As The Sun Sets

by Noobblue

I promise I'll start taking chapter titles seriously

Silver's face dropped from mildly irritated and thoughtful to a completely blank poker face.

Cadance stared on, trying not to spontaneously combust

"I'm sorry... What?" Silver tried, slowly

Shining called out from behind Cadance, "Cadance, what are you-" He stuttered, "What?"

"Same page here dude," Silver gestured to Shining

Cadance cleared her throat and side eyed Shining. "I was thinking that as a favor, we could-"

"What, hang out?" Silver inturrupted

Cadance nodded, starting to lose confidence.

"Why?" Silver said, "What possessed you to even ask that?"

"Well... you wanted to before."

Silver's face turned to surprise and confusion, she turned to the side and just stared off into space, heavily blinking every couple of seconds. That continued for at least half a minute before Silver shook her head and turned to leave again.

"Wait, Dusk-"

Silver rolled her head and groaned, "what."

"You're right-" Silver mumbled 'of course I am', "We do owe you a favor"

Shining tuned in again, "Do we? We never asked for any of this."

"Actually-" Silver and Cadance said at the same time

Cadance glanced at Silver quickly and continued, "I did give the okay for Silver to be involved."

"You?" Shining tried before realization dawned on his face, "Ah right, the letter."

"And you want to... take me out for a night on the town because you owe me a favor?"

"Well... I'm not giving you my memories, but I don't just want to leave a hanging debt."

Silver nodded, "Which makes plenty of sense."

"Is there anything else not power related that you want?"

Silver thought and locked eyes with Cadance,

Cadance followed up, "Anything we could provide, to be clear."

Shining had stopped detesting the situation; as he had made is opinion known enough, he returned to a guarded but neutral stance from his seat at the table. Amber had taken several steps closer to him, behind him, specifically.

Silver sighed. "Not really anything unrelated to my original ask."

Cadance ruffled her wings, and waited for Silver to continue

She rubbed her whole face with her hoof and groaned again, "You know it's not even midday yet."

Cadance found the use of midday instead of noon odd, but she started smiling.

Silver was avoiding Cadance's gaze. At least, Silver was trying to, by rubbing her face and turning away.

"I really don't have the time."

Cadance's smile turned into a frown and Silver looked back to her with a mirrored expression, "I'll just have to go without advanced magic for a while." Silver shrugged, and shook her head, "Cause you know, opening dimensional folds doesn't take any magic." She continued gesturing extravagantly, and shaking herself.

"I mean, why would I even try to do conventional magic anyways? That'd just be too convenient!"

Cadance's frown turned to concern as Silver kicked one of the chairs over and began laughing.

Cadance reached a hoof over to Silver, "Are-"

"No Little Princess. I am not okay." Silver snapped her head back to Cadance, "I have over three weeks of work to do in ninety hours, and I can't use magic, and have no tools."

Cadance stepped forward with the intent patting Silver on the shoulder and reassuring her. Cadance was interrupted by a loud cracking noise coming from Silver's saddle bags as Cadance touched her, and by a little jolt of arcane lightening traveling up her hoof like a shock.

"Ow!" Cadance quickly stepped back, cradling her hoof, Silver guffawed.

Shining was at Cadance's side in an instant and was looking her over, Silver sat down and pulled a pile of destroyed ruby from her bag.

"What did you do!" shouted Shining.

Silver continued to tiredly laugh while speaking, "And of course now! I have to deal with this"

Cadance meanwhile, having recovered from being startled, "It was just a jolt Shining, I'm okay."

"And my apologies for that, you tripped one of my non-Snoutlean wards."

"Your what?"

Shining answered her instead of Silver. "Non-Snoutlean geometry?"

Silvers eyes began to glow as she turned towards Cadance, "You appear to have some built up residue from a 'nth-'m-'l'c"

"A nathimalac?" Cadance tried, she got a look from Shining.

"No vowels, the word is non-dimensional, Alicorn ears though." Silver's eyes returned to normal.

"She was asking about the creature, not the pronunciation."

"They're like cosmic lampreys..." Silver put a hoof under her chin, "Although pretty much all eldrich animals are cosmic lampreys, so ignore that analogy."

"That sounds bad."

Silver shook her head, "They're pretty harmless normally, but they also don't normally cause that much residue buildup, Shining has a bit less. I'm guessing they prey on you more since you're an Alicorn." Silver pulled several more objects out of her bag, including several bound plants and a jar full of opaque orange fluid.

"What about me being an Alicorn makes me more of a target?"

"You're juicier."

Cadance leaned forwards with eyebrows raised, clearly demanding a better explanation than being referred to as juicy.

"No, I mean literally. They consume chemical entropy. You have more since you do less, I think. It means you've got more of what they want." Silver continued doing random assortment of things with the objects she had on hoof, mixing them into the fluid, crushing gems onto the floor and casting quick spells.

Cadance frowned, "That doesn't sound promising."

Shining leaned forwards, "Can you get rid of them?"

Silver dropped the rock they were holding and slammed their hooves on the ground, "Could you make up your damn mind!?" Silver pointed an accusing hoof at Shining, "Whining and complaining about owing me a favor and now you, 'well just get rid of them'" Silver threw their hooves back to their work with frustrated speed, "Just shut your mouth Shining, seriously."

Shining did, and Cadance wrapped a wing around him, both to reassure him, and to make sure he didn't 'add' anything else.

Silver put a lid on the jar and shook it a couple of times. The orange, which had turned brown through Silver's mixing, rapidly expanded to fill the container to the lid, and turned an ivory white. After examining it, Silver slid the jar over to Cadance, "Put a dollop on your horn, under your wings, and in the frog of each of your hooves, it'll make you unappetizing." Silver gestured up and rolled her eyes. "And I don't suppose you two know how they're getting into reality? Any rips in space time hanging around in the castle?"

Shining became suspicious, Cadance responded, "Yes."

Silver's ears perked up, "Wait, really?"

Shining gestured for Cadance to not

But she did. "The mirror portal"

"The whosit whatnow?"

"The Mirror Portal is an artifact made by Starswirl, it opens to another world every thirty moons." Cadance explained.

Silver scrunched her eyes with her pitch rising as she asked, "And what kind of protective spatial enchantments do you have to keep out the nasties?"

Cadance gave an 'oopsie daisy' smile

"I thought so."

"So what do we do?"

"Smash the mirror." Silver said

Cadance looked to Shining, who was pretty much just along for the ride at this point. Then back to Silver. "It's not quite that simple."

"There's not a habitable world on the other side is there?"

Cadance nodded

Silver tossed their hooves up, "So why can't we smash it? Do we need this other world? Because eldritch nonsense will be getting into that world too."

Cadance put a hoof up and opened her mouth to respond to that, but found that she simply couldn't.

"I'm just kidding, the opposite anchor point is an opener, void creatures wouldn't be able to get into their world."

Cadance bopped her head and rolled her eyes, "There's a mare on the opposite side living there. Plus, they occasionally need our help."

"Who? Anyone important?"

"Celestia's old student, Sunset Shimmer."

Silver coughed, hard. Still working through what seemed like a random choking fit, said "I'm sorry. Who?"

"Sunset Shimmer." Shining said.

Silver closed her eyes slowly and pinched the bridge of her snout and mumbled a long string of expletives.

"Well then you're just going to have to deal with occasional eldritch creatures sneaking into reality." Silver gathered up her things. "Either that, or bring her back and destroy the mirror."

"Can't we... Put those enchantments on it?"

Silver scoffed, "For something like a world gate? Not a chance, if you breathed on the spell structure hard enough you could potentially completely lose your destination by several other realties, timelines, or just by infinity entirely."

"Are uh..."

"'nth-'m-'l'c"

"Are they dangerous?"

Silver thought for a moment, "I dunno really, a swarm could potentially kill a pony if they all attacked at once, but 'nth-'m-'l'c tend to be pretty passive creatures." Silver stood up, and tossed something to Cadance. Shining caught the little ruby in his telekinesis.

"If you see anyone rapidly aging, give them some of that ointment. Otherwise it'll be fine. That gemstone will shatter if anything bigger comes through the portal."

"You're just giving us all of this?"

Silver frowned. "You say that like I want to."

"Well... I... Yes?"

Silver just sighed and turned to leave again.

This keeps happening the same way.

"Thank you."

Silver perked up a bit on her way out, but otherwise didn't respond.

There was a pause before Cadance heard Amber gasp, and start, "That was terrifying!"

Cadance turned towards Amber with Shining, he spoke out first, approaching Amber, "Are you okay?"

She doesn't look like it

"I didn't know changelings could steal memories!"

Cadance was momentarily confused before remembering Shining's quick cover story.

Shining vainly tried to comfort her, he couldn't.

"And what was all that about?! Monsters?! Eldritch monsters aging ponies!? Here? Who even was that?!" Amber was practically hyperventilating, and practically fell into Shining as he went tried to pull her into a hug.

"Normal changelings can't do what he can, Amber."

"Shining, let's just tell Amber the truth."

Amber looked up and her head shook between the two of them, "What truth? Please tell me there's not more?"

Cadance wasn't quite sure what to do here, or how to even explain Dusk to Amber. So she did not. Cadance bid a hasty retreat, "Shining, I'm going to go setup our evening, go ahead; Amber, I'll clear my paperwork during lunch, and we can talk tonight okay?"

Amber nodded, with a fearful and confused look on her face. Shining began talking as Cadance left the room, her mind not quite racing with organizing her next couple of actions. Her thoughts were interrupted by Silver, who was stood just outside the meeting room, on the side of the glass that wasn't transparent.

Silver was facing the door, and clearly waiting for her. There was a suitcase with wheels, and a runic teleportation circle spread in dust over the floor behind her.

"Now listen."

Cadance's adrenaline filled response went dead and she felt her anxiety building, but she waited and listened.

"I don't know why you care, but if you desperately want to help me, you can, but Shining Armor can't know."

Cadance kept waiting.

"Is there more?"

Silver smiled, "Nope, that's it."

"I can help you if I want, but I can't tell Shining."

"You can forgiveness and permission it, but he won't like it."

Cadance forced herself to calm down, and tried to apply a bit of rational thought. "You're saying 'it' a lot, what does this actually entail?"

"Oh, well I'm going to manipulate you into doing something you don't want to"

*Distrusting horse thought noise*

Cadance's face matched her thoughts, "So why offer, if you're going... to..." She trailed off in confusion, not exactly knowing how to phrase what she meant.

"You don't want to now; that's what the manipulation is for." Silver said, matter-a-factly

Cadance tried to think a bit more, but Silver tapped the ground, "Tick tock Little Princess, Shining will be done consoling Amber in a moment."

Cadance looked back to the door, then back to Silver

I mean, he won't use magic on me, so why wouldn't I? If I know what he's trying then... Well then I guess, that's the gimmick; I can handle that.

Silver held out a hoof.

Cadance looked at it with visible hesitation.

Silver smiled, "Learning to not let me touch you. Smart." Silver walked backwards into the circle and grabbed the suitcase in her mouth.

Not exactly what was happening there, but okay.

Cadance took a couple steps forwards, "Okay, Dusk Swirl; I'll hear you out."

"Then let's get a move on." Silver gestured towards the circle.

Cadance stepped up towards the circle and gave it a once over before entering the bounds, Silver spread her wings.

"May I?"

hmm? Oh

"Yes, go-" They teleported, "ahead."

Okay.

They were in a cavern made of ice. Cadance was stood on some strange metallic pattern. The room had several pillars of ice carved into the walls, and there were three pathways leading away from the round chamber that was, in Cadance's opinion, roughly thirty hooves wide. Looking through the perfectly clear ice out into the darkness gave the room a particularly ominous aura too it.

"It's an old spell" Silver said, stepping away, having been observing Cadance's thousand yard stare into the dark. "A fear based astroturgy spell to separate a large area from reality."

"Like a pocket dimension?"

Silver took a couple of steps around, giving the metallic rune structure inlaid in the ice a couple of testing prods with her hoof. "Yeah actually, exactly like a pocket dimension. The only difference is the space in here is where things actually are out there."

"Well so, what do you need?"

"Alicorn memories."

Cadance frowned, and lifted her mental guard, "I already said no to that."

Silver smiled and calmly said, "and I said I was going to manipulate you into doing it."

Silver's look was wrong. It took Cadance a moment to figure that Silver had an incredible poker face, with perfect facial contortion. The reason Cadance could tell at all that her expression was a lie was because her emotions didn't match her expression. In fact, Silver was limited in emotion at all.

I'll never get over the eyes

Silver's eyes made Cadance uncomfortable.

"Okay?" Cadance tried, after Silver had continued to stare

Silver didn't blink, "To make a long story short. It won't hurt you, and you'll get to pick what memories to get rid of. Anything will do, so long as it's a clear one."

"And then what?"

Silver deadpanned, "And then nothing, I distill the memories, and you can get back to princessing."

"Will the spell do something to me?"

"It won't hurt you, if that's what you're asking."

"So... You just give a series of memories I have physicality, and then remove them?"

"Not in that order but yeah."

Cadance shook her head, "And that's it."

"That's it."

"This isn't like one of those stories about fae deals that go wrong?"

"No."

Cadance tried to dismiss her expectations. "So there's literally nothing dangerous or permanently altering about removing my memories?"

"You'll have your memories removed" Silver tried, sarcastically.

"Why didn't you explain that before?" Cadance said, incredulous.

"I did."

"Well-"

"It wasn't anymore complex than I described, and still isn't. You presumed it was, because you didn't understand it. Then you didn't ask either."

Cadance just... paused as her mind tried to describe back to her what Silver did say, and that was pretty much correct. "What about manipulating me?"

"I did it already."

"I never agreed to anything."

"You will though, now you know it's not dangerous."

Cadance scrunched her muzzle. "That's not manipulation though."

"It is, because I knew that so long as I didn't clarify the details of taking out memories, that I'd have the opportunity to do it later, and it would guarantee that you would agree."

"Except I haven't."

"But you will."

"How do you know"

"You're easy to read."

"It's not like I try to hide what I think."

"Only because you don't know how"

"I didn't learn because I didn't want to do it"

Silver's rebuttal stuttered and died, "Okay then, fair enough."

They looked at each other in silence while Cadance caught her breath from their argumentative back and forth.

Cadance slowly spoke, "So you planned that interaction?"

"Of course I did. What makes sense to you? Did you honestly think I thought that I could just walk up to you, ask for your memories, and then not explain and be successful?" Silver explained

I guess not

"It's funny how you recognize how dangerous I am, but refuse to act as though I am intelligent."

Cadance rubbed the back of her neck, "It's not that, I just-" She tried to answer abashedly, but Silver held up a hoof and spoke over her.

"I make things move fast. It doesn't give you time to think, I know." Silver put her hoof back down and her false smile disappeared. "Life gets like that around me. I know it's uncomfortable, I'm sorry."

Cadance smiled, "Thank you."

"Don't thank me, think up memories you don't need."

Am I... really going to do that?

...

...

Cadance's you can't just get rid of your own memories.

...
...

Cadance groaned, but couldn't keep her amusement off her face, "I can't believe you convinced me to give you my memories."

"Just a couple, I'll need a gallon, at least." Silver began walking out of the chamber towards one of the caverns openings out of the teleportation chamber.

Cadance followed tentatively, making sure to keep Silver in view.

"Where is this place?"

"In the mountains, outside of the Empire."

Cadance didn't say anything for a moment in their walk. The hallway curving up and around itself in a loop. As soon as Cadance realized, she looked up to see the floor above them was close enough to see it through ice.

Once they walked up to the top Cadance got a look at what reminded her of the laboratory in the Crystal Empire Spire. It was very reminiscent of what Cadance would describe as a 'pre-medieval' alchemy setup. Silver pulled a flask off the shelf near the door, and nearly bumped into Cadance as she turned around.

"Oh, woops, I didn't realize you were right behind me." She said, walking past and back down the loop.

Cadance, without better reason to interact just followed.

This is... Honestly exactly what I expected

Once they entered back into the teleportation room, Silver held out the flask for Cadance out on a wing, "You'll need to drink this for the spell to work properly."

Cadance took it in her telekinesis as they walked, and held it up to inspect it. It was some midnight blue liquid, with speckles floating around inside. "What is it?"

"It's mostly distilled nightmares."

"Is that safe to drink?"

Silver nodded, "It's like anti-venoms. Safe to consume, not safe to inject."

Cadance popped the quark lid out of the top with her magic and gave the concoction a whiff. I didn't smell of anything. She, very cautiously, gave it a sip. It was cold, but it didn't taste like anything. It slid down her throat very much not like water. Almost aggressively not letting her maneuver it in her mouth. "That's really strange."

"You'll have to drink it all."

She did so, it was weird, but not bad.

Silver led her into another chamber mostly full of broken boxes, and packing material. Random objects were strewn about, broken crystals mostly.

Is this a trash room?

Silver tipped over a box, the interior containing a cast iron cauldron. After rolling it out, Silver drew a circle around the massive pot, and began digging through her bags. She briefly looked up to Cadance, "Would you charge the pot with magic please?"

Cadance started emptying her mana into the pot. It was surprisingly easy.

Normally objects resist mana charge, I guess it's made of some mana absorbing material? Magic?

Silver tossed a hoof full of assorted items into the pot, which was around when Cadance felt the potion start taking.

"Oooh." She blinked the tears from her eyes and put a hoof to her stomach. Silver was at her side almost instantaneously, inspecting where she was holding her hoof.

"Have you eaten anything today?" Silver glanced up with worry.

Cadance shook her head, "I came down to that faux meeting as soon as I got up and ready for the day."

That's an awful lot of concern

"I like your mane by the way"

"Thanks." Cadance tried to smile, "Aside from that, is the gut discomfort normal?"

Silver looked unwilling to answer, "It... Yes, I've never seen that side affect, but it should do that if you're hungry."

"Why?"

"The potion makes your mind more responsive. It just means that your body is sick of you tuning out how hungry you were." Silver bopped Cadance on the nose, "Bad Princess."

"Hey, half of that was on you."

"The half that you told me to take over, yeah absolutely."

Cadance stopped charging the pot, the inside was filled with pink mist and a couple of charges of arcane lightening could be seen flashing around the bottom of the pot.

"Now all you have to do is focus on the memories you want to remove. Nod when you want me to draw out, shake when you want me to stop, I'll tell you when I have enough."

"Should I make sure to mentally separate them?"

"You don't have too, but if you start thinking of something and don't tell me to stop, I'll draw it out by accident."

"At least you're honest."

"I've never not been. Ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

Silver wasted no more time talking, and wrapped a hoof around Cadance's face, covering her eyes. Silver placed another hoof at the back of Cadance's head, and tilted her muzzle over the edge of the cauldron rim. It took her a moment to feel the magic take hold. It was a little bit like waking up from a dream, but in reverse. She slowly felt foggier and foggier until the things around her may well have not been there. Yet, her understanding of the environment was still present. It was just being fed to her mind factually, some strange disassociation of the mind from the brain.

Cadance thought about a memory of showering earlier today. It wasn't anything unique. Sure her mane was trimmed down, but aside from getting the bits of cut hair out, it was nothing special. She nodded, and didn't so much as feel, but vaguely knew there was fluid rising up and out of her throat, dribbling out of her mouth.

Instead of focusing on the strange knowledge based experiences she focused on her memory until it got to when she got out and Shining entered the room, then she shook her head. Not really feeling it happen, yet still the same knowledge that it had happened present in her mind. In the same way, she could hear Silver chanting some sort of ritual magic, she just couldn't find it in herself to care about the specifics.

She mentally went to a few more random memories about random inane tasks she'd done recently. Brushing her mane or coat. Particularly boring days of walking down halls. Interesting meals she could bear forgetting about. She was tempted to remove her memory of a couple of books she loved, so she could read them again, but thought better of it. Eventually light returned to her knowledge based understanding, and she knew Silver said that 'she had enough memories'

So Cadance tried to clear her mind, but was roughly dropped back into her body as she did so, coughing up golden fluid from just beneath the back of her mouth.

"You good?"

After a couple more coughs, and clearing what was left in her mouth by spitting it out into the cauldron, which was now a vortex of swirling golden images and feelings. "You're a lot more dispassionate when it's just the two of us."

"What can I say? I don't have to pretend nearly as much."

Cadance shook her head.

I seem okay, like nothing's changed.

"Alright, that's perfect. With a bit of work, I should be able to do all the things I need."

Cadance just observed Silver's expression, and it's distinct lack of meaning.

Every face she makes is planned before hoof. She planned this whole encounter... How much effort did she go through? How much time did she even have since last night? How'd she know any of this was going to-

"C'mon, I'll teleport you back. Like you never left."

Cadance, still a little dazed from the mind magic, just nodded, and followed Silver back out into the main chamber, where Silver and Cadance exchanged some goodbyes, and Cadance looked at some more meaningless facial expressions before being warped off back to the Spire.

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I promise I'll start taking chapter titles seriously

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