Destiny is calling for the death of the four Princesses, but one filly plans on making sure the message doesn’t reach its destination.
The death of the four Princesses; Celestia, Luna, Cadance and Twilight was all planned out, poisoned by those who fear their power. One earth pony decided to have none of it, defied time and destiny themselves to rewrite history. Given that unique chance, can Twilight and Azure change how events once played out?
Twilight stood still. Something had happened, and she could swear it was magical in nature. Worse, she didn't know what it had been. Even after all her studies, she was amazed how magic always found a way to surprise her. As with any kind of unknown magic, caution was primordial. At least she remembered that much as her short-term memories were in a blur. For now she kept her eyes shut, trying to remember what just happened. Her mind was fuzzy, as if someone just rebooted her brain, images slowly coming back of the previous moments.
There, a memory flashed back; she was in front of a series of books. Against her will, that automatically brought a smile to her face. She was looking for one... No, not one; she was looking at all of them, at their order on the shelf. Yes, that's it! She was pondering about her methodology to order the different books in Ponyville's library. She tried once a month to find a better way to classify them. So she was in the library... Her library, or she used to be, as she still had no idea of her current whereabouts.
She tested her body, trying her legs one by one. Whatever that peculiar magic had been, she could swear it affected her whole body and she needed to verify that everything was still in place. She was happy to find out that she didn't fall down with whatever happened and she was still standing up. Head, check. Neck, check. Tail, check. Wings... Concerns surfaced in her mind as she found out her wings were not answering to the call from her nervous system. In fear she quickly probed her horn to find out if it was still there. She let out a breath of relief. She had only gained those wings two months ago and she never really cared that much for them, but losing her horn was something else. She had really hated it when Discord stole that from her. It made her feel... naked. Powerless, even!
Of course, losing her wings could mean a lot of different things, from losing her alicorn standing; to sickness; or worse, some magic gone wrong. Considering she still didn't know how she really got them in the first place, regaining them could prove problematic. She knew the theoretical part about creating new and powerful magic, but if everypony who designed a new spell was awarded wings, there would be no simple unicorns left. No, there were other elements at play in the creation of an alicorn, and while she knew that friendship had something to do with it, she still didn't know exactly how.
She slowly opened her eyes, only to find she was facing the exact same bookshelf as in her memory. It would have been a source of reassurance if it wasn't for her brain automatically noticing that the order of the books was different. Worse, she couldn't find any of the books that were supposed to be in this section. Instead of geopolitical treatises, different tomes about mathematics and physics and their relationship with magic stood in front of her eyes. To make the matter worse, some of those books were not even supposed to be in her library! She spotted a tome about advanced teleportation of complex matter that was, as far as she remembered, under lock and key in Canterlot's library.
She closed her eyes again eyes and took a few deep breaths while trying to keep herself from hyperventilating. Somepony had come into her library and messed with it. At that very moment, she couldn't say what was worse; losing her wings or the disorder of the books.
"Hello, Twilight," a voice said behind her. Without mistake, that was a voice of an old pony. While Twilight couldn't say whose voice that was, her gut assured her it was a friend. She was unable to say how that was possible as she didn't know many old ponies. Granny Smith was a friend, and she certainly sounded old, but the only other aged friends she could think of were the Princesses. They were ancient, actually, but they didn't sound old at all.
She turned around and looked at the pony who had just spoken. It was an old earth pony mare who appeared to be well within her eighties, if not beyond. It was hard for Twilight to estimate earth ponies’ ages as they tended to have a longer lifespan. Even after years of trying, she never managed to find out Granny Smith's age, only that she was beyond a century old. Twilight stared at the pony, trying to guess who it was, but the sky-blue mare with a gray mane and turquoise eyes didn't ring any bells.
Noticing the confusion in Twilight's eyes, the older pony smiled and moved around to show her flank. A small, eight-pointed white star was still easily noticeable on the whitening fur. If there is something that never changed in a pony, it was a cutie mark, and Twilight could never forget that specific one.
It took a few moments for Twilight to gain control over her gaping mouth. "Azure?" Something sounded wrong to her ears, but for now the age of her friend was monopolizing her brain. While it should have been working overtime trying to solve that puzzle, for some reason it had decided to shut down and think about nothing. Twilight just stood there, staring at the old mare.
"It's been awhile," Azure replied while sitting down.
"I don't understand," Twilight said, staring at the other pony. Again, her voice sounded wrong, as if another pony had spoken.
Azure took a deep breath. "Simply put, I pulled your soul to the future and fixed it temporarily to another pony's body. As with any time travel spell, the fabric of space-time is now pulling backwards on what was done. In a few minutes you will be back to your own time and body." She ended up her explanation with a smile.
It took a few moments for those words to register properly in Twilight's brain, and even more for it to recover from the revelation and start processing that new information. After all, it wasn’t exactly her brain. When the light finally came on, she looked down to find two light green hooves. Working overtime to keep her breathing in check, she turned her head back and found a short blond tail. Her cutie mark was also different; a quill drawing a dark-gray pentagram. Her eyes went wide when she finally understood; it wasn't a mare's body!
"You're in my son's body," Azure explained. "Again, it's only temporary, and we don't have much time. He decided it would be better if you were to speak to me instead of him."
Twilight closed her eyes and put a hoof over her heart. She took a few deep breaths while moving her hoof away from and back to her chest. It took far longer than she expected for her heartbeat to slow down to an acceptable level. "I... I'll be alright. I think," she finally managed to say in her now disturbingly masculine voice. She deeply hoped Azure was right and it was only a temporary situation.
"I’m sorry. I didn't have any other choice. The quantity of magic needed to transport an object through time is dependent of three factors; the temporal distance, the spatial distance and..."
"The mass of the subject," Twilight concluded, as her brain switched focus from her predicament to the complex magic formula behind it.
Azure smiled. "Yes. In this case, eighty two years was too much to transport any significant amount of mass," she explained. Twilight frowned as she realized her estimate of her friend's age was off by over a decade. "At least with the quantity of magic me or my son are able to summon."
"A soul doesn't have any mass obviously, and by doing it in my library you reduced the relative spatial distance to a minimum," Twilight finished almost automatically for her. Azure nodded in agreement. Her mind focused now on some complex magic, Twilight barely noticed her panic had dissipated and her breathing was back to normal. "But why pull me into the future instead of traveling back in time?" The only time travel spell Twilight knew of, the one Pinkie Pie found in Canterlot's archives, was only designed to travel backwards. While that specific spell wasn't that hard to execute, she understood enough to know that reverse-engineering and rewriting it differently could very well take decades of work, if not longer. While a spell could be easy to cast, the formula behind it, supporting it, could be of orders of magnitude more complex and vice versa.
"Because I could not accomplish what I had in mind that way. Time travel is tricky and it took me a lot of time and effort to find out why," she explained while looking at Twilight, suddenly quite serious. "You cannot change history by going back in time. From the point of view of the traveler, events will always take place the way they already did… would have… will have… the way the traveler remembers them." Seeing Twilight didn't understand what she meant, she continued. "If for some reason you really plan to change things... Let's say you want to travel to a moment to meet yourself, but you don't remember seeing any future version of yourself at that moment, the spell will fail to send you there. Or worse, it will work, but send you somewhere else and you will still not meet yourself. Or events will simply unfold in a way that you don't meet yourself. In other words, you cannot alter events that already happened to you; they are fixed in stone. Pulling you forwards means you will still be able to change things. From the traveler's point of view, the future is yet to happen. What you are experiencing right now is only one possibility of your future, but it is the only past that can lead to my present."
Twilight let it all sink in for a while. "Wow." She didn't understand everything Azure had just said, but she guessed her friend had taken a lot of time to think about it.
"Yeah, don't think about it too much. It gives me headache, but it’s the only way we can even hope change events," she said softly. "Took me decades to find the errors in Constellation's original time travel spell, and even longer to design one that would allow me to reach my goal."
Twilight shook her head. "I doubt you brought me here to talk to me about time traveling, am I right?"
Azure nodded again. "You are. No matter how much I would love to chit chat, there's more pressing matters." She stood up and walked to a nearby window, which was covered by a curtain. With her mouth, she pulled it away.
Twilight walked up to the window and looked out. Where she expected to see Ponyville and a bright blue sky, there stood only ruins of buildings covered in ashes. The sky wasn't blue; it was a sickly brownish color. She looked up instinctively towards Canterlot hanging on the mountainside, but it wasn't there. All that was left of Equestria's capital was a few pylons of stone that had once supported the city's foundations.
Twilight recoiled at the sight, shaking her head. "No... no... What happened?" she finally managed to ask, unable to tear her eyes away from the ruins.
Azure was looking at the ground, almost in shame. "A little bit over week from the moment I pulled you... You, Luna, Celestia and Cadance will die. Poisoned." She looked up directly in Twilight's eyes. "And it's all your fault."
Seeing the look of horror on Twilight's face, Azure continued her explanation, "Well, not really. It's not exactly your doing." Twilight let go a long breath of relief. "Everything happened because you became an alicorn. That was the trigger for everything else."
"What?" asked a surprised Twilight, the horror back in her mind.
"Not only that... but the terrorists... The rebel unicorns... I'm sure you remember them." Twilight nodded at the not so happy memory. "They don't like alicorns very much. Probably because of what happened with Celestia and Luna... Well, I don't know how long ago that was. So you can understand that three new alicorns showing up in the span of a little bit over a decade did nothing to alleviate their fear."
"I... what?" Twilight asked, confused.
"Celestia was alone for centuries. They were used to her, to manipulating her, or at least dealing with her. Then Cadance became one. Luna came back from being sealed on the moon and finally, you ascended too."
Twilight sat down abruptly, shocked by the revelation. How could she have missed that, it was so obvious. She had never given it a second thought after her ascension. For her, gaining wings was obviously special, but it wasn’t meant to affect how others treated her. In a sense, she thought about it as if it was a doctorate; she had learned enough about a special kind of magic and gained a degree. As for princess-hood, she saw that as a formality; every alicorn was a princess. It was a tradition, even if she thought it was old and backwards. She had no intention of taking any political or leadership role. She should have understood that others might have taken it as a threat to their standings. After all, Cadance never displayed any wishes to lead anypony, but she still ended at the head of an empire. How long before destiny forced Twilight into a similar position? After a moment thinking with her head low, she fixed her eyes on Azure. "There's more, isn't there?"
Azure smiled weakly. "Probably a lot more, but I only know what little information I managed to gather." She sighed loudly. "I found an old historic tome before Canterlot fell. It mentioned that the Princesses never needed their food tested because poison had always been ineffective against alicorn physiology. From what I understand, it’s similar to earth ponies’ natural resilience."
Twilight frowned as she remembered details about alicorns being generally more resistant, displaying the advantages of the different pony kinds. "Then how?"
"How were you all poisoned? I don't know," she explained, her voice shaking at the memory. "While I struggled through the aftermath, I was never let near you or Luna. Your agony lasted a week, tens days for Celestia, and..." A tear appear in her eye. "If I had been allowed to see you... I... I would..." Twilight interrupted her with a hug.
"Shhhh..."
After a moment, Azure pushed Twilight back gently, her emotions in check again. "While I don't know how that poison managed to work, who made it, or who administered it, I do know that the country fell into civil war shortly after your death. While we were fighting against each other, every other country took a stab at us, too. The zebras attacked and managed to reach Canterlot in a matter of months. Even the northern dragons and the griffons did some raids. After two years of fighting, the zebra invasion was at the gates of Canterlot. None of the attackers were able to breach the force field your brother had put in place, so they blew up the city's supporting structures instead."
Twilight shook her head. "Wait, I don't understand. What do the zebras have to do with this? They live on the other side of the world. On another continent! As far as I know, we are on good terms with them and all our other neighbors." She didn't mention the dragons, who lacked any kind of structured government. If they saw Equestria weak or wounded, an attack from them wasn’t surprising.
"I'm not entirely sure. I never managed to ask any of them," Azure answered, apologizing for her lack of knowledge.
"How is that possible? If they invaded us, they should still be around! There's no way they could be responsible for such destruction!" Twilight said raising her voice. She felt her heartbeat increasing once again.
Azure swallowed, obviously uneasy with some of what she had to say. "There were a lot of soldiers around and most didn't care about what a filly was asking them. But... A few years after Canterlot fell, a raid tried to capture some ponies hiding in the Everfree forest."
It didn't take long for Twilight to understand who would hide there. "Fluttershy?" she asked cautious.
Azure looked away. "She died. Discord didn't take her death too well. He had never been emotionally balanced, but she had brought a stability to his life unlike anything he’d had before. I'm not sure if there are any zebras left alive." She pointed at the window. "That devastation, he did it in a blink, a single instant of rage. I managed to save the library by hiding it in a dimensional bubble with the help of my husband. But... While the rest of Equestria doesn't look much better, I'm not sure what the rest of the world looks like."
Twilight looked at her unfamiliar hooves. It was a lot to take in in such a short time and she knew time was against her, pulling her back. With her death, there would have been no Elements of Harmony to stop Discord. At any moment she could be brought back to her own body. She had to ask the right questions, gather the right information. "You sound like you have reasons to think the zebras were behind the assassination? Or at least part of it?"
Azure shrugged. "Their invasion happened a bit too quickly. The others took much longer before attacking us. They were waiting for it, knew about it. They reached Canterlot so quickly. They were prepared, had planned it in some way! Also, zebras are experts in potions, so I would guess they are the obvious culprits behind the idea of a poison deadly to alicorns. I know this is all conjectural, but in retrospect, that’s a lot of points against them."
Twilight closed her eyes and tried to focus her thoughts. "But... why? As far as I know, we have always been on good terms with them."
"I'm sorry. I don't know," Azure replied, disappointment tainting her voice. "After your death, I was kicked out of the castle and never managed to further search Canterlot's library for any information. Maybe Luna or Celestia would have known, but I was not allowed to see them."
Something ticked in Twilight's mind. "Why? Why prevent you from seeing them?"
Azure shrugged. "Again, I don't know. My guess, someone high-ranked tried to protect you. It could have been simple security measure put in place automatically. I never managed to figure it who gave the order."
Twilight raised a hoof and her voice; Azure's theory didn't sound right. For some reason, raising her hoof required her more effort than usual. "How is that possible? Why would my brother allow something like that to happen? I'm sure Luna - or even I - would never allow something like that!"
"Your brother couldn’t reach Canterlot in time. You were all dead before he was able to reach the city," Azure replied plainly.
Twilight recoiled. "What? How? It only takes about two days by train to make the trip between the Empire and Canterlot. Less if there is no stop along the way. With the time to communicate the news to the Empire, he should have been here within four or five days!"
"All I know is that he had some kind of accident," Azure explained. "I guess it wasn't really one, but in the end, it took him over two weeks to reach the capital."
Twilight took a deep breath, suddenly feeling as if the whole world was against her, as if nothing she could do would change her fate. She could feel something pulling on her mind, more and more insistent. The clock was ticking and only seconds were left. "Wait! If all the princesses are dead, who's raising the Sun?"
Azure shook her head. "Rumors go that Celestia and Luna used their remaining strength to put the planetary system in the most stable orbit they could achieve." She smiled weakly. "They managed to do it with relative success. I'm no astronomer, but from what I observed the Moon's orbit is slowly degrading. In a few centuries, a millennium at best, it will collide with our planet," she explained. "I guess the unicorns planned to resume the task they used to perform a long time ago, but they didn't expect the civil war or the invasion to turn out so badly. Even now, I'm not sure there are enough unicorns left alive to push the Moon back in orbit."
"If I do manage to change the past... my future... This future will never happen. You, your husband... Your son! You... They might never..." Twilight said concerned, fully aware of her time running out. Her sight was blurred and she was feeling lightheaded. Reality was dissolving in front of her eyes.
Azure raised a hoof to interrupt her. "We—all three of us—decided a long time ago that this future was not worth living," she said closing on Twilight. She stared deep in her eyes. "We put all our time and effort into achieving this very moment; a chance to change it all." A smile appeared on her lips. "Besides, if there is really such a thing as destiny, I might still meet Sunny..." Her lips trembled at the name. "My husband, even if the world doesn't come to an end. I’m really sorry that we couldn’t do more than give you this message."
Twilight closed her eyes, but she wasn’t able to reopen them.
She couldn’t say if she was dreaming. It didn’t feel like she was sleeping, but can a dreamer really tell? She couldn’t remember anything, not even her name. She only knew that she had to go somewhere. In her mind, she swam against waves as tall as a mountains. They were glowing with golden energy and were all going in the same direction. They pushed her back from where she tried to go, rocking her against her will. Every effort was wasted against that relentless flow. She had nothing to hold on to and simply keeping her head above the waves was draining all her power.
Her body ached far worse than the day after she raced against Applejack and Rainbow Dash. She noticed a light on the horizon, warm and familiar. A safe haven... Home. She was attracted to it and only wanted to be there, but the universe itself didn’t care for her wishes. She wasn’t meant to be in these flows. They never stopped for anypony, not even her.
She finally noticed that something was pushing her forwards, surely if not terribly slowly. It was a tug of war between that blue glow and the waves. It felt like an eternity as she slowly crept forwards towards the light. Many times, the helpful glow weakened, as if it was tiring itself out. A few hooves away from her destination, it gave out. Immediately the flows started to pull her away. She was so close, and yet it could have been worlds away.
The blue glow came back, stronger than ever. It surrounded her, picked her up and delivered a final push. It was gentle but firm and full of determination. It felt different too, as if somepony was holding her up in the waves; preventing her from drowning. She knew what it was! It was somepony’s life force; energy that, once given, can never be regained. She couldn’t tell who it was and it faded away the moment she crossed the light’s threshold.
Remember!
This time, coming back to consciousness didn’t go as smoothly. Her whole body was in pain as if she had run from Ponyville to Canterlot. And back. She discovered all the muscles she only knew on paper and some she could swear were not documented. Finally the pain started to recede, except for her right wing. It got crushed when she fell down and if the pain was to be believed, she had lain on it for quite some time. Having gained them only recently, she hadn’t developed the instinctive reaction of folding them when falling or laying down.
She got up too quickly and had to lean on the nearby bookshelf to prevent herself from falling down again. She couldn’t remember the last time her head had spun like that. Actually, her memory failed short of anything beyond a few moments ago. She opened and closed her right wing a few times, blood slowly flowing back into it. She was happy to find nothing was broken.
Azure?
Memories of what was yet to come flooded her mind. Suddenly pain wasn’t her primary concern anymore. Now that she knew what was about to happen, she hoped events would unfold differently if she acted quickly enough. She raced to her desk and grabbed a quill with her magic.
“Twilight, aren’t you supposed to be in Canterlot?” asked Spike, standing in the library’s doorway. Twilight didn’t notice him entering. Wasn’t he supposed to spend the day at Rarity’s?
“Quick Spike!” she shouted. “Go find me Rainbow Dash, it’s urgent!”
He turned around and was about to leave when he realized something. “Wait a second, the train for Canterlot was what… three hours ago?” he asked. “You missed a train?”
From the pain in her wing, Twilight had guessed she had been on the ground more than a few minutes, but she was surprised to learn it was hours. She quickly came up with a theory from the glimpses of what happened when her mind was brought back; the transition didn’t happen softly and she could have ended up in the wrong time entirely. In the scope of what just took place, three hours did seem like an acceptable margin of error for a travel of over eighty years.
She did feel bad about missing the train. She hated tardiness more than anything. However, she had more pressing things on her mind.
“I know Spike! But right now I need Rainbow Dash here. It’s far more important than missing a train!” she snapped.
“More important than Princess Cadance’s ascension celebration?” he pressed on.
“Far more! There’s no time to waste!”
He turned around and ran away. “Alright, alright… Is there a moment when something’s not important?” she managed to catch him grumble.
She turned her focus back to her desk. She levitated a piece of parchment and was about to write on it, but stopped. How could she say that; how could she explain what was going to happen or how she came to know about it? She shook her head. He didn’t need to know that. He only needed just enough information to act. She quickly wrote a few lines; just enough for him to understand. She could always explain to him later, if the country survived that long.
Just as she finished rolling the paper and sealing it with wax, a blur of rainbow slammed the library’s door open.
“Spike said something’s important?” asked Rainbow Dash, wound up like a spring, ready to fight.
Twilight didn’t answer right away, but walked up to her with the missive levitating in her magic. She stopped in front of the pegasus and stared at her, making sure she would understand how important it was. “Yes,” she said. “I need you to deliver this message to Shining Armor.”
Rainbow didn’t understand and it showed. “Huh… Alright,” she said. “I can bright that to the mailmare and…” She stepped forwards to grab the paper, but Twilight pulled it away.
“You don’t understand. I want you to deliver it to him, in his hooves. Personally,” she hammered on. “And very, very fast.”
Rainbow took a step back before scratching the back of her head. “Well, alright. Isn’t he in Canterlot for his wife’s celebration?”
“No, he stayed in the Crystal Empire,” she explained. It suddenly occurred to her that she had no way to explain how she knew that. Anypony would assume Shining came to Canterlot with Cadance. She hadn’t received any information stating that he had stayed back. She suddenly wondered what could have kept him back in the Empire. No doubt some ponies worked to keep him away from Canterlot.
“Wait… what? Why?”
Twilight decided against lying to her friend. “I don’t know. I just know he stayed behind.”
Rainbow stared at the alicorn, trying to decipher anything that wasn’t being said. She sighed; reading other ponies had never been one of her strengths. “Alright! The next train to the Crystal Empire is tomorrow morning,” she said while taking a step toward the floating paper, but Twilight pulled it back once again.
“You don’t understand,” Twilight said, far calmer than she thought she would be. “The train is, at best, two days of travel. More if it’s not a non-stop trip. If it leaves tomorrow morning, it means Shining would only receive it in three days.”
“Well… Duh!” said Rainbow radder rudely. “It’s not like there’s alternative mode of transportation!”
“How long can you keep the speed of your Sonic Rainboom?”
Rainbow recoiled back, as if Twilight had just grown a second head. She took a long moment staring at her friend, trying to decide if the alicorn had just gone mad. “You’re serious?” she asked. Twilight simply nodded. “You’re insane! There’s over two thousand miles between here and the Crystal Empire!”
“And I need this in Shining’s hooves within a day,” she said pointing at the parchment.
“It’s that important?” Rainbow asked quite unsure. “Can’t you teleport the message?”
“I wouldn’t ask something that crazy if it wasn’t,” she answered. “and no, I can’t teleport it. I would need a way to locate him precisely over that distance.”
Rainbow frowned. “You can’t explain more than that?”
Twilight bit her lips. She didn’t have time to explain everything, and there’s some good chance Rainbow wouldn’t believe her anyway. “All I can say is that Equestria might cease to exist within two weeks if we don’t do something.”
“What?”
Twilight moved closer to her friend. “Remember the changelings? This could turn out far worse.”
Rainbow’s sight snapped and locked her eyes to Twilight’s. She was the bearer of the Element of Loyalty and she hadn’t believed her friend’s warning back when the changelings invaded. She had ignored her, and the cost of that could have been huge. She doubted she would ever forget that mistake, and sometimes she wondered if she would ever truly forgive herself. She grabbed the floating roll. “Your brother will get the message.”
She turned around and dashed out of the library, leaving no time for Twilight to say anything. A moment later, a chromatic explosion could be seen spreading across the sky.
