Time Enough for Everything at Last

by Jay Watson

Ch.1 Experimentations in Time

Near the end of the second full year of Starlight Glimmer and Sunburst Blaze’s watch over the School of Friendship as Head Mare and Vice Head Stallion, Princess Twilight come to them in a troubled state of mind. She tells them of having the same premonition three times in the last month, foretelling of a ‘great calamity’ in Equestria’s not-too-distant future. She fears for their world’s safety under her watch still.

Princess Twilight implores them both to return to Starlight’s work of Time Travel in order to find out what happened to cause this ‘great calamity’ in Equestria’s future. Both heads of the School of Friendship are very reluctant to broach that area of magic, with Starlight reminding Twilight of the danger they themselves witness when she first tried ‘messing around’ with their world’s history. Besides, their one-year anniversary was coming up and they had plans to go away for a romantic weekend while their eight-month-old daughter, Luster Dawn, was in the care of Sunburst’s parents.

Twilight won’t order them to do something they wouldn’t want to do but she does appeal to their curiosity of ‘theoretical practice’; to see if it actually could be done, opening a doorway to either the past or the future of their world. Sunburst does admit it always very impressed with Starlight’s spell-craft and would have loved to have read it before it was sealed away in Canterlot public library’s restricted part.

Twilight promises to retrieve the scroll and offers the magic journal she uses to communicate with Sunset Shimmer from her lab. Perhaps some of the magical elements of the book could be replicated in some way that Starlight and Sunburst could integrate with her spell scroll in some way.

The duo, somewhat, reluctantly agree to help out, giving warning about the good chance they might not be successful with what she asks of them. All the work could be for naught. But Twilight has faith in their research and spell-casting skills, accustomed to putting such projects in other pony’s hooves and trusting those she chose. Success or fail, she knew she had the right ponies in charge.

After reacquainting herself with the original time-travel spell scroll and the various component sub-spells she used, as well as examining Twilight’s magical journal from the Equestria Girls world, Starlight and Sunburst have recreated the spell in a more stabilized form and imbued it into a full-sized mirror on the wall, effectively creating a ‘portal’ in which to view into. Twilight is astounded by how quickly the two had achieved what they had, taking less than one week to do so. Sunburst is humbled by the praise while Starlight couldn’t help but brag a little about how easy it was and how fun it was to work with her husband on a magic project unrelated to the School of Friendship.

So far, all they’ve tried is tossing inanimate objects into the portal and have them return a few minutes later. They regulate their magic power together into a receiving crystal that focuses the energy into the mirror’s glass pane. They can control how far forward in time the object returns. So far, the longest period of time they have experiment with been one hour. Each experiment has been successful. The next real test would be one full day’s time.

Twilight encourages them both to continue the work, very pleased with the progress. Two days later, Twilight is summoned to the magic lab for an update. There is an issue; going beyond one day’s time requires more magic power then just the two of them to activate the portal. Sunburst asks Twilight to help out; they need another strong magic source to power the portal in order to go further out in time. The princess is thrilled to be asked to help, getting to enjoy her time with two very close friends on a project. With Twilight’s magical power and spell-casting skills, the pace of progress increases to the point that now some pony needed to actually go into the portal and see if it worked with a living creature as opposed to, say, a rubber ball.

Starlight offers herself as the test subject, confident in her spell creation and the research then trio has done in order to make this work. They start small, just one minute forward in time as a first attempt. It went as smoothly as they had thought; Starlight emerging from the mirror exactly one minute later. The second attempt was for one hour and, again, Starlight returned through the mirror as they had predicted. Then came the big test; one full day’s time. Starlight was not worried by the potential danger, still very sure of her skill and now with Twilight’s help, even more confident that traveling into the future would be possible.

Sunburst is very concerned about the danger; prolonged exposure to ‘time displacement’ is still an unknown factor of such actions and none of them knew of what, if any, symptoms might come about after such magical experimentation. It might nullify their magic power, or it could wreak havoc on their bodies and leaved them internally injured without any pony realizing it. There was a lot of unknowns but Starlight wasn’t afraid. Her best friend and the love of her life were helping her do this; what could possibly go wrong?

After powering the crystal that was mounted above the mirror with the correct magic energy, Starlight stepped into the portal and disappeared. This was going to be the most worrisome twenty-four hours for Sunburst, wondering if this was going to go as well as they had worked out in their notes. Twilight stays with Sunburst all day and into the next, returning with him in to the School of Friendship’s magic lab to await Starlight’s return. Twilight counted down the final twenty seconds of time. The crystal began to glow with a soft red luminance, increasing in intensity as the seconds wound down. Right on time, Starlight emerged from the mirror, smiling with satisfaction at her spell’s success.

From this experiment, Starlight can extrapolate how much magic spell casting power is needed to go forward in time and return successfully. To do what Twilight is asking will take a few days’ time for Starlight and Sunburst to calculate going as after as fifty or one-hundred years into the future.

Sunburst openly questions as to the ‘why’ Twilight needs to know; if it was something out of her control, no amount of effort on their part could divert it from happening. But Twilight is adamant, intending on creating some kind of ‘failsafe’ to protect their world from total collapse into chaos. She understands she can’t, and shouldn’t, stop it from happening, but she intends to keep its effects to a minimum so as to prevent all life from ending. She admits to both Starlight and Sunburst the seeing what happened to Equestria while chasing after Starlight through time like she had those years ago, made a deep and jarring impression on her. She made a promise to herself to never let that happen on her watch; she would not let Celestia and Luna down after taking over for them.

Both Sunburst and Starlight are sympathetic to her heart’s desire and would do all they could to fulfill her wishes. Just before leaving for their anniversary week-end get away, Starlight delivers her report to Twilight, presenting a case study of time travel and what it entailed. The reading kept Twilight intrigued; the princess saved it for bedtime reading after a long day of ruling Equestria, finding the escape into Starlight and Sunburst’s work more interesting than the legal documents and meetings that filled her daytime hours. She promises to give them more resources and open access to the restricted area of the Canterlot Library in order to peruse this project when they return from their vacation. This looked very promising.

Comments

[MatTheBook]

Near the end of the second full year of Starlight Glimmer and Sunburst Blaze’s watch over the School of Friendship as Head Mare and Vice Head Stallion, Princess Twilight come to them in a troubled state of mind. She tells them of having the same premonition three times in the last month, foretelling of a ‘great calamity’ in Equestria’s not-too-distant future. She fears for their world’s safety under her watch still.

The RUG

[careerera]

Nice story.

Regards
Careerera