Angels and Demons 2: Timelock

by lunabrony

Timelock

The smell that came from the apartments was foreign. It was old. It was abandonment. It wasn't enough that Angel simply wasn't here, she had NEVER been here. Her scent, her very presence, had been completely removed. There was nothing here except himself, dust, and memories that'd never happened. Silver hadn't seen any guards at the castle, which was strange. He could possibly find answers there, for a princess who was so reclusive, it didn't seem she had any need for protection.

There were things that didn't fit together properly in his head. The absence of the royal sisters was the most important. Likely the unicorns could still raise and lower the sun and moon by joining forces, but when had the princesses ceased to be? If someone really had tampered with the timelines, then when had the tampering been done? There were history books in the Canterlot library, which was inside in the castle. Now he had two reasons to go there. Making sure his disguise was close fitting, he stole away out of the window and teleported in a few jumps towards the castle. The headache made him instantly regret such an expenditure of magical energy. He'd yet to find anything resembling a painkiller, and despite patient tutoring from Angel, and no lack of motivation, he'd never been able to cure his own headaches.

The headache was beginning to become barely tolerable. Alicia had been the only other creature who bothered to cure him whenever his headaches started up, and she was just as absent as Angel was. What if they were both dead? No, that was unlikely, Alicia had said she was a thousand years old, she wasn't about to just keel over now. The castle was a wreck, completely abandoned, every room he entered looked as if the Hulk had smashed through it. Someone really hated this place.

He had become moderately proficient at magic. A teleportation spell was not easy by any stretch of the imagination, and if Angel hadn't been instructed in the art in her early princess training, he wouldn't have picked it up. She had mercilessly drilled it into him. He could sense magical aura's, but he didn't feel any more able of unlocking them than someone who could solder things together as a hobby; he wasn't any more able to deactivate a complicated security system. Feeling the etheral magic with his horn, or its absence, and using all his mundane senses to full use he slowly entered the castle. To either bump into the princess or find an appropriate history of Equestria to read.

The Library was his first stop, a room which had seen many times on his tour of the Castle with Angel. Of course several sections of the Library were under lock, key and guard, but the majority was open to the public. As he rounded the corner and got his first glimpse of the regal room, his heart stopped. Perhaps some part of him had expected, hoped, it would be the one room left alone, but it had been hit hardest of all. Everything had been burned. The walls and shelves were scorched and blackened, useless scraps of barely readable yellowed parchment littered the floor, some had floated out into the hallway.

That this place was hit so hard indicated that someone had intended it to be hit like this. It hadn't simply been the result of whatever explosion he had seen at the beginning of this. Someone had meant to erase all traces of the past. He spent a little time hoofing through the burned remnants of reading material, but judged that it was a hopeless task, there would be nothing here to read. Closing this possibility, he tried to think of where to go next. First in search of the reclusive princess, who seemed to need no guards, and if that failed he'd have to find some way of figuring out where and when things had gone wrong. And what had changed.

As he rummaged, a voice filled the air. A voice that was masked by very simple magic, one designed to ensure anonymity. He couldn't tell if it was male or female, only that it was directed at him. His first encounter with, presumably, whoever had done this. "Looking for something, Silver Key?" It came from all directions at once, any unicorn with an affinity for magic could do basic auditory projection.

Someone who knew his name, obviously not a pony from this timeline. "You should know, shouldn't you?" He said defiantly standing tall, he didn't have much in the way of power, but there was no need to cater to magically powered antagonists. It was a guess that the voice belonged to someone involved with had happened, he'd find out soon if he was right.

The voice didn't seem to have any plan on showing itself, and continued. "Your wannabe-detective demeanor was cute at first, Silver Key. But it's really beginning to annoy me. And if there's anything you don't want to do, it's annoy me. So I'm going to tell you once, and one time only. Leave, and do not come back."

"I would love to." He stood up on his hind legs and held out his arms invitingly. "Send me back to where I was, back in the real Canterlot, not this facsimile or whatever it is you or whoever you work for has turned it into." Tactically this wasn't the best thing to do, but if the pony or whatever creature it was would show itself he would have more information. Then again, he might also find himself trapped or worse. It was a gamble.

The voice just laughed. "You're bold, I like that. But you don't seem to understand, Silver. You're in a Timelock, and there's nothing you can do about it. You want so badly to put things back the way they were, but you're wasting your time. I've already won. Goodbye, Silver Key." With that, he felt his hooves lift off the floor, and he was thrown through one of the broken windows at what felt like a thousand miles an hour. Wind rushed around his body, and his head exploded. Unable to take any more pain, he quickly entered a world of darkness.
...
He wasn't sure what had happened, or where he'd ended up. His eyes slowly fluttered to life. He was in some sort of small room, lying on a grass cot. A soothing aroma filled the room, one which could only be described as a mix between herbs and medicine. Oh good, presumably someone had found him and brought him to a hospital. Even in this unstable reality, he could still rely on the kindness of ponies.

The pain of his head wasn't singing Ode to Agony, he could think again, and take in the world around him. First simply by scent, taking in the exotic and herbal smells through his nostrils. There was a healthy atmosphere here, it made him feel good and at home. Though no scent of Angel. He missed her. How had it ended on the note it had? It couldn't end there. He wouldn't let it. Opening his eyes he looked for his benefactor.

There was no one in his room, but he caught a watchful eye observing him from outside the door. As he struggled to sit up, a black and white equine entered, pushing in front of her a bowl filled with various soups and herbs. His head didn't hurt in the slightest. She cast him a look of amusement.
"You should really stay out of the sky,
when you lack the wings with which to fly."
She looked him over, astonishingly, aside from a few bandages around his middle, nothing seemed to be broken.

"I..." He ground a little as he sat up. "A run in with someone who had decided to be against me." The voice was unfamiliar to him, and the rhyme was humorous. It was a good spirited pony, he decided. Whoever had thrown him out of the castle had been powerful and cruel. And for some reason considered Silver Key a significant threat. That counted as the ego boost for the day, but why? He hadn't done anything... yet. His head span from considering how the temporal mechanics might work. "Thank you… where am I?"

The zebra, for that was the only thing she could possibly be, left the cart by his bed. She was kind, at least, if somewhat eccentric.
"If you seek to find where you may be,
you'd find yourself in Everfree."
She replied, gesturing to the cart, for him to eat and drink what she had brought. It didn't seem she spoke without reason to.

He helped himself generously, it seemed the food situation would be a bit shaky now that he didn't have stable income. This, zebra, weren't zebra's ponies as well he wondered, had a good disposition. He was good at mysteries, but not always a sound judgement of character, but he wanted to stake a bet here and he had little else to go on. Finishing some large roots he decided to take the chance. "Have you ever heard of the regal sisters, Celestia and Luna?"

Sadness. That was the look that overcame her features. A look of pained nostalgia, as she paused in her movement of opening the curtains.
"It's been a long time since I heard their names,
but I know them both, all the same."
She said simply.

"If you can, tell me as much as you know, why aren't they ruling Equestria? Why aren't they in Canterlot? Do they even raise and lower the sun and moon?" He was giving things away with what he said, and he wasn't sure what she'd take him for. Someone who had woken from a coma, or had been frozen as a statue until the spell had finally released him? Someone with amnesia?

As she opened the curtains, he feared he had half of his answer. Instead of sunlight, darkness poured through the window. It was just light enough to see extremely creepy looking masks and decorations lining the walls of the cottage. He realized it had been dark ever since he arrived here. The zebra seemed equally surprised by his questions.
"My spells and wards are not just for show."
You mean to tell me, you do not know?"

His thoughts swirled. I've been a statue for a couple of decades, my fiance broke up with me, left me in a garden staring into a wall. It only broke when she left this world... Or I'm a coma patient, I've been sleeping for about as long, or longer. Or I bumped my head worse in the fall than you thought. Or time itself has been altered, some pony traveled in time, messed things up and I seem to be only one who remembers anything. These were all arguably silly excuses. He trusted her, but he had to be careful how much information he divulged. "I don't know, the world wasn't like this yesterday from my perspective, and now it is. One minute Celestia and Luna are the rulers of Equestria, and the next Canterlot has been reduced to a dung heap, my fiancee has never even been to our apartment. I don't even know if she exists." Check Evodia, in a timeline without him she would either have continued her healing arts there, or if need be, ascended to the throne despite her disposition against it. "The royal castle is trashed, the library burned down… Timelock." He remembered the words. "That's what she called it. You're in a timelock, Silver.'"

"A Timelock? That's a very good start.
For it is a forbidden art."
The zebra suddenly sounded worried.
"A Timelock is as reliable as a dull knife,
for it can only be used once per pony, per life."
She explained. She seemed to have bought his statue story, for now.

He had briefly heard about Starswirl the Bearded's time travel spell, mostly since he was considering all sorts of ideas to help Evodia get an edge up against magical threats. A fairly useless spell. Except someone had obviously abused it to its theoretical potential. Its main use was to find out what had occurred in the past, but it was hard to find specific moments where it could be applied. Hence it was locked up, to prevent exact things like this from happening in the first place. "I haven't heard about Timelocks… and what happened to Celestia and Luna? I notice that the sun and moon haven't been raised." Only nighttime. Only darkness. The spells for doing that were surely in the library which had been burned down. And no one had figured out how to do it since? The world locked in a permanent twilight? How could plants even grow?

The zebra sighed.
"There is no need for light anymore. Nightmare Moon has seen to that.
It's dark and cold, and we live like rats.
Much of Equestria is barren, we grow our own food,
despite the extremely depressing mood."
She looked out the window, clearly upset by the way things had turned out.
"Nopony has seen Celestia in a long while,
not since the day she was forcibly exiled."

This was enough to give him hints, but it was still not much to go off. He tried to recall and address that princess Twilight Sparkle had given, she had been the bearer of the element of magic, which was one of a set of strange elements that embodied harmony. They were deeply tied to a powerful source of magic, which she together with her friends had mastered. They had stopped some fairly powerful foes, and had returned Luna to what she had been prior to having become this Nightmare Moon. In this world this hadn't happened for some reason. He had read some reports on the princesses, to see who they were and where they had come from. Twilight had been a gifted student of Celestia prior to moving to a village some ways away from Canterlot… the other bearers of the elements had been living there. Nightmare Moon had kicked her out? This was possible of course. "Do you have something that can soothe a powerful headache? I think I'll risk telling you the whole story." He wondered if she'd be able to tell that he was telling the truth.;. or if she could, whether she would believe in it.

His host nodded.
"I have many soups that will quench your pain,
but eventually it will start up again."
She called to someone outside the door, had someone been listening in on him this whole time?
"Dear, fetch the herbs for his headache,
while I listen to his tale of whats at stake."
She commanded gently. He saw nopony outside the door, only a faint rustle and faint clop of hooves.

He was a bit suspicious about who was listening in, though it was something he'd have to trust the zebra on, not wanting to wait until he was absolutely sure that no one was around to listen to him. When she was ready he told her all his story, coming from another world, ending up in Equestria and proposing to the love of his life. That part he skipped through a bit. He told her of Equestria as he remembered it, as much as he knew of it, and how that had changed. "…and I woke up here, knowing not much more other than a Timelock spell is at the heart of it."

The zebra began to pace, thinking.
"Then I'm afraid you must set your sights
on restoring what you know is right."
She looked thoughtful.
"If what you say is true,
the only one who can stop it... is you."
She shook her head.
"Your story explains a thing or two.. First, you say you do not come from this world.
You were born in that world, and came here, as events unfurled?"

"Yes, born as a human." He wondered how to express it, and stood up effortlessly on his hind legs. "Standing on two legs, no hoofs, we have hands... think dragon claws, only without claws, we call them fingers. Flat head, small ears, no fur, no tail, very short mane?" A rough idea. Too bad that any of the few pictures he had of Angel as a human was in another timeline now. He sat back down. "And because I was from another world, originated there, this world changing wouldn't change me?"

"Something like that, I think you'll see.
You would be the only one who remembered how things used to be."
Unaffected by the Timelock. Perhaps whoever has done this didn't count on him being a threat, or if they did, assumed he'd fail in all his attempts. She looked up as the door opened, a small squeak coming from the yellow Pegasus who opened it. She carried with her a small bowl, filled with steaming broth. On her flank was a series of herbal leaves. "I... um... here." She said quietly. The zebra brightened.
"Thank you, Fluttershy. Let it sit.
I'm sure our guest will appreciate it."

He recognized her, his eyes widening, from a report compiled on the bearers of the elements of harmony. It was an early report he had supervised to demonstrate his skills to Novaria. Basically in case the elements of harmony got disconnected from their current bearers, would Evodia be able to quickly ready six champions of their own? He had found a likely list of candidates for each element without being able to guarantee success, and had made various political proposals for how Evodia could negotiate for the elements to be tried out there in case of an emergency. Then Evodia could supply their newly formed champions to save Equestria. Fluttershy, representing kindness… and with a similar but different cutie mark. Destinies had been altered. Shy, he remembered that, or had been. And in this timeline she still was. "Did you pick these by yourself, Fluttershy?" He asked very gently.

The pegasus squeaked, her eyes widening at the thought. "Oh no, I only help Zecora here." Zecora, at long last he had a name for his host. "It's much too scary outside. There's carnivorous plants and timberwolves and..." She got herself all worked up, and bolted from the room in tears. She was even worse than he remembered. Zecora frowned.
"Three of our main cities have been taken over by villainous kind,
Is that the same as the world you left behind?"

Figuring out pony politics had been interesting. They had managed to get a lot things right, as long as there weren't any villains around. In principle Celestia was the unquestioned ruler, whose word was law, with her sister as co-ruler. In practice she didn't micromanage anything, but was simply there to be the highest court of appeal, advisor on magical issues, implementer of laws and to move ponies in special occasions such as war. Power was granted downwards mostly to mayors and local courts. Most ponies were self-employed. Except in Manehatten. There were no profiteering corporations. No pony worked in a business were they didn't own their own tools. There were guilds, but no unions. In principle there were elections, but ponies seemed to rise to power in a natural progression. He tried to explain all this to Zecora as best he could Despotic rulers were a bad sign. "When was Celestia exiled?"

Zecora shook her head. "I don't remember.
There's a lot of things I don't remember, sad to say.
Every city ruler has a different way.
Nightmare Moon uses memory spells, to make it seem as if all is well..
In Canterlot, the Princess I hear,
rules in silence and never appears.
If they're always cheerful, they won't realize how bad things are.
Ignorance is bliss, and they refrain from war.
And in Manehattan... it's even more terribly so.
Believe me, you don't want to know."
She shuddered, as if it was awful to think about.

Considering that Fluttershy's cutie mark was switched it would have to be significantly far into the past. There were a specific set of interconnected events that had united the six already back then. Which he had also mentioned in his report as something to potentially watch out for, if a new group was to sought out. The appearance of the first sonic rainboom in centuries had marked that occasion. "Zecora?" He asked. "Do you remember a Rainbow Dash?"

Zecora's answer was wordless, but to the point. She shook her head.

The sonic rainboom had been much talked about. Perhaps not on all ponies tongues, and he would not have faulted Zecora for not knowing about it, but the weight of odds indicated that there hadn't been one. Someone had prevented these ponies from finding their natural destines, or had made them discover alternate ones. "The Fluttershy I remember had a different cutie mark." He said, pondering things, taking some of her headache soothing mixture.

Zecora looked out the window into the darkness.
"This is exactly why the Timelock is disallowed.
To prevent things from changing to the way they are now."
She said solemnly.

They never rose to fame, so it was unlikely that she would know anything about them, but he asked leading questions about each of them. Where had she found Fluttershy? The information was probably not worth much, if he was right, someone had stopped Rainbow Dash, permanently handicapping her or worse. "I have a suspicion about where and when now, but not much more, and I don't have any means of travelling back in time, or who I'd face or what I should stop... and if I can do it only once, I need more than that." It was hopelessly difficult, and he was in pain, but it was something to engage himself fully in. Otherwise he'd sink into a dark pit of despair thinking about Angel. He sighed, was she here in this timeline? She wouldn't recognize him, but would she be able to fall in love with him again? No he couldn't think like that.

Zecora tolerated his questions, she was learning as much about his ignorance as he was about how this new realm functioned. She told a fascinating story about how she'd found the terrified Pegasus in the Forest, cornered by wolves, and had taken her in as an apprentice. As for the other five, she had absolutely no idea who they were. When she finished, she added a final bit of information.
"I tell you what, I'll offer more help too,
Go see a friend of mine at Ponyville U.
He should be able to help you, if nopony else can,
but be warned, he's a very odd man."
She scribbled a number on a piece of parchment, and stuck it in his saddlebag.
"Go to Room 112, you may find more answers there,
If you need to find anything, he can tell you where."

Silver suspected as much about the five, though placed her note in his saddlebag. "Thank you for your hospitality, try to stay low and quiet about this." He filled his saddle bag with provisions and a good helping of the soothing herbs. It would all be needed before long. "Zecora, I might need your help again before the end of this, can I count on you? This mistake has to be fixed." Not just this one, he decided. How would he fix the one with Angel? There was one way of course, depending on how the Timelock spell worked, but could he do that?

Zecora spoke calmly, framed in her doorway. Silvers head was starting to pound again, and all this talk about time travel mechanics wasn't helping.
"I will be here if its help you need,
now off you go, be safe, godspeed!"
She said, and her door closed.