They said it was insignificant. Oh, how wrong they were. So very, very wrong.
A certain event that so many considered insignificant went horribly wrong. They said her teacher would forgive her for a tardy, but why listen to them? Now she wanders across the wastes, a shattered shell of a mare. AU in which Twilight went even farther with her tardy freak-out and was punished by banishment, all due to a few more seconds of insanity. Somewhat inspired by Among the Ruins.
In a land so many know of, beyond the borders of a kingdom ruled by a diarchy, in a long-unnamed desert, a lone figure strode lethargically. She had been living a great life not three days ago, but she had gone and ruined it. A stray strand of ethereal energy bent into the wrong shape, and it was all over. She hadn't meant to destroy it all, really. She just put a bit too much of herself into a spell. Granted, that tiny bit had gone wild and split the rioting ponies apart from the inside of each instead of splitting the ponies apart from each other, but everyone makes mistakes. Or had she been casting a reversal spell and accidentally reversed the ponies themselves instead of the enchantment? Maybe both, she contemplated, or maybe she had built a faulty spell matrix that collapsed in on itself, taking a decent bit of pony-shaped matter and turning it into antimatter.
Her hoof caught a small pile of gathered dust, scattering it to the wind.
It mattered not, she realized a moment later as the memory of the results beat on her fragile mind like an incoming tsunami. Not that she'd know anything about tsunamis, mind you. She had simply studied them at one point, and now she found the term resurfacing. Regardless, the image of that innocent little hamlet after it had been so violently defiled by the arcane stuck in her mind. Sure, she had done a horrible thing, but did they really have to banish her for it? Couldn't they have placed a rehabilitation spell on her or something? But of course, rehabilitation spells were one of her own projects, and no one could know for sure if she had sabotaged them in planning for this.
She stumbled a little on a small hole in the ground.
Of course, she hadn't planned it, but the lawyers insisted that she must have, and that they simply couldn't take her word for it. Oh, how she hated lawyers right then. If-- no, when-- she found civilization, she was going to kill the first lawyer she saw. No exceptions. Even if the princess herself had taken up law, she would do everything in her power to wipe the horrid creature from the face of the Earth.
Another hoof fall, more dust in the wind.
She wanted to kill something. She wanted to kill something, and she knew it, consciously knew it. She could feel her rage boiling up, yet it did not touch her. Curious. She was curious about why she could and simultaneously could not feel it. She knew she was being affected by it, yet she did not care. There was a certain... serenity in this curious form of anger, almost like she could use it.
More dust, this time preceding the slow, inexorable step.
It was at her disposal, and she could control it, yet... it needed to be let out. She had no choice, and so she realized that her ire was not truly under her control, though it made no difference. It was warping her, and she knew it, delighted in it.
Small grains of sand began to idly flow around her, swirling about as if in a small cyclone, and she was the eye.
Insanity. It was the only coping mechanism she knew, and she was bloody well going to use it. It didn't matter now, her life was over days ago. Now all she could do was start anew.
Now larger masses of sand were caught up in the wind, forming looping tendrils around her.
Her magic had proven unstable time and time again. She needed a replacement. At least her hatred was reliable, and the more she let it twist her, the more in control of it she felt. Well, in control is the wrong term. Perhaps 'in sync with' is a better fit.
The sands billowed around her, bowing to her subconscious will.
She could never be Twilight Sparkle again. Twilight Sparkle had failed, and left her to the wolves. And by wolves, of course, I mean lawyers.
The winds swirled about, a fair tempest forming.
She needed to be someone else, someone stronger, more geared towards her own power, rather than hindered by logic or sanity.
The winds lashed across her, digging small furrows into her skin.
She needed less constriction, a new name, a new identity. She would become the one no one had heard of before that rushed through the ranks of society. She had spent enough time sitting and learning behind a desk, though there was always more to learn. She was broken, but a broken tool can be repurposed. She still needed to learn, but now a new method presented itself. Research was great, but nothing could come close to the indeniability of empirical data.
Now she found herself floating slightly off the ground as the wind lashed about, striking her, demanding she give it a directive.
A star can shine brightly, but when it goes out, something new and awesome is born.
A particularly jagged speck of sand grazed her right eyelid as she closed it, blood flying from the wound to join in the gale.
She had always been a beacon to the rest of society, the perfect example in nearly every case, and now she was falling from that position of grace and prestige. If she was going to go out, she would go out with a bang.
A harsh, horrid light emitted from her, her entire being changing.
Twilight Sparkle was dead. Now there was naught but Shattered Nova. And it felt good.
The storm struck at her, blood being torn from the flesh.
Those who had wronged her must pay, but one cannot dispense retribution properly when one does not bear a clear conscience. The sheer injustice of her situation fueled her, the urge to right that which was wrong overpowering her. What she had done was horrid, true, but she had no control over that, and this knowledge only served to drive her wrath to new levels. The knowledge of what she had done would weigh her down, certainly, but she would not let it affect her as it would have many others; depression, grief, paralysis, even suicidal behavior. She was insane, and so such words bore so very little meaning to her.
The tempest yet attempted to pry a command from its mistress.
But where to start? Perhaps, with a new identity would come a new opportunity for life. But where would she start?
The cyclone encompassing her had its orders. It would find a new home for she who owned it, and bring ruination to all that would dare stand in its way.
The whirlwind of sand tore across the desert, the occasional streak of red or flash of purple breaking the constant tan color. She remained in the center, harsh, hot wind biting away at her now seemingly raw pelt. She could feel it speaking to her, telling her of its history and of the surrounding environment in a tone of speech lacking voice or sound. There was a village not far ahead, one which had managed to remain out here all this time, all but cut off from society. She didn't want to scare the inhabitants, though, so she couldn't just drop out of the center of a tornado and act like nothing had happened, or ponies would think her crazy.
Not that that would be an incorrect assumption, she noted to herself.
Still, if she was going to start anew, she would have to show up in town through mundane means. She could claim to have gotten lost in a sandstorm, a rather accurate and credible reason for being in the figurative-- possibly literal-- middle of nowhere. Yes, that would make sense; a young astronomer-slash-magician who lived on the edge of the desert getting lost in a sandstorm. The only problem was that if Applejack and her family were anything to go by, many of these cut-off hooligans would most likely try to get her home, and that simply would not do.
At any rate, her ride had arrived at its destination, an old gravel road, and had continued on without her.
She stood there, sand still clinging to her coat, by the side of an ancient rundown path, one way leading to civilization, the other leading to more madness and aridity. Shattered Nova may have been, indeed, out of her mind, but she bore no desire to die, lest her trial and planning be for naught. Curiously enough, it appeared that the direction to her right was the right path, and, being the madmare she now proudly claimed to be, she dictated her direction by a simple phrase; right is always right. Having been a mare of science, she knew this to be nothing more than a superstitious claim, but for the moment, it did have a bit of logic to it. And so she went right.
-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-
Less that an hour later, but more than fifteen minutes, she found herself at the edge of a puny little townstead made up of scarcely more than twenty buildings and a water tower. It clearly wasn't much, but it was a place where she could begin. After all, many had to rise to greatness rather than be raised to the position, as demonstrated by a certain self-important stallion who considered himself a part of nobility, despite his being absolutely ignoble.
She strode slowly in, a drop of blood falling from her face and being consumed instantly by the dry dirt, and her head lowered in fatigue. A tumbleweed rolled past in front of her, lightly scoring a set of lines in the dust which the wind erased less than a second later. This place seemed to be her soul manifest; dry and hopeless, yet somehow existent. A pair of eyes peeked out from behind a curtain, soon joined by another, and then a door opening and the clip-clop of hooves. She didn't care, she simply continued on, her path now muddled and unguided.
She felt a hoof on her shoulder and a calm, cool voice speaking to her. "Hey, are you alright there? It's a few days travel to the nearest town, and you aren't carrying anything, so you can't have had any water, could you?"
In reply, she only looked up wearily at the concerned pony, an earth pony. She was a dull red, so much like the twirling dust, with a similarly drab yellow mane. But her eyes stood out. They shone a brilliant shade of cyan and betrayed so much of their owner's intentions and emotion.
Her expression shifted slightly away from concern to shock at the sight of the violet unicorn's visage. "Heavens, girl, what did you do, stand in a sandstorm?!" Nova felt a slight smile cross her lips, too small to be discerned with the untrained eye. "Come on, we've got to get you back to Auntie. She'll know what to do." At this she called back to the house she'd come out of, "Gale, stop staring and get out here! We've got a guest!"
A hurricane blue pegasus with a wild grey mane flew out the door and began to tow Nova back to the decrepit-looking cottage she had just come from while muttering something about "darn tourists" that couldn't take care of themselves.
Seeing no reason to maintain consciousness, only to be questioned as soon as she got through the door, Shattered Nova allowed herself to drift into the realm of dreams-- or in her case, nightmares.
She found herself in a grassy green meadow with so many she cared for: Applejack, who couldn't tell a lie if she had a sword to her throat (1); Rarity, whose rather endearing obsessive behavior was rivaled only by the former Twilight; Rainbow Dash, never willing to simply abandon her friends; Fluttershy, ever so kind and timid, willing to help even the fiercest of beasts with a cramp in its back; Pinkie Pie, her energy overflowing such that one could never stay in a bad mood around her; Spike, her assistant and adopted little brother, always there to comfort her when something went awry; even her genetic family was there.
Of course, all good things must come to an end eventually. The ground seemed to shake, the light breeze growing much stronger, blowing away a picnic basket that seemed to come from nowhere and knocking many of the ponies over, save for Twilight. As the gale force winds grew stronger, storm clouds pooled overhead, lightning falling all around the panicking ponies, even among them.
Then the real shift happened.
The ground began to peel away, leaving behind a dark and desolate landscape, the skies turning blood red as the ponies were whipped about, unable to grasp the land beneath them, Twilight just standing in the middle of it all, gaping at the horrible mess the theoretically well-planned picnic had become in such a short time. The storm, however, didn't seem to think that enough. It began to rip away even faster, the ground constantly being worn away, debris getting scattered to the wind and making the whirling two-hundred foot vortex visible. It seemed to be a dusty tan color, uprooted grass being the only thing to provide a change in the monotonous color, a deviation highlighted by the rapid flashes of lightning.
'How could this get worse?' you might ask yourself. Think for a moment; so many of her friends had been flung into the air, and the only thing keeping them there was the storm, and said storm kept them up to a hundred feet above the ground. What else would happen in a nightmare but for the storm to simply vanish? At the sight of so many ponies important to her falling to their dooms, Twilight tried summoning her magic, only to find the space where it had once been replaced by rage. She struggled a little longer, but still her magic refused to work. This was getting frustrating. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't call to her magic.
And so her friends and family fell fifty feet.
She tried again fruitlessly to bring all those around her to a halt before they hit the ground.
Thirty feet they fell.
And again she tried, this time allowing her anger to step in. It slowed them all down a little, but it certainly didn't stop them.
Ten more feet, gone.
It seemed to have been a good idea to let her anger lend a hoof, because now she found a much lighter tempest forming and stopping the horrid descent.
But then, anger and fate decided to take their fee. Celestia showed up from an apparently nonexistent place, congratulating her for the remarkable display of magic, and attempted to grasp the floating ponies with her golden aura to set them down, only for the spell to explode. Literally. All of them, save for the mare in the middle and the solar princess, exploded in a flash of bright light, one which faded to reveal the falling remains of all she held dear, except of course the aforementioned princess, who appeared to be really quite wrathful. She scarred her student with harsh words, and began to stride menacingly closer.
"I always knew, one day, you would bring this land to ruin, or lead it into prosperity. Now I see which. You always just sat there reading your books, but you needed to WAKE UP. I cannot express how many tines you seriously needed a SLAP IN THE FACE, but I never gave it to you. Instead I just LET YOU SLEEP." The enraged diarch drew ever closer.
Twilight cowered in fear, a corner somehow forming behind her and preventing escape. "B-but princess! I-I thought th-that was what you'd wanted me t-to do!"
The darkening and even more menacing image of her mentor drew ever closer, saying in a dark tone, "no, you knew. It is all your fault. Now it's time for you to WAKE UP. WAKE UP and smell the ashes!"
And so Twilight did.
-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-
She woke up to a light being shone in her face with a pinkish unicorn with a bluish mane and a pair of glasses hovering over her. "Gale! Dusty! Get in here, our guest's awake!" she shouted, causing Shattered Nova to lay her ears back against her head at the loud sound. She swore that if she hadn't seen the source, she'd have sworn Princess Luna was the one shouting at the other two ponies.
The door opened, and two ponies came through, one a pegasus, the other an earth pony. If her memory from before her nightmare was anything to go by, the dark blue-furred, grey-maned one was this 'Gale', and so the auburn, ochre maned one must be 'Dusty'.
But a question still remained; who was this mare examining her? So she asked. "Wh-who are you?"
The pink unicorn looked down at her with caring eyes and said in reply, "I'm Cotton Candy, but everyone around here just calls me Auntie Cotton. Makes us feel more like family. How about you? Where're you from?"
Family. That word echoed through Nova's head, a pang of sadness at remembering how she had been forced to leave her family when she was exiled, and how horrible it had been knowing that she would probably never see them again. Then she realized that she'd been asked a question. "I... I-I'm Tw- Shattered Nova. I... I don't remember where I'm from. All I remember is being in the desert, then there was a sandstorm, and now I'm here."
Cotton Candy gave her a sideways glance. "Shattered Nova, huh?" She looked at a clip board she held with a powder blue aura. "Well, that explains the cutie mark."
Nova was confused. Her cutie mark? Wasn't it a star? She decided to investigate. Insanity is great, but you can't do anything with it unless you have information. "Cutie mark?" she inquired.
Cotton looked over her spectacles at Shattered Nova. "Are you telling me you don't remember your cutie mark?" she asked suspiciously.
The purple pony in this exchange gazed emotionlessly back at her. "After long periods of dehydration and starvation, one tends to lose a bit of their memory, if not their mind," she quoted back. Now she was glad that she'd read The Effects and Symptoms of Deprivation: Unabridged Edition. It was proving to be a good choice.
"Hmm," was Cotton's reply. "This look familiar to you?" she then asked, holding up a drawing of what looked to be Twilight Sparkle's cutie mark, but instead of one solid star, it looked like it had been broken into multiple sharp pieces, each a slightly different shade.
Shock. That was the feeling that flitted through Shattered Nova's head at that moment.
"Wha?!" the lavender mare exclaimed, well... shocked by the design levitated before her.
Confusion. It seemed to follow so quickly.
"B-but that's scientifically impossible! How could this happen?!" she quickly followed the previous statement with.
Intrigue. Such a thing ought not have happened, yet did, clearly, as a quick glance at her flank confirmed.
"The only thing that could do this is a master magician of Celestia or Luna's caliber! How did I break such a fundamental principle?" she continued her tirade.
Fear. It flooded her as cold logic and reason cut in.
"Wait, but if only the princesses could cast it, then how..." Her eyes widened. "Are they following me?!" the insane mare shouted.
Acceptance. Such a thing was like water after a long walk in the desert, and she knew all about that. Plus, reason seemed to have slapped logic upside the figurative face, had a short spat, then decided to work together.
"Celestia Probably thinks I'm dead or still wandering, as should Luna, despite her dreamwalking, so it must have been..." Her eyes now drifted up towards a certain bone-like structure on her own forehead. It looked a little longer than before.
And then she realized that she'd said all this out loud, much to her chagrin.
Cotton Candy placed a hoof on Twi-- no, Shattered Nova's head. "Are you alright, dear? It sounds like the sun got to you." The recipient of the temperature check flinched at the mention of her former mentor's celestial body, and the irony struck her; the sun had indeed gotten to her, but not in the way this disconnected pony thought.
Then came the random sleep sequence that is so often used as a transition.
-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-
Now, this dream wasn't so much of a nightmare as a blank white expanse, cold and harsh, yet bright all the same.
And then there was the rift. It started small at first, but soon it grew to the size of a door, shortly thereafter taking the form of said portal. It was made of a dark indigo wood inlaid with intricate silver patterns. Then it opened, quite dramatically, and through stepped a certain eldritch princess, all decked out in midnight regalia. Said princess seemed quite glad to see her first friend still alive and well, which it did not take her long to voice, and quite loudly, might I add.
"Twilight!" the lunar princess called out. "It has been too long, my friend," she said, embracing the former Twilight Sparkle.
Shattered Nova looked back in surprise at the apparently dream-walking alicorn. "Princess Luna?! What are you doing here? I didn't know you could dream walk!" Then she paused, thinking. "Wait, but if you're here, then what of Princess Celestia? Is she through that door too? Or is another one going to show up with her inside? Perhaps with a bag of-" she was stopped by a hoof in her mouth.
"We already told thee, thou mayst call us Luna, as thou art our friend. Tell us how hast thou been? And didst thou manage survival?" Luna asked, only then removing her hoof from the lavender mare's mouth.
Nova decided to go along with the spontaneous conversation, as the other party appeared to be a bit of a Lunatic as well. "I've been fine, despite being stuck in a desert for the past few days. Also, I found a tiny out of the way village with a water tower, so I assume that they must have given me water at some point, although I don't remember it. And my name's not Twilight, it's Shattered Nova. I got a bit tired of that name and it seemed like it would be better to have a name that matched my mental status."
This caused Luna to take a moment to process what she had just heard. Did Twilight say that she had changed her name? No, that would mean she was insane, and Twilight was definitely NOT... Okay, she was a little insane, but only a little! She wouldn't do something like that... right? There was only one way to know for sure. "Excuse us, didst thou just say that thou changed thy name? We could have sworn-"
Nova was quick to the response. "YES! I've been thinking, and if magic is who Twilight is, but magic will not comply with me, then I cannot be Twilight! There was only one thing to do then: change my name, and thus who I am as well!"
And so Luna decided that this pony was too insane to be of any use, and so fled the dream realm, waking up in a cold sweat in Canterlot, and Twilight slept for a few months, locked away with none but her imagination and the voices in her head for company.