another detention in the middle of serving one; students scattering out of the way in hallways to make room for her to pass; slammed stall doors and stolen lunch money and the thrill of provoking people until they dared to try fight back.
High school meant perfect grades, endless entertainment, and a reputation that earned the nickname she wore like a badge of honour: she-demon.
Yeah, Twilight decided, and this time her thoughts rang clear enough for the book to receive their signal. You’re right.
Oh?
That school needs a monarch. And whether they like it or not, I’m the one who’s standing next in line.
Tenth grade began under a ruler with an iron fist. Over the first term Twilight claimed another crown, her reputation ballooned from crazy to delinquent to bully, and the shadow she cast over the school grew just a little bit longer.
December. The evening of the last Monday before winter break. Slightly snowy; definitely cold.
And the day the magic left.
Twilight had forgotten how lonely her thoughts were when she was the only one contributing. The book’s voice had suddenly disappeared during lunch period, and without its presence the world felt far emptier than it had before. In its absence the only certainties Twilight’s bedroom had left were math homework, the muffled blare of the television downstairs, and a foul mood.
(How many days are left again? she’d asked earlier, after she’d finished eating her lunch.
From today? The book made a noise almost like a hum. Nine-hundred and ninety-six.
And do all prophecies have to take so long?
This one does.
I’m flattered you’re willing to wait.
Oh, time is no deterrent, chosen one, it said, and Twilight felt her heart flip a bit at the title she’d finally earned from it—not girl, not star, but chosen one. A decade is nothing compared to a millennium, and the darkness that you will face is just as old as I am. As you anticipate your role in preventing its release, that terror of a thousand years eagerly—
And then it stopped.
Twilight frowned into the silence and tapped her fork against her tray. Everything okay?
No. A pause. I’ll be back in a moment.
What?
But it never heard her question, for it was already gone.)
“Bit longer than a moment,” Twilight muttered under her breath. She stared harder at the paper in front of her in the hopes that it would somehow finish itself. Someone downstairs turned on the microwave, and in response the television volume cranked up louder to drown out the hum.
The world was too loud and her thoughts were too quiet. I might really be going crazy after all.
It never came back. Not after days or months or even years. And while Twilight eventually adjusted back to a magic-less life, some habits were harder to justify without the book’s encouragement in the back of her mind.
Her iron grip started rusting in eleventh grade as routine and reputation dragged school life into a monotonous bore. Fear was predictable. Testing limits was no fun when she’d already soared far out of anyone else’s reach.
And… it was kind of lonely at the top of the food chain.
Not that she’d ever admit that out loud.
But actions spoke louder than words, even more so when said actions ceased to be. Twilight knew her peers noticed her withdrawal from their torment—though a few well-placed glares were enough to stop anyone from confronting her on it—and she also knew it was only a matter of time before what little control she had left slipped away entirely.
Eleventh grade finished with her ninth seasonal crown. Twelfth grade started with her tenth, if only by the slimmest of margins. Then, a week before the Winter Ball, it happened.
In a slushy, freezing-cold parking lot in front of the school, Twilight finally met her match.
“Hey!” someone shouted at her across the empty lot. “You’ve gone soft, she-demon!”
Snow splattered against the back of her jacket before she could turn around. Twilight grit her teeth and spun on her heel to face her attackers, cutting a mark into the slush beneath her boots.
“How so?” she barked back. She didn’t recognize any of the five girls grouped up beside the snowbank—freshmen, she figured. They’d have to be new if they had the guts to pick a fight with her.
“You used to have a spine!” The same girl chucked another snowball that Twilight just narrowly managed to sidestep.
“Yeah!” another one piped up. “Think nobody noticed when you turned into a washed-up”—she chucked a snowball—“lame-ass”—another snowball—“coward?!”
The first shot hit the parking lot, but the second nailed Twilight in the shoulder. She stumbled back a step from the impact and grit her teeth harder to muffle an involuntary grunt. “Says the ones staying at a distance,” she retorted. She squeezed both hands around the strap of her bookbag to balance herself and yelled, “Why don’t you come here and say that to my face?”
She was bluffing. Probably. Five-on-one wasn’t at all stacked in her favour, especially without magic, but...
“Gladly!” the first girl—the leader, Twilight decided—shouted, and vaulted over the snowbank to start marching over across the parking lot. The other girls followed after her, tossing their backpacks behind them into a pile on the snow.
They’d called her bluff. Twilight had no choice but to show her hand.
“Shouldn’t have expected a fair fight from frosh like you,” she sneered. “Figures you’d only have the guts to come at me in numbers.”
The leader scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Ooh, now you care about playing fair.” Only a few metres remained between them, a distance that shrank with every step she took. “But, hold on, don’t you have magic?” She grinned wickedly and lowered her hands that had made air-quotes around the word. “Now that doesn’t sound fair at all.”
Twilight swallowed hard and tried to ignore the sweat somehow beading on her freezing skin. “How so?” she managed. “You actually believe I can—”
And then a fist connected with Twilight’s stomach and knocked all the breath from her lungs in a single gasp.
“Nah,” the leader droned. She pulled her arm back and bared her teeth in a wicked grin. “You don’t stand a chance.”
Ah, shit.
Twilight dropped to one knee, off-balance and breathless from the punch. The slush from the parking lot instantly soaked through her jeans and into her skin at the contact. “Fuck,” she coughed out.
The leader raised an eyebrow and waved her goons forward. “Wow,” she said dryly. “Not even gonna fight back?”
“Nope,” she rasped, and grinned despite the fear bubbling into her blood. “You guys aren’t worth it.”
Because despite how badly Twilight wanted to fight back; despite how badly she knew she’d get her ass kicked without magic to back her up, there were two problems with that plan: that they were on school property in plain view of the front windows and the security cameras, and...
She tightened her grip on her bag and tried very hard not to think about what would happen if the book inside got trampled into a slurry of snow and mud.
“Tch.” One of the leader’s eyes twitched as she clicked her tongue. She raised her arms again as if to shove Twilight onto her back, only to pause before her hands met the leather of her jacket.
She’d noticed.
“You’re holding on to that bag real tight,” the leader said slowly. “Got something important there?”
“Got a reason to stick your nose in my business?” Twilight fired back.
That did it. The leader shifted gears from shoving to snatching, one hand shooting forward to grab the strap of Twilight’s bookbag. “Indigo!” she barked. “Help me get this off her!”
And at that Twilight’s thoughts slammed to a halt—she no longer had petty quips or insults or plans that might get her and the book out unscathed. If they took her bag— If they put their hands on the book— If they destroyed her only hope of ever finding magic again—
“Don’t you fucking touch me!”
Twilight slammed her elbows down on the leader’s arms and twisted hard, using the bag clutched between both their hands to yank her off balance and down to the pavement with a wet thud. The leader shrieked another order at her lackeys, but Twilight didn’t hear it. The only thing that mattered was getting the book away from her thieving, undeserving hands—
She scrambled through the slush and planted her knee on the leader’s stomach to pin her on her back. “Let go!” she snarled. She let go of the bag with one hand and crushed her forearm down against her throat. “Let go let go let go let go!”
Something smacked—kicked—the back of Twilight’s head hard enough that her vision blackened to stars. Hands pulled at her jacket in an futile attempt to break her hold. But in her consuming desperation she refused to yield, bearing down with all her strength on the windpipe of the girl beneath her arm.
The strap of the bag stopped cutting into her neck when the leader's hands went limp.
That’s what you get, Twilight thought before finally easing herself off. She didn’t resist as two of the girls dragged her back by the collar of her jacket so the remaining ones could rush to their leader’s side. The two who’d grabbed her threw her to the pavement and descended upon her, and she quickly curled around the bag clutched to her chest to defend it against the pair’s kicks and slaps and screams. The book was safe. That was all that mattered.
By the time a teacher realized what was happening and rushed to break up the fight, a chill had seeped from the freezing ground into Twilight’s bones and numbed her battered limbs. She uncurled only after her attackers broke away, and when she pushed herself up into a sitting position she saw a kaleidoscope of colours already forming on her skin—purples, yellows, reds, and blacks. The palette of a petty fight.
She turned her head to look over at where the leader still lay sprawled on her back. Her eyes were open and her chest heaved with every breath, but even at a distance Twilight could see the massive bruise painted across her neck.
Expulsion.
Twilight wished she could say she hadn’t seen it coming.
As freshmen with no history causing trouble, the other five girls had managed to escape with the much lighter slap-on-the-wrist of a week’s suspension and a month’s detention. But as for Twilight? The infamous bully with a reputation nearly as bad as her track record?
“You may already be aware,” her former principal explained in clipped and icy tones, “that the board has recommended to carry your expulsion forward to all schools in the district.”
Twilight stayed silent at the news and kept her gaze locked to her lap. The blinds to the office were shut, casting the entire room in an ominous light despite the sunshine just outside.
“The next step of the process would normally require you and your parents to meet with the board to decide on your student action plan; however...” The principal shuffled some papers on her desk and cleared her throat. “It seems you’ve been granted a lifeline.”
“...What?” Twilight finally looked up from her knees, confused. What does she mean by that?
“Let me finish,” the principal snapped. After a few seconds of silence she continued, “The trustees that reviewed your case suggested that you would make a good candidate for the gateway program offered at one of their schools next year.”
Twilight snorted. “Pass,” she said, as bluntly as she could. “I’m not gonna be a charity case for some stuck-up trustees.”
“Don’t talk back to me,” the principal hissed, and slammed one palm against her desk with a bang for emphasis. “While I cannot force you to accept such a generous offer, I can inform you that if you proceed with the student action plan then the program will be completely off the table. Is that clear?”
Silence. Twilight bit back her urge to snark and instead muttered, “What’s so good about it anyways?”
For the first time since Twilight had entered the office, the principal’s expression softened slightly. “Well,” she said, “it’s a second chance—you get to finish the courses you need in a... less-hostile environment, shall we say, so long as you keep your behaviour within the bounds of reason. Which, may I remind you, means”—she raised one hand and counted off on her fingers—“No physical altercations, no extorting your classmates, no disrespectful language, no skipping class—”
“Okay, I get it.”
“And,” the principal finished, “you must attend counseling.”
“I don’t need—”
“Your parents have been informed about your options. It’s necessary that you enroll by the end of the month, but the required duration is very flexible.” The principal raised her eyebrows. “In fact, I would dare say it’s entirely up to you.”
The rest of Twilight’s protests died in her throat. Any argument she could come up with felt flimsy against the gravity of her situation—she’d finally fallen into the grave she’d dug herself.
“Which school?” she eventually asked.
It wasn’t an agreement. She hadn’t signed any contracts or shaken any hands. But somehow her former principal recognized the defeat laced through her words and, without words or judgement, slid the manila folder she’d prepared Twilight across the surface of her desk.
She didn’t finish counseling before the school year started.
Not because she hadn’t improved, but because she finally let herself admit it helped.
Sunset Shimmer sat at the desk by the back window, and it was only then that Twilight realized something wasn’t right.
Because those were her glasses and her chewed-up pencil and her backpack on the seat of the adjacent desk. It was all exactly the same as the day before—except for Twilight. And as she stared in disbelief at the spot where she was supposed to be sitting, Sunset looked up from her desk to where Twilight stood frozen at the front of the classroom.
They made eye contact.
The whites of Sunset’s eyes had turned pitch black.
But before Twilight could even begin processing that terrifying change Sunset’s expression quickly twisted to confusion. “What the fuck,” she blurted out. “You’re me. Why the hell are you me?”
“This isn’t real,” Twilight whispered back.
“Wait.” Sunset’s chair scraped back along the floor as she jolted to her feet. “Did you see my—”
And then the world dissolved.
It was like waking up all over again, Twilight managed to think, except this time it wasn’t from a dream she’d ever lived. Reality returned to her in pieces for the second time that day: Celestia’s office. The shadows. Being dragged through the wall into darkness. The book.
Twilight opened her eyes to a sideways view of the auditorium with Sunset standing centred across her vision. Despite the lack of glasses her sight was clear—somehow corrected back to normal by blue flames that wouldn’t leave.
“What—” she croaked, disoriented. She managed to roll over from her side to her hands and knees, the book from Celestia’s office still clutched tight to her palm. What was that?!
Then she lifted her head and saw it:
Celestia was dead.
She lay face-down, battered and beaten and completely still—
—was what Twilight’s mind assumed in the split second before Sunset kicked one of her still-intimidating combat boots into Celestia’s shoulder and flipped her onto her back.
“What did you do?!” Sunset yelled. She kicked again, and this time Celestia grunted in pain when the boot connected with her ribs.
“What I had to,” she choked out, the golden light from her gauntlet flickering weakly with each word. “To protect her from you.”
At that Sunset screamed again, wordless and primal, and Twilight was suddenly very thankful that neither of the two seemed to have noticed she’d woken up. The part of her brain that expected the room to fill with a sea of red quieted down with every laboured breath Celestia took—injuries be damned, she was still alive.
You made her forget! it wailed—it, not Sunset, Twilight realized, as the words echoing at the back of her mind rang with the same suffocating weight Nightmare’s wordless voice once had. Because what good were borrowed vocal cords for conveying the anger of a demon wronged?
And yet somehow you dare call ME a monster?!
Shadows erupted from the scorched carpet beneath Celestia’s back, bursting forth so suddenly they sent Sunset’s hair whipping in their wake. They twisted into a writhing mass of darkness that rushed high into the air before morphing into a pitch-black replica of an object that Twilight recognized on sight: the helm of the armour from the office.
And for a single moment the auditorium fell into a suffocating silence. The shadowy helmet hung suspended and still above the pair as if it were holding its breath.
“I hate people like you,” Sunset said softly. It was her own voice, with her own conviction behind each word. She raised one hand out in front of her with her fingers splayed and narrowed her eyes to slits. “Someone so intent on punishing the world for what she saw in the mirror.”
“Not the world,” Celestia managed. “Just a woman.”
The helmet above their heads shuddered. Sunset flexed her fingers like claws. “Whatever. I don’t care how you justify your actions—it’s time you learned they have consequences.”
Celestia closed her eyes.
“And I’m going to make you remember every moment you tried to forget.”
Sunset clenched her hand into a fist, and the helmet dropped. But instead of colliding with any force like an actual helmet would have, it landed perfectly and silently around Celestia’s head—the shadows parted and reformed on contact so quickly that Twilight almost believed it had no physical form at all.
But then Celestia convulsed and threw her head back against the carpet with a metallic thunk, and Twilight immediately retracted her previous thought. Terror clawed against her insides at the sight of her mentor writhing in soundless pain, and just as she worked up the courage to raise her voice—
“Oh, geez.” Sunset made a face. “Sorry. That wasn’t me. Gimme a sec.” She opened and closed her hand a few more times until Celestia’s body relaxed and her arms fell limp against the floor. As she stilled the golden aura around both her gauntlet and the book beneath Twilight’s palm flickered, faded, and died.
Is she—
Twilight killed that thought before it formed—even at a distance she could see the faint rise-and-fall of Celestia’s chest beneath her tattered suit. Still alive. She’s still alive.
“Sorry,” Sunset repeated, but this time she turned so she faced where Twilight knelt frozen against the ground. “That you had to see that, I mean. Not that I did it.”
She sounded like Sunset. She moved like her; talked like her; carried herself in the exact same way as the girl that Twilight had seen skewered through the heart—but her eyes were black and her voice was laced with an ice that Sunset never had.
“Are you Nightmare?” Twilight whispered. She somehow managed to push herself up to stand on trembling limbs, Celestia’s book clutched tightly against her chest.
Sunset blinked. “Not completely,” she replied.
“But you’re not Sunset.” It wasn’t phrased as a question.
“Kind of?” Once again Sunset pulled a face. “Like, I think I’m still me? But that thing’s also floating around in here”—she pointed to her forehead—“with all sorts of magic and memories and whatever else mixed in with the part that’s ‘me’. So...” She shrugged. “Both yes and no, I guess.”
Oh. That wasn’t very reassuring. Twilight squeezed her arms tighter around herself and took a half-step back. “Why did you bring me here?” she asked instead. “What do you want?”
“Always straight to the point, huh?” Sunset grinned in response, and Twilight couldn’t help but notice the way her canines glinted in the blue-purple candlelight—had they always been that sharp? “Real efficient. I kinda like that.”
Twilight took another step back. “Please just give me an answer.”
“Whoa, okay. Sorry.” The grin vanished, and an oddly determined frown formed in its place. “I just wanted to know why that monster was so interested in you.” Sunset tilted her head to the side and stared at Twilight with an unblinking, blue-black stare. “What’s so special about Twilight Sparkle?”
Nothing, Twilight wanted to reply, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it.
“I mean, I know why,” Sunset continued. She tapped her forehead again to emphasize her point. “But for some reason Nightmare’s memories don’t match up with you. So I thought, hey! I can just borrow its powers for a little bit and find out the truth for myself!”
Truth?
“And of course it was easy to find you. All I had to do was pull you back here, send you to dreamland, and take a quick peek at a few of your memories. You weren’t even gonna notice I was there.”
Twilight furrowed her brow in confusion. “But I saw your memories too,” she argued. The talk of memories and magic powers had lit an oddly uncomfortable fire beneath her skin that she could no longer flee. “Why?”
Sunset’s frown hardened. Her upper lip curled into a sneer that exposed her teeth. “Wow,” she snorted, “you really don’t remember anything.”
“What are you—”
“I figured Celestia was all sorts of fucked up if Nightmare hates her guts this bad, but damn.” Her expression twisted from disgust to a familiar pity that Twilight hated to see her wear. “All this just to make sure you didn’t find out she failed her ██████.”
Twilight blinked. “...What?”
“Guess she thought you’d end up like ████ did if she didn’t interfere.”
There it was again—a crackling, high-pitched static in place of human words. The fire under Twilight’s skin itched at the sound of secrets she wasn’t allowed to hear. “How are you doing that?” she whispered.
Sunset narrowed her eyes. “Doing what?”
“That sound— Didn’t you hear it?”
“There’s no sound, Twilight—”
“There was!” Forget the fire—pressure had returned to squeeze her heartbeat back to racing. “When you said who I’d end up like, I couldn’t hear their name—”
“Who, ████?”
“There it is again!” The book Twilight clutched to her chest like a lifeline only added to the pressure pushing back against her lungs. Something was wrong—terribly and magically wrong.
“But I don’t hear...” Sunset trailed off mid-sentence as some sort of realization dawned on her, her words falling away to a silent disbelief that only served to reinforce the wrongness in the air.
You don’t even know her name.
All of Nightmare’s prior anger paled in comparison to the controlled and even fury carried calm within its voice. Any doubt that Twilight had about who stood across from her immediately vanished—no matter how much it sounded or moved or looked like Sunset, the malice that twisted both its voice and Sunset’s features made one thing very clear to Twilight: that’s not Sunset anymore.
Nightmare thrust out one arm with an electric snap, and suddenly the book within Twilight’s grasp lit up with an aura of blinding white. Before she could react it effortlessly tore itself from her arms and hurtled back toward Nightmare’s—Sunset’s—waiting hand.
Oh, that woman spites me even now, it hissed. It caught the book out of the air without blinking, the spine smacking to a stop against its palm. It’s such a pity she won’t witness the last of her hope destroyed.
“No!”
But it was too late.
The white aura dissipated, and immediately a spiked shadow burst up from the ground and cleaved the book in two, drowning out Twilight’s panicked shout with the sound of a hundred pages tearing all at once.
The cover hit the ground first—because of course leather was heavier than paper, Twilight noted numbly—one half landing on either side Nightmare’s still-extended arm. The pages followed close behind, fluttering down like leaves from where the remnants of the spine hung mangled around the spike.
Get the book. Bring it back. Of course it wasn’t going to work, Twilight managed to think, despair flooding her senses and mixing with her panic into an emotional cocktail her brain could barely start to process.
I failed.
A hundred moons I’ve waited to do that. Nightmare strode past the book without a second thought, paper crunching beneath Sunset’s boots with every step it took. Twilight felt her body automatically mirror each step in the opposite direction, the part of her mind not frozen in panic still sane enough to keep as far away from Nightmare as she could. The last of the papers scattered in its wake and spread further across the carpet—as if even the corpse of the book wanted to flee from the monster wearing Sunset’s face.
Nightmare kept advancing. The aisle began to slope behind Twilight’s heels, and she didn’t have to count the rows of seating in her peripherals to know that she was running out of space.
Are you afraid, child of stars? Nightmare asked.
Twilight resisted the urge to nod and took another step back.
Because while our confrontation has been an inevitable part of my return, it continued, it is a pity that fate dealt the hand she did. Then, almost as if it were mocking her, it tilted its head to the side and opened its mouth to speak instead:
“I always did hold a fondness for you,” Sunset—Nightmare—said matter-of-factly. “Perhaps ████ left me with her heart, for I cannot explain why I so strongly wished that you would be my heir.” Its voice softened further. “Before that woman meddled, it was always supposed to be you.”
The floor leveled out. Twilight’s back hit the stage.
But even I cannot change fate. It closed the distance separating them with every step, one after another until only a single meter remained between. Whether I to you or you to I, you cannot keep what was not yours to take.
It raised its hand, and suddenly Twilight was reminded not of how it had subdued Celestia, but of all those hours ago in the very same auditorium when she felt its pressure for the very first time. And when Twilight remembered what Nightmare had said back then, and Celestia’s reaction, and the terrible feeling that had nearly consumed her whole—
“You’re going to kill me,” she whispered.
Nightmare blinked slowly. Yes, it confirmed. I am.
Suddenly Twilight’s knees felt weak—she had to grab on to the stage behind her to keep herself upright. Her vision flickered in time with her pounding heart, the fire around her eyes struggling to hold its form.
“But I don’t want to die.”
Fate was cruel. Twilight hadn’t believed it until she’d said it, but as soon as the words left her lips she knew that they were true. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to die anymore.
And it is regrettable that you never had a choice.
Nightmare clenched its hand into a fist and the pressure in Twilight’s chest once again surged to an unbearable, unbreathable intensity. Something tugged against her heart and lit a fire under her skin and filled her lungs with ice and blood with bubbling panic. Her vision dissolved to a familiar blur—the flames had vanished, she realized—before a creeping darkness then began to eat away at the edges of her sight.
But this time her voice remained behind.
“Please,” Twilight begged. Words spilled out before she could stop herself—despite her panicked gasps and empty lungs she somehow still managed to force her tongue to speak. “Please don’t— Please don’t kill me— I promised—”
Nightmare’s expression didn’t change at all. Its arm remained extended straight out and unwavering.
“I made a promise,” she babbled. Her voice raised as the world turned hazy and her fingertips went numb against the stage. “I promised Rainbow. I— It’s so unfair! That I finally have a reason to live— That I even want to be alive— But now I don’t even get a choice!”
Everything was cold. The pressure tugging on her heart pulled back further, and through nearly-blackened vision Twilight thought she saw a flicker of something solid phase through the centre of her blouse—but then the world went dark and she could see nothing at all.
“Please,” she choked out. Her words sounded muffled and far away. Fog faded in between her thoughts. “Please, Sunset— Please—”
And then there was silence—
And then there was nothing—
And then—
—the pressure stopped.
It wasn’t a sudden change. It took nearly half a minute for Twilight to realize that she was still there. She could feel the stage beneath her freezing fingers and the collar of her shirt brush against her chin with every heaving breath she drew. Breathing. She was breathing—but far, far too fast. Hyperventilating.
Then a sound pierced through the pounding echo of her heartbeat: a shallow, breathless grunt.
Slowly, Twilight lifted her head.
“Fuck,” Sunset—Nightmare?—gasped. The distance between them was close enough that even with blurred vision Twilight could make out the pained expression on her face. Her clenched fist trembled midair—she clutched at her forearm with her other hand to try and steady it, but to no avail. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
She staggered back a step and broke her pose, both arms dropping limp to her side. But the trembling still continued, even as she raised one shaking hand to the centre of her chest and clawed her hand into the fabric of her shirt.
“What is this?” she wheezed, though it didn’t seem like her question was directed at Twilight, but at herself. “What have you done to me, girl?”
As if in response Sunset’s other hand shot up to her face, her palm pressing against her eyes and her fingers tangling into the fringe of her hair. Despite the physical strain on her body that seemed about to tear her apart, a voice devoid of ice cut clear and unwavering above it all as a single, defiant command:
“Get... the fuck... out of my head!”
And with those words the skin of the wrist pressed against her cheek erupted into brilliant golden light.
Time never passed the same in panic, and Twilight had always found that it was easier to count in breaths. So at the sudden sight of magic with her body frozen against the stage she locked her gaze on Sunset and started counting up from one.
Six breaths for the light to fade to a gentle glow.
Two breaths for Sunset to lower her hand from her face.
One breath to open her eyes.
One breath to make eye contact.
Oh, Twilight realized between shallow gasps, her eyes are blue.
Blue—just blue, ringed by a human and familiar white. Twilight couldn’t bring herself to look away or even blink, terrified that if she did the darkness would return. She held her gaze, and her train of thought derailed. Numbers jumbled together in the crash. She’d lost count.
“Hey,” Sunset croaked. “Hey, hey hey.” She stumbled forward with stilted, trembling steps, still staring back at Twilight with those blue, blue eyes. “Look at me.”
It took eight breaths for Sunset to cross the space between them.
Five for her to reach both arms out to Twilight’s sides.
Six to gently pry her hands from the stage.
Three to hold them.
One to squeeze.
“Just breathe,” Sunset whispered. She raised Twilight’s hands up beside her shoulders, and Twilight felt her elbows catch on the edge of the stage—just in time to keep herself upright. “I’m not going anywhere. Just breathe.”
A familiar electric jolt raced up Twilight’s arms at her touch. Her fingers began to thaw against warm and gentle skin, and the golden light illuminating them from Sunset’s wrist finally started fading away. Only when the telltale twinkle of looping cursive flickered at the edge of her sight did she tear her eyes away from Sunset’s and glance over at her word.
Empathy.
“I’m sorry,” Sunset said quietly. “I almost— I’m sorry.” She squeezed again. Twilight drew a slower, deeper breath. “But you’re okay now. You’re okay. And I—”
She faltered.
Twilight took another breath.
“It always ends up like this,” she said finally. “Every single chosen one for over a thousand years. I— I know that now. I know all their names and faces and...” She swallowed hard. “And that all of them don’t survive.”
And suddenly the air in Twilight’s lungs turned cold as ice.
But Sunset didn’t give her time to respond—instead she shifted her palms against Twilight’s so that their fingers intertwined. “You saw my memories. You know the type of person I am now, right?” The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled, defeated and self-deprecating. “It’s like I was born to play the villain in our stupid fairytale.”
No, Twilight wanted to protest, but her words caught silently at the back of her throat.
“You’re— you’re a better person than I am, Twilight. You went through so fucking much. And if one of us was always gonna go down with Nightmare, I’m glad that it was m—”
“Don’t say that.”
Sunset flinched slightly at Twilight’s interruption. “But it’s true,” she argued back.
“No,” Twilight wheezed. She forced herself to take a slower, deeper breath before she continued, “You’re... a good person... too.”
“You can’t possibly think that—”
“I can.”
“Twilight—”
“I don’t care about memories,” Twilight choked out. “Just facts. Proof. Evidence.” She squeezed Sunset’s hands with as much strength as she could muster, desperate to communicate the resolve her voice could not. “You stopped Nightmare... from killing me.”
“But I nearly didn’t.”
“Twice.”
“Okay, so the first time just cancels out the second—”
“And you helped me... yesterday. At lunch. Just... like this.” Twilight ran her thumb over the edge of Sunset’s hand to emphasize her point. She could feel her own pulse under her fingertips—it seemed calmer than before. Quieter. “You’ve been a good person to me.”
The world was still, if only for a moment. And in the silence Twilight could pretend she’d never heard of magic books or demons in gauntlets or bullies with fiery hair.
Monsters didn’t exist in moments. It was just her, and Sunset, and warm, steady hands.
But then the moment ended, broken by a sharp and sudden exhale between gritted teeth. “Oh,” Sunset managed. “I... I think it’s coming back.”
Twilight squeezed her hands again. Her fingers weren’t cold anymore—just slick with nervous sweat. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I— I don’t know.” Sunset bit her lip and shot a glance back over her shoulder. “Celestia might have been able to do what she did last time, but... I destroyed the spell.”
“Last time?”
“████ was—” She stopped herself when Twilight winced, then corrected, “Someone was the one before me. Before Nightmare’s magic killed its host, Celestia used that book to expel it from someone and seal it away for a bit, but...” Her voice trailed off.
Twilight frowned. The pieces were easy enough to put together: “But something else happened as a result.” Her breathing had started to even out and her legs felt steady, so she pushed herself up a little straighter and stared Sunset intently in the eyes. “Something bad.”
“Yeah.”
“And something else is preventing me from hearing anything about it.”
Sunset nodded, then grimaced. Her eyes flickered for a moment—not in colour, but briefly to an emotion Twilight could only describe as despair. “I-it doesn’t matter now. Nightmare’s almost awake. The spell’s gone, and Celestia’s in no shape to help you. I’m already a goner, but you still have a chance—”
“Not if that chance means taking yours,” Twilight snapped. “I refuse to accept that. That thing can’t possibly be invulnerable—there has to be some other way to stop it.”
“Yes,” Sunset tried, exasperated, “there was. And I destroyed it.” She tried to extract her hands from Twilight’s grip, only for Twilight to squeeze tighter in response.
“Then I’ll figure it out by myself.”
Disbelief flashed across Sunset’s face. “You can’t,” she argued. “And I’m not saying you’re not smart enough to, but that you literally can’t—there’s some sort of magic stopping you from learning anything related to Nightmare’s previous host. All you’ll hear is static.”
Twilight narrowed her eyes. A thought had just occurred to her—why couldn’t she of all people know what had happened? She was Twilight Sparkle, a person who had never believed in or been involved with magic. Except that contradicted the evidence of the word-blocking static and terrifying pressure that only seemed to be affecting her. So then had Nightmare done something to her during their first meeting? But that couldn’t be right either—it had said she’d taken something from it, which meant their paths would have had to have crossed before then.
But if Nightmare had been sealed away since Celestia removed it from someone, when could she have possibly...
And then it hit her.
The only and obvious explanation that had been staring her in the face all along.
“I was involved last time, wasn’t I?” Twilight blurted out.
Sunset visibly flinched. She tried—and failed—to pull her hands away again. “I—”
“But between then and now something happened to my memories. That’s why I don’t know the someone Nightmare seems to think I should.”
Somehow, Sunset’s expression seemed to twist even more. “████,” she replied. Twilight didn’t have to understand static to know she’d hit the bullseye.
“Then if I was there,” she continued, “if I still have those memories that Nightmare says I’ve forgotten, I might have seen how Celestia managed to stop it.” The gears of an idea started to spin. “So even if you can’t tell me what happened, maybe you can still show me.”
“Twilight, what—”
But Twilight was already moving, unlinking her left hand from Sunset’s so she could pull her closer by the wrist. Caught off guard, Sunset stumbled forward a step at the same time Twilight lifted her captured arm and used her own hand to press Sunset’s over both of her eyes.
The world went dark again.
“You can show me,” Twilight repeated. “And... I’ll find a way to fix this. Promise.”
“But I could hurt you,” Sunset breathed. She didn’t try to move—neither closer to Twilight nor to pull her hand away. “I could kill you. Nightmare’s about to take me over again, and if you’re stuck in some memory when it does—”
“You won’t.”
“You can’t know that.”
“No,” Twilight admitted into the darkness. “I can’t.” But despite the terror of uncertainty racing in her blood, she managed a smile just faint enough that the corner of her lips brushed against Sunset’s thumb. “But I believe in you.”
Belief without proof was an irresponsible endeavor, but Twilight didn’t care anymore—if magic and monsters could flip the world on its head simply by existing, then Twilight Sparkle could surely do one better and flip the world right back.
The skin on the wrist of her hand still interlocked with Sunset’s started to burn as soon as the words had left her mouth. In response Sunset whispered something under her breath that sounded like a neighbour to a swear, then shifted her raised hand slightly against Twilight’s eyes.
“Okay,” Sunset said reluctantly, and Twilight immediately felt a pressure throb against her heart in response. “Then I’ll— I’ll see you when you wake up.”
She gave Twilight’s hand one last squeeze. Twilight returned it. Her hands are still warm, she noted.
Then the world shifted from darkness to bright and weightless, and the warmth vanished from Twilight’s skin as she opened her eyes to a final, familiar dream.
my prereaders told me the second act deviated too far from my roots (gay shit) so im here to rectify that immediately
all jokes aside! this was an extra long chapter, but again, i've always intended for c11 and c12 to be a two-parter regardless of how long they each end up. this is also the first time im posting without having the following chapter immediately ready to go, so please bear with me in getting the finale preread and posted as soon as i can
and as always, thank you very much reading! i hope you enjoyed the chapter 
Stats
Page generated in 0.029 seconds
Total duration
756 users online
1,065,560 hits today, 2,244,100 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Thank you for a wonderful chapter!! I was so excited to see the chapter upload!!
11473588
ahh, thank YOU for reading it! im glad you liked it
Oh my gosh this only gets better! So much suspense! I am Living for the Gay Shit, by the way. So excited to see what comes next. As always, excellent work!!
11473625
tysm!! please look forward to the finale, im super excited for all of you to read it
THANKS FOR UPDATE, I've never been so happy 😭😭😭
11473921
thanks for reading!
11473980
hey, thanks for commenting! the few grammatical things you pointed out arent typos - the bracket closes one i opened previously, and the period for ‘me’. belongs outside since it closes the sentence and isnt part of the quote. but it’s good that you double checked these for me! and as for the chapter, if youre confused on what happened, it’s very similar to pinkie’s in that it was memories, except this time for some reason twilight saw sunset’s when sunset was checking hers I hope that makes a bit more sense ^^
Millennium. Millennia is the plural. Also, both have two n's.
Now, isn't that interesting. Because, while I enjoyed the chapter immensely, I thought the romantic aspect was delightfully understated. Not that I have any problem with "gay [stuff]", in fact I very much appreciate it, especially between these two, and I eagerly look forward to more. But the fact that it was came alongside tension, intrigue, revealing-good-answers-while-raising-interesting-questions (should be a name for that), character development and showing a connection between them on multiple levels rather than just romantic and physical... well, it all makes for a wonderful batter, and I like that the romantic cinnamon didn't overpower the taste, but just added that little bit to complete the marvelous cake.
...I really need to stop writing reviews and comments when I'm hungry.
Anyway, great chapter and, I must say, an interesting translation of Sunset's character arc through the movies - changing the facts but keeping the shape and the spirit. Excellent job.
11474202
whoops! fixed now, ty
and i think your analysis is really spot on - perhaps my style of writing isnt so much working toward "omg and then they kissed and were gfs" but more inclined to "how can i make the reader WANT them to" while still keeping things relevant to an overall plotline... ig to me, the payoff is in the little moments that are part of something greater. love the cake analogy btw, sometimes being hungry is the perfect motivation ^^
thanks so much for the comment, glad you enjoyed the chapter!
Awwww 😭
Hearing only static instead of a name... Wasn't that a plot point in another book series I have read before? Brandon Sanderson? It is an interesting dynamic... Or maybe I am reading too much into it.
But can Twilight see the truth in time to stop this?
11476995
it's definitely been done before! im not familiar with the example you've mentioned, but the adventure zone is one i can think of off the top of my head that did something similar ^^ and hmmm, i wonder... guess we'll have to find out next chapter
thanks for the comment!
Heh, ya know while reading this I couldn't help but daydream... I keep imagining that while injured, Celestia is still conscious. And the thoughts going through her head by the end of this chapter?
"A prophecy a thousand years in the making, countless battles of blood and sacrifice, and all the effort I put into manipulating events... Are... are we really about to be saved by the power of teenage hormones?"
11480149
omg i love the imagery of this, it's semi-canon in my heart now!
Okay, I'll admit i trued to click the static blackouts.
11481669
no spoilers allowed!
this is actually sunset isn’t it
i know there was that line about the name, but the book could easily be asking about sunset’s name and not twilight’s
is this luna
11668464
:)))
also this is the first chapter art in 5 chapters where the characters’ eyes are visible
11668635
good catch :))))
Well.. that isn't wrong.. (speaking from experience)
Wait.. is Twilight experiencing Sunset's memories or something?
I was right-
(This. This is the best fucking Au I've ever seen/read)
11789709
good guess :)
so glad youre enjoying the story!
This is my third time reading this fic and somehow I've only just connected that Nightmare disappeared from Sunset when Twilight hit her rock bottom. Genuinely brilliant, I'm kicking myself for not getting it earlier.
11807745
im glad you picked up on that :D and wowza, three times! im honoured, tysm for reading again ^^
Flirting gals
De Ja vu
Another amazing use of the flashback form! Yeah, Sunset coming from Crystal Prep in this timeline, instead of Twilight, makes so much sense. As does the Shadowbolts challenging her, and Sunset lashing out violently against them.
Overall, I'm hella impressed by the way you are blending MLP:FiM and Equestria Girls here, with Sunset's demonic form being the result of Nightmare possession. Also, the way demon Sunset is still Sunset, not a puppet. Just a Sunset with her moral restraints turned off... or are they?
Holy only this chapter was a ride.
11881601
it’s all gas no breaks now!
Trespassing, sabotage and stealing… How many years does she have to spend in jail?
11885223
0, as long as she doesn't get caught :P
so much for "less-hostile"
I've been searching for a place where I can put "You were the chosen one!" in, but failed
Hang on I get why Twilight survived, she was retreating back and the back of the auditurium makes her on a Highground!