Chapter Two - A Journey of a Thousand Miles
After deep consideration and thought, Twilight put down her experiments for once.
"Fine! Fine! I'll go!" Twilight warded off the whispers bounding around in her head.
It wouldn't be THAT much of a journey anyways. A few teleports would have her there in no time. Based on estimations she had already done; it would take around a month of constantly teleporting and walking. It was daunting thinking about all the time she would be wasting in that month. Her poor experiments, put off for a month. It was sad to even think about.
Her gaze traveled across the room to her experimentation table. Sitting there were the results of her recent experiment. A single bar of Arcanite.
Maybe she could put it to use in getting to the wedding. It had the potential to hold mass amounts of magic. Maybe it could store up enough magic for one giant teleport? A great leap for ponykind if you would. The only problem was, how long would it take to develop something capable of that?
In order to make it to the wedding, she had around a month. A short time frame indeed. The mail service really needed to work on its delivery speed. Now that she was thinking about it, how long had it taken Flint, a pony from Equestria, to find where she lived? Who even was Flint?
Well, those thoughts aside...
It was time to get to work.
For all her collective knowledge, Twilight couldn't help but wonder why things always turned out this way.
A potent backlash of magic smashed into her horn with all the force of a boulder. It rubber-banded, dragging her across the floor towards the magical equivalent of a collapsing star. With a surge of effort, Twilight ripped the magical tether free. It snapped towards the rapidly collapsing spatial singularity.
For a moment, the magenta swirling magical construct seemed like it had stabilized. It was a swirling mass of untamed magic, orbiting a perfectly round orb that seemed to swallow up any and all light. A giddy excitement filled Twilight. She might just have done-
Then, it started to collapse on itself rapidly. Sensing the building magic in the air, Twilight rapidly raised a lavender colored magical bubble around herself. In practiced fashion, she started activating the various wards in the tower, trying to reinforce it against the inevitable.
Twilight turned and started running, adrenaline fueling every step. With a practiced leap and a quick levitation spell, she shattered through one of her windows. Northern winds ripped into her, warded off only by her bubble which kept its internal temperature perfectly stable.
Gliding slowly down towards a massive chunk of ice below, Twilight slowly spun in place to look back at her tower.
"Please not this again." Twilight pleaded.
Her tower shook. Thankfully, it seemed like her wards had done their-
Her tower then exploded.
An eruption of magical energy blew off the two tallest stories of her tower in a single moment. Chunks of enchanted ice went flying into the air, along with countless priceless books. Tables and chairs shattered into fragments as pages went flying everywhere.
Then, the explosion seemed to freeze, as if time itself had stopped. A rapidly expanding nova of magenta energy stopped just before reaching Twilight, her levitating momentum giving her just enough distance to be out of its grasp.
Yes! Her wards had worked! Now everything would magically begin to put itself back togethe-
The explosion began to spin.
The books and shards of ice rotated around the singularity, spinning faster and faster. Shards of ice ripped books to shreds. The third layer of her tower was shredded to pieces and disappeared into the maelstrom. The orb began to rise, taking everything with it.
When it reached an apex above the tower, it collapsed on itself one more time, then erupted into a massive shockwave. Everything in its orbit was thrown at hurricane speeds in every direction. Books went flying up, then came raining down. Some disappeared into plumes of snow, some landed into icy crevices, while others dropped into arctic seas.
When the shockwave hit her bubble, it immediately popped it. A sound like glass shattered echoed across the landscape, and Twilight found herself plummeting towards the arctic ocean below. With a scream, Twilight barely managed to recast the levitation spell in time before she hit the ice-cold waters.
"Thank Celestia." Twilight hung just above the water.
She set her hooves on it and stood serenely on the silent plane of water. The levitation spell had more than one use, one of which included water walking.
For a long moment, she stared at the remains of her tower.
"...I may have made a miscalculation."
Twilight managed to seal the bottom layer of her tower enough that it would ward out the cold. Shivering, thoroughly downtrodden, and chilled to the bone, she sat directly on top of a freshly carved warming rune. Her horn ached but thankfully wasn't broken. It was giving her a mother of a headache though.
Where had it all gone wrong? The formula? The magical application? The fact she was working with a material that theoretically shouldn't even exist?
The mere thought of rebuilding her tower was giving her another headache. At the very least, she had put a magical tracker on every book in her collection, as well as a powerful protection spell. The natural elements shouldn't be able to damage them. The books that survived that is. For her precious babies that had been turned into origami, there was unfortunately no recovering them.
She nearly broke into tears right there. How many books had she just lost?
With a calming breath, Twilight refocused herself.
"It's alright. You can still recover the ones around here."
She focused on the magical pings around her. Most of them were on the ice, some of them were in it. A collection larger than she would have liked was at the bottom of the ocean. One was... moving away? Rapidly? Had some ocean dwelling creature eaten it or something?
Well, cross another book off her collection.
Just thinking about all the work she would have to do to rebuild was making her exhausted. This shouldn't have happened. Sure, it had happened before, but never to this extent. She had never messed up this bad.
Thinking about all her precious books scattered to the elements, going to the wedding suddenly seemed much lower on her list of priorities. The books were her treasures after all. Besides, it would be much easier to just keep experimenting here in her tower. Or maybe it was a squat now? Was there a term she was missing for a tower that wasn't tall?
With a groan, she put her head in her hooves. This really was a disaster. It looks like she was going to cross the wedding off her list. There wouldn't be enough time to develop a long-range teleport spell before it.
And yet...
The letter was right next to her face, having drifted to the floor from the force of the explosion. While this tower floor was relatively unharmed, it had still knocked books off shelves and papers to the floor.
Twilight read the letter once more and thought of her brother. It really had been forever since she saw him.
She could still imagine his white coat. He was a good brother, always looking out for her, always encouraging her studies. When she had left with that wizard, he had cried the most. He had cried so much that eventually her parents started crying, then she started crying, and then even the serious old wizard started crying as well.
"...Fine. I'll go." Twilight pulled herself off the floor. "I guess I'm jaunting."
Jaunting: a term she had invented which effectively meant teleporting between walking.
But first, she had to pick up what she could around her tower. She wouldn't have time to fetch everything, but she had enough time to get everything back inside the place. For what she couldn't... well, it would be well preserved in the ice until she could get it. There was a reason she lived up here after all. No distractions, convenient freezing temperatures, and plentiful magic ores stored deep beneath the ice.
So, she began the meticulous process of collecting everything. A process that was cold, miserable, and frequently interrupted by gale-force winds knocking her over.
When she had finally collected all the easy to grab books, she started preparing for her journey. Surrounded by piles of them, there was barely any room left to walk in this single roomed tower. Nonetheless, she began sorting out her travelling supplies.
First, she put on her magi robes. Brown robes littered with white stars in the same style as her cutie mark. On her head she put on a ridiculously large wizard's hat. It was her former mentor's hat. A mentor that went by the name Big Hat. There was a clear reason for that name. It was brown, old, and had a few weird stains on it, but the bells attached to it made it all worth it.
She looked at herself in an ice mirror. Yep, her style was just like Star-Swirl the Bearded. Though with much less blue and without a beard. The bells were right, however. More than right. Historically right. She had made sure they were right.
"Twilight Sparkle the Bearded." Twilight hummed. "No. I can't use the same name as such a respectable figure. Twilight Sparkle the... intelligent! No, no, not that either. Too arrogant."
She would figure it out later.
"Big Hat Sparkle!"
That didn't feel right either. Ok. Now for sure she would figure it out later.
As she was headed towards the door, ready to start on the long, long walk back to Equestria, something caught her eye. It was the bar of Arcanite, laying on the floor from where it had melted through her ceiling. After a moment of thought, she grabbed it and slipped it into her saddlebags. Maybe some of the other magi could help her with it. This trip to Equestria could be a research opportunity as much as it was a trip to visit family.
With one last check to make sure her tower was secured and everything she had gathered was in place, Twilight opened her door. Having already prepared a forcefield around herself, the wind couldn't even reach her. She stepped outside, and the door slammed shut behind her.
She cast her gaze across her surroundings. The frozen wasteland that was the end of the world. Even though it was entirely inhospitable, it was home to Twilight. There was beauty in its cracking ice and deep cervices. Though the sun never rose here, sometimes an aurora of breath catching beauty would rise on the horizon. Whatever caused it was still a mystery to her and was one she eventually wanted to discover. Past that worldly limit, who knew what could be found?
And yet, this was not that day. She had a thousand miles to Canterlot. More than a thousand miles. If that was the location of the wedding. Shining Armor had not included that particular detail in his letter.
"First stop, tavern I forgot the name of..." Twilight said. When your mind was constantly filled up with spells, you tended to forget some of the minor details.
With a zip of magenta light, Twilight vanished, leaving nothing more a few floating sparkles. At her departure, an aurora rose on the horizon, as if waving her a goodbye. The destroyed remains of her tower glimmered in its light, scintillating all the colors of the rainbow.
Then, there was a crack of ice finally giving way, and half of the remaining tower slid into the ocean.
But no pony heard it, so did it really happen?
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Only two chapters in and you already have my full attention, I won't deny that I'm interested in how you plan to develop this AU and how many events unfolded differently from those in the series.
i.pinimg.com/736x/f9/00/26/f900268df5b8b61a2546a83a95fcb208.jpg
Wow...I love those last two sentences, Twilight won't be happy with that.
An interesting variant of Twilight. I could definitely see this setup occurring.
Most interested to see how your going to set up the rest of the cast. I would assume that there weren't three, much less one, nightmare alicorns when she left with the wizard.
Looking forward to the next chapter.
More of this, please!
rip ;-; all her books
nice
This is a very exciting premise! I am very interested for what will happen next.
Who wants to put money down to see if what her family thought she would turn into I put 20 gold on a Lynch
Twilights Mentor wouldn't have been named Logan, would he?
Big...Hat...Logan?
12139271
Perhaps...
Nice catch lol.
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oboi 0_0
12139018
I put 15 gold on a desert hermit
I dont understand the point of this chapter.
Previous chapter established she accomplished the impossible and also sent a messenger across a vast distance that took an unknown amount of time and effort.
Is she underestimating herself or you just wanted to cement the fact that she has nothing and has to move forward back to equestria?
I wonder what kind of strange hell scape Equestia's political situation is right now. Daybreaker, Nightmare Moon and Heartache are seemingly tolerating each other.
I would imagine that Equestria is currently a diarchy split between the sun and the moon. It might also be a triarchy with power split between the three alicorns, I would think that Heartache would be too yandere to really care that much about ruling Equetria.
Great story so far. Would love to read more.
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In my mind, it's a fun chapter where Twilight wraps up loose ends before she leaves. It helps show character, while showing her loneliness beneath the surface as she eventually decides she is going to take the month to travel there without any shortcuts. Which is a big undertaking for her. Hope this helps.
Well, at least she has most of her books memorized, so none of the information is lost.
12139365
You forgot the most important reason, which is the fact that there's no way Twilight's ever going back to her neet-bunker at the literal edge of the world by the time she experiences character growth. It's a multiversal constant. The moment Twilight outgrows her home, it violently explodes.
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We all know she's going back for the books eventually
And this is why I never take vacations. Bad stuff happens to your home whenever you are not there to witness it.
If Twilight is going to do The Jaunt, I hope she puts herself to sleep first, I hear it's forever in there ...
This already looks to be a very funny (for us, not Twilight) ride. Can't wait to see what shenanigans an overpowered hermit Sparkle gets up to, especially since she has absolutely NO idea how to interact with people. Her lack of social finesse and etiquette will probably be one of the many wacky aspects of herself which garner the attentions, for good or ill, of the Alicorns.
Let the chaos ensue!
12139365
How many chapters do you roughly plan on devoting to the journey? While it would be interesting to watch Twilight's reactions to the changed world around her, I presume her greatest and most interesting reactions and interactions will probably come from the alicorns, aside from everything else?
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There will probably be just one or two more chapters of the journey there. I'm leaning more towards one.
12139942
Cool beans
12139529
I fixed it. Thank you.
Well, it's a very sad chapter with a sad ending, leaving behind, one might say, almost his native home, his native land. I wonder if Twilight Sparkle will become the fourth nightmarish alicorn in this story?
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Ah, but if no one is there to witness it, did it really happen? If you go away and your house disappears while you're gone, but no one noticed it disappeared until you returned, did it actually disappear or are you just not where you think you are? Not actually home?